 It is just three days before England removes all coronavirus restrictions and daily UK cases have just topped 50,000. That's for the first time since January. Are we heading for catastrophe? Now, I should give you a warning at the start of this show. I'm not going to give you a categorical answer either way. I do think there are a lot of unknowns in this case. You will have watched shows before, for example, before Christmas at the beginning of January last March when we were pretty sure what we thought should happen. That was before there was a vaccine. Things are more complicated this time around. So what I'm going to just try and do today is give you a fair outline of the arguments for and against. You can make your own judgments about the undoubtedly risky new world England will be entering next week to have that discussion. I'm joined by Aaron Bustani. How are you doing, Aaron? I'm very good. Just applying the after sun, Michael. Did you catch the sun today, Aaron? I did, yeah. I think I'm going to burn. Hopefully I'll find some time to do that this weekend. I've been planning this show. Now, as ever, you can let us know your thoughts if you're watching us live by tweeting on the hashtag TiskeySoul. We'll be reading some of those out. And if you're watching back on YouTube later, let us know in the comments below the video. Tonight, we're also going to be discussing Keir Starmer's sweating blood or the fact that Keir Starmer has said he will sweat blood and the latest crisis in GB news. At the end of the show, we'll be dedicating some time for a tribute to a brilliant journalist and comrade Dawn Foster. I'm sure she meant a lot to many of you watching. So we're going to talk about her at the close of today's episode. Now, let's go straight to our first story. Daily new cases in the UK have topped 50,000 for the first time since mid-January. As you can see, there were 51,870 cases reported in the past 24 hours. Now, cases are up 34.9% on the previous week. Simple mathematics tells you that if this trend were to continue, we should expect 70,000 daily cases in a week's time and 95,000 daily cases in two weeks time. We also had more data released today from the ONS. So the Office for National Statistics every week released the data from their coronavirus infection survey. This isn't based on just people who were turning up to get tested, but it's based on a representative sample of the UK population. Now, they have found that in the week-ending 10th of July, so that's last week, one in 95 people in England had COVID-19. This is up from one in 160 a week earlier. I should say those are estimates, sorry, based on a representative sample. The figures are slightly better in the rest of the UK in Wales and one in 360 people had COVID-19 in Scotland, one in 90 and in Northern Ireland, one in 290. Now, what you can see there is how this compares in England, at least to previous peaks. So as this chart shows, we are not quite yet at the peak levels we saw in early January when over one in 50 people had COVID, but things are moving in that direction. You can see the gradient there is not particularly happy to look at. Now, of course, the difference between now and January is that most adults are now vaccinated and the link between cases and hospitalizations and deaths has therefore been significantly weakened. When it comes to hospitalizations, there were 717 new hospital admissions reported in the past 24 hours, which compares to 4579 daily admissions at the peak in January. So you can see a big difference there. It also seems to be the case that hospital visits are shorter this time around, that's because people turning up to hospital are younger. You can look at that with glass half empty or glass half full, because they're younger, they're less likely to die and they're less likely to have to spend a long time in ITU, but young people turning up to hospital is never a particularly happy site. Let's have a look at patients here. So we can see this graph about patients here where you can currently total occupancy is much, much lower than at the peak when almost 40,000 people were in hospital. This does mean though that elective surgeries, elective operations have already been cancelled because the NHS has a huge backlog. That includes in the UK's largest hospital, which is the Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham. That follows similar situations in hospitals, in Leeds and Newcastle. And of course, the current situation in hospitals is just a snapshot. What's really worrying is that exponential growth means this could change really, really fast. We know that cases are rising exponentially, hospitalisations lag cases. In terms of this danger, it was one which was set out by Chris Whitty. He was speaking to a seminar organised by the Science Museum. At the moment, the number of cases in hospital is mercifully much lower than it was previously, but not trivial. We've still got over 2,000 people in hospital and that number is increasing. If we double from 2,000 to 4,000, 4,000 to 8,000, 8,000 and so on, it doesn't take many doubling times to deal into very, very large numbers indeed. And the doubling time at the moment is probably around about three weeks. Could be a bit less than that actually for hospitalisations. So, it doesn't take many doublings to we're in actually quite scary numbers again. Of course, for every individual hospital person in a hospital, this is potentially very dangerous and there will be people who die or have life-long effects from this. But I don't think we should underestimate the fact that we could get into trouble again surprisingly fast. And I think saying the numbers in hospitals are low now, that does not mean the numbers will be low in hospital in five, six, seven, eight weeks time. They could actually be really quite serious. And as Kevin says, at that point, if it looks as if things are not topping out, we do have to look again and see what where we think things are going. So, it is very important that people don't imagine just because numbers are low now, they will always stay low. Exponential curves to look as if they're going very slowly and then suddenly, they look as if they're going very fast. Now, given the concerns expressed there by Chris Witte, you might wonder why he has been so willing to publicly endorse Boris Johnson's plan to remove all legal restrictions on Monday, whether or not he thinks that these arguments are showing the risk but the other arguments for opening overwhelm it, that's one possibility. The other potential is he's holding his tongue. One group of people who certainly are not holding their tongues are 1,200 scientists who have now signed a Lancet letter. This was printed a week or so ago, signed by lots of UK-based scientists critical of the government's approach. It has now been endorsed by government advisors from Israel, New Zealand and Italy. When I say government advisor, that's basically the equivalent of being signed by a sage member in the UK, something of that sort. Now, the letter expresses particular concern about the possibility of the current plan, which involves lots and lots of infections and not trying too hard to limit them. They're worried that this will create new variants. They warn the UK government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment. So, are they correct? As I say, I'm not really going to say yes or no here. I'm going to put forward the different arguments. So, in press conferences over the past two weeks, as we've discussed on the show, Chris Whitty's defense of loosening this Monday, even though there are risks involved, is that while there will be a potentially damaging exit wave by removing all restrictions on Monday, if we don't do it on Monday, that exit wave will just be pushed into the future and potentially into the winter when the NHS will find it harder to cope. Now, the arguments for that, for that idea that the exit wave is inevitable, is based on a couple of assumptions or points. So, one of them is that the vaccines stop only 75% of transmission of the Delta variant. That does mean, to my mind, that we will have an exit wave whenever we remove those restrictions because we're going to need to block basically all transmission with a virus, which is as transmissible as the Delta variant. So, I think there will be an exit wave. It also assumes that the advantage of doing it now when we haven't vaccinated all adolescents and young people is bigger than the advantage of having those people vaccinated if it also means it would be happening when schools were open and it was the beginning of winter. So, you've got the benefit of opening now, schools are closed, we're in the summer, the benefit of opening later, more people will be vaccinated. A big part of the scientific debate about which one of those is more important. Now, for a good piece summarizing the objection to Chris Whitty's argument, I think this is the best summary I've seen so far this week. We can go to Christina Pagle in The Guardian. So, she writes, the argument that delaying now will only result in more infections later in the winter ignores free things. The protection millions more, including adolescents can have from vaccination. The potential for vulnerable adults to receive booster shots in autumn and crucially our ability to offset the additional infection risks of winter with public health measures. So, she's essentially saying yes, it might be more difficult when schools are open. It might be more difficult when it's winter to release our public health restrictions, but we can take other mitigating measures. For example, vaccinating adolescents giving booster shots to people who are vulnerable and using more public health measures. As I say, I'm not going to say which one of these is right. I will suggest some potential problems with that is, are we hogging vaccines? There are lots of people in global health who say the idea of vaccinating people who are at quite a low risk from COVID-19 in the West before even healthcare workers and the vulnerable in sub-Saharan Africa have been vaccinated. That's potentially problematic. The other issue is whether public health measures are going to be enough to stop an exit waiver. Are we just delaying the inevitable? Now, as I say, should we be unlocking on Monday? I'm not going to give a definitive answer. I think everyone at Navarra media agrees there are some things which are undoubtedly unquestionably stupid, which the government are doing right now. For example, getting rid of masks on public transport and in shops. There are no good arguments for that, but for reopening, there are good and bad arguments. Aaron, I want to go to you on this point. We are about to reopen when we have 50,000 daily cases. I mean, that does make lots of people uncomfortable. I think it would be slightly odd if it didn't make someone feel uncomfortable. Should we be reassessing this plan? You know, it's so tough, Michael. The thing I don't quite understand and maybe, given your sagacity on the subject, you can clarify this for me. The constant talk of, exponential curves, of course, exponential growth is going from 2 to 4 to 8 to 1632. Very quickly, things get out of control, as we saw last year. Given that 80% plus, I think now