 Good evening and welcome to a Friday night edition of Tiskey Sour. We have five, yes, five massive stories for you this evening. Labour taking the lead in the polls for the first time since January, an excruciating interview between Keir Starmer and Beth Rigby. Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, the BLM movements, surprising new supporter, vaccine passports, and the bizarre reason the chair of young Labour is currently being investigated by the Labour Party. I'm joined as on every Friday by Aaron Bostani. How are you doing, Aaron? Yeah, I'm good, Michael. How are you doing? I am very well excited for tonight's show. I do, I should tell Fox, I do have a slight echo when Aaron speaks, but I'm sure we will, we will get there. Any viewers this week will realize that we have moved back into the studio. That means that the quality is going up, but we do have one or two teeming problems here or there, so we do thank you for your patience. As ever, if you have any comments or questions, tweet them on the hashtag Tiskey Sour or put them in the comments under this video. Most importantly, if you haven't already, subscribe to the video. First story, when Boris Johnson first announced a hike to national insurance to pay for social care, many pundits suggested it was a stroke of electoral genius. This was a politician culturally on the right leaning into left-wing economics and therefore hitting a sweet spot when it comes to public opinion. However, it didn't take long for the idea that Johnson's tax hike was progressive to completely unravel. A majority of the public rightly see the regressive tax as unfair, and now, according to YouGov, it's cost the Tories a polling lead they've held since January. We can get up the polling here. Labour are on 35 and the Conservatives on 33. It's the changes that really matter here, so Labour are up one and the Tories are down five. So a fairly significant drop there. The Lib Dems are up two to ten and the Greens down one to nine. That's, of course, all very much within the margin of error. YouGov also had reform taking some votes from the Conservative Party. That's the party that used to be the Brexit party. Worrying for the Tories, although, you know, I don't need to tell you, that's my huge lead and it's just one poll. There are some much bigger margins when it comes to how people have viewed the national insurance hike, though. In the same poll, YouGov asked, thinking about the national insurance and social care changes announced this week, do you think they will leave you personally better off or worse off? Better off, only 1% of people think these changes will make them better off and 58% think they will make them worse off. Now, you might think, oh, this is a tax hike. Why would anyone think it makes them better off? But the idea of this is that it should be to pay for social care or improvements to the NHS, which will improve people's lives. But people clearly think this is going to take away more from them than it is going to give to them in improved services. They also asked about Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party. And these results should be, I imagine, especially worrying for the wonks in Tory HQ. YouGov asked respondents, thinking about Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party, do you think they do or do not care about keeping taxes low? Only 22% said they do. 59% said they do not. Now, the flip side of this, you might think, okay, they're not the party of low taxes, but now are they the party of public services? Again, it doesn't seem so. So asked whether or not Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party do or do not care about improving the NHS. Only 31% said do. And 53% said do not. Aaron, I want your thoughts on these results. Boris Johnson has had a bit of a Teflon quality throughout his decades-long career. Do you think he's now blown it? No, absolutely not. And I think if you're going to impose tax rises as the PM, you're obviously not going to do it in the middle of the pandemic. You're obviously not going to do it in the year before a general election. So if he was going to do it, it would be now. I mean, if these are the only tax raises that we see from the Tories before 2024, I don't think it's going to have a major set of consequences for them. No. Of course, that might not be the case. It might be the first tax increase of many, like we saw from the Conservatives during the 1990s. And they did genuinely lose their reputation for being a lower tax party. And Labour didn't actually win by saying, we want better public services through higher taxation, because they never actually made the argument for higher taxation. They made and won the argument for better public services. Of course, that's quite easy to do. The worry is, if Boris Johnson does go down that route again, yes, you could even foresee Labour becoming a government of some kind, although it looks unlikely at this point. That's another story altogether. But even if that did happen, you still have to make the case for how you're going to pay for the increased public services, the improved public services, the social care, the social housing, the public ownership of various institutions with its rail, whether it's energy, water. That's not going to cost as much as the Daily Mail or the Sun claim, but it's still going to cost some money. And so, yeah, it is something that Labour are going to have to eventually engage with. And no, I don't think it's one poll. And look, the times don't often run polls on a Thursday evening. They did that because this is a topic where they want to really make a hit with the Tories because it's a tax increase. You don't get polls on a Thursday. Why did this happen? And I think the polls by Sunday might have looked very different. So it's about sending a rocket up Boris Johnson's arse and putting the frighteners on him, saying that we don't like tax increases. Don't do this too often. Otherwise, we'll make your life very difficult. There are a few more issues to mention about the polling. We're not going to obsess about it all show. And one issue is where these Tory voters are going, as you would have noticed in that poll, the most significant thing was the drop in the Tory vote, not the increase in the Labour one. According to Chris Curtis, who is a pollster of those who voted Tory in 2019, now only 53% are sticking with the Conservatives. Only 5% though, are switching to Labour. So, 13% are going to other parties and 28% say they are now undecided. In terms of the poll being within the margin of error, I don't think we should take any single poll too seriously. But it is worth noting that this is the continuation of a trend. Boris Johnson was building up a huge gap between the Tories and the Labour Party throughout much of this year. Since around about June, that has gone into reverse. The gap has been narrowing for a very long time. Finally on polls, a word of warning that we shouldn't take these necessarily too seriously. These are the averages of polling for the Labour Party and the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2015. As you'll be able to see here, the Labour Party were ahead for almost all of the Parliament, often by quite large margins. The Tories still came out from the election with a majority. Of course, they went into that election as part of a coalition government. That was a brilliant result for the Conservatives. You wouldn't have guessed it by looking at five years' worth of opinion polling. Before we move on from this topic, Aaron, should we avoid the polls? Ignore the polls altogether, or are we being told something useful from these new findings by you, Govan, from the polls we often discuss on the show? Good polling is obviously useful for a political party. It's not a bad thing to be polling well. But I think if you're looking at election polling, this far out from a general election, you should think of it like the Premier League, right? You don't look at who's leading the Premier League two or three games into