 At Navara Media, we aren't especially interested in politicians' private lives and we're not too wedded to traditional values when it comes to issues of relationships and sex. However, Matt Hancock's affair with his COVID aid isn't just a story about a politician's sexual morality. It's also a story about hypocrisy because Hancock broke his own COVID rules. It's potentially also a story about corruption. That's because Matt Hancock was having an affair with someone he had personally hired with public money. To discuss the implications of the health secretary's kiss on camera, I'm joined tonight by Aaron Bostani. How are you doing, Aaron? I'm very well, Michael. How are you? Very well. I like this kind of... I was very excited waking up knowing we're going to talk about how sex and politics and sleaze all colliders. Definitely going to be a great show for you all tonight. We're also going to be discussing the latest policy failure by a member of Labour's shadow cabinet. They just keep on coming. We'll discuss who Stammer has hired as director of communications and show you the latest from badly and spent by election. That will be a very, very interesting segment. We will of course be going to your comments throughout the show. Let us know whether you think Hancock should resign and whether you think he will on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. Of course, as ever, if you're new to our channel, do make sure you hit that subscribe button. We're going to go straight on to our first and main story. This morning, Britain woke up to an image none of us wanted to see. It was Matt Hancock snogging one of his COVID advisors. You can see that on the front page of the sun there. Now, the woman in the photo is Gina Collodangelo, an old friend of Matt Hancock and a PR firm director. She was brought in by the health secretary as an unpaid advisor at the start of the pandemic. Though in September last year, she got a paid role in the department. That was as a non-executive director at the Department of Health. One issue that's relevant when it comes to this image, who's in it? The other is when it was taken. The photo revealed on the sun was taken on the 6th of May this year. Back then, government advice was still that hugging anyone outside of a household bubble was not allowed. That means that Matt Hancock broke his own rules, which today he admitted to in a statement he said, I accept that I breached the social distancing guidance in these circumstances. I have let people down and am very sorry. I remain focused on working to get the country out of this pandemic and would be grateful for privacy for my family on this personal matter. The Prime Minister has since accepted Matt Hancock's apology, and a spokesperson has said he considers the matter closed. Now, whether or not the public will agree is a different matter. We will talk about that more on tonight's show. First, we're going to go to one of the few Tories who appeared to talk about this issue today on the television. Obviously, I don't think anyone was particularly keen to go out and defend Matt Hancock, but Transport Minister Grant Shaps was already booked into this morning's media round. I think there has been for a long time a complete difference between what people do in their job and how they do their job, which is everybody should be judged for and what they do in their personal lives. I have no intention of commencing on any other colleagues or anyone else's personal life. That's for them and themselves. The paper is saying that this happened in May. This was at a time when Matt Hancock himself, Health Secretary, was publicising government advice on hugging. He's saying if you're meeting with friends and family, you can make a choice about whether to keep your distance, but close contact, including hugging, increases the risk of spreading COVID-19. As I say, I can only stress the point that what happens in people's personal lives and personal relationships is a matter for them and I don't intend to go into commenting on it. Matt Hancock was said to have secretly appointed hers to his department as an unpaid advisor on a six-month contract in March last year, which meant there are claims, criticisms of a democracy. I'm not aware of that. The only thing I know is that if you are appointed to a government position, I think in this case it's a non-executive director position. That's her job now, not the original job. The only thing I can tell you is from my only experience in government, which is there are very rigorous programs in place when people are appointed, which requires all sorts of civil service sign-off before public money is spent. That's the situation that I'm sure would be followed in a position like this. Grant Shapps there responding, as opposed to three big issues, which are the ones raised by that image. One is just the issue of a politician having an affair. Does that suggest some sort of moral impropriety? Obviously, the politician's line here is that this is a personal issue. I think that probably will wash with most people. More significantly, the question of hypocrisy, did they break social distancing rules? There in that clip, you saw Grant Shapps say that's still a personal issue. He doesn't think that's a political issue, even though Matt Hancock was the person who wrote up and promoted those rules. The