 From media reports and statements from politicians you'd be forgiven for thinking that last Friday a Bristol mob attacked a police force just doing their job and doing their jobs with the utmost professionalism. Actual footage of the protest tells quite a different story. We'll speak to a local journalist who was on the ground to find out what really happened on Friday night. As you've just seen as well, as ever, I'm joined by Ash Sarkar. Thank you for not cancelling on me to spend your Monday evening with six people in a park in the sun. It's the first time you will have been allowed to have done that for months now. So I really appreciate you staying in for me Ash. Well luckily you're my only friend Michael. That's what I like to hear. That's the kind of dependence I like to generate among people. You really respond well to neediness. Exactly. Exactly. It's why I get up in the morning. We have loads of good stories for you tonight. We are, as you've heard, talking about those protests in Bristol. That's our main story. Also I'm going to go through the latest coronavirus news that was delivered by Boris Johnson in his new 2.6 million pound briefing room. The Northern Independence Party hoped to challenge Keir Starmer in Hartlepool. We're going to talk about whether or not he should be worried. And finally an impressive performance from David Lamy speaking to a caller who thinks black people can't be English. It's completely viral on Twitter. You might have seen it really, really worth watching. As ever, if you want to get in touch with us, let us know your thoughts about anything we're talking about. Do so by tweeting on the hashtag TiskeySour. Now on Friday evening, Bristol saw its third protest in a week against the draconian policing bill. Around 1,000 people marched around the city against the advice of authorities before beginning a sit-down protest near the Bridewell police station. Now that sit-down protest lasted for around three hours. Then at 10 p.m., police decided to clear the street. Now to do so, they used quite an extraordinary level of force. And we've collected some of the videos from social media which give an idea of how the police interacted with protesters. So first we can see scuffles which lead to cops using the sharp end of their shields to whack demonstrators. So you can see that that's not how shields are supposed to be used. The shield is supposed to protect you. They were using it to jab people the end of it. It looked incredibly painful actually. And they also rammed people with shields pushing them to the ground. That one's really... Every time I watch that, it shocks me actually just the force with which that lady is pushed to the ground. There were also videos which were separate from that sit-down protest or presumably just down the road. And this one has been much shared because it was an assault against Matthew Dresch who was a journalist at the Daily Mirror. There's another video now we can show you of them assaulting someone else who appears to be a journalist. I mean, I think actually the reactions of bystanders is really telling because they are the people, you know, they're from behind a fence. They're not there on the protest. You can imagine they're fairly neutral bystanders and they're looking at that and they know who is applying force there, who is being unfair in that situation. And they were telling the cops to get off that person. A few more for you. We've got one of them, another. This is a really horrible one again actually. They've got someone who's on the ground and they're using a baton against them even though they're already on the floor. Yeah, lots of... I mean, battons were... Batons and shields were the main weapon of choice. We did also see lots of animals deployed, horse charges. I don't... I'm not sure if anyone got hit by a horse. There were some dogs who... I saw a couple of images of them by protesters. This deployment of a dog though did backfire. Watch this one closely. It was that protest. It's lucky day because just as he was getting arrested, the police dog bit the policeman, arresting him. A couple of pictures for you. This is the aftermath of the protest. These are the kind of injuries which people suffered at those protests. You can see they're huge enormous bruises. So clearly some real contact made there. Either that's someone falling on the floor or someone getting hit with something. That clearly looks like a baton there on the shoulder. And finally, to make it, I suppose, clear where all of this emerged from, we've got a short video of the demonstration before the scuffles broke out if that's what I said. That's how we want to put it. Now to discuss how that sit-down protest led to such violent classes, clashes, I'm joined by Adam Cantwell-Corn, co-founder and coordinator at the Bristol Cable, who have probably been doing the best coverage of these protests so far. And you have to say thank you to your colleague Alon Avaram, who's many of his videos are used there in our introduction. And so Adam, I wanted to get you to talk us through initially because you were there, obviously, on the ground. How did those interactions between police and protesters develop on Friday night? Sure, yeah. Evening. Yeah, so I was there with my colleague Alon, and we've been covering the protests on Sunday and Tuesday previously. And on Friday, I took over from a couple of other my colleagues who had been on shift earlier on in the day. And we arrived, and it was basically that scene in that last clip that you showed where there was the vast majority of people sitting down in front of the police just by the police station that was the site of the incident on Sunday previously. At that point, there was just people like singing, like chilling, like chanting, and like a number of people standing up, but like they were at the back, like on the fringes of the protests, but like in the middle and a raid in front of the police lines was just actually a really big crowd of journalists who would all obviously want it to come down to cover this after what happened earlier on in the week. And then the vast majority of people were sitting down. There was I did see like a couple of eggs thrown from unknown people from behind. And there was a couple of beer cans as well that were thrown towards police lines. But other than that, there wasn't anything between the protesters who were sort of like actually facing and sort of like in the vicinity of the officers. Yeah, then as you say, around 10, there was this kind of like stirring behind the police lines. They started to sort of like amass, get geared up. And then basically they proceeded to sort of like wade into the crowds using the shields as you identified as as you spoke about in the videos the test to as weapons and battens as well. And basically would do this sort of like push and like people were trying to sit down and people are going sit down sit down peaceful protests, peaceful protests, people kept trying to sit down. And then the police would sort of like advance like four or five more steps, swing swinging their shields and batten so people would get up and retreat. And it was quite chaotic. And I was screaming and shouting. And then the police would halt and then people would be like sit down sit down sit down sit down. And then the police would do like another wave. And I think that happened maybe like three or four times. And by that time, it's sort of like moved out into a sort of like wider street area by the shopping center. And then basically everybody and then the horses moved in. And then basically the whole sort of like protests like broke up and dispersed. And that's where there was like a number of different sort of like standoffs or altercations, horse charges, dog charges, a couple of different sites in the vicinity. So looking at the videos on obviously you've reported on all these protests, I haven't been at any of them. So my experience of them has just been via social media clips. And basically to me, you know, Sunday it looked ambiguous. It looked sorry last Sunday looked like it was a difficult policing situation. There was sort of some aggression from both sides. The police seemed a little bit overwhelmed at times Tuesday, then it seemed like it was actually a very peaceful protest. There wasn't as much sort of aggression and the police massively overreacted. And then on Friday night, it seemed like the police just went completely wild. And to me, what it looked like is that basically the police had thought that we were humiliated last Sunday. What we're going to do is we're going to take it out on anyone who stands remotely in our way. And it seemed to me almost a sort of like quite an emotionally violent reaction, like a kind of like a gang who were fighting back at someone who embarrassed them the week before. Do you think that that interpretation bears true to what it felt like on the ground? Well, I can't say like obviously like what the police were thinking as like an organization or as the individuals there. But it certainly was the case that on Tuesday and on Friday, that there was no meaningful resistance apart from completely passive resistance in terms of like people sitting down with their hands in their air. As I said, there was a couple of eggs and a couple of beer cans thrown towards the police lines as at that moment that people were sitting down for the several hours before that. And then I think what ensued then basically, and this is obviously the justification or part of the justification alongside the coronavirus restrictions that the police used to move in in that fashion. And I think kind of like what happened is that they used that justification, but then a lot of it was kind of like a sort of collective punishment type situation where like people were sat on the ground, a vast majority of people not involved in anything that could be millingly described as a threat were then obviously on the receiving end of quite significant physical force. And then later on it did go into scenes that were more like on Sunday, where there was like fireworks