of the countries had at least one shot, given almost 70% has had two shots of the vaccine, surely there is a ceiling to this. I mean, we can't have exponential growth as you would expect under normal conditions because vast numbers of the people have either had the virus and therefore producing antibodies or have been vaccinated. So, I mean, I can only presume there is a ceiling here, Michael. Have you read anything that was sort of indicating that? I mean, Witty did suggest that, but are there actually any sort of modelled numbers around this, which you would expect there would be, of course, given we know how many people were vaccinated, we know how many people have actually had the virus. No, there would be a ceiling. And I mean, throughout this pandemic, it's always been the case that there would be a ceiling. Viruses always wear themselves out once they've infected everyone. The issue beforehand was that the time it would take to wear itself out or the number of people who would have to get infected to wear itself out would leave half a million people dead. Of course. There is lots of modelling for this time around. And there will be a ceiling. The issue is just how quickly will that ceiling be reached and how quickly does it happen? I mean, the government policy at the moment is to reach that ceiling before winter. Essentially, we are going for herd immunity now. It's just different when we went to herd immunity before, because we already have so many people vaccinated. And as you can see, if transmission is only reduced by 75% by these vaccines, if it's still quite possible for many people to catch COVID-19 with these vaccines, we are going to need a bunch more people to get COVID-19 before we have herd immunity. So the government is basically saying, what's the most rational way to let the sufficient number of people catch COVID-19? I'd say, actually, that's potentially being too kind about the government. This is what scientists are debating and discussing. I think the government probably have quite a lot of ulterior motives, including how can they reduce the amount they have to pay for social support, etc. But when it comes to the scientific debate here, it is we are going to reach that peak where we reach herd immunity. But is now the time to do it when we still have lots of young people not vaccinated? Should we wait until they're vaccinated? Or if we wait until they're vaccinated, will that mean that we're doing it at a time which is even more difficult and even more problematic because it's in the winter? I understand all of that, but I just find it strange that Sage haven't offered actual numbers about when this would potentially peak, given that is the plan. Given public health England is publishing so much constant data on absolutely everything. This is the approach, as you've so articulately said, a mix of people getting it and vaccines being rolled out. It does still feel like we're moving around by the seat of our underpants. There isn't no real plan. I could believe that was a plan if they said, look, by early October, we're expecting hospital admissions XYZ to peak and it will stabilize there. Winter will make some new interventions and we honestly think by next spring this thing will be beaten more or less. I could understand the approach they've adopted, but until you see numbers in the absence of actual quantitative data backing up this approach, it does just feel like a repeat of late last year. That's not to say the same thing happens because it won't happen, but we still could see a colossal screw up in terms of some economic demobilization, kids missing school, huge numbers of excess mortality deaths. There was a number last week, Michael. This was crazy in terms of pushing back people for, I think, I can't remember the exact name of this, but urgent care and also including urgent care and non-urgent care, so things like cataracts. You're looking at 13 million people, apparently, according to Sajid Javid. 13 million people waiting for treatment on the NHS, perhaps. So, this does really feel like, again, there isn't a plan. I know you're being above the fray, you know, as you always are, very inscrutable. I'm not going to argue for or against whatever measures we should adopt, but I think it does seem to be pretty obvious that there isn't really a plan here. I could be wrong. I should say I'm not always above the fray. As I say, there are many moments where I've taken a very strong position. I take a very strong position when it comes to things like masks and when it comes to supporting people who are shielding. It's just this question of when precisely to reopen certain sectors of the economy that I think is quite difficult in this sense, because I have seen lots of sensible modellers suggest that if you push it into September, there could be added problems based on seasonality and schools being open. In terms of the number at which it would peak out, potentially, Sage have put something out like that. But I mean, my understanding is that there is just so much uncertainty here that even the top scientists are saying, we don't really know, this is an experiment. We'll have to wait and see. And you could see that's probably why Chris Whitty is saying, we can't rule out this being reversible if the shit really does hit the fan. We are going to have to go back a few steps. I want to bring up vaccination rates and who has been vaccinated at this point in time, because I think it's very relevant here. I'll go to you and Aaron. Do you want to come back direct point on that before I go on to because some people are saying, oh, he's got the numbers wrong in terms of people vaccinated. I should be clear. That's percentage of the adult population. So first dose is 87.6%, second dose is 67.5%. Those are hugely impressive numbers. And again, yes, one dose doesn't mean you're resistant to this, but it does, to some extent, reduce possibility of transmission, and it does, to some extent, reduce the likelihood of something very bad happening to hospitalization and so on. So like I say, given those numbers, you're looking at 46 million people have had their first dose. I don't quite understand how we can talk about logarithmic growth in the same way we could last year. But over to you, Michael. Well, again, that's because that's the adult population. So 50% of the total population is double-vax. And if even double-vax people have a 30% chance of catching the virus, and then you've got 50% of people who aren't double-vaxed, you can see how that creates a big pool of potential people to get infected. As I said, I want to get up some data about vaccination rates. Obviously, a lot of conversation, and especially the opposition from those scientists in the Lancet, I just mentioned, is how much it is going to be young people who bear the brunt of any new spike in COVID infections. And you can see why that would be the case when we have a look at vaccination rates currently look like across age groups. Now, as you can see, then, when you get up to the older age groups, people between 75% and 79%, 100% of people are double-vaxed. Now, presumably, there are going to be some people who aren't double-vaxed. That's because this is ONS data from 2019. The population has increased slightly from then. But we're going to be very, very close to 100% vaccination rates. There will be some people who have escape infections, people who are double-vaxed, who still get the virus, but it should be much less severe than if they weren't vaccinated. When you get down to people who are between 18 and 24, much lower rates, so only 60% of people have had their first dose of the vaccine. Now, this is quite complicated at this point in time, because you could say, well, everyone now has had the option to have a first dose, so maybe that's their choice. We can't keep locked down, because people aren't choosing to have the vaccine. At the same time, I have to say, I don't think the government attempt to get people to get vaccinated has been particularly impressive. I think, for young people, there are lots of people who aren't persuaded yet they should get the vaccine. Obviously, I out on the show are always like, get the vaccine as soon as you possibly can. But it hasn't been overwhelming in terms of Twitter advertising and Facebook advertising and Instagram advertising. I thought they would have tried a little bit harder than they would have done. Also, on the topic of age, let's look at the breakdown in the ONS statistics, the Office of National Statistics. They show here that the highest rates at the moment are among people who are from school year 12 to the age 24, so that's from about 18 or 17 or 18 to age 24. 2.9% of that age group currently have COVID or had COVID at the end of last week. Second highest is people who are school aged. Obviously, people who are school aged won't have been vaccinated. People who are between year 12 and age 24 are much less likely to have been vaccinated than everyone else. The good news here, when it comes to how big is this spike going to be this summer, is that the second highest group, their school years 7 to 11, they're going to be out of school. So potentially, those rates will go down a little bit. The bad news is that the people who are aged 18 to 24, where 3% of them have COVID, they're the people who are going to be going out to clubs from Monday. So you can see how they could be a real hotbed for COVID infections, potentially variations and presumably a lot of community spread. Let's talk about clubs very briefly, Aaron, because as I say, this is probably the most difficult one for me because I know a lot of people who are very keen to go out to clubs. When I'm double vaccinated, I'm quite keen to do the same, but I also do understand the argument that potentially this is going too fast, too soon. What's your take on night clubs? I mean, obviously, they obviously shouldn't be open, Michael, obviously. I mean, this is kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Under conditions of where you have COVID passports, perhaps, I think it's a really important point by the way to talk about COVID passports. Great book out by Ben Bratton about, you know, we often think on the left, biopolitics, the idea of the state surveilling, you know, our data, whether it's as consumers or in the case of a pandemic or epidemiological data, he says, no, you know, this is just a fundamental reality of the 21st century as the left has to be able to embrace these things and talk about them propositionally. And so that made me think it's a good book, short book, very much recommended. It did make me think about, you know, COVID passports, but the idea that you say that you would have thousands of people go into small spaces, not necessarily tested young, intimately, you know, close to one another, no ventilation. I mean, you know, we thought sports stadium were bad enough. Well, this was, that was people that were, you know, generally vaccinated. It was generally, you know, it's outdoors, it's well ventilated. And there was at least the possibility, at least you can, socially distance, the point is, you're there to watch the football in a nightclub, you're there to talk to people and be close to one another and to dance and so on. So it