 Welcome to Tiskey Sauer. If you've just joined us from the seven-way BBC debate welcome You can leave your leave your comments about who you thought won the debate I imagine our audience is somewhat biased, but you know, it's still good to know what you were thinking about it Tonight I am joined by Laura Parker national head national coordinator of momentum Thank you very much for joining me for any of the show. You just whispered just before we went live Do you look at the camera on me? I know I just don't know what I'm doing I mean the sort of the default is you look at me or David But you can also look at the camera. I mean, especially if you want to break the four-four If there's a particularly sort of like intense moment that you feel like they really need to be listening to you And as you know now, I'm also joined by David wearing academic and foreign policy commentator and also a friend of the show Thank you for joining us this evening Today we are going to be talking about Boris Johnson evading scrutiny him dodging some debates dodging some interviews Labour's weak in the election momentum's ground game Obviously that will come down to you a lot Laura and Labour and the Tories respective foreign policy platforms going into this Election but first we should turn briefly to the news of the terrorist attack that took place just around the corner from us on London Bridge tragically two people were killed and a number injured by a knife wielding an attacker in an event Eurydia reminiscent of the London Bridge attacks which took place in the middle of the 2017 general election The attacker who was wearing a fake suicide vest was initially wrestled to the ground by passers-by before being shot dead by police I suppose at this point that's not going to be too much for us to discuss about the nature of that attack I suppose the only thing we know at this point The only thing that was particularly striking was the fact that there was a guy with a huge knife With a fake as we know now a fake suicide vest on and passes by wrestled him to the ground until the police got that Which is quite Incredible, I know it is amazing actually I feel like I'd probably be more inclined to just run away But I suppose you never know until you're in that situation. Maybe you Who knows I'm convinced I think it's amazing how like ordinary people do really extraordinary thing I suppose there's a there's a drive What's there's a drive to sort of you know like avoid danger and run But I think there probably is also a drive to protect other people in that sort of heat of the moment event I mean, it is strange how similar it looks to the 2017 London Bridge attack I suppose it's going to be too early to say whether this was a copycat or whether it's an odd coincidence We've got no idea he's done it. So yeah, so let's talk about now as we've got no idea what went on there I'm sure more information will come out as the days go on. We are going to go straight to the week that was in politics So first of all it's been it's been somewhat of a tough week for both of the parties Jeremy Corbyn had a bit of a Difficult interview which set the news agenda for the day, but they've also had you know some interventions Which have really landed in terms of the NHS, but there is only one leader Boris Johnson who is Running from scrutiny. So first of all, he said that he would not take part in the Andrew Neil interview So that is probably the the toughest 30 minutes of the election for any party leader As I've said, it was quite difficult for Jeremy Corbyn. It was very difficult for Nicola Sturgeon And everyone was predicting that when Boris Johnson sat down there with Andrew Neil some of his talking points some of his slogans and buffoonery Would to a degree crumble, but the conservatives have decided that they would prefer to sit that one out Well, that's what it seems at the moment. We could get a surprising Decision later on in the campaign that he's gonna do it at the last minute. We're not precisely sure last night He dodged another debate Which I have to say was not the most entertaining hour of television I've ever watched but at the same time it is not a particularly good look For a prime minister to miss out on the debate on the biggest issue I suppose of our future channel for replaced him with a block of ice They also replaced Nigel Farage with a block of ice which melted throughout the show and has created a Storm of debate all day as to who was in the wrong channel for or the leaders who did not turn up This is to a degree coming back to bite Johnson the first clip. We're going to watch is him being interrogated him being grilled On his refusal to take part in those Andrew Neil interviews. Let's watch that now Can I begin by asking will you sit down and be interviewed by Andrew Neil on the BBC? Before polling day, I will have all sorts of interviews with all sorts of people and here I am being interviewed by you I'm sure that active discussions are taking place about future interviews with any number of people We're talking for five minutes in a farm shop But will you agree to a proper interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC before polling day? I'm sure that I will be having all sorts of interrogations and inquisitions From all sorts people sit down stand up You know prime minister this is a big interview all the other leaders have agreed to do it Will you join them in being interviewed by Andrew Neil on the BBC before election day? Well, I'm I don't want to preempt any discussions that may be taking place But I've no doubt that conversations are going on about all sorts of interviews with all sorts of people And I look forward very much to their result. Is that a yes or no? There is I'm other than other people are getting involved in these conversations It would be not it's not my my job to do is they will be they will be deciding and discussing who I'm very happy to be interviewed by by anybody and particularly by you and I look forward to the the Outcome of the discussion. Can you see if you don't do this interview critics will say that you're running scared your chicken You're afraid of scrutiny here. I am I'm being interviewed by you. Are you saying I use five minutes? It's not a full-length interview. Are you saying that you're incapable of providing scrutiny? This is a five-minute interview in a farm shop. It's not the same thing Well, I'm very happy to submit all manner of scrutiny or manner of Debates and have done so and lots of conversations are happening about that matter right now So you might do it I'm all sorts of conversations are happening about that matter right now and Other people than me are responsible for those discussions and negotiations I do not want to preempt what they made us early awkward interview there. I don't know if you think that will do any damage I mean to be fair if you were head of the Tory electoral strategy campaign I think you'd think you'd achieved a bit of a coup in having Jeremy Corbyn go and do his Andrew Neil interview and Boris Johnson managed to To sneak out of his one. Yeah, they probably should have tightened up that agreement to be honest But I just think in the end Johnson's looks terrible. I mean he said he's dad. Can you imagine like if David had sent his dad So we get we can get up that image. I think so that was for the climate debate yesterday When Michael Gove tried to sort of jostle his way into the debate saying the Jeremy Corbyn is scared of debating the conservative But I know it's just he didn't send your leader and then quite awkwardly Stanley Johnson was there Trying to get him through the door as well. Well, in a moment, we'll see another Stanley Johnson clip But let's let's hold that off a second. I mean, what do you think? Do you think this this whole Boris Johnson as chicken could do any damage? I don't know. I mean, you think about last time May supposedly had a terrible campaign like did you didn't turn up for one of the debates, right? She refused to debate She wouldn't do anything in the same room as Corbyn and Yeah, she was complete disaster in so many ways and yet the Conservatives got more votes than they had since that I think they've got a bigger share of the vote since that year the big Facts about the Tory share of the vote historically is it's just been in this secular decline for decades including during the factory a long term she She rebuilt the Tory electoral coalition and got 42% of the vote So I just wonder of all this stuff and same with Corbyn. It's not like he supposedly Is a great politician and yet he reconstituted Labour's share of the vote which it lost over The Blair Brown and Miliband years who put that all back together got 12 million votes Which is more than Blair got in two of his free election victories So all this stuff about how politicians present themselves how they look which you know Lobby journalists obsess over and they get us to think about too much I just think it's you know, it did the last few years have shown that it matters a lot less than everyone thought, you know I think people care more about policies They care more about the kind of values that a party projects and even if You don't like the politician you don't like the leader if you like the values and you like the policies You'll probably vote for him anyway That seems to be what we're learning because you're saying values and policies matter more than whether you turn up to a debate But what if your father turns up to morning TV? and Does a stinker like this one here? Let's watch I think it was on Victoria Derbyshire this morning Stanley Johnson who is Boris Johnson's father So we didn't quite manage that video there We might show you it in a minute. If not, you can look it up yourselves. It was quite entertaining. You've all seen it I presume about three million people have seen it now on the internet. So it's it's too I won't do an impression of Stanley Johnson But but basically someone tweets into the Victoria Derbyshire show and calls Boris Johnson a Pinocchio because he lies so much Stanley Johnson says well, I think it's ridiculous that you would say on live TV that my son is a liar and two I don't think anyone in this country is really literate enough to know how to spell Pinocchio He just film us as you wouldn't do Yeah, that was quite bad Was that quite bad? I was thinking I kind of surprised myself with that I thought like posh old English guy is actually not the hardest one to do The thing is the quote doesn't get any better even if you kind of try to make it amusing I mean it's really and then he then doesn't he challenge the presenter Well he challenges the presenter say I can't believe that you you would say on live TV that Boris Johnson is a liar Which is a bizarre thing to say as we quite we it's quite demonstrable that that he is let's list out We just I just did a shout out in the room before we went live What what are some of his biggest lies over this camp? Well, there's the 350 million pound a week bus which was nonsense That was two years ago in this campaign You've got 40 hospitals that he said he is going to 40 brand new hospitals in fact He's upgrading six fifty