 At the start of the pandemic, the Tory government increased universal credit by £20 a week to support Britain's poorest families. The £20 uplift was nowhere near enough to make up for a decade of Tory cuts to benefits. But nonetheless, Rishi Sunak is still desperate to take it away. Now a £20 cut to universal credit would be devastating to those on low incomes and those out of work. On the latter, the Resolution Foundation have said, Pressing ahead with the £20 cut would see the level of unemployment support fall to its lowest real-term levels since 1990 to 1991 and its lowest ever relative to average earnings. Indeed, the basic level of out of work support prior to the March boost was at £73 a week, that's £3,800 a year, less than half the absolute poverty line. Now that is an absolute disgrace that that is £3,800 a year you're expected to live on if you're unemployed or poorly. The Resolution Foundation have also suggested the cut would contribute to a £730,000 increase in the number of children in poverty. Now all of this means it was very welcome that the Labour Party chose their day for opposition motions to put forward one opposing the cuts to universal credit. This was Keir Starmer laying out his stance this morning. This £20 uplift has been the difference between making ends meet or not for many, many families. We're at a food distribution centre here, hear the stories of the families that are absolutely reliant on this. We're still in the middle of a pandemic and the government wants to get rid of that uplift, which is vital to those families. It's the wrong thing to do. I think many Tory MPs in their heart of heart know it's the wrong thing to do. It's about priorities, put families first, keep this uplift. But the Tories aren't backing down. So even though they have stained in today's vote, we'll get on to the reasons for that later. That they are putting forward the political argument that this uplift should be withdrawn. So for example, on Radio 4 last night, the Tory MP, Bim Afalami, supported the £20 cut, saying the best way of getting people out of poverty is into work. Angela Rayner summed up well why that's an incredibly misinformed argument. She tweeted, Bim Afalami sadly demonstrated how out of touch Tory MPs are talking about people getting on the work ladder instead of universal credit on Westminster Hour. 2.2 million recipients of UC are working and 70% of children in poverty are in working families. The problem is poverty pay, well said Angela. But their main gripe has been the process. So conservatives all around have sort of tried to change the subject from universal credit itself to suggest that the process of labour putting forward emotion itself amounts to bullying almost. So this was a message sent by Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister to all Tory MPs on Saturday. So Boris Johnson wrote, folks, I know that many of you are first thing to give battle and vote against all labour motions. But after the shameful way in which they use their army of momentum trolls last time to misrepresent the outcome and to lie about its meaning and frankly to intimidate and threaten colleagues, especially female colleagues, I have decided not to give them that opportunity. We can be proud of what we are doing to tackle all the consequences of the pandemic. And if Labour decides to stop playing politics and to stop inciting the worst kind of hatred and bullying of a kind scene, sadly across the Atlantic, then I may think again about legislatively vacuous opposition debates. Now, beyond the very, very crass comparison of Labour activists who just want better benefits to Donald Trump supporters invading the capital more on that later. What does it say about the Prime Minister that he thinks the opposition shining light on the plight of low income Britons is playing politics? Does he think poverty is a game? And that's the only conclusion you can really draw from that message sent to all of his MPs. And what's particularly striking there is the implicit threat to get rid of opposition day debates all together. Now, what are opposition day debates? They are their time put aside in Parliament for the opposition to put forward a motion which they think is important and which the government is ignoring. It's not legally binding. So if it passes, it doesn't become law, but it's precisely intended as an opportunity for the opposition, whoever is in opposition to publicise, to put their cards on the table when it comes to an important issue of the day. It also has worked in the past. So the reason why the government were forced to U-turn on free school meals over the summer holidays was because of a very well timed opposition day debate. A motion put forward by the Labour Party, which timed in with pressure from Marcus Rashford. Obviously, it couldn't have been done without Rashford, but the opposition day debate was very helpful, which is why they want to just get rid of them. If you don't like the process, if you don't like being held to account, just get rid of it, change the rules. Of course, though, they don't want to say we want to get rid of this because it's too effective. They have to make up some other excuse. Let's take a look at a video put up by Ben Bradley today. So he's the Tories most hyperactive keyboard warrior. And this is sort of put forward