seems unbelievable. I thought, I thought it would never happen. I just presumed this would be one of the industries which the government writes off for a year, maybe even two years, right? Maybe even next winter, we can't have nightclubs. That's what I thought would happen. But here we are. Do you think that might be because you don't go to nightclubs anymore, though? Because I know there are lots of people who are really frustrated that they haven't been able to socialize in the way that they like to who are now desperate to go to nightclub. They've had one vaccine already, potentially two. And they're willing to take the risk. If people are willing to take the risk, I mean, that's a strong argument for opening them. I know that that could lead to community transmission elsewhere in society. But if we're going to get that anyway, because we either have an exit wave now or we have an exit wave in September, that's why I think there is a complicated situation because there is always going to be community spread sometime between now and herd immunity. If young people want to go give it a go now in nightclubs, who are we to stop them? What I would do, I suppose what's very important to say there is that we should be telling young people if you go to a club, if you are willing to take that risk, make sure you don't go anywhere near someone who looks old and vulnerable. If you go on to public transport, if you go into a supermarket, double mask yourself because recognize that you could infect vulnerable people. But to say you have to stay at home for a benefit, which at this point is fairly unknown, that's why I'm very unsure about this particular issue. No, I genuinely think opening nightclubs is the craziest thing. I think this really does show the decadence of Western civilization, Michael. I'm being serious. You look at Taiwan, you look at South Korea, you look at all these countries, Vietnam, China, and so on. And then we're having a conversation that, oh, should we open up nightclubs on Monday because people in their early 20s want to go out? They've had a really terrible deal, no two ways about it. They should be getting the equivalent of a UBI, free university education. I get all of that. They should obviously be able to enjoy themselves socially as well. But Michael, we'll be like Park Mausoleum in Barcelona. Let's open some outdoor nightclubs. But this is basically creating the perfect set of conditions under which people could contract this thing and spread it. And it is important to say, Michael, that even older people who are double vaccinated can still catch this and can still die. And I sort of feel we're not yet in a place where our care home is really safe enough. I mean, probably not. There are old people, by the way, in Vietnam and China. They seem to be protecting them somewhat better than we are even now. That's always going to be the case though. This is not going to be the case. No, because the government can actually look after those people a bit better. The presumption is that we're not going to... I'm being serious. If we're looking at still single digit deaths in a lot of these East Asian countries, what are they doing any different? They still have old people. Well, so what most of the world is going to do... So there was a zero COVID strategy, which many countries... I'm not suggesting zero COVID. Let me finish the sentence. So these countries which you're talking about, their short-term strategy was to have zero COVID to stop travel and to basically have all of these measures which, in normal times, would seem quite authoritarian, but when it's compared to countries in lockdown in the West, on balance, they definitely maximized freedom. Now vaccines are available. These countries are going to abandon their zero COVID plans. COVID is going to become endemic everywhere. Luckily for them, they can vaccinate their populations before they have an exit wave, but they're going to have an exit wave, and then older people who were double vaccinated will still catch COVID-19 and they still will die. So the argument that you can't avoid that reality is actually quite strong, and the East Asian, the Australian example don't really work because they don't have long-term zero COVID plans, and the reason they've been able to protect their old people is because of a zero COVID plan. So someone like China does have the equivalent of a COVID passport. They do, right? And there are severe curtailments on your... or there was when it was, you know, when things were really intense early last year, there were severe curtailments on people's internal freedom of movement within the country. We aren't doing that, Michael. So I don't really agree with you. I don't really agree with you. They're not going to keep that forever. Why not? Well, because they... why not? You don't want to have internal travel controls in a country for a really long time. No, I don't. But I think China probably will. And I mean, you know, if we are in this age, if we are in this age of pandemics, it may be a thing that, yeah, you know, your sort of epidemiological data has actually tracked quite a significant name. It may be that, you know, look, in this country, Michael, every year, every winter, regularly, not last ones actually went down, obviously, lockdown, you have about 40,000 excess deaths every year. And it may be, you know, maybe as a society now, we're going to have a conversation about, oh, well, do you want the state to say, sorry, in this part of London, you can't travel today because it's going to save 20 lives? Plus, I don't want to do that, right? I think that's a bad idea. But it's a conversation that we need to now have, which is at the interface of data, politics and society. And it's quite clear that a lot of East Asia is going in a very different direction to Europe and North America. I'm not, you know, I'm not down for that, but clearly the approach is rather different. So the idea that we're going to open up nightclubs, no vaccine passports to people that aren't vaccinated, you need something here. And it does seem kind of strange. And we haven't really talked about it yet. And it's a criticism that's been waged. We mentioned it briefly because of that letter that was in the Guardian 1200 public health professionals. You know, the idea that we are a sort of testing ground for new variants. And it's important to say new vaccines are being developed. There are obviously variations on present vaccines to increase efficacy rates, all sorts of things, particularly with the ones that were coming out of Moderna, for instance, which they said they think they could alter those actually in a quite bespoke way in a period of, say, six to eight weeks. Fantastic. It may be that we can outpace these new variants, but they're almost certain to arise. And I think the countries where they're most likely to arise would be the countries where you don't have vaccine passports and you have lots of young people going into nightclubs, dancing and getting off with each other. I know it's not nice. I wish they could go and do it, but I don't think it's in the public interest. And I think they said, oh, they have a right to go. Nobody has a right to go to a nightclub, Michael. Nobody has a right to go to a nightclub. I'm not really talking in the language of, I'm not talking, I'm a utilitarian about these things. I'm saying if there's either going to be a wave now or a wave in September, and it's unclear which one is better, then it is difficult to deny people the opportunity to go to a nightclub if they want to. That's my argument there. I think they should be shut all the way through, probably through until we've got 99%. I'm not just the adult population, the entire population vaccinated. Yeah, then I think you can open up nightclubs. Then I think it's sensible. Until then, probably not, right? So, okay, another six months. Well, yeah, but I mean, that could mean many, many restrictions for a long, long time. Let's go to some comments. Henry VIII, fake with a fiver says, if Chris Witte actually disagrees but is truly holding his tongue, why not resign or threaten to? Very interesting question. I assume Chris Witte thinks he has more influence on the inside than he would on the outside. I'm not going to make a judgment as to whether or not that was the right decision by him to make. Tom tweets on the hashtag Tisgesauer. I find it a bit surprising Michael's being so relaxed about this being an experiment. People's health is on the line. Experimenting with mild illness would be bad enough, but we're talking about long COVID, death, perfectly avoidable, but Aaron is right, no plan. Yeah, well, I mean, I think on one level, we are experimenting. If you think about it, COVID was not like flu. COVID was definitely not like flu, but for a vaccinated population, COVID is a bit like flu, right? So now you're in a situation where double vaccinated people are at risk of catching COVID. Yes, that's unpleasant. As Andrew Ma said, we talked about that on a previous show, but it is a bit more like catching flu than it was catching this new disease to which you had no immunity. So that's why I think the vaccines mean we can talk about COVID a bit more like flu than we could before we had them. Rick O'Shea tweets on the hashtag Tisgesauer. Hearing Indie Sage today, they are not both siding this in my non-scientific capacity. Their mindset seems to be you can mitigate the impact of caution, you can't morally justify the impact of recklessness, such as increasing the chances of creating a new variant. Again, I think that's a strong argument. I think that's probably quite a good summary of their position as well. As I said, I do think there are some potential problems with their arguments, or at least Christina Pagel as we presented them, one because it requires vaccinating, shedlights more people in this country when there is currently a huge shortage of vaccines. Lots of global health experts say the idea that you would vaccinate children before you vaccinated healthcare workers in Africa, there's some big problems with that. Also, I do think sometimes there is a desire to talk in quite categorical terms in terms of we are allowing people to die. How can it possibly be right to allow people to die? Now, we do this all the time. We can't. As I say, I was very in favour of very strict measures when COVID-19, when there wasn't a vaccine for it, when vulnerable people were just left to fend for themselves and when there were hundreds of thousands of people dying. When there is a vaccine, it does become more like a risk that we manage in many other ways, like flu, for example. COVID-19 is not like flu. COVID-19 plus vaccine a little bit more like flu. Ken Roberts with a big donation of 50 pounds. Thank you very much. Appreciate you guys. Can you please do some work on the state of Afghanistan? I served there multiple times and was there during COVID. Other West really just going to abandon that country for the Taliban to take back control. Incredibly interesting question. We did do a show on this quite recently. We spoke to a brilliant guest who was in Afghanistan. You might like to check that out, but we should, I'm sure, be covering that topic again soon. Let's go on to our next story, which is also related to the COVID chaos. In the first week of July, 1.3 million people were told to self-isolate for up to 10 days. That's right. 