third issue is whether or not there was a conflict of interest because Matt Hancock was having an affair with someone being paid by public money, whom he had personally appointed. In response to that, Grant Shapps said, even if it looks dodgy, the civil service, they have processes here. I'm sure all of those proper processes were followed, so there's nothing to see here. That was his way of shutting down that question. We'll have loads more detail on both of those two big issues throughout this show. First of all, Aaron, what's your initial take here? Do you think the revelation about Matt Hancock snogging his aid is going to be politically significant? Could be. I mean, if you think about what was the one time that Boris Johnson and this government were really on the ropes, and that's a remarkable thing to say. It was only once, given we've had three waves of a pandemic where 130,000 people have died. It was, of course, the Dominic Cummings saga, and that wasn't just because he did something morally wrong, and of course, cheating on your spouse when you have three children with them is morally wrong. It was because it was hypocritical, and we spoke about this at the time, Michael. We both agreed that it was very, very, very bad for the government, precisely because hypocrisy just goes down so poorly with the electorate. It seems to be okay these days, and we think of all the many scandals that have surrounded the Boris Johnson Premiership. That one didn't, however, because hypocrisy really, really goes a long way. It's a personal story. Dominic Cummings is a memorable person. He was a big personality. He was telling people to do something that he wouldn't do himself. It's the exact same story here with Matt Hancock, so you would suggest from that the government has to deal with it. He has to go, whether it's a sacking or a resignation, he probably won't stick around. But then again, the key question is, when it was Cummings, there was a lot of political pressure, not just from the Labour Party. It was actually the one time that Labour called for a resignation until today, but also from the media. Will there be that same bunch of piranhas nibbling away at the number 10 Downing Street press operation saying he needs to go? This isn't acceptable. We don't know what the political weather on this is going to be. There's a bi-election a week when I talk about that later. It could be that the political weather changes quite quickly. I'm not saying it's as bad as Dominic Cummings. I think that was clearly worse, just because Dominic Cummings is such a large of a life character, but Matt Hancock does have big name recognition, Secretary of State for Health, and he's been a hypocrite. Big problems for the government. I suppose I'd probably add what the Cummings situation had was both hypocrisy, but it was hypocrisy on an issue that people really, really cared about. So obviously, I think you could probably find lots of examples of hypocrisy on the part of Boris Johnson, but if it's not about something that people don't really care about, like wallpaper, I'm sure he's said down the line that he cares about corruption, etc., etc. People care about it if it is an issue they care about. When it came to Dominic Cummings, people were like, I have missed really important life events. I have really missed key members of my family and friends, and now this guy who's told us to do all of this broke all of that. This time around, probably Matt Hancock would be hoping, and we're going to show you what the public do think in a moment, would be hoping that his get-out could be that at that point the lockdown was significantly relaxed. Anyway, we could do quite a lot of things other than hug. So it might not be quite as visceral, I suppose, as the public reaction to Dominic Cummings. Let's go to some of the political responses. As you say, Labour have called for him to resign. This is a statement from the chair of the Labour Party, Annalisa Dodds. She said, if Matt Hancock has been secretly having a relationship with an advisor in his office whom he personally appointed to a taxpayer-funded role, it is a blatant abuse of power and a clear conflict of interest. The charged seat against Matt Hancock includes wasting taxpayers' money, leaving care homes exposed, and now being accused of breaking his own COVID rules. His position is hopelessly untenable. Boris Johnson should sack him. The public, this time around, are on Labour's side. Yugov asked people today, asked the public today, in his role as health secretary, Matt Hancock should and resign was agreed with by 49% of people. So 49% of people said he should resign. Only 25% said he should remain, and significantly here are the changes. So the last time people were asked was on the 27th of May. That was because of the allegations put forward by Dominic Cummings about lying, about testing, going into care homes. Back then, it was pretty even. So you had 33 or 36 and 31, 36 saying resign, 31 saying remain. There was no clear-cut position there from the public. Now there very much is. There was also a poll from comrades which showed the majority being larger for people thinking Matt Hancock should resign. So here 58% of people thought he should resign versus 25% of people who thought he shouldn't. There may though be one silver lining for Matt Hancock in the polling today. That's