Shadowing Practice: What chaos? Farage tries to distract with immigration plans | Politics Weekly - Learn English Speaking with Video
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If the Royal Navy is not there to protect this country from invasion, then frankly, I can't see what its purpose is.
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Sounds familiar?
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Reform UK has said they will use the Royal Navy to stop small boat crossings.
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The immigration debate has been reignited after a massive influx of migrants into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta last week.
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We're just going to be relentless.
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People want to see this issue addressed.
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So are reforms plans realistic or are they just a distraction?
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I'm Alexandra Topping.
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And I'm Jessica Elgott.
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And this is Politics Weekly for The Guardian.
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So Jess, we've just seen a standard summer reform press conference from Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf talking about Operation Fortress.
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What is Operation Fortress?
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So this is this idea that they would launch this large military operation in the English Channel, the largest since the Second World War.
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It's always the largest since the Second World War.
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Essentially forced boats back to France to collect.
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migrants who are in dinghies in the channel and tow them back to France.
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I'm sure that viewers and listeners will have seen the obvious flaw in some of these plans, but they were saying that,
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you know, they've had legal advice on this particular plan, that the Royal Navy vessels would intercept every single small boat entering the channel with all those ships
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that we have, which is...
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Yeah, because with the Royal Navy in famously fantastic shape.
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Yeah, and they'd be detained, given food and returned under escort to France and Belgium,
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countries who of course don't have to accept the docking of these Royal Navy vessels or ships if they don't want to.
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And we both know that there's nothing France likes more than being told by Britain
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that the Royal Navy are going to turn up on their shores and offload a load of migrants.
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Yeah and what that leads to in terms of cooperation with the French
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which is it's fair to say on shaky ground at the
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moment in terms of what the UK is paying France to do to patrol the beaches but
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nevertheless likely to be on even more difficult territory if this plan were to go ahead.
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We've had already sort of Navy veterans talking this morning about the way the plan works.
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And in fact, the Conservatives did try for a period of time having the Royal Navy lead on this issue during, I think it was 2022,
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that they were involved in trying to stop the small boats
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crisis it had a very minimal marginal effect on stopping the numbers.
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And the Border Patrol vessels that are currently in charge of stopping boats seem to be having, it seems like more success.
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Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
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Because, you know, this all very much seems, it's bombast, it's the usual narrative.
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Even the name Operation Fortress is very kind of dam buster-y, isn't it?
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But didn't you feel that this felt very much like a lackluster encore?
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Absolutely.
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This was like, let's reprise everything that we said last summer
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and put it into this summer but this summer is different you know it's real
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that small boat numbers are down you know and
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that migrant hotels are closing migrant hotels are closing we have
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you know last year we saw the bell hotel in epping
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being the epicenter of media focus we saw small boats crossings going up
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and up every day it was a huge year for
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that this year they're down 43 percent I think it's 14 percent back on on 2024
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and we've got a different prime minister you know
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and a prime minister who is who just seems much more free
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and easy talking about this it's what did you think of his press conference in Dovey yesterday I think
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that what's quite interesting about Andy Burnham is
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that though he kind of signals left on a lot of
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issues he was his reputation in government was being fairly hard line on immigration.
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And, you know, it was signaled to us very early on in his campaign to make field
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that he was in favour of Shabana Mahmood's migration policies, which tackle both illegal and legal migration.
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And, you know, seen as being fairly jacronium by even, you know, your average Labour MP will balk at some of the suggestions that particularly around indefinitely to remain.
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And we do probably expect some of those to be tempered somewhat, but he's kept Shubana Mahmood in the Home Office.
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She's made it very clear to him, but by staying in the Home Office, she wants to deliver those reforms.
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And I think there's a certain degree of authenticity
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from Andy Burnham that he believes that you need to have sort of public consent
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and public faith in the immigration system to treat people fairly.
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That people who shouldn't be here should not be here and
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that people who deserve support and who have a right to sort of claim asylum here also should be treated fairly.
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Keir Starmer always found it quite difficult to articulate that.
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He never felt comfortable, did he?
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I thought what was really interesting yesterday, actually, that what Burnham was saying wasn't markedly different, really, from what Starmer said from 2024 onwards,
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but he just felt different.
