 Good evening and welcome to Tiskey Sour. Tonight I have the privilege, the surprise, of being joined by Aaron Bestani who is standing in for Ash this Monday evening. How are you doing, Aaron? I'm doing very well, Michael, just a point of clarification, actually. She's standing in for me. I couldn't do Friday, so we swapped round. Ash is an incredibly committed employee of our media. She never messes around like I do, Michael. That's an important... I'm glad you put that correction in there for the record. We have four big stories for you tonight. We're going to talk about gas. We don't talk about gas very often, but it's a big political story of the day. We're going to talk about Rosie Duffield, Macron, Morris Johnson, and Joe Biden, the Australian Prime Minister, who I'm going to performatively forget the name of. No, it is Scott Morris and I know his name. And we are also going to talk about the latest rumors about what rule changes are going to get passed at Labour Party Conference. That could be pretty worrying. You know the score. If you have any comments or questions you want us to read out, do tweet them on the hashtag Tiskey Sour or put them in the comments. And do make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. First story. In the past two weeks, five energy companies have gone bust and experts have warned that by the end of the year, all but 10 may have collapsed. There were 70 energy firms at the start of this year. The problems are due to a hike in wholesale energy prices, which firms are unable to pass on to consumers, either because the nationwide energy cap won't allow them to, or because they offered fixed-term contracts to customers. Today in Parliament, Energy Secretary Kwaziqua Teng said that despite the crisis, talk of throwbacks to the 1970s and people unable to heat their homes were alarmist and misguided. Here's what he said the government would and wouldn't do. The government will not be bailing out failed companies. There will be no rewards for failure or mismanagement. The taxpayer should not be expected to prop up companies which have poor business models and are not resilient to fluctuations in price. Secondly, customers, especially most particularly vulnerable customers, must be protected from price spikes. Thirdly, we must ensure that the energy market does not pay the price for the poor practices of a minority of companies and that the market still maintains the competition, which is a feature of today's current system. We must not simply return to the cosy oligopoly of years past where a few large suppliers simply dictated to customers' conditions and pricing. I'd like to reassure all members and honourable members constituents that the energy price cap, which saves 15 million households up to £100 a year, is staying. It's not going anywhere. As I said earlier, our priority in this situation has to be the consumer, the great British public. And the cap has done that effectively. It protects and has protected millions of customers from sudden increases in global prices this winter. We are committed to that price cap and it will remain in place. Meanwhile, sir, our warm home discount, winter fuel payments and cold weather payments will continue to support millions of vulnerable and low-income households with their energy bills. It is absolutely vital that the energy supply sector remains a liberalised competitive market in order to deliver value and good service to consumers. The problem for the government here is that the competitive model of energy distribution has proven unsustainable. Small firms have entered the market, attempted to gain market share by undercutting the bigger firms and then collapsed as soon as gas prices rose. That's left consumers worrying their gas will get cut off and meant the government is forced to step in. Now, Quarteng wants to find a way he can guarantee energy supply to customers of failing firms without rewarding failure and while maintaining a competitive market. Responding for Labour in Parliament, Ed Miliband focused on the consumer side of the crisis. He highlighted how energy price rises may expose how damaging another recent government decision will be. Families are facing a triple whammy. Rising energy prices, national insurance rises and at the end of this month the £1,000 cut in universal credit. Mr Speaker, these energy price rises turn the indefensible decision on universal credit into an unconscionable one. If you really want to put consumers first, if you really want to help working people, if you really want to tackle fuel poverty, isn't it time even at this late stage to cancel this terrible decision on universal credit? That was Ed Miliband making the obvious but still very good point that cutting the £20 uplift to universal credit is a terrible idea when gas prices are due to rise by 12 to 13% this October. We don't know if they will rise by any more than that the following year or next year. Aaron, we've talked a lot on this show about how Britain faces a difficult winter. Up to now that's been based on COVID and cuts to universal credit. Now do we have to add a gas crisis to that list? Well, who knows? I mean, we'll be talking about this more. You'll go into some of the detail as to how this reflects a big crisis infrastructure when it comes to energy storage in the UK. But I'd say that the broader problem that that reflects is one of we have given so much infrastructure, responsibility for infrastructure over to the private sector that we're in big shit over the next 10 to 20 years and it's not just on gas and energy. But what I want to say particularly right now, because like I say, we'll talk about that more in a moment, is where a labour, given that at the last general election, they were promising to nationalise energy alongside water, alongside rail, a host of other natural monopolies. And this is something which was highlighted, by the way, by Miliband recently speaking on television, some viewed it as him trying to bounce Keir Starmer into heaven forbid, actually upholding the very pledges that he made to become Labour leader. But it does seem strange. You've got this huge crisis possibly coming just around the corner with regards to energy, not just not just price spikes, but also quite possibly a scarcity of gas during the winter. And Labour isn't really saying anything coherent about what it would do differently with the sector. Instead, it's just going to that kind of comfortable place of talking about what don't do this cut, don't do this cut. Of course, of course, but if there is an opportunity to make the argument for public ownership of energy, it's now. And if it doesn't happen now, it's never going to happen, Michael. And I think that again reflects a broader issue we've seen in COVID. People say, well, Labour are three points higher, there's a poll out today, Labour are 35, they've got 32 in the last general election. Labour are closing the gap on the Tories. I mean, there's a good argument, that's progress, sure. When you look at what's happened over the last 12 months, it's not have made more political capital to not have made more of a dent on the consensus around how we run the economy, how we run society. I think it's criminal. And I think there's a huge opportunity, which has been missed generally in catalyzing that debate. And I think we're seeing the same thing right now with energy. The big six are getting away with it. And that's