1.3 million people. Now, that's an incredible statistic. We can see the breakdown here. This was via the Guardian who were using NHS, NHS, Test and Trace Department for Education. In the week between July 1 and July 7, 337,695 people were contacted by NHS Test and Trace, even because they've been in contact with someone who tested positive or because they'd been to a venue where COVID-19 was present. 520,000 people were pinged by the COVID app. The largest number there, 624,000 children, were sent home from school because someone in their bubble had tested positive. We can also potentially add to this. There might be some overlap here. 194,000 people in that period tested positive. There's up to 1.7 million people who were self-isolating over the past week. As I said, there could be some overlap. I'd imagine more like 1.5 million. This is obviously having some very serious consequences. One is very annoying to be told to self-isolate for 10 days. In terms of the very concrete material consequences, probably the worst here is the kids missing their education and also the NHS who are struggling with staff because so many members of their staff, so many doctors and nurses and healthcare assistants and everyone who works in a hospital, are being told to self-isolate. As we've already suggested, there is a big backlog when it comes to elective surgeries. This is not a good time for that to be going on in the NHS. What can be done about this because it doesn't seem particularly sustainable? The government, as we've discussed, don't want to reduce the number of cases. The proposed solutions appear to be allowing NHS staff to continue working even if they've been in contact with positive cases. That's been touted in the newspapers today. I suppose one argument for that is most of them will have been double-vax. They are less likely to contract it. An argument against is they're in contact with lots of vulnerable people. Another response or potential solution is to allow double-vax people not to self-isolate. That will obviously make a huge difference considering most of the adult population is double-vaccinated. That will only come into force from August 16. We've got a month between now and then. Much talked about in the press was the idea that the sensitivity of the COVID app could be reduced to stop so many people getting pinged. The argument against this is this idea that that's like switching the fire alarm off because it keeps going off. It doesn't solve the underlying problem. The argument for changing the sensitivities at the moment, there are some big problems with the COVID app. Most importantly, it can't tell if you're inside or outside. Being next to or close to someone for 15 minutes who's COVID positive inside means you've probably got COVID. If you do it outside of CAF, if you do it standing in a park, you're much less likely to get COVID. This app isn't very good at distinguishing between those two situations. Finally, a solution that's already been, I say solution, a proposed way out of this is to get rid of bubbles in schools. That will be the case from September. The Guardian reported that according to the ONS, one third of people who self-isolated last week went on to develop COVID symptoms. I'm not sure if they included school children in that, but it's clear that weakening these measures will not have zero impact. Aaron, what do you make of the potentially 1.7 million people who were self-isolating last week? Probably more like 1.5 million, but whatever figure we use, that's a lot of people who aren't allowed to leave their houses. To be honest, Michael, from what I'm hearing, I think that's a significant understatement of people that should be isolating. I've heard stories of people who are self-isolating and they're in large areas, and then other people haven't. There are literally, honestly, personally, there are dozens of people who've relayed to me the fact that they got COVID watching the football. One game, a game. Dozens of people have told me that from different settings, some at the stadium, some in pubs, et cetera, et cetera. God knows what we're looking at next. We were talking earlier on, and this works both ways, Michael, because somebody in the comments said, oh, they don't know what exponential growth is. I talk about exponential growth in my book. For the automated electric communist side, I do know what it is. It's very different to linear growth. My point is, given that 50% of the population has had two doses of the vaccine, given people are producing antibodies from previously having it because the government's mismanaged this for so long, there's clearly going to be a much lower ceiling than there was a year ago. But it also works the other way, that if you just, we opened up so quickly, it could be that actually the exponential growth accelerates. I think it might do that after Euro 2020, or Euro 2021, as we should call it. All those Scots coming down to London, I mean, they were great fun. Good luck to them, but I think that's clearly going to have some epidemiological sort of hangover. I think the same with the final. I think the same with people watching the final and pubs and so on. So, let's see. I think this could actually accelerate if anything, Michael. I don't know what your thoughts are. It might not be like, oh, it'll double in three weeks. That 1.5 million could rise much quicker than that, or at least it should do. But from what we're hearing about people deleting the app, maybe we won't get the clearest numbers. Well, Nick Gusset with £2 says, everyone I know who went to the Euro final has COVID. So, I mean, the people who went to the Euro final probably should be testing positive already that the incubation period is about five days. So, one would imagine that a lot of those people are already included in the figures, though it will still be going up for, whether the Euro effect might still last a little bit longer from now. Anyway, we'll be back on Monday. So, we'll be talking more about the impact of this unlocking. I'm hoping next week as well we'll get some more scientists on both sides of this debate to come on and discuss what is a very complicated issue and a big risk. Everyone seems to agree that the government is taking quite a big risk here. Now, if you are enjoying tonight's show, hit the like button. It helps us on the algorithm. We're going to move to a non-COVID story now. Since becoming leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer has struggled with commitment. When it comes to the big questions of the day, the Labour leader has sat on the fence instead of taking a side, and it means most people very reasonably think he stands for nothing. However, this week, speaking to the BBC's Laura Kuhnsberg, he has come up with a pledge he hopes will grab the country's attention. It's to sweat blood to win back the nation's trust. Now, he made the comments after taking part in a focus group with ex-Labor voters in Blackpool. The BBC put out a clip with some of the exchanges which took place in that focus group. First thing is, your party is divided within itself. Get rid of all these sort of bickering people who lose us. They want to lose further by doing what they're doing. If someone's in my shadow cabinet or on my front bench, I can do something about it because I can fire them. If they're on the back bench, then they've got a bit more freedom to say what they want. But I get the point you're making is it doesn't really matter to anybody else. You want to hear one voice. I honestly believe for Labour Party, it's a stigma of Jeremy Corbyn. He's still 18 months on and it's still there. People think he's toxic. Trust is invaluable. If you lose trust in something or somebody or an organisation, to get that trust back is so difficult. You aren't kind of a death spiral. I mean we lost really badly in 2019. We lost 66 in a row and we've got a lot of work to do to rebuild and we've got to change. You can't lose that privately and say well we'll keep things pretty well as they were, which is what we're doing. What I heard tonight was people, they weren't saying I'll never trust you. What I heard them saying is I have lost trust in Labour but I might, I might have trust in the future but it's down to you to earn it and that I will do. Sweating blood over the next days, weeks, months and years into the next general election. No pressure. It's exactly what I expected. This was always going to be a tough gig but actually I'd much rather have the sort of robust discussion I had tonight than the warm bath of simply talking to people who already agree with me. Michael, that was the most infuriating thing I've seen in days. So first of all the first gentleman that spoke to get rid of all these losers. The BBC was presenting this as this is the core lost Labour vote. You know the last time he voted Labour, he was quite honest about it, fair enough, 1997. 1997. He hasn't voted Labour for 24 years. What are they going to do next? Are they going to start going to the cemeteries and exhuming people that voted for Harold Wilson in 1964 or 1974? Is that what they're going to do? Let's find out what this person can say. This is the quintessence of what Labour should be adhering to. The guy didn't vote for Labour after 1997. They went on to win two general elections without him voting for them. I think they'll be okay. They don't need this guy. Another person saying Jeremy Corbyn's toxic. He last voted for Labour in 2010. Clearly Jeremy Corbyn didn't lose Labour's vote. Jeremy Corbyn was not the leader of the Labour Party for nine years. There was a predecessor. It was Ed Miliband. He says 2010. Maybe he doesn't remember correctly. Then the other chap saying, we have to get trust back. Someone's going, I know, I know, I know. Starm up, by the way, was the architect of Labour's Remain position. Blackpool South voted 67.5% to leave the European Union. He slapped those people in the face saying, no, we're going to have another referendum. But the lost trust, nothing to do with me, Gov. This to me says a few things, Michael. Firstly, he has a pathological... This is so dislikable. He has a pathological aversion to taking responsibility. But he does this corporate thing where he says, I'm going to take responsibility. And then he takes zero responsibility. Zero. He's never taken any responsibility for the Brexit decision. Never. Not one iota of responsibility for it. And the fact this is being broadcast on the BBC. What is this? Is this a proper exercise to collect data? Focus groups do that? Or is this a media stunt? Because in all honesty, you can't do the same two things. And anybody who's familiar with methodology in qualitative research methods will tell you that people, if they're being recorded on a camera by national television, are going to change their answers. You change the conditions under which you ask the questions and you get different answers. So methodologically, it makes this focus group quite weak. It's just another stunt, Michael. It's just another fucking stunt. It's a stunt from a man who hasn't got a clue what he's doing. Terrifying. Labour at