 Keir Starmer says we're in a new era of Tory sleaze, but will the growing allegations and revelations about the close relationship between ministers, civil servants and big business stick to the otherwise Teflon Prime Minister? That's our main story today and I'll be posing that question to Dalia Gabriel. How are you doing? Hi Michael, I'm doing good. I had my first coffee like that wasn't in my house for ages a couple of days ago so I feel like a new woman. I'm able to pump myself with caffeine outside now. Have you still got that glow from Monday's coffee or have you been having more coffee since Monday? I accidentally had two large cappuccinos today so I'm probably going to need to be like physically knocked out tonight if I'm going to like threshold as I'm very sensitive to caffeine so I might I'm not on speed basically the way I behave in this show today. It means we have you on your toes for the show I like that. Yeah absolutely heart palpitating. I'm also going to be posing that question to Adam Ramsey editor at Open Democracy and I know that Adam has been just swimming in in the Scottish Sea so you're probably refreshed in probably a healthier way than having two large cappuccinos is that correct? Well it's true although actually while I'm not on speed right now I was recently prescribed what is effectively speed for DHD which is amazing so I recommend it to everyone. Ritalin? No it's the other one, Methylphenidate. Interesting. Right I'm keeping Adam for two stories today because as well as running the website which has been most consistent in calling out Tory corruption that's Open Democracy. Adam recently wrote a brilliant piece on the anti-traveller prejudice of Douglas Ross Scotland's Tory leader. Now those revelations in Adam's article were raised at the leader's debate last night so Douglas Ross had those allegations leveled at him directly and we're going to be covering that whole controversy as our second story. Also on tonight how Liz Kendall's defensive care workers ended up insulting people who work in supermarkets completely unnecessary and a brewing row within Labour over sex work. I'll be speaking to Lydia Caradona from the campaign group D-Crim now definitely worth the wait for that one. Now before we get going if you're new to our show we do this three times a week and if you want to watch more hit subscribe. The Greensill scandal is the most damaging cronyism story to have hit Boris Johnson's government and it seems as if almost every day new details emerge of the cozy relationship enjoyed between Tory ministers, civil servants and big business. Now on previous Tiskey Sowers we've gone over the extraordinary access the disgraced bank Alex Greensill was given within David Cameron's government and we've gone over how Cameron would go on to work for Greensill and lobby on his behalf. Now since then since Monday we've learned that in 2015 the head of procurement for the civil service under David Cameron that was Bill Crawvers also took on a job at Greensill and what's particularly extraordinary about this instance is he did so while he was still working for the government so he was head of procurement, head of the you know the department which buys services from companies while he was working for a company selling services to the government completely unbelievable. Now the mounting extraordinary revelations that we've received over the past days and weeks led to this brouhaha in the House of Commons this afternoon. Mr Speaker I know the Prime Minister is launching an inquiry that inquiry isn't even looking at the lobbying rules I'm not sure it's looking at very much at all because every day there's further evidence of the sleaze that's now at the heart of this conservative government. Let's just look shake your heads let's just look at the latest scandal a wealthy businessman Lex Greensill was hired as a senior advisor to David Cameron when he was Prime Minister we've all seen the business card after he left office Cameron became a paid lobbyist for Lex Greensill next thing we know Cameron arranged access for Greensill with cabinet ministers ministers and senior officials and he lobbied for taxpayers money on behalf of Greensill capital we also know the Chancellor pushed officials we know the health secretary met Cameron and Greensill we know that senior officials met Greensill capital regularly and now even more unbelievably we know the government's former head of procurement no less became a Greensill advisor while he was still a civil servant does the Prime Minister accept there's a revolving door indeed an open door between his conservative government and paid lobbyists Mr Speaker this is a government and a party that has been consistently tough on lobbying and indeed we introduced legislation saying that there should be no taxpayer funded lobbying that quangos should not be used to get involved with lobbying we put in a register for lobbyists and those one party Mr Speaker has actually voted to repeal the 2014 lobbying act and that was the Labour party in their historic 2019 election manifesto which he has yet to repudiate Mr Speaker they did so because they thought it was unfair and was restricting people's ability to make representations to politicians I think that's absurd will he now say that it's absurd to repeal the 2014 lobbying act Mr Speaker he talks of the lobbying act who was it who introduced that legislation David Cameron who was it who voted for the legislation half the conservative front bench we said it wouldn't be tough enough and where did that legislation lead two years later David Cameron camping out in a Saudi desert with Lex Greenfield having a cup of tea I rest my case in relation to that legislation so it's Starmer I think very effectively actually rolling out all of the key allegations against the government when it comes to this particular scandal Boris Johnson in response says aha well if you're so opposed to to lobbying why did you vote against the lobbying bill the lobbying act now like Starmer wasn't in parliament at that time but the Labour party did now the reason Labour did vote against that is because as Starmer suggests it didn't do much to stop corruption and cronyism that's why it seems that none of what has happened so far was illegal even though it was outrageous and more importantly the reason Labour opposed that lobbying act was because what it did more than clamp down on big business clamp down on big money having an influence in politics it was trying to stop NGOs and trade unions influencing politics so when Labour opposed that lobbying bill they were joined by action for blind people action for children the british heart foundation the campaign to protect rural England the countryside alliance guide dogs islamic relief uk hope not hate the national federation of women's institutes the royal british legion the rspb and the salvation army amongst others now that is a grouping which represents neither the interests of big capital nor the subsection of the hard left so i think that argument from Boris Johnson does look a little bit desperate now as well as using p.m. queues to challenge Boris Johnson on sleeves starmer also took the opportunity to implore mps to vote with the Labour party this afternoon in order to set up a parliamentary inquiry into the green cell affair the prime minister should be voting with us not blocking a proper inquiry the green cell scandal is just the tip of the iceberg dodgy contracts privileged access jobs for their mates this is the return of Tory sleaze mr speaker it's now so ingrained in this conservative government we don't need another conservative party appointee marking their own homework actually mr speaker the more i listen to the prime minister more i think that ted hastings and ac 12 are needed to get to the bottom of this one mr speaker we know the prime minister will not act against sleaze but this house can so can i urge all members of this house to come together this afternoon to back Labour's motion and start to clean up the sleaze and cronyism that's at the heart of this conservative government prime minister so the joke was kind of cringe but the point was was legitimate Labour today were encouraging the House of Commons to vote to have a select committee set up to investigate lobbying and to investigate the green cell scandal they judge that will be more effective than the independent investigation which the government have set up they've appointed the person to chair that who also happens to be an advisor to the business department so it's not going to be very independent Labour were pushing for something that would have been effective i think it was voted down so 262 MPs voted to set up that select committee 357 voted against obviously the Tories did not want that level of scrutiny there was a bit of a silver lining today though because the treasury committee have announced their own inquiry into green cell so we could still see David Cameron and others hauled in for questioning now the hope from Boris Johnson is that this is going to um slide off his back he probably has some reason to think this when it came to the scandals with PPE when it came to giving out huge contracts to friends of cabinet ministers that doesn't seem to have done that much damage and Adam I want to bring you in on this because I know that your website has been publishing lots of these revelations when it comes to cronyism on the part of government and whilst those articles have gone far and they've been very effective Boris Johnson doesn't seem particularly scared by them let's say do you think this one could be different do you think this issue this green cell issue could stick in a way that the pandemic procurement stories haven't I think the way I put it is to think about the broad narratives that these you know going to the next election what people will remember they won't remember the details of each individual scandal they'll remember