because there's no real alternative being talked about by the opposition party. And I mean, it's an interesting point because I mean, the big argument put against Labour in 2019 for renationalising the energy companies was that it would be too costly to buy out the shareholders, if you're not just going to nationalise it at a price set by the House of Commons, which would be controversial, this would be actually the perfect time to buy out those shareholders because presumably these gas companies are worth less than they have been in a while because they're in this current price crunch right now. As I say, they're in this price crunch because they can't change prices that much because of the price cap or because these smaller firms have tried to undercut the big firms by offering people cheap gas and electricity deals. Now the price has risen, they're screwed essentially. As Aaron suggested, we're now going to talk about why those wholesale prices have risen. It's partly about capacity, but there are a number of reasons. First of all, let's look at how quickly and to what extent prices have risen recently. So this is wholesale prices in gas. As you can see, they've gone from under 50p per firm at the start of the year to 175 now. Now I should say, you're not going to know what these units of measurements mean, but just focus on the change instead of worrying about what precisely a firm is. According to experts, there are a number of reasons this crunch is happening now. They include a prolonged cold winter which drained natural gas storage facilities. They're normally filled over the summer when we have lower demand. Also, Russia has been sending less gas to Europe. A couple of reasons for that. Russia needs to refill its own storage facilities and also people are suspicious it's pressuring European governments to approve Nord Stream 2. That's a big pipeline they want approved. Also, the switch from coal power to gas powered plants means there's less ability to switch to alternative sources when gas goes up in price. You might say, what about renewables? Unfortunately, and there have been low winds recently, which means that wind farms have struggled to pick up the slack. And finally, there's been a high global demand for liquid natural gas, that's especially because of a bit of a boom going on in Asia. All of these supply side factors mentioned are affecting countries across Europe, but Britain is uniquely vulnerable to any crunch. That's because we store only 1.7% of annual demand, so contracting the job of gas storage to Germany and the Netherlands. This chart shows how the UK compares to our European neighbors. You can see here the UK has nine terrible hours of gas storage, that's 1.7% of a year's demand. The Netherlands has 75 terrible hours of gas storage and their population is of course only a quarter of ours. France has 113, Germany has 148 and Italy has 166. This then helps to explain why Britain faces some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. You can see from this graph here that they are a lot higher than in Netherlands, France and Germany. Aaron, this does seem like a perfect storm, lots of different crises intersecting. What are the political implications? What are the lessons we can learn from what we're seeing right now? Well, I mean, we've been here before a few times, Michael. I think the most recent analog is 2007-2008 crisis. We obviously had the financial crisis, which created a big liquidity shock for banks, which meant that they couldn't give credit to businesses. They couldn't give new mortgages out to people. At the same time, you had a crisis of the real economy, so people were being laid off. The high street was having problems, businesses like Woolworths going bust. So you had a problem in terms of supply of credit and then of course the supply of final demand and a problem of unemployment. And then lastly, you had this huge inflationary shock in regards to food around 2008. And I think some of our audience, I'm sure, remember pretty well. You were seeing in the space of a few months the price for loaf of bread. You'd go to Tesco, one minute and it was 80p. You'd go three months later. It was £1.10. That was happening quite a lot with quite basic goods, so dairy, bread, meat. We saw really big price increases for foodstuffs. And one of the major consequence of that in 2011 was the Arab Spring. People talk about what are the kind of continuous factors which explain riots, revolutions, uprisings. Food riots is one. And that increase in food prices between 2008 and 2011 was one of the big contributing factors, the Arab Spring, going from Egypt into zero and elsewhere. So that tells us a couple of things. It tells us that there are consequences for increases when it comes to price increases, when it comes to things that really matter. Energy, transport, foodstuffs. But it can take a while to play out. And so we may have a terrible winter. We may have major problems. But actually, the political overhead of that, it could be immediate. Of course, it could be immediate. But equally, it could take a couple of years to play out. But then at the same time, you look at what we've been through in the last 18 months, you know, in a way, Michael, the public's really been primed for hardship with the COVID crisis. You know, we've had an unprecedented demobilization of the labor market. We've had an economic downturn. We've had basically all of us go through an episode of mass depression. You know, we've had a collapse of civic society. So, you know, maybe this winter, however bad it's going to be, Michael, I think it'll probably be better than last winter. But where in Miliband's right is that there's a certain subset of the public who are going to see national insurance contributions rise, who are going to lose a pretty big amount of money when it comes to universal credit. And now we're going to see bills go up. You know, that's a couple of million people who are going to be really badly hit, well, more than a couple of million, tens of millions of people who are going to be pretty badly hit. The question is, again, what are they offering them? You know, what are they offering them? What's the alternative here? Because of course, as we know, Michael, people on the lowest possible incomes are less likely to vote. And right now, what we're seeing with the labor strategy in terms of how to win an election, we're not talking about this today. But there was a piece that came out in the observer on Sunday saying that labor can only win by leaning into soft Tory voters, aka, that means ignore quite a few of these people that we're talking about right now. And that's an electoral calculation. Fine. But what it does mean is that, you know, the political direction of Labour going forward, maybe, actually, this isn't this isn't the group of people we need to win. Horrible thing to say. I obviously don't think that I'm a socialist. I think that Labour should be representing working people in employment, unemployment, disabled pensions and so on. But if we're looking at the kind of the segmenting of the electorate that we've seen from the Starmer leadership, I mean, don't write it off. Henry the eighth fake says he won't bail out failed companies as long as they aren't banks. Another oligopoly, by the way, so the point there being that the government were willing to bail out banks. I mean, the bank, that's one distinction. I think