 The brutal circumstances surrounding the murder of Sarah Everard have left the Met Police open to charges of institutionalised misogyny. What does such a claim mean, and will change, finally be forced on the Metropolitan Police? That'll be our main topic tonight. I spoke earlier to my colleague Ash Sarkar. You'll be seeing analysis from her. She wrote a great article today on the Navarra Media website and also joined by Aaron Bastani later on in the show. We do want to know your thoughts and your comments, so do tweet them on the hashtag Tiskey Sour or in the comments box under the video. Let's go straight into our first story. On Thursday, Wayne Cousins was sentenced to a full-life sentence for the murder of Sarah Everard. As we discussed on Wednesday's show, the court heard that Cousins exploited his role as a police officer to kidnap, rape and then kill Everard. The revelations about the nature of the murder have rocked relations between the public and the Metropolitan Police, who were already facing scrutiny for a failure to properly deal with violence against women and girls. However, both the government and the Met have attempted to reassure the public that the despicable crimes of Wayne Cousins should not undermine broader trust in the police. Last night on BBC Question Time, Environment Secretary George Eustis spoke for the government. It's a shocking and incredibly distressing case for everyone and a real tragedy. But I think we always have to bear in mind that there are police officers up and down the country who feel exactly the same and will be absolutely utterly ashamed of what one of their fellow officers did. And it's really important, I think, that we challenge ourselves not to allow the actions of one bad apple, one individual to tarnish our police force, which by and large has got very high standards and where it's very hard to keep us all safe. That was George Eustis saying Wayne Cousins was just one bad apple, i.e. that the actions of Wayne Cousins should not affect how we view the rest of the police. Simon Harding, a senior investigator on Sarah Everard's case, went even further than that. He suggested Wayne Cousins shouldn't even be considered a police officer. Police officers do not view Wayne Cousins as a police officer. They view him as a murderer who happens to be a police officer, rather than the other way round a police officer who is a murderer. And it's a really important thing. He doesn't hold the same values as a police officer. He doesn't have the same personality that we do. He's a very sick, very dangerous individual who should never have been near a uniform. There are two obvious problems with what Simon Harding said there. First, Wayne Cousins wasn't a murderer who just happened to be a police officer. He was able to commit his murder because he was a police officer. Second, you don't get to decide after the fact whether or not Wayne Cousins should be considered a cop. It would have been useful if you and your colleagues had stripped him of that role after the numerous red flags which preceded Sarah Everard's murder. You do not get to do it afterwards. Now let's look at all the information we have which puts to bed Eustace's idea that Wayne Cousins was just one bad apple. On this front, there is ample evidence from the Everard case alone to go through some of those points. Yesterday, we learned that colleagues of Cousins in a previous posting referred to him as the rapist due to the way he made women feel uncomfortable. Today, the Times have reported that five police officers had exchanged misogynistic, racist and homophobic messages in a WhatsApp group with Cousins. Three of the five are under criminal investigation due to the grossly offensive nature of the material. And, astonishingly, the Guardian has reported that the two Met officers under criminal investigation remain on duty. Stay with that for a moment. These are police officers who are exchanging misogynistic, homophobic, racist messages with a known killer who was still on duty. Next for something we've known for a while and which is perhaps most significant. The police are currently under investigation for failing to respond appropriately to a report of two separate flashing incidents committed by Cousins Adam McDonald's in south London. Police would have been able to link the incidents to Cousins car. The reports were made 72 hours before Cousins went on to kidnap, rape and murder Sarah Everard. If he had been investigated properly, there is every chance that tragedy could have been avoided. So why was a police officer able to continue in his job with impunity despite all these red flags and abuse allegations? Yesterday Radio 4's The World at Once spoke to Palm Sandu, who served for 30 years in the Met police and rose to the rank of police superintendent. Here's what she had to say. The police service is very sexist and misogynistic. Unfortunately, the majority of police officers are male and it's put down to banter. It's put down to, oh, you can't take a joke. And a lot of women will not report their colleagues because if it was me and I reported a colleague. I don't want to ask, was it you? Did you ever experience something that should have been reported? Yes, I did, but I dealt with it myself. And on one occasion I did report it and then I was vilified because what happens is that male police officers will then close ranks. And the fear that most women police officers have got is that when you're calling for help, you press that emergency button on your radio, they're not going to turn up and you're going to get kicked in the street. So you've got to be very careful and weigh which battles you can fight and which ones you can actually win. Say what? You don't report something serious that happens from a colleague because you fear that people will leave you to have your head kicked in? Yes, absolutely. And women officers who are married to police officers won't report domestic violence either because of the same sort of issues. The woman becomes the perpetrator as such. That was Palm Sandu, a former police superintendent. What she said there obviously should be shocking. Unfortunately, however, for anyone aware of the current statistics concerning misogyny in the police, it won't have been. According to information accessed by the I newspaper, between the 1st of January 2010 and the 31st of May 2021, 771 met police employees have faced allegations of sexual misconduct. 88% of that total was serving police officers. 