because almost half of Britons say that Boris Johnson would be a hypocrite if he were to ask Matt Hancock to resign given accusations of his own infidelity. So you can see there among all voters 47% of people think he would be a hypocrite if he asked Matt Hancock to resign. Only 35% thought he would not be. And you can see there's a majority saying Boris Johnson would be a hypocrite among conservative and Labour voters and men and women. So there's a bit of a catch 22 for anyone who wants Matt Hancock to resign, which is that the public want him to resign. But the only person who can force him to do it has a I suppose an interest in not doing it because he doesn't want to look like a hypocrite. All right we're going to go through the big two issues here. Hypocrisy and corruption. First of all if you're enjoying the stream do like the video. On hypocrisy as we've said Matt Hancock was breaking the rules by snogging his aid as it happened at the start of May where hugging people unless they were in your household bubble was banned. Now we can presume this woman wasn't in his household bubble because she would have to have shared that with Matt Hancock's wife which would have been awkward unless it's a particularly modern relationship. Now I'm personally fairly inclined to be relaxed about people breaking the rules if it's within reason. I'm not one to say I can't believe you kissed someone in May when you weren't supposed to hug people. But I did read a persuasive article in the new statesman today as to why we should care when it comes to Matt Hancock. It was written by Rachel Cunliffe and she wrote, England's lockdown rules have amounted to a de facto sex ban for millions of people who do not live with a partner and aren't eligible to form a bubble. From the 23rd of March 2020 when lockdown was first imposed until the 17th of May 2021 there were just a few months when intimacy between non-cohabiting adults was legal. As health secretary Hancock was directly responsible for this peculiarly English state of affairs, other countries made specific exemptions to their COVID restrictions for romantic partners but the UK government refused to acknowledge that single people existed and might have a right to physical affection. She also pointed out in the piece that Hancock has repeatedly been asked about the plight of separated couples during the pandemic and each time has emphatically come down on the side of abstinence. Now we can jog your memory about some of those occasions where Matt Hancock has come down on the side of abstinence when asked what people in non-cohabiting couples, so couples who don't live together, what they should do or people who aren't in a serious relationship. The rules changed as will be apparent from the clips I'm about to show you. So this interview is from September. Back then Matt Hancock said people should stick to the letter of the rules which at that point in time was that you could only get intimate with people with whom you were in an established relationship. How long is this casual sex ban going to last? You're saying that no social distancing needed in established relationships. What about people who are not in an established relationship? Why am I whispering? I don't know. I don't know, you're live on national TV. Indeed. It's okay to smile. In these rules that we have to bring in, you have to have to be boundaries to coin a phrase. If you're saying that the two households shouldn't mix, which we are in some parts of the country, in the northeast, the northwest, in Scotland, in parts of Wales, then you have to then define what is the boundary of that. And that does lead to some. That's my question. Establish relationship. Does that mean if I say I love you? Because some people say that and they don't mean it. Are you in an established relationship then? I don't know. I think we should stick to the letter of it which is that it's okay in an established relationship. What does that mean to you? I mean I know what it means to you and Mrs Hancock. That was exactly how I was going to answer. I know that I'm in an established relationship. What about other people watching this morning? How would you define an established relationship? I think people, it just means that people need to be careful, right? People need to be sensible. And if you're in a relationship that is well established, you know, that's what it means. Is that like six months? What it means is not people realising that by coming into close contact with people in other households, then that is how the virus spreads. So that was obviously a very cringe-worthy interview. You can see why people, single people, people not in established relationships would be pretty annoyed watching that. He's essentially saying, look, if you're not in an established relationship, I've got no answers for you. And also, by the way, yeah, I'm married, so it's fine for me. I don't even have to ask this question about myself. Obviously, if this interview was redone now, they'd be asked, you know, how many established relationships is one allowed to have. We're not sure how long Matt Hancock's affair was going. And obviously, that picture's from May. We don't know if it went back to September. But clearly, that interview would have gone very different if it had happened now. Now, as I say, the context there was people had been