The telegraph. EQ Bank is here to help you make bank. Let that sink in. It's a bank built to make you money.
Not just take your money. Sound unrealistic? Don't just take it from me. Take it from the over 600,000 other Canadians earning high interest and paying no fees on everyday banking.
Like, not right now, I can't just wrangle over half a million people like that. That'd be unrealistic. What a bank helping you make bank? Yeah, that's EQ Bank.
Dramatic breaking news in the Tory leadership race, Gordon. Do you see how exciting I'm trying to make this thing? Yeah. Well, Stride, Chocora is out.
Choramel. Five become four. But what do we make of Kenny Baidnock and Robert Genrich both leading this contest? And as 1,750 prisoners are released early due to overcrowding, we'll get the reaction to Labour's controversial policy from the former prison governor who dealt with Moors-Murderer, Marah Hindley and Seville-Keller-Rose-Wester-Bine-Bars.
And the Princess of Wales is candid video marking the end of her chemotherapy treatment. Majestic or more-kish? Welcome to the Daily Tea with me, Kim and Adamani. And me, Gordon Rayner.
Before we get into today's Daily Tea, I mentioned yesterday that we lost a dear colleague and friend David Knowles. And Gordon, the tributes that have come flowing into the telegraph website in response to his death at the age of 32. I mean, they've been absolutely heartwarming, devastating, but heartwarming. I just wanted to read one out, which kind of sums up the mood, really.
I mean, we have received a message a minute, I think, since we announced his very untimely and tragic death yesterday. And we've heard from people across the world, including people in Ukraine, that listened to Ukraine the latest, which was the podcast that he set up two years ago. And I just wanted to read this out from a lady called Ella in Chicago, because I think it sums David up perfectly. When a voice that fills your mornings with information about a thing you care deeply about for 922 days, you grow quite fond of it, attached even.
And when that voice is suddenly absent, you finally see just how big of an impact it made on you. As a listener, I am forever grateful to David Knowles and his elite journalism, reporting and storytelling. Losing David Knowles is losing an educator, a routine, a voice of reason, of comfort, of truth, of unapologetic freedom. You can continue to pay tribute to David as we will be doing in the coming days, weeks and months.
But thank you so much for all of the love that you have shown to somebody that was very special to all of us. I'll read out the results for each candidate in alphabetical order. It can be bad an op, 28 votes. James Cleverley, 21 votes.
Robert Genrick, 33 votes. Mel Stride, 16 votes. And Tom Tugenhott, 21 votes. So as a result of that, Mel Stride is limited from the contest, and the following four candidates go forward to the Conservative Party Conference.
Thank you very much for your attendance. I would look forward to the next ballot. That was Bob Blackman, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, revealing the results of the second round of voting among Toriyem, please, in the Troydyship race. Gordon, summarize the numbers, please.
Who's out on top? So Rob Genrick is still out ahead on 33 votes. He's getting five. Thank you.
Kami Badenock has gained six and is now on 28 votes still in second place behind Genrick. James Cleverley was on 21 votes. He's still on 21 votes. Wow, so all that talk of him stealing votes from Pretty Patel because they're in neighbouring constituencies in Essex.
Wasn't that sense? Well, and also, I think there were some MPs who had been named as switching to Cleverley. So that's just he's lost a couple of votes. Or they've lied.
Maybe. Tom Tugenhart was on 17, is now on 21, so he's now joined third, and that means that suddenly a poor old maelstride was on 16, is still on 16, and he's out. So he didn't get any more momentum, ironically. They thought that he was gaining momentum.
He's gained nothing. He stayed where he is. No. He's basically a stride in history in the history of this.
We keep on saying that about Maelstride because he was once he had revealed on the daily tee. He was once a tour guide and has got a very good knowledge of the history of this great nation of ours. So your thoughts, Gordo? Well, Baidock's doing better than people had been briefing.
It's not really a very exciting result, is it? It's too right, it's on top. The membership will be delighted. Yes, but nobody swap places.
There was lots of talk of James Cleverley actually overtaking everybody, and being James the first was going to be our little line, but we can't really use that now. He has said exactly where he is. The question now, I suppose, is that if Mael has gone out, does that mean that him being a moderate? Does James Cleverley or Tom Tugenhart pick up all of those votes and then storm into second place even first place?