the season. You generally look after Christmas by March, April. And look, if there is a significant polling lead for a political party like Labour in their actual election like in 1997, yeah, that's really, really important. Equally, if Labour, and this applies to Kirsten, applies to whoever, if Labour are within the touching distance of the Tories or vice versa, as was the case with Cameron and Ed Miliband before the campaign starts, four or five points, then that's very easily made up. So I said this yesterday, it's just one poll and people are getting really upset and they've got, yeah, it's just one poll. And the fact that the Tories have basically collapsed on this issue, according to this one poll, which may be an outlier, and Labour have picked up so little, would suggest that there is a ceiling with Stammer, which has probably been 30, 35%. Now, it's important to say, for Ed Miliband, 35% in 2015 was viewed as his path to getting into Tendowning Street. And from what people have been saying, if this was correct, Labour would form a government. However, then you look at the polling for Labour in Scotland, I think they're down four up there, the S&P remarkable poll, put them on 51. So that would suggest they're not going to pick up any seats in Scotland. So if you're not going to pick up any seats in Scotland, you're not going to form a government as Labour. You're just not unless something ultra strange happens with Lib Dembos. And I think that for me is the really interesting story of the last several months is that the Tories have major problems, actually. I think their vote is really soft. I said this again last night on Twitter, and it upsets some Stammer supporters. You think the opposite, but there we are. The Tory vote is really, really soft, particularly in the South, particularly to the Lib Dems. And that might obviously, again, help Stammer get into Tendowning Street. But I can't really see Labour right now benefiting from that. We're a couple of years out from election, that's fine. And, you know, there's an argument to say, you're power dry. I don't agree with it. I don't think you agree with it that much either. But, you know, you need some evidence to suggest he's doing a good job. Right now we're not saying it. Let's go to a couple of comments. Kieran Buckley with a fiver. In the next general election, do you think the likely scenario is the Tories win again, but lose their 80 seat majority? Or they increase their majority? I feel like that's going to be a topic of discussions we have over the next three years. So it's going to be difficult to give you a definitive answer to that right now. Toby Libati Mesme tweets on the hashtag TiskeySour. I reckon Johnson has effed it with the national insurance increase. A few issues really turn the dial against the government, both social care and taxation are in that grouping. If it wasn't for such a weak opposition, they'd be in real trouble. We will be talking a bit more about that opposition in one moment. First of all, if you're enjoying tonight's show, hit the like button. Boris Johnson's hike to national insurance has gone down with the public like a cup of cold sick. Labour strategists therefore might feel confident, given Stammer vocally opposed it. However, when it comes to articulating an alternative to the Tories social care plan, the Labour leader is far less convincing. Take a look at this excruciating interview Stammer did this week with Sky's Beth Rigaby. When it comes to funding it, I wouldn't look to working people and have a tax hike on them. I would say that those with the broadest shoulders should pay. Well, that means that those that earn their money or their income from things other than work should pay their fair share. Well, there's a whole range of things we could look at here. But people who earn their money from property, dividends, stocks, shares, capital gains tax, they should all be looked at as a broader fair way of raising taxes. So in principle, you would prefer a wealth tax of some sort? I think we should look at all of these options and we shouldn't say that the whole way it has to fall on working people, that the people who earn their living from a wage, why shouldn't those that get their money from other means, whether it's dividends, stocks, shares, property, pay their fair share. And the landlord example is a very important one. Why should a landlord not pay a penny but the working tenant because they're earning a wage rather than a rent? So you would prefer wealth taxes than a raise of income tax? I think we should look across the board at something that is fair but at the moment you would prefer a wealth tax to raise an income tax? I think we look at a broad range here but the idea that we don't, the one thing that I'm going to say. Can you just answer that? Do you prefer in principle wealth taxes to income tax increases? I think we need to look at a range of options. You're not going to answer. Well, we need to look at a range of options but that includes the way people earn their money, whether it's from earned wages or whether it's from rent or stocks and dividends. I think we should look at all that because in the end it should be the principle that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. Okay, so just to summarise, national insurance you think you're anti that because you think it's unfair on working people. Income tax could be looked at but it seems to me that you think that when you say those with the broadest shoulders you are looking at those with wealth taxes you are looking at those. We're looking at precisely the sorts of income that Rachel Reeves identified yesterday, which is income from property, income from dividends, stocks, shares, etc. The income that comes not from your wages because what the government is doing is putting this all on working people. So that's not income tax then is it? That is wealth taxes. I'm trying to pin you down because I actually want you to say yes or no, I think we should look at a wealth tax. It doesn't commit you to the policy. It just says to me that that's your preferred option and that's very clear and it's very clear to the public. Yes, all of those options are a wealth tax, I mean in the broadest sense of the world and we should look at it. Third play to Beth Rik B, I thought her exasperated face during that interview was incredibly effective. Aaron, I saw you share this interview on Twitter. It is slightly odd, isn't it? Because Keir Starmer is in quite a strong position here. He's in favor or apparently he's in favor even though he's not going to be explicit about it of some form of wealth tax. The conservatives are pushing through a very unpopular increase to national insurance. He should be shouting about it yet he sounds like the shifty one. What's going on? I made the joke on Twitter that he looked like there was a still from the interview. He looked like a divorcee who was being clobbered by his wife and Beth Rik B was the expensive central London lawyer who was milking the cow. There's that saying, isn't there? In a divorce, you're the husband and the wife, they're pulling both ends of the cow and underneath you've got the lawyer with the others and that's kind of what it felt like. It felt like he was being told, well look, Juliet's going to take the London flat, the house in Umbria and both dogs. He looked really upset for some reason. That was strange because like you say, he was kind of on home territory and she was making his job really easy. I don't think she was doing that on purpose. You're not expecting something that specific this far out from a general election on principle and he kind of answered it but then didn't answer it. Do you prefer tax on wealth or on work? You just need to say in principle, yes, you could just say we want them both aligned. That's going to raise a hell of a lot of money which is again what he kind of said in a really shifty poor way. Now this tells me two things. Firstly, I don't think he believes in anything. I genuinely think he would say whatever the