it's also are the firms too big to fail. So what's going on right now is it's the smaller energy companies that are collapsing. If you saw the big six collapse, that's when you might see that bailout because they're too big to fail. What's going on at the moment is those smaller firms are collapsing. They're now saying you bigger firms, can you take on these customers? They're potentially going to have to give those bigger firms some money to do that because these customers at the moment are loss making because of the price of wholesale gas and the contracts that they've signed on to. One other thing I do want to mention, people often say they haven't bailed out the company. This is the market working because the company made a bad decision and now they're going to fail. They've gone bust. What you've got to ask is how much money were the shareholders and the managers of things like people's energy and bull by think is about to go bust? How much money were they extracting from that business before it went bust? Because if during the good times, when gas is cheap, they've managed to cream off all of this profit and then the moment it goes bad, they can just say, oh, company's gone back cramped. We're out now. They're out. Are they out with all of the dividends they've collected over the past 12 months and the huge salaries they've collected throughout the history of that business? So I still think this isn't the market working as it should have done and you will still have a lot of people who are rewarded for failure within the way that this industry is structured. Aaron, before we move on, any final points you have on this story? Yeah, I think just to follow up what you just said, Michael, look at Carillion. Carillion went bust. It was a construction giant. It did a bunch of other things too, but basically it was working as a mediator between government contracts and other businesses and it was basically this strange outsourcing pipeline, which went from one to the other and creamed off money from effectively offering a subcontracting service for public infrastructure projects. And of course, when it went bust, that meant that tens of thousands or thousands of smaller businesses were in trouble because those contracts had disappeared. Now, people would say, well, it was poorly run. It shouldn't have made those decisions and that's the market working effectively. But the problem with outsourcing, Michael, is of course, people always give the contract to the lowest possible price. So what you see is repeatedly companies like Carillion saying, actually, well, these guys are saying they can do it for $40 billion. We think we can do it for $35 billion. And they know full well, if they don't do it for $35 billion, they can't win the contract. And they basically are doing that to win the contract. Then the margins are so low, they work with the cheapest materials. They don't really pay very much low labor standards, not necessarily good standards when it comes to environmental sustainability. And then like you say, any excess is given over to shareholders. Often it means that the project or the business doesn't really function. So we talk about outsourcing so frequently being effectively, this is the smartest possible way to make both businesses and the state insolvent. It's a complete scam. I spoke about this to Mariana Mazzacato. She's not a radical. She works as an academic at the University College London. We did a great interview about this. People could see it on the Navarra Media YouTube channel, put in Mazzacato, Aaron Bistani. And she makes very clear that this whole modus operandi without sourcing, where shareholders get so much money, increases regional inequality, means bad services for customers. And of course, when these businesses go bankrupt, well, we have to foot the bill. And it's not just the banks that we build out. If you have a rail operator which goes bust, of course, we're going to bail it out. We need, we'd like you say, Michael, with the big six, it's too big to fail. Of course, we need that. If a broadband company goes bust tomorrow, of course, it's going to be taken over by the government because without it, big sections of the economy can't work, reduced tax revenues, high unemployment, no, it's in the state's interest to take those businesses over. The same will apply, of course, to the big energy companies. So again, we see in microcosm how stupid and ridiculous outsourcing is. Most of the electorate know this. Most electorate prefer policies which go against that around public ownership. And yet, we don't really have any major parties right now publicly stating loud and proud, this is what we should do. I mean, yeah, I mean, this would be the time for Keir Starmer to actually push the policy he did commit to in his leadership election. One of his 10 pledges was to bring the energy companies into public ownership. Now would be a good time to talk about that, you'd think, right? Let's go on to our next story. Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, has told the Sunday time she won't be attending Labour Party conference due to threats she has received online. The story made the front page of the Sunday paper, alongside comments from the Speaker of the House, Lindsey Hoyle. As you can see, the headline speaks of extremists terrorizing Rosie Duffield. And this was the first paragraph of that front page splash. Speaker of the House of Commons has made an unprecedented intervention over the security of politicians after a female MP was forced to pull out of the Labour Party conference later this week after receiving online threats from militant transgender activists. Threats from militant transgender activists. Now I said I mean that's not even dog whistle, that's just incredibly specific and explicit. I find it unbelievable that militant transgender activists are threatening people can appear on the front page of the Sunday Times, but there we are. Duffield told the paper about her decision to stay away from the conference. She said, I mainly took the decision not because I really thought I was going to be attacked, but because I did not want to be the centre of attention. We have had Labour MPs who have had to have security at conference over the past few years and I didn't want that sort of attention or to become the story. I just thought it was better for everyone if I stayed quietly away. She went on to say, LGBT plus Labour now seem to hate my guts and I feared they'd have a massive go at me at conference. The people who threaten me I don't think are actually likely to harm me. They just say it often and very loudly. LGBT Labour have previously called for Rosie Duffield to lose the whip for her social media activity, which includes tweeting that only women can have a cervix, which was a response to a CNN story which used trans-inclusive language. So lots of people got annoyed that they were calling women people with cervixes. She joined in that row. She was also criticised for liking this tweet from Curtis Lamasta. I'm so sick of hearing how queer has been reclaimed. I'm so sick of hearing about how queer has been reclaimed. I had that word spit in my face as recently as 2018 and look at who is reclaiming it. Mostly heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay. Stop co-opting our language. Stop colonising gay culture. So this is a tweet that says that calling queer people heterosexuals cosplaying