 and welcome to Tisgy Sauer. We are coming to the end of the second week of the general election campaign, a remarkable general election campaign, for many reasons, which we'll talk about this evening. And I am joined by Aaron Bustani, co-founder of Navarra Media. What's up, Michael? How are you doing? I'm doing very well. I feel a bit, I've been off my feet today, but tired. I think we should give credit where it's due today to Fox, who I've given a lot of links, a lot of tweets, a lot of videos to- Fox the producer. I think they know that now that- But they're not in Fox News, right, okay. Oh yeah, not Fox News. James Fox, who is our producer this evening, I gave him a lot of links very close to the beginning of the show, which was very unprofessional of me, but it means you're gonna get some great clips as we go on. We are going to talk about, it's a recurring theme in this general election, fake news from the Tory party, a press release that is based on complete fabrications and nonsense numbers, potentially because they want to have a row about the nonsense numbers, but we'll talk about that. We're gonna go on to discuss the NHS. The Tories had a bit of a hiccup in their general election campaign today when it was revealed that waiting times were longer than ever this month. So they just had those statistics revealed. And we're gonna talk about a flame war that took place today between Farage and the Conservative Party where some quite serious accusations were made. Criminal allegations, Michael. It's not cash for honours, is it? Standing down, honours for standing down. It's technically bribery, and it does fall under the 1983 Representation of the People Act. We're gonna start with Tory fake news. So this morning, Britain's newspapers were filled with another round of fake news from the Tory research department. This time, they're claiming that under Labour, immigration will rise to 800,000 a year. We might have a sun article we can show you. I'll quote the first paragraph of it. Net migration would skyrocket to three times the current level under Labour's open borders policy according to alarming Tory figures. This is a very sun way of reporting this because they've covered their backs by saying Tory figures, but then they've added alarming to the beginning of it to say that the paper clearly endorses the sums that they have come up with. Pretty Patel has warned voters that immigration would surge under Labour because Jeremy Corbyn has no credible plan. And I like this quote from Pretty Patel just because of its, I suppose, ridiculousness. The biggest risk to our NHS is Corbyn's plan for uncontrolled and unlimited immigration forever. Yeah, comma, forever. It's like that Orwell quote about fascism and a boot stamping in your face, forever. Obviously the figures are nonsense. They're based on the assumption that Labour agrees to complete open borders to anyone in the world. So this 840,000 figure is on the idea that we just end borders in this country and anyone who wants to come can come. I mean, some of our viewers will be pro that position. There's some good arguments for it, but it's not gonna be the policy of the Labour Party. They're also designed as a dead cat. So the Conservatives knew there would be embarrassing statistics released later in that day. That's not conspiracy. It's just the NHS statistics are released on the same day every month. And the government obviously get advance warning as to what is going to be in them. But this managed to become the story of at least this morning. I think by now actually the NHS story, all credit to the BBC was leading their six o'clock news. So they hadn't completely gone with this fake claim as they did with the 1.2 trillion pounds, which was the last figure made up by the Conservatives. Well, that was different. It was the Sundays, wasn't it? And the thing is Sunday is quite unique in that, even though circulation of Sunday papers is really in freefall, actually the biggest selling newspaper right now in Britain at the weekend is on a Saturday. It's the mail. The Sunday papers very much still lead to the whole sort of media narrative. So whatever the Sunday papers print, that's what the news is for the day, even if it's nonsense, like it was with the 1.2 trillion story. I mean, that's what we'll see time after time. So bit harder to do that with the daily papers. So I mean, what you get is you get the Sunday papers. So with that 1.2 trillion pounds, it was the front of the mail on Sunday, the telegraph and the Sunday times. And then what happens is the BBC reports the row. So the BBC doesn't report that Labour manifesto will cost us 1.4, Labour's plans will cost the country 1.2 trillion pounds, because obviously, I mean, it's not true. So they report about the row. And that's the phrase. And the framing, Labour deny that they'll spend. Yeah, Labour deny they'll spend 1.2 trillion pounds in their first term, which I suppose brings me to the next question. So as we know, those headlines often are Labour deny. Should Labour deny that they will allow 840,000 people into the country every year? Should they deny it or does that feed the story? Am I going to ruin this by talking about a Corbyn video we're going to show shortly? No, we're not going to show that video. No, I mean, we're going to show it quite shortly. So if you give away parts of it. Well, I just thought that the response, the optimal response was in that video, where he says, when politicians talk about immigration, it means they've run out of excuses. It's a very good line and it's also very true. The stories can't talk about, you know, underspending with the NHS because of cuts. They can't talk about a failure with the economy, with productivity, GDP per capita, wages, et cetera, because that would be undermining the economic orthodoxy which they've championed since the late 1970s. So you just talk about immigration. And I mean, and so that's a really, I think that's a great way of pivoting. You go, look, and we talked about this pivot so many times in Bernie Sanders, this is kind of the specialist, that's it. When politicians run out of excuses, they talk about immigration and the big things people need to talk about in this election, falling wages, home ownership and an NHS in crisis. And like people go, yeah. So is that necessarily answering the question? No, and you don't have to because like you said, it's a bullshit number. They've generated from nowhere. You don't need to dignify the response. Well, I think what you can do is you can dismiss it. So you dismiss them pivot. So you say, this is fake news made up by the Tory research department. Now let's pivot to what matters. Because if they say, are you gonna do this? And you're sort of like, oh, maybe, maybe, you know, you have to dismiss it first to get permission to pivot, but then you pivot. And today they did pivot well. So we might be ready to show the latest video which was shared from Jeremy Corbyn's Twitter account and his Facebook page. It's brilliant. We'll talk about it after it shows. I'll be in the middle of this. Please, please, one at a time. My daughter's school is falling apart and there's just not enough teachers to cope. My mother needs surgery and she's been waiting six months. I got made redundant and can't pay my rent, but there are no council houses. Look, I know you're all angry, but there is one simple explanation. It's all his fault. Huh? What's Ali got to do with my mother? Well, he's an immigrant. If we get rid of Ali, then medical waiting times will be shorter because we'll have more doctors. Actually, I am a doctor. But what about the services you've cut? Are schools? His fault. Housing? His fault. Hospitals. Whatever the problem is, it's because we don't have enough money. And we don't have enough money because we have to spend it all on Ali. He's just given to that guy. He's just the CEO of a major tech company that needed a tax break. Don't worry about him. But if you need money, couldn't you just stop giving it to him? He clearly doesn't need it. You start giving it to schools and hospitals instead. He's a job creator. He hasn't created any jobs around here. He isn't part of our community. Why would he care about us? I trust Ali more than him. Look, let me level with you. I would love to put more money into housing and health care and education, but my hands are tied. I have to give wealthy corporations massive tax cuts because of Ali. Really? It's the kind of video where you really see the value of having Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party. So people, I remember, it was kind of a centrist talking point, actually, where they said that people always complained about Ed Miliband's controls on migration mug, but then Jeremy Corbyn is the leader and obviously the Labour Party is still going to have controls on migration. And in one sense, the Labour Party did go into the 2017 general election with a policy that was tougher on immigration than Ed Miliband's because they were saying freedom of movement would end after Brexit. But the difference between those two politicians is the way they run a campaign. And so whilst Ed Miliband decided that, oh, immigration is an issue, so we've got to put it front and center in our campaign, which is one of their top seven promises which we saw on the Ed Stone, the tombstone-like giant stone, which he thought was a good idea to put his seven key pledges. So they made controls on immigration one of their seven key pledges and that's the opposite of a pivot. That's inviting people to talk about migration. So I mean, I'm in favor of having at least some controls on migration. I don't think it'd be a good idea to have open borders at this point in time, but you don't put that on a tombstone because the whole point is, someone might say, what is your immigration policy? You're gonna let in millions of people, you're gonna have open borders and you say, well, obviously we're not gonna have complete open borders, but I wanna talk about the NHS, I wanna talk about XYZ, you don't engrave it. And that video is precisely what any progressive should do, which is if you are gonna take the migration question head on, you don't take it head on by saying how tough you're gonna be. You take it head on by saying the reason we're having this conversation is because there are vested interests at play who want you to be talking about, you know, in that video alley, want you to be talking about your immigrant neighbors, or I suppose in these situations it tends to be an anonymous migrant because people tend to like their immigrant neighbors, they just don't like the anonymous specter of the migrant, they don't personally know. And that's something that I can't think of. I mean, I'd be interested to see, tweet us if you've seen any other leader of a