thrown at police lines, rock thrown at police lines and much more confrontational actions by some of the protesters. But by that point, it had this seems like the crowd had been broken up and also decreased in quite a lot of sides. I think probably a lot of people did get injured and or shocked and scared and decided to leave. It was interesting. You opened it by saying with the police with the utmost professionalism. And I think this is an interesting point because I had a conversation with the superintendent on BBC Radio 5 on Saturday night about what happened on Friday. And I said, do you accept that the police were using the shields as weapons? And he said, yes, I do. And that's a totally legitimate and sort of like legal thing to do if the officer can justify that use of force. So there's a question here about like what counts as professionalism and in many ways the police have defended that as a professional practice and presumably totally justified. It's not just the police who have defended it. I want to go to Pretty Patel statement. So in in response to the images that were coming out of Bristol, Pretty Patel, the home secretary tweeted, I am disgusted by the disorder in Bristol and the violence being directed towards the police. I'm in no doubt the silent law abiding majority will be appalled by the actions of this criminal minority. Despite repeated warnings to disperse, it's clear these fugs were only intent on causing trouble. I am receiving regular updates and the police have my full support. Now, for people who were, you know, looking at those videos on Twitter on social media, that would have been quite a shocking statement. She's clearly calling. You're seeing people there sitting with their hands up in the air saying peaceful protest. She's dismissing them as fugs. You're seeing the police who are whacking people with battens who were lying on the ground. She's saying the police have her full support and then this very sort of Richard Nixon like appeal to the to the silent law abiding majority. Now, I said people who were watching videos on Twitter, they would have been shocked by what she said. People who just get their news from the BBC would be would think that what Pretty Patel said was completely legitimate, quite likely. This was the the tweet that BBC sent out UK PM Boris Johnson describes protesters who threw bricks bottles and fireworks at police in Bristol as a mob intent on violence after third night of protests in the city. Now, you might say to me that's just them reporting what Boris Johnson said. The important context here, that's the only tweet the BBC sent about that protest and, in fact, more importantly than Twitter, actually, that's the push notification they sent out about that that protest. So anyone who has the BBC app on their phone will have got a message or a notification which says that the protest is through bricks bottles and fireworks and can be described as a mob. The BBC, as I said, they're leading with what people have said. If anyone took time to go to the report, it was equally, I mean, unbalanced, I'd say. So this is from the BBC website. If you click through on that article, I've just shown you the tweet for the protest had started earlier in the day on College Green before moving during the evening to Bridewell Police Station, the scene of disorder on Sunday. Police in riot gear blocked access to the road and protesters sat in front of them in response. But officers moved in after 10 p.m. after the atmosphere changed and people became physical. So people became physical. That's showing us that, yes, it was the protesters who first came into contact with people who got physical. And then it says, footage showed police in riot gear using shields to push protesters back. And then a couple of comments from the police chief. Now, I want you to focus on that footage showed police in riot gear using shields to push protesters back because I've just shown you a lot of videos where that's not actually how they were using shields. Let's take another look at how police were, in fact, using those riot shields. Now, as Adam said, police may or may not defend that as being legitimate, but it's certainly not pushing someone with a riot shield. That's whacking someone with the hard end of a riot shield. Ash, I want to bring you in at this point, because I know you've been writing and thinking about how the media report police actions and protests and how there is quite a smooth pipeline between the police and media organizations, which mean that even when there are sort of videos going around on social media, which is showing us what actually happened, the smooth pipeline between police and media means that a often misleading portrayal gets put forward in the mainstream to people who are consuming this via mainstream channels. So what you've got to do is I think look at all the different elements to this. One is a longstanding tradition of journalists being used as PR mouthpieces for the police when they are facing criticism for operational decisions. And you could see this with the coverage of Orgrief at the time, Hillsborough, that very famous front page of the sun where they'd been briefed by police that Liverpool fans had urinated on police officers, that they'd attacked ambulances and those who'd come to the aid of people who were injured or even killed in the crush. Similar story following the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the police briefed to the press that de Menezes had jumped the tube barrier at Stockwell to the point that lots of people still believe that to be the case today, whereas he actually very calmly got on the tube just like anybody else who was shot and he was killed. Mark Duggan, when he was killed in a hard stop in Tottenham nearly 10 years ago now, there were reports to the press by the police again telling quite lurid stories of a shootout that Duggan had fired at police first and then they'd fired back and that's how he was killed. No such thing happened. In fact, the gun was not in his possession on his person at the time the fatal shots were fired. In Tomlinson, when he was killed at the G20 protests in, I can't remember, it was about 10 years ago, the next day there was a double-page spread saying that this man had collapsed of his own accord. No mention of Simon Howard, the police officer who struck the blow to the back of Mr Tomlinson and that they were pelted with missiles as the police tried to save his life. Again, no such thing happened. There was a bystander who happened to be a nurse and they were in fact inhibited from administering first aid to Ian Tomlinson. So this is a pattern of briefing from the police directly to the press and it is often misleading. Now, we saw that when it came to the coverage of the previous Sunday night's protests where there were these stories about the police having suffered broken bones and a punctured lung and it turns out none of that was true. There were no broken bones, there was no punctured lung and still the police have not made clear how or why that incorrect information made it to the press and despite the best efforts of some people in the media, the guardians Damien Gale trying to do the Lord's work here as well as more obviously partisan figures like Owen Jones, the correction of the untruth has had nowhere near the reach of the original lie and that's because there are a lot of people within the media who are scared of sullying their relationship with the police because there is a reciprocal arrangement between the press and the police. On the one hand, you've got the journalists who are used to PR mouthpieces, but on the other hand, they require these quite good and chummy relationships in order to be first on a breaking news story. And so there is a kind of you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours arrangement between journalists and the police. The leaking of information by police to journalists again is something which is commonplace. So it means that when the police have done something dreadfully wrong like lie or even indeed assault a journalist as we've seen from the footage that mirror journalists being assaulted in Bristol just the other day, you don't have nearly as much condemnation or skepticism on the part of journalists because it could sour those relationships which they rely on. And then I think there's another aspect to this briefly before I move on, which is the impact of anti-leftism. So you can see this and I'm sure we're going to talk about some of the responsive, you know, quite reactionary figures like Ian Austin. There are people who hate the left so much that they refuse to countenance the idea that there are people who are on the left or could be perceived as being on the left who might be being treated unfairly, whether that's being treated unfairly by politicians, whether that's being treated unfairly in the press or indeed if it's having the living daylights kicked out of you by police and being assaulted by baton and by riot shields. And that anti-leftism suffuses the political framing that the press choose to adopt when covering these matters. Because your starting point is that people who are on the left are illegitimate players on the terrain of politics. And so when you've got something which I think is quite morally cut and dry, seated, peaceful protesters being chopped in the head by riot shields, there is an unwillingness to elevate those images to the kind of prominence they deserve or give them the robust criticism that they deserve as well. And again that anti-leftism then feeds back into the need to cultivate good relationships and access to police forces and also politicians who share the same viewpoint as those police officers who are batoning protesters in the head. I mean you mentioned that Ian Tomlinson example, really important one where the police put out basically a message which was a complete lie and which did get found out and actually it got found out by, especially the Guardian, put a lot of work into that. Paul Lewis, one of their journalists did lots of reconstructions of CCTV footage