as the opposite sex and as gay. So a very offensive way to talk about LGBT people in any context really. Rosie Duffield was challenged on the Today program on Monday morning as to whether she endorsed the sentiment of that tweet. I think the point about that particular tweet was this gay rights activist who I know from Twitter is like many of my gay friends incredibly distressed and insulted that the Q word and other words that they find incredibly offensive are used by people. There are men, activists out there who are married to women who call themselves the Q word you know and they appropriate gay culture in a way that is deeply offensive to quite a lot in the gay movement, the gay rights movement. But you now see that that tweet though was deeply I mean properly offensive to people who may themselves have been appallingly abused in the past. Obviously I don't understand those issues as well as someone who is in that situation but I do know that several of my gay friends a lot of gay rights groups find the appropriation of gay culture as they see it incredibly offensive. Right so you're not apologizing for endorsing that tweet? I didn't do the tweet. I liked the tweet. I am in touch with that particular person who did the tweet and I know that he finds this particular issue incredibly difficult and I think he has a valid right to talk about it without being cancelled as he was. Now this might be a surprising response but that interview actually made me feel quite sorry for Rosie Duffield because she must be friends with the driest gays in the country. I have literally never met anyone who is remotely well I mean how would you be offended that some bisexual people being married to someone of the opposite sex doesn't mean you can't be queer there's a thing called bisexuality Rosie Duffield and you know even if you were suspicious oh what if this person who's married to someone of the opposite sex they don't get with people of the same sex. Who cares? Who cares if they call themselves queer? This you know I do think there are issues related to the subject sports whatever you know I can see how there are people who have strong feelings on both sides. When it comes to this idea that trans people are undermining gay people's identity I'm just like what planet are you living on? Where do these people live? I haven't met any of them. It's completely bizarre. I should say we did have a transgender journalist lined up to talk about this particular story. We had some connection issues which is unfortunate but I'm going to go to Aaron for comment on this story. Aaron what did you make of I suppose especially that front page on the Sunday Times militant transgender activist terrorizing female labor MPs I mean it's quite grotesque isn't it? Yeah I mean look I'm a I'm a cishet guide does that mean I have a right to talk about these things in a sense I think it does I mean I'm an ally but also Michael you know we believe in the capacity of people to look at something and say whether that's right or wrong and I think particularly what she was saying on BBC Radio 4 this morning was was biphobia I don't quite understand how anybody could think otherwise of course there are many people in relationships or who are married to people of different sex who have previously been with other people or like you say my experiment in their private lives I don't care you know knock yourself out and it's really strange you know somebody like my dad who's 65 we had my wedding a couple of weeks ago Michael oh god heaven for me you know heteronormative me and there were several speakers a couple of gay people a trans person somebody said queer and proud you know and my dad's 65 he's not political he's just like great they're happy don't live your life that's that's most people I think I could be wrong I mean I could be really you know completely misguided here but it's most people and I think when you lose sight of that and you go down this kind of this rabbit hole that Rosie Duffell's clearly going down you start to say crazy things which are which are bigoted which is what she said about bisexual people she did and I don't think she realizes she's doing it the kind of conversation she was having as well was at times you know really just incoherent she says the key word just say it queer what's what's the problem with the word right and then she says q word which is an which is offensive we'll know the point is it's not offensive she was all over the place Michael and you know sometimes it's just somebody finds himself center stage of a big public debate she probably doesn't want to be there and I don't really think she has the experience I don't think she has really engaged with the arguments adequately to be in such a position of prominence to be declaring this or that position I don't think she really knows enough about it and I don't think she is curious in a positive way about it so I mean look again it's partly an outgrowth of social media if we didn't have social media none of us will be talking about this but but we do and so there is a responsibility on MPs even if they don't think oh well I don't know that much about this well you're an elected representative you represent 70,000 people in a parliament which only 650 people sit in out of the whole country you probably need to take your online self a bit more seriously and then of course she spoke about that person I mean you know somebody I know I don't know if we're going to go into this Michael the nature of that person and they're sort of there how they conduct themselves offline which is of course very important I just think it speaks to the kind of retrograde ignorance frankly which you see among a lot of people on this a lot of people in the Labour Party a lot of people in the media particularly the Murdoch Empire as we saw that Sunday Times front page and I do get the sense you know you said you felt sorry for her because she hangs out with the driest gays I sort of feel sorry for her because I mean she's just so clearly out of her depth and I do feel like you know the Sunday Times probably had a story and they called her up and they've said oh LGBT Labour have said this what do you think and she you know she drags LGBT Labour it's an affiliated organisation of the Labour Party she criticises them she does she know it's going to be on the front page I bet she probably doesn't she just seems quite you know ignorant malevolent and naive I mean it sounds strange that you'd put all three together with regards to one person on one topic but that's the best way to describe her I think I mean I think it is worth saying I mean I have no doubt that she receives a lot of nasty messages and I have no doubt that women in politics receive a disproportionate amount of nasty messages like that seems obvious to me so I you know and I'm sure Rosie Duffield receives loads of really nasty messages that you know no one would deserve whatever they've said however obnoxious they've been about whatever topic at the same time the way this story sort of gets a life of its own you know it had on the front page of the Sunday Times transgender militant activist terrorising you know Rosie Duffield MP and then to substantiate that in the article she sort of says oh labour LGBT Labour seem to be upset about some things I've said she said on on Radio 4 there'd be groups there irritated at my presence now having groups irritated at your presence