 Since 1968, British police have infiltrated more than 1,000 political movements with undercover police officers. Many of those movements were not only peaceful, but advanced arguments we now see is politically common sense, whether it's advancing women's rights or opposition to apartheid. Seven years ago, Theresa May ordered an inquiry into the police's use of undercover officers relating to protest, and late last year, the undercover policing inquiry finally began. Expected to run until 2023 and coming in at a cost of tens of millions of pounds, it is a judge-led inquiry on a par with the Savile and Chilcot Inquiries. But will it lead to justice and change? And even if it doesn't, what are the chances that it furnishes yet further light on how the police treat and often subvert democratic dissent? Joining me now is Tom Fowler, host of the Spy Cops Info podcast. And so far, someone who is attending every session and providing as much live reporting as is possible from the inquiry. Tom, welcome to downstream. Cheers. Thanks for having me. Before we get started with the interview, I think it's going to be a really exceptionally informative interview. I want you to do two things at the end, but only if you find it useful. One is to like this video. And the other is to subscribe to the channel. But only if you find this a useful interview, which I'm almost certain you will. And if you do, please do those two things. We really appreciate it. We've got so many great interviews coming out in the next couple of weeks. Theresa May announced this was going to happen 70 years, seven years ago. It only happened late last year. Why did it take so long for this inquiry into undercover policing to actually happen? Because the goddamn cops, man. What else? So, I mean, essentially, the police used every opportunity they could to slow down the process. Partially, that's because they put in like the extra anonymity orders for each of the individual officers. The levels of secrecy, the level of anonymity these cops have had has been practically unprecedented, to be honest. Like, obviously, they've got the documents. So there's the redaction process. So they've like dragged the heels to that. I mean, they've put in a couple of judicial reviews, which we don't know what the details of those were, but that slowed up the process as well. Yeah, there's I mean, just literally every opportunity the police could possibly choose to slow things down. They've taken it. I mean, it's worth noting on the anonymity thing. They've been really like keen to like kind of impress upon the chair of the inquiry that these former undercover officers would be in danger if they weren't anonymous. I mean, like, I think you'd probably be aware there's a number of former undercover officers who infiltrated like criminal groups of criminal gangs, who have a public profile, have no no danger whatsoever. Some of them like Neil Woods, the one of the more noted former undercover drug cops has come forward and said, Well, this is ridiculous. I never expected any anonymity later in life. Why are these guys getting it? And certainly, you know, there's, yeah, it's really weird that they've got so much anonymity. But that's made not just the process for getting it started really slow, but as the inquiry takes place, makes it a really alienating and difficult process to engage with. From what I'm hearing and from what I've heard in your excellent podcasts, I really recommend our audience to go straight after this, but only after this. It sounds like the opposite of accountability and transparency. Obviously, you're there, not in the flesh, you're virtually there monitoring things. How does it feel to you? Are they trying to be transparent in this inquiry so far? Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, I have been going there in the flesh. So in order to watch the live feed of the undercover officers, give evidence, you have to go to a special viewing room, which is basically it's where the inquiry is actually taking place at the moment. As you say, a lot of it is because of COVID, but I don't expect the end of COVID will result in the beginning of any kind of transparency happening. Yeah, I mean, I think the whole thing, like, I mean, like so many of these things, man, it's like, it's designed to be alienating, it's designed to be like off putting to ordinary people, you know, so like, there's a whole there's a whole layer of like legal bullshit, which is like quite hard to kind of from someone like myself to sift through in the first place. But it feels like they do everything possible to like kind of keep you keep as much as possible secret. So for example, the undercover officers, they've all got an enmity for their real names, and in some cases, their cover names. But they don't actually refer to them by their cover names, they refer to them by a cipher, the HN number. But then there's certain officers who've got such a level of secrecy, they haven't even got a cipher assigned to them. So there've been numerous undercover officers who've been deployed into political protest groups, who we can't even really, it's quite hard to talk about someone when you haven't even got a cipher to describe them, their evidence is put into gists, which are then like mixed together with other undercover officers who've got full enmity, so that it's really hard to like draw out where where this bit of information is coming from. Obviously, as well, I mean, like typically for any sort of inquiry, you know, as soon as somebody's giving oral evidence or the written evidence is