polling said was more popular and even though the polling is quite good around wealth taxes, there isn't that much data out there so just don't say anything and I don't think he really has a kind of moral core on this particularly. I know some people disagree but I don't think we've ever had a leader of a major political party in this country get to where they are and believe in so little. That's my personal view. Keir Starmer is about always has been and that's fine. That's life. Career progression and he is in politics and if you really care about career progression you want to get to the top of your game. You know the equivalent of the leading CEO in the country or what he was previously is the the director of public prosecutions as a barrister. The equivalent of that in politics to become the prime minister and so he would say purely what is useful instrumentally in order to achieve that career ambition. I mean that's not good. That's my personal view. I don't think that's absolutely good. Again people can disagree with me. If he had been asked the question about Jeremy Corbyn or about the left or about how somebody who'd been suspended or accused of something should be thrown out of the party and they happen to be a socialist or an MP or Ken Loach he would have been very critical. He would have been very stern. He would have been very direct and decisive. All the things he's not in that clip and so that for me is the biggest worry of all. You know you might agree or disagree with Starmer on some issues but he clearly is incredibly comfortable in attacking the left and not really saying very much about policy. You can't run a country like that. You cannot run a country like that. That's clearly not a that's not a program for government and I think the electorate has already worked that out. You clearly can't run a general election campaign like that. I mean they can try and I think they probably will do that and I think that'll start by the way with his conference speech in in a few weeks. I think Keir Starmer will make his conference speech about the left. I think it'll be a rerun of Kinnecan 1985 partly because it's his comfort zones I've just said partly because he's literally got nothing else to say and he knows that the media generally speaking is going to lap that up. They're not going to push back on it whereas of course if he says I support policy over policy B there's a bit more you know criticism and the Tories are way in. He attacks the left. He attacks Corbyn. He attacks people like Navarra Media. That's just great for him and the Tories get on side and it takes the heat off him and removes some of that political pressure which he insists on putting on himself by being so bad as a politician. That's the right comparison to make actually. If he was asked about Jeremy Corbyn he said look this is an issue of leadership. I have to take a strong position because that's what it means to lead a party because I want to lead a country. If he's asked about policies he says well don't ask me. I'm just the leader of the opposition. We haven't done a manifesto yet. I'm not here to take leadership on the issue. I think it's a it's a very important comparison to make. How he is when he's asked those questions whether the option given to him is whether or not he's going to attack the left and the ones where it's whether or not he's going to put forward a different vision for the country. One politician who is attempting to put forward a vision for the country is Andy Burnham. Mayor of Manchester and probably Keir Starmer's biggest rival at the moment. He's written a piece in the evening. Standard slamming Boris Johnson's social care plan isn't enough he says. Labour needs its own ideas so in this piece Andy Burnham is obviously saying what Keir Starmer's doing is enough he needs to put forward a positive vision a positive alternative and he explains this is what he wants it to be. Labour should create a national care service. Labour should ask all older people to contribute whether they need care or not. He goes on everyone benefits from this approach because it means no one has to worry about care costs in the later stages of their life and by asking all older people to contribute the cost comes right down. Continues. More than 10 years ago I promised this approach as health secretary as part of my plan for a national care service. My 10% care levy on all the states was labeled a deaf tax but I still stand by it. I accept that my care levy wouldn't pay for the entire social care bill so I would supplement it with a range of wealth taxes such as a higher rate of capital gains tax. This is a truly far-reaching Labour policy and I think the country is now ready to back it as we get ready to gather in bright and the political tide might just be turning in Labour's favour but we've got to be ready to catch the wave. A clear challenge from Andy Burnham a very pointed intervention. There is pushback from Keir Starmer's team they're defending the position of not having a position. This is from Patrick McGuire from The Times he was told by a senior party source we're far from victory but the polls show that the social care scam wasn't the brilliant wheeze number 10 was spinning earlier this week and our decision to focus attention on their plan expose it and not get spooked into making a big announcement of our own in response despite some flak was the right one. Aaron would you make of Andy Burnham's intervention and also that defence from a senior party source that actually not having a fully fleshed out policy gives them more space to attack the Conservatives without this becoming, you know, distracting well how much would Labour's cost what are the holes in Labour's policy? Sure. Who do you think is right here? There's some truth to it of course and I don't think Labour needs to you know line by line fully cost how they would you know reform social care in this country however I think that that's a fundamentally misrepresentation of the criticism that you or I would make do you support the principle of wealth tax or tax on work? That's really simple he didn't do it and I think he was you know it's an open goal it is really an open goal so I don't I don't think that's I think it was a masterstroke to not say that personally in terms of Andy Burnham you know he gets a lot of flak people say he'd be Starmer Mark II he's a Blairite or you know that's that's where he came from right his trajectory is certainly from there but you have to you have to also be fair you know in 2010 when he ran for the leadership he was talking about a national care service then as Health Secretary under Gordon Brown he was talking about social care more than a decade ago so I believe him when he says we need to do X and this is how we'll fund it and I also believe he's thought about it you know it's not last-minute politicking to to get some popularity because he's been saying that same thing for so long and Burnham is a former SPAD former special advisor so we can we can you know lambast spads all day there are many ex-spads in politics Ed Miliband, Ed Cooper, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, David Miliband the list goes on that whole John Ashworth that whole group of sort of post-blair sort of advisors going into labor after 2010 basically defined the party and that's why Corbyn really upset so many people he wasn't a former SPAD but they do know a bit about policy and they are quite familiar with questions around whether it's social care, education, tax, defense whatever because they've been doing this for 10-20 years in the case of Burnham about 20 years. Kirstam was a lawyer until 2015 and so I'm sure he's going to learn a great deal he's going to get down to the brass tacks of political economy and so on but he doesn't know a lot of this stuff you know we go back to that story which was in the Sunday Times a couple of months ago about him basically doing you know Economics for Dummies 101 with Charlie Falkner and Ed Miliband what makes us different I mean people might