that's very different from being terrorised and this idea that the people who are sending nasty messages I'm sure there are a bunch of nasty messages to make out that this is about militant transgender activists you know as opposed to you know the nasty misogynists that live in every corner of the online world seems to me to be very clearly certain people coming to this story of a particular agenda because they want to smear transgender people as aggressive as militant as as threatening and I mean it's it's obvious that that's what's going on and it is incredibly unpleasant I want to go to Rosie Duffield's sort of defence of her position she did a recent tweet thread this was actually responding to a local conservative councillor who had spoken out against her alleged transphobia this is what she tweeted so she said I also have feminist and gender critical beliefs which mean that whilst I've always fully supported the rights of trans people to live freely as they choose I do not accept self-id as a passport for male-bodied biological men to enter protected spaces for biological women that includes dv refuges so domestic violence refuges women's prisons single sex wards and school toilets I believe the majority of people also support this view the mostly male aggression and verbal abuse about this has resulted in changes to my personal safety and security arrangements this is misogyny some angry strangers none of whom have ever met me have decided that what I believe is transphobic which seems to others piling on to be the worst of all possible crimes my sins to agree that male-bodied people should not be included in lists of murdered women to have liked tweets such as Piers Morgan's you mean women when he read a health advice post about people with a cervix while there may be a very small number of people who now identifies men and still have female organs the vast majority of women should not have to rename our bodies or ourselves accordingly there's a lot in that that I disagree with I think this idea that you want trans people to live their lives freely and happily but also you don't want them to use the toilet of the gender in which they identify I mean that's there's an obvious inconsistency there because how can you live your life freely if you're not allowed to go to the toilet of the gender of which you identify I mean where do you want is where do you want trans people to go to the toilet and this is a fundamental right you know at the same time I do wonder lots of people are saying she should lose the whip she should lose the whip now this is a topic where I you know it would have been good to have a trans person on to have this discussion but I'm now actually quite suspicious of and suspicious is a complicated word to use I'm not suspicious of people calling for it but I'm skeptical about demands for people to be suspended and lose the whip for expressing opinions because I don't think that her opinion is is that rare I feel like it would be risky for Labour to say anyone who doesn't believe in self-idea is not welcome in the party I don't know what you what you think about that Aaron yeah I think I think you have to have consistency so I think Labour party MPs have been threatened with losing the whip for a lot less but that's not really an answer to your to your question I think for instance what she's said and done is I know she's not on the front bench for Kirsten Dahmer or maybe she is and she hasn't got a permanent role I mean what she's doing is she's not she resigned she resigned when she brought lockdown rules yeah I think it's much worse than what Rebecca Longbailey said with regards to Maxine Peake say you need some you know consistency liking tweets again you know it's quite it can be quite spurious like you say if you're going to start disciplining people for liking tweets because they can make the argument I'm bookmarked people said that to me or friends I'm bookmarking you don't know why somebody's liking a tweet but where I find her strange and again I don't know if she knows what she's saying is that you know that one of those tweets Michael it was it's basically disagreeing with the 2010 Equalities Act brought in by Labour now if you say this on Twitter and it is a very it's a very fluid bit of legislation right so it does give some give and take on these issues particularly but you read some of the guidance which is given to instance for the High Street businesses and it quite it quite clearly says by the government quite clearly says looking at 2010 Equalities Act you know a trans woman should be able to use a trans toilet in in your business this is this is guidance being given to businesses from the government so what she seems to be saying as a Labour MP is that I disagree with legislation which is already in place which was introduced by Labour Government 11 years ago I don't think she knows that I don't think she knows that and so I think that should be said to her yeah losing the whip I again I you know that's something that's open obviously but for discussion look Michael if I was the Labour leader I'd be doing many things differently to Kisdama but I think that he should quite clearly state what she's saying isn't the party's position and actually it's at odds with what's already legislation which we introduced 11 years ago and we're very proud of it I just think there's so much ignorance on this issue which of course suits the Murdoch Empire so well really important to say as well Michael purely from a position of political expediency it is wonderful for the likes of Rupert Murdoch you know and the right-wing press more generally to keep this issue alive to to keep Labour just fighting amongst itself and also to be looking backwards it's fantastic that the LGBT people from the perspective of Rupert Murdoch it's fantastic they're having to defend things which are already legislation right rather than asking for new things so yeah I agree with you about losing the whip thing because I think ultimately she's been elected by I think she should be disciplined I don't think it has to be losing the whip necessarily I think she needs to clearly conduct herself very differently on social media but like I say it's a really strange mix of of of naivety and malevolence and and ignorance no other way to to say it but she's an MP Michael has to be better than that so I think she should be disciplined yeah that would be my position I think let's go to a few comments Tom Langford with a tenor Stammer willing to ignore Duffield while she stayed in her Twitter bubble will he be more likely to act now she's going to the Murdoch press will I assume her going to the Murdoch press is a way to get Kier Stammer to act from the opposite direction I would afford so I imagine if he's going to make a statement it will be a statement defending Rosie Duffield I mean of course the boilerplate comment which is that no one should be subject to harassment on social media especially due to any protected characteristic such as being a female MP right you know that would be a reasonable intervention to make I doubt he's going to come out and say look we the Labour Party stand by the Equality Act 2010 and we stand by the right of trans people to live their lives freely and with dignity which means that they will go to the toilet of the gender which they identify as he should say that I doubt he will anytime soon Paul Taylor with a tenor one of the few