There's a really mixed bag supporting Stride that could go anywhere in my mind. But also now this all comes down to conference. So it becomes a beauty pageant at conferences last weekend in September. They all do that a little bit.
They all go to all the parties, they schmooze, and then the membership basically narrows four down to two. We know that the membership at conference. No, it's MPs. The MPs narrow it down to two, the members vote on the final.
So the MPs still have the sway. However, the point is they might be influenced by how the membership receive each of the four candidates. So if one of them has a spectacular moment with the grassroots, it's going to be really hard to ditch them out of that final two. Like David Cameron did.
Can we have a moment with the whiteboard? Sorry, Mael. Oh, Mael's out. Can we put the...
Oh, this is the same. Well, maybe we need to move Tom there because he's now joint. Oh, wow. Yeah, like that.
Nothing has changed to quote a former Tory leader, Theresa May. And it's important after today's Winter Fuel Allowance to vote Gordon that we do have an effective opposition. I appreciate some saying this is a Westminster bubble, it's a story, nobody cares about the Tory leadership. Well, you should really, because we've got Labour taking money away from pensioners.
We've got Labour releasing violent prisoners, which we'll get on to in just a moment. So actually we do need an effective opposition to hold their fleet to the fire. Yeah, but the problem is that even though this has been the biggest rebellion of Starmas' permission so far, it's only we're talking about 53 Labour MPs who didn't vote for various reasons and one who voted against the government who presumably now will be suspended as that's what Kirsten Amr does. John, kit.
Yeah, but the problem is that Labour have a working majority of 167, so even when they have quite a big rebellion like this, they still won by 120. Symbolically though, it's a bad moment for Starmas. You know, he's only the infancy of this premiership and this could be sort of albatross around his neck like poll tax was for Thatcher. This is going to be the Prime Minister that took money away from pensioners.
Well, I mean, we were saying that Thatcher was known as Thatcher, looks Thatcher for ever, pretty much just. What's this? Starma. I haven't really thought.
We would have fueled payments, Thatcher doesn't have the same ring. We need a bit of time to work on that. We'll work on that for tomorrow. Yeah.
To be fair, they're gone. You never know what might happen to this policy in the Lords. Where, next to me, is there a lot of pensioners. There are.
They might rebel against it. I know Rosalton, former pension minister under David Cameron has been inundated with emails of complaints about it. So there might be a rebellion on the Red Ventures as well as Green. And because it wasn't in their manifesto, they can't use this whole convention to force it through in the Lords, which means it could get bogged down.
Coming up, as the government releases thousands of prisoners onto the streets to try and deal with the overcrowding crisis in our jails, we'll ask if this was really the right idea. Happy Prisoner Release Day, Gordon. Thanks, Camilla. No cards, but what's happening?
Well, in case anybody has missed this, up to 1,750 offenders have spent their last night in prison. There has been a mass early release today under the Ministry of Justice's Emergency Plan to ease the overcrowding crisis in jails. What it means is that eligible prisoners who have served only 40% of their sentence rather than 50% will be automatically released. It doesn't include people who are in jail for serious violent offences with sentences of four years or more, as well as sex offenders.
And it also excludes people convicted of domestic abuse. Oh, that's OK, then. And our colleague, Charles Hymer, who's the Home Affairs Editor, writes, a killer, men who assaulted their partners and a man who shook a baby so violently he was left blind are among the prisoners who have been released early, so it's not quite right to say that they haven't released violent criminals. Then we also heard, thanks to GB News' Charlie Peters, who was outside HMP-1'sworth from Liam Fitzpatrick, praising this policy introduced by a former Director of Public Prosecutions, no less.
Early-release prisoners, sir. You happy to be out today? I'm happy to be out. Are you grateful to Kistama for this release team?
Kistama, I have done my big labor. Oh, really? I'm happy to support it. I'm having an opportunity to do it.
So they have it. Labor supporters, trade unionists, lefties, jailbirds. Yes. Great.
Marvellous. But there is a downside, believe it or not, Martin Jones, who is HM Chief Inspector of Probation, told that today program this morning, the defenders who had been freed were almost bound to be sent back to jail within days or weeks, because things will go wrong in the community and they would breach the terms of their licence. Wouses. This seems to me to be a little wrong-headed from a man who wants us to follow the rules.