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And it was like he had this ease of saying, people in Makerfield, it's all, you know, he always comes back to the people that he knows, the people that he's spoken to,
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and that is something that is, I think, genuinely important to him.
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people in makerfield don't want to see these small boats they worry about control over our borders
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but we do have to make sure that there are safe routes for refugees
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and you know the interviewer the pool interviewer from yesterday picked up on
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that immediately said oh well you talk about safe routes do
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you want to change the tone of the debate here
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and what he said was i want it to work i
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want to look at the practical things rather than playing politics with it and we've heard that before from multiple other politicians,
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but from him somehow it feels authentic.
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And I think, you know, one of the things about Keir Starmer's Island of Strangers speech, which was, you know, I think one of the really key moments where he lost the support of his party.
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And this, the Island of Strangers speech being when he talked about that we don't know each other anymore.
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Yeah, and the communities are kind of living side by side
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but not interacting with each other because there's been such an increase in migration over the last sort of five years.
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But, you know, there were even worse things, I would say, arguably in that speech
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and in the forward to what was then the announcement to
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the immigration reforms where he talked about you know immigration just having been wholly negative for the UK you know
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that it had been a disaster essentially the last five years
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and firstly that felt deeply inauthentic to Keir Starmer
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and the kind of person he is
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but also you can't imagine Andy Burnham ever saying that stuff
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because he doesn't you don't need the performative cruelty you don't need to
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that was what that's what I literally thought
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that yesterday I was like what is interesting about this it's not
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that he's saying there needs to be safe routes we've heard that before, but he hasn't said 25 other things about how they're going to smash the gangs,
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how people have to earn the right to be here.
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It didn't come after a long list of punitive actions before you were almost allowed as a progressive figure to say, oh, by the way, we also think there should be safe routes
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because that's the only way that you actually tackle this problem. Of course, one of the things to keep bearing in mind is immigration
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is still extremely high saliency in the electorate like it is it is at the top of the issues
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that people say they care about even though under these new reforms from shabana mahoud
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and some hangover from the late reforms the tories put in
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place right at the end of their uh time in office
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immigration might be net zero by the time we get to
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the next election i mean the numbers will be uh you know fallen
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so dramatically but even still it has this salience for people
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because i think of these images of people coming over in small boats
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and what that means for how people perceive the UK to have on you know
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because of course small boats are just such a tiny fraction of the people yeah the immigrants
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that come to this so they're the ones
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that we can see absolutely absolutely I don't know what you thought Jess
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but to me this morning it felt a little bit lackluster
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it felt like Nigel Farage didn't have his usual vim and vigor we are very confident that our policy of securely
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picking people up and safely taking them back to France.
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We are entirely confident that that falls within other conventions of international law and you'll see that argued clearly in this document.
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Zia Yusuf was just sitting there parroting the same lines he always does, you know, this is fighting age men, we don't know who are coming to this shores,
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stuff that, you know, we've heard a million times before.
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A nation that cannot control its borders is not a sovereign nation.
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And Britain is being invaded.
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For decades, Tory and Labour governments promised to get tough on illegal immigration.
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And yet year after year after year, tens of thousands of fighting-age males have arrived on our beaches.
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When we look at the actual policies, can they work?
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There is an increasing, I think, ramping up of the rhetoric, which I don't know, but I would assume that most ordinary voters can see sounds, you know, kind of faintly ludicrous.
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Zia Yusuf's idea that, you know, should have the military along the border in the same way that they did, you know, the Spanish military being deployed along the Souter border.
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I mean, just on very practical terms, like the British Standing Army is probably, you know, about 70,000.
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That would not cover very much of the South Coast.
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I mean, we probably couldn't even cover most of Dover, couldn't we?
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Yeah, quite exactly.
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But it was not, I mean, just on that point, yesterday, Shabana Mahmood was asked this, you know, why can't we just send them back like you've sent,
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you know, because 98% of those 50,000 migrants that made it to Suta are now back in Morocco.
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Why can't we do the same?
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And we can't do the same because we don't share a land border.
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And we haven't got an agreement which says that we can.
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So it's the diplomacy that we don't have.
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We're an island, essentially, and they're not crossing a land border.
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And essentially, we're in the hands of the French about who they allow to be returned.