and footage that people had taken on their phones saying that I was a little bit disappointed by the way the Guardian sort of reported on this protest because they led essentially with a similar line to the BBC, they led with what Boris Johnson said about the protest. So this was the first tweet from the Guardian on that night. Boris Johnson, Bristol killed the Bill protest violence is disgraceful. And I just think the first thing you report shouldn't really be Boris Johnson's perspective on something. Later on in the night they did report on the journalist who got hit so then you can see police under fire for assault of journalists at Bristol protest. I want to go to some of the commentary which has come about after this protest. So as Ash mentioned there Ian Austin was probably the character with the grossest response to these protests. So Ian Austin if you weren't aware of him, he was a Labour MP. He is now chair of mainstream UK which describes itself as a new cross-party campaign to combat extremism in public life. He campaigned against Jeremy Corbyn in 2019 and afterwards coincidentally got a peerage from Boris Johnson the person he'd helped put into Downing Street. Now let's take a look at how he responded to the violence that we saw on Friday night. So Ian Austin, Lord Ian Austin as it says in his Twitter handle completely with the police in Bristol after rioters attacked, tried and seriously injured police officers last week and tried to invade the police station. It's not surprising they're taking a robust approach, support our public service workers. Then Robin Gray, a Twitter user replies, perhaps you miss at the police chiefs, already apologized for misleading the public last week about the seriously injured officers. There weren't any beating up innocent peace protesters is not a robust approach. It is a disgrace to which Ian Austin responds, I hope they didn't damage their shields and batons. Now he is the chair of an organization which he himself set up, which by its own approximation is set up purely to combat extremism and now he's celebrating police batoning and peaceful protests. He did delete that final tweet. He presumably had some shame or maybe someone who he has associated with said you've got a bit too far there mate, you should take that down. I speculate I don't know why he deleted that. I want to show you though one voice of reason in all of this. So we've obviously seen lots of police behaving very badly here. Michael Barton, who is the former chief constable of Durham this weekend, I told the Guardian about his opposition to the policing bill. I thought he came across very, very reasonably. So he said, I'm not in favor of even more restrictive measures surely after an historically unprecedented year-long curfew in peacetime, the government should show some common sense and gratitude for such incredible forbearance to allow civil liberties to once again flourish, or are they happy to be linked to the repressive regimes currently flexing their muscles via their police forces. Fortunately, in the UK, we are not a paramilitary style police force, but these powers dangerously edge in that direction. Police chiefs will be seen as the arbiters of what is and is not allowed when it comes to protests. Democracies thrive on protests. This government has condemned what has happened in Ukraine, but those same protesters would fall foul of our new laws. Now, what's super interesting there, I think, is he is saying, look, this this policing bill, which would give the police way more powers to say when a protest is and isn't illegal, that's actually not the kind of powers the police want because they want to police by consent. That's making them a sort of political organ. He's uncomfortable with it. Obviously, the police have been doing that for the past few weeks because we're in a lockdown. They get to decide when social distancing is taking place, etc. Adam, I want to bring you back in. I don't want to pin this too much on you because I know that you haven't had an inside account of what the police is saying, but just because you've been on the ground, and I haven't, did you get the impression that any of the police were uncomfortable with what they were being asked to do and the role they were being asked to play or did you think that, I mean, watching those videos, sometimes I felt like they were relishing it. It was it was difficult to tell. What was your sense? Yeah, I think it is obviously very difficult to tell, not least because it's like such a sort of like tense and crazy situation is dark and everything else. I was struck by one scene, though, earlier on in the before it sort of like kicked off on Friday, I saw a couple of protesters chatting with one of the police officers. And they were having a laugh. I don't know what they're talking about, but I took a photo and tweeted it of the police officer smiling and they were chatting for quite a while. Literally about 30 minutes later, that officer was one of the officers who was using his shield as a weapon to bring down on protesters who were sitting on the floor. And that to me just sort of like was just a bit, I don't know if it was shocking, but I think it was just like quite starkly contrasting. And I guess it probably just made me think like, well, there is obviously this, I think probably quite honestly held the controversial belief by a lot of the officers doing that, that they are, you know, they're enforcing the law, they're taking the orders from their superiors, and that these people have to go. And, you know, and I don't know what happened after that, and like how individuals, officers will see, you know, the videos that happened. I do know that the office, the senior members of the Avenus Somerset Constabulary, they reached out to myself and my colleague Alon after an officer from another force that was supporting them on their operation on Tuesday confronted us and physically shoved us around with his shield, despite us identifying ourselves with NUJ press credentials. At that point, a senior officer stepped in and said, stand down to that officer. These are journalists like stand back. And then later on the next day, a very senior officer called both myself and Alon to apologize for that. And they've sort of like made it quite clear that the press has a role to play here. So I think there is like an awareness amongst the police. But at the end of the day, and it was reported today by one of the senior commanding officers, they've said that was totally legitimate and proportionate and justified. But I do think that what you've said about some officers in police leadership expressing concerns about the pill, that same officer that was leading the protest on Friday, I think it was him or one of his colleagues at the same level of rank had earlier said in the week, what did he when he was asked what do you want to happen next? And he said to make protests lawful. And I think this is really instructive is that like this is being handed down by the Home Secretary and the police are finding themselves in a position of enforcing the law and they are doing that with force. But obviously, this is a political issue as much of it is a policing one. I mean, it is it's legal from today. So it is surprising that they clamped down so hard three days before protests became legal. Anyway, Adam Katmocorn, thank you so much for speaking to us tonight. I do recommend to all of our viewers to check out the Bristol Cable, doing a really important service. Also really helpful for us in London to have brilliant local journalists on the ground who are covering covering stuff across the country. So thank you so much. Thank you. Good night. Ash, I want to go to you quickly on this before we move on to coronavirus and our other stories of the evening on this issue of the police. So I did read out one quote there from one officer who seems kind of reasonable. We've obviously seen lots of officers look pretty violent. Last week, I did have someone reach out to me on Twitter in DMs who said like, I'm a left-wing cop. There are a few left-wing cops. Look, we think this is a job that needs doing and we want it to be less violent than it is, but also all of the ACAB stuff from the left, ACAB means all cops are bastards, is pushing people to the right. What do you make of the whole, do we shout all cops are bastards or do we try and love bomb the people like Michael Barton who is here saying, actually, we don't want to follow through with the authoritarian tendencies of pretty pateau? Well, I think that you've got to do what I would call skeptical bridge building. And so you're always trying to build outwards and not just rely on an in-group identity, the point about being on the left believe in the power of mass mobilization. So the more and more you rely on things which construct an in-group out-group identity, whether that's particular ways of dressing or presenting yourself or particular rhetorical flourishes, what you're doing is you're kind of saying this is us and this is you. So I'm not too wedded to the ACAB slogan. Even if I've got a lot of sympathy with the fact that it emerges from a structural critique of the police, their role in surveilling and sometimes brutalizing working class communities and their role in the preservation of the status quo. So I've got a lot of sympathy with where that comes from and the fact that it's taking aim at a system and a system which does not allow or facilitate individual officers to act according to the better angels of their nature. However, I think the more you rely on slogans which construct an in-group out-group identity, the less you're able to do that kind of outward bridge building. But you've got to do it, I think, with a degree of discernment and skepticism. As Adam said, there are police officers who are quite happy to chat and laugh with you one minute and then baton you the next. Something that we saw in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the United States. You would have the police in New York or Washington, D.C., taking the knee and raising a fist in solidarity