published, so I mean, we've gone from a real like famine to feast of information when it comes to this topic. And what's the ambit of the of the of the inquiry rather? What's it trying to cover? What's the period? What organizations is it looking into? So when the inquiry, the terms of reference refer to the deployment of undercover police into protest groups from 1968, which really refers to two groups, the special demonstrate units, special demonstration squad and the national public order intelligence unit. The special demonstration squad was set up in 1968 and ran through until the 2007, I think it was. The the national public order intelligence unit was set up in 2001, run until well, run until it was discovered essentially 2011. It still exists in some form, you know, what that is, you know. These these units were deployed like I get in up to like approximately once they got going, like four to five year deployments into political protest groups. What we're discovering from the inquiry is it was almost exclusively the left. The inquiry is working in tranches and this first tranche, which was still on, is 1968 to 1982 and so far everybody has been infiltrated into the left. Like initially it was the anti-Vietnam War campaign. Once they kind of they were deep enough into that, then it became the anti-apartheid movement, then the troops out movement, anti-fascist groups, basically whatever the big noise was on the left at that time. Supposedly their their issue was public disorder and sedition, but subversion, sorry not sedition, subversion, but you get an impression that it's neither of those things really. And the thing about it not really really monitoring, covering what we would now call domestic extremism on the right, I mean just for our audience out there, we're talking that the mid to late 1970s is a real, there's a hugely emergent, powerful far right in this country both on the streets but also the national front doing pretty well in elections. So I mean that makes that look particularly strange, doesn't it? The absence of these guys going after right-wing groups too? Yeah absolutely. I mean like as you say as well as like large numbers of protests by the national front, they were like, I mean the numbers involved quite low but like for an overtly fascist party in Britain, they were doing incredibly well. They came forth in a number of elections, they looked like they might be taking over the Liberals at one point. I mean that just really successfully stole the like, you know, we see that again more recently with the conservative party just borrowing from parties further to the right to bolster their electoral whatever, you know. But yeah, I mean in the 1970s you had like a lot of racist attacks, fire bombings, pretty serious stuff. I mean it was really kind of, it was quite shocking when I've been like hearing the evidence from these former undercover officers, when it's put to them, like why did you choose the international socialists, the international Marxist group or Anarchy Magazine or one of these to infiltrate when the national front were so active, they were like, oh well the national front weren't a problem. And just literally like without that context of knowing what was happening at the time, you think oh they weren't being a problem then. But it seems, I think it's really kind of relates back to something we hear a lot where like, where is like left-wing politics is considered like, you know, like unacceptable, like it may be the pay of foreign governments and like coming from like some secret evil clique. Like fascist politics is presented as like the legitimate concerns of the white working class and you get the impression that that not only comes from the top but also comes from like special branch, you know, that the police themselves clearly didn't have a problem with the national front, probably because they supported a lot of those those things. And also when you're reading their reports, the language using those reports, I'm not going to repeat it here because it's, you know, incredibly racial language. They're describing people, you know, because these are the reports they did on people were incredibly detailed. Not just, you know, kind of what they were doing politically but what was going on in their personal lives, where they worked, what they remember of a trade union, how much they earned, who they lived with, how much those people they lived with earned, what they looked like, everything about them. But you know, often would include quite like, quite nasty comments about their appearance and their race, both people of colour, Jewish people, you know, also any kind of minority was getting kind of slagged off, basically, in the in these reports. More than a thousand groups were infiltrated by undercover officers, I think more than, well you told me more than 180 officers I think or something between 150-200 officers? Yes, I mean so there's as well as the field officers, there's the handlers but then a lot some of the and the backroom staff but then some of those we've got some officers got more than one cipher because they had more than one role, which initially you got the impression this was part of what I was saying about being so alienating is kind of confusing. The numbers kind of move as you kind of go well there was this many roles but how many actual officers there were is different again. So of these thousand organisations that were were infiltrated more than a thousand, which are the ones that sort of stand out as particularly ridiculous for you? If you if you were trying to make