 Good evening and welcome to Tisgy Sal. We have an absolutely jam-packed show for you tonight. Later in the show, I'll be joined by two great guests, Tony Wood, to talk about what's going on in Russia, the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny by Vladimir Putin. What it tells us about the future of that country. At the end of the show, I'm going to be joined by Clive Lewis to talk about Labour's turn towards flags and patriotism. He's worried about it. Are you? The rest of the show, though, we are going to be talking with Aaron Bostani. How are you doing, Aaron? I'm very well, Michael. I'm incredibly happy to be joining you on this jam-packed show. If I wasn't on this show, I'd want to watch it. Exactly. I'd say the same thing myself. We're going to talk about Captain Tom, what his character has meant to the country in this pandemic. There was supposed to be a clap at 6pm. I have to say, no one clapped in Hackney where I am, but I'm not sure if that was a universal experience around the country. Some good news on vaccines. And we are also going to talk about a beef going on in the United States between Glenn Greenwald and AOC, and also AOC describing the events from her perspective of the Capitol Hill riots. There's actually some really shocking stuff that sort of changed my opinion on what happened, so definitely worth staying tuned for. Before we go on to our first story, you know the score, share the show, link, tweet on the hashtag Tiskey Sour, put your comments both under the YouTube videos and on Twitch. Now, the story of Captain Tom has followed the arc of this pandemic. At the start of the crisis, when we were locked down and cheering Britain's carers, the story of a World War II veteran doing laps of his garden to support the NHS inspired many in Britain. He is talking about why he wanted to support health service in its work over the pandemic. They're putting themselves in mortal danger and they're doing it cheerfully and they're doing with everybody's good in mind. I think they are doing marvellous and I think they're so brave. Now, the campaign captured the imagination of many, as did the story in general of Captain Tom. He raised £33 million. In that first wave, he also had a number one single recorded via Zoom. Then in the summer, when much of the country was celebrating the end of the first wave by eating out to help out, Captain Tom went to Buckingham Palace to get knighted by the Queen. Then in the next phase of the pandemic before we were locked down in this last wave, he managed to escape to Barbados but when he returned, like 109,000 others before him, he succumbed to COVID-19. Boris Johnson today in Parliament paid tribute to Captain Tom at PMQs. Captain Sir Tom Morrill, Captain Tom, as we all came to know him, dedicated his life to serving his country and others. His was a long life, lived well, whether during his time defending our nation as an army officer. And last year, bringing the country together through his incredible fundraising drive for the NHS that gave millions a chance to thank the extraordinary men and women of our NHS who protected us in this pandemic. As Captain Tom repeatedly reminded us, please remember, tomorrow will be a good day. He inspired the very best in us all and his legacy will continue to do so for generations to come. Mr Speaker, we now all have the opportunity to show our appreciation for him and all that he stood for and believed in. That's why I encourage everyone to join in a national clap for Captain Tom and all those health workers for whom he raised money at 6pm this evening. So as I say, I didn't hear any clapping where I am in Hackney. I'm not sure if that's because this isn't a particularly Tory area and people don't tend to like taking part in activities at the behest of Boris Johnson. Or maybe these kind of things just don't really work from the top down anywhere in the country. Aaron, I want to bring you in on this. We'll talk about the sort of Boris Johnson element of it in a moment, whether he's using this situation. But first of all, I mean, a story of Captain Tom, you know, putting aside our cynicism about the conservative reaction to it all, it is kind of incredible. You've got like a hundred year old, he comes to represent the fight against COVID-19. You know, quite an inspirational guy, the way he talks about the health service and his history. And then just as the vaccine is beginning to be rolled out, like tens of thousands of other people, he tragically passes away. Yeah. I mean, obviously, he's obviously an amazing person. He's lived a really long time and he's done a lot. And I think in a way, you know, for me, the most important lesson, and look, because I'm writing this book about aging, is that you're never actually too old to actually do something really amazing and what people will remember you for. And I think as we become an older society, increasingly you'll find people who actually hit their strides doing things coming sort of to the public eye, by capturing the public imagination in their 50s, 60s, 70s. That will become increasingly normal, I think. But yeah, I mean, clearly, the reason what we're talking about him, you and I are talking about him right now is because of the broader political context within which he's been mobilized and elevated as a sort of icon in the corona crisis. And I do think, I do think, Michael, people look back on this as something just frankly very strange. I do think in 30, 40 years time, people look back at the COVID crisis and say, my God, they had a 100 year old, a centenarian doing lapses, back garden to raise money for the National Health Service, while a very low GDP country in Southeast Asia, pick Thailand, pick Vietnam were saving lives without having to do this, without having to put old people through the ringer. So I do think on the one hand, hugely impressive, I don't mean any way to denigrate his achievements, particularly those of last year. But at the same time, I think it also does tell us something quite important politically, the way he's been mobilized in the manner in which he has. And, you know, I don't know if you've read, have you read any Evelyn War, Michael? I haven't actually, I'm not very good with novels. I don't find enough time in my life for them. Well, there's a good trilogy of novels. He was a conservative writer before anybody sort of says, you know, Evelyn War is cancelled, I know. But he was probably one of the best novelists, English novelists of the 20th century. And he wrote an amazing trilogy of books about the Second World War. The trilogy is called sort of Medivh Honor and Men of Honor. And one of the sort of characters in this, the main protagonist, the guy called Guy Crouchback, is a sort of Catholic officer. And what he increasingly finds throughout the war is that basically you get these phony heroes being elevated by the establishment to keep people in good cheer throughout the war effort. And actually there's a lot more to it than meets the eye now. That's clearly not the case with Captain Tom Moore. But I do think we have to understand this idea of heroism inflected, infracted through the prism of government failure, right? And one, you know, is inextricably linked to the other. And I mean, I suppose all, I mean, the objections people have to Boris Johnson utilising this, which I think are totally fair, is the one, yes, this was someone who walked across his garden to raise money for the NHS. I mean, I'm sure, you know, people like being part of movements. I don't necessarily think he was driven to that because the NHS was underfunded. But it is true that the NHS has been underfunded for the past 11 years. That's why it is at the brink of collapse every winter when we have a normal flu pandemic and why it was not in any fit state whatsoever to deal with this particular pandemic. I mean, the other issue is, I suppose, you know, almost kind of grows for Boris Johnson to say, let's take inspiration from this person who's passed away as if this is some sort of tragedy which is completely separate from the decisions he has made. And we all know that the death toll we have seen, especially since Christmas, is because of Boris Johnson's decision to go into a lockdown very late. So this isn't a natural disaster. The death of Captain Tom, just as so many of the tens of thousands of people who, especially in this wave who have passed away, have passed away unnecessarily. I want to show you a video of Boris Johnson from a while ago, because I suppose the response some people would give. And I mean, I have some sympathy for this, actually, is to say, look, the politics behind this, especially the clapping, it doesn't make a difference. It's just gestural. What's going on in the background is that you've got an underfunded NHS. You've got a Prime Minister who's made criminally negligent decisions. And this whole movement to try and make the country feel good is itself, you know, on one level dishonest. And I have some sympathy with that. I also, I think making people feel good is kind of fine. But Boris Johnson has sort of, he's spoken about gestural politics before in not the most positive way. This was him talking last summer on LBC about whether he would take the knee. Would you take the knee, Prime Minister? Look, what I want to do is substantial. Well, let me give you my answer. I don't believe in gestures. I believe in substance. I believe in doing things that make a practical difference. So if you look at what this government has done over the last few years, look what I did when I was running this city. I massively increased, for instance, black representation, black and minority ethnic representation in the metropolitan police. We increased the proportion of recruits. We had an active program to accelerate promotion. And I think it's relevant, actually, that you've got these two forms of they are gestural politics. So taking a knee was a gesture. It didn't resolve racism among the police or anywhere. But what it was, is it was saying, this is a symbol of solidarity with people who have passed away because they've been killed by the police. And also, you know, a symbol that we should do better, that we should try and change society. And in that case, Boris Johnson could get away with saying, look, it's just gestural politics. I'm not going to take part in it. From here, you've got another situation where you've got clapping for Captain Moore at 6pm, both for his memory and for the people working for the NHS. That's a form of gestural politics. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't give people working on the NHS front line a paid rise. It doesn't change the fact that Boris Johnson went into this lockdown late, and that's why so many people are passing away. But imagine if Keir Starmer had said something along the lines of what Boris Johnson said then about Black Lives Matter. Imagine if Keir Starmer had said, no, this is just gestural politics. I'm not going to take part. He would be castigated in the press for months. I think he'd probably have to resign. And you can see why, you know, gestural politics, when it involves anti-racism, when it involves minorities, when it involves people who are, you know, explicitly oppressed by this government, you're allowed to opt out of those. Whereas when it comes to this guy who's a, he seems like a wonderful guy, right? But because he's an old, you know, very traditionally British fella, if you were to take that kind of position that Boris Johnson had taken there, you would be, you know, let alone Keir Starmer, it'd probably be the end of anyone's career on Navarra media. You know, that would be you're getting threats from the far right kind of situation. What do you make of that, the way that, you know, Boris Johnson about the Black Lives Matter movement often said, you know, it's important that it should be a choice if people participate. And sometimes when it comes to a situation like this, like even clap for Keir as well as this clap for Captain Tom, it doesn't really feel like a choice, does it? You almost have to get involved. And that's why I think there were so many people on Twitter yesterday saying, I'm not tweeting this evening because they knew that if they tweeted anything remotely critical, they'd end up having like the biggest pile on you could ever possibly imagine. Did that happen though? I mean, when I when I when I heard the news, I thought, oh, that's that's a shame. That's really sad. Then I thought about the fact, you know, his family took him on holiday. Was that particularly wise? Like a hundred year old, a