this rate are going to struggle to get their 2019 vote, let alone their 2017 vote, let alone forming a majority. But we know what the excuse is going to be, because he only makes excuses. It's going to be, well, it's Jeremy Corbyn's fault. I mean, he says we have to change. By the way, that's code for saying I'm going to ditch the 10 pledges. He became the leader by saying, I'm going to have these 10 pledges. There's a bit of continuity on policy. And now he's saying we've got to change. So every single person that voted for Keir Starmer, well done, because all the things he promised, they're going down the toilet. And the worst thing of all is, I think they'll get fewer votes in the process. The worst guy at the worst time to be leader of the Labour Party right now, when the political dial could have moved so far, so quickly during the course of this pandemic. And actually, it's gone the other way. Congratulations, Keir Starmer. I mean, I think the points you raised are quite important, because there is also a political purpose to this kind of self-flagellation tool, which is he is very specifically talking to people who are ex-Labor voters, as you say, some of them not since 1997. And this is all part of justifying his project to take the party to the right. What it completely ignores is that just because people who voted for you in 2019, you might not see them as a priority, but they can go elsewhere. And if it seems as if you only care about the people who didn't vote Labour last time around, they're not going to take particularly kindly to that. And that does seem to be the way that Keir Starmer behaves. He essentially says, if you voted Labour in 2019, you're a bit of an idiot, right? What kind of idiot would have trusted us in 2019? We have to build back that trust, because only idiots voted for us then. People don't like that. Now, one group of people who there are suggestions will not like this is the young. The young obviously overwhelmingly voted for Labour when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. They came up in these focus groups. And this particular part of a longer BBC clip annoyed lots of people on Twitter. 125 don't waste your money. Don't waste your money. Don't waste your money. If they want to work, they are already working, but they're just sitting on the back sides. They don't want to. Because the government are still paying them to sit on their bombs, they will not get up. In this country, there's a lot of people under the age of 25 who just don't want to work. Trying to get everybody into a job, I just don't think that will happen. You're always going to get some people who maybe don't want to work, but there are lots of young people who've lost their job in this pandemic. Lots of people got very, very annoyed by that clip because of, I suppose, what the woman said to Keir Starmer. She said there are lots of people who are under 25 who just don't want to go to work, essentially because the scheme to pay people money over the pandemic has been too generous. And it was seen that Keir Starmer didn't push back strongly enough against that. I thought potentially that was blaming him for what was said in his presence. It was a highly edited video. What did you make of that particular controversy? Yeah, I think that's a fair judgment. I don't agree with it, but I think it's a fair judgment. Clearly, it would be highly edited. And he does clarify that he thinks, you know, that's a very minority of people. I don't agree with him, by the way. The worst thing than having a job under capitalism is not having a job under capitalism. I've never met a person in my life who had no money, who was broke and who didn't want a job. I've never met a person because it's the worst thing in the world. It's the worst thing in the world. And the only people who say that are people who say otherwise who have never experienced it. And for me, this is a guy who's a barrister, a sir, a QC. What the woman was saying was crap. And he's clearly not on a level with her. But I think, look, if you want to be a leader of the Labour Party and one of your most essential core bases of supporters amongst young people, you need to go back for them, Michael. And people say, Oh, is he patriotic? Does he love his country? You can't be patriotic and love your country. If you think everybody under a certain age is a twat, is a lazy good for nothing. You can't. I mean, it means you're a misanthrope. It means you hate what is what is your country, if it's not the people inside it. And so if you test all these people, you don't love the country, just you're an ignorant misanthrope, which is what that lady is. And sadly, we saw this with the, was it the Gillian Duffy quote in 2010, you know, Gordon Brown apologised for calling her a racist bigger. She was a racist bigger. And Labour needs to have the front like Biden with the Democrats. Sorry, Madam, I disagree. That's what he said. And you know what, people are, I really like this guy. That's really impressive. He has the front to say, I disagree. Yeah, I disagree. I've never met a young person who needs work who refuses a job because they need the money. Sorry, maybe we've had different experiences in life. But he's just such a non entity, identity politician, laughing at that stuff as well. Just really, really got my back up, Michael. We're seeing millions of kids in child poverty and these people talking absolute shit and he's laughing at them. No, under 25s don't want to work. Who's serving your coffee? Who's cleaning your clothes? Who's cleaning your office? Right? Who, you know, who works in the supermarket? Who works in the logistics chains to get food from A to B so that you can eat? All the people in the global south are making all these consumer durables you buy. How old do you think those people are? You know, we in this country in particular are suffering from a cult of the older generations hating the young. Now, there are many older people who love the young. I'm not saying it's universal, but there is a real hatred of the young in this country. And I do think it's peculiarly British. Very strange. Most countries, people love the young, they love children. Oh wow, what a blessing. Here, they seem to hate them. They seem to really hate young people. I've often thought it's inexplicable, but increasingly, that's also that's now also running along class lines and also, you know, cultural lines. They disagree. They have a different relationship with the means of production. They have less likely to be asset owners, their generation rent. As a result, they have different political views. And that is just adding sort of kerosene to the boom of fire of these people hating the young. It's really sad, Michael. It is really, really, really sad, because I think it makes those people even more miserable. It's good for nobody. And I think fundamentally, it's not growth of the media environment in this country. But the last thing you want to do is concede an inch to it. No, I mean, I agree with most of that. And I agree with you should just say outright, I disagree. In terms of the laughing, if I remember the clip correctly, the bit he laughed at was when she said under 25s aren't worth it. And I can imagine an awkward laugh, because I didn't know what she was talking about until she expanded on that. So if he'd laughed after she said under 25 just don't want to work, yeah, kind of offensive. If he's got an awkward laugh after under 25s aren't worth it, what are you talking about anyway? I don't know. I feel like I'd like to see the full footage. Well, you agree to do it, Michael. He agreed to do it. So we, or we can't judge him because it's not the full footage. Keir Starmer agreed to do it. So we're going to judge it on the, we will judge him on the content which he agreed to do. I mean, what else are we going to do? I'm going to start second guessing Keir Starmer, or maybe he pushed back, but that wasn't broadcast. Come on. I wasn't born this way, Michael. He did push back. He said most people don't, most people do want to work. No, Michael, he did self-flagellation on the BBC with a bunch of boomers, ignorantly slagging off the young, because he thinks it goes down with a certain demographic, but he thinks he needs to win. We need some booners to vote for him. That's, that's what he did it. Maybe it was, no, this is, he did it. They got exactly what they wanted. They got exactly what they wanted. I don't think it was a particularly strategically sensible thing to do. I just think we, there was a bit of, I suppose, an ungenerous interpretation of that clip, because he, well, why not? You know, I'm a good man. Why would you be, why would you be generous? They've done this, they've done this focus group. There's enough to criticise Keir Starmer for without choosing potentially weak arguments. And I think it's a potentially weak argument because he isn't shown to agree with that person. Right? So I feel like there's enough, there's enough where you can uncharacteristically have a really strong argument against Keir Starmer, including, I think, doing a self-flagellation talk. But it was just when it came to that young people issue, I think the idea that he, you know, sold out the young is potentially over-interpreting that clip. No, he did. He did. Michael, Michael, young people today, right, and you never had it so good. We agree on a substantive point. No, no, no. Let me, let me, let me get to clarify this. Young people are like, you've never had it so good. If your parents or grandparents are saying this to you and you're young and you're watching this, tell them they're talking out of their ass. You've lived in a 13-year economic downturn. Houses are unaffordable. Your generation rent, you'll probably never get a public pension. You're not going to save enough to buy a house or for your old age, or to have children. Right? All these major, major challenges, all these generations are, you've never had it so good. They got the cheap consumer durables because the doubling of the global labour market after 1989. They got on the housing ladder and a lot of it was paid down because of high inflation in the 70s. They got the gold-plated pension on the public sector, which has been eroded and destroyed because of outsourcing and privatisation. They got all these goodies. You're getting nothing. Young people today, they have had, they have it as bad as anybody. It's not been this bad for young people entering the labour market. I would argue since the 50s. Since the 40s. I think you need, if you're a progressive politician, Michael, you need somebody who just says that. So the idea that, oh, the bear essential is that somebody slagging off the young who are the most shafted right now in the economy in terms of public services, not just right now, but in 20, 30 years time, they get a terrible deal. A terrible deal. If the bare minimum is, oh, he laughed, but we kind of misunderstood. Do me a favour, Michael. We didn't laugh when she said that. I didn't know what she was talking about when he said that. I mean, I'd love a leader who could push back and say, look, you're wrong. The young people are having a hard time, but I think people are potentially overinterpreting that clip. And I would like to see a bunch of