overall sense and the sense that Boris Johnson wants people to kind of feel is that he's from the ruling class who ought to be in charge and ought to govern us and that is entirely fine that he's doling out contracts to other people from the ruling class because that's that's how the country should be run and that's very much in model I think we see particularly hungry a bit to rule ban you know it's totally consistent that politicians from that kind of you know further right model over the last decade have as well as the kind of more racist pandering essentially orders racism often the kind of nationalism they peddled have alongside that very you know clearly you know pushed this kind of contract out to their mates model and that's a way of securing loyalty in particular bits of the political class essentially it's way of managing you know those around them you can resource you you hand contracts to your mates because that's a good way of getting your mates to do stuff for you does the contrary you know eventually get a sense that this isn't a very good idea and it's not the way to run a country well the polls in Hungary interestingly have just shown for the first time that you know post pandemic 3ds is now behind the first time in a decade because the opposition parts of the united but I think that that's also because the context of the pandemic where politics is not kind of no longer just a kind of soap opera going on in some building over there that's quite kind of boring often it's about our lives it's very real it's about death you know people have experienced this in a very different way from a huge number of political issues that you know we watched going on in the telly's and so I do feel like the narrative through the pandemic that you know the government has really mismanaged it and run it you know been ultimately corrupt has held pretty well and I think that we should you know hope that there's some power there sorry my phone's ringing you know we should hope that that sticks but of course at the same time we're seeing the opposite narratives being pushed very hard you know the the big story the media is all covering is the death of prince Philip because that's a way of peddling that kind of nationalist myth that the ruling classes who really should be governing us when I think of scandals that really land either they have to be very simple or you have to have the press willing to go hard on them consistently over and over and over again so for example labor anti-semitism it was that the press went on that over and over again that made that people in the back of their minds they didn't really know what mural Jeremy Corbyn had liked or which MP had complained about which MP they just heard this said so often that it was sort of they absorbed it then I think Tory Slees in the 1990s was potentially similar so either you'd need the press to go hard on this or it would need to be simple enough for people to understand so for that I'm thinking of Dominic Cummings you know he broke the rules everyone knew what the rules were it was an outrage to everyone and I'm also I'm not saying this in a patronizing way because I find this controversy very difficult to understand and I comment on politics for a living so I'm not saying that people struggle to understand this because it's too complicated for the plebs no it's just quite a complicated story um Dahlia do you think this could fall into either of those categories do you think there's any chance that the media will go so hard on this that the Slees label sticks to the conservatives or do you think that you know labor potentially can start to pose this in a language which people do understand one of the key issues here is that it is becoming a or it's being reported as a problem of individual corruption right um and not as the de facto functioning of our state of the government and that is not limited just to this particular government but is historically especially in recent history is the kind of de facto position um and you know when you look at at Kistarmer in particular and and this sort of uh what what we saw at prime minister's questions I mean he looked confident but there's sort of such a lack of strength in the labor party's opposition such a lack of vision of alternative society and a real sense that this is a man who is going to fight for an alternative society something that is radically different not just from what we're seeing now but from what has been politics as usual for several decades um that it just kind of comes off a little bit as a petty political dispute the one thing that might push it beyond that is if it feels like the media um catches on to it as well and sort of parrots it as you said um but you know I think that the problem is that you know there is no reason amongst the public to believe that Kistarmer has the metal or that the labor party has the metal to overturn something that has been business as usual for so long especially because this revolving door issue is something that also exists very much within the labor party um former and former MP Angela Smith uh labor MP she was advocate advocating for the privatization of water while she was in office something that a labor MP should frankly lose the whip for doing um and she then went straight into an executive role in the private water industry um not to mention that you know the era of labor party politics that Kistarmer very much hails you know is trying to kind of hark back to the Blair years was riddled with stories of you know lobbying scandals that came straight from the top you know they what didn't come from ex-prime ministers they came from you know Tony Blair while he was in office intervening to exempt formula one from the ban on tobacco advertising shortly after he had a meeting with Bernie Eccleston and Bernie Eccleston donated a million pounds to the party um not to mention that you know the government and so you know so given the fabric that for given that the fabric of the two parties at the moment seems so similar seem to be made from the same material I think that these a lot of these attacks don't feel sincere they look like politicking and I think the public don't find that particularly compelling um not to mention that there have been several other scandals in this government um which we might get on to a bit later uh lobbying scandals and scandals where uh the government has sort of handed contracts over to incompetent uh companies that are simply their mates um and that you know there have been several of these scandals because this kind of proximity between big business and capital and government is a part of the DNA of the British state um and yet so in order to to to really profit off of this the Labour Party have to not only show that they're going to be a different form of of government going to demonstrate a different form of governance to this particular party or to this particular government but that they have the metal to fundamentally overturn the way that the British state has been functioning for several decades and Keir Starmer doesn't really look like that's what he is going to do or that's what he plans on doing. So you don't have much faith that Keir Starmer is going to make this land um I have a very unscientific poll um which backs up your theory and we asked the followers of our YouTube account today a question um we asked them whether they thought that Keir Starmer could make these these allegations do significant damage to the Tory party's image um only 23% of you said it would and 77% said it wouldn't. Now 1,800 people voted as I say incredibly unscientific poll I'm not pretending that was a representative sample. Adam I want to know from you how much you think this does intersect with party politics as Dali has said Tony Blair that government had you know also a lot of cronyism allegations when it came to Formula One for example Peter Mandelson who now it seems is going to be brought into Keir Starmer's team or at least informally advise him was completely you know neck deep in this in this kind of thing. Do you think there is an argument the Tories are more corrupt than the Labour Party or is this just the whole um I suppose swamp to use Trumpian terms and obviously in this case as well it's it's the civil service who are incredibly implicated just as much as party politicians? I think there's two things I mean the first thing and Dali is entirely right is that you know this is what the British state is for um you know the the main thing that Britain does economically for the world is provide tax havens through which oligarchs spend hundreds of people's money you know the the Cayman islands of British overseas territory is Britain's biggest economic impact on the world much more so than manufacturing and our factories and so you know you can't really get to groups with the concept of corruption in Britain without understanding that our whole economy you know the the city of London the housing bubble in the city of London is inflated you know and this is you know the House of Commons Select Committee on Crime and Justice has said this is inflated by the money of cash laundered through it by oligarchs of the world stealing it from their people and so you know we can't really talk about corruption in the British state without understanding that corruption is the functional and the heart of the British state it's the first thing I'd say in terms of party politics I think there is a big risk that the Labour Party often makes and this is really the strategic mistake that Ed Miliband made to some extent I think Corbyn made it and we're seeing it particularly with Kirstom is that they think that the alternative to a conservative government is a Labour government when historically normally in the British state the alternative to one conservative government is a different conservative government and what we're really seeing in a sense here is a battle within the