mainstream social democratic party, take on the immigration debate in such a, I mean, simple, but head on, and I think quite brave way. Certainly not in Europe. Certainly not in Europe. I don't know, maybe in Canada or in the US in the last 20 years has been somebody, obviously not including Bernie Sanders. I'm trying to even think of democratic primaries in the last 20 years. I can't think of anybody. Well, the American thing to do is to say we're a rainbow nation, we're a country of immigrants, but I don't know how much they say the reason, well, obviously no one in the democratic primaries other than Bernie Sanders would say it, the specific reason they are trying to bring up migration as a talking point during this election is because they want to protect their rich friends. There aren't many people in democratic primaries who are able to say that. Sanders. Other than Sanders, I was saying before. Yeah, no, I'm saying maybe even Sanders isn't that, it's not even that explicit. I mean, that was really explicit, right? Or has he been in that explicit in the past? I imagine he has, again, I haven't seen it as a specific yet, but. Well, definitely in the Anglophone world, I think it's some rifled, right? And it's definitely, it's never happened in this country. Completely unapologetic anti-racism. And there was a really good tweet actually yesterday which really made me think it was tweeted by somebody I don't follow, and I thought, well, that's great, sometimes there's so many smart people out there. And they said, people say, Corbinism's been ineffective. Well, Keir Starmer was on a picket line with McStrike and he's loved by FBPE liberal Twitter. Now, five years ago, people that were sort of self-identified, sort of radical centrists were not standing a politician who was going on picket lines with ununionized, precarious workers in the service sector. That wasn't happening. And I think this is another signifier of something quite significant is going on. The country's been polarizing around values for a long time, for more than 10 years, but actually the left hasn't been making its own argument. At that level, you've obviously had grass roots. The left have apologized for their values. That's right. Sorry, we're so moral, what it means. Sorry, we're so righteous and moral that we won't give you the things that you want, which was kind of the Ed Miliband line. Like, sorry if we're too nice for you. And the media loves that. Actually, we will try and be a bit meaner to satisfy your... The media loved that. The media loved these kind of like very moralizing left-wingers, they're not left-wingers because they universally go on to the sky or BBC and they attack Jeremy Corbyn. You know, I'm a lefty, but, and they love those people because they've got no concrete offer. They're not willing to actually take on the establishment around these really key issues. And like you said, it's just kind of a media mouth. And you know what? 10 times out of 10, you're going to lose. There are two strategies available to the left right now. One is the one that's being pursued by the Danish social democrats, which is economically redistributive, but also quite racist. Sure, that can work. Unapologetically socialist, but also they're taking, you know, jewelry from refugees. Or the argument that's being made by Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, sort of left-wing populist going on a class cleavage rather than, you know, xenophobic one. Those are two options available to you. And sort of what Ed Miliband did was kind of like neither. Somewhere in between, yeah. And I suppose when you say they're successful in the sense that they can be electorally successful. You can win an election. Like the Danish social democrats right now are probably the only sort of, the only social democratic party which has actually won an election impressively and against the odds in the last couple of years in Europe. Maybe the exception of the PSOE. So on what should be the messaging strategy when it comes to migration and immigration, I think there is basically general agreement on the left. I don't think you'll even see many, you know, people on the labor right who quote, tweet Jeremy Corbyn's video there and say, oh, this is nonsense. This is the kind of thing that's gonna lose us an election. Because when it comes to messaging, it's quite, even though you have to be quite brave to do it, it's quite obviously the correct thing to do in electoral terms. When it comes to actual policy, so what should be labor party migration policy in their manifesto, you are gonna see much more disagreement and potentially a bit of a row. This was, I mean in the news, but also it's been being debated on on left Twitter and within the party over the last few days because the clause five meeting is gonna be coming up on Saturday. And what that means is you have people from the trade unions, people from the shadow cabinet, various members of the stakeholders that make up the labor party and they decide what's going to go in the manifesto. We won't find out about it straight away unless you have a leak or as you did in 2017, so it'll be released at some point in the following week. But at the moment, there is a debate as to whether the motions which were passed at conference in September are going to find their way, copied and pasted directly into that manifesto or whether they're gonna be watered down and shifted somewhat. And the particular conference motion that's relevant to this discussion was the one to defend and extend freedom of movement. The row this week partly started because of an intervention by Len McCluskey in an interview with The Guardian. He said and I quote, we will have to see what's in the manifesto but I don't think what conference voted for is a sensible approach and I will be expressing that view. It's wrong in my view to have any greater freedom of movement, any greater free movement of labor unless you get stricter labor market regulations. There was also a report in the Financial Times yesterday or the day before. I'll quote from that with a sort of insight about what they think is going on in the party. So I quote again, Mr. Corbin's team is looking for ways to respect the spirit of the conference vote on immigration including extending full voting rights to all foreign nationals living in the UK and closing all immigration detention centers but is looking to pair back on free movement. Emily Formbury, shadow foreign secretary appeared to rule out free movement becoming party policy when she told BBC Radio 5 Live on Monday that the party wanted managed migration when the UK left the EU. She said that was consistent with labor's Brexit policy of remaining in the customs union but not the single market. There was a contrasting intervention from Diane Abbott today when she tweeted, she tweeted a link to Labor List with the text of the motion that passed at conference and Diane Abbott says, this is the actual resolution passed overwhelmingly at Labor Party Conference. I fully support the policy to maintain and extend free movement rights. Aaron, you've got sort of a free, I suppose there's two positions here really, well, three positions. So one is, should Labor commit to having freedom of movement even in their Brexit deal? Two, should they extend freedom of movement? You've got so two different issues that make three different positions, I suppose. So where do you stand on this? What do you think's going on here? I think the Guardian wrote a misleading headline and actually misframed what McCluskey said. And what lots of people do is they look, they read the headline and then they go, I saw people sharing it, bastard. Now I don't agree, I probably don't agree with them McCluskey on immigration but these, the words he said, we will have to see what's in the manifesto but I don't think what Conference voted for is a sensible approach. So I would disagree with that bit. However, I agree with what he goes on to say. It is wrong in my view to have any greater free movement of labor unless you get strict to labor market regulation. Dianne Abbot wouldn't disagree with that. You know, nobody is proposing, nobody is proposing we would have a labor government that you would have freedom of movement without an increase in labor market regulations. That would mean trade union laws being changed, changing legislation around, some of the stuff that's been in the major criticisms of the European Union with regards to labor regulations. Well, the ones relating to like the ferry in Norway or whatever it was, Norway, Sweden. You know the one I'm talking about? I don't know the one you're talking about at all. Basically membership of the European Union can undermine certain labor standards and it's very marginal niche ways and some claims are well, there's a posted workers directive which is the main one, right? Where you can employ people from different you can employ people from a different country and pay them according to the standards in that country. There's also the Laval Viking thing which is people can go and check that out. Basically, you can stand the EU and still have higher levels of labor regulation with regards to that. Anyway, labor is quite clear. It wants to up the labor standards in this country. That's what it would like to do in a number of ways through on the statute books, through policy, through creating, you know, a minister for labor with Laura Pidcock. So nobody's proposing within labor what Len McCluskey is saying. But I would agree with him. You wouldn't want greater freedom of labor without some attendant reforms to labor laws. I mean- But there is a disagreement. Nobody's proposing that though. I don't think you can propose a disagreement because- There is a disagreement, but it's not as intense as I think it might appear from that Guardian headline. Well, what you could say is given the fact that no one in the Labor Party is proposing we don't raise labor standards. There's quite a simple solution, which is Diana, but gets what she wants, which is free movement. And then McCluskey gets what he wants, which is free movement. Only if we increase labor standards, and you say, well, fine, that's gonna make a great manifesto then. Yeah. The FT article, though, suggests the Labor Party didn't want to have freedom of movement as part of their Brexit deal. Obviously, many people would be backing Remain anyway, which requires that Britain maintains freedom of movement. But what do you think about this idea in the Brexit plan or the Brexit deal that Labor proposes should freedom of movement be in that? I just think we should have the status quo. I just think it's an easy thing to understand. The status quo being what, Norway plus? Yeah, I mean, if you, well, even Iceland, Iceland's an EFTA, right? Iceland's not