 What the Tories are saying now is that, oh, it's all very well to say this in hindsight, but we were doing what the science told us at the time. For you, what do you think the Labour Party would have done differently? Not so much in the long term in terms of ending austerity, which would have made our healthcare system better, but what would you have been doing in January and February that would have made us better prepared for where we are right now? We were beginning to raise then our concerns about the seriousness of the potential pandemic and what its implications were, and so we were then, and we took the line that we'll try and work with the government as best we can, try and ensure that we provided our advice to government, and then if we felt work wasn't being undertaken, yes, we would raise issues with them. And actually, yeah, if necessary, criticize our line all the way through at that stage, I was dealing with the economic implications, but our line, John Ashworth was dealing with the health side, and Shamu Chakrabarti and others were dealing with Diane as well with some of the issues around civil liberties as well, depending on the type of legislation that might need to be developed. And our line at that time was follow the scientific advice, but if you go back and look, search the records, John Ashworth at that point in time, quite rightfully, was saying you need to be open and transparent about the advice you're getting, both in terms of the science, but also the clinical advice too. And actually also what we're suggesting then is if there are differences of opinion, would rather those differences of opinion were published and that we could understand there for how judgments were being made. And when you're in this sort of situation, of course, what you've got to do is try and just try and ensure you're not into knock about politics or anything like that, you're trying to be as constructive as possible. But at times you have to draw a line in the sand and say, well, you're not doing it right. And that's it. And what was interesting on a whole series of issues, we were putting issues to them and recommending things. And then if they didn't follow it, we would go public. And interesting enough, they usually fell into line. So, for example, the daily press conferences, that was us. We actually said that at the very beginning, your communication strategy, that's to be absolutely key. And we pushed them into doing a daily announcement of some sort, either in the major or to the House of Commons. And they did, they started the daily press conferences. When it came to the financial response, I kept the record of the statements I made. First of all, I can remember doing a Thursday and a Friday, some weeks ago, where I was actually saying just how urgent the need was to put in place the economic protections for workers, et cetera. And also, at that point, I was strongly arguing that we needed to have this as an international globally coordinated strategy. And we published a sort of, I published a sort of five point plan. And we submitted a detail of that to government. Rishi Sunak delayed, he did his budget and it wasn't nowhere near enough. And we said that at the time, the protections weren't good enough. The following week, they started, I think they went into a bit of a panic. They then start bringing forward proposals. Each one of them just wasn't good enough. It wasn't, but what's interesting, Rishi Sunak publishes the first proposal, which is the job protection scheme. I responded within half an hour of his press conference and actually said there's huge gaps in this. It's not going to protect people, particularly the self-employed. It wasn't going to protect someone. The way I got a tsunami of attacks then, it was just extraordinary. It was like, it was like I was being accused of treachery, betraying the country and all to claim party politics. No, it wasn't. I actually went out there, welcomed his proposals and said, actually, they just don't go far enough. And also, the point I made then as well, waiting for the people to wait till June for the money as well, wasn't good enough either. I got really savaged in both the mainstream media and also all the social media stuff as well. But so you had to be careful as you raised issues that you actually did preface it by saying, look, I welcome this, but let's go further. So our attitude was always constructive engagement, but increasingly it got really frustrating because, like for example, the lockdown, the Monday, the weekend before the lockdown was announced by Boris Johnson, we'd had a discussion with a shadow cabinet subgroup with Jeremy and myself, John Ashworth and Shami and others. And we just, we got to the point, I think it was the Sunday. I said, this can't go on like this because this isn't working, people being forced into work. It was clearly the social distancing that advice wasn't working. And so we actually then, on the Monday, we told Johnson that we needed a more thorough lockdown. It had to happen. And that we couldn't wait for them. We were going to go public. So in the Monday morning, we sent John Ashworth out on a media round. He made it clear. And then in the evening, they delayed their press conference and then they announced a more thorough lockdown. And if you look at the pattern of behavior by the government, that's exactly, exactly happened at each stage. On the testing was the WHO said test, test, test, test and track. We've consistently argued that all the way through on the PPE, we were already get submitting things to the government saying, actually, the distribution of PPE is well, first of all, the principles of on how it's used is absolutely critical to get them clear. And then PPE distribution wasn't working. We've got what's happened up until literally, I think this, this last week is that the attitude of trying to work with them, be constructive, push them to take decisions has worked to a certain