think I'm making this up go check it out Charlie Falkner, Ed Miliband, Kirstam on Sunday Times he was asking what makes us difference the Tories when it comes to the economy and they had to tell him I don't think Andy Burnham has those problems because he's been doing this for so long and that's why I think you know what he's saying on social care totally authentic you might say well I think he's talking about a crap he's being opportunistic on XYZ and that's because he wants to be leader of the Labor Party wants to be the prime minister I may or may not agree with you depending on the issue I don't think that's the case with social care. Kirstam as people would say even what Andy Burnham is saying is you know that opens up a lot of avenues for them to attack the Labor Party when you know at the moment the conservatives are having a difficult moment I wouldn't necessarily advocate something as concrete as Andy Burnham is suggesting right now even though I think it's a good policy position but there is a there is a big middle ground which is just for Kirstam and to say I support progressive income taxes and I support wealth taxes he doesn't have to give amounts neither of those things are unpopular so yeah it just seems like an own goal to me. Let's go to a comment Greg McGregor with a fiver, Beth Rigby is hilarious I remember her interviewing Starmer last year and literally saying to him it's all a bit hopeless isn't it? LaMau laughing I've actually forgotten what LaMau means because he gets said so often laughing oh that's it isn't it um perfect let's go on to our next story the global black lives matter movement has this week gained an unlikely supporter Queen Elizabeth the second the support of the monarch for the movement for racial equality was revealed by Sir Kenneth Elisa a senior representative of the Queen and the first black Lord Lieutenant of Greater London. Kenneth Elisa told channel four I have discussed with the Royal Household this whole issue of race particularly in the last 12 months since the George Floyd incident it's a hot conversation topic the question is what more can we do to bind society to remove these barriers they the royal family care passionately about making this one nation bound by the same values he was asked explicitly does this mean um that the Queen supports the principles of the black lives matter movement and Sir Kenneth said the answer is easily yes Aaron this story made it to the front pages of both the Times and the Telegraph lots of people think this is a big bit of surprising news do you think this is significant come on Michael what do you think look she was the monarch she was the monarch during the 1950s when was the coronation again Michael you tell me was it 53 I don't I don't know the precise year of the Queen's coronation I'm afraid my royal history is lacking so she'll live in Queen for 70 years quite soon I think right is that right I think I think I think it's mid 50s anyway you know she was she was the heir apparent that she was the you know the next in line when Britain was in and she was young I'm sure she wasn't fully on top of all the facts but when Britain was dealing with the Mao Mao insurgency in Malaya and 150,000 people were killed because they wanted to effectively end a system of economic and racial apartheid in their country and it was repressed brutally by the British very similar thing happened in Malaya previously about Kenya elsewhere in Malaya there was a similar insurgency put down it's called the Malaya emergency from 45 to about 51 52 and again you know the the tactics you see used by the US and Vietnam agent orange concentration camps torching torching forest by the way the British were using that in India in the 19th century that was being pioneered by the British after the Second World War and the Americans would imitate that in Vietnam that was when she was you know the a princess and a queen so I don't quite understand what's changed you know black lives matter now but they didn't matter when Britain was fighting the the Mao Mao insurgency in Kenya in the 50s I guess now it's because the culture has changed right that's the answer and that's why she says what she does is the Queen personally racist I have no idea you know I've never met the lady you hear some nice things about her you see some hear some bad things about her I thought it's quite touching how and I'm a republican Michael you know this I'm sure our audience knows this but I thought it's quite touching how her visit to Grenfell was talked about because I remember watching at the time thinking wow she's she's braver than most of our political class certainly Theresa May but I think the idea that she supports black lives matter is ridiculous she's the she's the unelected sovereign for a bunch of countries which we colonize which are primarily comprised of black people you know if you think their lives matter so much let them choose their own head of state so I find it quite strange you know this but again it just feeds into this bizarre mythos that we haven't written you know Britain fought for democracy in the Second World War no it fought against fascism hugely important but it didn't fight for democracy because we had 2.5 million Indians fighting for us and the people who've been elected as the politicians effectively to lead that country the congress party were in prison Gandhi's wife died in prison right so this idea that oh they were fighting for democracy how could they be fighting for democracy when the elected politicians were in were incarcerated so I don't think she supports she supports black lives matter no I think it's a PR stunt but equally I don't know her personal views on race either so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna denigrate her I suppose there's two different angles here aren't they by the way the coronation was in 1953 there are there are two angles one is do we really believe the queen is a committed anti-racist I'll sit on the fence on that one as you say Aaron there's quite a lot of evidence from the past that she shouldn't really be considered in that category the other is what does this say about the success of BLM that even the queen has to say she supports it in in principle now one argument will be the sort of cynical one which is to say that even if the queen can say she supports it it's become meaningless but there is quite a strong pushback in newspapers such as the telegraph and sometimes in the comment pages of the times to say that even the principles behind black lives matter are flawed because even on the most sort of mainstream interpretation of what they stand for they believe structural racism exists and they're opposed to it now there will be lots of people especially in government who who say no structural racism doesn't exist this whole idea that we need to say that black lives matter is mistaken because as it stands black lives matter just as much as white lives matter we should stop talking about race now the fact that the queen has to you know fall into quite proactively and positively the camp where she's saying no we do need a movement such as black lives matter those principles are important it doesn't necessarily say much about her but i do think it says something about the success of the BLM movement do you think i'm being reasonable around no i i agree with you entirely i think it's from i think it's remarkable i mean does what she doesn't need to do this right you know i mean i don't wish her real well but she's not going she's not going to be the monarch for much longer right i mean she's what 95 okay let's say she lives 105 defies all the statistics you know she doesn't need to do this she's in a very safe situation we're not going to become a republic in the next 10 years her kids William and well particularly William the sort of the heir apparent the prince of wales yes i could see why he would do it i think from a perspective of again i don't know if he believes it or not but from a perspective of political expediency in public relations you