allowed to get together with people who were in established relationships. That was more relaxed than in the first lockdown where you couldn't get with anyone unless you actually lived with them. Later, during the winter lockdown, that changed again, though they tightened the restrictions and took away that clause whereby if you were in an established relationship, you could get with someone. So it went basically back to you can only have intimate relations if you live with a person. In February this year, a member of the public asked Matt Hancock about that decision. Why has the government removed guidance from last summer, allowing couples in established relationships not to socially distance from each other? And what would stop support bubbles being extended to allow couples to see each other again without limits on social contact? Well, thanks, Hannah. We made the change that we did to, because as we went into the lockdown over the autumn in November and then again at the start of January, we wanted to make sure that we did everything we possibly could to stop this from spreading. And I'm absolutely sure that the actions that everybody has taken and the sacrifices that people have made have had that very, very positive impact. We do look of course at the support bubbles. We hold all these rules under review, but the purpose of the support bubbles is so that people living on their own can't socialise because we know just how difficult it is to live on your own if you have no contact at all. So that's the reason for that support bubble. So again, Matt Hancock was fairly dismissive about this young woman asking him, when is this going to change? What if I want to get with someone who I don't live with? He said, well, look, we're only saying you can break these rules or you can escape the social distancing rules if you're in a bubble because you live on your own. Essentially, he's saying, look, you can only move alongside the rules or get this opt out if you're in a really desperate situation, which is that you live alone. He's saying, if you live with friends, then I'm sorry, I've got nothing for you. Clearly, what he's done here makes it seem as if he wasn't willing to make similar sacrifices. We have one more clip for you to show Matt Hancock's hypocrisy. And this is actually probably the most significant one, because there is here actually, I suppose, the exact mirror image of what's happened today, which is there was someone who was responsible for lockdown rules or who shared responsibility for lockdown rules. This time it was Neil Ferguson, a top epidemiologist who sits on Sage, as you'll probably remember. In May 2020, he had to stand down because he had invited over a lover to his house. That was, of course, during the first lockdown when it was banned. Let's take a look at how Matt Hancock responded at the time. It's extraordinary. And I don't understand speechless. I am. That doesn't often happen to me, Kay. I know. But I am. And, you know, Mr. Ferguson is a professor. Ferguson is a very, very eminent and impressive scientist. And the science that he's done has been an important part of what we've listened to. And I think that it's a, I think that he took the right decision. To resign. Yeah, you wouldn't have thought to keep him. It's just not, that's just not possible in these circumstances. Aaron, I want to bring you in on this because the weight of evidence there that Matt Hancock wouldn't have fought his own actions were acceptable and spoke as if he would be rather judgmental if someone had behaved in the way he had done. It does seem that, I mean, on the hypocrisy grounds, he doesn't have a leg to stand on whatsoever, does he? No. Not in the slightest. You know, if laborer on top of social media, Michael, which of course, they're not, but, you know, things can change. This evening, they would put 20 grand behind Facebook ads, talking about Matt Hancock and sharing that clip, because it's just, it's just deceptive. I mean, to be doing it in real time, it's one thing to say, and then he breaks the rules. I mean, we don't know the full facts, but it appears that this has been a relatively longer relationship. We have to, we have to obviously get on top of that. If that is the case, and he really just looks like an utterly duplicitous rat, you know, in more ways than one, because what was going on with the other liaison with Neil Ferguson was ultimately, you know, a relatively harmless relationship between two consenting adults. This was two, but look, there's a wife and three children involved. And by the way, they found out about it through the Sun newspaper. So I mean, it's just really, really poor. And you know, going back as well, Michael, to what we were saying earlier, that, you know, private lives that matter and so on and so forth, I do feel like when there are children involved, people don't necessarily buy that as much. And there are three kids involved. I mean, they're young adults, they're teenagers, but still, I think, I think he is in trouble. I've already said it. I think he's either going to resign or be pushed out. We possibly, and I'm pushing this back to you now, Michael, putting the ball back in your court. Are we going to talk about why this video ended up on the table of the political editor of the Sun newspaper, who's the ex of the partner of the Prime