as close as Norway is even, and they have freedom of movement with the European Union. They don't have visa-free travel, basically. I mean, what do you wanna call that? I don't know, but basically Icelanders can come here and they can access benefits, et cetera, the exact same way as a European national can. I don't know how that works, is that with all EFTA members, the Faroe Islands, I think it probably is. So, I mean, you could just argue for the status quo. I mean, again, I don't see it, it's not that complicated. And I think the argument actually at conference around freedom of movement, that motion always understood it as, okay, well, whatever Labor's policy on Brexit is, it has to mean at least the status quo. At least the status quo and freedom of movement, because it has to mean not the status quo on something, right? I mean, I suppose that's the issue, right? Yeah, entirely, yeah, that's what I mean. If Labor are proposing they put a manifesto, or if Labor are proposing in their manifesto they put forward a referendum with Romain versus a leave option, they do need a credible answer as to how the leave option is different to some degree, right? Or do you think that actually Jeremy Corbyn should just say that people voted leave, we would give them, we would let them leave from the political union of the European Union. And then when in the debate, which will be next Tuesday, and we'll have a live Tiske Sauer as soon as that debate finishes. When Boris Johnson's saying, you're gonna give them Romain versus Romain, what's Jeremy Corbyn's answer? If he's said that in the leave deal there is going to be freedom of movement. We're still, even with Boris's, even with the no-deal Brexit nonsense, there's still gonna be something quite close to freedom of movement with the other, with the European 27, the EU 27. There just will be. They weren't set now. It might take two years, it might take three years, it might take four years, but you'd see it could, you know, there just would be. What about extending freedom of movement? Because that's the other debate. Yeah, that's a separate thing, right? What do you think about it? Do you think there should be extending freedom of movement in the manifesto? I mean, you know, I'm sort of ambivalent. I want to take far more, it's not a zero sum, by the way, but I would rather us be more committed to taking far more refugees personally. I'm perfectly happy with freedom of movement in the EU because that's the status quo. I'm perfectly happy with that. I would far rather us be having an argument about, look, we should be taking four times more refugees than we presently are. I think it's around 35,000 asylum applications a year. We could easily take four times that. I mean, I would prefer to talk about that. I'm not against freedom of movement thing. I just think that those, you know, we could be helping 100,000 people a year that we're presently not. That would be my sort of counter-argument, but I'm not opposed to freedom of movement. It doesn't push down wages if you have the requisite sort of high labor standards, et cetera, et cetera. That wouldn't be my preference, and that wouldn't be what I want to talk about when it comes to immigration. Yeah, I mean, I think you're right, that the safest bit here is to stay with the status quo, right? I mean, I think almost the policy is somewhat secondary to the strategy, because obviously the debate around migration has to be shifted in Britain, and that's more an issue of political argument, as opposed to what is your precise policy. We have to have a policy which respects human rights, and the real break, I think, between Corbyn's labor and Miliband's labor. Yeah, there will be very significant, materially important policies such as shutting detention centers, abolishing or reforming the most grotesque elements of our border regime. Yeah. But Jeremy Corbyn's not gonna get rid of borders, so there are still gonna be, and so long as you have borders, there are still gonna be human rights tragedies, because there are gonna be people who are trying to get here who aren't allowed to come here. So Jeremy Corbyn's labor is not gonna solve that sort of essential tension between the fact that if you have any kind of border, you are gonna have to have some kind of border control, but what he can resolve... Was it a tension? Well, it's a tension because... I mean, you know, you want borders for some things. Like, for instance, we don't want animals with rabies. I mean, even under a sort of socialist, internationalist, quite and quite borderless world, you're still gonna have... I mean, you're gonna have to, right? Well, I'm not in favor of open borders, but what I'm saying is if you're... Somebody bringing some sort of meat from Bloody Garner that's got all Italy with... But the reason there's a tension is because we're not talking about meat, we're talking about people, right? So the reason... No, we are talking... It's a health and safety issue, that is talking about people. We're not talking about... I'm talking about meat because that can, for instance, the free... A borderless world where you can import... You know what I'm talking about? People bring in sort of... There's no inherent... Swine flu or something. There's no inherent tension by having borders when it comes to goods because you don't have to respect the human rights... You don't have to respect the rights and goods to move. We don't even have open borders for goods either. Like I say, like, if you wanna bring in some, like, meat from, like, certain parts of the world... Yeah, I'm not saying we do. I'm just saying that if any left-wing government, Corbyn's included, is gonna have to deal with a system whereby there are gonna be borders in Britain and when you have borders, you're gonna have border controls and border controls tend to be fairly unpleasant. So there's gonna be an inherent tension between having borders and having border controls. Depends who you are. Border controls for a British national going most places, perfectly pleasant. Yeah, depends who you... Depends who you are, right? I mean, I... But it depends who you are because the reason people are quite pleasant when Britons want to come in is maybe because of structural racism. But it's also because they're less likely to stay, right? Well, I mean, the issue with migration tends to be, well, the political issue in terms of why border controls are used is to stop lots and lots of poor people moving to richer countries. So that's why, you know, the same tension doesn't exist when British people go on holiday. No, I came... For instance, I came back from Sweden. I went through Gatwick two minutes, right? Yeah, but you're talking about holidays. Hold on, hold on. I went through Gatwick in two... No, let me finish, Michael. Okay. Gatwick in two minutes, it was entirely automated. It was, you know... And there'd be an argument there, well, look, that level of automation, the sort of oversight, it meant that you could have somebody blowing up a plane. And then there's an argument there because it's happened, right? In terms of the security checks and so on. Now, somebody else is gonna have a completely different experience because they're gonna be racialized in a certain way. They might be presumed to be a terrorist on a different day, maybe I could have been. So, I mean, that's an argument against the racialization of people. Now, on the left, there's a debate about the relationship between borders per se in and of themselves and a racialized other, right? So, obviously, you need to have that debate, but I just don't think we know. We're not, we're obviously not wanting it. We've always had some form of... Even, you know, people go, well, we've only had passports until the early 1900s. Well, you know, there have been delineations between societies, whether it was linguistic, whether it was religious, you know. I mean, I think we agree here. We do agree, Michael. You know, we're very much at odds with the ultra left on this. Well, I'm, no, but... Maybe you sound a bit more ultra left than I am. No, no, the basis of the disagreement here is I'm saying there's always going to be a tension because if you have borders, which I think we're going to have to have, you're going to have border controls, and border controls are always going to be unpleasant if the purpose of those border controls is to stop people living here who want to live here. Your experience of borders there... That'd be a measure of structural violence, for sure. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. We agree. And what I'm saying is that Jeremy Corbyn is not going to be able to resolve that tension. No. But what he can do is one, sort of, get rid of or reform the most grotesque elements of violent border regimes and shift the debate in terms of how the public think and talk about migration. And also, yeah... And he's doing the second one already. Britain is a massive, it's a big country. It's the fifth biggest economy in the world, 65 million people. Us taking the lead on taking refugees, lots of refugees would be a big, big thing. And I'd love us to do that. When I was in Sweden, you know, they said, oh, we've had this debate about, you know, refugees in the far right are doing really well on it, making loads of political capital out of it. And I'm like, yeah, but look, you took 90,000 people in 2015, 90,000. That same year, we took 35,000. Sweden has a population of 10 million. So basically, they're taking 18 times more people than we did on a per head basis. And even if everybody in Swedish society says, we want to have completely open borders, not everybody in the whole world can move to Sweden. Right? So what that means is we have to have global coordination across all the sort of affluent countries to have progressive refugee policies. Okay, what can you do to catalyze that? Well, the major nations could start to have socialist heads of state, socialist governments leading the way, right? So that would be a big thing for me in labor and immigration. You know, I don't really, I don't really, I'm not really thinking about expanding freedom movement beyond the EU 27. I'd far rather emphasize fulfilling, you know, human rights commitments on refugee policy and having far higher levels of successful asylum applications. Let's talk about the NHS in a moment. But first of all, you are watching Tiske Sauer. We are Navarra Media and we rely on your kind support. So if you are already a supporter of Navarra Media, thank you very much. If not, please go to support.navarramedia.com and give the equivalent of one hour's wage a month so we can make these shows more regular, put out more short, shareable videos, increase our article output, which has been brilliant at the moment. Definitely go to our website and check out