163 of the Met's officers were arrested for sexual offenses and 38 were convicted after appearing in court. Huge numbers there over a 10-year period. Of those 771 employees who were subject to complaints, only 83 were sacked. Another 46 resigned or retired after complaints were upheld. Something else mentioned by Palm Sandu in that interview was that female police officers would be regularly subjected to pressure to remain silent about their police officer partners if they had subjected them to domestic violence. Again, the statistics show how abusive police officers are able to act with impunity as reported by the BBC in June. 829 allegations of domestic abuse have been made against police officers or staff in the last five years. Only 32 of the 46 UK police officers responded to the Freedom of Information request, so the overall figure will be higher. This is an underestimate. Of the 129 allegations which the BBC could find out about, 43 resulted in prosecution. That's only 5% of all cases, which is lower than the rate of domestic violence prosecutions against members of the public. That's 9%. Only 15% of the allegations resulted in disciplinary actions. Those statistics will not inspire anyone to raise a complaint about police officers, let alone if it could come with professional consequences. Finally, what we have heard over and over again this week is that the extreme nature of Wayne Cousins' crimes make them exceptional. On one level, that is obviously true. It was an exceptionally cruel murder. But women being killed by serving or former police officers is not particularly rare. The Times report that in the past 12 years at least 15 women have been killed by serving and former police officers. Those cases include that of Eva Ashak who was jailed for life in 2013 for murdering his estranged wife, her hair salon in Ashford Kent where he stabbed her 11 times. That figure also includes Peter Foster, a former detective at Surrey who murdered his partner, a police woman, by hitting her with a baseball bat and stabbing her in the throat while she was on maternity leave. That last murder seems particularly awful in the context of Sandu's comments that police women face harassment if they report their police officer partners. Ash Sarkar, my colleague, wrote a powerful piece about all of this on Navarra media this morning. I asked her earlier today to explain what it means to call the police institutionally misogynist. When we say that the police are institutionally misogynist we're talking about a top to bottom problem of reproducing outcomes which disadvantage and perpetuate violence against women. So we can see that in terms of the internal processes of the police, 52% of officers who were found guilty of sexual misconduct between 2016 and 2020 kept their jobs. The second thing is that you've got an astonishingly regular pattern of cops being accused of domestic violence. At least one woman a week comes forward accusing officers or police staff of having perpetuated domestic violence. And then you've also got what is it they're actually doing in their job. So there does exist an abuse to prison pipeline where women who have themselves experienced domestic abuse or sexual or physical abuse as children are more likely to end up in prison. So 57% of female prisoners are victims of domestic abuse, 53% experienced abuse as children. So that tells you something about how we treat vulnerable women in our society. Do we care for them or do we criminalize them for that very vulnerability is the latter. And then we've got to think about those instances where police officers have wielded and abused the authority that they have and it is a unique authority. It's a uniquely coercive power in order to perpetuate abuse. So when cousins may have been an extreme case, but he certainly wasn't alone. There was Jeffrey Davies, a detective in South Wales who used his position as a police officer to rape two women in his custody in the early 2000s. This only came out when he was subsequently convicted of further offenses around 2013, I believe. You also had Erling Liske, who sexually exploited victims of domestic violence, who again he came across in the line of duty. And there was also Derek Winston Seekings, who raped a woman while on a meal break from work. And that's before we even get into another story which has been in the news, which is spy cops, which is undercover metropolitan police officers who conducted long term in some cases sexual relationships with women who they were spying on. And this happened either with a nod on the wink from senior officers or due to their incompetence, they didn't even know it was going on. So there is, I think, a much deeper problem of misogyny encoded within the police's practices. That's then before we get into the culture within police. It's an open secret that you have the dissemination of racist, misogynist and homophobic material within private group chats. That's exactly what Wayne Cousins did with his colleagues who are now facing criminal investigation. But that's also what happened when you had two officers suspended for sharing selfies that they took with the murdered bodies of Bieber, Henry and Nicole Smallman. That indicates a very callous and indeed very dehumanizing attitude towards female victims of violence and people who they come across in the course of their work. And then you've also got something which is very disturbing, which a former chief superintendent said on Radio 4 yesterday, which is that even female police officers and staff are discouraged from speaking up and reporting abusive or harassing or threatening colleagues. So top to bottom, you've got a problem of culture, you've got a problem of outcomes, you've got a problem of internal procedures and practices. And that's what we mean when we say that the police are institutionally misogynist. That was my colleague Ash Sarkar. I really do recommend you check out her article today on all of this. One of the big stories today, again, completely shocking is what the police are telling people to do if they get stopped by an undercover police officer. Because obviously what was so shocking about this case is that Sarah Everard did what she was supposed to do. She was stopped by someone who said, I'm an undercover police officer. He showed her his ID and then he handcuffed her. So this was an arrest. People say it was a fake arrest, but actually he was a serving police officer and police are allowed to arrest people off duty. So it was a real arrest. It was under false pretenses. But she complied with police officer, which is what you're supposed to do. Now, the big debate in the country is what should people do in future? What should women do if they are stopped by a police officer who they are suspicious has ulterior motives? The advice from the Metropolitan Police is really quite shocking on this front. I want to bring up the statement which is from the Metropolitan Police's website. So this is their advice on verifying an officer's identity and intentions. They say it is unusual for a single plain closed police officer to engage with anyone. If that does happen, you should then expect to see other officers arrive shortly afterwards. If you do find yourself in an interaction with a sole police officer and you are on your own, ask that officer for