hundred year old on holiday. That's their business. I mean, maybe he just wanted a final holiday. But then, yeah, my third thought was, oh, God, I can see some leftist on Twitter tweeting something. And Michael Goval retweets and then Boris Johnson retweets. I mean, you know, we have days of front pages that didn't happen, did it? I mean, I don't know. Maybe I've missed out here. But I think everyone's what I'm saying is that everyone's been very disciplined. Yeah. You know, I recognize one person, right? Before we go on to very good news about vaccines, you know, the score, we have 1500 people watching. We want to get that higher. So do share the show link. Now, results from ongoing trials of the Oxford vaccine have delivered incredibly good news, both for the British rollout of the vaccine and for the potential for vaccines to end this pandemic more generally. Now, on the Britain specific issue, this has a lot to do or everything to do with the gap that our government announced there would be between having the first dose and the second dose of a coronavirus vaccine. So the initial plan was to give it first dose, then your second dose after three weeks, they changed it to 12 weeks. That was so they could give more people the first dose and they thought, you know, slow down depths quicker than would otherwise have been the case. Now, there were some doubters about this. Some people were saying, look, this isn't how the trials were done. This could be taking a real risk. But results from Oxford, so they're doing a sort of ongoing constantly developing trials of this vaccine are very positive on this front. So they say that protection from a single dose does not fall over a three month period with efficacy remaining at 76%. They also show that over the long term, a delayed booster is in fact more effective than one delivered after three weeks. We can go to a quote from the scientists. They conclude data supports the four to 12 week prime boost dosing interval recommended by global regulators or by many global regulators because it wasn't recommended by all of them. Also, this is probably more significant in fact, especially in terms of the global fight against this pandemic was what they told us about vaccinations more generally. Let's go straight to the quote here. So the Oxford scientists write analysis of PCR positive swabs in UK population suggests vaccine may have substantial effect on transmission of the virus with 67% reduction in positive swabs among those vaccinated. Now, this is really important. The importance of this can't be overstated because we already knew that what the COVID vaccines, all of the ones which have been approved now all the ones which have been shown to be effective. They all are effective against disease. They are less likely or you are less likely extremely less likely to get disease to suffer from COVID and especially to go to hospital. And it's almost, you know, it's 100% sure you won't die if you've had the vaccine. That seems to be the case from the trials so far, but we didn't know if you would be able to transmit it to other people. And this really matters because if it's been shown out, this vaccine does stop transmission. That means we can reach herd immunity, you know, vaccine induced herd immunity, not natural induced herd immunity where we will have to get ill first much quicker than we might have previously fought. Let's take a look at Matt Hancock celebrating the news on Sky this morning. So that reduction in transmission, as well as the very, very, there's no hospitalizations. The combination of that is very good news. And it categorically supports the strategy that we've been taking of having a 12 week gap between the doses because it shows that the strength of the protection you get is in fact slightly enhanced by a 12 week gap between the doses. So it's good news all around. The Oxford scientists have also said they will be publishing data on the vaccines effectiveness on new strains. So all of the results we've had so far on the original COVID strain. The scientists have said they predict they predict the results to be similar to other vaccines, which essentially means that against some of these new variants, the vaccines will be less effective, but they'll still be effective. We won't go below the 50% effectiveness, which was the original threshold for regulators. The other good news, and this is significant, because the UK roller of the vaccine is proving so successful, it's happening so fast. We've had 10 million people vaccinated in this country already. It's possible we could all get immunity sooner than we thought. So late on Monday, Sam Coats at Sky revealed that some in Whitehall think every adult in Britain could be offered a first dose of a vaccine by the start of May. And today, to add to that, Steven Swinford, deputy political editor at The Times tweeted this. Every adult will have had two doses of coronavirus vaccine by the end of August. Senior government sources believe you won't hear ministers saying it publicly, though they're acutely aware of the risk of over promising and under delivering given past events. Now, Aaron, none of this should be taken as certainties. I don't think we should all be getting ready to go clubbing in mid-May because we'll all have been vaccinated at the start of it. But this is much more positive than any of us would have imagined at the start of the year. I mean, it's incredible news, Michael. If you go back six months to last summer, or even September, I don't know, when was it announced there were successful trials for the first one? I think it was the BioNTech one was the first one, wasn't it? And then Pfizer, prior to that. I know they got approved in December. You remember on, I think it was the today program on the World at One specialist came on and said, what does this mean? He said, basically, we could be out of the woods in a year. And people like, oh, wow, because we had those conversations all the time. Like we were saying, you know, it could take several years for a vaccine to arrive. It may be incredibly expensive. You know, it may be incredibly difficult to produce, et cetera, et cetera. Turns out there are multiple vaccines, which are easy to produce and easy to distribute and some are harder than others. But, you know, we can basically see global herd immunity sometime by 2022-2023. I mean, this is what Richard Horton told me on Navarra Media recently, editor of the Lancet. So there's no reason for us to disagree with what Richard Horton has to say. He's not been particularly overoptimistic when it comes to these things since the pandemic began. So it's clearly amazing news. I think, you know, six months ago it was kind of unimaginable. And it's clearly a break with much of what's going on in the rest of the European Union. I think the second highest rate of vaccination amongst the European countries is Malta, which is something like maybe I think maybe somebody can correct this. I think it's maybe 4%, given it's a country of 300,000 people. You know, it could do it much more quickly than that, too. So for a country like Britain to be where we are, a population of 65 million, a much larger land mass, it's a huge accomplishment, Michael. And I, you know, ultimately, yes, on the left, we're going to say that's because of the NHS, not because of the government, but the government did massively over-purchase and people will say, well, you need to ration these, it should be fair and so on. But if you think, you know, the government has bought 400 million, sorry, is it 400 million doses of a vaccine in the long term? I think we could be getting around at a maximum. So you think, look, there's 65 million people, two doses each. We might have to do this every year, 18 months. I mean, that's, you know, that's probably reasonable, actually. So the government did a great job in procurement, and then the NHS did a great job in terms of distribution. So it's brilliant news. But then, of course, there is the caveat. We could get a mutation whereby, you know, actually the efficacy rate drops dramatically. So Novavax, for instance, or the Johnson & Johnson vaccines, much cheaper to produce than biotech and Pfizer ones, kind of surprised people how effective they are. But actually, as with all the vaccines compared to the variant, for instance, from South Africa recently, it's about a 50% efficacy rate. Now, if we get mutations which basically drop the efficacy rate to below 50%, then we start to have problems again. If that doesn't happen, if that doesn't happen big if, then this is fantastic news. And what Richard Horton told me earlier this week is that we may not be able to go on summer holidays this year. I think perhaps we will, probably not to a few big European countries, but other places. Yeah, probably by next year, we'll see more or less business as usual, which is remarkable. It's never happened before, within two years. Some global South countries are going to struggle. That's going to require global solidarity, but more or less amongst the OECD will be back to normal, which is kind of confirmed here. And Britain will be at the front of that, which I don't think any of us expected six months ago. Yeah, I mean, it's really surprising that, especially, as you say, procurement, they've done really well because sort of the critique of the government is to say, look, all we've done is we've hoarded vaccines, right? So we've got all of these vaccines, which means other people don't have vaccines. But if you read about the actual process in this country and also, we should caveat this with the government's handling of COVID has been appalling. The reason why we have 108,000 deaths or 109,000 now deaths is because Boris Johnson didn't listen to his scientists because we never went into lockdown because we had this sort of addiction to listening to industry logby group groups who didn't want to slow down travel or who didn't want to close hospitality, et cetera, et cetera. That's why it's been such a catastrophe. But on this one particular issue, the government have done very well and it seems actually in particular Matt Hancock has done quite well because they made a decision which was to say, look, we don't really care if we splash some cash and it fails. What we want to do is make sure we get vaccines as quickly as possible, which means they just spent billions here and there everywhere. Britain spent the same amount as the whole of Europe on investment in vaccines and obviously we have a much smaller population. And it has paid off. That's why we have so many vaccines which seem like they're going to work. The sooner actually that people in this country get vaccinated the sooner I think the government seem like they probably will want to export vaccines as sort of an effort of diplomacy. It's quite a cheap way actually to find yourselves in good stead with the rest of the world. So it's a genuine good news story. As Aaron says, the only risk here now it seems is if a variant emerges. It could come from abroad. It's also become apparent that there are variants which are evolving independently in this country that have the same features as the South African variant which will mean that they could be a bit more resistant to the vaccine, which is why while we're doing this vaccine rollout we want to make as sure as we possibly can be that we aren't allowing the virus to grow out of control because obviously the more people who catch COVID the more people who pass it on the more chance there is for evolutions of it. And that's the last thing we want not because it would mean that we'll be in the same first wave that we've had. It seems very unlikely that that will happen again but that we can say goodbye to any hopes of having a decent summer. I personally don't think there will be international travel this summer. I don't think there'll be that much demand for it and I think it will be seen as a very big risk. So I think we'll have another holiday of staycations which I can definitely handle for a year. Let's go to a comment. Juliet Duffy with £25 says, amazing work you guys. I always tune in. Thanks for keeping me updated with excellent analysis. It's my 25th birthday today. So here's 25 quid from a Glaswegian living in London. Happy birthday Juliet Duffy. Thank you so much for the donation. I hope you have a wonderful day. I'm sure it's going to be a quieter birthday than usual. I just need to check if we've got our next guest. I've got a slightly different setup today. Can I come in with my arms? Yeah, you can come in. I have three points to say. I do think by the