would expect him to do it but it is a surprise for her to say it you know i'm kind of surprised you know separate to say am i am i sure she really means it i don't know is it a quality that said this is probably a wise thing to say possibly yes but i don't think she had to do it and i'm like say i do think it speaks to the the strength of the movement and also michael you know the commonwealth is really important to her apparently as a personal thing so i think for her to say i'm i'm the head of state not just of the union not just of the united kingdom of great britain and northern arna but also its crown dependencies and of course the commonwealth however this long title is i can't remember all of it and i think for you to be uh such a prominent figure in the commonwealth which obviously includes so many countries from the global south you probably do have to say something like this but i'm i'm still surprised i am still really surprised because like you say michael it really does defang you know people booing footballers that take the knee for instance i mean it might it might boil the piss of all the right people which is you know better than i think so i don't think it's a bad look i don't think it's a bad thing that she's done i think it's a really the fact that's happened is really positive do i think she really means that i have no idea i'm just sort of trying to contextualize the british raw family and the in the in the within the broader history of racism and anti-racism it's never been a very anti-racist uh but it's a funny one it is a really funny one um william you'd expect it less her so you know maybe maybe she did go and say who knows maybe didn't now prince philips gone and you know he was he was quite particular about these things i mean you can't imagine prince philips saying it right but maybe she has her own views and she's not really communicated them or maybe she's changed her views there was a great rumor recently actually michael i don't know if you saw this when christiana ronaldo signed for mangedy united that you know there was a great rumor going round that was being spread by mangedy united sort of a pretty official looking twitter account somewhere verified saying that she bought 100 ronaldo shirts and they were all signed and she's a man united fan so maybe this is like that you know why would you why would she need 100 just because she can because she's the queen i suppose they were like the first hundred printed you know you know ronaldo's shirts they're the number seven of course since he's gone back and then you know there are people tweeting you know hrh has a red all this nonsense i'd like to get that and so maybe maybe you know i mean make that that makes no no sense either so maybe but i find it weird if she's 95 and they are yes you know man united have got a new number seven unlikely we'll move on from the royals yohana before that though yohana with a fiverr says how refreshing to listen to someone speaking sense royal family and the idiotic royal mephos i assume that was a reference to aran pointing out how we probably shouldn't consider the royal family to be beacons of anti-racism if you enjoy our shows and want to support us directly you can at navaramedia.com slash support vaccine passports are coming to a town near you that's the message from nicolas sturgeon to residents of scotland and also now from the government in west minster let's start with Scotland this week msp's in hollywood approved legislation to require vaccine certification to attend nightclubs music festivals and some football matches sturgeon explained the move on itv's good morning britain i don't think anybody wants vaccine passports nobody wants to be in this pandemic at all but we know vaccination reduces doesn't eradicate transmission but it reduces transmission and therefore i think they have a part to play and we see them in operation already across much of europe they've got a part to play in trying to keep us safe from covid without facing possible closures of part of the economy again and that's why i think they are worth having as part of our package of responses so support for vaccine passports comes as somewhat of a u-turn from the scottish government john sweeney who's deputy first minister had previously described passports as the wrong way to go it now looks as if we're about to see a similar vault fast in west minster orish johnson's government had previously ruled out mandatory vaccine passports but speaking to sky culture secretary oliver dowden suggested the tories like the snp had now changed their minds my overall approach to certification and the prime minister and the rest of the government is in relation to any restrictions we want as few restrictions for as short a period as possible but if we need them to protect public health we will that's why we've said in relation to very high-risk venues and the nightclub is an example of that you've got lots of people mingling very close to each other often poor ventilation we will be looking at bringing in certification for nightclubs towards the end of the month we continue to engage with other sporting and cultural venues so for example most premier league matches you go to will have some kind of certification already i've been at the royal albert hall recently they've got certification lots of them are proceeding on a voluntary basis and if there is a need to further extend that certification according to the public health need we will look at doing so but we're always reluctant to impose further burdens on businesses unless we really have to vaccine passports are a controversial issue aran we've discussed them before i seem to remember you being broadly in favor is that still the case i'm not opposed to you know listen under no conditions can we have vaccine passports i don't agree with that no i think if you have i think if you if you want to keep large bits of the economy open and it's quite limited it's just to those parts of the economy i don't think you should need to go to the shops or if you want to go to a nightclub or a music festival that's obviously you know got indoor you know indoor performances if it's high risk and it's indoors and there's lots of touch i think you probably you pretty sure it's probably a wise idea or the the argument is you don't have open those places at all i mean that's another argument right so if you're going to open them you probably need to have to have vaccine passports should it just be oh i've had two vaccines probably not i think it should probably be a test as well that's basically what we do already with traveling you know you've got two tests and you've got the and you've got the proof of two vaccines i think you know a proof of a test within the last 72 hours and two vaccines to get into a nightclub i think that's reasonable and again people are going to make arguments against it we already do it for travel i would rather be able to do travel safely have that in place why why wouldn't we extend that principle to a nightclub so that's a slippery slope well look i don't want another winter like last year and i know we're not going to have one like that we sort of disagree a bit on this but we could have a major spike this winter we could i think that's inevitable because of kids going back to schools and barely any of them will be vaccinated before christmas but i think you throw you throw you know nightclubs into the next thousands of people indoors every friday saturday it's going to be a nightmare so of course i support it yeah or you or you just don't open them at all that that's that's the alternative right hmm i mean i i agree i mean i i agree with this this winter is going to be very difficult there is going to be a spike in covid and there's also going to be a spike in in other other flues or not other flues because covid is not a flu but also in in the usual seasonal flues that we have which means that there will be pressure to close things like nightclubs and pubs and while people say oh yeah you know this is this is