right-wing press so the allegations you talk through they're very good journalism that the Rupert Murdoch allowed his journalists at the Times to do because he doesn't like Boris Thompson very much the Telegraph on the other hand does like Boris Johnson he's their man and a lot of the tabloids are kind of okay with him at the moment and if Boris Johnson is replaced because of these scandals the most likely person to replace him isn't Kirstom it's another Tory politician from another one of those internal factions of the Tory party and I think that Labour often misunderstands that they can't wait in the wings to be the opposition and step into power the person waiting in the wings is another Tory they need to push themselves in there somewhere and Stelma certainly isn't succeeding in doing that at the moment. It's about providing alternative as well as taking down the the current incumbent. Well yeah and I think yeah and I think that's right that the you know you talk to people around the country which is a lot of my job to do and there's a very deep understanding that the political system is broken and until Labour you know the reason the SNP is the most popular party where I am in Scotland is that they have a simple solution to that question the British state's broken so vote for us and you'll get independence and that's a very very popular prospect even people beyond you don't tell Palsons they'll vote yes basically understand that message and don't think the SNP are part of that system whereas Labour doesn't have an answer to that fundamental question and if people don't trust politics then why do they believe anything of promising them you know you say people we're going to give you all these you know good things that Labour was right to promise in 2019 and the first reaction people across the country I spoke you had as well we don't trust politicians we don't trust politics so why do we believe that you're going to give us those things and until you can really engage with that deep question of the fact that British state is fundamentally not built to work for ordinary working people to use the bear right phrase you're never going to you're never going to be able to reach them you're never going to be able to sell them on the things you're trying to offer them the you know basic kind of material goods you'll you'll offer it you know I mean that's a very good point I mean yeah attack them for corruption but it's going to be part of something much much bigger and we're yet to people think the whole system is corrupt because it is yeah and until you can talk to them about what you're going to do about the fact the whole system is corrupt they're not going to believe you on the small stuff I'm going to go to some comments Julie Batterson with a fiver super chat says have to say kudos to hairdressers and essential workers thanks I feel 20 years younger and we can guess what you've been doing over the past three days thank you for still having a fiver spare after your haircut and whatever other services you've been um I suppose acquiring or whatever and we have a couple actually of really important super chats from Monday left over so Julie gave a super chat on our last show which we missed she said goodbye Sue Edgar from Banbury and Bychester CLP and Oxfordshire Socialist Health Association thank you for your advocacy help and championing our cause to keep the NHS public RIP and Simon Garrett says has a similar message my life has never been affected by Prince Philip but it has by other people who have contributed far more people like Sue Edgar who fought for the NHS so yeah our our our thoughts go out to those who knew Sue Edgar who sounds like she made a real difference in in the world so RIP Sue Edgar let's go straight on to our next story Douglas Ross is the Tories leader in Scotland and he has a problem with travellers he's been very public about that prejudice take a look at this interview Ross did in 2017 as a newly elected MP in Westminster if you're prime minister for a day without any repercussions what would you do I'd like to see tougher enforcement against gypsy travellers that's right if Douglas Ross could do any one thing as prime minister with no consequences anything he wouldn't end hunger or poverty or give a boost to British businesses this is a Tory after all rather he would persecute gypsy travellers now thanks to Adam Ramsey at Open Democracy we've also learned that Ross's obsession with travellers goes back further than 2017 so in this article which was published this week we can get up the headline in a moment I think Adam reveals that when Douglas Ross was a counsellor in Moray North East Scotland he led a campaign to block the development of a legal traveller site now this was this happened in 2010 a traveller and had brought a plot of land to develop into a site and complained that Ross would regularly appear at the bottom of their drive taking pictures Douglas Ross also went around local farms encouraging people to sign a petition against the granting of planning permission for the site this is someone who's really obsessed with with stopping this person get planning permission for a traveller site we know there is a huge shortage of traveller sites across the UK now unfortunately for Douglas Ross local supporters of the traveller community in question gathered even more signatures in support of the development than Ross managed to collect in opposition this was an obvious example of democracy in action however Ross wasn't happy with this outcome and he complained I am disappointed and frustrated that we seem to have to bend over backwards for this ethnic minority this is the man who is currently leader of the Scottish Tories he wants to be first minister of Scotland and he said this kind of thing about ethnic minorities who are discriminated against now on May the 6th Douglas Ross will be standing to become first minister and there was a debate last night for those elections so all of the leaders of the Scottish parties stood up and argued why they should be elected on the 6th of May and in that debate the co-leader of the Scottish Greens Patrick Harvey challenged Ross on his record of prejudice I want to suggest to you that you've built your political career on divisive language and actions against one of Scotland's most marginalised communities the gypsy traveller community it's not just your claim when you're asked if you are prime minister for a day what your first action would be tougher enforcement against gypsy travellers you've campaigned against their right to legal traveller sites for a decade and when your attempts to stop one of them failed you complained about what you called having to bend over backwards for this ethnic minority is it your whole party that's prejudiced against gypsy travellers or just you I've apologised for the comments I made in the interview you have cited they were wrong it was the wrong answer to the question which was well put and I should have answered it far better there are so many other priorities that I could have answered with and I should have answered with and I apologise for that but on the later case that you cite in my 10 years as a local councillor and in my time as an msp and an mp I've always stood up for constituents who have come to me seeking action on issues that they are worried about and there was a big issue of gypsy travellers who don't have legal sites or have you tried to block those legal sites there was a big issue and we formally had a legal site it had to be closed by over a hundred officers from the former grampian police because of the legal activity which took place there so I will continue to act on behalf of constituents who come to me as a representative seeking help and to advocate your constituents are also gypsy travellers do you acknowledge that this is a long persecuted community in Scotland and what will you personally do to make amends for the way that you've broken trust with them and appear to support campaigns that are discriminatory against them well there is far more I can do and everyone can do you know I've had communication during this election on the cross party group that's established in Westminster and also the one that I am sure will be re-established in Hollywood so there's definitely more we can do for gypsy travellers here in Scotland and what are you personally going to do well I'm willing to open those discussions to accept the mistakes I've made in the past but also work with all communities here in Scotland going forward but I will never ever refuse to stand up to constituents who come to me seeking help seeking support but I think that's the right thing for an elected coalition so you heard that he apologised for saying that his number one priority were he to become prime minister would be to persecute gypsy travellers however there was no apology either for organising to try and stop the the the traveller site get legal approval nor apology for saying complaining that people were bending over backwards for an ethnic minority Adam Ramsey I suppose first of all well done for having the revelation in your article be brought up in the Scottish leaders debate to begin though could you could you talk about the broader article in that in that piece so you were saying that Ross's own habit of targeting gypsy travellers taps into a deeper history and and deeper presence of racism against travellers in Scotland so very briefly can you summarize your your argument yeah sure I mean the first thing people need to understand is that there are a number of distinct different gypsy and traveller groups in Scotland I think a lot of people aren't aware that like Ireland Scotland has the Highlands in particular have an Indigenous traveller group which is um you know it often interacts with but is distinct ethnically and historically from the Gypsy Roma um division who arrived around 1500 in Scotland so for at least a thousand