We shall be banning smoking and vaping outdoors, but we will let people like drug dealers free onto the street to continue taking drugs and selling drugs. It's interesting, isn't it, that for months and before the election we kept on hearing from Kistama about how he used to be Director of Public Prosecution, seems to have said it every single time he was on tele. He was tough on crime. You can trust me because I was the DPP.
I took on terrorists. I took on the drug gangs and I was letting people out of prison. Clearly, this is quite a long-term problem that's been building up and there was some speculation wasn't there. That part of the reason she seemed like called the election early was because he knew this crisis was coming.
It was another piece of news that he wanted to avoid before the election. But there have been alternatives. I'm unclear as to why the government was so quick to dismiss the offer from Estonia, for example. You've got loads of prison places.
They said you can send some of your prisoners over here. Was that even considered? Well, Deputy Leader Reform, Richard Tice, was saying to me at the weekend, if 20% of the prison population is foreign, why don't we house the foreign prisoners in Estonia if they're offering to rent us cells? And that would free up space.
I appreciate that two middle-class people are pining over the state of the prison. Have you ever been in prison, Gordon? Last time I checked. No.
I haven't been in prison either. It's probably best for us to get some expertise from somebody who spent a lot of time in prisons and can tell us what it's like literally from the inside. Vanessa Freik Harris, MBE joins us now, who is the former governor of Wormwood Scrubs. Vanessa, welcome to the Daily Tea.
Thank you for coming on. Vanessa, as of 2024, the UK prison population is just under 88,000 people. Is this really going to make much of a difference? In the short term, yes.
But I think, you know, we have to remember this is to allow the prison's breathing space. You know, this is not a long-term fix by any stretch of the imagination. And if something drastic is not done within the next sort of six months to a year, then in six months time, I'll be sat here talking about the prison overcrowding system again, because, you know, it's going to take something drastic to sort our prison systems out. Tell us what those drastic measures would be, because I think looking from the outside in, is it just a question of funding?
Do we need root and branch reform? What would you do? Well, I think first of all, there's been successive governments, and I don't mean just the last government or indeed the Tories, but going back to the Blair and Brown days. You know, prisons have always been seen as a vote winner.
You know, let's lock people up. Let's put them behind bars and show them how tough we are on law and order. It's never been a vote winner. So successive governments have ignored calls that, you know, our prison population is growing faster than we can cope with faster than we can build prisons with.
And for me, I see, you know, old Victoriana prisons that are no longer fit for purpose, some with sewage running down the landings, rat infested, rubbish, you know, cells that are no longer really fit for human habitation. So for my mind, that is what we should be building new prisons for, is to replace these old 200 year old buildings, which will house modern technology to prevent drugs and contraband getting into jails. I think also we need to look at inadequate staffing. You know, I was staffing once was a time that the prison service was looked at as a long term career.
These days, you know, staff are leaving quicker than they're being recruited. You know, so we're now in the position where say somewhere like ones worth a quarter of the staff at ones worth joined in 2024. Well, that's just ridiculous, expecting such inexperienced staff to manage a prison. And with that comes mistakes.
So you get escapes and you get drugs in and you get staff that are easily manipulated and coerced. Also, I think more than anything, we need to look as a society about what we want to do with and use our prisons for because somewhere along the way, you know, we've got lost in the, let's lock them up and throw away the key brigade. You know, it's going to take a real eye opener to change people's mindset that locking up people for short sentences doesn't actually work. And locking up some people first time nonviolent offenses doesn't actually work and causes more harm than good.
So I think as a society, we need to decide what we actually want to do. Can you give us an example of what you could do with somebody who is, you know, potentially would have been given or under the current system a short sentence and what's the alternative that you would suggest to that would be. Okay, you look at somebody who has a drug habit and may fee to manage that drug habit to be enabled them to make a bit of money to buy drugs. Is it really acceptable to put that person in jail for say six months because they walked into the local Tesco's and Nick to bottle whiskey?
You know, is it not better to address that drug habit by putting somebody in a place where that drug habit can be addressed because in prison drugs are too easy to get hold of for any of the above reasons I've already said, you know, all they do is come out and just want to feed off that drug habit. And also, if you're locking somebody up for six months, well, certainly under the old system out of that six months, they do 50%. So three months. So in that three months, they've probably lost their home.