the make the case against spy cops you're talking to somebody who says no this is good it was necessary what was just like brazenly absurd? I was a member of a of a group called Eat Out Vegan Wales where we went and reviewed takeaways and did like social gatherings in in vegan like vegan-friendly restaurants and Marco Jacobs who infiltrated my group was a part of that. I mean it's very easy I mean you could talk about all sorts of you know kind of civic groups essentially and other kind of community organisations which were infiltrated by these undercover police. I mean but I think like when it comes to that sort of thing I kind of I don't really kind of get into those kind of arguments generally because I think but because the nature of like these deployments of course they infiltrated those kind of groups because they're infiltrating the lives of people and I think it's really key to understand that these they're not just infiltrating organisations and often they're barely infiltrating the organisation they're infiltrating the lives of the people who are in those organisations so you know they're infiltrating groups like Eat Out Vegan Wales or these like you know perfectly reasonable groups the same way that they're infiltrating wedding parties and funerals and everything else that's in people's lives because the cover is that deep I mean obviously like you know quite famously they deceived a number of women into long-term sexual relationships and had children with some of them you know the fact that they infiltrated like some community groups along the way as well is well it's to be expected we know of four undercover officers who had children is that correct we know four children yeah yeah you know it wasn't just one person it was it seems like this was basically given carte blanche by management it seems yeah like this was kind of known about and wasn't really addressed yeah so I mean I think there's um when we first found like back in uh the 2010 2011 when we first discovered these undercover officers there was a there was a narrative being spun by the Met Police that this was a firstly Kennedy was a rogue officer then his unit was a rogue unit and then it kind of becomes more clear that actually this is systemic this is more than just individual actions going on um we we at first we thought that it was it dated back you know kind of maybe a decade or two but the more we learn and with the inquiry we're starting because it's a linear inquiry it's starting with 68 these things seem to go back much further and further um one of the undercover officers who had a number of sexual relationships Rick Gibson who we heard about um it turned out another when another undercover officer was giving evidence about him uh it was he was asked did he know about uh you know what he'd got up to and he said oh yeah that gossip was well known throughout special branch before I joined the unit so you know it yeah that that those kind of activities were happening from very early on we heard from a former undercover officer who used the cover name Graham Coates uh who said that he that the the language being used at the banter the the um the safe house banter that was going on between the undercover officers was would have been considered extreme misogyny extreme sexism even then in the 1970s um because one of the defenses that the police keep the police lawyers keep using is we shouldn't judge the social attitudes of people at the time by today's standards and it's coming very clear that even by the standards of the day they're pretty extreme even though I reject that argument entirely anyway I see the argument you're saying about well no you know we should judge this by the people's lives they were infiltrating also a lot of these organizations have very permeable boundaries you know anybody involved in activism knows that you you're kind of just friends with one person you might go to some demos or one action once and all of a sudden you're a member of x often doesn't especially direct action related stuff but I think for our audience you know women's liberation anti-apartheid it does feel like the british state was systematically infiltrating forces for progress I mean there's no two ways about it and you know okay and people and people might have a misgiv you know the socialist workers party that's a it's a revolutionary party which ultimately wants you know political power okay fine and some people are I don't even like the idea of that fine but anti-apartheid the anti-nazi-link I mean it sounds really astonishing within the police themselves was there never a sort of political tension there or is there any suggestion at least that some people at the top were saying you know look we just we had a war with these guys in the 30s and the 40s the Nazis now we're now we're monitoring people and infiltrating people calling themselves the anti-nazi-link maybe we we shouldn't be doing that how was the politics of that all decided was it coming from the home secretary was it kind of autonomous what was it I don't certainly don't get any impression that there being any kind of political tension around this it's very clear that it went all the way to home secretary absolutely the the annual reports that were submitted were to to renew the funding you know made it very clear it went all the way to the top you but yeah I mean I think you're completely right it was you know I personally believe that the whole thing was it was about fighting social attitudes right it's it's not just about disorder it's not about anything else it's about holding