summer, I think by August anyway, between countries with higher vaccination rates you can see travel corridors because ultimately the tourism industry has collapsed. I'm not talking about aviation companies. I'm talking about potential corridors between one or two European countries, maybe the United States, the UK. That's plausible. I can see how that would work. Also maybe Southeast Asia. Because ultimately these are industries which are going to collapse. I can see the argument and I think it probably can be done quite safely. But it's nothing like what we saw over the summer with people going to South Spain and so on and so forth. Secondly, what this shows, the procurement strategy which has been done so well by the government with regards to getting various vaccines. This offers a glimpse of how the government should basically engage in state intervention of the market in the future. Climate change. We need new technologies to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions to ultimately withdraw carbon from the atmosphere. The government should be going to businesses that are trying to do this saying, we're going to give you X amount of money for 10% equity, 20% equity, 30% equity. Most of those won't work. Most of those won't deliver. But the whole point is, we've been told for 40 years you can't have the government back winners. It will always fail. They talk about Concord. They talk about British Leyland. What have we just seen with these coronavirus vaccines in their procurement? We've seen the government back winners. So if it's worked here to solve a major problem which was a pandemic, why can't we do the same thing when it comes to climate change and backing new technologies, new business models which allow us to withdraw and reduce carbon from our atmosphere and a bunch of other things too. And then finally, what's really important is, Michael, we can't just talk about mutations. The reality is we're going to see far more pandemics over the course of the 21st century by virtue of climate change, deforestation and globalization. The fact that more people are traveling, more goods are moving around the world more quickly than ever before. That means we're going to see more of these pandemics. It's no coincidence. There have been three distinct coronaviruses this century. There will be more. And so the lesson has to be the next pathogen that breaks the species sort of barrier that we're subject to, whether it's a SARS-like virus or Ebola or Zika. We need to have a response which is entirely different. So what does that mean? It means that globally we're going to need a floor on public healthcare which is free at the point of use. We're going to need that. That's in everybody's interest, by the way. Whether you're a New York banker or a fisherman in Southeast Asia, it's in everybody's interest for universal free healthcare and universal vaccination programs. And also we need government capacity, whether it's state-administered quarantine or test and trace systems which are overseen by the state and which are highly effective. Because it may well be, Michael, that the next pathogen we are subject to is far worse than this. And so, yes, the problem is there with mutations, but we could have another virus do precisely the same thing, maybe even worse in five, 10, 20 years. We have to learn the lessons, which is exactly what East Asia did after the 2003 SARS outbreak. We have to learn these lessons. If we don't, it might not be 18 months we lose of economic life, social life. It might be five, 10 years. This thing is 10 times more deadly than the flu. What if it's 100 times next time? That's plausible. That is not me being hysterical or hyperbolic. That's entirely plausible. So I think that's a major lesson too. No, I do think that's tough. I'm glad you got the chance to make those three points, Aaron. I thought they were all very, very important, actually, especially the one that I really want. I really want to be politicized, actually. And I think Labour have taken all the wrong lessons here, which is that if you, you know, mission-oriented industrial policy is what Marina Matsukato would talk about. You know, you had the government which had an aim. We want to get a vaccine as soon as possible. They said, look, considering how important it is to achieve this, you know, throwing a billion here, a billion there, it really doesn't make any difference. You know, if we get this vaccine a month earlier than we would have otherwise done, that is going to save 100 times more than the amount we could possibly waste on a failed vaccine. So let's be really liberal with this. Let's splash the cash and hope something works. That's exactly how we should approach climate change, as you say. We should be saying, how do we have a completely zero carbon energy system? How do we have a completely zero carbon heating system? What we need to do is splash cash, invest in all of these different startup companies because the costs of not resolving climate change are going to be way bigger than any waste we might have on a few failed projects. And why I say this relates to the Labour Party, actually, is because they clearly had a strategy when Keir Starmer became leader, to say what we want to do is reassure people that where they think Labour are weak, we are strong. And one of these was when it comes to sort of fiscal profligacy. So they thought the public think that we like to spend money. So when they saw the Conservative spending quite a lot of money, be it on PPE or vaccines, etc., they were very quick to say, oh, this seems like a waste. You've got this friend doing that, this, that, and the other. And my impression at the time was that people weren't really going to care about this because it's all, in a pandemic, people care about their incomes and they care about their loved ones and they care about people dying. They don't really care if someone's mate got money for PPE instead of one other person or if some failed PPE came here. But it's now something that actually the Tories are very explicitly saying, no, that was always our plan. Our plan was always just to spend money here and everywhere and hope for the best. Matt Hancock has been explicitly saying that in press conferences this week. He said, we threw money here and everywhere and we might have wasted some. But you like the result. I like the result. So really don't complain about us if we wasted some money. And it seems like the Labour Party still aren't willing to go beyond saying, oh, they spent a bit of money on this project where there was a connection to their friend when actually, I don't think the public care. And I think instead of nitpicking here and there, we should say, let's do this again. But for other issues that people care about, climate change, let's do this again. But for technology, when it comes to aging, Aaron, I want your final point on this before we go to our next story. I think you've just nailed it, Michael. I think that's entirely right. And I think you're right. People don't really care. If you said, look, we're going to make some sort of... We're going to do some procurement deals, which won't work out, but we'll eliminate homelessness and we'll ensure that every person in this country has access to either affordable or free social housing. Great. We'll build amazing public infrastructure. We'll build amazing schools. Not using PFI, by the way. I think people will be up for that. And I think you've nailed that there, Michael. Great example here is Tesla. Tesla is one of the sort of leading companies, completely overvalued. I'm not saying it's a great company, but it's a world leader in electric vehicles. Without huge injections of liquidity from the US state twice, it probably wouldn't exist today. And that was a mistake in so much as those shouldn't have been loans, which were then paid back. The American government got in the company because it would have found a huge return, but that's exactly the sort of thing we should now be doing. And it's the kind of smart, necessary policy that sadly Labour isn't even talking about. Labour has moved backwards. And what's happening with the Tories, where they're talking about where they've started, this DARPA-like agency, it might be a joke, it might not be serious, it might be purely cosmetic, we don't know. But at least they're gesturing towards the things and the kinds of policies that we're going to be talking about by Marianna Mazzucato, who I have an interview with on the Vora Media next week. And Labour just feel a million miles away from that right now. People want politicians who solve problems. Matt Hancock, with the procurement of these vaccines, solved the problem. That's all they care about, that's all they hear. They don't care if some friend of a friend of his managed to get some big contract. It doesn't matter, it doesn't affect their life. So I think you're entirely right, Michael. And I think sadly Labour have pursued the other thing to point out, which we will have to be carried over to any sort of future policy questions, is that the reason this has worked is also because there was a deal with Oxford and AstraZeneca that AstraZeneca couldn't make a profit of this vaccine, at least in the short term, and for perpetuity in the global south. So we'd have to invoke those same conditions when it comes to investment in climate change technologies, for example. Let's go to a comment. I'm very excited, hence I'm sending a super chat. Keep up the good work. We're very excited to have you watching us live, Michael. And thank you so much for that super chat. Now, we are going to Russia for our next story because more than a thousand protesters have been arrested after demonstrations in Moscow following the sentencing of Alexei Navalny to two years later and eight months in prison. Navalny, who is Russia's most high-profile opponent of Vladimir Putin, was arrested on his return to the country last month after having survived poisoning by Novichok, most likely by agents of the Russian state. Now, the dissident has been charged with violating parole from a suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement, a charge which is widely believed to have been politically motivated. He also missed parole because he'd been poisoned with Novichok. You couldn't really make this up. Now, Alexei Navalny who previously stood to be mayor of Moscow has long been a fawn in the side of Vladimir Putin and a vocal critic of corruption in and around the Russian government very recently. So in this process of events which has now led to his imprisonment in a move which would have infuriated Putin when Navalny landed in Russia last month, a video was released which he had produced while recovering from his poisoning in Germany. Now, it contained drone footage of a palace allegedly built for Vladimir Putin with money siphoned off from the state. Now, Navalny calls the palace the New Versailles which allegedly cost £1 billion to construct. The video is two hours long. It's very entertaining. I recommend you watch it. This is a real showman talking. It's narrated by Navalny and has clocked up 108 million views. The start of it actually is also fantastic because he's saying I'm recording this in Germany but when you watch this, I will be in Russia because I'm not coward and he knows that he would have been arrested by the time it gets released on YouTube. Let's take a look at Navalny explaining what's special about the palace. Without exaggeration it is the most secretive and guarded facility in Russia. It isn't a country house or a residence. It's an entire city or rather a kingdom. It has impregnable provinces, its own harbour, guards, church, its own checkpoint, no fry zone and even its own border point. It is a separate state inside Russia. So will Navalny's imprisonment shut him up or only further provoke protests from the movement which has built up around him and has Vladimir Putin's presidency been put at risk by the exposés of his media savvy opponent. To find out I'm joined by Tony Wood author of Russia without Putin published by Verso in 2018. Tony, welcome to the show. Thanks, Michael. Great to be on. Now, Navalny's return to Russia has been marked by widespread protests across the country. Will this decision now to imprison him for two and a half years put a lid on that movement? Will it put a lid on the threat to Putin or will this just I suppose provoke it to grow only bigger? Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's a strange sense in which Navalny's arrest doesn't really change that much. I think when he returned to Russia he knew that was going to happen. So I think the real question is how long a game is everyone playing? How many protests are they going to be and how long can that be sustained? The early signs of the Russian government intends to clamp down pretty fiercely and they can get a lot more violent as we've been able to see. The number of arrests has been ticking up with successive weekends. So it's sort of a question of pacing and how much pressure the people in the streets are willing to take. Navalny in his speech, I don't know if people might have seen that, he made a very good point where he said this is really not about me. I can go to prison, it doesn't really matter. The question is how many more of us there are on the streets and the more the better. More or less he said they can't put everyone in prison. So the gamble is just will enough people go out on the streets to keep the pressure up on the Kremlin or will they be able to keep a lid on it? And it's kind of too early to say. How popular or how vulnerable is Putin's rule at this point in time? My understanding has been that he's been corrupt for a very long time, but he's also had fairly widespread popularity even if there aren't particularly free and fair elections. But at this point in time is it a sort of situation where if people realize, oh political change is possible then you'll have that critical mass where people pile onto the streets and then the regime falls or is that sort of imposing a structure of thinking onto the situation that doesn't actually apply? Yeah I think it's sort of hard to measure this stuff. I think partly because opinion polls are very unreliable in Russia as elsewhere. And partly I think the popularity of the regime is genuine. There is a kind of real what used to be called the Putin majority which was pensioners, people in state sector, jobs people with some kind of connections to the state apparatus which is a very large number of people in Russia. And a lot of people whose personal fortunes had improved in the 2000s relative to what they underwent in the 1990s which is a time of course of great deprivation and economic depression in Russia. So there was a very strong kind of Putin consensus if you like and the question now is how solid that is and I think there are signs that it's not as totally solid as everyone would like to believe in as the polls would seem to indicate. The consensus is if you like it seemingly solid but actually quite brittle. There's a US political scientist based in the UK actually Samuel Green who came with a very good term to describe Russian public opinion saying that it's not passive but it's aggressively inert was the term he used which I think is a nice distinction because it does capture that psychology you're talking about of once the calculation shifts then once you reach a critical mass then events can move very, very swiftly. I think not to get carried away but the historical precedent that you can look at is that in early 1991 there was a referendum on changes to the Constitution of the Soviet Union and the new sort of union treaty and basically large majorities of the population voted in favour of maintaining the Soviet Union but in a different form and of course by the end of that same year that entire state had disappeared so that's a sort of sign that the popular agency in Russia in the last 30 years has actually shifted very, very quickly in ways that no one I think would have predicted. Can we talk a bit about the politics of Alexei Navalny because obviously he's lauded in the west as sort of this liberal hero challenging the undemocratic nature of Russia and the corruption there. Also as far as I understand he has a history of saying some really racist, extremely nationalist thing comparing Muslims to cockroaches. I mean what kind of character is he and what does that say about the movement which he has come to lead? Yeah I think you're absolutely right to point to those really very alarming parts of his political repertoire and I've been quite critical of him in the past, in things I've written and certainly talking to people in Russia that there is this sort of ease with that aspect of his politics. He has undergone something of a political mutation if you like, a series of shifts in the past four or five years and again not to say that these are genuine or heartfelt but that he's understood the political calculus is slightly different and I think what doesn't necessarily receive as much play outside Russia is because of that framing of him as the lone liberal dissident fighting against the tyranny of the state etc. Is that a lot of the shifts he's undergone politically in a much more social direction his 2018, he did a late 2017 excuse me, he did a presidential platform to run in the following years. Presidential election he was barred from running but the platform itself was much more socially oriented it stressed the social welfare functions of the state called for increased spending on health and infrastructure it was against raising the pension age which the government then did later that year and those are all things that Navalny himself would have not supported several years before in fact his own party in 2014 called for raising the pension age so you know in that space of four years he'd taken a it's a bit strong to call it a left turn but certainly he'd clearly understood that the country centre of gravity was not quite where he thought it was and I think some of that nationalist rhetoric has also fallen by the wayside partly because I think he's realised that it's not going to work. Slightly if you like off putting both to people outside Russia but also within Russia which is after all a multi-ethnic state and I think a lot of his support base would not be in favour of a very nationalist outlook I mean I think there's been a lot of debates within the Russian left which is a very small part of public opinion but I think it's worth highlighting these because they highlight a larger kind of tactical question which is to a certain extent Navalny is really the only game in town for the Russian opposition so the question is do you join it in the hopes of contributing to that movement and if possible turning it to the left or do you stand apart from it and then have to like fight on your own against the same kind of enemy and I think a lot of the Russian left as is true of a lot of other Russian political forces liberals I mean even some on the right who are opposed to the regime have realised that Navalny is the kind of galvanising force for an entire opposition movement so there is a sense in which you know his anti-corruption politics it's not totally empty in ideological terms we can talk more about what the implications that are but it is capacious enough to bring together a lot of different kinds of opinion and that's part of his force I think so even if there is sort of passed far right statements from him he's not actually fronting a far right movement I want to bring Aaron in because I know that he's got a question yeah I just want to know Tony what European figures would you compare Navalny to because obviously in my mind I might think Marine Le Pen or Salvini but from what you're saying here actually he's kind of like a much more opportunist populist so I'm thinking perhaps the five star movement four or five years ago or you know John Gnar when he ran for the Icelandic you know the mayor of Reykjavik a long time ago now is that a sort of fair assessment actually a relatively empty populist who is just a signifier ultimately if he was ever to have power he could be on the right he could be on the centre on the left and then second question foreign policy which is why people talk about Russian politics in Britain and elsewhere I mean he said previously that he depends to the effect that you know Belarus and the Ukraine are effectively Russia or perhaps that's been mistranslated so he also clarified some of his views on sort of Russian irredentism yeah sure I mean I think he yeah I guess I don't I don't want to say he's totally empty I think he does have views of his own but I think he's just willing to be flexible and adaptable as a smart politician would be I think the comparisons you mentioned I think the five star movement certainly makes sense I think what's interesting there to think about is that the five star movement was a movement I mean there were figures in it that were very prominent and Bebe Grillo was one of them but I mean Navalny is really on his own in terms of prominence within that movement and I think he's really unlike those in the sense that he's very charismatic Michael mentioned the video which I do recommend people watch because it's actually very funny among other things just the comment and that's partly true I mean excuse me it's true it's his Twitter presence his blogging I mean it's just a way that he has a kind of humor an irony that I think really appeals to people and that makes him compelling I mean even in his speech yesterday when he was being sentenced you know he talked about Putin going down in history as you know he compared his great Russian historical figures you know at Tsar Alexander the Liberator Yaroslav the Wise Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants everything he does that's very serious and politically charged he still manages to have a kind of light touch which I think is kind of impressive I guess the other thing that makes him unlike these figures is that in a way because the Russian regime has so totally dominated the political spectrum and just emptied it of any real ideological contest or you know substance he's really the terrain is kind of empty in a way that it's not in European European states where you have these very established political formations like it or not with you know very long standing connections you know very atrophied now but in society in terms of trade unions and associations and such like that all of that formation in Europe is certainly in crisis and eroded but it's very present whereas I think Navalny is operating in much emptier terrain and he's much it's a much more straightforward message in a way that like and that it involves a really kind of systemic critique of the way that the whole of the post Soviet system has worked it's really not he obviously in this latest video and in what he's been doing he's going after Putin but a lot of his criticisms are of the entire post-soviet order and its corruption so there is a sense in which he's unlike those European movements in having this kind of really you know effective populist attack on the order that has shaped people's lives in total I guess that was Aaron's first question could you remind me again of the second one because I've already forgotten it sorry it was foreign policy foreign policy yeah minor detail yeah in terms of his irresentism I think again some of those statements I don't doubt that he holds those views because they're sort of quite ordinary views among Russians that they had this tendency certainly I mean the agent Navalny is he would have grown up thinking of Russian speaking parts of the former Soviet Union and especially the kind of Slavic even if they're not Russian speaking they speak cognate or closely related languages he would they would grow up thinking of those as ours right in a way that Central Asia for example someone like Navalny would not think is home in a certain sense whereas Ukraine I think a lot of Russians in this very nationalist way tend to think well yeah we're all part of the same thing but I think in terms of foreign policy he'd probably be pretty conventional he would certainly have moved to have better relations with the West and he would have a better chance of that but I think sort of lurking behind all of this there is something to think about certainly for Western foreign policy and for everyone else that there are certain things that I think any Russian government would want to do that Russia has interest as a state that any national leader whether it be Putin whether it be someone else whether it be Navalny would try and defend and so the question I think for the West is what do those what interests of Russia's are outside parties willing to recognize as legitimate and where do we think that it's illegitimate and I think there's been a kind of tendency certainly since the fall of the Soviet Union to think that Russia really doesn't have any legitimate interests that can be distinguished from those of the West or rather when they do differ they're illegitimate and I think if say Putin were to be booted out