And how old are you?
>> 32.
>> Yeah.
>> That's the issue we have using our in
our country. You got raping our kids
our kids.
>> This is our country. How about becoming
your country? Your kids.
That's what That's what That's what
That's what
>> to avoid an escalation of the
confrontation, I attempted to move
Zaheen away. Are you okay?
>> Yeah, cuz I'm used to this conflict.
>> No, but that's
>> that's my
>> No one should be used to that.
>> Well, Shiman joins us now along with our
political correspondent Mari Aurora. Um,
Shiman, that incident that we saw in the
town center there in None eaten. Um, I
keep hoping my Twitter and seeing so
many of those incidents being uploaded
online and shared, which is a sentiment
that it's got the whole country to this
melting point of anger.
>> Absolutely. And that's what's
interesting about Neneton as a town. It
is a market town which has seen an
increase in asylum seekers. But we're
talking about an increase from in 2023
asylum seekers being in single digits
and now in 2025 around 247
now in a town with a population of
88,000 people. That number seems pretty
small, doesn't it? But it's clearly
having an impact in places like Maneton
and across the country as well. And as
you've rightly pointed out, those uh
confrontations are being widely shared
across social media. And actually, I
think my initial thought Yeah.
>> after that confrontation was just how
humiliated Saheen must have felt in that
situation and how it's quite difficult
to defend yourself, isn't it, in in a
situation like that. I didn't know what
to say to deescalate the situation. But
I think what was quite interesting is
when I was speaking to people around
Lenon is that actually lots of the
people that I approached that were from
various ethnic backgrounds had spoken
about an increase in what they perceived
as racism and questions about their
backgrounds and what they f felt about
um asylum seekers too. And I don't know
if it was clear in that piece, but
Saheen, the person that was confronted
by this group, he's British and that's
what he had to deal with in in in that
situation. Well, your background was
also brought into question. What was
that like?
>> Um,
it's not the first time that I've been
asked and I think that ordinarily, you
know, I'm quite proud of my heritage.
I'm proud of my background. It's not
something I will shy away from, but in
the context of of this reporting, it was
quite confronting actually.
>> Yeah. And just thinking about the the
figures you said there, 240 people in a
town of 88,000. If I've done my maths
right, Mari, that's 0.3% of the
population. And this is the challenge
for the government, isn't it? Is there's
a kind of a government of of technocrats
and statisticians and people that like
facts and figures. They're not the
Langard class. They're not so good on
the emotion maybe as as other
governments have been. And and they'll
look at this and go, "Well, look, the
issue is not that big, but that's not
the perception, is it?"
>> Yeah. This is the problem that I think
Labor is having at the moment is
politics is just as much about emotion
and vibes that has been historically
said as facts and figures. And the
difficulty is you cannot win the
narrative purely on facts and figures.
You have to fight on both of those
fronts on the emotive front. And the
difficulty is Labor have so far been
perhaps slightly unsuccessful uh when it
comes to that side of things. We've got
the PM now uh back at work. We've got
the home secretary giving her statement
today in the house talking about
tightening up border security, talking
about uh you know the different national
crime agency raids that they've had and
the number of boats that are falling um
you know since Labour have come to power
despite the fact that the boats are
having more people on them. So the
number of boats might be going down, but
the number of people aren't going down
necessarily at the same pace. Um, and
this is the difficulty is that they are
trying to make sure that they persuade
the public that they are really got a
grip on this and essentially bear with
us, give us a moment and we will crack
down on this. Um the difficulty is that
if people don't feel that way, um
whether it's based in fact or whether
it's based in hyperbole, Labour needs to
I think spend a bit more time finding a
way to tap into that emotional
connection to the voters and actually
try find an emotional way of connecting
with them in order to try and persuade
them that they are doing a better job.
Because if you look at the polling from
what voters are saying, they're not very
impressed with not just immigration but
in general. You were talking about a
polling a poll that out today saying how
many people feel like the country is
broken%.
And so they have quite a lot of a
cleanup operation to do having been in
power over a year now to persuade people
that things are getting better. And then
you talk about vibes. You look at I'm
just looking at Elon Musk's Twitter feed
which is hugely influential and like the
the first half a dozen posts are all
he's reposting Darren Grimes. He's
reposting about migration. He's
reposting about how the UK got so messed
up and and this this a lot of the people
in in towns like the ones you went to
Shiman will will be really hooked in on
this rather than what the government's
saying.
>> Absolutely. and and actually many of the
people that I spoke to on the streets of
Nitton were referencing news reports not
necessarily from Neneton but from across
the country and there are so many people
that do have genuine concerns whether
that's about the state of Nenon it's
about social housing so many people I
spoke to spoke about knowing people that
were trying to get on the housing ladder
but struggling and as far as they see it
you have asylum seekers 247 who they
believe are benefiting from a system
that they're not able to. But then on
the flip side, speaking to someone
that's currently going through the
asylum process, he told me he's scared
to leave the house because he
understands how people feel about people
like him. And I think it is really about
having a conversation which not only
humanizes asylum seekers but also really
takes into account how people view.