thousand extra nurses Whereas according to their own plans, they're only going to train 30,000 new nurses and obviously he dine a ditch rather than accept a breccia extension There's actually a whole website. I don't know if you've checked it It's put up by Peter Oberon called Johnson lies. Yeah, there's hundreds and hundreds of them and today labor challenge didn't they they challenged Johnson to answer 60 questions. I think it was Then there's the lies that they're telling about us The 1.2 trillion the thing which was probably a corker that they started off with a couple of weeks ago Have people stopped doing scarce stories about momentum because you used to be like the whipping boys of the sort of like right-wing dog whistle Press where it's all like these are the commies that coming to yeah, exactly reds under the bed They don't do it anymore. Do they know they don't think they're not quite a nice bunch of young people trying to make positive change I think they're taking us seriously now I think they thought but we were flashing a pan and it would all just fade away after the initial sort of excitement No, they don't someone tried the other day on On a what's it called? LBC. Yeah with Ian Dale someone rang up and I Don't know had a bit of a poppers asked me how I could sleep at night And Ian Dale shut them off. I really mm-hmm and then apologized on air for the bad behavior So that was a first But yeah, I think people have stopped largely because it just doesn't ring true and the idea that we're this little niche And if you look at how well like our videos are doing in this campaign like you can't be a niche if you've got a video that's seen by Seven million people. That's not niche You know and the people that were mobilizing even in the party. I think that's the other thing I mean, there are still a few that've not kind of quite reconciled themselves to the shift But in an election campaign, it's amazing how many labor MPs are really keen to have our help Because you can get them the people they need you can get in the boots on the ground Exactly, but will they be dissing you the week after anyway? Let's it's not that it's not the time to discuss whether or not the MPs you have will be No, they won't know because I think they're genuinely genuinely see that there's this massive energy It's very inclusive But it's very well a whole approach is like whoever you are wherever you are. We're gonna help you win So I think that that's shifted people a lot and just the contrast between I mean Who did the media go to when they want to interview Tory activists? But like literally who do you speak to you can't there aren't any other exactly every now and again You get a selfie of Matt Hancock with I mean, I don't want to be ages, but you know with people of a particular demographic mature Pale people with grey hair, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that But I mean it's just if that's all you've got the sort of suggest something doesn't it? Let's do another one Boris Johnson lie. Yeah go on What's your favorite one in the manifesto this is in the toy manifesto Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to break up the UK and disband the armed forces and this is in the manifesto in the toy Manifesto he says Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to disband the armed forces. That's toy manifesto Here's a labor manifesto defense and security labor commits to spend at least two percent of GDP So they've read that and just lied about it. It's flagrant, isn't it and like John main I'd love to disband the armed forces, but I'm not in charge and the people who are in charge of say Specifically that they're going to spend a great proportion of GDP on the military the most industrialized nations So it's just a absolutely flagrant lie. I mean this document is toy manifesto It's so aimed at their base and the fears and prejudices of their base. Yeah Yeah, the lying is blatant. It's incredible. They're not talking to the rest of the country They're just trying to mobilize their own Supporters and you know it play at their own nerve sort of thing. We are gonna have cynical I think it's the Stanley Johnson video is ready now. We've already talked about it But it is worth watching it because it's an entertaining 60 seconds when it comes back. We're gonna talk about Brexit So this is Stanley Johnson on Victoria Darbyshire again another point that was made in the Comments there from viewers somebody calling your son Pinocchio. I know that you refer you Responded to these Literacy, which I think the Great British probably doesn't necessarily have And I went to you. So what do you mean by that? I'm not gonna get into that Well, that's quite a pejorative thing to say about they couldn't spell Pinocchio if it um, if they tried Why would you say that? Why why do you what can you spell Pinocchio? I mean whether I can or not I go back what I said before and I was trying to say it in a humorous way I think it is utterly absurd and wrong that you can read out on air a tweet Coming in for one of your readers on air, which calls the Prime Minister Allah. I think it is amazing. You can do that Yep, I now have to we've really professionalized in here And now I have to look out for a swinging arm when I come back because I think often you might have noticed I come back about a second or two early. I've ruined I've ruined it now But sometimes just when something's in my head I have to let you know what's going on everyone in the room decided that actually my Stanley Johnson impression I know Ian Dale style. I'm gonna apologize to you. Laura. Did you still gonna dispute it? Your impression was great You are watching Navarra media you're watching Tiskey sour as you know this show is only possible because of your kind support if you are a Subscriber already. Thank you very much. You are what makes this possible If not, please go to support Navarra media.com and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month So we can keep working around the clock or give us an election bonus So we can keep trying to I suppose up the ante in these shows and also produce more shareable content to try and get some Messages out to people who might not necessarily already be subscribed to Navarra like this video share it on Twitter share it on Facebook keep your comments coming will go to your questions at the end I Promise you both we were gonna talk about Brexit Labor seems to have had a little bit of a wobble this week or I don't know if wobbles the right word But everyone seems to be quite worried That whilst at the start of the campaign people felt yet We're quite confident in this this position that Jeremy will remain relatively neutral. There'll be a second referendum That's successfully squeezing the Lib Dem vote Now two weeks out of the general election the you gov MRP poll comes out Which sort of shows where if you look at the demographics of particular constituencies and how particular people are telling you gov They'll vote it shows that there is a suave of Constituencies which are traditionally labor and we're labor in 2017 which are at risk of falling to the conservatives So I'm supposed to put this in a bit of a pointed way. You're one of the people who was quite you were quite Strong in your advocacy of labor shifting to a more pro second referendum or pro-remain position Have you had any second thoughts after the polling from this week? Not from the polling from this week. I would genuinely say I think there's a lot of us Who've who've kind of been on a bit of a journey since the beginning? I mean God when was the beginning? It feels like about 20 years ago. I Thought we should trigger article 50 definitely argued for that very strongly That's obviously what labor did although. I know you know, I never wanted us to leave I don't want us to leave so my own personal view hasn't really shifted very much I think a lot of people me included would have gone for some sort of soft Brexit and if labor had been in charge That's what we'd have had would have negotiated The best that you could manage from the 48 52 and we'd be out by now and I don't know because you're Pretty pro me you as well. I mean, I think most of us would have strong, but yeah We'd have lived with it. Yeah, then my view kind of did become quite hard about the need for a Public vote not because I think that in and of itself. It's a brilliant idea But I genuinely think thought and think it's the best of a series of bad options Back earlier in the year around the European Parliament elections I did think that we should take a clearer position and I think had we taken clear a position now We would have done better then what would that have done for the election now? I mean who knows I'm actually now pretty enthusiastic about the position. I think it stacks up that we've You know, we've got We've got a position which means that we can speak to the whole country. I Personally think that it's it's fine for Jeremy to sort of rise above. I think it's consistent with the whole Position of unity. Yeah, I suppose the two things are that we got to this position too late in some ways And maybe we've just not been as confident about it as we should have been but that the other thing is that you know these places that we are In theory losing now I mean, this is just a nonsense like Labour's support in some places as being on the wane for years way pre-corban I kind of feel sometimes that Jeremy's the guy left holding the baby The baby of but I mean there's there's being on the wane and then there's collapsing, right? So obviously obviously when someone talks about Labour heartland They haven't been as heartlandy for a while as they were 20 years ago But it's still the tipping point appears to be well We don't know the election has happened and there's going to be the fight of our lives to try and keep those 30 odd seats Still in Labour hands, but they do seem to be a greater risk of falling in this election as Compared to any previous one in recent history and the reason for that does appear to be that Labour have backed a second referendum and people Who voted leave? Feel that you know if their priority is to get Brexit done then they can't obviously vote for the Labour Party That's what they think I mean I think there are many arguments as to why why if you voted for Brexit you still should vote for the Labour Party even given our position But but it's difficult to deny that's become a significant challenge for the party. It's been such a simple sell for the Tories I mean they are selling people alive and making these extremely complex political Maneuver or series of I mean we can have this for years and years and yet. Yeah, they've they've managed that Their comms has been get it done. I mean it's it's a nonsense But it is an easy sell and for people who are already frustrated and actually did want to just get it done You know, maybe it's an easy thing to To hang on to I still don't believe that most of this Brexit votes got anything to do with the EU for for the Labour people who are voting leave. What do you mean by that? What people say no Brexit Showed all, you know, Brexit created these divides in