with protesters. The pictures get snapped, they get disseminated as a symbol of the police taking this moment of anti-racism seriously and then a few hours later everyone's getting pepper sprayed, batoned and brutalized. So I think that you've got to, again, be discerning and be skeptical of some of those outward gestures of solidarity because they can really turn on a dime when it comes to how operational decisions are being taken. But I think the words of this particular police officer, which is a critique of this legislation, how it works and the defence of the right to protest, is of course welcome. It's of course welcome. You're not going to get somebody like that over to an abolitionist perspective and even on the left, an abolitionist perspective is not the dominant perspective of how the police are viewed. And that's fine, we don't have to agree on the end point of where we want policing to go. But if I've got a couple of police officers saying this law is dangerous and we do not want to enforce it, fantastic, build on that. That is a short-term goal that we can both pursue. When it comes to a wider critique of the functioning of the criminal justice system, we don't have to agree. Building, was that the phrase? I already liked that. What was it? Skeptical bridge building? Skeptical bridge building. Excellent, I love it. Fabulous. Thanks to Jane Hayward who gave us a £10 super jet and to Jack Edwards with £4.99 who says keep up the good work, guys. Thank you so much, we will keep watching. Next story. We haven't talked about coronavirus for a while, so we're going to take you through the latest updates now quite briefly. So today's number 10 COVID briefing was the first to be held in the new £2.6 million briefing room. Boris Johnson has to be expected celebrating the fact that the lockdown is being slightly loosened today. And I want to congratulate the members of Elkeston Cycling Club in Derbyshire that set off at midnight, the swimmers who broached the chilly waters of the Hillingdon Lido at the crack of dawn. And more than anything, I know how much it will have meant to millions of people to have joined someone else for a cup of tea in the garden. And I must stress that it's only because of months of sacrifice and effort that we can take this small step towards freedom today and we must proceed with caution. It's great to see that yesterday we recorded the lowest number of new infections for six months. Deaths and hospital admissions across the UK are continuing to fall. But that wave is still rising across the channel. And it's inevitable, as we advance on this roadmap, that there will be more infections and unavoidably more hospitalisations and sadly more deaths. Now, no prizes for guessing that part of that £2.6 million went on huge Union jacks to go behind the Prime Minister. In terms of what he said, a bit of a roller coaster starts off with sort of twee folksy. You can go cycling now, you can go swimming. Also, more people are going to die. I don't think anything he said there was untrue. There was some good news. I suppose the conference today was mainly good news. There is mainly good news when it comes to COVID-19 in this country right now. So, as Johnson said, the good news is that cases are way below what they were. They have currently plateaued, which has some people worrying. So, we can see a slide from today's press conference. So, you can see they go from around 60,000 per day. That was in the peak in early January. And now we're at an average of 5,257 cases a day. Now, that has plateaued. So, it was going down consistently basically until when schools opened. So, schools opened and now instead of cases going down, they're staying steady. Now, that's not necessarily a reason to panic. That's what the scientists were all expecting. In terms of a breakdown of age, we can see here that that uptick is being driven by school age children. So, schools went back on the 8th of March. This data from the ONS goes up to the 19th of March. You can see there a slight uptick in primary school age children, a slightly bigger one in secondary school age children, and then some in people who are the age of parents, essentially. So, yeah, some uptick. We'll have to keep an eye on the data, but no reason to panic at this point in time. Chris Whitty was quite clear that even though we have vaccinated over half of the population, we still can't relax. I thought this was a very explanatory graphic, which the Chief Medical Officer showed us. So, you can see here on the left is the age distribution of COVID deaths. This is Graphic 9C. So, you can see there nearly all of the deaths are coming from people above 50, above 50. So, the people who've been vaccinated now, but nearly all of the cases or the majority of the cases come from people below 50. So, if we go back to normal now, you're very likely have new surges, which will mean a lot less hospitalisations than the last time that happened, but we could get variations, which is a real worry. When it comes to variations, of course, borders are the real issue. Chris Whitty at that Downing Street briefing today warned that that's what we should be worried about, especially when it comes to Britain's borders. For the UK, essentially, there are two risks. There's always a higher risk. If any country has got a higher rate than you have, then there is a risk of net importation of COVID. But the much bigger risk, and the one that we're all concerned about is the risk of variants of concern. These are COVID variants, which might, and I want to stress the word might, have a problem with the vaccine, where the vaccine is less effective against them. And so, the main thing we're concerned about is the risk of importing into the UK variants, which could have a reduced effectiveness of the vaccines we're currently using. Now, in the long term, there would be ways around that. But in the short term, that is the principle, the thing that's driving concerns about border issues at the stage. You can see why there is a worry. That's because cases are currently not really lifting off again. In Europe, they're getting a proper third wave. We can see here a comparison between cases in France, the United Kingdom, and the European Union as a whole. As you can see there, Britain, we really peaked at the beginning of January, but it's been all the way down since then. And France is now having quite a severe uptick, which is one of the reasons why it's quite tasteless when you see people on Twitter bragging that our vaccination program is going so much better than people on continental Europe. Because, yeah, fine, it was annoying that Macron said that maybe the AstraZeneca vaccine doesn't work, but this is going to lead to death. So, I mean, I think some sensitivity around the issue would be appropriate. In terms of the issue when it comes to Britain, especially we are worried about importing new variants, again, and we have some worrying data from France. This was an image, a map, I'm tweeted by Adam Kucharski, who's an epidemiologist at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. And here it's showing us the distribution of variants of concern. And these aren't the UK variant, which we already got. These are variants of concern which we're worried will bring about some vaccine resistance. So, it's the strains which were first identified in South Africa and the ones which were first identified in Brazil. And you can see here there are parts of France where over 30% of new cases are one of those more vaccine resistant strains. So, it's important to say they're not completely vaccine resistant. It's not the case that if you get that strain, it doesn't matter whether or not you've had a vaccine, but they will be slightly less effective, which is why we probably should have more strict border controls than we currently do as it stands. When people arrive in the airport, everyone I've spoken to who's arrived in Britain recently has said one, there's huge queues by the passport office. So, you've got a bit of a super spreader event inside the airport. And then unless you're from, well, you actually even up until very recently, even if you're from one of the red zone places, you get on public transport to go home, right? Actually not the red zone ones, because then you'll go straight to your hotel. But if you're not in those red zone ones, which includes France, it's not in the red zone, then you'll get on public transport to go home, which is a lot of opportunity for leakage of these new strains. Ash, I want to bring you in actually not so much on coronavirus, but not necessarily on the decor of that room as well, because this isn't changing rooms. We're not here to just judge the colour of the dark blue and the panels and the flags. But the fact we are seeing this new briefing room is because the government has a plan to have three times a week a briefing with their spokesperson Allegra Stratton on television. It's the first time it's happened. We've always had a rule in this country whereby civil servants don't speak directly to the public. They've decided they want to go down the route that you have in the United States. We've got a press secretary who does very high profile daily press conferences or by daily or whatever every two days press conferences. And they're going to bring that here. Do you think it will work in terms of, I mean, presumably they want to introduce this to improve the popularity of Boris Johnson and the government? Well, I guess we'll see. And I think the reason why they're doing this is because they think that an American style media ecology around the governing party will suit the conservatives. And I think that there are multiple aspects to this. One is, of course, the spectacle. So you move towards almost more presidential imagery around Boris Johnson. And the idea is that it kind of puffs up his status. But two, I think it also goes hand in hand with the kind of commercialization of our broadcast media. The fact that you do have the emergence of new television outlets, which are going to be intensely sympathetic towards the