what is being put out by Navarra Media. As always, we like it when you like this YouTube show because it means that it appears in more people's feeds. We like it when you share it on Twitter. We like it when you share it on Facebook and keep your comments going because we'll go to your questions at the end. So some of the comments even there about, oh, is Aaron joining the BMP? No, I honestly think on the left, this stuff about open borders is a cover for actually not having a serious conversation about, we destroyed the global south for 250 years. How can we have a fair planet where everybody can access the means of subsistence in a way that they can have a meaningful life? That does not mean allowing 100, which is ultimately what the rational end of that argument is. Hundreds of millions of people have to go to the global north. How about we redistribute wealth so countries in the global south can be nice as well? But rather than make that argument, you sort of call everybody who says, we clearly, we can't do that, even if we wanted to because of climate change, a world of six degrees warming, most of the planets are the desert are under fucking water. You want to get 10 billion people. The southern hemisphere in a world of six degrees warming is Tasmania, Western Antarctica, and Patagonia. Like we need to, we need to not, this is just dumb. We need to have a global green new deal now, rapidly decarbonize, have a far more egalitarian economy globally. You know, that's what we should be doing. Sorry, I make no apologies for it. That's not fascist. I don't know if they were talking about the open borders point or the thing where you're talking about meat when we're talking about migration. That's true. I mean, that's true, man. My favorite meat in Italy is you can't get it in this country. Let's talk about the NHS. For that reason. Let's talk about the NHS. So the reason that the Tories put out their ridiculous migration statistics today and wanted, they obviously had migration on their grid was because they have known in advance for a while that today was going to be the day that the NHS released their statistics as to waiting times and how or whether or not performance targets had been met. They knew this in advance. So obviously, it was not Linton Crosby anymore. It's one of his protegees who was heading up the campaign at conservative HQ. We were like, oh, what could we talk about that day? Given that there's going to be some helpful statistics released about the NHS. It wouldn't be tax policy because then that links quite nicely to the idea that we could tax the rich more to fund the NHS. It didn't want to be healthcare because then whatever announcement they make would be ruined by these awful statistics. But they made it as Corbyn's video quite rightly showed. The one distraction that the ruling class always rely on, which is migration. But anyway, now we've talked about that. We can go to these actual statistics. Let's get up this tweet from Lewis Goodall. Just because he summarized the statistics very nicely. New A&E figures have just been published. Bad news for government and patients. A&E targets performance the worst ever. The target is 95% of patients to be seen within four hours. But in October 2019, only 83.6% of people were seen within four hours when they arrived at A&E. That compares to 85% the month before and 89% last year. The 95% gold standard. So the target that 95% of patients will be seen within four years was last met in July 2015. And even better example or a way or graphic in this case, which it is, presenting Tory failure, is potentially we can get up this tweet, which was handily. Someone replied to me earlier today, which shows that these targets. So you might think, oh, targets are often missed. That's the nature of targets. We can't expect that at least 95% of people are seen within four hours. Obviously, there will be a significant amount of people who fall between the cracks. So now between, that's bullshit, between 2004 and 2010, there was not a single month where those targets were missed. So we can have an NHS where more than 95% of people are seen within four hours. It's perfectly possible. All you have to do is put decent money towards it because you tax people who can afford to. And it is since, you can see when the number of these targets being met just collapses. And woe betide, it is after the Tory funding changes of 2010. So since then, it goes down from consistently always being above 95% to by 2015 being about 92. And as we know now, going down to 83%. So this is a complete catastrophe for the Conservatives and the NHS. And they are absolutely. So they've recognized, obviously, they've been, I think, somewhat complacent on the NHS. I think if you are, I mean, there's two theories of how the Conservatives deal with national health. So one of them is they are committed to making it as shit as possible so that people have a big debate about is a nationalized health care system sustainable? And that becomes an argument to privatize it. It's a very famous Chomsky clip that often gets shared on social media, very insightful, summarized well as every viral clip of Chomsky is where he's saying that the strategy of the ruling class is to run down a public service until they can say, ah, to save it, we have to privatize it. So one argument is that's what's been going on over the last nine years, that they've been intentionally creating a crisis as a justification for privatizing the health care system. The other option is they felt really complacent and they kind of, they just didn't bother solving the problems in the NHS. And it seems to me at this point that the conservatives realize, at this point it looks more like it was the latter and the conservatives have realized they've kind of fucked up because they are intensely now trying to make sure that the winter crisis this year is less catastrophic than it had been in previous ones. So I'm gonna go to, this was in the Guardian, I think a week ago, it was one of the weekend splashes. And so they've said Downing Street has taken emergency action to head off winter pressures in the NHS amid growing fears in government that a health care crisis could derail the Tory party's general election campaign. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been holding regular meetings at number 10 with the head of the NHS England, Simon Stevens. Stevens as evidence mounts of lengthening delays in treatment caused by shortages of doctors and nurses. In addition, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock has been seeing Stevens every week on Monday mornings to assess how to prevent a deterioration in waiting times at hospitals and GP surgeries. Now this is evidence if you ever needed any that the conservatives only care about your health in the middle of an election. So it's literally, they didn't think about funding the service properly, giving the doctors and nurses the resources they needed until two months before a general election, now they're having emergency meetings every week to try and at least for a short time put a stop gap into that service so that we don't see piles and piles of trolleys queuing up when in the winter as always happens, people get flew at greater frequency. And if the stats are anything to go by today, that is quite likely to happen. And if there is a winter crisis, I do think that makes the Tories chances of reelection much tougher than they would normally be. Aaron, if there is an NHS winter crisis this year, is Corbyn straight into number 10? Do we want to discourage people from getting their flu jabs this year? No, no. The NHS has been falling apart for five years. It's been underfunded systematically by the Tories for nine years and the Tories are still polling 40%. So it's a major issue why people vote Labour, right? It's the number one issue even under Ed Miliband that was like the go-to issue. I just don't think you're gonna win over Tory voters on the NHS generally or just the NHS. It's gonna get you a couple of percentage points, but you have to price in Labour winning people on the NHS already. What would be the difference? The economy, wages, attacking the establishment, et cetera. I think. I mean, that's what it was in 2017. They didn't get 40% in 2017 because they talked about the NHS. They talked about the NHS in 2015 as well. So it's definitely part of that and you need to win your base. If Labour are gonna win, they obviously have to tick all those boxes. Is it gonna make the difference in terms of winning an election even if it's always really screw up? Well, it's can it win back Labour leavers? So it's not, it won't win over traditional Conservative voters, but the Conservatives have a strategy which is to win over Labour leavers so that they can win over constituencies that they've never had before. If you get a huge NHS winter crisis and that is going to impress some people's minds that yes, maybe we do want Brexit, but it's not worth it to have five more years of my nan being stuck in a corridor for six hours. But those were Labour votes in 2017, right? Those people generally. Yeah. So. So yeah, potentially it won't get us a majority, but it could destroy the Conservatives' plan to, what do they call it? The red wall? So they've been briefing out, it was in the FT the other day, they've been briefing out this idea. A bit like, I suppose, Trump with, I think they called it the blue wall, which is the Rust Belt States. So Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And Ohio. Ohio, that's the one. Is it Ohio? Yeah, Ohio is the Rust Belt State, isn't it? Is it the one that did it swing to Trump? Yeah. Okay, so yeah, Ohio. So the Tories are doing a similar strategy, but which is based on seats in the north of England, which have always been Labour, but they think they can swing to themselves. And I think that NHS Winter Crisis could somewhat scupper their plans. I can see Aaron, you're arguing in the comments about whether or not there's gonna be cellular meat or vegetarianism. No, no, it's all about NHS now, that's over. Okay. Somebody was saying, how could you eat meat? And I was like, I'm a vegetarian. I was talking, I was just, I want to make clear that I'm not talking purely about sort of non-European food products. There are lots of very, you know, unhygienic European food products. In Italy, there's a Sardinian cheese, it's a maggot cheese. You don't want that travelling across borders either. Have you ever tried maggot cheese? I haven't tried maggot cheese, I don't want it either. Apparently it's delicious. We're gonna talk about one more story before we go to your questions, which is... Can I just say actually, anecdotally on the Labour-Leaver thing. Yeah. I was chatting to Laura Pidcock just on Twitter DM the other day. And she said, there's