discriminatory etc i think the alternative probably would be they just close the clubs and yes a vaccine passport does not make going to a club completely safe we know that you can be vaccinated and catch the delta variant to make that you know even safer you could demand people take lateral flow tests before they go to nightclubs i know lots of night clubs are already doing that they're asking all of their um guests all of their attendees to do a lateral flow test that day then you've got the security guard who you know before they do their other checks checks that you've got your test from your test result from the NHS that says negative i haven't really spoken to anyone who thinks this is a massive infringement of their freedom everyone's basically pretty happy to do it they want the venue to be as safe as it possibly can be it's also quite handy having people taking lateral flow tests all the time because if they take a lateral flow test to go to a nightclub they find out they're positive that means they will stay at home for 10 days they won't be spreading it elsewhere so it could have some you know positive side benefits i think obviously i'm not suggesting that opening clubs is going to mean less covid than closing them obviously closing them would mean less covid but i'm basically in favour of any policy any mechanism which means that we can minimize the amount of covid in circulation without minimizing people's freedoms which i think are valuable and freedoms which are valuable for me is being able to go out being able to socialize freedoms which i'm not which i don't think are that valuable are the freedom to not get vaccinated or the freedom to not take a lateral flow test before i go to a nightclub right so so that's where i stand on it in terms of the slippery slope as well as this idea that it's sort of really dystopian to have an electronic database connected to your healthcare status but it already exists i already have a vaccine passport on my phone there is something called the NHS app and all that does is connect up to your your NHS you know data page or whatever is your NHS records which everyone has and on everyone's NHS records it will tell them if they're vaccinated or not so there's actually there's no real extra data being collected here can i come come back on this please do yeah and also it's like you know you have to be 18 in this country to drink alcohol you know is that a slippery slope are we now going to say oh well actually you have to be 18 to to buy a chocolate bar because also you know you're not an adult to make that decision about eating something which may have negative health consequences nobody says that nobody says it was a slippery slope so and when you look at the data collection already out there whether it's for credit scores whether it's for social media i'm not saying that's all good i mean this is very this is very very similar to what we already do which is checking people's id on the door to get into a nightclub what is substantively different about checking somebody's passport looking at the date of birth and looking at a recent test and the fact they've got two forms of two vaccines i mean it's substantively the same the question is where is it going to be stored and so on we can have those conversations i think you and i and probably many of our viewers and listeners would say that you know generally speaking that data should be destroyed quite quickly if it doesn't have some major public benefit you know as in x person went to x nightclub by the way your phone and your credit card already says all that stuff anyway you know we're not making an argument here for big brother and i think a lot of this a lot of this debate is built on straw men and i think people that want to go to nightclubs aren't making these arguments right the people that don't care about going to nightclubs possibly are and and you could you could do that all day long right we could say if somebody doesn't like i know people that hate football and they say football shouldn't be on television well there's lots of people who disagree and they're like watching it so it's probably not a good way to run society working on the base of what 25 percent of population think it's also about you know making people make their own choices i think at this stage or letting them take their own choices because the other argument you hear against vaccine passports is oh it gives people a false sense of security they'll then think that it's impossible to catch covid in a nightclub now again i've been to nightclubs this summer the people i meet at nightclubs no one thinks this is a covid secure space but they want to take as many measures as possible to make it as covid secure as possible basically everyone there who i've spoken to is double vaccinated they think there is a slight risk i'm going to catch covid-19 but i'm willing to take it because i'm double vaccinated i'll mask when i go on public transport to try not pass it on to to anyone else i'll take regular lateral flow tests after i go out to make sure i don't have it you can take all of these measures and i think most people are pleased when a nightclub has asked you to take lateral flow tests beforehand because it means that other people in the venue will have also been tested or will also have been vaccinated to me this does seem like a bit of a storm in a teacup when it comes to opposition in america though there is a much more serious announcement that has been made this is genuinely contentious and i'm actually surprised that this has happened again i kind of sit on the fence as to what i think about it but this is joe biden announcing on fursday that 80 million workers will be mandated in the united states to take the covid vaccine many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million americans who are still not vaccinated even though the vaccine is safe effective and free while the vaccines provide strong protection for the vaccinated we read about and hear about and we see the stories of hospitalized people people on their deathbeds among the unvaccinated over the past few weeks this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated the unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals or overrunning emergency rooms and intensive care units leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or pancreatis or cancer this is not about freedom or personal choice it's about protecting yourself and those around you the people you work with the people you care about the people you love my job as president is to protect all americans so tonight i'm announcing that the department of labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week some of the biggest companies are already requiring this united airlines disney tyson's food and even fox news my message to unvaccinated americans is this what more is there to wait for what more do you need to see we've made vaccinations free safe and convenient the vaccine is FDA approval over 200 million americans have gotten at least one shot we've been patient but our patience is wearing thin i should terrify i said 80 million american workers will be forced to get the vaccine actually and they've got this other option which is to have weekly tests still aren't i mean in this country we're discussing whether or not you should have to be vaccinated or take a test to go to a nightclub in the united states they're already at the phase of the debate where they're saying you're going to have to take the vaccine or be tested to go to work right this is much more much more invasive but in a way i kind of respect joe biden's quite strong and frank argument there which say we're tired of this we want this pandemic to be over and everyone's got to pull their way i mean what do you make of it i think we've both been surprised michael actually with the biden presidency with the character of joe biden how he's composed himself you know he's an older guy he kind of he seems quite sort of politically fragile at certain points which i think any look