political leaders using the, you're talking out of your arse, school of communications. We'll see how it goes. As you're saying, Joe Biden did it a bit. Joe Biden, look, if Kirsten puts on a pair of sunglasses, licks an ice cream and goes, I don't agree, Jack. Like, come on, man. This guy's got something to, he's got something to him. They just go, he's a limp. And all those people, by the way, they would have come out of that room with less respect for Kirsten. At the end of the clip, they kind of came out liking the guy a bit more than before. The problem there is that he can't go in a room with everyone. It's on camera. It's on camera. Anybody in the social sciences tells you that the data you collect changes by virtue of how people think they're being monitored. It's on camera. No, well, first of all, if you meet a politician, yes, you're going to like them more than having, you know, having preconceptions. Everyone likes Boris Johnson after they meet him. Pretty, yeah, exactly. Pre-conceptions fed from the media or even Jeremy Corbyn, I think probably most people that met Jeremy Corbyn would like him, if they hadn't previously liked him, would probably change their mind. But Michael, it's not a leader. It's not leadership to just sit there like a little punch bag in your £1,000 suit and just agree with everything for 20 minutes. Oh, I agree with that. It's not leadership. All right. Let's go to some comments. Oliver Kant with a fiver. The Labour right exists purely to punch left and do nothing else. To be a roadblock, there is no strategy to win. Fair enough. Agree with that. Kieran Buckley with a fiver says, The way Labour is going, it looks like we will be stuck under Tories for decades, if not the rest of our lives, which is a nightmare to think about. That is a nightmare to think about. Unfortunately, I don't have a way of pushing back against that analysis. Let's grow the institutions of the left so that we can fight back as strongly as we can. Matt Bond with a fiver. What does Keir Starmer's Labour offer the young, genuine question? Not very much. I assume they are potentially hoping that in the general election, when they say free tuition, everyone is going to suddenly be like, oh, fine. We will vote for them. He might have burnt too many bridges. By then, Loz Hennessy with 1244, I've just started my third self-isolation on the trot situation in Bristol is dire. Thanks for keeping me sane, Michael Walker. You're very welcome, Loz. I'm very sad to hear you've started your third self-isolation on the trot. There is definitely something very unsustainable about the government saying, on the one hand, we don't really mind loads and loads of COVID cases. Then on the other, if you potentially come into contact with someone with a COVID case, you have to isolate for 10 days, potentially over and over again. Either it's a big deal or it's not. I think they probably need to make their minds up to some degree. The idea that you don't have mandatory masks, but you do have mandatory self-isolation doesn't make any sense to me. In any case, solidarity. I hope you've found some good things to watch as well as Navarra Media, of course. Now, before our next story, we do have some news about the show. Very exciting. We're currently hiring another member of our production team so that we can expand, improve this show. We are really, really excited about getting someone else on board. If you are interested in the role, you can check out the details on our website. The link is in the description of the video. The deadline is this Sunday, so I cannot emphasize enough if you are interested in this role. I've got to say working on Tisgy Tower is good. It's good fun. You will enjoy it. Make sure you apply by this Sunday. Next story. GB News. The channel set up to promote free speeches already suspended one of its presenters. That was for taking the knee. This was the incident which started the row. The benefit of hindsight, I may have underestimated how close to the surface the racism still was. I actually now get it and so much so that I think, you know, we should all take the knee. In fact, why not take the knee now and just say it's a gesture, but it's an important gesture. And, you know, it's not about me in the studio, but for them to do that as footballers on the field makes sense because they're saying it's just not right and racism has no place in football and no place in modern Britain. And those people who think that being English is okay with being anti-black people are completely misguided and they need to know that there is no space for them in normal acceptable society. And that was Guto Hari. He's a former BBC journalist and a former advisor to Boris Johnson. He's recently started hosting that show on GB News, which you just saw. Now, you might be surprised to watch that. It was a kind of uncharacteristically thoughtful intervention from a GB News presenter, but it caused a huge backlash from the channel's Snowflake audience. They proceeded to boycott the channel. Now I'm going to show you a characteristic tweet from one of the very upset GB News viewers. This is the Brexit Defense League. They have 27,000 followers and they tweeted, thousands turn off GB News as they begin virtue signalling to viewers and take the knee. What happened to Andrew Neil's promise of anti-woke journalism? GB News is no better than the BBC. They deserve to lose what's left of their diminishing viewers. Now, of course, it is difficult to know quite how many people actively boycotted the channel, but one thing we do know is that whatever the reason, not many people are watching it. Indeed, The Guardian have reported that at certain times this week, GB News attracted zero viewers. Yes, zero viewers. Now, this wasn't at 2am either. It wasn't the graveyard shift. Let's go to a section of that report. They write business editor Liam Halligan and former Labour MP Gloria de Piero attracted no measurable audience to their show between 1pm and 1.30pm on Wednesday afternoon. During the same time slot, the BBC News channel attracted 62,000 viewers, while Sky News had 50,000 people watching. GB News's audience again briefly dipped to zero at 5pm during a late afternoon program co-hosted by ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former UKIP spokesperson Alex Phillips. Now, you might ask, what does it mean to say no measurable effect? Presumably there was at least one person in Britain watching GB News at that time. Now, it is quite possible there was one person watching GB News at that time. Ratings are worked out by monitoring the devices of 5100 households who are representative of the overall UK viewing public, and then they using that representative sample estimate how many people would have watched each show. So, here we can assume that no one in any of those 5100 households was watching GB News. Now, whether or not that was because the show is boring or because people were actively boycotting it, it has clearly shaken GB News on Thursday. They tweeted an apology for Hari taking the knee. They wrote on Tuesday, a contributing presenter took the knee live on air, and this was an unacceptable breach of our standards. Their standards are to be a little bit racist or not be anti-racist, I suppose. Now, they've since gone further and suspended Hari sources at the station told The Guardian, sorry, that Hari had been taken off air indefinitely, and all of this shows that apparently the station which rails against woke mobs gave into demands of its own right-wing mob who were upset that the channel was not 100% reactionary 100% of the time. Only 90% reactionary, 90% of the time. A friend of Guto Hari told The Guardian, GB News is becoming an absurd parody of what it proclaimed to be, not defending free speech and combat in council culture, but replicating it on the far right. Nasty! It's ridiculous to say he's breached editorial standards and almost certainly defamatory. In reality, it wasn't a breach of editorial code, but sacked for offending the lynch mob. Now, Aaron, I want to bring you in on this. GB News is clearly a parody of itself, isn't it? At launch, saying we are a channel for free speech, we don't give it to woke mobs, we're here to challenge them, then the moment some of their audience don't like what they've seen, they cave in, they sack or suspend or take off air, one of their main presenters. I mean, okay, so this is going to sound strange. It is unique. I don't think there's another instance of a presenter on the BBC or channel for ITV doing what he did. And there is an argument to be made that, you know, a presenter contractually, you know, it's not a guest, it's not somebody who's just a guest presenter, he is a guest presenter, but he has some sort of long-term relationships to a news organization. GB News is obviously not a news organization, but it claims to be. I can see the argument and say, well, you shouldn't do that again. That's not what's happened. What's happened is he's basically been put on permanent gardening leave because there was an effective de facto boycott because there are so many racists that watch their channel and actually the last thing they care about is freedom of speech. They want to defend your freedom of speech, Michael, just as long as they agree with you. And if they don't, then you need to shut the hell up, which is what happened with Gita Hari. So yes, it reveals a genuine weak point in right-wing politics, which I think the left is getting better at. We gave them far too much space and room on this for years, particularly because of Brexit, but these people actually care about freedom of expression less than anyone else, not more less than anyone else. And Rosa Luxemburg was that great left-wing defender of freedom of expression, I think as a socialist, you have to believe in freedom of speech. And the right, it's just been a means by which they've been able to insert themselves into popular political conversations and give themselves a certain credit when they never deserved it, because they really don't believe in this stuff. They really don't believe in this stuff. The amount of times, Michael, I've tried to invite on for interview a right-wing thinker who's written a book or whatever they're an influential person and to talk about what they do, they don't even respond. That's their right, by the way, they can do that. But we make an effort at Navarra Media to talk to people that we don't agree with. You yourself, when you're hosting this, you try and see an argument from both points of view, etc., they don't do that. They don't do that. Because what GB News is, Michael, is it's not a media organization, it's political communications, which is to say, what it does, just like Fox News, it finds a political argument which it disagrees with, it finds the weakest possible part of that argument, or the weakest advocate of the argument, and it then relentlessly attacks it. That's not news, that's not investigating, that's not informing your audience, it's propaganda. So, of course, it shouldn't really surprise us that propagandists aren't the interest in freedom of expression. Two different things. I want to push back against the first thing you said there, Aaron, because you suggested that, whilst it is disproportionate