as an explainer about what opposition day debates are. Opposition day debates are a chance for the Labour Party to choose what subjects are debated on the floor of the House of Commons. They go out of their way to choose particularly emotive issues that they can weaponise in the media and online. Whenever government announces a new policy, which includes a range of support measures and additional funding, inevitably Labour say this isn't good enough. They demand more money without explaining what they would do instead. The trick is that they choose a particular divisive title in order to make headlines. This is the result and in truth, that's exactly what they're after. These debates don't change the law. They don't change any policy. In fact, they don't change anything. They're just a conversation about how we deal with a particular issue. That's how we deal with it. Not whether we deal with it or not. How we feed vulnerable children. Not whether we feed them. They go out of their way to misrepresent government policy because they don't want change, just negative headlines. I mean, there's so many ridiculous things to point out in that video. I'll leave some of them to Ash. But first of all, I mean, he's saying he's Labour choosing emotive topics. They're playing politics. They're abusing the system by choosing emotive topics. That just means topics that people care about. It's also not divisive to say you should have free school meals over the summer. The other critique he has is that they don't have an alternative. Now, we at Navarro, we often critique Keir Starmer's Labour for not having a practical alternative to offer to the country. But here, it's very concrete. What do they want instead of the Tory policy? They want to keep the 20-pound uplift. They want to give free school meal vouchers to people over the summer. It's not rocket science. It's very, very concrete laid out. They can adopt it if they want the Tories. I mean, it could be government policy today. Ash, I want to get your thoughts on this, especially the PM, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, saying, Labour members campaigning against cuts to benefit is basically the same as Trump supporters storming Capitol Hill. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Parliamentary procedures actually cyber-bullying. And I would appreciate it if you took that a little more seriously. I mean, look, this whole thing is a bit of political theatre to try and contain the kind of reputational damage that the Conservative government has really enjoyed inflicting on itself recently. You know, you've got these very cut-and-dry issues, which is that, you know, there's a statutory obligation on the part of the government to make sure that children are fed during school holidays, not just local authorities. Pretty cut-and-dry issue. There's a consensus on that in the country. Instead, Boris Johnson decided to keep hitting himself in the head with a hammer until, you know, the very last minutes, just drawing those, those negative headlines upon himself and his government. Same with the universal credit. I don't think that this is going to be the line through to April. I do think that we'll see a U-turn because it's a false economy taking money out of people's pockets just at a time where they will financially be incredibly precarious. And the government, even from their very right-wing perspective, are going to be a bit worried about people spending power during that time. And also, it looks like you're picking on the very poorest people. Once you've given someone a 20-pound uplift, it's very difficult to take it away. You know, did your living expenses get 20 pounds cheaper? I don't think that they did. So do you think that there'll be a U-turn coming? So this is an attempt to contain the mess of their own political strategy. Why do they leave things to the last minutes while making a U-turn? Well, it might be to do with some of the personality types in government. We know that Boris Johnson is somebody who doesn't like making tough decisions early on in the day. What he likes to do is, you know, kind of take it right up to the cliff edge. Wait until the options fall away and there's one standing in front of him, which is a great way to live your life if you've got, you know, five Tinder chats going on and you're trying to work out who to, you know, take on for your winter wifey but less good for, you know, purposes of governing a country. But the story here is very interesting because this business of saying that opposing is in itself an act of bullying and aggression. That's not something that the hard right came up with. This was also something which was a preferred line of the center left, particularly when Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party. When you had those political differences, these divergences in policy vision and also in values between the kind of liberal and the left wings of the Labour Party, this was in itself presented as hostility, bullying, aggression. And now when you see the kind of after effects of the attack on the Capitol being an attempted realignment amongst parts of the American political establishment to kind of rule out of order, you know, kind of Trump's base. There are lots of people in, you know, the UK who think, well, wouldn't that be great? We can do that