Minister? We're going to do that in one moment. We're going to look at conflicts of interest first. So I do want to, I suppose, in terms of a direct response to what you said, I think probably, you know, everyone agrees that if you have a wife and kids, then secretly cheating on the wife is not necessarily a victimless thing to do. But at the same time, we don't normally see it as a red line whereby you can't be in public office if you've done that because we recognize lots of people are fallible and these things happen, right? So that's why I'm not saying we don't care about infidelity as if it doesn't have any consequences. But I don't think we'd be calling for Matt Hancock to resign if he just had an affair with someone who had nothing to do with government and he hadn't broken any rules. Let me qualify it. So two things. I'm just saying it's qualitatively different to what happened with Neil Ferguson. I think that's just, obviously, people are going to try and draw an equivalence between these two justifiably. But I think this is worse. Secondly, no, I agree with you. I personally wouldn't. But I can see why a conservative voter would say I'm not voting for somebody because that's what they did to their three children there, their wife or husband. I can see why somebody would think that. But they've already voted for Boris Johnson. So presumably, it's not a red line for them. No, we just observe it here. And you're absolutely right. No, all the evidence is out. Look at Farage, look at Boris Johnson. You know, actually, personal behavior in these areas, it doesn't seem particularly doesn't seem a game changer anymore like it used to, maybe with the perfume affair, for instance, in the 1960s. Let's go to some comments. Shlendra Singh with a fiver, inveterate liar, shamelessly corrupt, brazen nepotis, flagrant, re-incompetent, certified cheat. Hancock finally joins the Tory Great Hall of Shame. Very well, but finally, Alexia Wiley tweets on the hashtag Tisgy Sour. Hancock should go and so should Johnson for among other things, keeping the useless lump on for this long. Now, if you watched our show on Dominic Cummings' testimony to the Health and Science Select Committee, you'll know that there is one theory as to why Boris Johnson has kept Matt Hancock on. And that's because he wants him to be the head that rolls after the COVID-19 inquiry. So he's saying, I need someone who I can, you know, throw to the wolves when our government gets found to be incompetent and responsible for a bunch of deaths. So he wants to keep him on until that point in time. Let's go on to the conflict of interest question. This is the other big problem which Matt Hancock's kiss on camera poses. And for this section, we can go actually back to a Sunday Times report from November, because even before this image of the snog came out, there were concerns arising over the appointment of Collard Angelo. And this is because she was appointed and she was already Matt Hancock's very, very close friend. So they refer to Collard Angelo in the interview in the article, sorry, as Hancock's closest friend from university. They also report that in March Hancock secretly appointed her as an unpaid advisor at the Department of Health and Social Care on a six month contract. She accompanied Hancock 42 to confidential meetings with civil servants and visited number 10 Downing Street. Now here, what the government always said, Oh, these are unpaid advisors. It doesn't matter. There's no questions of corruption here, because it's not public money. Why that doesn't really stand up is because these were people who had enormous extraordinary access to decision makers at the top of government. And it was often done in a very untransparent way. This obviously leads to many suspicions about conflicts of interest. And here, the Sunday Times also, I suppose, raised reasons for suspicions or doubts about the appropriateness of this particular hire. So the Sunday Times reported that Luther Pendragon, so that's the lobbying firm in which Collard Angelo is a director, both clients who have secured lucrative contracts during the pandemic, including British Airways, who got 70 million pounds and Accenture, which received 2.5 million pounds to help build the COVID-19 app. So we've seen this time and time again. This is someone who is at the top of government. Now we're not in a position to say whether that decision was corrupt, but it obviously raises many a question. As I've already said, as well, her initial role was unpaid. It didn't stay unpaid. So Collard Angelo later in the year was appointed to a different role. The Times report in September, Hancock appointed Collard Angelo as a non executive director at the Department of Health, meaning that she is a member of the board that scrutinizes the department. There is no public record of the appointment which will see her earn at least 15,000 pounds of taxpayers' money and which could rise by a further 5,000 pounds. Now for me, the part that strikes out there isn't so much the 15,000 pounds that she's going to get paid because these are very rich people. I kind of feel like those, I mean, even if that's a very significant amount of money to me or you, I feel like to these people, 15 grand, how big a risk are they going to take for it? I'm not sure. The bit that really stands out for me here is that her job was