the country I mean, no Brexit cast a light on the divides that already existed and these divides really For the main the frustrations that people felt and they were told that the answer to their problems was leaving the EU But the but the problems that they've got are about, you know, you can't get a bus You can't get I mean Ian Lavery told me the day he did a six mile bus journey as a biff and experiment really And it took him over two hours There are parts of the country where you can't get to work if you haven't got a car if you don't Get, you know, because the buses don't start till 10 o'clock Wage stagnation. I mean the list is you know, we all know it like everyone watching this. Well, we'll know that this list is endless That's really what's behind a lot of the frustration Then you're told well, we're gonna kind of solve this by by doing this one simple thing You know, you've got a busy life. The stresses are enormous People have latched on to that and we've we've not done enough actually really I think To just set up Stole out. I don't mean in these last few weeks. We're countering years of political rot a Terrible media a really really biased Media and a media that's singularly failing to hold the Tories to account You know partly because they're not turning up for Debates, I mean, I'm not sure I would have put a block of ice I had a thought some more creative way of just saying these are all I mean like Whoever it was a couple of weeks if you were channel four. Yeah, all these are all the questions I would have asked you. Oh, okay, right. Yeah turned up So to be honest one of the other leaders could have done that to be fair. Was it was a very bizarre low energy What can you do? But look the thing is it's not over yet. And so our job now anyway is not to get depressed I mean this this MRP stuff It's only as good as the data that you put in and the modeling that you do and it's a bit of a snapshot It ignores the fact that we've just had this massive Registrate voter registration and Our job is not punditry our jobs like persuading people. So yeah, it is difficult and Brexit is complicated And I think there's things we could have done better But the only thing that counts now is two weeks of getting out on those doorsteps and Talking to people about Brexit if that's what they really want to talk about But also talking about all these other things that would genuinely transform their lives I think that's all that we can do the rest is The rest is kind of beyond us Do we need someone to start so I suppose list out some of this so in the in the MRP poll what they predict and it needs all The caveats which is that this was I think from polling from the beginning of the week or last week And obviously the polls are closing since that period So it only tells you if you were to model what people were thinking at that point in time How the seats would would pan out but it shows you where the risks are so the risks are in the West Midlands You've got Dudney Love West Brom which East wedge West Brom which West in the East Midlands Ashfield Bassett Law Bolsova Derby North in Yorkshire, Don Valley, Peniston and Rover Valley How do we make sure we keep hold of these seats David? I mean, I was worried about this and I thought it remained with absolutely no ambiguity whatsoever with no kind of belief in some fantasy lexate or anything like that and Brexit was overtly the way it was sold in referendum a Racist project with racial demagoguery at the front and center of the campaign There was no way I was going to reward that with my vote and and yet once it happened My I was quite concerned about the idea that the left and progressive side of politics was going to try and Give the sense it's just wanted to cancel the vote. I was really nervous about that that that was going to inflame the situation for even further And I was concerned about the idea of pulling a referee saying let's have a referendum so soon After the initial vote because you know, we had this vote last year or two years ago What do we need while you're asking us again, which is what people are saying? So I was nervous about this and I was nervous about the fact that Whenever whenever anyone said if like just came out strongly for a remain with whoever up all these votes It'd be 70 points ahead in the polls He's ignoring the fact It's like a third of the Labour vote voted for Brexit and you've got to hold that together You can't be a pure main party You can't be a pure lead party because we sit on that on that fault line in a way other parties don't that being said I Think the way the position evolves over the last few months has been quiet I think it's been reasonable In terms of holding that together by saying we'll give people a choice to lead all set above it We'll give you a not shit Brexit or remain so trying to you know Hold all this stuff together, which is a really tricky thing to do I think Corbyn's position while it's had a lot of there's been a lot of derision about or you can't decide. It's just You know, it's fast on and when when journalist interviews behaving this kind of infantile way I think people at home see through it and can see it's quite, you know, it's quite sensible So despite my kind of my worries about Labour coming out as a remain party my worries about invoicing people's vote I don't feel now like pointing at that poll and saying, you know You know because this was all part of it This is part of balancing that is the one hand You've got to turn to the remain part of your vote and say, okay We're listening to you and we're going to give you an option to remain your route to remain is fighting Labour getting referendum and campaigning or Voting for remain so to remain part of the our vote coalition That's the offer and then now you've got to turn to leave part of the coalition and this is the question What do you say and I think The chunk of the electorate voted leave is It differs and there's a right that it was mainly a right-wing vote when you look at the character of that vote It was mainly a right-wing vote. It was not mainly a You know, northern working-class vote. It was a southern home counties vote for the most part Mainly a conservative vote the biggest correlation of a leave vote in terms of social attitudes was opposition to multiculturalism racism There's also opposition to feminism which would be two ways. It was a it was a right-wing vote for the most part But our part of it When you look at their preferences, they don't care about Brexit that much I'm saying you know about public services and things like that and so If you're saying to them look if you still want to leave there'll be a referendum and you can vote leave if you want but also If you voted leave out a frustration because you care about other things Well, we're gonna do of those other things look at manifesto Look all the policies we've got to do with you know to invest in these regions that have been left behind for so long, you know So I think they're balancing it It's a really delicate difficult thing to do and all their critics from the remain site have not given them credit for how Hard this is this challenge. Yeah, but they're they're balancing it just about right and getting there and one thing I When other people were panicking a few months ago my sense always was there's not gonna be a Brexit election We've had nine years of austerity People at home are not gonna just care about Brexit. They don't have that luxury You know news night presenters might have the luxury of just caring about Brexit and just seeing it as a Brexit election But the public don't half the public live on less than 28 grand a year. They struggle daily with Not being able to make ends meet their public services not working with their hospital not being fine with their school not being funded They're not gonna call it the Brexit election They're gonna care about those bread and butter issues and that's the way it's panned out You know Sky News call it the Brexit election and the son are calling it the brexmas Yeah, but it's you I mean like you're right all the evidence shows that Labour voters who voted leave who I agree with you that's completely different to kind of Tories in Godelman They're thought that first three priorities of the NHS austerity and welfare benefits and Brexit comes a kind of miserable Fourth the other thing is that the so-called Labour leave seats You know the vast majority of people who voted leave in those seats were not Labour voters Yeah, yeah, so None of which is to say it's not difficult and like the places that you listed Yeah, we've got a mountain to climb so the you know There's no point sitting around at the bottom of it talking about it. We've got to get out there and You know get our boots on which is a brilliant segue to talking about momentum's ground game exactly So, yeah, we can't rewrite history. We can't bother. We can't do these counterfactuals We are where we are we have the position we have and actually I think one thing you can say about Labour's position now Is it is very coherent there were periods in time when their position was a bit muddy a bit ambiguous now It's incredibly coherent, especially now Jeremy Corbyn is saying I am committing right here right now to be neutral in the campaign As well as Harold Wilson until the last three days if some sort of political boffin will tell you Always clearer than journalists made it out today. Yeah, just a performative disingenuous But it's clearer now than it really muddy. Yeah, it is now the unity position that we always said it was It's just now it's spelt out a bit more. What are you doing on the ground then momentum? I know that you've been sending lots of people to different constituencies Tell me how you're gonna make the difference How are you gonna talk to the hundreds of thousands of people that is gonna get labor a majority of the next general election No pressure. Yeah, so We started mobilizing before the other parties woke up and I don't actually know the number of people that we've managed to reach in this election, but it's Definitely, it's hundreds of thousands if you discount the video stuff and if you include the videos It's in its millions. We're gonna do videos in about Five minutes. Okay. So let's stick to ground game on the people on the move stuff. Yeah We've had a number of kind of big mass zoom phone calls starting like literally on the first day of the election through which we've reached hundreds of thousands of people and We've now got about 1,500 labor legends who are people have committed a serious amount of time to campaigning for labor I think it's an average of 2.6 weeks each So what does it so a labor legend they take two and two weeks off work and then you say we need you here Or we need you there and then you get them an Airbnb or what where do they stay? Well, they're local activists exactly we basically help people network together So we've got about 400 that we've placed so far and including in 56 marginals now Obviously, not everybody can just take like two or three weeks off work So we've got kind of on the road legends who are doing the big like, you know, that's it I'm going to