to put Guto Hari on gardening leave, it might have been reasonable to admonish him because he is a host, he's not a guest, and he was taking an overtly political stance. Now, that, of course, would be fair enough if this was the BBC or the IT or ITV. Obviously, Robert Peston can't take the knee on ITV because they're not allowed to take any political stances on those channels. But GB News set itself up precisely to be an opinionated station. In all of their opening statements, in all of their founding documents, they suggest we are going to have opinionated hosts. He was expressing an opinion that's completely allowed at GB News. And in fact, I want to, can we jump to graphic 15 Fox? So this was tweeted by Andrew Neil after the launch night when Dan Woodton sort of railed against government scientists saying they were, you know, obsessed and addicted to power, completely spreading lots of misinformation about lockdowns. And in response to that controversy, Andrew Neil tweeted, I'm the flagship presenter. I did not say this. If another presenter said this, that's for them to defend, I don't agree with it. But GB News believes in free speech even for presenters, right? He then goes on, it has nothing to do with hate, it's just wrong, et cetera, et cetera. But the key part there, GB News believes in free speech even for presenters. So GB News explicitly, if you're a presenter, you're allowed to have a political opinion, all of their presenters express lots of often quite extreme political opinions. It's only if the opinion you express is anti-racist that you get into trouble. I want to go to a few more nuggets of information we've got from insiders when it comes to GB News, because it does seem like this has caused a bit of a crisis within the organization. So since putting Guto Hari on gardening leave, the channel's director of programming, John McCandrew, has resigned. And I'm sure you haven't heard of John McCandrew. So we're going to go to the Guardian Report, which gives us some context here. They write, McCandrew, a well-known figure in the television news industry who has a long track record at mainstream outlets, including Sky News and Neuro News, was considered to be the channel's second in-command and played a key role in convincing many of the more established mainstream presenters to join. Sources suggest he had come under pressure to dial down the focus on local reporting and free debate in favor of full-blooded culture war topics, so chose to resign. Also leaving is Gill Penlington. The Guardians say she is, again, she's a senior producer. She'd worked at CNN and Sky News. So you've got lots of senior figures now leaving, especially the ones who come from mainstream journalistic establishments, people who wanted it to focus on local news. And you'll remember that opening advert where they say, we speak for all of England. Now, clearly the bosses have said, no, we want to go heavy on culture wars because that's the kind of thing people tune into. And now there's a big split within the organization. Of course, we showed you and Andrew Neil Tweet. He's obviously been a topic of much speculation because after two weeks of hosting the flagship show and after being the chair of the organization for its launch, he's already gone on an unplanned extended holiday. People are also speculating because he hadn't tweeted about the organization for a couple of weeks. But I think in response to that speculation today, he tweeted, startups are fraught and fractious. GB News is no exception, but the news channel is finding its feet and has a great future. Watch this space. Aaron, do you think that Andrew Neil is going to follow these other senior executives and leave GB News? Or do you think he's going to be in it for the long haul? No, I think he'll bail. There are a few things that he's been involved in the past. There was a newspaper, for instance, called Today. There was the European newspaper, not the new European. These were both from the early 1990s, which he was involved in, and they both folded. So he's been involved in failed media projects before, big money media projects. So that wouldn't be new. Equally, he was involved in the creation of Sky News, Murdoch sent him over there from the Sunday Times. He walked away. That wasn't a failure, but he walked away from it. He was sent to work, start up Fox News, my God, this car was working for the BBC for 20 years. He didn't really make much impact there. So Andrew Neil is a strange creature because he's a confection of effectively the Rupert Murdoch complex in print media, particularly in Sunday Times and the BBC. But other than that, he hasn't really been particularly successful. He loves the free market, but his broadcast career has rested on effectively a massively well funded public service broadcaster, quite ironic. So I don't think there's any real evidence in his resume that he'll turn this around. I think he's going to walk away because he's quit similar projects in the past, so I don't see why this would be any different. The most pathetic thing of all, Michael, is that he'll probably go back to the BBC. The BBC will probably take him back. I just find the whole thing fatuous, ridiculous, bizarre. I do think also that GB News, I mean, it has two options at this point, doesn't it? It has either it just collapses, which may happen. Like I said, there's been similar media projects in the past. There's generally been newspapers. There was a paper that was launched by the left in the 80s, I believe it was called The News on Sunday. People can correct me in the comments. A couple of million went into that. I think it only ended up producing maybe a dozen editions. It went out of business. So this isn't new. And of course, because of the falling costs of entry into things like broadcast media, particularly radio, particularly TV, maybe we should be expecting almost these kinds of ventures to be increasingly common, but also increasingly likely to fail. I always thought the approach was a very strange one. They should have started minimal, built up, learned from mistakes, recruit as you go, rather than week one, day one, ano zero. That's it. Singing, dancing, BBC News, zero calorie version, but very right wing. I didn't think that was a wise way to proceed. They should have started like on a YouTube channel, maybe got a DAB license, maybe did an LBC-style thing. That would have made more sense to me, which does suggest they don't know what they're doing. Has anybody, other than Boris Johnson with the Garden Bridge in London, Michael, has anyone ever burned through £60 million this quickly? I'm sure lots of people have, but it still doesn't make it any less embarrassing that they have done so in such a way. I mean, someone just paid £30 million to go into outer space and then cancelled because they had, you know, they double-booked their diary. So I feel people have burned this much money quite quickly, but again, very embarrassing. Imagine what we could do with £60 million. I want to go to a comment from Gryndry's Factory with £15. Thank you very much. Aaron, completely right on everything tonight. Sorry for saying you look like a tool in your suits a few years ago, by the way. Michael, you must have done a few years ago. I'm sure you didn't look like a tool. Michael's Social Democratic, lack of imagination, really showing through tonight. I think it's just that I know more people desperate to go to nightclubs at this point in time than Aaron does. And we probably follow some different modelers on Twitter. Let me say, I think it's really important to say as well, Michael, in the context of, oh, there'll be another lockdown this year or next year. These do have huge implications for people's mental and physical health as well, the economy, in terms of curtailing travel. Last summer was a huge rite off the European tourism industry. And of course, there are many places which depend on tourism. It's their primary industry. But I think if we had another summer like that, I think, you know, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of millions of lives being destroyed. So I don't think it should be said likely that, oh, we should just shut nightclubs for six to eight months. Right? I agree. And that's going to really destroy a lot of livelihoods and a lot of people's income and professions and dreams. I get that. I just don't see the argument for opening them as long as you have anything less than 99% of people vaccinated for two vaccines. To me, it's crazy. The point of a nightclub is intimacy. It's the point of a nightclub. It's like opening, you know, mass massage parlours or, you know, oh, let's make any sense. There are never going to be 99% of people double vaccinated. So you have just condemned nightclubs to being closed forever. 95%. 95%. You're happy with 95. Okay. Well, I don't know the exact numbers. But whatever the numbers are in terms of the herd immunity, 99% of the adult population and maybe, you know, a significant number of young people too. All right. We're going to go to our final story now. Now, we at Navarra Media are all incredibly sad to pass on the news that Dawn Foster, a brilliant journalist, committed socialist and longtime friend of this organization, has tragically passed away. Dawn was only 34 and she died suddenly at her home after suffering from a long-term illness. Dawn, I'm sure most of our audience will be very, very familiar with her. She was a staff writer at Jacobin and before that a columnist at The Guardian. She was well known in particular for her uncompromising reporting on injustice across the UK that was particularly related to housing, social welfare and disability. Lots of topics that so many people in mainstream journalism just don't care about. That was her passion. She reported on people who were ignored by mainstream journalism. And I think that's, you know, why people valued her so highly and why it's been so devastating to hear the news this week. Dawn, for anyone who didn't know her background, I mean, she was a rarity in being a working-class woman who rose up to become a prominent national opinion writer, a regular on the BBC, a regular on Sky, lots of other mainstream platforms, always arguing passionately for the left, defending the principles of socialism often in very difficult circumstances. And she did it remarkably well. She also has appeared on Navarra Media regularly since 2015 on FMs, on Tiskey Sour, on The Fix when we had that show. Has always been a really, really good friend of the show, really generous with her time, a real privilege to have her on board with our project over various times. I also have to say from my own experience, as well as an incredibly sharp intellect, she was a brilliant individual, always the life of a party, incredibly generous with her time, with her thoughts. Very funny. Now, we're going to talk about what Dawn meant to Navarra and the left in a moment. First of all, for anyone who is unfamiliar with Dawn's work, and as I say, I imagine most people watching this will be, I want to read a couple of extracts from her writing, which I think really summarise what was so exceptional about her as a journalist. Now, this first extract is from a Guardian piece from 2015. This was on Living Life with a