to scrutinize Matt Hancock's department. So she was appointed by Matt Hancock to scrutinize Matt Hancock. So you've already got, you know, it shows a ridiculous way that our government functions where you've got loads of people who appoint the people who are supposed to hold them accountable. But then also you have this other layer of, I mean, this ridiculousness, I suppose, which is that the person who is supposed to hold Matt Hancock to account is seemingly in a relationship with Matt Hancock in a secret relationship with Matt Hancock. Aaron, how big a concern do you think these corruption suspicions will be when it comes to this case? The government have been able to basically escape much scrutiny when it comes to questions of corruption, even though there has been so many causes for concern, do you think they'll be confident they can do the same thing again this time around? You know, going back to the Dominic Cummings thing, we've said that's the one time that the Tories were on the ropes in terms of poll ratings. Some people said, oh, Stun was doing so well in August. I mean, he was doing quite well. He was doing okay. But what put Labour really high, that was that peak was the Dominic Cummings kind of saga. I suppose that would be an argument that he could make. Actually, it was always time limited. But what are we looking at with that now, the downside is that actually Dominic Cummings, after being pushed out, had a great deal of dirt on Boris Johnson. I guess, again, I'd push the story a step further and say, yes, there's a lot of sleaze here, a lot of scandal, potentially, you know, apparent conflicts of interest. But if you're the Tories and you're carrying on with that all the time, we have an example now where if you push somebody out, because of that, they're actually a lot more damaging on the outside than they are on the inside. And you wonder the extent to which there is compromising information on Boris Johnson or other people in the government, which Manhawk presently has. Now, normally, you wouldn't say that normally, right? Normally, when people run governments, there's a great deal of distance between various departments, the problem is that runs thing, 10 Downing Street is, you know, as a real, it has a lot of executive functions kind of centralized. But I think because of the nature of the crisis that they went through, and the ad hoc nature of many of the responses, both for better and for worse, I do feel like probably Manhawk has a lot more leverage in this going forward than we might suspect. And so again, you know, it's really, really hard to say because the corruption thing is terrible. But you know, that's what we know about. And so I suppose there's an element of damage limitation with the Tories, do you just carry on with that and take the hit, or do you push the guy out precisely for that? And frankly, he's quite liable to, you know, talk about even more of it. So I guess I've made an argument as to why they would get rid of him, make him resign or fire him. I suppose that's not a sort of counter argument as to why they wouldn't do that. Again, going back to the sort of the electorate's response to this stuff, so far, it doesn't have much of an impact that could change, you know, by 2024, we could be out of this crisis. This is what Labour obviously are banking on, I think is a very dangerous thing to bank on. But it's not entirely absurd. It makes sense. It's a plausible outcome. But right now that doesn't seem to have the impact. But it's also important to say, Michael, we shouldn't just talk about these corruption stories as, oh, well, it doesn't matter, it's not coming through in the polls. Because firstly, that's the job of journalists to translate these stories and transmit them to the public at large. And what really angers me is one of the first sort of lines you'll hear when this story comes out, whether it's, you know, BBC World at 1 or PM or whatever, it's almost always the BBC because they try to think a level above, you know, the tabloids. And they'll say, well, will this cut through? You know, are people already paying attention? You know, don't second guess what people are thinking, just report the facts. But from what we know, people don't seem to care that much, particularly when you've got what, 81, 82% of people now have had their first vaccine, you're having, you know, the number of countries people can travel to expand it, albeit very slowly, you're looking at a relatively good fit year for the UK economy compared to what was previously thought. So I think given all that, this kind of is a second order problem. I think the relentless focus on corruption by Labour probably won't be that productive in the short term. We'll see. We are going to finish the segment on that last issue you mentioned earlier, which is the provenance of this image. So the image is from CCTV footage from the Department of Health. So it wasn't a paparazzi shot. It was clearly leaked by someone, either a security guard or a security guard who'd been tipped off or a political opponent of Matt Hancock. We don't know. I want to go to some speculation from former Chief Prosecutor Nazir Afzal. He tweeted this morning to think that the Prime Minister has thrown his Health Secretary Matt Hancock to the wolves for an affair and not his handling of the worst pandemic in a century. These