for the Corbynistas as well. It doesn't matter that there has been no comparative act of aggression, violence, subversion of, you know, legitimate democratic process. It doesn't matter that mostly what people are talking about in terms of aggression is like being called a melt or bald on Twitter, which Michael, if you've survived those slurs for this long, I think, you know, well-paid guardian columnists sort to as well. You know, it really is just quite pathetic. And Boris Johnson, I think, is quite cleverly seen that these lines of presenting differences in politics and differences are what makes the political machine run. That's what makes a parliamentary democracy meaningful is that you don't just use that to bash the left of the Labour Party. And when Keir Starmer in particular has talked himself into a position of we will support the government in anything they do, these moments where he does the right thing in my view, which is put clear redwater between himself and the Prime Minister, you know, Boris Johnson has got the ideal comeback, which I thought you were supposed to be Mr. Consensus. I thought you were supposed to be, you know, rolling your sleeves up and putting aside politics and participating in the national effort. I think that inadvertently, Keir Starmer has validated this idea that principled opposition is, you know, in fact, something to be mistrusted in politics. So I think that the way through this rather than backing down is for himself and Angela Rainer, who's a very effective communicator on this issue is to keep picking fights like this. It's something which polarizes in a good way. I think that there is a, you know, strong sense of there being a social majority behind keeping the uplift just as there is with, you know, free school meal provision throughout the holidays. And I think that means that you've taken a step forward on the issue of welfare provision. And this has been traditionally some quite difficult territory for the Labour Party, apart from, you know, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonald, although the policy was, you know, really lacking in some aspects, you know, not committing to scrapping the benefit cap being one of those aspects. But getting Labour onto the front foot to making a positive case for welfare provision, you know, not just being on the defensive all the time, you know, that's the kind of thing they should be looking forward towards. The Tories are kind of like, it's unfair, you've picked a topic where what we're doing is so unpopular. So that's why they picked it, you know, you picked a topic where the consequences of our policy are obviously wrong. That was to eat, you know, you should have picked a more ambiguous policy. The reason they picked it is because it does make you look evil because it's an evil thing to do. But I think in some ways, I mean, we're going to talk about the statues thing a bit later down the line. But I think that this kind of ties in, which is what, you know, the Republican Party tried to do under Trump using Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as kind of totems is to present their opponents as politically illegitimate, aggressive, violent, lawless uncouth. And now you can kind of see an attempt to turn that back onto Trump supporters, except there's some evidence to think that they're, you know, violent uncouth. But you know, it's all about that kind of realignment of who is a legitimate political player. And the minute you say it's okay to do for, you know, the parliamentary left and look, let's face it, Jeremy Corbyn was not a revolutionary. All right. I wouldn't say, you know, his analysis, you know, began and ended with Marx, but you know, John McDonald was saying in some ways is the more traditional Marxist, but Jeremy Corbyn, I don't think so. You know, they are part of a long established, you know, particularly English political tradition by saying that you guys are completely illegitimate and beyond the pale. Well, it's never going to stop there. It's then going to encroach, right? So then it's going to be, you know, Angela Rayner for muttering scum under her breath, or it's going to be, you know, somebody like Clive Lewis, or it's going to be, you know, Sam Terry. It's going to be Ed Miliband evens. So people getting, you know, further and further towards the soft left. And then it'll be Kishtama. Whenever he has the temerity to do his job, which is oppose something, it's going to go, Oh, look at you. You're part of that rabble. And the problem is, is that the center left has been really complicit in conjuring that image of the unruly rabble. That's not to say that sometimes people who are supportive of Corbyn, you know, didn't take it too far, said things which were, you know, kind of unstrategic or stupid or yes, even abusive, right? It's the internet. That's the thing that happens and it sucks. But I don't think that that was indicative or representative of Corbynism as a whole. Either in terms of the grassroots support or, you know, that kind of cluster of parliamentary MPs. But because it presented an immediate threat to the career ambitions of some of those in the center left, and I'm not just talking about in Parliament. I'm talking about in the press as well. They were 100% willing to team up with those on the right to say these guys boot them out.