issues when of our immediate is completely out of step with reality this is this is where we need a phone in because I need to know what you think about that I don't what you mean by out of step with with with reality trans people exist and they need to live their lives with dignity so I mean that that's always my starting point when it comes to discussions such as this I think if you think that's out of step with reality you've probably misunderstood something about the world and likely you don't know any trans people potentially I've completely misunderstood what you were saying there but we'll see apologies if I have a bit of with tenor with 10 pounds thank you very much big up Michael Aaron northern of our media crew for persistently getting the goods in the journalistic domain keeping us informed educated and entertained on occasion much love and respect a very kind message thank you very much for that and a small bean with two pounds turfs are our minority not representatives the turfs being trans exclusionary radical feminists and Tilly Alton says Rosie is an ignorant she is repeating the anti-LGBTQ plus views lots of dog whistles that idea turfs for a minority I think that's actually really interesting because definitely militant turfs who were sort of obsessed with this idea that trans women can't be women they are a minority I was looking at a you-gov poll from 2020 a majority of people do think people should be able to self-idea that trans women are women and that trans men are men that's the majority but a majority don't agree it should be easier to legally change gender or that a doctor's approval should not be required and they also think trans people should be able to use toilets and changing rooms with their chosen gender but only after gender reassignment surgery now I'm obviously not saying this because I think the majority of people are necessary right I don't think people should be required to have gender reassignment surgery before they're allowed to use a toilet of a different gender I think that misunderstands how trans people live but at the same time I do think sometimes people overestimate the side the extent to which public opinion is on one side public opinion is actually quite muddled which is why I think probably having these sort of conversations in a sensitive politically open way as opposed to just taking the whip off people is probably going to be more productive people will disagree which is fine I'm sure we'll have more people on the show who disagree in the near future let's go to our next story while we're doing that like the video if you haven't already the launch of a new military pact between the UK US and Australia has been accused of being an attempt to stoke a new cold war it's also been a moment for a number of brutal paths to be being launched at the alliances to junior partners the first insult was accidental this was at the launch of the pact this is how Joe Biden closed that meeting Mr. President thank you Boris and I want to thank that fellow down under thank you very much appreciate you Mr. Prime Minister I mean I'm sure I'm sure the you know the people who brief Joe Biden are probably lots of topics to cover lots of you know technical details they wanted him to be on top of and they just forgot to remind him the name of the Australian Prime Minister to be fair I think you know if he had forgotten the name of the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison he dealt with it okay my pal down under could have been more awkward since then Boris Johnson has been the principal target of diplomatic slights though and these ones are less accidental the context here is that the French are annoyed that they weren't given prior warning of the pact which involves the US and UK selling Australia nuclear submarines that deal will replace an agreement Australia had with France to buy diesel electric subs you can see why they're pissed off in response to the pact France has recalled its ambassadors to Australia and the US but not the UK the French foreign minister explained it was because France was familiar with Britain's permanent opportunism and said Boris Johnson was the fifth wheel on the carriage sources close to the LSA so that's the the French presidential palace were even more damning Tony Hates is an ex-central banker he tweeted the following Macron did not recall the UK ambassador apparently according to sources close to the LSA for the same reason that when the cooking in a restaurant is not first class you sack the chef not the guy who washes the dishes um Aaron I want your thoughts on this which is the better burn forgetting the name of the prime minister with whom you've just signed what's supposed to be a historic security pact or that comment from a source close to Macron I thought there was a sort of both I think Biden generally is quite funny in how much he doesn't really seem to care Biden doesn't really seem to care about what anybody thinks probably except the except the Chinese and the US electorate which you know I kind of rate and I think that the French kind of negging the Brits I mean it's kind of pathetic look we're often critical of UK foreign policy and and the the come the outlandish sense of self that Brits and its politicians have regarding that place in the world the French are just as bad you know these are these are two countries medium-sized powers in the North Atlantic 60 to 65 million people relatively large economy relatively advanced technological bases that's it you know you're not China you're not the EU proper you're not the United States you're not Russia just just move on let's talk about the actual substance of the pact and what's it all about so the agreement means that Australia will be allowed to build nuclear powered submarines for the first time using technology provided by the US and the UK so before they were going to be building submarines based on diesel and electricity alongside the construction of the submarine's orcus so that's how you shorten the alliance will also cover artificial intelligence and cyber and quantum technologies and it will be more focused on military capability rather than intelligence so intelligence is the domain of the five eyes alliance that includes Canada and New Zealand this is how Joe Biden explained the purpose of the agreement today we're taking another historic step to deepen and formalize cooperation among all three of our nations because we all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term we need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead and I want your take on this moving on from whose burns were better and what should we make of the I think is it pronounced orcus the orcus pack is it is it a dangerous escalation of a new cold war or is it you know just fairly simple weapons trading deal Michael what do you think come on Australia what it's a it's a country what 25 30 million people I think 25 million people um no is the answer I think actually if anything what this alliance this new alliance shows you Michael is actually how weak the United States is geopolitically against China compared to where it was say 20 years ago if you remember the war on terror you know America you know it was criticized by the French and the Germans for not having a bigger coalition behind it um but it actually had a really big coalition behind it it commanded a great deal of good faith from much the rest of