really positive news about Labour-Leavos in the Northeast. And actually, the counter-argument of Trump and an NHS sweetheart deal for the Americans and the prescription charges going up in medicines, maybe being 500 million pound a month more or whatever, or a week, you know, is that a week? It would be 500 million pounds a month, not sent to the United States, but that the country would be paying extra for medication. And these are really powerful arguments to them because they understand the idea of, like, sort of perfidious America. And, you know, and that's obviously very much at odds with the take-back control sovereignty arguments that were peddled by the Leave campaign. It's actually quite a good point in terms of the comparison between the red wall in the United States. So Donald Trump didn't win Ohio, not Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by arguing for a free trade deal. He did precisely the opposite. He won those seats by arguing against free trade deals. And there is somewhat of a contradiction or a tension or a weakness in the Conservative Party's strategy, whereby they are trying to win over post-Industrial Britain by promising a trade deal, by promising more free trade, which, you know, seems like a slightly odd offer. So the extent to which the Labour Party can exploit that tension, I think, will potentially be very key in this upcoming election. Let's talk about Nigel Farage briefly. So today was the day when nominations closed for anyone to stand to be a candidate in the upcoming general election. So every year in the week before this date, you have lots of speculation, lots of rouse about who is or who isn't gonna stand down. On the left, that means conversations about whether the Greens will stand in Labor Tory marginals for FBPE, Twitter, that's been about whether the Lib Dems will stand down in Labor marginals. And this time around on the right, you've had this big question about whether the Brexit Party will stand down in Conservative marginals. As we spoke about on Tuesday, Nigel Farage announced earlier in the week that the Brexit Party would be standing down in any Tory-held seat. There's been intense pressure, but that they would stand in all Labour-held seats. Now, there has been intense pressure from the Tory side for them to stand down in Labor Tory marginals, which are currently held by the Labour Party, because as we've just discussed it, as many Labour leave seats, which the Tories see as crucial for them to get a majority, they want or they hope that if the Brexit Party stood down, there would be a united leave vote, which could potentially overturn what are historically large majorities for the Labour Party. It turns out that the Brexit Party have held to their line, or Nigel Farage has held to the line that they will stand in all of those Labour marginals, which are all those Labour-held marginals. But Nigel Farage today released a video to camera sort of opening his heart up to the camera to explain what's been going on. And he made quite a serious allegation about the Conservative Party playing somewhat dirty tricks to try and encourage his candidates to stand down. Are we ready to go to that video? Yeah, I'm going to watch that now. I've said in the past, and I'll say it again, repeatedly it's been suggested to me that I might like to have a seat in the House of Lords so that I can go quietly. And every time this gets said, my answer is the same. I'm not for sale. I'm not interested. I don't want anything. I just want to get Brexit delivered. So knowing they couldn't buy me off, there was a concerted attempt from people who work deep inside number 10 Downing Street. And I'm not blaming Boris for this. I don't believe he would be part of this, but it shows you the caliber of people he's got around him. It shows you the culture that exists in Westminster. Now they bypassed me and went to other senior figures in the Brexit Party, suggesting that eight of them could go into the House of Lords and all they had to do was come to Nigel and convince him to stand down in a whole load more marginal seats. Well, as you can imagine, I said I do not want and I will never have anything to do with this kind of behavior. That's quite a serious allegation that's being made there. He's saying that members of Boris Johnson's team, we saw earlier that Eddie Lister was mentioned by name, but then it seems to have disappeared from the internet. Did Nigel Farage Tweet that it was Eddie Lister, who was one of the chiefs of staff? Yeah, that's not liable. Well, it wouldn't be our liable because it's not our claim. But we don't know if he wrote, right? No, in any case. I don't think he said that. I don't think he alleged that. I think he said something sort of tangential to it. In any case, we're not alleging anything on this show. Well, we don't know, we're alleging, we're just not saying. We're saying that Nigel Farage. Yeah, we're alleging that he alleged it. Does that count as liable if you say that someone might have said this? So it seems quite far removed to me. But in any case, it's quite a serious claim that's being made by Nigel Farage, which is that people deep inside the Conservative Party operation and the Downing Street operation are offering peerages to Brexit Party PPCs so that they will stand down in the upcoming election. I mean, the biggest question here for me is what fucking Brexit Party PPC could offer a peerage. Wasn't PPCs? He said it was eight people. So presumably it's like their equivalent of like a national executive. I mean, they don't have that because it's like, it's Trump's, and not Trump, it's Farage's. No, I thought the point was that they were gonna give, so they wanted candidates to unilaterally stand down. He said eight people had been approached. Yeah, but they would be people who were standing in Labour Health Marshalls. Yeah, but presumably that's people like Richard, presumably it's people like Richard Tyson. Presumably it's senior people. Oh yeah, I suppose he's senior. Who will then say to Farage, look, we want to be peers in the House of Lords. The whole thing's finished. That's what Farage is alleging, right? And the fact he knows it's eight people. I mean, maybe it's more. He knows it's eight people. That's what he's aware of. It's interesting the distinction he makes between Boris Johnson and his operation. I mean, there's two ways of looking at it. One is that potentially he sees that among Brexit, the Brexit Party base, the Conservative Party is unpopular, but Boris Johnson is popular, so he wants to pitch himself as against the Conservative establishment to make himself. Yeah, it's pretty smart. To get appeal amongst those people. The other option is that he's hoping after the election, Boris Johnson, if he keeps him sweet enough, will give him some kind of role. The more ambitious end, it would be being ambassador to Trump's America. At the less ambitious end, it would be a peer which he said he doesn't care about it. In that video, he was saying, I don't care about anything for myself. But ultimately we know that these are the kind of people who change their minds if they find themselves not in the middle of a general election campaign and someone offers them something which is what being a Lord is both financially quite rewarding and gives someone a certain element of stature that they can keep for life, even if the audience base they achieve on or enjoy on LBC trails off at some point. Money as well. Money of peer, 300 quid a day. That's what I'm saying. It's financially rewarding. But it's just like basic, you know, it's not even like, I mean, it's just like fucking turn ups in London for half an hour and 300 quid, boom. Do that five days a week, 1500 quid a week. Great, you know. You get to use the resources available to them and the houses of Westminster are gorgeous, much nicer than what MPs get to use. So I can see the, and also people, I would also say that people should watch the whole video because he is quite explicit that he wanted to deal with Boris Johnson. He said there are 150 seats that the Tories have never won. They will never win in the modern era, I presume. And he means basically the North of England. But we could win. They don't like the Tories, but they like us. And he's basically saying like, and the same standard as in the South. You know, the Brexit party was never gonna win, maybe it could win one or two seats, but it was never gonna win 20, 30 seats in the South. Never, or UKIP, even it's most popular. And so basically he wanted to kind of compact, which says we have levers in the North, you have leave voters in the South. And the Tories said no. And so he was absolutely looking for something from Boris. And I think the reason why Boris Johnson rather, and the reason why, like you say, he draws that distinction between Johnson and his team is I think he probably still would like to. If there's a hung parliament, Farage is a variable again, isn't he? Let's go to some questions. Yeah. I mean, if there is a hung parliament, well, Farage is only a variable if the Brexit party gets some seats, which I think is quite unlikely. No, but he's a variable in so much as a hung parliament. We don't really have any sort of deal that can go through. And we'll just stay in this limbo. And then the debate, you have more European elections, you have more local elections, et cetera, where the Brexit party will be a problem for the Tories, unless the Tories, you know, can deliver Brexit. So he will be a variable if there's a hung parliament, not in the Westminster sense, but in the broader political sense. I mean, what would be quite smart for Nigel Farage is he, you know, let's Boris Johnson get a majority because I don't think a second referendum would be, you know, particularly, if you've got Boris Johnson in power, negotiating Brexit and negotiating a free trade deal, then Boris Johnson, sorry, Nigel Farage can constantly be breathing down the neck of Boris Johnson saying if you, you know, let up and negotiate a fairly soft Brexit deal at this point, he'll say, I'll be back with a vengeance in five years' time, which is, you know, which could be possible. Many people who voted Brexit who realized, shit, my life hasn't got any better. People who have become at that point disenfranchised from the Labour Party because of their commitment to Brexit and then say, well, my vote for the Tories was obviously a joke. Now I'm looking for a different party who I can vote for who really represented what I meant when I voted leave, which would be potentially when you could get a bounce back from Nigel Farage, oh, it could be his final. Look, 2015, we thought, you keep got 3.8 million votes. 