of power I don't think it's likely but if he were and someone like Navalny were to come in I think you might find some of the same questions arising that Navalny for example would would be opposed to further expansion of NATO I think and that would be a normal thing for a Russian ruler to do and the question is then what would the Western response that be if it's not Putin so I think I wouldn't really expect him to change a huge amount I think the tone of it would be very different and the relations with the West would be better but I think we would run into similar conflicts somewhere down the line Tony Wood thank you so much for joining us this evening and for all of your insights there we'll speak soon if you enjoyed that from Tony Wood I do 100% recommend you go and revisit a podcast from 2018 with James Butler and Tony which discussed many of the issues we've brought up today but sort of really in-depth about the political system in Russia I also do advise you to watch that two hour long video by Navalny just because it is very witty very entertaining I felt like I learned quite a lot we're going to rush through our next story in 2020 the US left didn't quite reach the grand heights it was hoping to Bernie Sanders lost the primaries and a centrist Democrat is now president however the political landscape in the state still seems fairly promising Bernie Sanders chairs the Senate Budget Committee AOC is arguably the country's most high profile congress person and Biden was elected on a platform significantly to the left of Obama it might seem odd then that large parts of the US left seem to be tearing each other apart at the moment this clip of Glenn Greenwald recently went viral this week has been like the most amazing week of having the left and the right unite against Wall Street almost everybody across the spectrum supports what those redditors are doing and is thrilled to see these hedge fund leeches suffering and it has blown it's created a major opportunity to regulate to legislate to reform and Ted Cruz whatever you think of him reached out by saying I agree with AOC about this so that was an opportunity for right and left to join together to do something that supposedly her main reason for existing as a political figure which is fighting income inequality and instead she turns around and says fuck you I don't want to work with you you guys got me murdered you're a white sometimes says so what's going on here now that clip was from four days ago the context was the GameStop surge we talked about on last Friday's show so more specifically it's referring to the moment in that that whole saga where Robin Hood which is a stock market trading app suspended the buying and selling of GameStop shares in response to that decision from Robin Hood AOC tweeted her concern Ted Cruz the right wing Republican tweeted agreeing with her and AOC responded like this so she wrote I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there's common ground but you almost had me murdered three weeks ago so you can sit this one out happy to work with almost any other GOP that aren't trying to get me killed in the meantime if you want to help you can resign now what was going on there was Glenn Greenwald was characterizing that as a missed opportunity for cross-party support against Wall Street and what many people took offense to was sort of his impersonation really of AOC giving her a whiny baby like voice you know if you follow American left twitter they're beefing all the time at the moment anyway the problem with what he said and you know we should note that this was he said that before the video we're about to show you is that when AOC said the capital rights nearly got her murdered it's really not clear she's overreacting we have found out since those rights that a Texas man has who participated in the capital right has been charged with threatening to assassinate AOC and on Tuesday AOC released a video reporting the events of that day let's take a look I go back in and I hide back in in the bathroom behind the door and then I just start to hear these yells of where is she where is she and I just thought to myself they got inside and so I hide behind my door like this like I'm here and the bathroom door starts going like this like the bathroom door is behind me or rather in front of me and I'm like this and the door hinges right here and I just hear where is she where is she and this was the moment where I thought everything was over and the weird thing about moments like these is that you lose all sense of time in retrospect maybe it was 4 seconds maybe it was 5 seconds maybe it was 10 seconds maybe it was 1 second I don't know it felt like my brain was able to have so many thoughts in that moment between these screams and these yells of where is she where is she and so I go down and I just I mean I thought I was going to die and I mean that all sounds so terrifying so awful and I should say again Glenn Greenwald's comments were made before AOC released that video so he might have spoken differently were he to have watched that first who can say it's worth noting the reason she was so angry at Ted Cruz is that he was someone who had supported, had actively supported all of Donald Trump's claims about election fraud and had therefore been a huge part of motivating and legitimizing those people who took part in those capital riots I want to show you a bit more of that clip actually because we'll talk about the context here what it means the debates within the left that's going on but first of all I just want to show you this because I think it really demonstrates how incredible a politician AOC really is and I had a lot of thoughts you have a lot of thoughts I think when you're in a situation like that and like also one of those thoughts that I had was I just happened to be a spiritual person and be raised in that context and I really just felt like you know if this is the plan for me then people will be able to take it from here I had a lot of thoughts but that was the thought that I had about you all I felt that if this was the journey that my life was taking that I felt that things were going to be okay and that I had fulfilled my purpose so I think that clip shows you a couple of things which is just what a phenomenal politician she is not just because of her skill at communicating but the relationships she has to her constituents who live in her precise constituency in New York but the people who feel like she represents them in the country you can really see her bringing a whole movement with her in such a moving way and I have to say actually there's also changed my perspective about the capital riots because I initially thought look these are a bunch of people who look like they're at a pantomime it's clearly not a genuine coup I don't think that the American state was ever under threat of falling but you do have left-wing people especially left-wing women of colour who are prominent in Britain in America who are under real threat of political violence from right-wingers and that shouldn't be taken lightly before I go to you Aaron I do want to quickly mention to clarify AOC said it was a capital police officer actually who was shouting where is she, where is she but there was no partner with them he hadn't been shouting that he was a police officer and even after AOC works out it's a cop he's super aggressive he then tells them to go down to a level of the building where there is no protection AOC is on her own she has no idea where to go all completely shocking actually you're watching you're watching Tisgis How We Go Live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7pm if you don't want to miss a video make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit that notifications button Aaron how are you viewing I suppose there's a couple of questions here how did you react to that AOC video there but also how are you interpreting the beef that's currently going on in the US left seems to be about this particular issue are you more interested in working with Republicans or Liberal Democrats there was an issue about force to vote it sort of surprises me how hostile everyone seems to be being to each other given that actually they've been quite successful yes and no because on the one hand you think well they've achieved so much more than we achieved as the British left here but you know I think with Trump and with Covid obviously hundreds of thousands of people have died the chance of Bernie Sanders and there could have been a Sanders presidency with control of Congress which could have transformed US public life and society and its economy that could have happened and so I can see why people are upset and angry their recriminations and bitterness ultimately that's all on Bernie Sanders you can't blame staffers you can't blame anybody else he's the person if it succeeds that's up to him if it fails it's down to him did he hire the right people did he make the right speeches did he try to appeal to certain sort of parts of the of the of the electorate it's not worth having that ranker and those disagreements with 101 people the same applies here by the way with regards to Labour's Brexit policy I can sort of I do obviously lambast people like Paul Mason or another Europe is possible but ultimately it falls down to Jeremy Corbyn ultimately that's how you have to do things otherwise you'll go a bit crazy almost but in terms of this I think it's really important to say you know some of the comments saying that AOC is being dramatic etc you know Gabby Giffords was a democratic politician in the United States she was shot she had to leave politics because she was effectively suffering from a disability subsequent to that you've seen American presidents being either assassinated or subject to attempts to assassinations repeatedly Reagan most recently in the 80s but then of course Jeff Ken 60s something might say well that was the deep state or whatever because violence has been at the center of American politics for a really long time so it's really not unthinkable that somebody like AOC would be subject to these kinds of threats so I don't think it should be taken lightly which I think is what Greenwald does but I do think there are some points which Greenwald raises which I can kind of understand which is and I'm not in the US so I don't know and I don't agree with them for one second by the way at working with Ted Cruz Ted Cruz is absolutely no interest in reforming the US economy and what's more the Democrats don't need him because they've got control of congress people at AOC need to be trying to leverage Joe Biden influence him not Ted Cruz anyway I think her response to him was absolutely optimal and fine I think she should try and discredit him as much as possible but there is something going on right now in the United States where you feel that the problem for the left may be because they've been very successful within the Democratic Party the problem may be now that they get recuperated by effectively a center left administration which may do many bad things that may be a problem they now have to confront it's been very easy for AOC and Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders to attack Trump his response to Covid the state of the economy Black Lives Matter because they weren't in power it's very different when your own guy is in the Oval Office which is what we now have with Joe Biden the next time a George Floyd is shot murdered by a police officer what's the response of federal government going to be if there are riots how will it respond and by extension how will these people respond to a Democrat president I think that's an important question to ask but I think Greenwald does it in a very poor way and I think he belittles obviously the horrific events which AOC and others were subject to completely unnecessary in politics for so long with so much intelligence are engaging in these really spiteful personal attacks these are strategic questions you need to have them in good faith you need to have them with a modicum of decency I think I think that question of are the left within the Democratic Party at risk of recuperation is the key one I think it's a very interesting question I think potentially what AOC and her colleagues have learned or potentially taken from those primaries is that actually there's a limit to how successful you can be in the Democratic Party if you position yourself purely as an outsider which is why AOC is seen by many as being a bit more friendly to the Democratic establishment than is Bernie Sanders but many