proof of identity and intentions. Questions like where are your colleagues? Where have you come from? Why are you here? Exactly why are you stopping or talking to me? They say try to seek some independent verification of what they say. If they have a radio, ask to hear the voice of the operator. Even ask to speak through the radio to the operator to say who you are. And for them to verify you are with a genuine officer acting legitimately. If you feel you are in real and imminent danger and you do not believe the officer is who they say they are, seek assistance by shouting out to a passerby or if you are in the position to do so, call 999. I think an earlier version of that sort of mention trying to wave down bus drivers, it seems as if that part has potentially been removed by this point because it was so widely ridiculed. That advice is so ridiculous as to be offensive, I think. Not wanting to be beaten in terms of offensive responses to a tragedy. The Conservative North Yorkshire Commissioner Phillip Allott told BBC York today, so women first of all need to be street wise about when they can be arrested and when they can't be arrested. She should never have been arrested and submitted to that. Perhaps women need to consider in terms of the legal process to just learn a bit about that legal process. Aaron Bustani, I want to bring you in on this and the political fallout which has come out of this because what I find, there's so much about this is incredibly shocking. What I find on a more mundane level completely mind boggling is that the police and police bosses have now had six months to work out how when all this information comes out because obviously we're only learning this week that the officer used his role as a police officer to kidnap and kill Sarah Everard but the people who would have been conducting this investigation knew that ages ago, we just didn't know that because it wasn't yet in court. They've had six months to prepare for this and yet they're still coming out saying oh maybe women should read legal books and if they are unsure about a cop who's stopping them wave for a bus what is going on here? Well I think my explanation for that is that the DNA fundamentally of the security apparatus in this state particularly the police is one of utter deference. The individual is in no way meant to scrutinize the police. The media are effectively meant to believe everything that they say. There's not meant to be any sort of culture of dissensus where you hold them accountable where you scrutinize them. And finally the Metropolitan Police Service I think at the last time of asking have around a hundred press offices so they are very much used to crafting the narrative determining the facts. That might sound like propaganda and that's because it is. But when you've got something of this scale, a crisis which embodies so many pernicious long-term problems for the organization but the case in this instance is so powerful that it can't just be dismissed then they have real problems. So I think the singularity of this case and its horrific nature means that the usual tactics won't work but of course they're used to using only the usual tactics. So I think that would be my answer Michael. They're used to creating and crafting media reality as they see fit and we don't really have a journalistic culture in this country which scrutinizes the police adequately. And when they say of course what people should be able to know their rights and you know ask the police what are you doing? As anybody who's watching or listening knows try doing that and the police give you a really hard time really quickly. If you do that, if you try and talk about your rights, if you try and let somebody else know their rights very very rapidly that marks you as a person of suspicion and I found myself being arrested for doing something like that in the past. I have a good friend who gave a bus car to some young people who were being stopped and searched by the police. She ended up being arrested, strip searched, she now has PTSD. I tweeted about that earlier on it was a BBC story so that's again in the public domain. That's not just something you need to take on hearsay. So that for me is the answer really, a really appalling culture and to an extent media complicity. And it seems strange to talk about the media but the police and in particular the Metropolitan Police Service are never wrong. And so when they are so decisively wrong the whole system in terms of how we metabolize truth and what to do next kind of doesn't make any sense. People might be watching this thinking but actually we are hearing quite a lot from the mainstream media right now about the institutional problems in the police. But it has taken an event so extreme, more extreme than anyone could have possibly imagined to get this issue to be taken seriously. And from all the statistics we showed you at the start of the show and what Ash Sarkar talked about. This is misogyny, violence against women is an ingrained problem in the police which has been the case for decades. And most people in the country will not have heard about that until an event happened which was so so shocking it could no longer be ignored. And as Aaron says that's because the police are incredibly good at putting forward a narrative which supports their perspective on whatever is going on. And you're not used to having media holding the police to account because they rely on the police to get their stories. This idea that you are supposed to respect the police, they are in the right, they are there to protect you. It is the kind of thing that politicians have to say. You know, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting, he was on question time last night, none of them have been willing to engage in any sort of critical discussion of the police because they think what we have to say is we have to stand up and say we're pro the police, we stand up for the police and they basically are too cowardly to say anything other than this is a bit of a situation of a bad apple, which all the statistics we've talked about show you this is not, this is much, much deeper than that. I want to go to a couple of comments and then we're going to talk about the future of Cressida Dick. Caroline Duvier tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour, wow. So as a woman I now need to be versed in all of the laws and when I get stopped by an undercover police officer I should call the police for help. Starting to think the police force are in cells. I do think the situation we are in whereby the police are telling members of the public they cannot guarantee that their officers aren't rapists or murderers. It is just phenomenal. You need to be vetting these people. You need to have proper surveillance of these people to weed out the rapists in your organization and the murderers in your organization so that you don't