They've lost any employment if they had it. They've lost their support systems. So we're letting them out to virtually nothing. So what opportunities do they have?
They don't have any. So what they end up doing is getting on the crime roundabout. And once you get on that roundabout, it's very difficult to get on. I and I'm definitely, I'm sure I have spoken to successive home secretaries and prison ministers who have all tended to make the same point.
So very often say we need to address this problem with short sentences, find an alternative. Is the answer to this? Just down to political will or is it down to money? I think it's the political will in the first instance.
Nobody wants to say, right, we're going to invest in reducing reoffending, you know, to go into schools and talk to young people about prisons and crime, et cetera, et cetera, which is what I used to do when I was at Scrubs. We used to go into schools and we did this thing called prison mean no way. And it was talking to young people between sort of 15, 16, 17 year olds about crime and about prison and what happens in prison and showing them that, you know, that isn't the answer. But it all of that sort of thing funding has gone long since gone.
And I think that the political will has got to be the change of mindset to the people because there's still an awful lot of people in this country that think jail is the answer. You know, don't get me wrong. I'm not some far left person that sees through everything through, roast into glasses, far from it. But what I do think is that prison should be those that we need to protect society from those violent sexual predators that need locking away and dealt with.
And that's the people that we should be using prison for, not people who don't pay their council tax. This is a controversial one and I'm sure many people will have something to say about it. But, you know, grandmother who never been in trouble with the law got jailed for 15 months for writing some stupid comments, Wells drunk on Facebook, you know, a main care of her husband never been in trouble before. What good does that do?
You know, she'd have been far better serve in that sentence in the community, talking to the people that she offended and seeing the reaction of her words on them. What we should have been better off visiting a mosque and engaging with members of the Muslim community in her area. Absolutely. Vanessa Gordon and I were speaking about this earlier.
What do you think of the government's plan to send some prisoners to Estonia where because the crime rate is lower, the prisons are half empty? Okay, look, you know, we've got probably about 8,000 foreign national prisoners currently languishing in our jails that we can't get rid of because their countries don't want them back or the human rights lawyers have got in the middle of it. We've got illegal immigrants coming over on boats that we can't send back anywhere. How on earth do the ministers think that, you know, we're going to open up a door and say, come on, Tommy, you're off to Estonia today because the only people that I can see, you know, making anything out of that will be the human rights lawyers.
And the first one who's going to Estonia will be asking his lawyer for a judicial review. It'll be dragged through the courts at great expense to the British taxpayer because it'll all be legal aided and how embarrassing for a country that we can't manage our own prisons and prisoners. And being a woman in charge of wormwood scrubs. I mean, when you were in charge there, what was the approach to kind of rule by fear?
Did you need a little bit of love in there? How did you approach it? No, I think women who rule by fear are, you know, in danger of becoming bullies and a man would be probably robust, but a woman would be a bully. No, you know, people say talk to prisoners.
Well, yes, of course you talk to prisoners. I think you have to find your own medium as to how you communicate with prisoners. And, you know, mine was certainly never through fear. I was always fair, always firm, never lied to prisoners.
And that's how you earn respect. Could you just give us a little sort of bit of insight into what life is like for a prisoner in a jail like wormwood scrubs? Because I think very often people try to suggest that life for prisoners is too easy. You know, we in the media probably do that probably with lower category prisons.
But can you just tell us what it is like for prisoners inside a prison like the ones that you've been in charge of? Yeah, I mean, certainly. I mean, I think you have to remember what a prison is. A prison is first and foremost to protect the public.
Secondly, it's the punishment. And the punishment is to remove somebody's liberty. That's what the punishment is. The punishment is not inside the jail.
The punishment is the removal of their liberty. And the third thing is rehabilitate or try and rehabilitate prisoners to make them useful members of society upon release. And that's the role of a prison. When you come into prison, you know, many prisoners find it a complete shot that suddenly, you know, where they could choose what time they went to bed or choose what time they woke up or shut their door or lock their door.
All of that is done for you know, it's decided when you eat what you eat when you go in yourself for the night when you wake up in the morning where you go in the jail, you're escorted. A door is open for you. It's shut and it's locked behind you. You know, so all of that can be quite a shock for some people.