Cornwall. Yeah, or I can you know, I can go to somewhere up north Or across the country, but obviously, you know, we've got concentrations of activists in some parts of the country But we've also got kind of local legends who are making massive commitments to all weekend every weekend And they might be able to go away for a Saturday night And then obviously there's lots of people who can't just up sticks because they've got jobs and kids and things But we're helping those people kind of engage Online maybe we've got teams of people who doing you know research data entry I mean the best thing explained to me was I met a woman at a let's go event Which is a kind of persuasive conversation training session. She joined the Labour Party on the Saturday. I met her on the Wednesday By the end of the Thursday all her contact details had been logged by another volunteer and on the Friday She got a text message telling her where to go canvassing on the Saturday I mean that is pretty Slick and that is happening all over the country But the other thing that we've done is we've kind of got people together given them ideas about campaigning Put masses of resources on the website. We've got mini festos explaining the manifesto We've got you know how to and then people have just they're kind of creating like organically their own Network of people so on the after the first couple of days. We had 500 let's go groups I think set up and so these are these are WhatsApp groups that people are in yeah sort of organised canvassing together exactly And now we don't know how many we've got we're gonna try and map it But I mean I'm in a couple in fact I just got something just before I came here and you know some Great, but random activists has posted in look. I was in this place last week. I've looked at my campaign map It's pretty clear that we need a few more people over here I'm see what King's Cross nine o'clock and like you're much more likely to make the big commitment to get out of town If you've got some people to go with and what's been really amazing is even up until like the last couple of days And we've obviously been at this for like three weeks Wherever we go, we still find people have not canvas before so we are still mobilizing new people So it's it's really exciting. We've had about 20 of these let's go events around the country My campaign happens at what happens at let's go event That's when you get strangers to come and then you say do you want to group up and join a WhatsApp group? No, well, but we start with What's what's canvassing about yeah, you know, because not everyone's done it Not everyone wakes up and thinks I'll just go and knock on the door of a complete stranger And people are a bit worried sometimes. I mean, I always think I don't know enough about economics And actually what we talk about a lot in this is you don't need to you don't need to be David wearing foreign policy expert You can be Laura Parker enthusiast and that's enough and we and we kind of talked to people about, you know What's the policy that you most care about and? How might you talk about it and in the end that's the conversation that people want to have I mean what my favorite one is still of everything I mean, obviously there's a headline stopping austerity in the NHS and foreign policy But like if you just ask me in my own little existence one of the policies I really care about It's dropping hospital car parking fees because my nephew's got like acute health problems And all of his disability living allowance goes on car parking fees And I also know that if I knock on the door of someone the chances are they've got Something kind of apparently small but actually really significant in their life as well So it's just a really great session where we just give people confidence about how you can go campaigning and and how you might talk about issues and how you talk about difficult issues like what do you say if you Knock on the door and and someone says I just want to talk about Brexit Because we don't all wake up thinking about how we're going to explain the Brexit policy or the how do the sums add up And then yeah, you end up in a group networked into these groups and then hopefully you look at my campaign map And that helps you figure out where to go and that has now been seen Whereas had over 1.5 million views by over a hundred thousand Unique people you in a let's go group. I'm not I keep going to Chingford because it's my friend So I want to yeah, that's all right But when I go to But apparently I've heard that's a problem that people are going to the glamorous ones well I've been going to where they're actually needed because when I look at my campaign map I live next in the constituency next door to Chingford doesn't tell me to go there tells me to go to other places Where does he tell you to go out of interest? Barna and and and I know I mean we're changing it all the time. We're trying to reflect the polls although as James Meadway always wisely says Don't trust polls, but you know, we've got to go on something So we look at polls we you know get feedback from the constituencies Including how many people have turned up and you know, and we try to guide people now Of course the thing is if you actually live in a marginal and you know the candidate It's not unreasonable that you're gonna go there because also you're kind of a more effective canvas that if you know the candidate Yeah, because if they're unsure about what you can say look I know fires as it's fires a Shaheen is the candidate in Chingford. I know the candidate She's amazing. I live in a seat. That's not you know It's gonna stay labor and so with no disrespect to my lovely labor candidate I'm you know, I canvassed in it once because it's interesting to see what's going on where I live But but you're right, you know, our bigger challenge though is not really The people from Vauxhall go to Chingford our bigger challenges is how we get to those places that you mentioned And of course one of the problems that we've got which is why we desperately need to win the election Is that it's actually genuinely really difficult to get around parts of the country? Yeah, like if you live in Cumbria is no point saying to people just get the bus Like where I live off the ones with road really at any time of day or night What a three-minute wait for the bus When my granny used to live in Appleby in Cumbria, I mean you could go shopping on a Wednesday You could either stay in Penrith for 45 minutes and come home Well, you could stay for about five days and come home like you just can't get around so we're also hoping that our Network of activists like carpooling and sharing and offering people a sofa to make it possible for you to go the next day but the brilliant thing is like we kind of know it's happening but But not exactly how because it's it's because it's grown itself, which is I think we have I hope That this is going to revolutionize the way the Labour Party campaigns Because this is the kind of inclusive do-it-yourself-we-trust-you approach that means that hundreds of thousands of people actually want to get involved and the other thing we know is From our friends in the Bernie campaign who we also worked with in the last election if you make a really big ask of someone They're much more likely to respond You know if I said to you do you want to come canvassing with me somewhere? Maybe you half an hour Well, you know, well you might you might Peniston for two weeks. Exactly. Yes. Exactly Because because like we need to really Maybe not two weeks. Well, it's because you can feel like you can be genuinely useful That's the problem with like you feel like I want to go to You know barrow for example to campaign because I think that's at risk It's like but I know they would take me six hours to get there Then it'll take me another hour to get to wherever the canvassing people are meeting Then you walk around for you know Two hours, and then you got to go again So it does you do need to give people up, you know and ask which people can feel like oh, this is genuinely Useful, I think that that legends thing is cool, right? It's brilliant And the other thing is because it's a big change that we want to make And so you've got to reflect it in a big Response like we're not we're not asking people to give all this time and energy so we can make things a little bit better And we're saying to people you could be part of making things like significantly Better like in many ways really transform it or starting the transformation of the country Doesn't sound credible to say and you can do all that if you do half an hour canvassing on Saturday morning in between Going to the gym and no give up the gym Just spin it, you know fuck the gym until December I mean I'm so I'm so committed that I've not been to the gym in all the time. I worked at momentum. That's my level of commitment I haven't been to the gym since the general action was cool, but you probably do normally go Before since momentum. Yeah, I've been to the gym since you became national director of momentum But look people are excited. It's not a competition. Laura's don't worry about it. True People are excited by it though. Let's do let's do momentum's online game We're gonna do this quite quickly so we can move on to the foreign policy elements of the manifesto But we are gonna start by watching What I think is momentum's most watched video during this campaign Which has been viewed seven million times on Facebook. It is Nikki Morgan getting Owned I suppose would be the phrase on it's not called GM TV. Good morning, Britain. Good morning, Britain We're gonna watch that now. Let's talk then about the conservative manifesto 50,000 more nurses are being promised now if you have a look at those figures, it suggests that around 19,000 of the 50,000 figure will come from keeping nurses. We've already got How can you say that there's going to be 50,000 more if 19,000 already are there? Well because the 50,000 more is exactly what it says, which is that in ten years time There will be 50,000 more nurses in our NHS Which obviously is good news for patients and and their families in terms of making sure that when they need the NHS there are people there But you're recounting 19,000 are in the NHS. No, what we're saying is as part of making sure that in ten years time There are 50,000 more nurses like any employer and of course the NHS is a huge employer Retaining your highly skilled staff is a key part of your workforce strategy, but it doesn't mean there are more nurses Well, it will mean there are 31,000 more nurses No, and and we're going to hang on to 19,000 nurses No, look the bottom line the manifesto is crystal clear on this 50,000 more nurses Over the course of the next bite, you know by the time we get to ten years time and they will be There through a variety of different routes Some absolutely will be retained and that's a key part of any as I say Workforce strategy you don't want to lose your highly skilled staff Stopping people leaving is not more nurses is it there will be 50,000 more nurses There for a variety of different route 19,000 are just people you're going