leave that task to women walking in the street, right? And for those who think oh maybe this has jolted them into action, what we told you at the beginning of the show is that there are five officers who were in a WhatsApp group with Wayne Cousins using misogynistic homophobic racist language. Some of it is so extreme that two of them are under criminal investigation and two of them who are under criminal investigation are still on duty for the Metropolitan Police. And again they have known for six months that this crisis was about to emerge. They have known the context of this murder for six months. We only found out about it because it's now being spoken about in court and yet they still thought they could get away with having five officers who were in a group with Wayne Cousins talking in misogynistic terms which were so offensive it might break the law and to not even put those officers on gardening leave? They're still on duty. I don't know how anyone can possibly have faith in this police force when that is the case. It's mind-blowing. Let's go to a couple other comments. The mainstream media still talk about bad apples when at a macro level every single tree in the orchard is rotten. Thank goodness for alternatives like Navara and Conmac tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. The figures are frightening but what is more frightening is the denial by high-ranking officials both police and politicians that there is nothing institutional about this horrific incident. If they don't do anything about this it will be repeated. That's evil and Rajya Dee says thoughts and prayers with Sarah Everard's family how so incredibly tragic. RIP Sarah I'm sure everyone watching will agree with those sentiments. The numerous failings of the Metropolitan Police in the run-up to Sarah Everard's murder and the woeful response to the force since has led some to call for Met Commissioner Cressida Dick to resign. Those calling for her to go include Labour MP Harriet Harman. Well women must be able to trust the police. They must not fear them. They must be confident that the police are there to help them and to make them safe. Not to harm them and therefore there needs to be fundamental changes in order that women can be certain and can have that confidence. I've been to Pretty Patel today setting out 10 points of action which need to be taken immediately but I've also written to the Metropolitan Commissioner Cressida Dick saying that I believe she should resign because she cannot be the Metropolitan Commissioner that takes these changes forward. That was Harriet Harman when Pretty Patel the Home Secretary was asked whether Dick should resign. She said the following. Well I think first of all there are important questions and questions that I've been asking and challenges we have to be honest about this in particular to this case but also the conduct of that serving officer and conduct of policing more broadly so I will continue to work with the Metropolitan Police and the Commissioner to hold them to account as everybody would expect me to do and I will continue to do that. That was Pretty Patel saying she will continue to work with the Metropolitan Police and the Commissioner to hold them to account. The government have made clear Dick is safe in her position but it was not an especially positive statement from the Home Secretary. Support from the leader of the opposition however has been more forthcoming. Very quickly though Doreen Lawrence introduced you yesterday at conference. She has been part of the petition to say that Cressida Dick's time shouldn't be extended by another two years in charge of the Met Police. Is Cressida Dick fit to continue? Would you want her out now too? No, Cressida Dick is fit to continue. I've worked with Cressida over many years in relation to some very serious operations when I was Director of Public Prosecutions and I was pleased that her contract was extended and I support her. Okay. As Kirsten was speaking in glowing terms about Cressida Dick Aaron, I assume because Dick has the support of the government, the leader of the opposition and as of today the London Mayor, Sadiq Khan has come out and says she has his support. She will presumably stay in her role unless I suppose the media could keep this story going longer for a while and the pressure will increase. What do you make of this though? Would it make a difference if she goes? Should she resign or would that just distract from the fact that this is a deep and institutional problem? Well, I think she should resign. The question of whether that would change anything is obviously an open one. During the first couple of years of the 21st century, there was a period where basically every Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service was resigning. So it's not that new but things didn't fundamentally change. I think Stammer calling her not to resign and basically eulogising her as a person isn't that surprising when you consider he was Director of Public Prosecutions when the John de Menezes case was reviewed and he decided as DPP that there wasn't really a case there to prosecute. Now the original Director of Public Prosecutions was to say it wasn't Kirsten, it was somebody else. Now how does that relate to Cressida Dick? She was the one in the control room when those decisions were made. Incredibly suspicious circumstances when John de Menezes was killed. Claims made by the police which at the time weren't really true. Evidence which subsequently disappeared. And Stammer as Director of Public Prosecutions played a part in that. It's important to say a few years later. And I think when you look at Stammer, you look at Stitcom, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, you have to understand that these are all effectively, these are people who are just administrators of the state. They are integral parts of the state apparatus. And one of the things you do when you're a part of the state apparatus is not to attack another part of the state apparatus. That can be the monarchy, it can be the armed forces, it can be the police, it can be several other institutions. Now one of the big problems when Jeremy Corbyn was leading the opposition was that that informal system stopped working. Because all of a sudden you had a leader of the opposition who will say actually war in Iraq was bad. Or this particular senior figure within the policing establishment should resign. Or this person related to the Bank of England shouldn't be in that job. The final one was a speculative hypothetical instance. My point is normally people in the privy council, people at the highest executive and legislative echelons of this country occupying those parts of this country's public life, they don't say things like the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service should resign. Now Harriet Harman did, and that's quite interesting, why? Well, we