the world both in the global south but also in the global north and now you have this quite and quite alliance which doesn't include Canada doesn't include New Zealand doesn't include South Korea doesn't include Japan you know if you look at the combined GDP of the UK and Australia by price purchasing parity it's not nominal GDP but it's a different measure something it's a more accurate measure of GDP you put the UK and Australia together it's about four and a half trillion US dollars per year ASEAN which is a trade area in Asia not including not including Japan not including China has a GDP price purchasing PPP price purchasing parity of nine trillion dollars and ASEAN is so integrated with the Chinese economy China exports so much stuff to them you know they're really they are dependent on China economically and that you know you wouldn't say they're satellite states or client states because they're not but this is kind of like the big trading area where you know a lot of growth is going to happen over the next 20 30 years geopolitical it's only become more important think Thailand think Vietnam uh think you know I mean Burma even Burma a relatively small country in that part of the world 55 million people that's that's bigger than Spain in terms of population so or it's about let's let's let's about the same you know you would never think in those terms of Vietnam I think 90 100 million people fast-growing economy similar with Thailand Thailand I think 70 million people 65 million people huge numbers of increasingly affluent consumers ASEAN's GDP measured by price purchasing parity is nine trillion I think I said billion before for the UK and Australia I meant trillion of course so ASEAN is about twice the size of Australia and the UK in terms of when you're trying to comparatively measure their economies so I think this alliance just sort of speaks to the weakness Michael of America's geopolitical position you know if it was Australia New Zealand and Japan impressive or Taiwan impressive maybe Korea yeah India and those the alliance is fundamentally which America needs to leverage if it wants to push back against China India Japan South Korea Taiwan the fact that knows those names aren't in the mix you know I suspect they they can't do that because again China is such an important trading partner for the Michael we're already seeing a huge overhead on this for Australia and Australia you know is far less integrated or is when it comes to you know raw materials far less integrated with the Chinese economy than somebody who say like Taiwan or Japan you know these are that often for all of these countries the number one importer the number one exporter in terms of partnerships so for me Michael it speaks to the kind of inevitability of a Chinese century and the inevitability of China becoming a world power and if you if you say this if I say this on Twitter people say why do you love the Chinese Communist Party why do you hate the West it's just an observation I mean what else do you want me to say right by price purchasing parity by 2035 China's economy will be the same size as the the EU and the US combined there's 1.4 billion people it's increasingly at the cutting edge of technological innovation what do you want me to say I'm just I'm just describing the facts so no I don't think it's leading to a new cold war I think it could be it could be leading the way for something yeah it could be a step on a particular path but I don't think it's in any way as important as is being sort of stated by particularly the Anglophone media it's in America's interest to say how big a deal this is it's in Australia's interest to say how big a deal this is you know Anglophone politicians love to be seen as close to the White House and of course it's in Britain's interest to stress that particularly post-Brexit you know a place in the world as with these other English speaking countries but frankly my view and I'm not a foreign policy expert I'm not an international relations head is that doesn't really change very much there was Jeremy Corbyn and I tweeted over the weekend that this was a problem in terms of nuclear proliferation I saw him get mocked by a couple of fairly smug journalists to say oh don't you know the difference between a submarine that carries a nuclear weapon so like our sort of trident system and a submarine which is powered by nuclear power now they clearly thought they're making an incredibly smart point it actually is very much related and this is from the economist actually had a really good article on this so that they were saying that while people might not be worried about Australia generating a nuclear bomb this is actually probably the the best way which is not in controversial not probably not in contravention of the non-proliferation treaty to get a hold of incredibly enriched uranium so you need uranium which is more enriched than anything which you can use for civilian nuclear power to fuel these nuclear submarines so if this sets a precedent whereby lots of countries now think oh we're not allowed to get nuclear weapons but let's build a nuclear submarine then that means you'll have a lot of countries who could have enough nuclear capacity to to generate a nuclear bomb in quite a short period of time so there are real questions to answer there we currently have 2 000 people watching if you're new make sure to hit subscribe as we do this show three times a week let's go to our final story the labor right to have one priority that exceeds all else locking the left out of power and if rumors are true a key moment in that effort could be at next week's labor party conference it's now expected that plans are afoot to change the rules for electing labor's next leader the plans would involve abandoning the system of one member one vote that's the method by which both Corbyn and Starmer were elected every member gets one vote and they're all counted equally the proposed replacement according to these rumors is reviving the Electoral College so how the Electoral College works is that members have a third of the vote MPs have a third of the vote and the unions have a third of the vote and they're all waited equally so if you've got half a million members they will collectively have the same vote as 200 or so MPs Aaron I think you were the first person to tweet this actually it's now going to put a momentum I've seen Sienna Mahler from Labour this sort of back you back you up how likely do you think it is that one this will you know the right will attempt to do this and two that they'll be successful thank you yeah I did I did break the story Michael which is always always good I first heard of it this morning there were whispers about it and you know we can talk in abstraction about whether or not somebody would try something I think this move would only be made if they thought they could win it and the the view of those behind it the Labour right people like Labour first and so on their view what and of course they've always wanted to do this this is probably one of their biggest ambitions during during the Starmer leadership if they can do this and nothing else they'll be incredibly happy they viewed it as really hinging on two unions unison and the GMB if they could get one of them on board it was go their view is again that the composition of sort of delegates this year at party conference is sufficiently right wing that they could get