to persuade to stay Whoa Unrelated but Bernie or Picard vote in the comments Seven million views I was reassured by that, you know what at the start of this election I was quite worried because I thought that a huge variable in the 2017 general election was was videos that went viral on Facebook Facebook kind of changed their algorithm. It's actually much harder to make a video go viral, but you're managing it It is harder, but we're there. Yeah, I've had 47 million views so far and Yeah, I think we've made over a hundred videos What's interesting is that some of the stuff that's really traveling is now clips from interviews So we you know, we've had a couple from I know the daily politics and things which have been seen I think we've had like 10 or 11 videos fabulous one of you explaining why we don't need billionaires Well to be honest like I mean what was really staggering about that was that Tory was trying to defend it You're just thinking you're such a chump. That was such a great start to the election Yeah, like making the Tories defend billionaires on day two exactly But yeah, we've had I think about 10 that have been seen by over a million that one that's been seen by seven I think we've learned a lot about you know the clipping in the cutting and we're kind of trying to stay ahead of a Facebook which So far we seem to be doing okay. We've had them Don't know if you saw the Joker one the Batman one. I didn't everyone keeps talking about that and that one has escaped me I will watch that. Yeah, to be honest if it hasn't gone into my feed That's a good sign because it means you're getting out of the bubble and all you don't need me to see the videos Yeah, that's very true. I was good. I'm gonna vote labor anyway. Are you? So my mask of objectivity exactly been cast off there Did you know that Jonathan pie was a Labour member? He was on news night last night and You know, they were talking he was you know, it was wasn't a very good debate They were having but they asked him if he was a Labour member and he was We think about Yeah, we think about 13 million people unique wow, but I mean that's impressive. Yeah, that's that that's already where we were in 2017 I think it's like a third of people on Facebook. Yeah, so we're keeping pace with our with ourselves and we and Labour I Mean with way ahead of the Tories. I mean, of course we need to be because they've got the Times and the Telegraph Frequently have the BBC so You know, we we have to be like this, but you know, we're so far beyond the bubble I mean seven million people is is a huge number of not necessarily politically aligned People but the other great thing is that we've also got them this activists online, I mean, there's loads of people doing this of course we've got little Video by the many production people who are doing clips of themselves and then sometimes we're picking up really good ones Even people hands. I mean, I've seen in a folk like me who've literally got as much skill as I have and And they've gone from I don't know 700 people follow them on Twitter And they've now got videos that have been seen by 30 35,000 people I mean, that's that's really brilliant and also talking about where they are in a way that is really Connecting, you know, because there's stuff that we do centrally is brilliant But actually if I'm in Huddersfield and I hear people from Huddersfield talking about saving Huddersfield one infirmary Yeah, it's kind of got and you might know it my friends are friends friends are friends very persuasive Let's talk about foreign policy. Yeah The manifestos both have foreign policy sections, which have probably be probably Received about three minutes of airtime since the general election was called. Is that about correct? Yeah, yeah, so foreign policy is this foreign policy never appear in general elections Or is this something which is specific to this particular campaign since you remember 2005 people talking about Iraq But even then the focus tends to be on retail policy offer bread-and-butter stuff and I feel like Hopefully label will focus on this a bit more in the coming weeks because you know, if we're socialists We don't think that people are just narrow self-interested utility maximizers We believe that people care about others You know solid there is you know, but based on that and like if you look at the history of the British left There's a long history of internationalism. It's part of the culture of the left You know solidarity with people resisting colonial rule if you read Priya Kapal's new but in Surgeon Empire It talks about that in real detail as part of who we are so Talking about foreign policy in the next couple of weeks. I think would be would be really good There's a lot of state. There are lives at stake and I don't think we should sell the public short I think if you tell people, yeah, we're gonna make your lives better And we're gonna address some pretty egregious wrongs in terms of what the British state is doing abroad I think that will attract people too, you know, especially as we're trying to not just reach Labor-tory swing but necessarily but rallied kind of base, you know rally people who don't necessarily always vote Who vote for other left-ish parties and Labour has a really good story to tell on this and an important one the biggest thing and I'm starting to get bored of the sound of me own voice on yeah, but like it really needs to be talked about and As someone who focuses on it so much and has done since the wall started It's incredibly frustrating for me when people keep calling it the Brexit election I'm like you think about what's the worst things that the British state is doing right now The worst is climate change and it's almost in a different category all together not dealing with climate change It's just a death sentence for for you know for millions and Britain's role when that is important talk about that in a minute perhaps The second one is Yemen. So when you look at What's happening in Yemen's Saudi-led intervention in the Yemeni civil war in 2015 now been going on for four and a half years That war in terms of the Saudi intervention. It's largely aerial bombing from the Saudi point of view and Half the Saudi Air Force has made up a British jets British supplied fighter jets sold Most of the ones that have been used now sold by new labor well done new labor And that deal was actually signed by the great humanitarian Gordon Brown. Well, those that fleet of jets is now Pulverizing Yemeni civilians has been for the past four and a half years and well documented by the you know Some people will be familiar with this, but I think it's worth saying because we'll talk about it for people who don't know Well documented by an international human rights watch the UN save the children Oxfam You can read all the reports. There's no you know debate about this Sad has been hitting schools in hospitals hitting clinics when they've been given the coordinates don't bomb this clinic Please hear the coordinates. They'll bomb it twice. They'll bomb it once then they'll wait for the first responders to come And they'll hit it again. So it's quite deliberate Hitting all kinds of civilian infrastructure Targeting civilian infrastructure as far as I can make out. They'll deny it the British government will deny it But it seems clear to me. That's what they're doing imposing a blockade on Yemen So they've killed like I'm gonna kill thousands of people for indiscriminate bombing the largest cause of violent death in the war is Saudi bombing and Yeah, just to just to focus on the bombing for going on to the blockade Those planes don't fly that British support because what the deal is We sell them the jets and in the contract as a commitment to carry on providing Whenever they need it the bombs the missiles the components the training for the pilots the maintenance There's British crews on the ground keeping the planes in the sky Those planes don't fly those bombs and missiles don't fall without British support and American support for that component the Saudi Air Force It's American but the British side the British component of the Saudi Air Force is big I know like, you know, we're much smaller power compared to the Americans but British Fight jets make up a big proportion of the Saudi Air Force to the point where some people involved have said and honestly to Channel 4 News when they did a dispatcher's documentary about this It wouldn't just if the British withdrew support for the Saudi bombing It wouldn't just ground the British supplied jets, which would be huge They'd struggle to fight the war full stop because the British jets are so important So the British state is acting as an accessory to mass murder to indiscriminate bombing Which has killed thousands of civilians that you know, they dropped a laser-guided bomb in a school bus in August 2018 killing 40 primary school aged boys British government is an accessory to this campaign of mass murder and has been for four and a half years in addition to which The Saudis and the UAE are imposing a blockade on the region's poorest country And you know what happens when you impose a blockade on the region's poorest country, which is import dependent What happens is people start dying in large numbers due to the humanitarian crisis that's been created so 85,000 infant children Forget about the casualties in children under above the age of five and adults just infant children 85,000 infant children dead of starvation or preventable disease as a result of a man-made humanitarian catastrophe which leading culprit is our ally doing this with our help really really serious and in terms of the election campaign you have a very straightforward choice between a Conservative party which has been enabling this for four and a half years And with which is in government and accessory to mass murder just a straight. It's not rhetoric It's not you know It's just a straightforward statement of fact and the labor government and the potential labor government Which is committed to withdrawing that support which would ground half the Saudi Air Force at a stroke and undermine their ability to find That wall which would literally save lives from day one, you know It would stop aerial bombing of informed in a week and a half apparently So that's a huge huge That's that's a huge dividing line, you know if you if people want to pull the election down to one issue I mean bought it down to climate change But if we want to pull it down to two issues bought it down to that bought it down to I mean Brexit's important But come on is Yemen less important if five thousand infant children less important So we need to talk about that and you know by the way, it's a terrible reflection on our politics Those people have been invisible, you know, and there's right This is this is an instance of racism brown lives don't matter Arab lives don't matter Yemeni lives don't matter just literally invisible from the whole campaign so far So I think it's really important to people going back to people canvassing If you get the chance to mention this mention it because actually when it's polled most British people we shouldn't bomb We