back those social attitudes I mean so like one of the groups infiltrated and broken up essentially by the deployment of undercover police of the undercover officer you know was was central in the expulsion of many of the main activists um was the women's liberation front and I mean when they were formed women weren't allowed to open their own bank accounts in the UK there's this idea now particularly that anti-apartheid like these days oh everybody was against the apartheid right well no they bloody weren't and the government of the day certainly bloody wasn't and you know that we remember at the time when the anti-apartheid movement was active in the early 70s um you know boss the uh the security services from South Africa were you know planting bombs across London and you know getting involved in all sorts of really heavy duty shit and the anti-apartheid movement were getting their jumble sales infiltrated but you know what was we we might we might think that oh yeah you know the the everybody in British politics was would be against the Nazis against the apartheid well no they're not no they weren't and you know foresight's a wonderful thing and the reality is is that it served the interests of the British establishment for the rise of things like the national front as a counterbalance to left-wing ideas and left lefting populism assessing this stuff the best way to look at it is imagine what Britain would have been like if these guys hadn't infiltrated more than a thousand organizations if they hadn't deployed into this and that organization how much further along we would be in terms of social progress i think that's such a powerful argument and that it doesn't really feel like there's a pushback because you know at least with when you have when you have undercover policing with drug stings or counterterrorism you know with actual terrorist organizations who've committed you know quite serious serious things people can agree or disagree about you know civil liberties being curtail and so on and so forth but people can demonstrate say look if we don't do this this happens but i can't really see there was no there was no downside if i hadn't done this there was only upside is that a fair assessment so initially the unit is supposedly set up as a response to the anti-vietnam war demonstration i made 1968 outside the the US embassy in grovega square which the police lost control of and there's you know the initial argument is that we needed that intelligence in order to be able to meet the challenges of public order public disorder so there's this the idea that we were wasting police resources by over policing certain demonstrations and putting police at danger by under policing other demonstrations i don't buy that at all i mean largely because you could get that kind of information without infiltrating these groups that to that level but certainly once you get beyond the early days of the unit it's obvious that their their agenda is much wider than that and yeah like they're they're holding back these organizations not just by like infiltrating them and like reporting on them but by in many cases taking the roles that would have gone to like activists who are very you know competent and articulate and know what they're doing taking those roles getting elected into positions and as they bragged themselves at the inquiry didn't do much didn't do anything didn't do any of the work though i wasn't you know i wasn't wasn't working for the for those i was i was not infiltrating i just took the position and didn't do very much so if you take like for example rick gibson who infiltrated the troops out movement um i mean he actually contacted because where he was deployed there was no local branch he had to contact the national organizers and say i want to start a branch in my area he became the rep for that branch he ended up being the rep for London he ended up being on the national committee and for a while he was national co-ordinator of the troops out movement so they're taking very in some cases like the the key role inside an organization and there's there's no doubt in my mind that like that not only would the troops out movement have been more effective but perhaps you know that the the message that they were giving which was that we didn't want to have a military deployment in northern Ireland aside from any kind of concerns about what Irish probabilism means or didn't but like there shouldn't be soldiers on the streets would would have got a lot further right if there wasn't undercover cop running the organization that's making this this argument um and more than that as well i think like one of the key things which like the undercover cops used um was trauma in a number of ways they use trauma as part of their deployment a part of their legend but also they use trauma um for how they how they interacted with the group and how they've ultimately left and that use of trauma often left is mark on people many of many which you know didn't get involved in politics as much or in activism as much going forward as maybe they would have otherwise um and i think we the the use of undercover police into activist groups really like stunted not just those groups but the people involved with them from doing that kind of activism again in the future and i think to my way of thinking you know there's too many amazing amazing inspiring activists that i know like spent decades of their lives firstly trying to piece together what really happened but also dealing with the the trauma or the uh supporting somebody who's probably supposedly