Vanessa, you've written a book called The Governor and in there you talk about some of your encounters with some of Britain's most notorious prisoners, including Myra Hindley and Rose West. Can you just tell a listener a little bit about your encounters with them? Yeah, I mean, sometimes I regret writing that because I think sometimes, you know, the media makes these people out to be something that they're not. And certainly, you know, Myra Hindley, when I met Myra Hindley at Cook-O-Woods in the late, late Aces, she was there.
I had taken some prisoners from Hollow-A to Cook-O-Wood on transfer. And when we arrived as his customary, when you arrive at another jail, you usually offered a cup of tea. You know, it's just sort of friendship from one jail to another. And so this officer called this sort of trustee Myra and she came and she sort of asked all of us, you know, what we wanted.
And I said, cup of tea, please. And she went and the officer next to me said, you know, that was, I said, absolutely no idea. Myra, I think she said her name was. And she said, that's Myra Hindley.
Now, when you think of Myra Hindley, you think of the bleached blondes, the piercing eyes, the horrendous crimes that she did. Well, this was a little old lady. She looked like, you know, she wouldn't been out of place sort of, you know, pushing a shopping trolley down the high street. She had baggy clothes on, shuffling along.
She had mousy brown hair. Her elbows were through her old knitted cardigan. You know, she was nothing extraordinary, nothing special. And if I had bumped into her in the street, I wouldn't know who she was.
You know, you think of this demon with, you know, evil stamped on their foreheads, but actually they're not. And they're nothing special, but people make them special by, you know, headlining Myra Hindley. And even today, you know, if you see some report in the newspaper, that's the photo that they use. I mean, she was nothing like that.
How about Rose West? I looked after Rose West for about six to eight weeks. She was a follow way. She was awaiting trial for the horrendous crimes that she committed.
We looked after her. She was down in the segregation unit because obviously when prisoners like that, the so-how high profile come into jail, they have to be segregated from the rest of the general population, because not only for their safety, but others safety. So she was down in the segregation unit, which I was in charge of at that time. Myself and the duty governor there at the time informed her that Fred had unfortunately killed himself at Winston Green Prison.
And that was on New Year's Day. And there wasn't a flicker of emotion when she found out. Not a flicker. And that kind of said it all to me that she's a definite psychopath.
You know, she showed very little emotion. Don't get me wrong. She did exactly what she was told to do and everything. And yeah, absolutely.
You know, she looked like your auntie that, you know, came to say occasionally. There was nothing extraordinary about her. Only her offenses. You know, my job was never to judge them.
As far as I was concerned, they were already judged. And my job was to keep them safe. And that's what I tried to do. It's absolutely fascinating.
Vanessa, we could talk to you for hours, but I think we've run out of time. So thanks ever so much for coming on. The Daily Tea, that's Vanessa, Fred Harris for my prison governor. Gordon, shall we discuss the royal video that everyone's talking about?
Let's. She ever listened to it first. The last nine months have been incredibly tough for us as a family. Life has been a change in an instant.
And we've had to find a way to navigate the stormy waters and road unknown. The Cancer journey is complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone, especially those closest to you. So that's Prince William's wife, Catherine, announcing the fact that she's finished her chemotherapy and is now focused on staying cancer free, kind of CP-a tinted, nostalgic. I liked it.
I'm not sure you did. No, I know you liked it. And if people are just listening to that audio clip, they would probably think, yeah, that's not, I'm listening to myself, just as audio. I've got no problem with it.
The problem I have is with the images. So the clip has lots of footage of William and Kate and the children, some clips of them playing cards with her family as well, lots of them cuddling, lots of them lying on the ground together, walking through a wheat field in slow-mo. And I didn't like it at all. I think that what she's saying is very impactful and everything she said about cancer is right.
But why, if she wants to reach out to people who have been to the same thing, why are we not seeing any cancer nurses? Why are we not seeing maybe her meeting some cancer patients? Why are we not seeing some footage of her receiving treatment? Whether it's just her taking a tablet or whatever, just something that shows you that she has been through this, which would be really striking.
Because it's a vision of hope. It's looking forwards, not backwards. She's there as a mum. She's a royal.
