Susanna Reid Shut Down Live on GMB — One Question Too Sharp One Answer Too Fast and a Studio That Didn’t Blink
She pushed, he snapped, and the tension didn’t wait for a commercial break. The moment hit hard — not because it was loud, but because no one saw it coming
Good Morning Britain erupted into a vicious row as Susanna Reid interviewed shadow home secretary Chris Philp
ITV’s flagship breakfast programme Good Morning Britain was off to a rocky start as Conservative MP Chris Philp hit back at Susanna Reid on the issue of the migrant crisis. The shadow home secretary was being interviewed live on the programme, blaming the lack of illegal migrant deportations on the Covid-19 pandemic and legal red tape.
After figures quoted from 2020, Susanna tried a different tactic, putting to Philp: “Okay so if we take a year that wasn’t in Covid, the number of asylum seekers accommodated in hotels continued to remain high, and peaked in June 2023. I mean, my point is, you can blame this government all you like for not handling this issue, but the issue became out of control under the Conservative government.”
A clearly irate Philp responded: “Well I’ve already said that the numbers came down by 200 [migrant hotels closed].
“In 2023, by the way, the full year, the number crossing the Channel illegally actually went down by about 30% and we had a plan to stop it completely, which is to remove everybody who crossed the Channel illegally either to their country of origin or to a safe third country – could be Rwanda, could be somewhere else.
“But the new Labour government and Keir Starmer cancelled that just before it was due to start with no replacement, and as a consequence the numbers have surged since the election!
“This year the numbers are 40% higher than last year, and this year is going to be the worst ever because the Labour government cancelled that deterrent before it started with no replacement.”
Philp was being interviewed about the Conservatives’ efforts to stop illegal immigration (Image: ITV)
Viewers, however, were left fuming that Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper was nowhere to be seen, with one tweeting: “How can we trust your impartiality when you have the home secretary’s husband [Ed Balls] sitting there? Absolutely scandalous.”
Someone else said: “Why are you not interviewing Yvette Cooper, let’s play Where’s Wally, come on Ed, you must know where she is hiding…”