 The pandemic has undoubtedly presented Britain's politicians with some serious challenges, but it's also had some less discussed benefits for MPs. Foremost among those is the lockdown has meant our often socially awkward political leaders haven't had to spend much time engaging with the often coarse general public. While we've locked down over that privilege has also gone by the wayside MPs are once again out and about meeting strangers. And today that included Keir Starmer who was out campaigning in Bath. He found out quite how unpredictable the public can be. Eight of one. Do you understand we have fucked our economy because old people are dying? Do you see this graph? The last time we had this much debt was 2008. That's the British medical journal. No, I came here to speak to this man, not your security. You have failed me. We, I've been a Labour voter my entire life, you have failed to be the opposition. You've failed to ask where the lockdown was functioning. There's a car just behind. Do you understand? Thousands of people have died because you have failed to do your job and ask the real questions. Well, I am telling you now, and I hope this goes out, you have failed this country. You have seriously failed. You have allowed our children to wear masks in school when it's never been any evidence for it. That clip was filmed by Stephen Sumner, who's a local reporter in Bath. Now, what was going on there? I hope you could hear it all. Obviously, you know, that wasn't a planned conversation to be happening in that situation. Keir Starmer was, I mean, quite notably actually, he was going around Bath both to campaign for the Majoralty, the West of England, but also to talk about the difficulties that hospitality had had. He then speaks to this guy who's very, very annoyed that the lockdowns happened because it cost jobs and he says lives. It's worth pointing out what that guy was saying was complete bullshit. I mean, he's basically putting forward this argument that we've heard so often that the lockdowns were a bad thing. We should have just let people die from COVID because they were old anyway. We know because of studies that the average person who died from COVID in the UK would have lived for another 10 years. So this is a significant amount of time. And obviously, that's an average. So there will be lots of people who passed away who would have lived for another 30 years. So this is not just people who were already on death's door passing away, even if it were, as we said on the show, the fact that people had to die alone and in quite horrific conditions doesn't, you know, it's still something that's really, really bad. Keir Starmer's response. At first, I was a bit like, come on, Keir. You can argue with this guy. Why are you walking away? In the end, actually, I think the argument was fairly good, saying, you know, my wife works in the NHS. Obviously, he loves that line, but he says, I won't take lectures on the seriousness of this pandemic because I speak to people who work on the frontline. Good argument. What happens next, though, is much more dramatic. And that's because Keir Starmer and his team try and escape this lockdown skeptic by heading into a pub. But what they don't seem to have realized is that the lockdown skeptic is in fact the pub landlord. Let's take a look. So after that clip went viral, there were discussions about whether the security was a little too tough with the landlord. Some people pointed out the fact that Keir Starmer handed the landlord back his glasses, which said was very gentlemanly. A lot of focus was also on why Keir Starmer's team, apparently it seemed, hadn't scoped out the pub before going in. Normally, if a leader of a major party is going to visit an establishment, you'd assume that they're not going to get shouted at by the landlord because you'd have probably spoken to the landlord beforehand. Well, that's where the story gets a little bit weirder still because it turned out that Keir Starmer's team had, in fact, scoped out the pub and Keir Starmer had actually been invited. It just so happens, he'd been invited by the pub's other landlord. So unbeknownst to Keir Starmer's team, the landlord they spoke to who was quite positive about Keir Starmer and quite positive about lockdowns, didn't tell them about his COVID skeptic mate who also owns the pub. It was Tim Perry who runs the pub alongside the man who confronted Keir Starmer who invited the Labour leader to visit. He seemed quite embarrassed by the whole ordeal when he was spoken to by a journalist today. The pub is getting blamed for and we're getting death by social media when actually lots of the one that held those opinions, not me. So there you go. That's it. But when I tweeted that out today, someone replied, which I thought was very entertaining to say that those two owners of a pub, it would make a very good sitcom because you can't think of two people who really seem more different. They've got to run a business together. Could you empathise with being embarrassed by a mouthy co-worker? Not remotely. No, not remotely. Although I do quite like the idea of inviting someone to the Navarra Media Studio and not telling them that, you know, I work with you or Aaron and then them just say, why the hell are you in our office? And I just meekly stand back while I've created this sort of this controversy and I just sort of stay kind of silent. You're like, they've never said anything like this before. I mean, I think, what do I think about? One, I like the fact that the spirit of Peggy Mitchell lives on. We all love a good get out of my pub. I mean, it's a classic line. It deserves to be passed down through the generations. I do think, however, there was a bit much of this being made on social media by people who will do anything they can to find a reason to like Keir Starmer and then people who feel kind of the opposite. So people who will do anything they can to like Keir Starmer, they were like, look at him, cool under pressure, forensic. He picked up the glasses with his own hand, his unloved hand and handed it to the rogue lunatic. And then on the other, there were people who were like, that man, he's got the right to sue Keir Starmer and his security team because the landlord has the right to eject whoever he wants. It's like, well, yeah, in real life, there's also the case that frontline politicians have police protection and the aggressive behavior of a man would be the overriding concern. And it probably wouldn't be seen as an unlawful use of force. What I think about the whole thing is that you can't read too much into politicians walkabouts and what it is they get back from the public because it can be all manner of things. These things are usually quite stage managed. And when they're not, it's tempting to read a lot into the person who manages to get through the focus groups and get through all the press offices and say something which is authentic to them and go, that's what the public really think. That's not always the case. But I do think you can tell a lot about a politician about what their reaction is to it. So quite famously when Gordon Brown was confronted by Jillian Duffy, I think in Rochdale, this was about a decade ago now, when she said all of these Eastern European migrants, something of that nature, where are they all flocking from? And Gordon Brown just sort of nodded a bit and didn't really argue back, but didn't really handle it well. And then off camera, but on a hot mic was court saying, why did you put me with that bigoted woman? Now that was his undoing because it made him look inauthentic. It made him look like he was angry that it hadn't been staged, managed enough. You know, why didn't you, you know, why did you put me with this person? Why didn't you handle this for me? It made him look like someone who had to disdain for ordinary people. And that's what became defining of that moment. I think that while Keir Starmer was left with, I think quite thick of it imagery of ducking into the pub and, you know, hustling out of it, I don't think there's anything that's fundamentally embarrassing about it in the same way that hints at a kind of disdain or inauthenticity. What I think could be the longer term problem of this is that quite clearly this guy, this pub landlord who's a COVID skeptic is, you know, making the most out of his time in the sun. So he's going on talk radio to talk with another lockdown skeptic. I think maybe what this hints at is a kind of feedback loop and an amplification between kind of radicalizing lockdown skeptic media. Now, that's not to say that you shouldn't ask questions about, you know, lockdowns and you shouldn't ask questions about the government's handle of a coronavirus pandemic. Criticism is really good and it's really healthy, but it needs to be, it needs to be based on facts and data and trustworthy information and not just any old stuff which is pulled out of your arse. So I do think that this hints at a kind of radicalizing feedback loop. I kind of wonder if, you know, in these kind of small circles, this guy will be a little bit of a core celeb for a bit. But I don't think that it's either as damaging or as validating for Keir Starmer as his supporters or critics would like to make out.