people's interpretation of the failures of Bernie Sanders in those primaries because he didn't love bomb Democrats enough not necessarily the leadership of the Democratic Party but Democrats as Democrats so to say I actually believe in this party I'm one of you and he underestimated how much commitment there was in society to the Democratic Party and that seems to me to be what AOC has learned and that's why they seem to be unwilling to fight what they see as unnecessary battles with the party establishment so for example to fill in our audience there is also a massive debate which involves the same protagonist about whether or not the left-wing Congress people should vote against Nancy Pelosi to become Speaker until she guarantees that there will be a vote on the floor of the House AOC and her colleagues have said there'd be no point in doing this we'd lose anyway it's just a way for us to sort of undermine internal coalitions within the Democratic Party and then people such as Jimmy Dawg, Glenn Greenwald, people like Breanna Joy Gray have sort of said no you're selling out all ready I don't know what you thought about that particular debate do you think that AOC and you've said it's a possibility that they get co-opted do you think that the actions they're taking at this point in time make it seem like co-option will happen we'll see I think it's very possible and I think ultimately the Democratic Party like the Labour Party in this country because of our outdated electoral systems is ultimately going to be a coalition of people who really disagree with one another and if you have a political vision for the United States which is a free accessible healthcare of social justice in the economy of civil rights being extended to everybody regardless of colour or creed Joe Biden is only going to take you so far Nancy Pelosi is only going to take you so far and I think you need coalitions and that's not to say I'm not going to do business with them I think obviously the Democratic Party with the left in it right now is probably in quite a good place but it's something you need to really have an eye on Michael and that's why we go back to the discussions we've had in the Labour Party over the last five years relating to the Labour Party over the last five years we've had those discussions as journalists about mandatory selection which is politicians will often make or sometimes will make mistakes and there needs to be methods of accountability for that but the advances they have in the United States and I think this is really good is they have primaries so if AOC is accountable to a movement and she doesn't step up and she makes terrible mistakes like Jimmy Dore and Glenn Greenwald are saying they can primary her they can beat her with a candidate to her left who will do the things they're saying she isn't doing but they're going to need to build a mass democratic movement in order to do that and so the mechanisms are there to keep politicians a little bit more honest than the US than they are here but yeah, first pass the post system you're going to have to make pretty horrible compromises inevitable we need to be adults about that but there are going to be lines that shouldn't be crossed we're going to move on to beef within the Labour Party now we've done the US left now let's come to the British left I'm not really sure if Labour Party beef now counts as a fight within the left because I you can interpret that how you want before we get on to that though we have 2,000 people watching we have 600 likes do like the video it helps us in people's recommendations people's suggestions now the Guardian has published a leaked presentation given to the Labour leadership that has caused quite a stir on social media based on a leaked presentation given by the party's head of research the presentation included analysis on the party's brand by Agency Republic it fed back on opinions giving up focus groups about Keir Starmer and advised the party on how to rebuild trust with voters in the so-called red wall now some of the focus group feedback in that presentation was pretty uncomfortable for the leadership so the Guardian explained here what was in that presentation they say his slides, this is the Labour head of research his slides featured comments from the focus group such as I don't know anything about the Labour Party at the moment, they have been way too quiet and he, Starmer, needs to stop sitting on the fence the Guardian continues voters see this fog as deliberate and cynical top officials have been told proving that Starmer and his team are not being forthright and honest about where we want to be they describe Labour as two different parties under one name an ex-Labor voter from Grimsby quoted they are the voice of students they have left real people tax payers behind lots of food for thought there lots of slightly awkward comments from the public about Keir Starmer's fence sitting but it's this next bit that really caused controversy so the presentation suggests that displays of patriotism are needed to reinforce that the party has changed one slide says belonging needs to be reinforced through all messengers while another is headed communicating Labour's respect and commitment for the country can represent a change in the party's body language it goes on among the top top recommendations is the use of the flag veterans dressing smartly at the war memorial etc give voters a sense of authentic values alignment now approached for response a senior Labour official said the language came from the agency's research rather than their own phrasing now that article which is saying they need to use flags veterans and dress smartly at the war memorial to give voters a sense of authentic values alignment I love PR speak in that article they quoted Clive Lewis who expressed concerns about the contents of the presentation saying it's not patriotism it's fatherlandism there's a better way to build social cohesion moving down the track of the nativist right the Labour MP has also put out an opinion piece in the Guardian this evening this was while we were live it's titled phony flag waving is not the way for Labour to win back the red wall voters will reject fake patriotism Kia Stama should have the courage to embrace the complexity of our national story and you'll be delighted to know I'm joined by Clive Lewis now welcome to the show Michael you're right there my initial reaction to this was a bit different to yours because I thought this is just a presentation based on research from an external company who have said look voters don't think you're patriotic enough so maybe stand in front of flags it was comms advice but you see more concern could you lay out your position as to why you think what was in this article is concerning and it should concern Labour members I feel a bit like the Emperor from the Empire Strikes Back because he says all is progressing as I have foretold but you may remember when I had my brief stint in the leadership election myself and many others could see post Brexit with a blame game going on about who was to blame was it people calling Brexit voters racist is this what's to blame for Labour's woes or second referendum we rushed headlong into basically under the first part of the system looking at where the new swing voters were and what their perceived issues were this belief that actually that meant that black people students others in those seats where Labour votes are stacked up we were going to be thrown under a bus because that's what the political system we have does it means our votes get taken for granted and the votes of those and the perception of those who need to be looked at and assuaged then take on a disproportionate standing in how we approach things on top of that we've also had a very difficult time during the pandemic with the rise of black lives matter and I think what many people would consider to be some of the mood music of the new leadership you have I won't even start with the leaked documents because we can park that to one side but I think in terms of the response of Keir to black lives matter I think the initial response on the statues which was a kind of out of hand dismissal of the whole issue around that the issue around those statues, around our history you saw how all those black historians and others piled into this to discuss and say this is good in so many ways because we're beginning to address the real history of this country rather than the fairy tale that we've told ourselves for far too long and this was what that was all about but that was dismissed out of hand as was the concerns of the black community who suffered racism for decades for centuries but who suffered decades at the hands of the police for many years brutality, beatings stop and search and whatever we think of defund the police the angst behind it the cry of help for that community behind it who were talking about that that wasn't unpacked, it was dismissed and I think when you begin to look at the new music when you begin to listen to those who are saying we have to look at what our voters are saying, they're justifiable concerns about issues on immigration and other things it begins to set alarm bells so in this piece of research which has been commissioned by the leadership and then you begin to kind of build up a picture which I think you can already see playing out long before this kind of brand analysis came back in, you can see this is where we've been heading Blue Labour now inside the party have are probably the biggest I would say intellectual force inside that is office, I can't prove that but you know there are people like Jonathan Rutherford and others in there who are advising Clare Ainsley's book has talked a lot about the values of these groups so it's not just come from nowhere, I haven't just suddenly panicked because of this piece of brand work, it's kind of on top of a stack of other things which I think lots of people in their bones can feel has been on the cards for a long time has been coming and so I suppose to get in the to give this strategy the benefit of the doubt let's say, what I imagine is going on I don't have much faith in sort of the left-wing credentials of Keir Starmer but it seems to make sense to me a bit in terms of a strategy where you spend the first two years trying really hard to appeal to those people who are the stickiest voters, they're most likely they're the most difficult to get to come back into the labour fold because they haven't voted for them for a while and they live in key seats and then they're going to realise that a couple of years down the line and they're going to have to make some big offers to young people and ethnic minority communities to get turnout up but they need to start with the really difficult voters and then come up with some good stuff later. Do you think that that could possibly be going on and if that were the story would you find that more acceptable? It's easy for me to kind of be an armchair quarterback and second guess what it is that they're doing. I haven't I haven't heard, I'm not privy to the strategy that's being pursued as I said we're having to many of us including MPs having to piece it together, jigsaw it together from what we're seeing and that's one possible analysis of what's going on but there's a problem with this and I think in many I didn't quite hear what was being discussed last time I heard the word PR mention by Aaron but there are limitations. The reality is for Labour to win in 2024 which I assume everyone on the front bench still believes is not just a possibility but has to happen because otherwise we're looking at 20 years of the Tories. Scotland is not going to come back under the current conditions before 2024. We might make some new inroads in the next couple of years but I think given the pandemic, given where the SNP are thinking that's going to change dramatically by 2024 is Cloud Cuckoo there. So that means that in reality we're looking at a 10.5% uniform swing to Labour to achieve a majority of one. That equates to about 124 seats we have to win to get a majority of one and that's not even stable government. So it seems to me this kind of pitch to the right to try to emulate the Tories and their kind of two-dimensional fairytale image of what our islands extremely complex history which they bottle it up and tell the story of Empire, tell the story of this country and its impact on the world and how it reflects now to this very day. That fairytale isn't a fairytale I want to buy into and the problem with the flag, the problem with