years there's been a nomadic tradition nomadic group in Scotland with their own language their own culture etc so that's what we're really talking about Murray is up in the Highlands so when we're talking about Douglas Ross we're talking primarily about Highland travellers um an ethnic group which are very rarely talked about in British politics and um there's a very long history so from you know the 1570s it was illegal to kill Gypsies as in Roma Gypsies um from the uh from uh 1609 James the 6th um passed a law which um again reinforced he could kill Gypsies and also banned any kind of you know support for traveller communities and that history goes on and on and we could talk about that in in detail but in the last one of the things I you know discovered when I started interviewing elders in the traveller community over the last couple of months which I had no idea about I grew up in rural Perthshire where there's you know a lot of travel there were a lot of travellers as a kid that knew this history I thought what I didn't understand is that from about the 1890s there was a long phenomenon of essentially taking children off travel of families you know kidnapping them as the state and then deporting them to colonies in order to essentially try and ban the nomadic lifestyle and that was fairly explicit the policy which started by the way um in a report written by George Trevelyan who was the Secretary of State Scotland at the time whose father Charles Trevelyan is the man some of you might know notorious for um being behind a lot of what wrongly Irish famine and who said that famine was an effective solution to the population problem secreted um and you know it's essentially a quasi-genocidal policy and I spoke to people whose grandparents or had had siblings deported you know taken from their parents by the state and deported to Canada and to Australia um this is a story which has never really been told outside the traveller community is really shocking and this very active attempt to force travellers to settle and if they refuse to settle you know literally taking their children off them and that is the story that's still live today so you know one um elder in the travel of meeting Angus told me that she'd intervened when the police were trying to stop some travellers stopping on her site near her house um up by Montrose in Scotland um a few years ago and the police said to the parents of this family you know if you don't do what we tell you will arrest you and then what do you think will happen to your children in other words you know find well that then we'll take them off you um so this threat is still held over the traveller community and that's the context that Douglas Ross's behaviour arrives in you know that there is a very virulent racism against that particular community you know my primary school growing up this was the most familiar kind of racism you know it was very popular to bash you know traveller children um and um you know accuse others if they were seen as you know I won't I don't want to repeat the tropes but yeah yeah yeah yeah and and so and so when when Douglas Ross is pushing this idea this hatred of travellers it's true this is a very common form of racism among his electorate and when he says you know that I I don't back down from speaking up for my voters I'm sure he's right that a large percentage of people who support him do hold racist views against travellers in the area and that he is accentuating whipping up and um and representing those views um but it it's you know we can all see it for what it is and what's the status of party politics when it comes to attitudes or policies I suppose more importantly towards towards the traveller community I mean we've been talking recently in England about how both the Labour Party and the Tory Party are guilty of marginalising at least in their in their literature in the way they speak about travellers that community um from people I spoke to policy between the two parties does actually differ a reasonable amount what's the situation in in Scotland is what Douglas Ross is saying um particularly grotesque compared to the other party leaders and I suppose most importantly because they are going to win the next election what's the SMP's relationship to the traveller community in Scotland yeah I mean so the SMP have just allocated about 20 million pounds to invest in traveller sites and to support traveller culture um I think to go back a little bit into the geography and history of this you know we're talking about the north east of Scotland which is really where the SMP grew up um you know I've had an SMP MP in the position so I grew up in since 97 um you know back when there were only very few um you know the the area of Banff was um previously an SMP seat before sorry um Moray was previously an SMP seat um before Douglas Ross took it so this is kind of the SMP heartland and the class politics in the region is that basically working class people vote SMP on the whole and um landowners wealthier people tend to vote Tory as as they do across the UK and unsurprisingly it's fairly consistently the case that the people who particularly don't like travellers are landowners and the working class communities have traditionally had much better relationships often you know partly because travellers are working class and and they will work personally they sometimes vote themselves so there's very low turnout rates but also there'll be much more personal familiarity and so um you know the SMP has to its credit tended to not have much or have any time for any kind of racism um I wouldn't I don't want to praise them too much because there's a lot more that needs to be done you know the 20 years um that I talk about at the end of my article where um you know there's been a massive decline in in visible signs of travelling communities say when I was a child um you would see them round about and now you don't and obviously the SMP has been in charge for a large time for that time and that's you know they've allowed that process to take place but they have tried and they've done some things they need to do more but but certainly there is a very big party split and the parties were unanimous to some extent in condemning Douglas Ross for his comments and to be honest even you know Ruth Davidson the previous Scottish Tory leader wouldn't be caught saying this kind of thing um this is very much out with the bounds of traditional political rhetoric in Scotland you know that there's there is a lot of prejudice there but normally even the Tories have kept a cap on saying this kind of thing publicly and what we've got you can I ask you more generally about the the Scottish elections which are coming up I mean you've mentioned that Douglas Ross is quite a different candidate to um I've forgotten an aim oh my god so embarrassing what was the previous Ruth Davidson my apologies he is a very different candidate to Ruth Davidson he seems in a way you know he's very brash he seems to be not particularly popular in Scotland um are the Tories going to tank I mean the SMP look like they are going to I mean they're going to stomp home in this election so in a way it's a battle for second place who is going to be the main opposition to the SMP is it going to be the Conservatives or or the Labour Party do you see that as the real story at this at this election and is it still in play or are Labour you know already relegated to third place the real story that everyone's following is will the pro-independence parties either the SMP and Greens get a majority and of course because it's a proportional system it's not like Westminster where it's automatically the case that the governing party's very likely to have a majority you know the SMP got a majority once in 2011 in the last parliament between them the two parties had a majority um if you know there's a third parliament with majority of pro-independence MSPs who you know where is in 2016 remember the last Hollywood lecturers before the Brexit referendum so both parties had said if there's a leave vote them will be in favour but that's a more complex manifesto promise to where we are now which is both parties say if we get a majority we have a mandate for a referendum on independence so that's the real question everyone's asking and and you know the secondary question as you say is who will be the opposition party the biggest opposition party will it be Tories or Labour now you're right that Douglas Ross is a very different figure from Ruth Davidson Ruth Davidson was a sort of attempt to appeal to the kind of camprenite you know we're liberal Tories she was you know her seat is Edinburgh Central which is you know very kind of it's quite rich but it's sort of younger and she had to win over like former Lib Dem voters basically to get that seat um Douglas Ross has no pretense of that you know this is the Brexiting Tory party there's no you know liberals in Scotland who don't mind the Tories so much if they're Ruth Davidson are not voting for them now but of course there is you know that if you think about the percentages you know what they got was 24% last time that was seen as the great Tory successor Ruth Davidson 24% you know that's about as many people as you know think well are there 24% of people who support Brexit and oppose independence in Scotland well there might well be you know and and you think about those as the two defining issues and will those people go and vote Tory in this election possibly you know the Tories have carved out a niche which is about 25% of the country it's the kind of most right wing 25% of the country um Labour doesn't have an obvious niche you know who who is going to vote Labour all again in this election well you know if you are against Brexit but don't want to do anything about it um in favour of the union but you know not a Tory then then sure that you've got those parties to vote for but it's not the same obvious