gone through trauma because so many of these undercover officers would would tell a story of their own personal trauma which would then make people want to look after them can you just provide one example of um of an officer and perhaps their legend and and and the kinds of ways they manipulated those around them yeah sure i mean like so i mean it was what was really common um so it says like uh andy davie um who um we know was andy coals uh he's the brother of the reverend richard coals uh he's currently a a counselor in peter bra up until not long ago he was the deputy police and crime commissioner for peter bra he was an undercover police officer in the early 1980 in the mid 1980s in animal rights groups in london uh he claimed that his parents both died that uh he was adopted that he'd been in care he was fostered he'd been in care um and he made connections with people who had had similar stories um you know during his his deployments uh you know he he he gave a lot of um a lot of do you know it's really difficult for me to talk about like this because so much of this is um about these stories is personal information which people who've been traumatized by undercover police have told to me some of it's in the public domain some of it's not so i'm always really wary of talking about a lot of this because though it might be in the public domain i could easily get it confused um but you know essentially like it's a pattern we see across these undercover officers so many of them had um the stories of trauma often they would come out for example marco jacob so infiltrated the group i was in he claimed to have been a victim of domestic violence in his previous long-term relationship um which was something which he didn't really want to tell people about because he was a proper bloke and this woman had knocked him around a lot and he it had really affected his confidence and he had problems around that um when like uh mark kennedy was discovered as being um having like a fake passport and stuff he came out with this this huge the like complex cock and bull story which involved him you know staying up on like crying in the arms of the woman he was infiltrating um telling this ridiculous story of horrible talk of horrible trauma um things which really stuck with people for a long time um there's so many examples of it yeah and so similar as well and that's one of the other things is that so many of these officers stories were so similar and it would it would appear i mean we look at something like the tradecraft manual um which you know really um like kind of set out the sort of the way in which to behave around what they called weary's um which was you know and actual activists who they found like we are weary some to deal with because they would talk politics and the stuff um that you know the the the the tips and tricks that they were being given they they obviously used and so much was redacted we don't know what's in it but we drawing from what is what we can read you get the impression of people being incredibly manipulative um of people's emotions um not just not just in a way to like kind of the like for their deployment and for their for their legend for to make their job easier but also just to kind of like twist the knife a bit basically you know particularly when we see the withdrawals because often you know often these men were in um what to the women they were in relationships with incredibly loving relationships um these men were like the perfect men for them in some way because they had so much information about their target that they could present themselves as the perfect boyfriend um and then when when they did disappear they would you know concoct this story that was you know that was so traumatic that it would kind of made sense why they disappeared but meant that after these women like wanting to search them being very worried about them for some kind of cases decades on end course i mean i mean there's no other word for i mean i find it evil um and i think also you know it's this was a job where the absolute worst elements of kind of you know top people's what toxic masculinity but kind of narcissistic lying deception maybe prone to physical violence and the state is saying to these men who are you know they're basically saying look unleash this sort of inner psychopath in you if you if you will do all these things that you could never normally do you know in your everyday life and what's more the public story for it's going to be you're keeping people safe doing it and i just i find it astonishing of course there was a there was a public campaign to to talk about getting spy cops uh or ending the whole practice um and it was raised most memorably of course by lush and there was a huge public kickback to that i mean when that campaign happened a were you surprised that the the sort of overt political nature of the campaign of course lush have been involved in these things but they really took it on and were you also surprised at the level of sort of public pushback the the fact that people are willing to defend the police having children women and effectively sexually assaulting them and then leaving their lives forever basically right we had a we had some that they kind of met with us and were like you know what can we do to help them like we should do a campaign and we're like in the window campaign come on you should do that because they give some funding some various groups they've given some funding to police spies out of lives uh around before that time and we were like that we went to a window