shouldn't arm Saudi Arabia. We shouldn't surprise us. It's a popular position, you know And it'd be good to see labor-pressing is a bit more because I've got a good story to tell on that There's lots of other stuff to say about foreign policy, but that one is so urgent So urgent it really needs to be discussed and silence needs to be broken on that those people shouldn't be invisible They deserve, you know, they're humanity to be recognized. I want to read into them to be recognized I want to read the relevant section of the labor manifesto to get an idea of sort of how Radical or how much of a break this is we've sort of existing Well, we know there's a big break with existing state policy But what's normally expected of a center-left party? So the what I thought was the relevant quote They will they've pledged to immediately suspend the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen and to Israel for arms used In violation of the human rights of Palestinian civilians and conduct a root and branch reform of our arms exports regime So ministers can never again turn a blind eye to British-made weapons being used to target innocent civilians As this I suppose bar 2017 ever been a commitment made in a labor manifesto No, I'm aware of now. I mean new labor sold these arms, you know I mean they got into I suppose what you said because they got into power with this whole ethical foreign policy Didn't know with Robin Cook, but there was never any Concrete well, they said we're gonna have an ethical dimension to our foreign policy Which amazingly begs the question what bits are not gonna be ethical and why is being ethical an option? I mean, it's a facile words, you know to begin with no, this is all new. I mean when you're looking at the The language in this in the foreign policy section of the manifesto is really really striking Here's one bit. This is right at the beginning of the foreign policy section One of the pledges we will conduct an audit of the impact of Britain's colonial legacy to understand our contributions to the dynamics of violence and Insecurity across regions previously under British rule imagine Tony Blair or Gordon Brown Both of whom were very proud of the British Empire Saying anything like that. You see it again and again and again We will issue a formal apology for the Emirates of Massacre. We will allow the people of the Chagos Islands Oh, sorry. You're on film mate, but really did Issue a formal apology for the Emirates of Massacre where British troops gunned down peaceful protesters and in India in 1920s in 1919 Allow the people of the Chagos Islands who have thrown out of their islands to make way for a US base and just Dumped on the port in Mauritius and not allowed to go back. They'll be allowed to go back So writing imperial wrongs you turn to the form to the diffid section, which is always the best section is the best people If the Department of International Development, yeah Second paragraph of the diffid section we recognize the need to address historic injustices and we'll reset our Relationships with countries in the global south based on principles of redistribution and equality Not outdated notions of charity or imperialist will I mean that's You can do realism hasn't feeding in a labor party manifesto. No, you could run against new labor on this It's so different. It's so qualitatively different, you know And there are elements of the manifesto with regard to foreign relations, which are more Which are less pleasing and it's the military bit as always because that bit seems to have been farmed out to the Right of the party. So you've still got membership of NATO. What's the point? You've still got 2% of GDP on the military. What's the point? I'm sure Paul Mason loves it But you know it stuff that's not so good But it's a struggle and low part at the moment is a real site of contest on this stuff and the people who are progressive are winning that struggle and The people who recognized the British foreign relations as a product of historical process is rooted in 300 years of Empire Which only finished in historical terms yesterday There's that understanding. That's what's most striking to me Anti-imperialist people wrote a lot of this and that it's so pleasing to see we need a reckoning with that history Let's talk about teaching empire in schools. It's really really important. It's not about It's not about guilt or shame We're gonna make people feel ashamed of their country or guilty about the past like most people in this country Not everyone most people in this country alive today didn't do anything any of this stuff So probably a few knocking around It's not about personal guilt. It's about how do we get here? How did this country get to be so powerful so wealthy so implicated in global systems of violence like Saudi militarism all sorts of You know regimes in the Middle East whose means of violence were provided and continues to be provided by the British How did we get there? You know, how do we get how did we? Find ourselves in meshed in a web of kind of Cleptocracy in terms of these tax havens which will put loads in the British jurisdictions. How do we get there? What can we do about it that recognition of Our role our place it's in the climate change bits as well climate justice for the global south is You know that theme keeps coming up in here It's so pleasing anyone who needs like because this is hard sometimes we get you know Worn down by the selection campaign, especially as it's all on us as activists It is hard and we lose hope and we get disheartened and the rest of it Many things you can do for that. You can be active in canvas one thing to just sit down and read that manifesto It's in some parts of it a terrific some parts not so good the foreign policy stuff Siphon the militarism stuff is really good really really good It's so interesting listening to you and it does make me think I really hope there's going to be a big intervention on Foreign policy from the Labour Party Because I think you're right that this was a major Motivator for for lots of us, you know, I mean I'm come from a development background and and you know, you're so right It's how do we understand how we you know, the UK got here. It's also why are other countries in the in the state? They're in you know to just Kill all these nonsense soft and xenophobic and racist ideas about there's some sort of innate superiority The other side of that ledger is and or deficiency Yeah, and on climate it's so important because we're gonna have to be prepared to make massive investments and to have much more ambitious targets partly because of our global and historic responsibility and also because people in long eating can't have their kitchens flooded every six weeks but But they're kind of interconnectedness and and you see with all these nonsense that the Tories were coming out without global Britain It's just a fantasy land It's kind of harking back to this thing that never existed in the first place that benefited a very small number of people Whereas the way that you describe it this that this is actually this international soldier This is what international solidarity means and it's so many of us were drawn to this political project at least in part Because of that. Yeah, so I think I really hope there's gonna be some space in this campaign for For the for the bigger looking beyond Britain kind of stuff And this this is an expression you can tell labors connected to grass which movements and connected to wider society in a way That it wasn't before this is an expression of a crisis of legitimacy around British foreign policy Which has been brewing for for a long time and the British foreign policy elite are nervous about this you think back Over the last 20 years We've seen I don't like talking about failed interventions like if you succeeded in this crime They are crimes invasion of Iraq was a crime, you know, but the fact that they were disastrous as well Afghanistan Iraq Libya didn't turn out the way it was promised Yemen people now becoming to be aware of it our uprisings people saw people rising up often just you know Unarmed calling for democracy and getting gunned down by regimes that were armed and trained on by us You know their regimes trained at security forces trained by us There's a crisis of legitimacy around that people are starting to think well, why is our country behaving like this and when you look at polls That is reflected in that and when you follow The discourse in the British foreign policy elite, they're really anxious. How do we win back the legitimacy for Britain's role as we want it to be And that that's their challenge. That's their problem in fact one I remember once reading A quote. I think it's an anonymous one in the Guardian from a military top brass figure basically saying One of the issues we've got is that British population is now more diverse And you've got people like me whose families grew up in British colonies And they're just less less likely to see British from British state power and British military power as a force for good in the world um So that crisis of legitimacy is growing from policy elite are really worried about it um And labour are manifesting it and labour are saying okay if you don't like the way this has all been going over the past 20 years If you think it should be revisited Then we've got answers for that and like if you don't think this is the country we we should be if you think we can be different better you know we've got a We've got some answers to how we can address that um There's a thing about that thing about teaching empire in schools Polls done shortly after that two thirds of the country supports it And that that would be transformative in terms of in terms of dealing with racism Which is a product of britain's imperial history? Was it that stupid thing peston said the other day that britain's been a beacon for toleration and all the rest of it And labour have introduced this alien force called racism into the british body politic like Racism isn't it's an outcome of britain's. It's one of the central components of british imperial history You know it makes imperialism possible and by Examining that imperial history. We will not just create the political space to change our foreign policy But also deal with racism in a way it manifests itself in so many different ways in Both our political parties and in the press. So all this stuff is really important really Exciting you know if we can get that victory it could be really transformative on on this side and by all means Focus on the bread and butter stuff But this stuff's really important and lives are at stake. So let's emphasize that too I'm going to go to questions in a moment, but first of all I want to talk about the alternative Also the dark alternative, which is what is in the conservative manifesto? So I mean from what I've seen of it. It's it's basically more of the same And the only thing I could see which seemed like you know, it was it was a new An even further lurch to the right than what is current. Can I just on that? Yeah You can't just say on that like I don't want to hope none of my students