niche so I'd see it more that way you know who's the base for these different parties and people are going to vote for Tories you know because they basically support Tories and and Douglas Ross you know continues to be a Tory and very visibly so and so yeah will they get somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of a vote I would guess so what does that tell you about Scotland is that about a quarter of people are Tories which has always been the case really yeah no that makes a lot of sense if you're not going for a majority then being a bit brash and offensive to most people doesn't matter that much if it can solidify the niche that you have Adam Ramsey thank you so much for joining us this evening all incredibly insightful and well done on getting that article mentioned on the Scottish leaders debates it was great to see Douglas Ross challenged so strongly in that way Adam Ramsey do check out Adam's work on open democracy it's really worth your attention um darling I want to bring you in um on on on on that issue and sort of seeing I mean in a way obviously the fact that this guy is a party leader in in Scotland is depressing at the same time the fact that you're having this reactionary you know I mean I think we can call him racist candidate who has no chance of winning and also who was challenged quite robustly on televisions quite refreshing if you compare it to English politics I mean what do you make of that of that story and that challenge that was very publicly made to Douglas Ross yeah I mean once again uh kudos to Adam Ramsey for putting that on the map and I think it's a good thing that the left that you know anti-racist movements are beginning to really have this conversation and take action on this issue of anti-grt racism because we've kind of failed on this issue for a really long time even though the pervasiveness of anti-grt racism across the political spectrum as you guys mentioned um in the Labour Party in that is in England is very much part of the the politics especially on the local level um this is absolutely integral and part of the state's racial character um in particular you know in particular it's in and there's so many connections and consistencies between how anti-grt racism operates and how racism against other racialized communities operate you know this connection to um property you know this idea of property ownership of property itself being valued above the lives of racialized minorities um where you know detachment from property is seen as such a threat to capitalism um and that threat becomes racialized and articulated through racialized threats um you know that are constructed around the GRT community and you know the the charge of rootlessness the idea of rootlessness something that we've historically seen levels against Jews levels against migrants um which again threatens the idea of the nation state and that's why we see these particular racialized formations around these ideas of nomadic lifestyles um the idea of property as you know being a higher property ownership as being a higher form of citizenship is that not similar to what we see when you know black and brown people protest against something that is causing harm or or death in their community and the story becomes damage against property that might have happened in the protest and even the the the why do we bend over backwards to this ethnic minority again it rings so strong against this idea that we've seen particularly um in the wake of in the wake of Brexit but also happening a lot longer before that is this idea that you know the state is being overrun by racialized minorities and it needs to like display its might through violence and through force against these racialized minorities so there's incredibly important and pertinent connections between anti-GRT racism and racism experienced by other racialized communities and so we must fight these um things in solidarity with one another but it's also when we talk about the failure of the left and and the failure of parts of the anti-racist movement as well um there is something to be said I think about how when you look at sort of the the compromise between the state and the streets that happened through the kind of state multiculturalist doctrine in the 1990s where you know street-based anti-racist movements were kind of absorbed into this you know state multiculturalism where we became sort of siphoned into these little individual categories and told we don't need to organize on the streets anymore because you know we can just apply for different bodies of funding from the government and you know sit on committees and stuff so the GRT community was left out of that um they they they were shunned from even the most mealy-mouthed olive branch from from liberalism from the state during that era and now we're paying the price as we are seeing that this kind of anti-GRT racism is becoming the grounds upon which the state is sharpening its tools and sharpening its weapons and we can see this in the attack on GRT communities in the crime and policing bill we see it in the ramping up of this kind of um of anti-GRT racism seen as the sort of legitimate racism that can be deployed even from the Labour Party and and across the the you know the left is going to sort of sit by and let that happen and it is becoming such an integral part of the consolidation of a reactionary and racist politics across the party spectrum that is going to have impact on all of us and whether or not we are part of the GRT community so I think it's it's it's really important for us to really begin to gain literacy on the centrality of this form of racism to how the British state and also states across Europe define themselves and and extract their and consolidate their power and really factor this in to part of our struggle against against that and it's so it's really important and it's really important for journalism like Adam Ramsey's and also for campaigns and you know organizing by the GRT community to really put these issues on the map something quite rare has happened we've got a comment I disagree with it's from Sunil Basu with a fiver he says um you don't want to mention it was a green de-invara you're not very independent if you only see the god of first pass the post-labor victory I'm pretty sure I mentioned it was a green it was the co-leader of the green party I mentioned that in my introduction I'm sure I did and also I'm in favour of proportional representation I think we should have proportional representation across the UK so I reject that allegation I'm afraid you got us wrong there but you are right that credit to the green party for for tackling Douglas Ross on that it's probably not a surprise that it was the greens not the Labour Party who who made that very strong challenge before we go on to our next story do like the video now in the words of her local paper Labour MP Diana Johnson is on a crusade to make paying for sex a criminal offense to that end Diana Johnson is leading attempts to pass a sexual exploitation bill which would criminalize purchasing sex and make it illegal for websites to advertise sex she's also called for amendments to the police and crime bill which would have the same effect now Johnson justifying these moves claims it would have the effect of suppressing demand for sex work and therefore would undermine the profitability of trafficking and the moves which would bring Britain in line with the so-called Nordic model have the support of high profile MPs such as Dame Margaret Hodge Harriet Harman and Stella Creasy so a wide degree of high-profile support there on the Labour benches however this drive to the to criminalize purchasing sex has also provoked opposition including from sex workers themselves the organization Decrim now advocates to fully decriminalize the sex work industry and they've released an open letter to MPs arguing that the Nordic model far from limiting harm from trafficking would increase the risks faced by sex workers. Signatories of that letter include Amnesty International the GMB union LGBT plus Labour momentum and Labour MPs Nadia Whitton and Zara Sultana now to discuss the Nordic model and the issues raised by this route within Labour I'm joined by Lydia Caradona an organizer with Decrim now who organized that open letter thank you so much for joining the show this evening first I want to start by asking you why your why you why your organization also opposed to attempts to introduce the Nordic model in Britain which just to clarify for the audience is most importantly to criminalize buying sex to criminalize being a client of a sex worker and to criminalize advertising sex work why do you think that would be a big problem absolutely so the the big takeaway from the Nordic model is that people die so in just six months after it was introduced in France 10 sex workers have been murdered the way that the Nordic model works is it criminalizes clients which means that you need to protect clients from the police in order to still be able to see them and it's not like you can just stop seeing clients because of poverty which is why people are in the sex industry in the first place so in order to see clients you have to see them in more and more isolated places like woodlands you have to avoid taking things like legal names which sex workers currently use to screen clients and to pass on which clients are bad you have to protect them from all of that and also it any reduction in demand shifts the power back into the hands of the clients because sex workers still need to see clients to be able to eat and pay rent right so in France in Northern Ireland we've seen it become more and more difficult to demand things like condom usage and people are having to do services that they would not normally do just in order to make ends meet we also saw in both France and Northern Ireland there was absolutely no reduction in demand but there was a