2016, they failed to win 2017 rather than January 2017. They failed to win the Stoke-on-Trent by-election. They collapsed in 2017 general election. We thought that was it, you know, it was only, it wasn't that long ago. It was about nine, 10 months ago, Farage was doing his march through Sunderland with 40 people in the pissing rain and people thought he was over. And you know, by May they had 35 MEPs in one or two national general election polls. They're polling above both the Tories and Labour, which by the way, that same polling is being used by Lib Dems on leaflets, like just shows you how ridiculous it is. Like they're now polling 5%, not fucking 35%. So don't, you know, don't write off a sort of third comeback. He's like a, you know, he's like a, you know, sort of fungal infection or he's like, you know, he's like, yeah, it's like, you know, a chest infection. Yeah, you take your first course of antibiotics. You don't really finish it. He comes back, you take another one. He comes back, you know, so if he's come back before, why couldn't he again? Let's go to some questions. I like this one. Adam Dransfield, does the recent move on Scotland go far enough to sorting out Labour's problems in Scotland? Does the limp engagement mean that Labour don't care or have consigned Scotland to independence? I'll consign Scotland to independence is a sort of leading way of phrasing that, I suppose. Scotland has been one of the big stories of the last two days and it has been somewhat interesting. So you have Corbyn who, I suppose, or it was MacDonald originally who at the Edinburgh Festival when he was talking to Ian Dale, said that he didn't want the Labour Party or MacDonald said he didn't want the Labour Party to stand in the way of a Scottish referendum if it was demanded by the Scottish people. You know, he respects the right of self-determination and so said that it would be wrong for Labour to do that. It's a very ethically, politically legit position, fundamentally. The Conservatives, as you'll have noticed, are going really hard on this idea now that that means what John MacDonald said and what sort of Jeremy Corbyn has repeated means that the Labour Party want not one but two referendums next year because Nicola Sturgeon is demanding a Scottish referendum next year and Labour are obviously offering or promising a second referendum on Europe next year. Corbyn, I suppose, to try and close down that particular line of attack said that he would not offer Nicola Sturgeon a referendum on her timeframe, which means that it wouldn't happen until at least 2021. People are speculating that maybe in government the deal would be with Nicola Sturgeon about if you get another majority at the Hollywood elections, then potentially you can push for one. And as we know, there's going to be a particular court case which could be damaging for the SMP between now and then potentially their fortunes could change. What about the Catalonia option? Just hold a referendum anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the argument I always make when people are sort of saying oh, Labour want an independent Scotland, is you say that no. I mean, I'm personally ambivalent about independent Scotland. I suppose I'd prefer to have Scotland as part of the UK because I feel like Scots are a bit more progressive than many other parts of the UK. And so we have a greater chance of having a progressive politics for the whole of the UK. But if they want to leave, fine, so be it. But the argument for why Macdonald and Corbyn's position actually is a unionist one is because, you know, obviously not a dogmatically unionist one, but is a sensible one if you are a unionist, is that probably the only thing that could turbocharge Nicola Sturgeon's claim for or demand for independence, I suppose one is a very hard Brexit, partly ruffering, or two an ability to say there is a mandate within Scotland for another referendum, but it's being denied in London. And that's precisely what turbocharged the Catalonian movement for independence was the fact that it was so clearly unjust that the central state that Madrid, the Madrid government was denying the right of self-determination to Catalonia. And over quite a short period of time, Catalan independence, which has always been, you know, alive and well, but it was always a minority issue, has become the demand of an overwhelming majority of that region of Spain. So you can argue it's a unionist position, what they're saying, but something that is a bit interesting about it, and I think a bit odd, is that obviously Scottish Labour have made a decision that they need to get the unionist vote, because they think that's what distinguishes them from the SMP, and they worry that by having a somewhat ambivalent line, they got squeezed by both the SMP and the more avowedly unionist Lib Dem and Conservative Party. So they're sort of saying they're really hard-line against independence, they attack the SMP quite a lot, they attack independence quite a lot, and then you've got the Labour Party in England who are saying like, independence may be not such a bad thing. And to me, electorally, that seems like you've really got things the wrong way around, because I think Scottish Labour's resurgence or revival demands that they seem a bit more open-minded about independence. I think given that this is a strongly held identity by many people who were previously of their base, I think you can say policy-wise, we really don't want to have independence, but to sort of try and attack the movement for independence as much as they seem to do, and attack the SMP as much as they seem to do, to me just seems somewhat counterproductive. But I could see why in England, remembering 2015 where the Conservatives made a big attack line about Ed Miliband that he was going to bring about Scottish independence and that he was in the pocket of then it was Alex Salmond, I'd have thought you'd expect British Labour or UK Labour to have a somewhat more negative tone towards independence and Scottish Labour, but you've got the reverse, which to me does seem like a sort of electorally counter-intuitive relationship between the party in London and the party in Edinburgh. Yeah. I can see arguments both ways, but I think Scottish Labour actually had a thing to say, but you just carried on talking, Michael. What was the thing you were going to say? As enlightening as it was. Did you forget? Have I forgotten? It was about Scotland, Scottish Labour. Come on, Michael. Try and push me here. Come on. What could I have been thinking? I can't read your mind, especially when I'm reading questions. Q words. Tell us if you come back to it. I don't know, that's it. I can see the arguments by four and against. The reality is, if Scotland's independent, would it become a sort of normally social democratic country? Probably. Why? Has huge amounts of unused land, right? It could take huge numbers of immigrants, which is obviously one of the easiest ways to get growth is just to get more people. You could have greater urbanisation. It's like a mini-Canada. It's like a mini-Sweden. You could have massive forestry, wind power, more agriculture. You know, it could be a very successful social democratic economy. It's the idea that it couldn't be successful because it's too small, absolute nonsense. Just put it out there. However, would that necessarily feed into a socialist project? Not really. Not necessarily. So as a socialist, there's an argument either way. Then there's the broader argument about well, if Scotland seeds away from the Union, what happens to England, what happens to English nationalism or British nationalism post-Scotland? That could be quite ugly. That could be really ugly, and so people do have to think about that. You see lots of Scots say, well, you know, see you later. End of British imperialism. You know what, sometimes the death throes of these things can be very ugly. So, you know, I wouldn't be flippant about it, but at the end of the day, on the left, you're meant to believe in self-determination. People that live in Scotland, it's them to decide. And that's why I think that's why McDonald has a very good, strong leftist line of national self-determination. And I suppose the counter to saying that they should, you know, if it brought Ed Miliband, or if it damaged Ed Miliband's campaign that he was seen as being in the pocket of Alex Salmond, and Ed Miliband, what he did was vociferously deny that he would make a deal with the SMP to have a second referendum. And actually, to be honest, it'd be quite easy for, in negotiations over a confidence and supply arrangement for the Labour Party to hold the line on that, if that's what they chose, because I don't think the SMP would want to be seen as allowing Boris Johnson to have the keys into Downing Street, especially when you've got the Remain Leave issue. OK, go on. The SMP are kind of really sitting pretty because they gain, politically, whatever happens. If Labour somehow become the largest party in the Hung Parliament, they always don't want a Labour majority. They'll then be the kingmakers in a sort of, you know, confidence and supply. If Boris Johnson wins and the Tories get a majority, they say, look, we're tied to no matter how... Five years of Boris Johnson with turbo-charge support. Oh my God, so really, you know, the SMP can't really lose here. They really can't lose. It's absolutely fantastic for them. And Nicola Sturgeon is a very effective politician. So, you know, it can play out either way. I would argue there's a really strong interest actually in Labour getting absolutely hammered. Look at it causally. Since when has Scottish independence been a mainstream thing? The SMP only had like six seats until 2015, right? It's since the collapse of Labour. And it's since basically the collapse of Labour as a viable national government. So Labour, obviously, and how it governed explains the long-term deterioration of Scotland's sort of propensity to vote Labour. Well, there was an alienation of the base. For sure, but it didn't flip into the referendum. That was the... The pitch is Scotland's voted Labour basically in every election, I think, bar one or something since 1945. And yet, most of the time, you get a Tory government at Westminster. That's the argument. And so it suits them perfectly well to have Boris Johnson and leave the... Obviously not in the short term, the Union's sort of cantankerous, belligerent, eating-educated guys prime minister. That suits their narrative. And alternatively, Corbyn government allows them to do Divo Max, they'd have leverage like never before over Westminster government. So, yeah, they went either way. I mean, you could say that if what they want is independence, they win more if Boris Johnson becomes leader because that will turn the other... And you could, if you were being cynical about it, you could say that that's why Nicola Sturgeon is not