like to criticise and lambast feminists on the viral media. And I don't like to criticise liberal feminists because I'm a man. I don't think that's necessarily the right thing to do. But we have colleagues and comrades who lambast women, colleagues and comrades who lambast and mock liberal feminists. But we have to say about Harriet Harman here, Michael, is that she's a principled liberal feminist who believes in the rule of law and thinks that this is unacceptable. And I think that does mark her in this other context of a kind of effectively a feudal British state, right? You occupy some of these roles that you cannot break the line. You're a part of the regime apparatus. I think that does mark her out as actually quite different and quite principled. And I don't agree with Harriet Harman on a bunch of things. But I think that clearly shows you actually how deeply illiberal and undemocratic power is in this country. When somebody like Harriet Harman looks like, and that's because she is, a courageous truth teller. We've got someone in the comments disagreeing. Douglas Pouch says, Harman would do the same as Patel if in power. I'm not really in a position to say which of those... You know, if that is the case, it's an interesting hypothetical. Michael Fort on the Super Chat says, Black people have been telling you all for decades that the police are rotten, RIP Sarah. Obviously, I think that's an incredibly important comment. I think probably one of the reasons why this is such a... Why the police themselves are considering this such a crisis is because the mirage has been shattered. People who thought, oh, the police, they must be upstanding. People, there might be a few bad apples, but ultimately they must be good. I think this has shown. The extreme circumstances of this means it's impossible to deny that there is something seriously, seriously wrong going on. And that's not just because of the actions of Wayne Cousins, but it's the actions of the police which let him do what he has done. The fact that 72 hours before he kidnapped and murdered someone, there was a report to the police that someone had flashed people, you know, a sexual assault in a McDonald's in South London. They would have, you know, unless they're completely incompetent, they would have identified that that was his car because you can do that very easily with the number plate. And he remained an officer. He remained an officer, he remained free. And then he used that privileged position as a police officer to do the most heinous crime imaginable. How anyone can see that sequence of events and not think there is something fundamentally rotten here is, you know, it's impossible not to. But it does seem slightly odd to have someone like Keir Starmer just, you know, creating this sort of protective ring around the person who leads that organization. Because it's just undeniable that something was fundamentally rotten in that organization. And I don't think taking away the leader of that organization is going to solve everything. It might not solve very much at all. But to say they're doing a great job when this has happened in an organization in which they have been in charge of a significant amount of time seems like an odd judgment to make. Nick Gusset on Super Chat says, Cressida Dick is only ever on Telly to apologize. I think that's probably, yeah, I can't think of any examples where she's been on Telly for another reason. Lost in the fog of war says, if a woman is accosted by a single male officer she should not comply, scream like hell. I mean, I'm just not comfortable saying what a woman should do in that situation. I can see why people want this practical advice. But ultimately, all of our attention should be on the police should not send rapists out with police badges. You might say, oh, how will they know? Well, there might be situations where even if you did have really high standards and a really effective net where you caught out people who were abusive, some might slip through. Sure, some might slip through the net. But clearly there isn't a net at the moment, right? Because these examples that we have, these people in any basic functioning system should not have been a police officer the day that Wayne Cousins kidnapped Sarah Everard. He should not have been a police officer. I mean, if there was the most minimum standards in the metropolitan police. So while people might say, oh, this is obviously going to be a difficult problem, yes, I imagine even the best organized police force in the world is going to have some people who slip through the net and abuse their power. But we have got a police organization, the Metropolitan Police, where you have these people who have the most power you can give someone in society to pick people up off the street, to put them in the back of your car, paying no attention, no due at all to who they are, to what their motives might be, to what their values are. And that is just so clear to everyone right now. And obviously we are going to see the political class now close ranks because they don't want fundamental questions to be asked about the police force, but we have to make sure they are. Oh my, that is unusual. If a super chat says, I'm skint, but you lot are doing great. Keep it up. Thank you very much. I do really appreciate all of your support. We will, I'm sure, be talking about this story on many future shows. For now we are going to go on to a few more topics from the day. If you haven't already, please do subscribe to our YouTube channel. The environmental campaign group Insulate Britain have caused weeks of controversy by blocking roads to gain attention for their demands. It's fair to say, while their demand that the government should pay to insulate homes is popular, their methods aren't. Much of the critique, the complaints about insulate Britain are reasonable. Just motorists who want to get to their destination slightly annoyed about traffic jams. It's not fine, however, to use a traffic jam or nonviolent direct action as an argument for fascism. This was a moment from Channel 5's Jeremy Vineshow this morning. The problem in this country in all areas is that minorities always get the upper hand because we're so tolerant. And minorities have to be swashed like that. That was Mike Parry speaking. He's an ex-son supporter. That clip has been viewed over a million times on Twitter. It was shared many times, I think, because people thought he was talking about ethnic minorities. And one user tagged Jeremy Vines asking how it was acceptable to let that go out on air. This is what Jeremy Vines tweeted in response. This would have been totally unacceptable had Mike been referring to members of ethnic minorities. In fact, this snippet does not make clear. Mike Parry was actually talking about the eco protesters who brought the M25 to a halt. He said they represented very few people in the UK. Jeremy