government, and which also present something of a threat to the BBC. I think you have all those things together, plus the government, which was quite happy to present itself as a mouthpiece in the culture wars. There's another, you know, valiant fighter on the terrain of culture wars that I think that they think this will suit them very, very well. Also, when you do look at the color scheme or the blues or the union flags, it's something which looks like it could be straight out of conservative party conference. So if you have imagery, which more closely twins in the popular imagination, the conservative party as a party and the state, the institution of a government itself, then they think it's going to suit them. I mean, they obviously think that is going to suit them. Otherwise, they wouldn't do this. We know this is a government who implement policies when they think it's going to benefit their own electoral hopes, not because it's, you know, to create better understanding of political life. And so there's more direct communication between government and public. No, it's because Boris Johnson wants to have more direct influence over the press, which means getting his spokesperson directly on TV. I don't know why he thinks it's needed, because obviously, Laura Koonsberg normally does that job, but they've made this decision. Let's move away from the government and the conservatives to labor. First of all, Michael Deerey with five pounds says, I worry anti-vaxxers will ruin it for the rest of us. My dad is using any excuse to avoid his like it's the plague rather than cure for the plague. Oh, sorry to hear about your dad. That sounds incredibly stressful. I don't know if I have any advice to tell you how to persuade your dad. In terms of the general point, I'd say I'm not, you know, the confidence in the vaccine in this country is higher than anywhere else. The uptake has been incredibly high. We did get some worrying information today from I think it was the Office of National Statistics, which shows that actually there is quite an uneven uptake when it comes to different communities, especially in terms of ethnic minorities, partly because of a lack of confidence or suspicion of the state often quite rightly, although it's not warranted in the case of the vaccine. So I think in general, vaccine skepticism is not going to ruin it for the rest of us, but because of the unequal uptake of the vaccine, it could create new inequalities in terms of the consequences of still having a little bit of coronavirus around. So some reassurance there also some more things to worry about. Now, problems are piling up for Keir Starmer. His approval ratings are now strongly in negative territory. As you can see here from Yuga, 45% of voters told the company he's doing badly, only 32% well. And you can see the direction of travel there. It was very much in positive territory back in May, in positive territory all the way up to January and since then it's completely flipped. The country now think he's doing a bad job. On top of that, people within the party aren't very happy. So on Sunday, the observer reported that MPs believed Starmer lacked grip over the party. An unnamed MP complained to the paper that he lacked that he and his team lacked direction on more than one MP. Also on the weekend, Starmer learned that a former Labour MP would be standing against the party in the key upcoming Hartlepool by-election. Falmer Walker was Labour MP for Coln Valley between 2017 and 2019. But in May this year, she'll be standing for the newly formed Northern Independence Party. Falmer won the party's primary with 70% of the vote. Now, do they have a chance, difficult to say? I mean, they don't have a chance of winning the C. What they'd be aiming for or how they could make a splash is if they dent Labour's vote share. And it does look like it could be quite a close by-election. The only polling we have for Hartlepool at the moment is not a poll of voters within Hartlepool. It's an MRP poll. So that means they poll a broader section of the country and then using the demographics of people guess what the vote share will be in Hartlepool. And according to focal data, Labour 39% and the Conservatives 36%. So a free point difference. So that will cause problems for Labour if the Northern Independence Party get more than free, presumably. There are some people within the party who aren't particularly impressed by the party. So Lee Drennan is chair of Northwest Labour commenting on the NIP logo. He said, Am I the only one who thinks this Northern Independence Party is a joke? The line, it's about bloody time and having a whip it as its party logo come across as ironic or fought up by someone who's never been to the north of England, but thinks it sounds like a nice place. And Kim Johnson says in response and patronising in the extreme, only missed out the flat cap on the whip it. Now, we were going to speak to Thelma Walker today. Unfortunately, there were some timing issues and some issues with technology we'll get around the show very soon. But me and Ash will speculate ourselves. So Ash, what do you make of this? Do you think the Northern Independence Party will cause problems for Keir Starmer or is Lee Drennan right that they're a bit of a joke? I'm just intensely aware of how London we both are. I feel like introducing the section of like, this is Chiskisar from London, you know, like a BBC broadcast from the 1940s. I mean, look, here's what I find really interesting about the Northern Independence Party, because I'm interested in how political identities get put together. Now, the way in which the north has been constructed, and there's some truth in this when you look at the direction of elections since, you know, 2001 is that you had a once robust left wing vote, a Labour vote in decline. You have seen a shift of Labour voters to non-voters and some of those also going towards the Conservatives or indeed the Brexit party. And the response to that from Keir Starmer's Labour leadership is to triangulate in a right words direction. That's how they attempt to deal with that kind of context. Has that worked? Well, you presented the polling. The more the public see of Keir Starmer, the less they're inclined to get behind him. He's facing disgruntled rumbles from his own backbenches, people saying that he lacks vision, that he lacks a sense of authenticity. And also that honeymoon period amongst the press where really, they couldn't heap enough praise on him solely because of the fact that he's not Jeremy Corbyn, that seems to be drawing to a close as well. And he doesn't seem to have that kind of hybrid strategy that Joe Biden was able to pursue, which is on the one hand, persuade the soft edge of the right wing vote who could come back on your side. And whilst also mobilizing and using your parties left in order to galvanize a grassroots movement. And of course, you know, to states, it's a different context. You could have different strategies in different states, but it was that mobilized model which was so devastatingly effective in Georgia. What Keir Starmer gambled is that by alienating his parties left, it's going to be cost neutral. He thinks that look our our engaged membership was actually detrimental to our electoral chances. The labor identity when it was being defined by Corbyn was unattractive to the cohort of older voters in the north and the midlands. So pissing off the buddies left won't matter. And one of those people that was intensely disillusioned by Keir Starmer's vision of labor was of course, Thelma Walker. So you've got this kind of confluence between young progressives who so far tend to be a bit more concentrated within northern cities rather than in towns. People who have been alienated by and even, you know, aggravated by Keir Starmer and his management of the party. And now the real test is whether that confluence of interests can be matched by serious on the ground organizing and ground game. There hasn't been much opportunity to see what that's going to be like because of coronavirus and limiting the amount of the amount that people can do in real life. The in group identity of the Northern Independence Party is really interesting because while of course you have to build outwards and be sort of wary of ever believing your own propaganda and your own in group identity too much, one of the ways in which political movements and parties get off the ground is by constructing a really recognizable and authentic sense of identity. Now that is something that the Northern Independence Party have been able to do not because they take their own northerness super duper seriously, but because they're quite willing to do stuff which is kind of ironic and taking the piss like having, you know, a whip it on your logo. Having a social media presence which is, you know, got a foot in the world of shitposting. Thelma Walker is of course not a shitpost. There's someone with a digital presence who takes politics very seriously. And so how that gets put together and how it's going to resolve itself, it's not entirely straightforward. But I think it's going to be an interesting experiment in creating a counterweight potentially to a way of defining politics in the North as just being old, socially conservative and a bit regressive. This is, you know, active, young, digitally literate northerners who are trying to do something different. Will it work? Will it translate into an electoral percentage which could make them real competitors in Northern and Midland seats? I don't know. But I'm interested to see. It will be interesting because it definitely gives, you know, it makes the the the by-election a little bit more lively than it otherwise would have been. I want to go back to the Observer Report that I sort of started this segment with because people within the Labour Party have their own answers to how they can solve the current woes. They're not necessarily ones that we would endorse. This was a comment from a Labour Shadow Minister in The Guardian. The problem, or to the Observer, the problem is that Keir's team is very