campaign and we were like yeah great do that and then we kind of they asked us some advice and we were like yeah do this do that whatever and i'll be honest i didn't think it was anybody who's gonna fucking noticed much to be honest i mean i've been involved in other things that had like a lush window campaign and it hasn't resulted in a great deal to perfectly frank you know you kind of get a little bit of i added interest you know but like it doesn't really remount to whole hill of beans but like fucking hell that was a big deal on the day i was like i was in work and i you know i've got things to nothing work with him but i looked at on my lunch break i looked my phone and was like oh shit what's what's going on um yeah i'm i'm always surprised by people i mean i think partially it's my own background i'm from south wales i grew up in the 80s you know like the police were a uh occupational army around here at one point you know i was i was most people i know ain't got much time for the cops i'm always shocked that people like support the police um because it seems regardless of what they do you know i it's yeah it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that that whole sort of thing of like um the the push like the the push for the king looks like even the bloody home secretary had to go about it didn't he i mean like yeah we'll be tired you criticize the police on like some really serious matter um and like you know kind of hold them to account for it because apparently then you're undermining all policing i don't know man like it it really i i'm like i'm i'm never like i'm not i'm not one to like kind of have a reason to argument with people like that i mean i just like just you know fuck the police man fuck off like for me i thought it kind of reflects a certain desperation in a way because it's like it was it was just so transparently obvious that they were in the wrong and like you said there are that's there's probably 25 of society who will defend the police whatever they do you know and most of them vote Tory um and it did feel like an act of desperation but but speaking about that actually um you got to reason main all of this who of course was a Tory home secretary who is the one that's basically started this inquiry will maybe talk about that briefly in a moment about whether or not you think he'll go anywhere but it's still a judge let inquiry into the police started by a conservative home secretary who's actually she's not exactly on the you know that she was not in the center of the party on things like immigration and so on so how can we understand this how do we make sense the fact that Theresa May is the one who gave us an inquiry into a policing fuck no man to be honest with you like people always ask me what surprises you most about this process and like once you've got over the initial thing right like it's hard to be something i'm shocked but not surprised all the time but i was bloody surprised that she did that i mean i think like it shows i mean partially it was because of the infiltration of the Lawrence family um you know the Justice for Stephen Lawrence campaign um and that are the political capital that like that has in this country just about it's one of the few kind of few kind of progressive like anti-racist things that has some sort of political capital in this country for reasons i don't really understand um i think i mean i got the impression i made people who understand these things better than me might have a different view but i got the impression that like Theresa wanted to like save a few quid you know it was like for good neoliberal reasons the cops cost too much and she was trying to come down to size and there was a few things she did like a couple of inquiries at that point and like the the Daniel Morgan independent inquiry maybe a panel was that same sort of time you know so i think there was like there was other battles going on and this was just a way of like because i remember she didn't she get booed at the like police federation that year like they were she was obviously she'd like you know for whatever reason she was having a pop at the cops and like you know i'm i'm no fan whatsoever they're absolutely none at all but like fair play to her for pulling this one i don't know why she did really i'm i think it's great that she did but like i don't know why and i couldn't really explain why i mean my theory with Theresa Mays i think it's partly neoliberalism but i also think like the Tories a lot of Tories obviously pretty per tell would never do what Theresa May did but i think they think like we're the elected governments we're the ones that should be making these political choices and the reality is that the Metropolitan Police Service the police generally in this country Scotland Yard New Scotland Yard now genuinely think like they aren't answerable to anybody Jen you know Jen i mean of course the political leadership is answerable to the home secretary in regards to certain things but i think they view themselves as autonomous and the second you sort of say well hold on actually formally that's not the case they get really shirty and i think that that's where that conflict came from i think just reversing for a second i mean this is something you talked about i think in one of the podcasts as well and this blew my mind Tom which was that Peter Hain in 2003 was and maybe you can tell me who said this in the police Peter Hain of course was a member of the Labour cabinet under Blair in 2003 even up to then was still being referred to as the South African