that's not an ageist comment he's a very hard demanding job and he's in his late 70s but when it comes to stuff like this he seems to have really good instincts and he's got a kind of will of steel which i think is really really really impressive i wasn't expecting it the wing of the democrats that he comes from sort of hillary clinton obama it can sometimes feel like they're talking down to well particularly hillary clinton really talking down to sort of working americans saying quite unpopular things always thinking they know best he's doing that kind of authoritarian thing in the public interest but in a way that doesn't do that he's channeling a kind of every every person um zeitgeist in doing it and i've been impressed you know i i've been impressed with his response to afghanistan not the the way they pulled out of course but the sort of the way that he pushed back against the media response to it saying shut up we're not changing here i've been really impressed actually even we talked about this when he was running for the campaign i think the moment when we thought oh actually he might beat trump was when he started seeing people on the campaign trail and they said i disagree with x y z and he said don't vote for me and i thought at the time it struck me it's quite idiosyncratic but i think you know he's an older guy he kind of knows what he thinks he doesn't need anybody to tell him what he thinks one of the benefits of getting older is you care less about what people say and think about you um and you see that here you know he doesn't really care if you think he's being authoritarian about covid joe biden is sick of your shit get vaccinated it's free it's in the public interest and so again i think it's quite commendable uh have i been fully biden appealed no he's obviously terrible and a whole bunch of things he's still a corporate democrat in many ways but this style of politics you know it's not that far away from banni sanders michael you know you're allying the idea that the state can act in the public interest don't fuck about because you doing x helps all of us i think that's you know that's something the left needs to really grasp on and it's been very popular in the uk with with the pandemic people are very um very happy to defer to the state if it means it's in everybody's shared interest to do so and i think the left shouldn't be scared of that you know that's the base of the nhs that's the base of so many powerful forms of collective action which have transformed society for the better so if we can channel more of this on the left is left populist fantastic no i do i do think i agree as i say i hadn't i hadn't properly considered the idea of mandating all workers to be vaccinated so i i don't have complete conviction in my support for this but i'm definitely erring on the side of like that's a good idea i just i feel like most people watching that joe biden clip will just really identify with the kind of impatience which is to kind of say we want this to be over we want this to be over as soon as possible everyone has to do their best so this can be over and there's a sense in which you know people might say well you're going to nightclubs you're not helping this be over well not going to a nightclub actually doesn't make this last longer you know you could say that will potentially you know against the alternative make rates go up but it doesn't extend the time until the pandemic is over the only thing that is going to mean this pandemic is over is enough people being vaccinated or enough people having caught the virus or having some hybrid immunity where they got vaccinated and caught the virus so it is the less people who take the vaccine the longer this pandemic goes on and i feel like that really is um something that you know so many people in the public care passionately about so i think it's probably a politically smart move for joe biden to lean into this to say look the one thing we can't tolerate at this point in time is people making this hell last any longer than it needs to um let's go to our final story oh before that let's go to some comments uh oh i'm quite surprised about that we did a poll um do you think vaccine passports being used for uk nightclubs are a good idea 51 percent of you said yes 30 percent of you said no and 18 percent not sure um that was from around 300 people voting i think that shifted from earlier in the year although i think you know potentially our positions have somewhat shifted from earlier in the year i suppose my my initial take on vaccine passports was that they probably wouldn't be necessary um because i thought we'd get herd immunity with you know 70 of the population vaccinated what then happened was the delta variant came along the delta variant means we need a much much higher proportion of the population to be vaccinated to achieve anything close to herd immunity so that's when these more invasive measures become more justifiable than they were beforehand obviously as nicolas sturgeon said we'd prefer they're not to be vaccine passports but if the alternative is closing nightclubs closing pubs or living with this goddamn pandemic forever then i think it's a small price to pay final story we are used to reporting on the labor party disciplining members on spurious grounds but the politically motivated purge has now reached new levels of ridiculousness that's because it's been revealed that the chair of young labor is being investigated for opposing transphobia we'll show you some of the offending tweets that made Jess Barnard a target in a moment first here is her response to labor's national executive committee which was leaked today Barnard writes i write to you urgently seeking clarification regarding an email i received this morning giving me notice that i am under investigation for challenging transphobia online i dare say you will agree from the evidence and charges this is absolutely astounding that the party resources are being used on this there is no discrimination evident in this document attacking trans people is not a protected characteristic i haven't identified any individuals therefore i cannot see why i've been put under investigation from either evidence given or alleged rules broken i'm also deeply concerned this email is being sent to me on your behalf at 1 a.m having a huge detrimental impact on my mental health as a young member already facing hostility from some members of staff this is very much starting to feel like harassment and intimidation i want to ask if this is being done in the name of the n.e.c and if not that this be overturned and there is an investigation as to why people who challenge discrimination against trans people or block abusive accounts are being put under investigation so jess barnard was sent an email at 1 a.m 1 in the morning saying we're putting you under investigation because of your behavior online now you might have seen these sort of disciplinary letters being shared on online before what they do is they include items which are basically screenshots of what you've said on social media now jess barnard shared a couple of these so a couple of the the pieces of evidence which party bureaucrats presented to her to suggest that she should be disciplined and a couple of them here competition time guess how many turf accounts i had to block today closest guess gets gets to pick a charity supporting trans people for me to donate some of my counselor allowance to voting closes in 24 hours now turf stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist and since people who basically are opposed to self identified trans people being considered to be women um it's some people say turf is a slur it's actually i think quite a accurate and you know almost unnecessarily polite way um of describing people who have some of the views which turfs espouse online another tweet which was presented as evidence that jess barnard deserved to be investigated was the following expect better from a labor representative these accounts stalk harass incite hatred and