inexperienced. We are in a bit of a state. They have spent too much time over the last year trying to appease the hard left on the one hand and being too cautious trying to look like a government in waiting. There is lots of concern in the PLP about Keir's office in general. So they're saying that the reason Keir Stammer is struggling is because he's pandered to the hard left too much. Now this is a leader who has literally kicked Jeremy Corbyn out of the party, who's sacked the only person from the left in his shadow cabinet, who has consistently refused to stand up for left-wing positions, especially when it comes to civil liberties and social authoritarianism. You know, he's opposed a rise to a corporation tax. How has he pandered to the left? I don't really see how they came to that analysis. But probably more worrying than the fact that that's what a Labour shadow minister said is the defence from Stammer's team seems to be, yes, no, we did spend all our time attacking the hard left. We've done the right thing. Allies of Chapman and McSweeney, this is from the Guardian as well from the Observer, say critics have seriously underestimated the work they had done to save the Labour Party since Stammer took office. They have spearheaded an overhaul of the party's structures in the wake of the factional fighting that took place under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, and they go on. Sources said they had been flat out during Stammer's first year securing a new general secretary, shoring up Stammer's support on the party's ruling national executive committee and trying to improve Labour's organisation in Scotland, where it now has a new leader. It might be subtle what they do, but they are ruthlessly effective, said a party source. An incredibly important part of our strategy has had to be fixing the party. Basically, Labour are, they were pushing back against the original MP because they're saying we haven't panned us at the hard left. Actually, the reason we're doing poorly in the polls is because we spent all of our time attacking the hard left. When you say we're doing badly, you're misunderstanding what we're about. What we're actually about is taking back control of the party. We don't care about the polls. That's the message I get from that. Finally, the last bit of briefing we saw over the weekend, again, very informative about the direction the party is going in, is that they are blaming their woes, as well as on the fact that they had to waste all of this time attacking the left on the most senior member in Keir Starmer's Shadow Cabinet, Annalise Dodds, who is the Shadow Chancellor. Apparently, there are plans to ax her and Rachel Reeves is the favourite to take over. Now, Ash, all of this points to me that if Keir Starmer thinks, oh, we've underperformed in these local elections, they have set the bar quite low, so I think they could well exceed it. If there are any failures in the near future, they're going to blame them on the left and they're going to move further to the right. Is that an analysis you share? Well, yeah, that's absolutely going to happen. Michael, if you read my Cortado on a Friday morning, you would know that I've been predicting for quite some time that there would be a panicky reshuffle, perhaps in the summertime after the local elections, depending on how they go. You are going to see almost like the return of the repressed in Freud. You're going to see perhaps Yvette Cooper, Hilary Ben, these figures from Labour's right as Keir Starmer tries to rejiggle the balance of power, which means that he can still stay leader. It's probably not enough numbers or discontent amongst the PLP in order to trigger a leadership contest, but he's going to be worried about his position. You could see this in terms of the negative briefing which has been coming out about, say, Annalise Stodds, who is the shadow chancellor who had, as she entered the job, something of a favourable reputation amongst some of the parties left because she'd been quite close to John McDonnell. Unfortunately, in that coming up to a year that she's been in that position, she's just not been allowed to say anything interesting at all. Her media performances, other than the first one she did when her daughter came barging into the room and that was really memorable, have been defined by kind of saying nothing, doing nothing, not making any big promises. And when your counterpart in the government is Rishi Sunak making all sorts of very splashy spending promises, whether it's ones that we approve of like Ferlo, or ones which are a bit more misguided, like Eat Out to Help Out, you know that you're not fighting the same old Conservative party anymore and that also they're willing to take positions like on nurses pay and you turn at times which are inconvenient for the Labour Party, they're willing to also do things which will trip up a Labour Party which is triangulating right words in order to look moderate and look sensible. So that's something which has really worked to her disadvantage. But where does that political orientation come from? Where does that strategy come from? Well, that's from Keir Starmer and the advisors which are around him. So I don't think that getting in, you know, the kind of old bones of the labour right into the shadow cabinet is going to make much of a difference. The problem is about the Labour Party is that often they're so concerned with shoring up their own jobs within the party that they're not that concerned with galvanising a movement that could win an election. And I think that it's going to be that same old story. But yeah, reshuffle on the cards have been predicting read my newsletter, Michael. Most of the time, I definitely read it last Friday, it was really good about the teacher showing the students the image of Mohammed or the portrayal of Mohammed. Do read Ash's Cortado, even if it does seem like there maybe were a couple, I missed this week and I am very much ashamed that's happened and I've been found out live on YouTube. And we've got 2,200 of you watching, only 600 of you have hit the like button. So do do that. Hit the like button. It helps us in the algorithm. It means more people watch the show. Now it's common to hear people describe themselves or be described as Black British, but can you be Black and English? That was a discussion prompted by Labour MP David Lammy on LBC today and he had an interesting and challenging conversation with one caller. Let's take a look. You keep saying that you are African-Caribbean, which is fine, but how can you be African-Caribbean and English? I couldn't be African. I'm English, but I certainly could not call myself African-Caribbean. You could be Irish though. You could have Irish. No, I'm not Irish. Yeah, but you could be. You could be. No, not because I have looked my name right the way back to Middle Ages, my maiden name, and I'm Anglo-Saxon. Great. But you will never be English. You are African-Caribbean. But why would I never be English? Because you're African-Caribbean. Now the caller there is saying that it's impossible for David Lammy to be English, because essentially because he's Black. That also includes his children. She's saying even though Lammy was born in England, even though his children were born in England, they can never be English. That's a position she's putting forward and not in a very sensitive way. She's saying you can never be English because you're African-Caribbean. Let's see how David Lammy responds. Britain 400 years ago started going out into the world. It colonized and conquered a lot of the world. A lot of the world has ended up coming back to the mother country. My parents were part of that generation who came from the Caribbean. When I took a DNA test, I actually had Scottish in me, probably be caught as a result of that. Someone somewhere frankly got their leg over with one of my ancestors. I've got Scottish blood running through me. I said that gently, but it could have been horrendous. Let's be clear about that. Here I am, having grown up in this country, have been born of this country. Actually, the truth is it's a myth that there's one English ethnicity. There's not because England has always been a country in which Huguenots, Danes, all sorts of people have passed through. When you say you are English, I'm not saying that that doesn't mean something to you and matter hugely because there are probably, as you put it, years and years, hundreds of years of experience of that, but it is to say that for me, the fact that I was born here and the fact that my sensibilities are English mean that I want to claim that heritage as well. That was such a good argument. It was so well put. It was also really respectful of the person who was calling. It hadn't been particularly respectful towards him. He's saying, look, if English heritage to you means that you have had members of your family living on this particular island for years and decades or whatever, that's fine. That's your English identity, but there are plenty of English identities which don't involve that. Actually, that has always been the case. He gives the example there of the empire and he's saying that, look, it is the case that people have been English in various different places and in various different contexts. I can be English even if the backstory is slightly different to yours. I thought it was really impressive and the way he put that. Let's take a look to see if the caller is convinced. Now, I'm very comfortable saying I'm British, Black British. Of course I am and I'm very, very proud. No one could say I wasn't because I talk about it all the time about my Caribbean roots and I know the Caribbean very well, but it's to say that I'm English. Sorry, what? You're British, but you're not English. Well, that's the point I think you're making and I'm disagreeing with that. Tell me, what do you think? If I was born in the Caribbean as a white person, I certainly wouldn't call myself a Caribbean. Have you ever been to the Caribbean, Jean? I haven't. No, I haven't before. Then you probably don't realise that