Vines has now deleted that tweet. We should say as well. We would like to show you the full clip with the fuller context of that intervention. Unfortunately, the Jeremy Vineshow haven't made the episode available online just yet. We can't explain why. I'm going to get Aaron's thoughts on this in one moment. First of all, let's just show you the clip one more time. Now you know the context provided by Jeremy Vineshow. The problem in this country in all areas is that minorities always get the upper hand because we're so tolerant. And minorities have to be squashed like that. Minorities have to be squashed. Aaron, obviously that would have been more shocking if he'd been talking about ethnic minorities or sexual minorities. Is it fine though to say you'll squash minorities when minorities are people who have particular political beliefs instead of immutable characteristics? Well, in a democratic free society, Michael, minorities' rights should be protected. And that doesn't just mean ethnic minorities or religious minorities or linguistic minorities or women or LGBT people. It also means people who hold minority political views which are of course still congruent with democratic values. So for instance, most people aren't Republicans in this country. They want to keep the monarchy. But that doesn't mean just because Republicans such as myself are minorities, it doesn't mean people have permission to go around beating us up because minority rights when it comes to freedom of political conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of association is really important once upon a time. The idea that women should have the vote was a minority view. Who knows what will be a majority view in 50, 100 years time. And we know that the train tracks upon which the locomotive of historical progress, if it does exist at all, they are the idea that perhaps the minority have something to teach the rest of us. That's a very basic point. And what I found very strange about Jeremy Vines' initial response is to say, oh, he just means political minorities. As if political minorities have never been subject to violence and murder and intimidation. Very strange thing to say. If you want to defend a free society, you don't think or say that. Secondly, he was clearly referring to all minorities because he said I think the exact words Michael, maybe you can again, we want to get it right down. He said in all instances or something to that effect. He's talking about minorities. Minorities are the problem. Political minorities, racial minorities, minority views. People who are uppity, you might want to change things. You think the status quo isn't perfect. Very, very, very dangerous thing to say. There's a reason why the other guest on the show, I think it was Yasmin Ali Pai Brown. Like you say, Michael, nobody can find this show online. I wonder why. He said instantly, almost like a reflex. God, I think most people watching that or listening to this show probably felt the same way. It is fascism and the fact that Jeremy Vine made an apology for it or rather excused it is unacceptable. And I think for somebody like Jeremy Vine, who look, he has Ash Sarkron, he has Owen Jones on and he has people from the right, like Carol Malone on as well, right? They want good television and they would say, well, people from the right, you might not agree with them, but they reflect a segment of public opinion. That's a fair argument. What this man is saying is something quite distinct, however. What he's saying is odds with the very foundation upon which a free society rests. That can't be allowed on television broadcast without significant scrutiny and accountability for the programmers and for the host. I do find it remarkable that after the fact, on social media, somebody as intelligent as Jeremy Vine, who has his politically experienced when it comes to the fallout of these kinds of things on broadcast TV or radio, it happens, it's live media after all, would say that. And I do think it says something quite dangerous about how toxic a media environment is. I don't think he agrees with the point, but he would say, well, he has a right to say that. No, I don't think he has a right to say that, actually. I don't think anybody has a right to say that minorities should be crushed. No, that's not how it works because if you start omitting people to say that on live television very quickly, we're going to lose some of the most sacred things we hold there in our society. The other thing that sort of shocked me about it, and I suppose why it is just so congruent with classic far-right tropes, is this idea that minorities have the upper hand. Now, obviously the classic sort of version of this is anti-Semitism. You'll also get it with sort of white replacement theory where you have ethnic minorities who are now determining policy and determining who can say what and who can't say what and ultimately their intent on becoming a majority, you know, classic far-right conspiracy theories. But they're also, I mean, they're also paranoid, and I think this clip just shows how ridiculous that is. You know, this is a guy who was, you know, a reporter at The Sun, he's often on television, you know, standard right-wing talking head, who thinks that the insulate Britain activists have got the upper hand, right? The insulate Britain activists are the new people with power in this country who need to be crushed. Now, you might find a few traffic jams annoying. As I say, I think it's perfectly reasonable to find a few traffic jams annoying. Some people will say it's legitimate because it's such a serious issue, such a serious issue climate change that all peaceful action is justified. This is certainly a peaceful action. Others will say, actually, it's self-defeating, it's also kind of annoying and it's a bit undemocratic to put your demands forward in those ways. Now, I don't want to weigh in on either of those arguments. What I do think it's safe to say is this group of people going out in the middle of motorways to say home should be insulated, they do not have the upper hand, they are not controlling politics in this country, and anyone who thinks they are is just completely deluded or completely disingenuous. I don't know which one you think it is of those areas. Do you think this guy is really terrified that insulate Britain have got the upper hand or is this just cynical politicking? Oh, no, I think he really believes it. A key part of modern fascism, Michael, or fascism generally, is the idea that we're in the majority but we're also the victims. Somehow, the minorities have got us under the thumb, whether it's people with disabilities, whether it's Jewish people, whether it's socialists, whether it's students, whether it's people on benefits, all these minorities are somehow exploiting the majority, which actually isn't really a majority because we're talking about a lot of people