are images from within his office, not paparazzi. You don't get them without high-level access. Don't let them play us for fools. So the suggestion there seems to be the means by which this image found its way to the front page of the sun had, I mean, I think the implication here is that it had something to do with the Prime Minister. Presumably it could be another political enemy of Matt Hancock. The other option is it was just someone who was in the security guard who watches cameras, et cetera, who took a picture of this and sold it to the sun. The problem there is that how would they have happened to be watching that camera at that particular moment in time? I would have thought probably this was someone who was tipped off to say, by the way, if you look at Matt Hancock's office, you might see something that is worth selling to the sun. What's your position on this, Aaron? I mean, obviously, I'm not expecting a concrete answer, but what do you think of the plausible scenarios here? Yeah, I think it's highly likely that somebody's done this, obviously, to stir the proverbial shit. You have to understand as well, the sort of close you get to the top of politics, it is just factions galore. It is people who are like, we want no factions. It's just factions. In Keir Starmer's office right now, there'll be people trying to undermine other people. The Ben Nunn story, for instance, that's probably somebody in the office releasing that to undermine him. That was meant to go out a little bit later. With Boris Johnson in the government, you have faction upon faction upon faction. Now, normally when things are going really well, if you're a political success story, that's pushed down a little bit. With the Blair Brown years, for a long time, what was a really ferocious rivalry and real animosity at times was really kept down actually for really 97 until 2005, even through the Iraq war. The question is, you have to be a very successful politician, thatcher is another one. In order to not have those shark circling, David Cameron, of course, famously had it with Boris Johnson and the vote leave faction within his, they weren't necessarily on the front bench a lot of the time. I mean, Michael Gove was, but there were very powerful elements within the Conservative Party who were trying to undermine him fundamentally, particularly with Brexit. That's why Boris Johnson went with vote leave. I think that's probably what's happening here. But again, like you said, you can't discount the possibility that it's some outsourced security staff worker or whatever, and they're saying, you know what, that's five grand, that's 10 grand. I mean, maybe, but the lesson of the last 30, 40 years, if anybody's familiar with how the tabloids in this country have operated, is generally speaking, this stuff is placed by political rivals, generally speaking, because for the sun, you know, to keep that on record, and then again, this is documented quite widely as to how the murder sort of press uses this stuff as leverage and as a means of exerting influence over politicians and public figures, et cetera. They sort of dangle the sword and they say, if you don't do this, we're going to publish this. If that hasn't happened, which doesn't seem to have happened, then I think it's about internal political rivalries and machinations. Yes. The question is who? You know, again, with this kind of stuff, often people talk about, oh, it could be, it's not the deep state. I'm just saying when you get published sort of CCTV footage of a politician doing something they shouldn't be doing, that can be one sort of answer. I don't think it's anything like that this time. I think it's somebody close to Johnson. And of course, Harry Cole, Harry Cucked Cole is the ex of Boris Johnson's partner, the mother of his child, they're married now, my apologies, the Boris Johnson's wife. So it does seem, it does seem like this is a very brutal political tactic by a rival. Could be wrong, but it seems that way. This is very interesting. So since we've been live, The Guardian have just published a story which says the government will not launch any inquiry into who leaked a photograph of Matt Hancock kissing an aide, even though they believe they know who did it, The Guardian understands. It says Downing Street and Hancock's Department of Health have decided not to instigate any hunt to try to identify who passed the image from a security camera in his ministerial office to the son. So they think they know who it is, but they're still not going to investigate it. Now that is... Can I just come in there quickly, Michael? They want to deal with it informally. Yeah, go on, Aaron, what's your take on that? No, no, that's really remarkable because look, compromising material on senior government officials is like gold dust for foreign states historically, or for particular interests, you know, if they're trying to get awarded government contracts and so on. You absolutely can't have that. You absolutely can't have that. That was the whole thing. Again, going back to the perfumer fair in the 60s, it was seen as, oh my God, this is jeopardizing national security because we have this powerful person who has actually made themselves vulnerable by these, these private sexual exploitation. So a private issue becomes a public scandal. I mean, that's a similar thing