huge increase in violence against sex workers so this coupled with banning advertising platforms that sex workers used to stay independent and and not have to rely on things like pimps or managers is really a violent move against the sex industry sort of masquerading as rescue it's not a rescue at all I want to bring up a tweet from Diana Johnson so she responded particularly to momentum signing this open letter so momentum the left wing group in in the Labour Party she quote tweeted them and said why is momentum on the side of pimps traffickers and organised crime and not women they sexually exploit women and girls and make huge profits sexual exploitation is violence against women and we need to drive down demand hold sex buyers accountable and support women exiting the sex trade now how would you respond to that and her argument there is that this will make if we do the Nordic model it will make life harder for traffickers and people who exploit women it will make the industry less profitable how would you respond to to that tweet from from Diana Johnson I mean I have some choice words first of all are we not women why is it that that they seem to believe that you know we're being raped every day we don't understand how to consent if we're if we're such victims why do they speak to us so awfully why do they not trust us why do they not listen when we speak about our own experiences of violence and first of all like demand has not reduced in Northern Ireland there is absolutely no empirical evidence that it has reduced trafficking even in Sweden in Sweden the organisation for security incorporation in Europe saw absolutely no empirical evidence that trafficking could be reduced the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention saw no evidence that trafficking had been reduced like there is absolutely no evidence that it happens and the way that we deal with trafficking in any other sector has not been to criminalise entire sectors how are we going to have good labour rights at work if our workplaces are continually criminalised criminalised like as it stands I can't go to employment tribunal about my boss can I in what world especially in what world is the labour party which is claiming to stand for workers making it harder for us to organise taking the power away from workers and subjecting us to more and more police involvement when police are historically one of the most violent groups towards us in what world is that helping us so yeah I honestly Diana Johnson I think it's disgusting I think you should actually listen to us for once and I think the way that we are being dismissed as pimps when this is our lives our bodies our experiences that you're trying to criminalise is disgusting and misogynistic honestly I suppose the the response to some of what you'd say would be to potentially I suppose assume or believe that maybe there is a bit of a division within sex work between people who do have autonomy and have made this decision as a choice and then people who are being exploited who have been pressured into the industry by traffickers or pimps or whatever is that a figment of my imagination or is that something that actually exists and while what Diana Johnson is proposing would be of a of a real negative to someone like you for other people it might be beneficial is that is there anything to that it's far less of a clean divide so the way you have to look at it is that with choices come power right so I in my life have had very little choice about doing sex work and I have a pimp now so you know I would surely fall into this group that needs to be rescued whereas some of my friends who are entirely independent and independence which would be taken away by this law and would push them into the hands of pimps and traffickers they might be considered in the first group or this like mythical group of you know happy hookers and apparently happy hookers the only ones advocating for decriminalisation but actually it's this big continuum where and we slide in and out of poverty based on our circumstances we have more choices and less choices at certain points and it's really setting up this idea of this like mythical I guess pimp figure a figure which is often actually racialized especially when it comes to talking about trafficking it's setting up this enemy and we just need to tackle the enemy and then the whole sex industry is solved but that's not true what we need to tackle is poverty I know so many sex workers including myself who would not be doing sex work if we had easier ways to make ends meet that fit around childcare that fit around disability that fit around language barriers that fit around visas that have limited working hours on there's all of these other issues that labour is normally so good on that apparently go out of the window when there's a penis involved in what world in what world is the answer to any of this making it harder for us to work it's not like if you if there are issues in our sector which I will be the first to say there are I hate my job I've experienced so much violence then the answer has never been to take the power further away from the worker it's always been to give workers more power and as part of a labour movement we should know that there shouldn't need to be said and I suppose that moves us on to my next question which is you know what Diana Johnson and her supporters are pushing for is to further criminalize the sex industry and sex work at the moment it seems to me to is seems to be a very gray area and when it comes to sex work in this country you're presumably not only opposed to what Diana Johnson is proposing but you'd like to go further in the other direction right I mean your organisation is called Decrim now what would decriminalising sex work mean how would it be different to what is currently the status quo so currently you can buy and sell sex in the UK that is all fine but lots of things around it are criminalised and the things that have been criminalised tend to punish poor people so you can be arrested and fined for working on the street which most people don't do because they like the weather right they do it because there's no other option you are completely criminalised for working together for safety so even if it's just you and a friend working from the same flat that counts as a brothel because there's two of you you are both brothel keepers and pimping each other out so we have to work more and more isolated ways in order to avoid that and you're not allowed to have any help at all because of third party laws so this is all like terrible especially if you're in the industry because you're disabled or even if you share a bank account with a partner who is barely involved in your work that's been criminalised and all of the things that these laws are supposedly preventing are still happening I still work in a brothel I just have absolutely no rights all of this stuff has not disappeared criminalisation does not make things disappear like we've seen this throughout history criminalisation just pushes things further and further underground we're not saying that decriminalisation is going to solve all of the problems in the sex industry that's irrational what we're saying is if we decriminalise that puts us on the same footing as other workers to be able to unionise properly to be able to hold our employers to account to be able to access services without stigma and judgement decriminalisation is the way that we bring power back into the workers and we get to change the conditions that we're currently working in and and finally I mean I think one of the arguments from Diana Johnson and that strand of feminism really is to say that the fact that you can purchase sex in society has an effect on the status of all women and I don't find that argument particularly convincing on the surface but there is situation so for example in Amsterdam if you go through the the red light district there are whole streets where the windows are full of women sort of dancing naked and I can kind of see how maybe that does affect how people in society see women do you think that there is a bit of a balance to be struck and if that it were to be decriminalised we should have sort of maybe regulations so that it doesn't just become like any other sort of consumerist capitalist industry sexism does not exist because of the sex industry the sex industry exists because women have been economically disadvantaged because we've been sexualised throughout history because there has been a patriarchy because we've had very few employment options so you know if you found a law which I don't believe exists and you could bring the law in and it would get rid of the sex industry entirely you know their husband still wouldn't respect them the patriarchy would still be a thing people would still be cat called there would still be sexual violence so this idea that sex workers should be volunteered as collateral damage when we're already facing so much violence is really disgusting like I'm not volunteering myself and my co-workers in order to win some ideological battle about whether or not men should be able to pay for sex when actually all that's going to do is make our lives worse and be a symbolic victory at best the patriarchy is still going to be there Lidia Caradano thank you so much for for joining us this evening super interesting super insightful thank you um we have a comment on that interview Rajya D with a 999 super chat thank you very much this is awful if you want to reduce sex work then the way to do it is improve the material conditions of women demand for this industry will never go down um a comment which very much echoes everything that Lidia's been saying darling I want to bring you in on this and talk about when it comes to the division within feminism on this question it seems a bit you know another one of those issues a bit like trans rights where obviously the divide is