are watching and I'll Scared them by saying this but like when I mark essays They were like I don't want to split it There are two there are two kinds or many kinds of two kinds of particular There's the one where the student has made a really thoughtful serious effort to research the problem Think about it in a kind of nuanced detailed way and set up a set of thoughtful serious structured answer And then and they're the ones you get like, you know, high 60s 70s or whatever And then there's the ones who just they just phone it in and they give me a load of really banal Bullet points and platitudes They've cobbled it together at the last minute and I just thought that when I read the two manifestos The labor one is a serious piece of work like I could You can never subtract your politics from it, you know, it's impossible But like if it was possible for me to just drop my politics and look at it in objective way One's a serious document. The other isn't, you know, this Tory document is just a series of vacuous platitudes bullet points The odd line now and again Look at this introduction From the second third fourth fifth and sixth paragraphs all start the same three words get Brexit done It's just a PR exercise, you know, the the paragraphs are sure it's all platitudinous The foreign policy section of the toy manifesto We will strengthen Britain in the world is the chapter heading and in the stand first and you can see this is a This is a response to to to labor what labor is saying that bits. I was talking about We were immensely proud of the UK's history Unlike those currently leading the Labour Party, we view our country as a force for goods while they're Acting as accessories to mass murder in Yemen. They're talking about Britain as a force for good in the world Strength for our own forces, blood to blood continue to be an outward looking country that's a champion of collective security. It's just it's vacuous hypocritical stuff and It's a very thin document um And it speaks to a party which has No ideas and it's just a status quo party and as steady as she goes party As long as that's trying to start a cultural war as well, right in terms of we're a party that's proud of Britain's past You know, it's just about yeah. Yeah. Well, are you properly British or not as opposed to what is our practical vision of what we'll do Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It is a dividing line though in British society and there's no dodging that That's a fight that needs to be had um Yeah, and I think part of this is that they want to motivate their own base You know just as And this is the way politics has gone as it seems to mean both both sides Atlantic It's less about trying to win over swing voters and more about rallying the base rallying the Yeah, running your base vote labourer doing it and They're doing it and you can you can see that and it's kind of Corbyn wants to disband the armed forces They're ashamed of our history All the rest of it. This is it's just red meat for Tory voters and playing to their fears and their paranoia and all the rest of it The other bit in it that I thought was not just platitudes is they want to criminalize public institutions boycotting foreign Countries, right, which was basically just seemed like a very simple clampdown on boycott divestment and sanctions on israel Yeah to say that any public body that starts a boycott Yeah, I think they say because of community because it damages community relations will be made illegal. Yeah Very authoritarian response. Uh, let's go to some of your questions I know that fox has messaged me some of them. So I don't stare so Distracting me at the screen. Oh, by the way, Picard apparently one you prefer Picard to Bernie Sanders. I prefer Bernie Sanders But there you go Ian Cameron asks I'm not very good at being persuasive when I have to respond in real time Should I still canvas or would I be more useful helping out in another way? I suppose that goes to you Laura. Well, you might be more persuasive than you think you are um, I'd say Come along to a let's go training. But yeah, there's there's masses of other things that you can do You know, if you think you're kind of handy with video getting in touch with the video team and clip stuff Share stuff online. Maybe you can do some research for us Maybe you maybe in on election day, you could be one of the people doing like almost the most critical job Which is sitting in the campaign room You know giving people maps and and helping the other people get out there If you think that there's something you can do phone banking, you know, we do also need people at different times in the campaign Who are gonna be helping people get from a to b? I think but the first thing I'd say is you you're probably a lot more persuasive Then than you think you are I mean the fact that you're watching this On a friday night when everyone else is down the pub Means that you're motivated enough and in the end it's the motivation and Normal no normal people like all all of us normal folk tune into normal folk who are motivated and And passionate, but yeah, there's masses of other things that you can do if you don't really think the door knocking's for you so check out momentum's website And there's loads of information in there Yeah, we say if you if you're unsure about what to say on the doorstep The easiest thing to do is just ask a lot of questions Listen and then explain why you support labor Yeah, because even if you're not you know up to speed on exactly why the tax and spend policy is perfect or I'm so sorry. Do not try to get out of here Do not turn right. It could have at least a turn left two hours later That's definitely true a lot of the persuasive conversation is is also it's about a conversation It's not supposed to be I knock on your door and tell you lots of things You don't you're not standing there to say have you got any questions about the labor manifesto? No Like you're saying you're there. Can we have a political conversation? Exactly I often say because if they say like I'm voting to or say any chance I could persuade you otherwise You can be quite explicit about the reason you're there Um, okay next question. Could the panel give some simple tips for persuading people on the doorstep who are abandoning labor over brexit? Please a difficult question. Lots of people will be asking over the next two weeks Laura again Yeah, I'd ask them why because obviously it depends. I mean if it's a an ardent Remain supporter Who's wobbling into the Lib Dems? I would say that the only way they have a hope of Securing remain is voting labor. I mean, I am voting labor for millions of reasons But amongst them is the fact that actually I do genuinely Believe that because the Lib Dems are lying, you know, they're only gonna they're gonna cancel it Which is a I mean, I agree with you disastrous idea So no democrat's gonna go along with that in the first place, but you know, so if there's a big remainder This is the party with a route to remain if it's someone who's voted leave You know, what what do they want out of that leave vote? They almost certainly didn't want You know the economy to crash If they're a labor person, they won't want to get rid of protections For workers for the environment. So you know Corbin and his team Will negotiate a much better deal. I mean a genuinely credible deal We know they can because they've got the relations already They've built much better relations with all the people out in brussels than the Tories ever managed The Tories have on their third or fourth brexit secretary. They're just not competent so I think You know, I ask them Ask them why it is that they feel whichever way it is about brexit and and Start from there. And then I think also, you know, if you have the chance put it in its wider context because In the end, I mean, I've not met anybody and I you know, because I am interested in it I've met a lot of people who are very interested in brexit. I've genuinely met very few Who are only interested in brexit It's just like it's just not true that people aren't I mean one in three people in this country The wonderful James Butler said this the other day on the on the burner Make sure you subscribe to James Butler's the burner, which is released every morning about half six I think at least he records it at half six Go to navara media.com slash telegram and you can sign up to that was a little propaganda interlude So the wonderful James Butler Said the other day that one in three people in this country can't Can't meet an unexpected bill of over a hundred pounds That means that in some parts of the country One in three of the doors that you knock on That's that's what they're facing and in fact, they're obviously that means in parts of the country It's three in three doors and the other parts of the country wasn't it's it's none but like Even the people who say they're really interested in brexit Like I've just never met one who genuinely that's the only thing they care Now if it really is the only thing they care about Maybe just don't waste too much more time on that doorstep as well because you know, you can't persuade You can't persuade everybody I've met some kind of angry former labor people are now going to vote lib dem and I and part of me at a certain point thinks Really so the people who enable the Tory coalition and the people who probably will get into bed with the Tories again And probably the truth is that brexit for you is an excuse or it's a proxy argument There's a lot more going On there that you're not Facing up to I mean the people I know who've been fed up with labor Because of its brexit position Who are kind of very pro stain in the EU the vast majority of them are now saying yeah, okay come on Yeah, of course I'm voting labor the advice with canvases is when you I'm checking if I've got this right when you make someone who's just passionately anti You just politely, you know, you don't spend your time with some way you think I'm not gonna persuade them You talk to the people who are Sensitive who can move yeah, I mean don't yeah, don't let people soak up half an hour if they're not gonna shift And some people aren't gonna shift, you know, you can't you can't win everyone But for this This brexit question in a way you've got something good that you've got something's good to say to both sides And if you want remind this is your only route and if you want brexit Will we get a less shit brexit or a better brexit depending on how you want to phrase it to them? If you vote labor, it's a better offer to both sides and there's also an appeal to kind of fairness Because this is the only party that's trying to talk to the whole country Who wants to vote for a party that only wants to govern for half the country because basically the Tories and the Lib Dems That's the choice they've made the Lib Dems are not trying to represent 52 percent and in fact the Tories aren't even really trying to Represent 52 percent because they've taken such an extreme version You know your your your average person gets that so Corbyn could sell this better, I think Because it is the better position to say Look, this