here, but it's this idealized notion of the person who keeps the country ticking over the middle-aged white man, I'm the taxpayer, I'm the one that adds to the pot, I'm the one that gives the surplus, they're the ones who are in deficit, I give, they take. I'm the striver, they're the skyver, that kind of discourse. So I think he does believe it. I think if you worked at the Sun for that long, I think clearly you're going to internalize those ideas. And it's become the norm now in British politics, Michael, over the last 20, 25 years. I mean, look, it's called the Jeremy Vine Show, but you know what it reminded me of? Another Jeremy, Jeremy Kyle. A lot of current affairs and political coverage and political conversations in this country now looks like Jeremy Kyle 10, 15 years ago. And people say, well, you don't want the guy on there, you're calling him far right, well, the far left shouldn't go on either. Well, I think somebody arguing for free broadband or rent caps isn't quite the same as somebody saying that we should crush all minorities and suppress freedom of political expression. Maybe I'm strange, but I don't think those two things are equivalent. And I think people like Jeremy Vine, I think people in the mainstream media and broadcasts and radio, TV, all the way down to the people booking guests need to have a really strong think about the kinds of people they want on. Now, it doesn't mean you constrain politically the political complexion of people you have as guests. I'm not suggesting that. You know, I think we should have people who think Brexit's good or wrong or liberals, conservatives, socialists, that's fine. But you can't have people calling for the smashing of individual people's rights. That to me is a form of political incitement that goes beyond the acceptable parameters of broadcast TV. And I think you shouldn't be allowed back on there again. I think they should apologize for it. Stephen Calder with a Fiverr says, The police have incredible power to take away our liberty. This power shouldn't be given to racists, homophobes and misogynists to misuse. Absolutely. I mean, there are two arguments which are being put out at the moment, which is, you know, we need to put people who have this power under more scrutiny. And then the other argument is maybe we shouldn't give people this much power because some people will obviously slip through the net and then power is there to be abused. Again, that's sort of a bigger philosophical argument than we're going to get into this evening. But a very interesting one, which we will return to on future shows. Let's go to our final story. Keir Starmer has followed up his conference speech with a tour of TV studios in an attempt to prove to the public he's not left-wing. And on BBC Breakfast that meant, once again, arguing against nationalization. Common ownership can be cooperatives, can be all sorts of different models. But the principle being you take it out of private ownership, is that right? Before we go any further, I honestly don't think that nationalizing the energy companies right now in the middle of a crisis which is the government making is the right way forward. What we've got to focus on for the next few months, and I think most people viewing with me, is the energy supply going to be good for the next six months? And how's the government got us into this ridiculous situation where the energy, we've got an energy crisis, we've got a fuel crisis, we've got no drivers for lorries, we've got empty shelves. I think most people say, well rather some philosophical discussion. We want to know in practical terms what is the government going to do to keep the lights on, keep the energy there, and get our fuel pumps back in action because lots of people are going to be scratching their heads and saying, how am I going to get to work next week? How am I going to get to a hospital? Well how am I going to visit a sick relative, a teacher or a nurse getting to their job? These are the issues that we need to address head on and they are all banded together and characterised by a lack of planning by a government that campaigns in slogans and is learning that governing in slogans just doesn't work. That was Keir Starmer arguing against nationalising failing utility companies. Just to remind you, this was Starmer during the leadership race. First of all, raise your hands if you're into scrapping tuition fees. That's everyone. We're nationalising water and electricity, yeah. They need to show that clip anytime Keir Starmer says, I said common ownership, not nationalisation. I didn't mean nationalisation. You put your hand up when they said nationalisation. Aaron, I saw you reacting to that BBC Breakfast clip online. I suppose, aside from the dishonesty of it all, what did you make of the actual argument put forward by Keir Starmer there? Well, it's a typical lawyer's answer, isn't it? He's saying, well look, ownership doesn't necessarily mean nationalisation, somewhat true. Does that mean he now supports a model like workers' co-operatives for the big six energy companies? Well, that may work for some things. It won't work for public monopolies. And no, I don't think that's what he means. This is a man who lives by rhetoric and elusive lines which he can backtrack on later. In a court of law that works. In the court of public opinion, and more importantly, in the world of public policy and actually solving real world problems, it absolutely doesn't work. It's a catastrophic failure. My question to you, Michael, and our audience is, what has to happen before it calls for nationalisation of energy companies? Will the lights have to go out? Will we all be freezing cold? Because it clearly is one potential answer. In 2008, we had the financial crash. What was part of the response from government, by Gordon Brown, by a Labour Prime Minister who wasn't particularly left-wing, was to take banks into public ownership. Does that mean that Keir Starmer won't do something similar with energy companies? And he's saying, well, it's an academic exercise. You can imagine 1945, Michael, we just come out of the Second World War. People are calling for a national health service and to bring energy and utilities and water into public ownership. And Keir Starmer says, now is not the time for vain and vague intellectual exercises. What we need is pragmatic common sense. We would never have got the national health service, Michael. When something doesn't work and it's broken, it's actually the best time to talk about, well, systemically, what do we need to change to restructure it? It's the best time, Mr. Starmer, not the worst time. So, yes, what does this tell us? A few things. The fact that he's a mendacious man who actually has no idea about the kinds of policies he'd want to enact as Prime Minister, that's one thing. Secondly, it tells us something quite troubling, which I think actually confronted