abuse towards trans people while on earth a labor counselor would defend them is completely beyond me there's no fishing for anything i just won't be intimidating intimidated into giving transphobes energy now there is obviously nothing offensive about either of those tweets this is someone with a significant position within the labor party chair of young labor democratically elected you might know her name we had her recently um on the show i mean you might know her name any of her because she's been elected as as chair of young labor we do have an update though whilst we've been on air labor have said they have rescinded the complaint against jess barnard have a steward from the guardian um tweeted update labor say they have rescinded the complaint against jess barnard which it says was issued in error party spokesperson we apologize unreservedly to jess for the hurt and upset this has caused wow this is the second time this has happened in like two weeks where we've done a story which is about the labor party behaving in a completely unjustifiable overbearing way more recently it also involved jess jess barnard that was when they were saying they couldn't host um Jeremy Corbin or anyone who was involved in palestine solidarity campaign then after there was a bit of a twitter storm they said oh no no no sorry sorry uh we didn't we didn't actually mean it it's just complete chaos is complete chaos iron um obviously it's good that this is being rescinded that's news that broke as we went live but the fact that that email got sent at 1 a.m in the first place i mean what's what's going on here what's your analysis michael this is you know kia samasas we will improve workers rights kia you've got agency workers pinging off emails at one o'clock in the morning we will defend people's civil liberties well actually it turns out they're basically harassing uh you know young activists oh it was an error we're told now it was an error it was a mistake that somebody found the offending tweets composed an email and said that an investigation had been started no an error is when you send an email to the wrong person an error is when you mistake one offense for a separate offense an error is not when you make up an entire case which is spurious and absurd and malicious contact the person and only when they've publicly stated this has happened actually turn around and say no we don't want to do this anymore that's not an error that's a u-term because they screwed up really badly and look i i think i think if she hadn't done that i think this would have been this would have gone ahead clearly there's there's there's no quality control right now in terms of disciplinary proceedings i mean is that a surprise michael because what we've had for a year from starma and his cronies on the nc is we will proceed 2000 you know we're gonna process 2000 anti-semitic complaints or we're going to expel x number of people well if you behave like that then you get stuff like this right but that's you're literally incentivizing trying to throw out or or investigate as many people as possible this is what's going to happen and it's not just been kia starma that talked about this michael angela reyna said the same thing you can't work like that you need to you need to have an investigations process which investigates people when they deserve to be investigated not because there's some arbitrary target that people have got to meet deeply concerning deeply concerning and michael look it's an error or so when you run the when you run the home office and somebody's deported is that going to be an error you know it does it does make you wonder because you're not even doing these necessarily political enemies this is somebody who's in your own party and actually just barnard as i think anybody who's familiar with her who saw her on the on the show she's very considered very thoughtful um and she's been treated appallingly michael appallingly this is where kia starma's Labour Party is going to go you know this is where they're going to go deeply unprofessional attacking the left no real screw pulls no real policy we could have a conversation about does that mean should you vote for them etc when you see the response from some people to her suspension i've got an altercation with a guy who's a chair of a clp up in middlesbrough my god we're dealing with some really regressive reactionary people here really deeply reactionary people who were cheering this on uh and now that apparently it was an error presumably they're not going to be cheering on anymore but that that's that's what they think they want to kick the entire left out of the Labour Party michael look i don't know oh you know he the same person talking about him posted oh you know copium i don't need to cope i you and i was saying this is probably going to happen if starma wins 18 months ago right we certainly were saying a year ago well i was saying a year ago you priced in it's why i didn't vote for the guy because it was highly likely that this was going to happen so my coping was a while back don't worry about that the point is how low do you have to be as a political faction to actually persecute and attack and try and investigate somebody on the base of the opposing transphobia and not even opposing it in a you know because i think it's justifiable to get angry and use harsh language if you're opposing bigotry but from those tweets that's doing from what happened it was it was a an elected representative within the Labour Party a young activist who you know gets all sorts of abuse online who's very politely i think called out transphobia and then was was put under investigation for it what she did was a model way of of engage with the issue you know and i feel like if aoc gave some sort of media comms masterclass on an issue she and she was a Labour Party MP the exact same thing would happen with her right because she's left wing before you go any further because i just want to say in recent days i've been contacted by so many people who are being investigated for the most crazy things so this is just one example which has come to light but it was an error there are dozens if not hundreds of cases exactly like this exactly like this possibly even worse i want to bring up a tweet from Jess Barnard which she's tweeted just sort of 10 minutes ago in response to the latest developments on this story she writes i have received an email rescinding notice of a medstigation against me thank you everyone for your solidarity and for my legal team for such swift action we need a full investigation urgent intervention against transphobia and an end to hostility towards young members again a very considered reasonable response or a very considered reasonable person who is being intimidated at one in the morning by party staff i mean it's it's gross and but it has we've come to expect it now haven't we with the current Labour Party as it is currently constituted under the leadership of Keir Starmer and David Evans let's go to a couple of comments sour with a five thank you very much good that investigation into Jess Barnard has been withdrawn but Labour right will continue to abuse complaints process as part of the factional war on the left you wouldn't lose money if you bet on that statement being true Sophia Christina Bopper with a fiver i sat on the lgbt national Labour national exec a few years ago and Terps came after me for stuff i posted online that's going to be familiar with probably lots of people watching this show and they aren't the most pleasant people on social media Ishtac with 899 says Starmer spouting like a Tory ain't going to help him when they release the media hounds their modus operandi is staying in power the Tories will come for him like they did for Jeremy Corbyn when the time comes great comments that is us for this evening Aaron Bustani as always it's been a pleasure spending my Friday night with you my pleasure i can't wait to be back in the studio Michael but now you've been watching Tiskey sour on the bar media good night