in countries like Barbados, there are significant white Caribbean populations who have been there for hundreds of years and they are significantly more Caribbean than I am. That was such a good argument and such a good point. I think it doesn't get said that often because what you often hear from English nationalists is that, look, we're not racist, we just think that we should have a country which is white and they can have a country which is Black. Everyone else gets to have an ethnically homogenous country. Why can't we have an ethnically homogenous country? What it completely ignores is that actually there are loads and loads and loads of countries which are way more ethnically diverse than Britain. This assumption, Britain is this really multicultural place and everyone else gets to have ethnic homogeneity. Obviously, I don't think ethnic homogeneity is a good thing, by the way, but arguing on their own terms, much of the Caribbean, Brazil, the US, all way, way more diverse in terms of heritage and race than England is. I think that was so well put and clearly the caller just hadn't really thought of that. She'd assumed that when she's talking about the Caribbean, everyone is what she thinks of as a Caribbean person, which is someone with the same skin tone as David Lambie. Actually, he tells her that's complete nonsense. You've really got, you know, the wrong end of the stick there. Now, let's keep watching because you're probably not going to be surprised, but she does get really racist. And again, you're not going to be surprised because David Lambie deals with it really well. Well, all I'm saying is the whole world is polluting everybody the way it's going. What's that phrase polluting? It is. Why is it polluting, Jean? Because you are what you are. You are where you are supported. But hang on, Jean. Jean, Jean, I don't. You're an inheritance. Jean, Jean, Jean, I can tell that you are more senior than I am in age. So I want to be polite. No, don't do that. In this conversation. Well, that's how I was brought up, that you're polite to seniors, Jean. But what I'm saying is the word pollution, where's that word pollution come from? It's a very negative way to describe the fact that people meet one another, they fall in love, they have kids, they move borders sometimes through war, sometimes through economic reasons, and they become what they become when they are of that country. And just as you can be in America and you can be African-American, or you can be Italian-American, or you can be Irish-American, how is it that here in England, you can only claim that Englishness effectively, Jean, if you were white? No, really, really well put again. I want to bring in Ash here because, I mean, as well as, you know, I was just looking at you and saying, that was a very well done argument by David Lambie there, it seems quite a racist caller. What do you make of the broader issue there? Because what David Lambie is doing there, which is to say, no, Englishness can be an inclusive identity. It doesn't have to be tied to whiteness. To some degree cuts against what some progressives say, because I often hear people on the left say, look, no, Britishness is an inclusive identity. That's why we're more comfortable with it than Englishness. And Englishness, they say, no, Englishness is quite white, and that's why we're not comfortable with it. I mean, what strategy do you think is right to say that, yes, Englishness is racist, so we should reject it, or do what David Lambie is doing, which is fight for an inclusive Englishness? Well, okay, first, I'm going to quote somebody surprising. I'm going to quote Enoch Powell, who I actually think was right on this thing, which is the life of nations is lived largely in the imagination. So rather than trying to find something fixed and unmoving and true, the question we always have to ask ourselves is how is the nation being symbolized, imagined, constituted, and thought of? And that's something which, of course, has got latitude as well as constraints. And I don't think that politics has dealt with that hybridity very well. And when I want to find interesting answers to this question of Englishness, Britishness, people of color, and diaspora, I don't turn to politicians. I turn to artists, and I come back again and again to one of my favorite emcees, A.J. Tracy. Are you an A.J. Tracy fan, Michael? If I think if I sort of lie and say I am, you're going to quiz me and I'm going to embarrass myself. So I'm going to say probably I would be if I was more, if I find you more than I could. You've embarrassed me now anyway. Finish your point, please. Well, one of my favorite songs by A.J. Tracy is called Force Nine. And I really recommend, even if Grime is not your thing, listen to the song Force Nine. Because there's this verse, which is essentially like a Stuart Hall verse, right? It starts with a play for an England squad, and I'm with an England squad, goes on and on and on. And then it's like in Trinidad fam, I'm the English Bob White Air once in an English top. And it's about not saying I'm English, I'm white. And it's also not saying I identify with a very narrow definition of Englishness. It's through the lens of a English art form, i.e. Grime, which has come from diaspora cultures and also has its origins in jungle MCing. Through that combined with the diversity within sport and sportswear culture defining in Englishness, which is also outward looking hybrid, Trinidadian, Black, all of these things. And so rather than trying to close down, I think these questions and produce these exclusionary categories, what he does within this verse is sit right within them and celebrate them. And so I think that this is what I mean by there's a certain richness and peace with indeterminacy that art can produce when it comes to addressing some of these questions about Englishness versus Britishness. And when we're coming back to this question of, you know, the lives of nations being lived largely within the imagination, well, these are the things which I think create some of the imaginative space. Now just to sort of talk a bit about national identity, ethnic identity and racial identity, one of the things which I think Stuart Hall, again, one of my favorite theorists on this, so correctly identified is that there is an assumed racial content within how we conceive of as Britishness. And Britishness itself is sort of seen as merely the extension of Englishness. And that's the reason why you do have nationalist movements in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and in Wales saying, well, we don't want any part of Britain at all, because that is just English domination. And there is also a sense that England has never really engaged with its own identity outside of their history of domination and expansion and projection across borders, starting with its own internal colonies. So I think that's why these questions become so fraught, especially when you add race to the mix. For me personally, there's no other culture which could have produced someone as obnoxious as me other than England, right? It's also something which I find so funny, which is when people say, oh, Ash Sarko, you hate Britain. You know, I did two useless degrees. I did two English literature degrees, and it's because I love the English language because I love English literary history. And I also love formally colonised, and indeed at the time, colonised subjects who took that English language to articulate resistance to the British Empire. I love that, except I don't feel the need to essentially litigate or argue the extent of my Englishness with idiot racists because precisely they're idiot racists. What I would rather do is sit within that indeterminacy in a way that AJ Tracy does, in a way which is just so dynamic and so fun and experience it. I don't have to argue it with tosses. I mean, in a way, I'm quite in favour of arguing with tosses. I saw, you know, one of the big social media responses to that was it was irresponsible for LBC to allow that person on why did David Lammy, you know, bother with the argument instead of cutting her off? And I think my position there is, look, even though, you know, I don't think anyone should be forced to subject themselves to that kind of conversation, of course, of course you have every right to say, I'm not having this conversation. But if someone like David Lammy does want to have that argument publicly, I think, you know, all power to him because the caller there wasn't actually a marginal person. I think she was probably expressing quite a reaction review, which many people in the country share. And by having that very persuasive, very sensitive conversation between David Lammy and that caller, I think maybe he did persuade some people. And I think that probably, you know, is a good thing. So I can, you know, I can see why it's an uncomfortable position for someone to be put in. But the way he did that, I think probably was, you know, did did more good than harm. You're watching Tiske Sauer on Navarra Media. We go live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 p.m. We also put videos out every day. And so do subscribe to our channel. Now that conversation between David Lammy and that caller did, I mean, it was interesting because whilst she clearly had some reactionary views and the style of that conversation with David Lammy sort of came across to me at least as quite racist. But what she's saying is that she kind of in line with the census bizarrely. So that sort of the government categories when it comes to ethnic minorities and what you what you fill in when you fill in the census when it gets delivered through the door. I'll show you the categories now. This is from the government website. You can define yourself in Britain when that census comes through the door as white English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British, white Irish, white Gypsy or Irish traveller, and white any other background. You can then categorise yourself as mixed or multiple ethnic groups which includes white and black Caribbean, white