wearing a tie at Remembrance Services is basically it takes the complexity of this country this island story of which I'm a part of, you're a part of black people are a part of, white people are a part of involves racism anti-racism empire, post-colonialism all of these aspects it's a complex tapestry and it tries to distill them down into these concepts of patriotism and flags which quite frankly are shorthand for some good things but also some quite dark chapters in our history and when you see the rise of the authoritarian right, the nativist right not just here but across the globe in the US you have to question a strategy which is about actually using those shorthands without unpacking them and doing the hard work of being able to understand what that complexity is and having an honest conversation about it. I would argue that black lives matter that that issue that was kind of knocked out of hand dismissed away was an opportunity where the country had come together, the majority of this country had come together had seen the evils of racism firsthand and wanted to unpack and discuss it and we didn't take part in that and that for me is a problem so now we find ourselves saying well let's try and move over here let's have some flags in the background let's talk about patriotism but not unpack what patriotism means, the good and the bad of it and let's just use these shorthands to try to convince these complex individuals in these six that we're on their side I think that's highly patronizing to them and I think it's an insult to all of us so I don't know where they are in this kind of brand management phase of things but what I do know is you're not going to win the election by aping the symbols of the nativist which then they have control of them in many ways and in the past I said let's not let them control them but before you can have your own take on these symbols you have to unpack them and have those difficult conversations the Labour Party has to come to terms with its own difficult history of racism whether it's Jim Callaghan's racist immigration act of the 1969 whether it's new Labour's attack on migration and immigrants when it was in office or Gordon Brown's dog whistling politics and slogans of British jobs of British workers we have to have that conversation as a party, as a country and as a nation and I don't see that happening yet I don't see that opportunity being taken up Black Lives Matter and until we do then that means that they control those symbols and that means that we are in effect saying well we're not going to unpack them we're just going to go hey look here they are here you go it's an insult to them it's an insult to us the last point I will say is this you know there is a way to win in 2024 and it doesn't mean aping the imagery of the right it actually means having a grown up conversation about progressive politics in this country about the crisis of democracy and being open and honest about the fact we have a political system as Aaron was talking about which is broken PR isn't a panacea for all those things but it's a link a linchpin to enable us to have an honest open conversation with the SMP about the future of the union whether it's federal or we go our separate ways and on its conversation with the liberal democrats the greens applied and all the other political parties in this country to start talking about the future of this country one where we don't have to listen to the rubbish of the Tory party and the hard right of this country and we can start talking about what it is to have a 21st century democracy that's the glue on which we can begin to build an alliance to get over the line and the PR is the glue of that I would also argue the Green New Deal but we can begin to find some common themes which will get us over the line so we can make those changes and have an electoral system which means that a party like the Tories which lost a popular vote in 2019 cannot have ever again an 80 seat majority and that conversation, the honest open conversation is a far better, far rewarding one in thinking we can win a general election by standing in front of a flag wearing a tie, I remember it some day so I suppose just to be super specific because a lot of this is about symbols and I basically agree with your critique of Keir Starmer up to this point I don't think he has been particularly daring or taken any risks or been particularly honest with the country but from past statements you have said we should reclaim the flag are you saying it's fine to stand in front of a union jack if you've done some anti-racist ground work beforehand the first thing to say is that union jack might not be around for much longer the Scottish combiner might be gone and that's the trajectory that it's on but look once you've unpacked let's take Winston Churchill there we are, it's a complex one isn't it I loved Finest Hour I love Finest Hour it sent a shiver through me but it was one part of a very complex story about that individual's life he was one of the key people who helped to stand up against Nazism that's that bit it doesn't talk about the comments he made about Indians the racist comments about the Bengal famine things that he did with chemical weapons in the Middle East in the 1920s and so on and so forth it doesn't talk about the fact that after the war he clearly expressed racist sentiments about the empire and so on and so forth it doesn't address any of that but it takes a single part of his life and it's hard not it's hard not to relate to that individual, clearly it is he's a complex individual, we're all complex individuals and that in many ways to me, the way he is the way we want to tell the story about some parts of our past but not the other more difficult parts means that there will always be conflict over these symbols like Winston Churchill until we have that honest conversation once you've unpacked it once you've had that reconciliation about the complexity of our island nation then I think people can make a decision about what symbols they want to stand in front of and what symbols they want to be a part of and it may be that people want the Union Jack and maybe they don't maybe they want something else I think people probably will want the Union Jack but I think it was Edmund Burke who said if you want people to be proud of their country then have a good country to be, create a good country to be proud of and I think ultimately one of the problems that we've got at the moment as a Labour Party as those comments were as the comments were reported from the people in the focus groups there seems to be very little of substance about what the Labour Party stands for and represents and I think to try and kind of short-circuit that and start talking about flags and remember in Sunday it's just not a substitute if you want people to buy into the Labour Party you want people to buy into your vision of what this country could be like the kind of country we could be the inclusive country we could be one where the resource to this country is shared equally or more fairly at the very least then you need to start articulating that and I think it's that lack and then this kind of sense that we need to kind of jump over that jump over the hard yards of unpacking these issues of creating and expressing a vision that we want to be of having an analysis of why we are in the state we are why we have one of the highest per capita death rates in the world why we have more black people in this country dying per capita than many others why the NHS is on its knees understanding why we're in the situation we're having an analysis of that and it's postulating what we're going to do to overcome that, to change it that to me is what the Labour Party should be talking about what the Labour Party should be doing and what means that in many ways it feels that this is a short kind of a short way of short circuiting that lack of vision that lack of clarity so you know look I think go back to the point about symbols and will people if we could reclaim these symbols would it be okay to say yes it would be I mean look I'm someone who was in the army you know on the left in the army said I love this country I love what parts of this country I love you know I put my eye I was prepared to go over there and get shot or blown up or whatever it was that was happening to thousands of the soldiers around me not for the Queen not for some fairytale concept of the Union Jack not for the country and the people that I love and the bits of that country that I love and everyone would have different bits it's all relevant it's all acceptable and it's that complexity this short circuited approach completely forgets completely pushed out the window so you know it is disappointing people aren't going to be upset with that but I hope the leadership takes that on board doesn't see the criticism as necessarily punching them and beating them for the sake of it I don't do that I try genuinely not to do that I hope it reminds them that actually they need to step up because I want to see a Labour victory in 2024 and I want to start seeing the green shoots of that recovery and I don't think we're seeing it at the moment and this isn't the way to do that I want to get behind the leadership I want to get behind our party and I think most of the people who want to see a Labour Government in 2024 do as well but I want to see a Labour Party that can actually take on those issues get over the line and make changes to our lives in a way that's going to be lasting and transformational and this sells us short I mean that issue of patriotism and the army in Afghanistan we could definitely talk about for a couple of hours but we're going to move on to another Labour story I should check with you because I know we've kept you a while and I didn't mention we'd be doing a Labour leaks and a community organising story I'll also have Aaron in for it but can we keep you as well? I haven't had my dinner yet but yeah Thank you, our audience will be very appreciative of that Right If I was to come to talking to you in your front room in my kitchen I can't imagine there are thousands of people watching but I'll tell you what That's the atmosphere we like to generate You are watching Tisgisour on Navarra Media Do hit that subscribe button we go live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7pm and we put out videos every day Now one of the most dramatic Labour stories earlier last year was the release of the Labour leaks they showed that people who were very high up inside the party have been working it seemed against the interests of the party in the 2017 general election and have taken part in really a culture of bullying and abuse We have today learnt that many of these people many of the people named as people who were disappointed when Labour did surprisingly well in 2017 have been readmitted to the party so this was reported in the HuffPo they show that Labour reinstates his ex-officials suspended over leaks dossier we can go to a couple of the key quotes from that article they write Emily Oldnow once thought to have been Keir Starmer's choice for Labour general secretary was among those suspended last year after the so-called Labour leaks dossier emerged but after a meeting of the disputes panel on January 22nd several of the officials have seen their suspensions lifted Patrick Hennigan and his ex-elections chief is not among them now Emily Oldnow featured numerous times in the leaks including in that conversation where senior staff were expressing their disappointment at Labour's surprisingly good election results in 2017 according to the piece Patrick Hennigan is the only person who has not been readmitted so he appeared in the leaks having boasted of telling Michael Crick the whereabouts of Diane Abbott after she was found crying this was a period where she was suffering horrendous racism we've discussed the actual leaks in depth on previous shows which you can go and check out in response to the news Max Shanley is a Labour activist and friend of the show responded to the news of the re-admittance of all of these people by sharing a part apologies a part of the report in which he appeared so you can see here this was from one of the WhatsApp chats a staffer says Max Shanley dies in a fire there's an emoji there you can't see that's a very bad wish Sarah but if he does I wouldn't piss on him to put him out and then another staffer says wish there was a petrol can emoji really really disgusting stuff solidarity with Max Shanley now none of the characters there were directly mentioned in the