extent. But then you realize actually, this is getting much too much too serious. And so over this last, last few days, this last week or so, and I did it over the weekend as well. Actually, this argument that, you know, opposition for opposition's sake isn't right. No one's doing opposition for opposition's sake. People have just had enough. People are dying out there. And the stuff in the stuff, for example, in care homes, which I think has been completely neglected, I'm really worried about really what the number of staff that are now self-isolating, number of staff that are real, and the number of elderly residents in residential homes now who are suffering and who have tragically died for a large number of them. I think that's been absolute failure of policy and prioritization. And who else can you blame? You have to blame the Prime Minister. You have to blame the government. Whether they're still pursuing this herd immunity theory or not, the policies that they've been pursuing certainly haven't worked. And it looks as though we could have the worst instance in the whole of Europe, of the scale of death in relation to population. So it clearly hasn't worked. A couple of tweets you did on the weekend because they got a lot of attention. I want to see, you know, what the thinking was behind them. So I'm just going to get them up now for the audience to see. So on, I think this was yesterday, had enough now with government failures. It's not opposition for opposition's sake to call out government's failure to pursue a effective test and track program and supply basic prediction to frontline staff and to neglect support for care homes and care workers. People are dying as a result. Of course, we also need an open discussion about eventual exit strategy, but people are dying and being put at risk by government failures. Also, I fear in exit planning, we will see business lobby override health considerations and profit yet again be put before people's safety. And so when I read that, I was wondering if you were, you know, suggesting that potentially the current shadow cabinet haven't got the balance quite right. Obviously, it's a difficult moment for them to decide how oppositional can we be, but do you think they're potentially deferring too much? Well, it's like walking a tightrope in all of these things. But the point, actually, I wasn't criticising Keir Starmer or the front bench. I was trying to say, look, you're going to get criticised. People are already saying, you know, this is partly political. It's not about its opposition for opposition's sake. And I say, no, it isn't actually. It isn't. People are out there dying. People are really suffering. And we've got to be, I think, we've got to be, we've got to call it out. And we've got to call it out. I think now we're at that stage where we need to call it out much more thoroughly and more directly. And, you know, the press conferences where we're told the large volumes of PPE are being delivered and then we discover they haven't or they're on a boat from Turkey or on the airplane from Turkey and they're not being delivered. I phoned around my local care homes to see how they were and they were struggling with PPE. My cousin up in Liverpool, she's been working with volunteers where they're creating their own and distributing because the government's supply isn't enough, both in terms of care and the NHS itself. So my first tweet was saying, just I've had enough now. I've listened to all the press conferences. It doesn't seem to relate to the reality of what's on the ground full stop. And saying these things isn't opposition for opposition's sake. It is just being honest to force the government to act. That's the first thing. The second thing was on the exit strategy. They've been raising this issue about what the government's exit strategy is. My own view at the moment, the exit strategy is secondary just to saving lives at the moment. Just concentrate as much as possible on saving lives. And the best way of doing that isn't just the PPE is getting the testing done and doing mass testing and tracking. That's the best way in which I think you can deal with this crisis. And the government just, I don't think they've appreciated it, just haven't appreciated the scale of testing that needed. And give John Ashworth his due consistently he's been calling for that and made representations to government directly to the Secretary of State to do it as well. But I just don't think the government understood the scale upon which it was needed. And then in the organisation of the testing and arrangements, I don't think have been in any way competent about going about. That's the first thing. But with regard to the exit strategy, I'm worried. And you saw some Tory politicians that build up about how we should now start relaxing the lockdown and getting back to work, etc. Well, in the early periods of this last month, in the first weeks this last month, it's still happening. I was still campaigning with the construction workers to shut the sites. Because large numbers of workers were still being forced into work on construction sites with no social distancing. It's almost impossible. And very little sanitation as well. And what I've had case after case, people contact to me where they've been forced into work in inessential roles. And they feel they're being put at risk. And my worry was is that I think there's a number of Tory politicians and others who'll be arguing that we start sending people back into work. And my fear is in doing that we're going to put people's lives at risk. It's as simple as that. So my view is concentrate on the real issues at the moment, which are getting the PPE out there for protection, making sure that we're developing the testing on a mass scale now, then start talking about the exit strategy, but fend off those who actually, as we've seen even up until now, are more interested in making profits than protecting people.