not absolute but there does seem to be a bit of a difference when it comes to the age of people so it's probably not a coincidence that the people who were backing Diana Johnson on this are you know include Harriet Harman who I think is the the mother of the house so she is the oldest female MP in in the House of Commons and one of the signatories of the letter who is backing decriminalisation is the youngest MP which is Nadia Wittem is this another issue where generational divides really do matter and potentially um you know the dominant position within feminism could change quite quickly and quite dramatically I think it's less an issue about age and more an issue about power um the power to define who is the woman in women's rights a power that emerges from a scarcity mentality that thinks that there is only a certain number of resources that can be allocated to women and so we need to create very harsh boundaries around who the deserving woman is in order to conserve those resources and make sure that they go in the quote-unquote right hands um I think that you know that that tradition is very alive and well in in the Labour Party Labour the Labour Party has a problem with women and weirdly it comes mostly from women Labour MPs and it's that tradition of a particular kind of very reactionary ideology which I think masks itself as feminism which is centered around constructing an acceptable womanhood who is entitled to the gains of the feminist movement even though the gains of those feminist movements are built off the people that are not considered good women by a lot of these people and it's you know that acceptable womanhood is a highly professionalized middle-class white cisgendered womanhood and it defines itself through its opposition to and willingness to marginalize and oppress women who exist outside of that category so there's a connection there between the anti trans feminism, the anti sex work feminism, the white feminism it's all around creating these very harsh boundaries and these very sharp edges around the category of womanhood so we see women MPs you know who have built their backs off of feminist reputation endorsing extremely reactionary and harmful rhetoric and policy against racialized communities like Sarah Champion in the name of women's safety we see cis women MPs standing up to trans women in the name of women's safety which is an oxymoron you know like Rosie Duffield we see people like Jess Phillips who boast about bullying Diane Aber and other MPs like who are mentioned here who are pushing through legislation that is harmful to sex workers and therefore harmful to the migrant women the working class women the disabled women who predominantly make up the sex work industry for all the reasons that Lydia outlined and so you know I see those things as very connected and when I say that I think the issue is about power I think it's really interesting that a lot of the elders of you know black feminism you know Angela Davis people who are in the same generation of and the same generation as a lot of the Titans of sort of anti-trans anti-sex work feminism hold those politics and it's because they know what it's like to be on the other end of that the other side of that sharp category of womanhood and they know that we don't get anywhere by restricting and relying on the model of the good woman they know that that that is a category that has very sharp edges so I think it I think that the age thing is a bit of a it's a bit of a it's a bit of a kind of cop out I don't think this is an ideology that is just going to be sort of like grown we're just going to sort of grow out with I think it is really an issue about power and about feminism a feminism that doesn't have a class analysis that doesn't have a race analysis that doesn't have an understanding of how these things are connected that is you know reproducing a scarcity logic and a hoarding of resources within the movement and I think that decrim now have done a really good job of making this into a labor issue and not making it into a moralizing issue the question is not do you think someone should be able to buy sex that's irrelevant your feelings about that don't matter it is a question of workers rights and if you care about the actual safety and empowerment of women and of people who sell sex then you would listen to them when they tell you about what they need in order to stay safe and in order to exit the industry if that's what they want to do but I think that essentially what we have here is that attempt to create a feminist reputation off the backs of the women who actually are instrumental in in anything that we can claim as a feminist gain over the past several decades so so yeah I think that it's much more of an issue of power rather than generation or age we've got another great comment ricochet tweets on the hashtag tisky sour get lydia into parliament um I wholly agree um that would definitely you know liven up the the labor benches um although I mean I think if you've said any negative tweets about the labor part at this point it's going to be very hard to to become an mp in kids Thomas labor so it'll be a challenge we're going to go to our final story first of all um you know the score we do love your super chats what we appreciate the most um is our regular supporters you really do make this organization possible um if you are already donating the equivalent or one hour's wage a month thank you so much if not please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support carers in britain do one of the most important and difficult jobs in the country and they do it for appalling pay so it's only right that labor challenged the Tories vociferously on their abandonment of the sector however when Liz Kendall who is shadow minister for care attacked the government on pay for carers she also managed to piss off another group of key workers let's take a look despite repeated promises the truth is you'd be better off stacking shelves at morrisons than caring for older or disabled people and that is simply not good enough for our country so that was a debate on tuesday in the house of commons Liz Kendall i mean the the motivation of the intervention was good she's saying you don't pay carers enough but for some reason some arbitrary reason i'm not sure why she thought it was a good idea she made that point by essentially denigrating or seeming to denigrate at least the work of people who work in supermarket so she's saying oh how could it possibly be the case that we value care less than working in a supermarket now understandably this pissed off many people who work in supermarkets let's go to some responses on on twitter from people who who are supermarket workers who weren't particularly pleased with what can this Kendall said there first tweet as a shelf stacker myself i think the people that have been on the front lines through all this deserve a bit more respect than being someone to be scoffed at um very reasonable point there um this worker um from the very supermarket Liz Kendall mentioned of a supermarket chain Liz Kendall mentioned also i'm pretty pissed off this is vile and disrespectful Liz Kendall should hang her head in shame yours sincerely a morrisons worker now this statement was also predictably pounced upon by opposition politicians in this case much more opportunistically um than the tweets i've i've shown you previously so this was the Tory leader in the london assembly she says let me take this opportunity to say thank you to shelf stackers in supermarkets you are valued hugely by the majority of us i am sick to death of some constantly belittling certain jobs everyone who does an honest job is valuable to all of us in society darling i want to bring you in on this now it would have been pretty easy to challenge the low pay of carers without devaluing other low paid workers what do you think Liz Kendall was trying to do that i mean what an ignorant and just appalling comment to make especially now when you thought we would have learned our lesson on you know about work you know about what kinds of work are actually essential what kinds of work are very difficult and are very skilled and and that that you know that has actually rarely corresponded to how that work is valued in society but either socially or economically and you know it actually you know there is actually a connection between the devaluing of care work and the devaluing of you know shelf stacking and and supermarket work because it tends to be the work that makes our world a much more hospitable place that seems to be um like undervalued in our society and it's the work that makes our world less hospitable that is somehow much more valued um and rewarded in society um and i just what is the job of the labor party if not to fight that paradigm that some workers are not worthy of respect rather you know and not only to reinforce it but proudly reinforce it this wasn't like some kind of got you a moment this wasn't like twitter sleuths like digging up past comments this was something that a speech that Liz Kendall wrote or someone wrote for her she read out and then posted it to her own twitter page which is just such a sign of where the labor party or where at least parts of the labor party are now and it it represents a kind of really disgusting what is often called aspiration politics that has plagued the labor party it's also plagued you know liberal anti-racist movements quote unquote movements um and it's an approach that basically says that working class people or you know racially minoritized people should keep intact the hierarchies that run our world regardless of how illogical how damaging they are and fight for our claim to have a few seats at the top of this false hierarchy um it's like a framework of empowering yourself by keeping the rest of your class or your group down and so and the reason I make that connection is because this reminded me of