and black African, white and Asian, or any other mixed or multiple ethnic background. Then we can go on to the other categories. You can define yourself in Asian or Asian British and then you've got Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, any other Asian background. And then you've got black African Caribbean or black British. Then you've got African Caribbean, any other black African or Caribbean background and then any other ethnic groups, Arab or any other ethnic groups. So the caller is actually on one level in line with what the government is saying because the government don't have a category which is to say your ethnicity is English and black. English is a subcategory of white in the census. And I've seen sort of David Lamy tweet about this where he's sort of complaining about this because he's saying I think it is a bit exclusionary that I can't define myself as white English and that English is a subcategory of white. I don't know, Ash, I mean, in a way, I'm sure you probably don't think these are the most important issues when it comes to racial identity in Britain. But it is interesting, isn't it? Whilst you can listen to that call on LBC which most people read as that's an incredibly reactionary person, actually what she's saying is kind of in line with the British government. Well, so this is where we've got to get into, again, race, nation and ethnicity and think about where these things start to blur into one another. So when we talk about ethnicity, we're often talking about place, we're talking about culture and we're talking about language. Now it is absolutely ridiculous to think that you can have a conversation about place, culture and language without getting into the social construction of race because in lots of ways race is invented as a way to explain culture as being hereditarily transmitted. Race doesn't always exist as an idea and really my hot take is that it gets invented roughly between 1492 and 1609, but that's another story. But it means that when you're trying to think about something like ethnicity which has these mutable, changeable characteristics like language and like culture, you end up finding it folding back on itself and when you've got an institution of the state which is having to categorize people and also relies on these categories in order to organize police and monitor people, well of course you're going to end up in these really sticky situations or if you ask anybody, practically works for the government, hi, I'm Asian, does that mean I'm not English? I was born here, it's the only language I speak, it's the football team that I swear at or go no, of course it can be, of course it can be but it's that liberal open-mindedness and tolerance is at odds with these categories because these aren't rational categories in the first place. You know what, we're not moving away from the discussion of ethnicity in categories because there was one more big news story today and I need your opinion on it which is that we're now getting rid of BAME. So today the Telegraph reported that the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities which was set up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests will advise the government to scrap the use of the term BAME. Now BAME stands for Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority. In that piece they explained, this was briefings I suppose from that commission because they haven't yet released their report. One concern of the commission is understood to be that the blanket term masks the much more complicated picture of different lived experiences of individual ethnic groups. Another is that companies increasing the number of BAME staff they hire then feel there is no need to tackle other systemic racial problems inadvertently curbing progress. And later in the piece they write, the report is expected to argue that using the term alone can hide major differences in outcomes between ethnic groups as well as people within the same ethnic group. It will argue for a more multifaceted approach which if adopted would put greater focus on tracking the outcomes of individual ethnic groups. In 2019, figures from the Department of Education's National Pupil Database showed that Chinese students were two years ahead of their white British peers by the time they finished their GCSEs while black Caribbean students lagged behind. Now Ash, this is something actually I've heard sort of people complain about the BAME sort of label from the left often especially because people think it sort of masks anti-black racism because people can I mean here it's saying that actually sometimes people of East Asian origin are doing better in school and then the BAME statistics can ultimately be misleading and hide the extent of racism you know experienced by certain groups in certain contexts at the same time this is being put forward by you know an organisation which was really complained about at the time when it was created as basically being a distraction and then Tori's trying to rewrite what racism was in Britain. What do you make of this this recommendation that the government abandoned the term BAME? I've been pronouncing it BAME all this time like LAME Wouldn't then it need a little dash? Yeah ethnicity you know just to sort of make it a little bit more a little bit more fancy. I mean so look I think that BAME has been used by scoundrels to conceal inequalities so for instance when you have organisations and universities talking about how good their BAME representation is often what they're concealing is the exclusion and marginalisation of particular groups within that framework and this is because race does not exist separately from class it does not exist separately from immigration status it doesn't exist separately from geographical disparities it's tightly bound up with all these things so one for instance this is how you get into model minority myths you have certain ethnicities who are not disadvantaged in the same way as other ethnicities being used as a kind of well look we're so diverse really good examples of this would be within the South Asian community itself the experience of class within the Indian community is distinctly different from the experience of class within Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and that's something which then plays out in terms of educational attainment wealth treatment by police the criminal justice system and all of that that's even within you know the South Asian category and that's before you get into the specifics for instance of anti-blackness so yes the framework of BAME has been used as a cover to conceal certain disparities but where I disagree with some of the more critical voices on the left is that it never actually stops the data from being gathered so while BAME is a sort of first step way of framing and organizing data so you can compare the performance and experience of racialized people against white peoples there was much more sophisticated data collection going on under that surface anyway and that's how we know about the specific experiences of not just African and Caribbean people but African people compared to Caribbean people and the differences within say the South Asian people so that data was always being collected what worries me about this perhaps is that you've got a government which is responsive to the least radical bits of identity politics so when you've got a section of identity politics which is all about recognition it's all about going I want to feel acknowledged and seen as part of my individual identity rather than the collective bracket it's actually fairly easy for a very reactionary hard right nationalist government to go while we respond to you because also part of that game is divide and rule and playing groups off against one another and that's also the kind of role that we've seen in terms of Pretty Patel who on the one hand is very proud of her heritage very very proud of her heritage she's somebody who will be pictured quite happily in Asari she is somebody who is quite close to a lot of her cultural roots but at the same time plays this structural role in disadvantageing particularly working class and less well off ethnic minorities and so that's what I mean to be wary of that recognition and it's again also just to think about the history of the term BAME is something which emerged out of the state trying to recognize mitigate and undermine the anti-racist movement at the time so at that time you had the bracket of political blackness which was an organizing tool it wasn't so much an identity tool but an organizing tool used in a way which I think is analogous with the way people of color was developed in the United States roughly the same time you've got these kind of umbrellas going on and it was a way of trying to think about the shared experiences of racism the impact of imperialism and shared experiences of colonization of course within it there was a lot of problems a lot of problems in terms of a lack of recognition of anti-blackness within non-black ethnic groups and so on and so forth but it was an umbrella term which could galvanize and put together a movement and the state response to that was to come up with a bracket of black and Asian minority ethnic so again you've got the way in which the state recognizes certain things and changes to have this more individuated recognition of racism in order to undermine and undercut anti-racist collective struggles It's super interesting it's going to be super interesting to see when the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities comes out what's the sort of broader argument that this government have put forward Ash Sarkar it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you this Monday evening thank you for your comments and your super chats if you are a regular donor thank you so much you make this whole thing possible please if you are not already please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month I'll be back on Wednesday at 7 p.m. for now you've been watching Tiskey Sauer on Navaramedia good night