guy wants to be prime minister of brexit lands She wants to be prime minister of Romania. I want to be prime minister of great But I want to be prime minister for all of you I mean he could have said that and sold it much better a long time to be fair That is the thing he's always felt most comfortable saying so that's that's that's that's the thing Corbyn genuinely feels comes into He says that he says precisely that quite often though I want to be I want to be the prime minister for the whole country and then they're like well What does that mean? What are you going to do? And that's where it took him a while to get there Um, this is an interesting question. Joshua Pym for David. Have you found people bring up foreign policy on the doorstep? I have yet to hear it. Is it a good one to mention? So sort of from practical experience? No, I haven't no in all honesty. Um, and your instinct is where's the thing your instinct in the doorstep is to Is that much neoliberalism is like drill down into our brains and that we start conceiving of each other is just we only care about Well, it is. I mean to be fair. It is also that you often start with any any issues you care about So so you are led by the person on the other side of the doorstep. Yeah, and they're encouraged to think the issues I'll care about things that affect me No, I'm going to come up on the doorstep And I haven't raised it on the doorstep in my to my shame But I think it's it's something we can talk about and you know if you get the opportunity and Perhaps if we talk about outside of the doorstep, there's all these different ways we communicate Different ways we can push it into the national conversation. Maybe if we do that people will start bringing it up Yeah, because one of the things we're trying to encourage which sounds kind of so obvious But it's talk to the people that you know Because it's amazing how many people will Drag themselves out to a canvassing session give up their weekends And then don't talk to politics to their colleagues or friends and family So, you know, to be honest, I have locked in a lot of doors now and apart from brexit, which is Not really a foreign policy issue. I mean it kind of is but at its edges We're doing in such a parochial way. Is it a domestic issue? Yeah, exactly. Those are foreign policy issues. I know but British politics is very Parochial, but that's why we're in the mess we're in in the first place So it doesn't really come up very much This is An interesting question. How can Labour from Juliet, Jake's how can Labour best combat the despicable Tory Manifesto pledge to converse gate Roma and traveller homes. Oh god, where to start? This is so politics of easy mode, isn't it? Well, it was it Matt Zarp cousins said It's always a plane politics on easy mode like today they unveiled a statue to an empty semi and Can you imagine if Jeremy Corby, when you when you have us did it, for example, you know the Labour member Michael Walker did this, you know They get away with murder these people absolute murder and that bit in the manifesto is absolutely egregious and by the way in terms of You know racism one of the things I think in terms of anti-semitism in our party is that The things that gives me hope is that That party is a scene of contestation is a site of contestation and up until very recently we had Labour home secretary who would talk about the David Blunkett talking about I wouldn't want Gipsy's Roma travellers moving into my street You know, imagine I'm saying I wouldn't want black people moving into my street. I wouldn't want this. I wouldn't want that like Those that's one of the racism's that you can say out loud and get away with completely, you know um I don't want to imply that anti-black racism is trivial, but there's this one of the ones where you can really say it out loud I think and and that's what I can put it in the manifesto so And you know, we had that in the Labour party. We had jack straw with his blowing a dog whistle on the nicker we had Tony Blair saying the problem with if you want to deal with black crime You have to look at black culture He said that just before he left the leadership and said something to the effect of now I'm not going to be leader anymore. I can speak a bit more freely. We had Gordon Brown repeating the BMP slogan British jobs with British workers You go all through the list. They use a dog whistle like Matt on on on race and immigration And now those people are out and the people who challenged them from the back benches are in charge of the party That's not to say suddenly there's not going to be more problems. It certainly has it really has But the party is a site of contestation and those things can be can be dealt with that's that's really important I mean, I suppose the issue is is that the reason The we're in a general election campaign and obviously the reason the Tories have chosen this particular policy is they've done some polls And they found out that it's pop like the whole Tory manifesto Why there's no coherent argument in the conservative manifesto is because they've you know done an omnibus on you gov and found out oh people like the cops people like the NHS people don't like roma and then they just sort of You know put it all in So I suppose a question is that you know in a general election campaign where you're desperate to get as many votes possible How do you or do you challenge unpopular policies or do you say well? Yeah, so we've got we've got away from Julia's point you have to and if we're rallying the base if that was that What I said before is true And we're trying to magnetize the progressive side of the British electorate back to labor Like trust the British public to be you know There's a huge chunk of the British public that is just straight forward erosives There's no getting away from that But there is also a huge chunk of the British public which is straightforwardly anti-racist And if labor spoke out more clearly on these things and foregrounded it People would reward also. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also About I mean, I do think we have to challenge it because It's wrong because it's right to do so and and it's and it's our job to call out I mean, you know, there's matters of opinions about taxation We might argue that some stuff is wrong, but actually it's not in the same Absolute way that racism just is but I think the conversation with those people which is sometimes going to be pretty unpleasant And and and sometimes it's going to have to be brief because you just some people you can't win It's to kind of say well. Yeah, when my granny was a girl It was perfectly acceptable to describe black people in a certain way when my parents were young It was you know, you had the no blacks no Irish no dogs written on pop walls That there are some remaining so-called acceptable racism in the eyes of obviously the focus group people in the Tory party and we just have to kind of You know, we have to get people to think of it and it's kind of in that context and And you know, I worked in human rights for many years If you can get people to see Beyond the label And think about like the kid, you know You really think it's acceptable that Children from the Roma community and traveling communities would be denied access to education Or if that kind of thing is said by grown-ups these kids get beaten up like most British people don't Don't think that that's acceptable. You have to appeal to some to some basic values And yeah, and then occasionally you have got to shut the door But I do think we have to call it out Because it will never change if we don't it's really interesting in about 2000 yeah 2000 just after the first report came out It's a killing of Stephen Lawrence stand away from me Actually roughly the same age as me um police Failed to put it mildly on that and then Judge-led inquiry into that which raises the issue of institutional racism in the police force and then there was a Was it a commission for racial equality or the commission for commission for multi-ethnic Britain? Money Meed Trust was a big part of it asked about Omar Khan was Says he was involved with it at the time They produce a report what we're going to do about the issue of race relations in Britain And what they say is look the way we conceive of Britain now the way we conceive ourselves collectively as a country Is is a hangover from empire It's chauvinistic it's exclusionary And if we leave it as it is it's going to be storing us problems up for ourselves in the future Instead what we should be doing is reimagining Britain reimagining our community Reimagining our collective sense of self um thinking about empire trying to reimagine a more pluralist society And that's how we're going to avoid the problems that we'll have if we don't do that There's a huge backlash from the from the press and the telegraph in particular saying they want to ban Britishness or something like that Jack Straw home secretary at the time just capitulated and saying i'm proud to be British and all this Not wanting to have those wows not wanting to have those conversations And we ended up with a decade of new labour dog whistles Revival it seems to me of racism in this country at a point where you know, we could have made real progress Thanks to new labour's capitulations on that and you end up with You know Hostile environment you end up with rindrash you end up with brexit and all the rest of it and there's a lot in this manifesto Well, I was reading it thinking I wonder if they read that report and I wonder if they want to try and go back to that point and say Okay, let's try and get back to dealing with this from the grassroots. What the Juliet's question I think speaks to that wider thing, you know We can get rid of these races But we've got to be prepared to have the conversation and not go back to this Or people have legitimate concerns about the race like a change in communities People don't have legitimate concerns about a black or brown person moving into their street Don't crouch couch it in euphemism. You're supposed to be progressive, you know We should be prepared to have those conversations I think and we're seeing a bit of a willingness here to deal with the under in this manifesto To deal with the underlying issues So we should definitely argue back in answer to that question on these things make a virtue of it and make it part of a wider approach to To race and immigration Let's wrap up there. It's almost 10 p.m. Thank you both so much for joining me this evening. Thank you I've learned a lot I hope you have too. You've been watching tisky sour. You've been watching the viral media as you know This show this organization is only possible because of your kind support So if you are already a subscriber, thank you very much If not, please go to support on the viral media dot com and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month So we can keep expanding our output Thank you so much to david wearing for joining me this evening. Thank you. Thank you to laura park for joining me this evening Thank you very much. And thank you for watching. I will see you next week. Good night You