being particularly helpful to Jeremy Corbyn. Because she is saying specifically, if he doesn't give me a referendum next year, I will block him entering government which is making it seem like either a hung parliament with Labour as the largest party or any kind of hung parliament where there's no route to Boris Johnson entering Downing Street, you'll either get another general election or you'll get a second referendum. Now, I actually think that Nicola Sturgeon would fold in those negotiations, but the fact that she's saying it now they also want... They do want Devo Max. All the things they've talked about, they say independence isn't an outcome, it's a process. They've said that stuff. They want Devo Max, they want more powers. You know, that's what they would want. They think in the sort of medium term that's more likely to guarantee independence. Anyway, next question. I've never tried it. Apparently it's delicious. It's like, imagine what the fermentation process is like accelerated, right? Because all these larvae are basically like eating the cheese and pooping it out. Is Boris Johnson going to lose to Ali Milani now that the deadline for registration has passed? Go on. The fact he hasn't... I know I can see why he didn't want to move because they're trying to run a campaign which is confident where they feel like they're going to get a majority and they always call the opposition useless, etc. And he doesn't want to move from his seat which has a 5,000 majority because it would seem like that's him admitting that there is going to be a swing away from the Conservatives. To be honest, if I was him, I would have said I'm going to leave, but the reason isn't because I think Labour are going to get a swing. It's because they're pumping in so many activists and sort of make it seem like what the Labour Party are doing is to some degree undemocratic because they're shipping in activists or something like that. Obviously it'd be a weak argument. But I think having him in a seat with a 5,000 majority with a great Labour Party candidate and with thousands of people knocking on doors is a genuine risk to him. I'd put it at 50-50. Which is incredible. Is it how remaining is the seat? Because lots of those seats in Outer London are actually about 50-50. Yeah, I don't think it's that remaining. But I think actually that's not even a variable. I think the primary variables would be there'd be just lots of anti-borris people. I think it's really... The reality is you've got tens of thousands of Labour members like tens of thousands will happily canvas there at least once. Right? Just phenomenal. They're going to have 100% in like two weeks. They're going to contact everybody multiple times. Ali's literally going to be... How many people is he going to be talking to on the doorstep compared to Johnson? Johnson's having to run a national campaign, right? It doesn't mean he has lots of name recognition so they also say that name recognition is quite good for him. For sure, but... It didn't help Ed Balls. It's 50-50. As Lamar once said, it's 50 now. It's really close. And I'm actually kind of impressed he's not run away. I thought he would. But then, Tories have been making big mistakes recently. Cameron called a referendum in 2016, thought he'd get away with it. May called a general election in 2017, thought she'd get away with it. Maybe Johnson's big mistake even if the Tories end up being the biggest party is staying in that seat. What's interesting is that nearly in every occasion where they fucked up it's because of hubris. Exactly the same, right? Because of hubris that they've stayed there. Will Labour's manifesto launch be the turning point for Labour's polling numbers? Quite possibly. Too early to say. Can I just say we've got 1,262 people watching this. Well, 1,267. We should do a shout out about support, etc. But it's the same time as the England-Montenegro match. Don't tell them about the... But that's amazing. I mean, that just shows you what a great show you're doing here on Tiskey Salon of Aramedia. Which would not be possible without your support. So if you are a subscriber, thank you very much. You're what makes Tiskey Salon. You're what makes Navarra Media possible. If not, please go to support.navarramedia.com and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month. And also, actually, don't just do that. Even if you are already a supporter, maybe you should tweet that link to other people to your friends, especially to your friends with lots of money, who get a high hourly wage. You know, I wouldn't say... I mean, share it to everyone, and especially share it to people on low wage because they've got an interest in bringing about socialism. But that particular support.navarramedia.com link send that to your rich friends. What you could ask for is from your rich friends if you've got, you know, so many objects you don't want anymore, they ask you what you want for Christmas. You tell them, I want you to give an hourly wage to Navarra Media every month. I think that should be a thing. It shouldn't even just be Navarra, TWT. The World Transform do amazing stuff, right? You know, if like my dad's partner said I'll give you a Christmas gift to be like, give 20 quid to TWT. That'd be great. They should do that, like a voucher thing. We should do that. Bliswinter says, Navarra is vital in challenging media hegemony. We love you. We love you too about Bliswinter's great name. This is a good question. Did you see this today, Aaron? No. BBC refers to Corbyn getting into number 10 as the long march today. Could a Labour government save the BBC reverse the bias? Oh, it was amazing. Did you not see that? No, I've not seen this. No, it's incredible. The BBC are doing profiles of each party. It's a feature, basically. Who's presenting it? It's an article on the website. Right, okay. It was by Ian Watson. And the framing of the framing of the article is, yeah, Corbyn will Corbyn achieve his long march or will his long march work, comparing them out. It's good. It's funny. We have to have a long march with the institutions. The subheading was the reluctant leader or the surprise leader. The whole framing was sort of like Corbyn wasn't supposed to be a party leader and he's a Marxist. Which, to be fair, there's some truth to it, but if you're in partial broadcast, that's not really the element you should... If you're writing a profile, there's obviously going to be some truth to everything you say. But if you're in partial broadcast, you have to think quite carefully about what elements of a story are you highlighting and are you feeding into people's original prejudices about a person. And I don't know what they're going to do about the other parties. You're going to have to be pretty... If they do a glowing one of all the other parties, which doesn't reference any historical leader of a non-democratic regime, then I think Labour probably have grounds to complain. As somebody said here, the long march was pretty fucking successful, to be honest. And also, look, we do have to have a long march with the institutions. It's important to say this to people watching. I think my view is, Labour will be the largest party at the general election. Does that mean a majority? We don't know. That's my view. I may be wrong. Even then, even if Labour won a majority of 20, everything we're seeing in this general election now from the media would be times five every day of a Labour government. This is going to be a very long-term project about a Green New Deal, about transforming the media, about rebuilding the economy, about ending massive regional inequality, about a proper constitutional settlement, elected second chamber, electoral form, written constitution, all these things, they're going to take 20, 30 years. This is not all going to change on December 13th for the Labour government. That's going to be one of the major steps, obviously. So long march, obviously the BBC shouldn't be saying it, but it is a long march. Ethel, the cat says, I have donated 20 pounds a month since January and gave 50 pounds towards the studio fundraiser. Can I get a thumbs up from an environmental media? You most certainly can, Ethel. We've been on for over an hour. Should we end soon? I'm quite enjoying it actually. I'm quite enjoying the questions because people have got a lot to talk about right now. I mean, another 10 minutes. Someone is asked, if Jeremy Corbyn comes to power, will there be a military coup like there has been in Bolivia? It's an interesting question because I do think that if Jeremy Corbyn comes to power there will be a counterattack from the establishment and from the deep state I doubt it would come in the form of troops on the street. I think that's something where you're quite lucky if you live in one of the advanced capitalist nations that you're probably not going to have a military coup. It was mooted in the 70s. We did have a civil war on our doorstep until 1997, Michael. People don't think of it as Britain, but we did. It wasn't a coup though, was it? It was a highly militarized society which, you know, formally speaking didn't adhere to a lot of democratic norms until very recently. Not on mainland England. There's a great book, a low intensity sort of, I can't remember what it's called, Frank Kittson, who basically worked on a lot of the sort of counter-insurgency stuff for the British Army, learned a lot of his lessons in Burma. And the books written in the early 1970s is very good. Frank Kittson. He basically writes the book with an eye to Northern Ireland in the early 70s and he's, you know, and he's saying what we're seeing right now in Northern Ireland may come to the British mainland in the next 10 years because of the leftist threat, etc, etc. So, wasn't that long ago, people were talking about these things seriously. I mean, I happen to agree with you, but you know, it's not implausible that in major Western countries we will see that kind of stuff. Scaris says something which I well, I half agree with you. They say there won't be a coup but they'll wreck his project. The reason I say half agree is because what they will try and do is wreck his project. We don't know if they'll agree. We don't know if they'll, you know, achieve it. Hopefully they won't. But yeah, I mean, the way that would happen is similar to what we've seen in the last four years, which is that you'd have, you know, various smears and stories planted. You'd be trying to get the movement to sort of fight against itself. You'd have, you know, daily attacks from all the broadsheets all the newspapers which would filter into the BBC as we've just talked about today by controlling the news cycle by even if you've got a complete lie which is made up by the opposition or made up by a particular journalist, then the story becomes