She's a wife. You're reacting like this because, let's be honest, you are the princess Anne of the telegraph. Okay? You are.
Keep calm. Carry on. If you say so. Hardworking.
You don't like the emotional. You don't like the Wizard of Oz curtain being ripped from this family. No, I don't. I think that one of the biggest strengths for the Royal Family is their mystique.
And I think that if you give away too much of that mystique, it lessens them. But they've always been depicted as being very safe, very serious. They've never indulged in the kind of public displays of affection we associate with Harry and Meghan constantly hand-holding and pouring over each other. You and I know because we've covered the Royal together for years that if they did cuddle, like, do you remember when we were in Canada and they cuddled after that dragon base boat race on Prince Edward Island?
And all the struggle was like, they're touching each other and took pictures. So this is them saying, look, the Monocius faced an existential crisis because of Meghan's death of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, because of the King's cancer diagnosis now hers, maybe even because of the Duke of York debacle. But rest assured, this institution is in safe hands because the couple who wear the crown in the vein of Victoria and Albert, George VI and the Queen Mother, the Queen and Philip are rock solid. Yeah, but the problem is that you mentioned those moments when we've seen them being affectionate before, but that was genuine and spontaneous.
This looked like it was scripted. It made me feel uncomfortable because I felt as though it was kind of put on. It didn't seem natural. Give me a bit too Sussex-ish.
Yeah, they're almost trying to out Sussex the Sussex is on, which is not a good place for them to be. To be fair, this doesn't look out of place in comparison to Oprah Winfrey and Netflix. Does it? And spare?
This is like, oh my goodness, by comparison, Beyoncé's just texted, this looks quite reserved. Harry and Meghan, though, wonder what they're thinking about Ticito? What what Meghan is saying to Harry? Oh my god, if we had produced this video, we would have been castigated by the British media.
It's so unfair how William and Kate are treated so differently to you and me, Harry. Wouldn't she? She might. Because we would have castigated them if they had produced this.
Yeah, yes, and I'm not going to do Prince Harry impression. No, sorry. Don't worry, Meghan. We'll do our own video in a couple of weeks' time.
Yeah, but I think that they don't want to be trying to outdo the Sussex is. It should be above all that. They shouldn't be trying to be this sort of Instagram perfection. Well, get on to Rita responses in just a moment.
One Gen Z, my 15-year-old daughter, had a bit of a surprising response because I thought she would like the whole instant nature of it all. Just going to read our message. That video was quite cheesy and a bit awkward. Like, yes, it was very sweet, but also just really weird, like filming her leaning on a tree and looking into the distance.
I don't know, it's just like, you're in real life, not a film. Don't have a beta, I'm just going to hate me for it. She listens to this. It was awkward.
And I asked quite a few of our colleagues earlier, all of whom were young with me, obviously, what they thought of it, thinking they might all say, oh, it was great, wasn't it? Toshi Feeli? And more of them didn't like it than did. Look at the division in the telegraph readership as is ever the case.
Mrs Wake, a beautiful video showing the value of having a loving family to support you through the hardest of times. This is the princess's story presented the way she wanted it to be. Full of hope, joy and gratitude with an underlying message that she is not through the woods yet. Meanwhile, somebody who's written in anonymously says, I understand why they're doing this, but I consider it highly regrettable, as I expect they do.
The viewing tastes and demands of the public have become excessive and emodest. We should not need to see anyone else cuddling and kissing. And if they feel they need to show us, then they do so on the understanding that we are voyards, we should not be. Bracket, G, radar.
Okay. Maybe. While we're talking about the privately educated, I just want to do a little shout out. V80 on private school things is quite a thing.
And we know that lots of you are worried about it, thinking about it, talking about it. And therefore, we'd like to hear your stories. So if you're being affected by that policy, we're going to do a daily T special on the issue. We're going to be in touch.
It's email the daily T at telegraph.co.uk. Or of course, you can get in touch via our socials because we are down with those kids at daily T podcast. Gordon, thank you for being with me for the last two days. Hope you've enjoyed it.
Of course. Tim Stanley's in the chair Wednesday and Thursday. Join us tomorrow at 5pm. Broke showed her for an ICIA CIBC Investors Edge while at the carnival.
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