Huffington Post piece but given they've suggested all but Hennigan have been readmitted we can assume from what was written in that piece that they have been let in I want to show you one more development from today this is Gabriel Pogrand of The Times who reported that Labour's entire community organising team has been fired he tweets Labour has told its community organising unit introduced under Corbyn that their contacts will not be renewed from May another key moment in Keir Starmer's battle to transform the party and remove Corbyn Easters from HQ and a lot of anger to have done it during the pandemic Aaron I want to bring you in for your thoughts about the developments you were ahead of the game really in reporting the Labour leaks what do you make of these readmitances and what does it tell us that this decision was happened within the same 24 hours that the entire community organising team have been fired yeah it's an interesting one we talked about this with Michael privately it's one thing to say that somebody shouldn't be working in the organisation clearly if these people were still working for the Labour Party and they've been found to have done this stuff they would be fired then as members you have to ask questions about who broke what rules and I understand that you have to have due process people on the right of the Labour Party didn't want to give that to Jeremy Corbyn I think these people should be given due process I think personally all of them should be expelled for reasons that I think are pretty obvious but they have to be given due process and the only reason why I can see that Patrick Hennigan would be expelled but not others is because potentially he indulged in racially motivated behaviour abuse I don't know but then there's similar kind of workplace bullying going on from other people so we'll have to see it come out in the wash like I say I don't think any of those people should be members including Emily Oldnow including the people that obviously said those horrific things about Mack Shanley and then in terms of the community organising team look this was something which was created by Jeremy Corbyn I think it comes into existence 2018 if you want this sort of thing to succeed it's not going to take one year two years people are saying well how did it during 2019 actually seats with community organisers did better than seats without them but even if they'd all won I don't think that's conclusive evidence about how effective it is these things if you're going to build a new asset within an organisation lots of staff lots of resources a big ask to engage with the whole part of the electorate which hasn't been engaged with for decades that's going to take a long time and I find it really strange that you've got the Labour Party after Joe Biden won you flipped the two Senate seats in Georgia people say wow Stacey Abrams it's all about community organising amazing Biden won by the way because of hugely increased voter turnout and yet the very same people who say all that say that actually there's no problem with getting rid of the community organising team and on the same day that we see these people not having their contracts renewed it's bad enough that they're going to not have jobs in May after the local elections they're going to have to try and find work in a pandemic that's bad enough but also the timing makes no sense you've got local elections in three months and you're telling 10-15 members of staff we're going to let you go in three months do you think they're really going to be that motivated to work particularly hard I don't think they are so it really makes zero sense to me at the same time they're advertising for positions as is always the case for people to be hired in a temporary contract going through to May but what's interesting is that some of these positions which are advertised are remarkably similar to what the community organising team does and they're going to be on £10,000 pro rata which is to say they're going to be working for three months on two and a half days a week and they'll be on a living wage presumably if Labour is serious about community organising which it's going to have to do to get votes turned out up which it's going to have to do in order to win that's not the right approach so what it tells me is we're not really looking at a leadership which is serious about creating a sustainable professional organisation take away the politics take away the ideology and of course ideologically I disagree with a lot of what Labour has done under Starmer but it just doesn't seem professional look at what Clive was saying he says I don't know what the leadership is saying about this I'm not involved, I'm not in the inner circle that shouldn't be how it's working Keir Starmer should be outlining his vision to every member of staff to every member of parliament to every Labour councillor and saying we all need to be pushing in the right direction here's why, here's my vision it doesn't exist he keeps on talking about values, what values he keeps on talking about traditions, what traditions it's incredibly vacuous and it's also I think incredibly incompetent and unprofessional you know people will say well Jeremy Corbyn was ex Jeremy Corbyn lost two general elections the 2017 result was good but he lost two general elections that can't be your benchmark if we're going to judge whether or not Keir Starmer is overseeing a successful project it needs to be a successful project in terms of members, it's losing members is that successful? No in terms of funds, it's losing, it's hemorrhaging money is that successful? No so come May, if it doesn't do well in local elections you know people then have to ask well what is working and look, they may do well in May in which case that's the answer but this doesn't suggest a professional competent leadership prime now no Clive, I want to bring you in on these two stories so one the people named in the Labour Leaks being re-admitted I know you were mentioned in them not as someone who'd said dodgy things but about whom someone had been said, or things had been said and then the sacking of the community organisers Yeah I think we can use the word that I was called in the Labour Leaks but it was a big word and it wasn't just any old what have you, it was the biggest so I kind of take some comfort from that the Labour Leaks were awful and I think they go to the court they showed a rotten core at the heart of our party which I think many of us had begun to see throughout 2015 and 2016 as we saw the behaviour of the party in that period it wasn't pleasant I agree with Aaron these individuals need due process but I think ultimately look we all say things in private which some of us not so private but we all say things that we regret it's part of the human condition but it seems to me that there were pages upon pages of comments you can do it once or twice you can say certain things you can get angry, you can become frustrated with someone and you can say something on whatsapp or in private in a conversation for example we all do it, we've all done it it's the human condition but I think it was the systematic nature of it the quantity of it, the volume of it and the sheer awfulness of some of the things that were saying the offensiveness of them the brutality of them in some ways that just doesn't correspond to our stated value to the party and so in that sense there are some questions that need to be answered and it does leave a really salvatace in the mouth of many people members and I also think voters as well when they look at that it just looks it looks awful and I think in terms of the community organisers I agree with everything Aaron said it looks awful, the time of it seems absolutely ridiculous given the local mayor elections I mean this as incentives go I can think of far better ones and it doesn't seem to make any sense and again maybe there is some kind of deeper strategy here I'm struggling to see what it is because I kind of think the mayor elections are pretty important to Labour they're the springboard from which we're going to go on to other things to begin the process of winning the building the kind of process of winning towards 2024 so I for the life of me cannot see why this has happened I can probably have a few theories like some of you but otherwise I agree with Aaron it looks it looks unprofessional and it doesn't seem to be any logic to it I can story and for all of your insights on Labour's is it patriotic advice or advice about patriotism anyway and I look forward to reading your Guardian article when we go thank you Michael thank you Aaron I thought you'd had your ears pierced until I realised I thought you know I thought you had your lobes pierced that's a good look that's interesting actually your headphone sorry that's alright they suit you you should think about getting your earlobes one of those earlobes sort of yeah extensions yeah wear it down I might do that why not you in touch with your metrosexual side you think you could get away with it alright I'm going to keep you to the end of the show now Clive we're going to go to some comments no don't let me go let me go get some dinner we need to get back on though I'll happily come back on let's speak soon and let's speak off Mike off camera and have a chat about you should say that after the show not on camera yes I know I should I'm an honest and transparent kind of guy yeah I'll see you in a little bit yeah have a good dinner let's go to some comments Dina Al-Aqsa says listening to Tiskey Sour Live for the first time there's more than there's a few of you listening for the first time today so glad I have a news source that is unashamedly leftist so thanks Michael and Aaron and Ash and Dahlia for all you do I've been so ambivalent about the way we label the stuff we use to substitute government competence as heroism great comment I think that's how many people I assume that's a reference to Captain Tom which I think is many people's response to the political reaction Harry May with £20 big love to all the Navara team also can I get a happy birthday for my big bro Ed happy birthday Ed have a wonderful low-key birthday as I'm sure it will be Julia Dalloway with £10.24 please can you wish my boyfriend socialist Sam a happy 24th birthday today he introduced me to Tiskey Sour and we both love the show and we think Michael Walker is a legend thank you that means so much that's such a lovely thing to hear I also like the thought of you I don't know if you call your boyfriend socialist Sam in in person I hope that's the case Aiman Ridgely with £20 says please can I get a happy birthday to my fantastic sister Maddie who is 25 today she's a long time fan of the show and previous contributor to Navara media P.S. keep fighting the good fight previous contributor to Navara media well you'll still get a happy birthday Maddie I hope you have a wonderful 25th birthday Aaron Bustani it's been a pleasure speaking to you this Monday not Monday Wednesday all days are the same in lockdown this Wednesday evening Oh I just wobbled my camera it's been my pleasure Michael it's all falling apart now can I say we've gone for one hour 40 it's like just all crumbling now can I say a quick thing about Clive you know I don't agree with Clive about anything you'll never agree with anybody about everything no no but listen I thought you said anything everything I agree with them everything Michael obviously I agree with them about 80% of things and in politics that's life you have to make compromises and that's how it's meant to work so if Clive Lewis was leader of the Labour Party I wouldn't agree with everything but there are people who go yeah I agree with this about what he's saying and other people say yeah I agree about that with Keir Starmer who agrees with him his idea of like political compromises compromises with the Tories it's not trying to meet people where they're out on certain issues I just thought I'd say that that's how political parties are meant to work most of the membership are meant to feel represented in some way by their politicians I don't think that's happening with Labour right now they don't know what they believe they don't know what they stand for maybe we'll find out if you want to support what we do you know that this is only possible because of your kind monthly donations so if you are not already a subscriber please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month it's what makes this show possible for now you've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navar Media, good night