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And there has been a returns deal actually negotiated for the first time this year.
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It's a pretty minimal amount.
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But even that has proven difficult to enforce and controversial at times
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because people return again or describe a kind of mistreatment that's been happening when that happens.
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But of course, reform are in a really different situation, aren't they, to how they were last year.
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They were riding high in the polls.
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The government effectively vacated the playing field to allow them to have one,
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often two press conferences a week during that period where they could just have the absolute run of the media.
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It was really the reform summer.
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Really the reform summer.
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And they don't have that this time.
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Farage is fighting a by-election, arguably a completely unnecessary one of his own making.
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They're under huge pressure over donations donations richard tysick again today being investigated by the standards commissioner
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the five million pound gift from christopher harbourn uh the donations
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uh seem seemingly seem to have come from george cottrell his family there's
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so much pressure about these donations about these gifts about his
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financial affairs you know it's a very different scenario it suddenly doesn't feel
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so attractive to have two press conferences a week
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when many of the questions in those press conferences are tell us about your finances yeah absolutely
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and i think you could see that he was feeling the heaver.
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That's all we've got time for.
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Thank you so much for watching Politics Weekly.
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We'd love to know what you thought.
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Let us know in the comments.
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Thanks so much.
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Bye.
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Bye.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “What chaos? Farage tries to distract with immigration plans”. This video has 158 sentences and 2138 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:09. The speaker talks fast, about 192 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| migrant noun | /ˈmaɪɡɹənt/ | A migratory animal, in particular a migratory bird. |
| donation noun | /doʊˈneɪʃən/ | A voluntary gift or contribution for a specific cause. |
| migration noun | /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/ | An instance of moving to live in another place for a while. |
| lackluster adjective | /ˈlæklʌstə/ | Lacking brilliance or intelligence. |
| interviewer noun | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | One who interviews. |
| arguably adverb | /ˈɑɹɡjuəbli/ | As can be supported or proven by sound logical deduction, evidence, and precedent, but without absolute certainty. |
| minimal adjective | /ˈmɪn.ə.məl/ | The smallest possible amount, quantity, or degree. |
| patrol noun | /pəˈtɹoʊl/ | A going of the rounds along the chain of sentinels and between the posts, by a guard, usually consisting of three or four men, to insure greater security from… |
| tackle verb | /ˈtækəl/ | To force a person to the ground with the weight of one's own body, usually by jumping on top or slamming one's weight into them. |
| bombast noun | /ˈbɑmbæst/ | High-sounding words; language above the dignity of the occasion; a pompous or ostentatious manner of writing or speaking. |
| buster noun | Someone who or something that bursts, breaks, or destroys a specified thing. | |
| detain verb | /dɪˈteɪn/ | To keep something from proceeding or coming to completion; to delay. |
| dinghy noun | /ˈdɪŋ.(ɡ)i/ | A small open boat, propelled by oars or paddles, carried as a tender, lifeboat, or pleasure craft on a ship. |
| enclave noun | /ˈɑnkleɪv/ | A political, cultural or social entity or part thereof that is completely surrounded by another. |
| encore noun | /ˈɑnkoɹ/ | A brief extra performance, done after the main performance is complete. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| pick up on verb | To notice, observe, learn, or understand, especially something otherwise overlooked. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- We're just going to be relentless.
- When we look at the actual policies, can they work?
- Why can't we do the same?
- That's all we've got time for.
- We'd love to know what you thought.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has said · has been reignited · we've just seen |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | has been reignited · be detained · being told |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | have, which is · people who shouldn · people who deserve |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 54 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, we've, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: inauthentic /ˌɪnɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, authenticity /ɑθɛnˈtɪsɪti/, authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: donation /doʊˈneɪʃən/, migration /maɪˈɡɹeɪʃ(ə)n/, distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/, negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/
- Long words — get the stress right: epicentre /ˈɛpɪˌsɛntɚ/, inauthentic /ˌɪnɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, saliency /ˈseɪ.li.ən.si/, hangover /ˈhæŋoʊ̯vɚ/ ~ /ˈhæŋɔʊ̯vɚ/, articulate /ɑːɹˈtɪk.jə.leɪt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like migrant, donation, migration.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.