Labour denies XYZ. Labour denies that they executed a bunch of call centre workers in Swindon. Well, I like that. Look, people are dying right now in the NHS all the time. They're dying on trolleys and so on and so forth. And this is a minor story about it, right? But like, not really. Well, somebody dies because an ambulance takes six hours to get some of it. This stuff is literally happening on a daily basis. You know, I mean, you also, to be fair, I mean, that would be magnified massively under a Labour government. This one person died because he's... Yeah, absolutely. All of a sudden, nobody's mentioned on the BBC or the Sun and like Labour's inheriting this like chaotic NHS. The second they inherit it, they'll be like, you know, Jeremy Corbyn is personally responsible for this person who died because an ambulance was five hours late, you know, and they'll be like, that happened 100,000 times last year and it's only happened a thousand times under us. And they'll be like, well, it seems like that's a mystery, actually. Yeah. It's what about to talk about the fact that this happened 10 times more the year before you came into power than now. We're asking you about this specific person who specifically died on this specific ambulance. I mean, also, if we're going to be real, the establishment trying to bring down Corbyn, there's a number of steps before military coup where they could quite easily just coax the PLP into bringing him down. So, I mean, the big problem that Corbyn is going to the moment the going gets tough because you've got these ridiculous stories about something happening that's completely not out of the ordinary, but they've made it seem out of the ordinary. You'll have all the backbench MP saying, oops, in the national interest, we're going to bring down Jeremy Corbyn. You don't need guns when you've got Ben Bradshaw and Jess Phillips. But that's absolutely true. Paul Mason put it beautifully a couple of years ago, the establishment, the British establishment, the line, I can't even read that one, is it saying, oh yeah, the burner, we just got the burner. Paul Mason put it beautifully when he said that the sort of trench, the primary trench of the British establishment runs through the Labour Party, which is absolutely true. It's like the last ditch, that's the last defence of the British establishment. If all else fails, if you get a Labour Government, if you have a militant union movement, you know, the popular program from the people, it can at least be wrecked from within by the Labour Party. So, I mean, it's absolutely true. Have you seen a very British coup? Oh, great. It's on more four if people want to watch it. So actually what happens in that one is you see that, you know, within the cabinet, there's someone who's, you know, basically become an informer to or working on behalf of, I think, MI5. Yeah. The Deep State, right? The Deep State. The Civil Service, MI5, the papers. It would be interesting if that was going on again. It'd be interesting. I don't know about that. I mean, there'd be many people in the PLP who'd think that they would be serving the national interest by bringing down a Jeremy Corbyn Government. Yeah, they do. I mean, they tweet, they text it all the time to Kevin Scofield. A top Labour source says that it would be better to have a military coup than have Jeremy Corbyn increase funding into the NHS by 5% a year. I did BBCA questions with Ben Bradshaw and, like, he literally started and everybody was perfectly polite to me. Jonathan Dimbleby, Nadia Zahawi, actually a National Farmers Union lady. She was lovely. Got talking to her afterwards about farming and the most horrible person to me was Ben Bradshaw and he actually explicitly said on the show I don't know why he's here. And, like, those people hate us more than anyone else. They hate us more than Nadia Zahawi does because with the right and I've said this before to you, I did this week when it still existed with Andrew Neal with Portillo, with Liz Kendall, with Lord Winston. Everybody was lovely to me, except Liz Kendall. Lord Winston had a glass of wine with him. We were talking about anti-Semitism. I said, that's terrible, et cetera. I don't think it's as bad why we had a perfectly civil conversation. Had a Japanese whiskey with Andy Neal. Portillo, perfectly congenial. They obviously despise my politics, but they're just polite civil people because that's what conservatives are like. Liz Kendall literally couldn't look them in the eye. Why? Because for them, I politically disagree with you. For her, well for 25 years, I've been the most left-wing person in the room. I've been the goodie. So you've threatened her identity. Exactly. It's a much more powerful thing. And so those people, we're going to threaten their identity for a long time and they're never going to stop hating us, I think. A lot of them. Someone's asking Mr Strang GS Mr Strand GS is asking, how do we feel about John Curt is saying we have no chance for a majority? He didn't say that. Did he not? I haven't heard the answer. The chances right now of a Labour majority are as close to zero as can be like said, within reason. There are a few caveats. No, but then he said he said the two most likely outcomes are a Labour minority government or a massive Tory majority. Yeah. And I was like, well, there's also the Tory minority if like the Tory minority government is also possible as well. Yeah, it's quite strange to say those are the main two options. Those are two like quite divergent outcomes. So it didn't really make much sense to me. I suppose the issue is it does seem very unlikely that they're going to win back Scotland which does make winning a majority pretty pretty goddamn difficult. It's improbable. I mean, I'd like to hear what he says about a very seriously very sharp guy about Labour being the biggest party. I'd like to hear what he thinks about that because there's two separate questions. I'd imagine that he was... I mean, I haven't listened to this interview but I imagine from what you've just said that he thinks it's the most likely outcome is either a Conservative majority or the Conservatives being the largest party but Labour having a route to a government because the SNP are never going to prop up a Tory government. And to have a Conservative minority government having 10 DUP MPs being the king makers because I can't, you know, obviously Joe Swinson has far more allegiance to the Conservative party than she does to anyone in the Labour party but given that they're two, you know key positions, one of them is to revoke Article 50 and one of them is to have a very hard Brexit. I think her propping up a Boris Johnson government would be somewhat implausible. Somebody has to put this in the comments. The Tories aren't running a candidate against Joe Swinson as the Eastern Barsonshire. We'll know that now actually if it's been confirmed or not. That was the rumour. No, the Conservatives have been very clear that they're going to stand in every... Well, I don't know, there wasn't a candidate named the Eastern Bartonshire like a week ago. If they hadn't done that, that would have been an absolute gift to the Brexit party who could say that the Conservatives wouldn't stand down for the Brexit party but they would stand down for the Lib Dems. Let's find out. You need to big up the burner before we go. We're going to big up the burner from James Butler. It goes at about 7 in the morning. He records it at about 10 past 6, so respect to him. At the moment, we're potentially going to come out as a podcast next week but at the moment, what you need to do is you need to download Telegram and what do you do? Do you click on a particular link? I've got it on my phone but I've forgotten how I got it. It's Telegram app. Just go to Telegram and then the link is a Telegram link. Maybe we can put it up at the bottom of the... We'll put it in this show description and what you need to do is download Telegram then click on a link which subscribes you to the burner every day which is completely unmissable. It's probably James Butler's pin tweet as well. It's probably James Butler's pin tweet as well. Just tell me. If you go to navara.media.telegram if you go to navara.media.telegram if you go to navara.media.telegram you will be able to... Fox, you're in the show as well. We're going to get a Fox cam. We're going to get a Gary cam. You don't need to whisper. If people want to feedback on that because James says he wants to hear what people want to listen to in the mornings and also that may be a thing after the election. We don't know. If you think it's really good if you think that could replace the today program let us know and we could have our own podcast feed on iTunes or whatever for it. Feedback always welcome. Someone is saying you can get the burner on SoundCloud mate. You can get it on SoundCloud but it's not a nice interface. You want to get it on telegram. Go to navara.media.telegram Let's call it an evening. Let's do that. We will be back soon. At the very latest we'll be back on Tuesday to go live straight after the first Prime Ministerial Debates between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn to talk about what has gone on in those instant reaction and potentially we'll have one before then so make sure you are subscribed to our YouTube channel and that you get notifications whenever we go live. Follow us on Twitter because we always announce it beforehand. There. Thank you as ever for watching this show. Thank you Aaron Bustani for joining me this evening. My pleasure. We've got anything else to shout out? Thank you Fox for producing the show. Thank you Fox. Oh yeah and also it will go higher. Please promote that. How do they sign up to it will go higher? It's doing well by the way. We need to look up how you sign up. Fox could you shout, do you know how to sign up to it will go higher? You don't know that one. We've got 1,300 people so we should let people know how to do it. But basically we now got a second newsletter. The first one was with Ash the Cortado every Thursday morning. It's great. But we've got a new one out. It will go higher every Monday morning in your inbox first thing. The thing with URLs doesn't everyone just I use Google for everything. So I just say Navarra Media the Cortado Navarra Media it will go higher. It will come up. Just use your initiative. I think so. It's also like with these like tactical voting apps. I Google Google images. Tactical voting apps. I don't need a fucking app. I just need to Google my constituency and look at the vote in 2017. Really not that hard. I don't need Best for Britain to lie to me through some bizarre algorithm. Thank you. Alright you can Google how to sign up to it will go higher. But do so and then sign up because it's very good. Good night.