Terrorists by by the police and this is when he's in government then this is what they were calling in 40 years earlier this is somebody who's serving in Blair's government see you think Christ if if a labour and he's now in the House of Lords if a labour minister is a terrorist for these people gonna help the rest of us could you can you sort of illuminate that anecdote a bit do we have any idea who said this and why you know why they said it i mean that's a bit more explicable perhaps it was a report from Mark Kennedy who was in a deceived Kate Wilson into a sexual relationship at the time Kate Wilson's family Kate Wilson went to school with Peter Hain's kids the family were friendly with with with Peter Hain and he'd been at I think it was over Christmas it was some family get some like Christmasy gathering that he was at and it was in a Mark Kennedy's report from that that you know the noted South African terrorist was there you know um yeah i think it really just shows you like kind of how deep the hole is i mean like um that you know though you might have a different government at some time it's still the Tory state man the UK is the Tory state they own the state like don't matter if they're not the government they're still the fucking state and like you know and i'm sure sure like people like you can join the establishment if you like you know kiss enough boots and kiss enough asses and do all the right things but like you're not you're never fully you're never fully that like that you're still you know like tough like you're still scum to them really and i just i think it just illustrates that i mean we haven't found any um every every political party in the UK was infiltrated except for the conservative party and you know that's kind of says it all really that's another thing yeah i mean following up from the Peter Hain point you know that these guys infiltrated the young liberals parts of the labor but the young liberals man yeah yeah well i mean the young liberals were like opposing apartheid so obviously you know i mean like it was important for the the the British state to you know give their due support to their ally in South Africa and to stamp out the campaign against what was internal South African politics right i mean like you know i mean literally like we we can it's not a complicated answer it's it's the obvious answer they were like yeah we might think them as quite mild but like they were opposed to what was the law of the day so like they were they were a problem so final question here you know this to me sums up British politics and British public life on the one hand we've got an inquiry into undercover policing and at the exact same time we've got you know a bill proceeding through parliament both parties ostensibly were backing it that's sort of changed basically legalizing a bunch of practices you know codifying in law rather than just sort of letting things pass a lot of the practices that we've been talking about today that you'll be covering over the next couple of months and years indeed with this inquiry again how do you make sense of that tension there's a there's a there's a judge let inquiry into a set of behaviors and at the exact same time they're being legalized by the Conservative Party and almost the Labour Party got behind it ultimately became too politically costly how do we make sense of that is it it just seems so chaotic and um I don't know it's it's just going like volatile and doesn't make any sense to me can you make sense of it for me Tom can you help me understand it if you're playing the game right and you're following the rules and you're kind of like doing it in the right order whatever no it doesn't make any sense but like since when did the fucking does your the Boris Johnson's world or like the Tory party in general give a shit about that man it's like it was an ideal opportunity they won some case at the IPT it's some in my five case and there was an opportunity and they just fucking jumped right so they just did it like and actually it makes perfect sense if you think if you like looking from their point of view it's like oh well this could be embarrassing at some point once it finally reports in like 20 years time wherever the bloody along long this thing is going to take but if we just legalize it all night won't be a problem and also it means that we can carry on with all these other things that we're doing right under the noses of this inquiry which you know I mean like because because might is right and that's the only that's all the politics means yeah I think that's I think there is definitely a relationship between these two between these two things and I think ultimately yeah when the inquiry reaches conclusions well it's all legal now so no more inquiries needed Tom if our audience wants to know where to find you and to follow your work where where do they need to go you can find me on Twitter at Tom B Fowler if you want to check out the podcast or anything else I've got links to everything spycups.info it's all there if you've enjoyed this interview like I said at the start there's two things you can do don't cost you a thing we really appreciate it like this video subscribe to the channel if you want to see more content like this and I think we have to get Tom back on to talk about this important topic go to navaramea.com forward slash support help us build a new media for politics my name is Aaron Bustani been watching downstream Michael Walker is back tomorrow night with Tiske Sauer but from me from our producers and I presume from Tom too good night