Chronic Illness. Dawn wrote, usually visits to doctors are rare, trips to hospital rare as still. Your body is temporarily malfunctioning. It is medicine's job to fix you. But when you're chronically ill, the equilibrium shifts, and your attitude to your body does too. If sickness is a sign of being broken, coming to terms with the fact that you are going to be broken forever is a tremendous blow. Nothing brings this home more than the never-ending NHS-headed appointment letters, blood tests, scans, and consultations. You know more about your body than you ever imagined. I've told no end of nurses that they'll find it impossible to get blood out of my bloody, terrible veins, consultants, medical terminology, without a butterfly needle. I'm lucky. I'm as functional as most healthy people despite multiple chronic health conditions. At the same time, I'm reminded that I could die at any point from an epileptic seizure or that the genetic condition that causes constant pain could, with little warning, advance to make me lose the ability to walk. Now, obviously, the circumstances in which we're having this discussion make that all the more heartbreaking to read. Now, the topic which has come up most often on social media, and I do really recommend, sorry, if you haven't been on Twitter over the past 24 hours, just search Dawn Foster, see all of the wonderful things people are writing about her, all the wonderful memories people are sharing, because it is a real, real credit to her. But as I say, the thing which comes up a lot in terms of her writing is housing and also Grenfell. I want to go to a section from a 2017 piece from Jacobin. This was written on the day of the fire. Then Dawn wrote, Margaret Thatcher famously argued that there was no such thing as society. It was an idea that did immense damage, particularly to those who need social housing. But in places like West London, on days like today, it is proven wrong in a fundamental way. The local community pulled together, offering places to stay, taking donations, donations, coordinating resources. The volume of rage at the tragedy and the fact that it seems so preventable has forced politicians to promise investigations. The battle now is to ensure that this anger is turned into change. Survivors must be properly housed. Those who could have prevented the fire must be held accountable. People living in similarly dangerous conditions across the country must be given urgent assistance. The housing crisis must be tackled. As one resident told me, many people will have died locked in their homes, aware that nobody had cared for their safety while they lived. The only way to change a world where that can happen is through political action. I think that sentence is a very important one to end on. The only way to change a world where that can happen is through political action. Now, Aaron, I want to get your thoughts about Dawn. Obviously, it just goes about saying someone at such a young age, dying, is so tragic, whoever they are. I know lots of friends will be in deep mourning now. I wanted you to talk, I suppose, on a broad term of what Dawn Foster and her work meant for Navara and the broader UK left. Yeah. She was fearless journalist, woman, socialist. She was formidable. I saw somebody post this on Instagram and I thought it was, it summed her right up. She was the opposite of a sycophant. Dawn was pathologically, constitutionally incapable of being obsequious, of being servile. She could only tell the truth and it didn't always advance her career. It wasn't always necessarily in her best interest, but that's who she was. It curtailed her progression in the industry massively. In terms of her relationship to Navara, and she still did so extraordinarily well, unlike you say, from her background, she was always defying the odds. To do that well retaining that honesty, I think, is remarkable. It's singular, I think, in Britain. In terms of her relationships with Navara, she was always incredibly generous, very close friends with James Butler, of course, my co-founder. She would always make time to come on the show in the early days and to offer advice or tips. She was just always there. She was very, very aware of the fact that we needed to change politics in this country and that it wasn't just going to come from some particular person, even if it was Jeremy Corbyn, leading the Labour Party. Dawn knew that we had to create a movement in this country, in the media, in organised labour, of course in party politics and social movements. She was somebody who was ready to be a part of that and to make serious sacrifices for that, to build a better country, a better planet. Somebody like that with that energy, that passion, that constant determination to always just be brutally honest. She never punched down, it's important to say. I can't recall her ever punching down. It's remarkable. And so for her to pass it, I think 34, deeply, deeply, deeply sad. Deeply sad. I say that as somebody who knew her, but I think it's just, you know, she had so much to say. She had, I know that she was working on a larger project around housing, around Grenfell. I don't know how that progressed. I think the last time I spoke to her was maybe about 18 months ago, face to face, unsurprisingly, maybe two years ago, at a Grenfell solidarity demo. She was working on something then, this was probably two years ago. She wants to give a voice to people that didn't have a voice in this country. And so obviously it's just terrible that somebody so spectacularly unique has gone. But I think that's the important thing to say is that she was the opposite of so much that we criticise the media for in this country, Michael. We talk about sycophants and civility and doing whatever you have to do to progress in the industry. She never did any of that. And she's still scaled the heights. So rest in peace. I mean, I think it is, I agree with all of that, and especially, you know, the rarity in mainstream journalism. I also think, and I've been, I suppose, reflecting on this a lot over the past 24 hours, she was also quite rare as a commentator on the left. Because I think we often, I do this myself, you fall into this situation of thinking about short term tactics, your, I think about the, especially in terms of the second referendum, I mean, I always thought the second referendum was a bad idea. Then by 2019, I was like, oh, let's go for it, trying to win over this section of the electorate, this section of the commentary, et cetera, et cetera. Don't never did any of that. She didn't give a fuck when it came to issues like that. Her, you know, her purpose was clear, which was to represent voiceless people to talk about the issues she cared about, housing, poverty, austerity. And, you know, she didn't flap about with sort of the moralism that I try not to fall into, but I, you know, looking back at sort of how I've engaged in politics over the past five years, I can't help it. I do it all the time. And I can't think of a single instance where Dawn got distracted or caught up in that debate where there's all these people say, oh, the left there, you know, this, that, this, that, and we have to defend ourselves. No, we're not this, that, this, that. She's just like, who gives a fuck about this? And I really, really respect that. Aaron, I know you want to come back in on this. Yeah, I think it's also important to say that, you know, there were often times, because I've known Dawn, I knew Dawn for maybe 10 years, she was there covering the UCAN cut process in 2010, you know, we would clash different personalities. And that would happen with other people. It's important to say this. But I can honestly say whenever I had a disagreement there, and then somebody would sort of, you know, people have conversations or I would try and there was once I tried to sort of mend a rift between her and somebody else, never once politically did I think she was wrong. Never once, never. I might have disagreed with the tone of what she said or whatever. But she was a comrade. And that's a really, really important thing to say, Michael, really important thing to say, because, you know, like I say, when you, when you had a disagreement, generally over how the point was made rather than the actual substance of the point itself, you put it to one side and say, no, no, politically, she is sound. She is really up there with, with, with almost always getting things right. And like you say, there wasn't this flapping around trying to be, you know, morally right. She had a real hard heart, not in a bad way, in a very, very good way. She was an incredibly resolute formidable woman. There's not many people you can say that for, Michael. I really, honestly, there's very few people I can say politically. I don't, I don't recall ever actually disagreeing with something they said, the political substance of it. I mean, we should clarify, obviously, she cared about being morally right, but it was not caring about being seen to be morally right. That's what makes people on, or people across the political spectrum, but especially, you know, I fall into it being seen to be morally right, you know, matters as much as, you know, actually holding the position you, you believe in. I want to go to a couple of, of comments. Juliet, Jake's says, rest in power, Dawn, one of the smartest, most uncompromising and hilarious people I met, utterly dedicated to her class over her career. Thanks for covering this terrible loss. And Sal says, Dawn was a journalist who principles before career, the country would be a much better place if more in her industry did the same. Really lovely comments. As I say, I really do, you know, recommend go on Twitter, search Dawn Foster, see all the wonderful things people are saying about her at the moment, because you will see how much she meant to so many people. Aaron, I want to go to, I suppose, your final comments before we close the show. Yeah, there was, we posted an Instagram, sort of a carousel of images commemorating Dawn's passing. And I think the final one talked about how she should really be an inspiration to people that wants to join the media to be journalists. And I thought what Juliet, Jake said there was on the money. She put her class over her career. And that is, again, incredibly rare, Michael. You know, we do, at Navara Media, what we do because we believe in a set of political values and we want to advance them. That's why we started the organization. But Dawn, I mean, somehow, somehow did that in the confines of the mainstream media, which is incredibly difficult, but she managed to do it. And she made some hugely important interventions. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's difficult to know where to end here. But as I say, if I recommend you to do one thing this weekend, it's go and look up what Dawn Foster has written over the past 10 years, explore her work, watch the intervention she's made on YouTube. And yeah, my thoughts go out to everyone who was really close to her. I know there are a lot of people hurting this weekend. We are going to wrap up the show at this point. Thank you so much for watching as always. We'll be back on Monday at 7pm. For now, you've been watching Tisgy Sauer on Navara Media. Good night.