with the facts, the Tories are more likely to nationalise things than the Labour Party. Over the last seven days, we've seen another rail franchise brought back into public ownership in the southeast of England. We're seeing it, I think, in the next couple of months, likely with energy companies too. I think that's looking increasingly probable. What are they going to say? He's saying, we need planning. We need a plan. The government should get their act together. What does it mean? What does it mean? You're not offering an alternative. You're not offering anything substantial. And look, positioning for the next general election is fine. Maybe that's all you care about. But in the meantime, we've got two years and particularly we've got this winter. I'd quite like Christmas. I'd quite like to not be freezing cold on the 25th of December here. So please, please offer some substantive solutions. How Starmer did Brexit, how he did COVID-19, won outliers, won anomalies. That's how he does politics, Michael. It's about winning some sophisticated debate in a courtroom rather than actually addressing people's problems and trying to infuse them behind what you're arguing for. He's not a politician. God knows how he got this job. He's uniquely ill-suited to be leading a political party, particularly at this moment. God help us. I think the point about the Tories, they would nationalise the utilities before Labour is a prescient one because Quasi-Quarteng has made it clear that if one of the big six fails, they might have to nationalise it because the alternative of bringing it into public ownership is to bail them out with public money and say, oh, OK, we'll cover your losses, but you can still run it as a private business. So that's... I mean, even the Tories admit that would be an unpopular thing to do, whereas Keir Starmer's saying, no, no, the crisis... In the crisis, we won't change the ownership of anything. Does that mean you'll give them a bailout? It might have been sensible to explain that sometimes nationalisation is whatever your political ideology, the most sensible thing to do in that situation. I want to talk about the internal politics of this. The nationalisation issue seems like it could tear the Shadow Cabinet apart. In particular, it's creating tensions between Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband. Miliband argued in favour of common ownership a couple of weeks ago on News Night, and the Times are now reporting that Starmer is being urged to sideline the former Labour leader. Aaron, do you think this could actually happen? Could it be the case that Keir Starmer says, Ed Miliband, you have been guilty of being too radical, of not towing the line strongly enough? Apparently, there are members of the Shadow Cabinet and Keir Starmer's team who are annoyed that Ed Miliband wrote a book which covered issues beyond his domain, beyond his Shadow Ministerial post. Do you think he could be next to go? Well, he's Labour's most popular politician, and Keir Starmer specialised in doing stupid things, so presumably he will, yeah. We should call it Starmer's Law, which is a scientific law whereby the worst possible decision that could be made by the Labour leader is the one that he takes. I think, generally speaking, whatever happens to Miliband, I think he will go. Whatever happens to Miliband, I think in the medium term, is that we won't see any of the Templars informing party policy in 2024, or at least the leader will try his damnedest to stop it. And I think that's an important background variable to consider when you think he's got the GMB on side, he's got Unison on side. The things that they tell their members they want, the leaders of these unions, we want a higher minimum wage, 15-pound minimum wage for care workers, we want to end fire and rehire, we want to end outsourcing. Very little of this would happen under a Labour government under Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. Very little, next to nothing. We would see some tweaks. Now, you might think that's great, it means a Labour government gets elected. I want the problems to be solved, Michael. In the last couple of weeks, the party's back. 95% of the public doesn't care about my party's back or the Labour family. Can I afford to pay the rent? Can I get on the housing ladder, my mortgage payments, the future for my kids, my kids going to university, that gang in loads of debt, elderly care, climate change, law and order, sure. These are all big issues. Nobody cares you got your party back, nobody cares. And so my commitment, Michael, it's not just about getting the Tories out, it's about getting a party in, which will do something about those problems, actually address those challenges. And so yes, it's all very good talking about oh, we need to get the Tories out. Well, if Keir Starmer is literally pitching to their right when it comes to public ownership of energy, what for? This isn't a game of football, right? We're not doing sweepstakes about whether Man United are going to meet Norwich at Old Trafford at 3 p.m. on Saturday. This is about whether the next 10, 30, 40 years of your life will be better or worse. Whether the life chance and opportunities of people will be richer or poorer for the presence of a Labour Party in power. Right now, Keir Starmer's not making that case. By all means, 0.5% of the public care about you bleeding on about the Labour family as if it was a protected characteristic for the EHRC. It's ridiculous. It's the most absurd people you're ever going to see at Labour Party MPs. That line. Talking about the Labour family as if it was a protected characteristic. Tom Hardy with a fiver says, I think so Keir Starmer needs the Tories to support nationalising energy to go for it now. I'd slightly amend that. So I think probably what would happen is the Conservatives would brief the press in the morning that they were going to announce it in the afternoon and then Keir Starmer would do an interview about 11 a.m. where he says, I demand the government nationalise whatever utility company it is. That's exactly what happened when he was against closing schools last January, you might remember. One of his lowest moments, I think. Let's wrap up there, Aaron Bustani. Been a pleasure speaking to you this Friday evening. It's been my pleasure, Michael. I love our Friday get-togethers and I love all the feedback from our wonderful audience. And thank you to our wonderful audience for watching tonight and especially if you are a regular donor you make all of this possible. If you are not already giving us a monthly payment, please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support. It is what makes this organisation, what makes this show possible, we are forever grateful. For now, I'll be back on Monday at 7 p.m. with Ash Sarkar. You've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navaramedia. Good night.