it through I mean it would be mighty strange Michael can you imagine you're a delegate obviously the delegates were chosen months ago this wasn't on the cards you send the delegate off the conference they come back say yeah I've just I've just voted for us all to have less influence I think most members would be livid but there we are they're going to try and get it through on the Friday and I think they're going to try and put it on the conference floor over the you know over the following days like you say Sienna followed it up John McDonald's tweeted something as well saying speculation Labour leadership aims to bounce through conference returned to Electoral College which is effectively a return to what we had before the status quo ante so just to clarify for our audience right now if you want to change the Labour leader or if there is an election for a Labour leader you have the candidate selection which is effectively MPs decide who's put forward to the membership there's a certain threshold that has to be met with the nominations once you're on that list of nominees that's then put to the membership it's one member one vote and it's not just the membership it's also a affiliate organization so if you remember the Fabian Saati or Unite or whatever you also get a vote now what the Labour right want to do and this is now in train is they want to return to a previous system where a voting for the leader still had that same nominations process you know parts of it were different but fundamentally Labour MPs decided who could be a nominee a prospective leader and then the the voting system was a bit arcane quite strange it was an Electoral College so trade unions had a bunch of votes members had a bunch of votes CLPs had a bunch of votes and Labour Party MPs had a bunch of votes and we're now being presented with something like that so you would basically see an even division of influence between trade union movement six and a half million people huge organizations like the GMB Unison Unite CW many others about 450,000 members right now and then equal to both of these you'd have sort of one third each would be around 200 Labour MPs clearly not a very democratic system but it's about the Labour right empowering the very small number of people who agree with them on most things which is Labour MPs who aren't just the odds actually with the party membership but I think actually with the public and a bunch of things we saw that in response to to the Afghan pull out a few weeks ago I think my club was a really classic example of it you saw people and the Labour benches saying that we should stay in Afghanistan even if America's pulling out which I think is effectively a death sentence for UK soldiers that would be there you know and again most the public didn't agree with that I think 70% of the public some 5% of the public disagreed with that so you have people as Labour MPs who are quite unrepresentative of public opinion on a bunch of things and the move here is to make those people even more influential in deciding who the next Labour leader is particularly ironic if it was pushed through while Keir Starmer was leader given that Keir Starmer himself was voted through one member one vote and I think most importantly my people on the soft left and liberals who say oh well Labour are going to offer proportional representation or constitutional reform come on if a political party is working backwards in terms of its own democratic processes do you really think they're going to enact meaningful constitutional reform or change the electoral system of course they're not so it's a big story let's see where it goes I mean I had one person tell me a sort of senior figure on the Labour left tell me just before we went on air they don't think it will get through they think it could go to the conference floor but they don't think it will get through because they don't think unison and GMB and or GMB would back it I mean that remains to be seen maybe there'll be some horse trading I mean it would I think it would reduce would reduce the influence of trade unions of course you could say well they had the block vote they would have that back again it would actually increase their influence but if you look at the role of trade unions and how much influence they've had in the Labour Party under Keir Starmer as well by the way since 2015 since the rule change I think it would be a very strange move by any trade union to do that you know the GMB unison and you know particularly GMB and Unite really have had massive extraordinary influence over party politics since 2015 so it would be a very strange move but look they've done strange moves before the GMB likes to sort of articulate itself present itself as this really sort of blue collar working class trade union they back to quote unquote people's vote far far before Labour did because some people inside the organisation staffers wanted it because they had different political views to their members so if that happened I wouldn't write this off either but like I say the last person I spoke to on this who I agree with politically I'm not gonna I'm not gonna you know mislead people that somebody on the left and who I trust in terms of their judgment that they don't think this will go through but it could very well be put to people over the next week hmm that is going to be super interesting I mean one thing this all means is the Labour Party conference in a week's time is going to be incredibly consequential I mean if this happens this is what I was saying last week was was you know the holy grail of the Labour right they want to change the leadership rules so that when Starmer fails in the next general election as seems likely can't guarantee it hopefully won't you know but you know the odds are against him if he fails they can replace him with someone on the right of the party and lock out the possibility of someone like Jeremy Corbyn winning ever again that that's their number one priority and it seems as if they're going to go early instead of waiting for for future conferences to do that Aaron Bustani it's been a pleasure being joined by you on a Monday evening for change it's been my pleasure Michael I just want to say one more thing if that's possible yes please do yeah because we've got the you know the world transformed I think what's going to be super interesting and like this was something that was raised to be my by former sort of senior Corbyn staffer is we could be in a really situation it's going to get incredibly acrimonious Michael if you've got people who back Starmer and Starmer does this you know if Starmer takes democracy backwards in the Labour Party because it really would be crossing the Rubicon very early on in his leadership it's a really drastic step Michael so that's why I think everybody watching this should really pay attention to our coverage of the Labour Conference and and the world transformed and next week starting actually this weekend it's going to be fascinating and I think it could be the most interesting period actually of Labour Party politics over the last couple of years and the way you make sure you miss none of that is hitting that subscribe button you can even turn notifications on for now we're going to wrap up thank you everyone for joining tonight and for your super chats as always we'll be back on Wednesday at 7 p.m we've been watching Tisgy Sour on Navarra media good night