you know when um liberals or people of color in upper class jobs like lament their experiences of racism through the lens of like oh i'm a CEO but i get mistaken for a cleaner like isn't that so terrible isn't that the sharp edge of racism rather than thinking you know why are we accepting the premise that being a cleaner is something that shouldn't be respected and valued and paid well um why are we accepting the premise that it is an insult to be to be mistaken for a cleaner because let me tell you a world without CEOs is probably going to be much nicer than a world without people who clean our streets our homes our buildings etc um but working class people people of color are encouraged to express their politics um through these means precisely because it is so reactionary and it does so much to destroy solidarity in particular to destroy class solidarity like think how much the liberal press loves the story about you know a professional being mistaken for the help quote and quote you know it's seen as the ultimate like in the ultimate evidence of racism even though or you know whatever even though that paradigm is itself part of the problem so when I was hearing this about Liz Kendall not only did I think oh my god like have you learned nothing over the past year but I also it kind of rang a bell with that sort of trope in a lot of liberal anti-racism that also really pisses me off and I thought god like this is just such an example of how liberalism has just cannibalized our movements of all of their radical potential but the good thing is that I definitely think the younger generation and the generations that are taking to the streets the generations that are becoming very disillusioned with this kind of politics um they're not just accepting that kind of representation aspirational um politics and so that's kind of where I pin my hope when I switch on Twitter and I see just this absolutely ghastly um self aggrandizing like disgusting form of politics that makes me so like bristle at the idea that she is in a party that is called the labor party and to be outflanked by Tory as well just embarrassing so embarrassing. Oliver Kant with a fiver um agrees with your sentiment he says the likes of toilet cleaners and shelf stackers have done more work for this country than any civil servant aristocrat or corpo not sure what that is corporation maybe have ever done um I think quite right I mean it's it's it really is bizarre for Liz Kendall and her team and Kirsten because we know he's quite authoritarian when it comes to what what front benchers tweet out thought that that was okay after a year where literally you know in march last year everyone was saying the heroes of this moment are people who work in supermarkets because while everyone else was self isolating they had to go out in the middle of the pandemic and make sure that we could all feed ourselves and you know the pandemic isn't even over and they're already using people who work in supermarkets as the example of people whose work is presumably valueless the fact she was pointing to are also a little bit more ambiguous than she suggested first of all you're watching Tiske Sam on Navarra media we go live every Monday Wednesday and Friday at 7 p.m if you haven't already do hit that subscribe button let's go to the facts of the matter um because as I say they aren't as clear cut as Liz come Liz Kendall um suggested and so I googled this after watching um that clip um I think she might have been referring to there was a blog from the Kings fund so they're the main um NGO or research organization when it comes to healthcare now they wrote a report in 2019 that was um comparing the pay of people in the care sector and people who worked in supermarkets and we can get up here the the comparisons they made so at this point in time they did judge that people who worked in care did get significantly worse worse pay than most people um in supermarkets so the Kings fund found the average pay for carers was 790 per hour appalling wage there um Island Iceland was the only supermarket chain that paid less than that seven pound 80 outside of London Tesco slightly higher which was eight pound outside of London and then it gets higher for for all chains inside London and up to 1050 when it comes to little and Aldi the average pay for working in those supermarkets and it's important to mention that the reason the Kings fund did that report wasn't to denigrate supermarket workers it was that there was a practical problem in the care sector which was that retaining staff is incredibly difficult because the conditions are awful and the pay is really low and so people weren't moving from being care workers to working in supermarkets I mean it's depressing but what matters in terms of retention of staff isn't so much is the pay any good but is but it is are there alternatives which pay better so this isn't how the left should be arguing but in terms of a practical problem that was within the care sector that comparison makes sense doesn't make sense in terms of putting moral value on anything but in terms of retention of workers you can see how that argument is a one that has some purpose at least however I said it's ambiguous because the BBC um this year painted a slightly different picture they used ONS data that's the Office for National Statistics to show the various pay levels for key workers um compared to whichever and compared to the median national wage and in this case um they show carers as earning slightly more than shop assistants I think we can get this this graph up now as you can see um the key workers who are paid the worst of pharmacy assistants then cleaners then teaching assistants then shop assistants and then care workers um so a slightly different story there but obviously when it comes to the politics of this and when it comes to what labour front benchers should be saying in parliament the point isn't whether cleaners get paid more than team teaching assistants or less than teaching assistants or whether care workers get paid more than shop assistants it's that all of these essential jobs people who are doing some of the most difficult jobs in society and some of the most necessary jobs in society are getting paid a pittance they're getting paid poverty wages you can make that point without pitting one group of workers against another group of workers um darling my final question for you we saw a big Twitter backlash um to what was said there by Liz Kendall we know that I mean I think understandably and probably quite rightly kia starmas team don't see a twitter drama as essentially something they should respond to in this case though I think the trick the twitter row was um quite representative actually of broader society do you think this is something that they're going to roll back from do you think she'll get a slap at the risk for this or do you think they'll say oh no actually that was a great point and we're sticking by screw the haters I mean I think what we're much more likely to see is just silence um and the problem with that is the double standard the problem is that for you know left-wing MPs or MPs with socialist leanings they can be fired for a tweet a tweet that in itself is innocuous and doesn't say anything remotely problematic but when there is a tweet or a public statement that directly contradicts with I mean the term is meaningless at this point but you know labour values um the basic premises of premise of labour values labour values that even a Tory can find it within themselves to hold um that you know there is sort of silence and and passivity and I think it is again part of this calculation by Keir Starmer which is if we can be seen to either match or even outflank the Tories at some point at in on some issues um but be seen as the kind of more competent and slightly less corrupt version of the Tories then are you know that is their pathway to power is through those disaffected conservative voters um of which there aren't really enough to win an election I don't think uh and which we have already seen even on his own terms and in that strategy that they are failing they are actually becoming less popular with disaffected or movable conservative voters so I think that you know whatever Keir Starmer's personal opinion on it is I think what we will see is a kind of you know inaction rather than an endorsement or a or a repudiation and it is because as I sort of mentioned multiple times the objective of the Keir Starmer leadership is to demobilize and purge the Labour Party of its left-wing socialist tendencies in order not just to remove the remnants of Jeremy Corbyn but to prevent the possibility of another Jeremy Corbyn now that doesn't mean that necessarily that's going to be successful but that is what the purpose of the Keir Starmer leadership is and so within that context there is no need to bear their teeth against you know someone like Liz Kendall in the way that he did for other left-wing Labour MPs so essentially the problem here is not oh you didn't reprimand this MP for a tweet the problem is that you reprimand some you hold some MPs to this very very particular often illogical standard and yet you let other statements that are very reactionary or who come from reactionary politicians within the Labour Party slide and so that double standard tells us everything we need to know about the image that the Labour Party is trying to put out for itself. A depressing end to the show tonight Darlia Gabberlut it's been a pleasure as always thank you so much for joining me this evening. Thank you for having me sorry about that I wish I ended on my nice note but yeah you guys can have a little bit of doom as a treat. You can you can drown your sorrows now so it's all okay thank you everyone for your donations and comments tonight we'll be back on Friday at 7 p.m for now you've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navarra Media good night