here. You cannot allow your top people to be compromised like this and not look into it. That is absolutely outrageous. It means fundamentally it looks that there's a quid pro quo between the leaker, the son, and the prime minister. That's how it looks, right? What other explanation do you have? And it would also indicate you won't resign. So reading the rest of the article, what they're suggesting, so the source familiar with the decision is that they don't want to do a leak inquiry, essentially, because they think whoever leaked it would have grounds to position themselves as a whistleblower because they were revealing wrongdoing on the part of Matt Hancock. So I suppose, you know, if it was just him having an affair, maybe outside of work with nothing to do with his, you know, if no rules were broken, maybe they would do an inquiry, but because they think he is in the wrong, they don't want to do that inquiry because this was wrongdoing being exposed. I imagine they just don't want the story to continue anymore because it's all quite embarrassing. Do you buy that at all? Well, it's not about buying it. I just think that you have to absolutely look into people who can compromise senior government officials because, like I said, that could be an issue of national security. It could undermine, you know, democratically agreed on policy. You can't have that. You cannot have that, Michael. You cannot have that. This is a really, really, really big step if they're not doing that. I mean, it's brazen. You know, it's not just about corruption. It should go beyond party politics. And if one of your ministers has been put in the public eye because of compromising material from a private security camera, that's a really big deal if all of a sudden you're not following up on that. And, you know, and that suggests it's coming from a very high, high place. Allow me to sound conspiratorial for a minute, Michael. I don't think it's the whistleblower thing. I mean, the government can afford to spend money on lawyers. I don't think that for a second. My God, look what happened with Pretty Patel and bullying. I don't think that for a second. No, I think it's about the person who leaked it, not having to face consequences. And I think that, look, the plausible reason why is because they were in hot with people close to the prime minister. Let's go to some comments. Ishtak with a fiver. Thank you very much. How much compliment has daddy Murdoch got? Cummings and now Murdoch shows no honor amongst thieves. It's very evocative description of what seems to be going on. Kath Maguire tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. Some of us have spent many months in social isolation, physically distanced from a range of loved ones, not only practicing sexual abstinence, how dare he impair our relationships while flouting these rules himself. I think I'm reading a lot of very justified anger in that comment. I'm sure lots of people will relate to that sentiment there. Tomorrow Law with a fiver says, thanks for delivering the unfiltered news for us guys. Your work is very much appreciated. Will any of you guys be attending the protest tomorrow? I'm not entirely sure what protest you're referring to. It could be Trans Pride, which is taking place in London tomorrow, which I might well attend. I'm not sure if there's another protest going on. Before we go on to our next section, we do have over 3,000 people watching the show tonight, which is fantastic. If you're new to the show, please do hit subscribe. If you are enjoying what you're watching and you regularly enjoy Navarra media content, please do consider becoming a supporter. You can do that at navarramedia.com slash support. Next story. A shadow cabinet member has told party members that Labour will not be supporting free social care, as it would give the Tories a stick to beat Labour with. Fangham Devenair, Labour's shadow leader of the House of Commons, was speaking at a meeting in the run up to Labour's Women's Conference. She was faced with party members who wanted to put forward a motion in support of free universal social care provided on the model of the NHS. She was pushing back against that proposal. According to Disability News Service, who broke the story, Fangham Devenair told female party members that introducing free social care for disabled and older people would give the Tories a stick to beat Labour with. She apparently claimed that such a policy would cost £100 billion and would cost more than the annual budget of the NHS. She also said that right-wing newspapers would attack the policy and that it would lose Labour the next election. Now, the site reports that Labour have not denied Devenair made such comments. There are two issues, of course, with what Fangham Devenair is reported to have said. The first, and this is a point that the article in Disability News Service really pushed on, is that it could represent another broken promise on the part of Keir Starmer, another U-turn from the Labour leader. Now, on this front, Starmer's support to say there was no U-turn, free social care, free universal social care on the model of the NHS wasn't one of Starmer's 10 pledges. It also wasn't in the 2019 Labour manifesto. In that manifesto, Labour pledged for free personal at-home care. What that doesn't include is care that takes place in a care home, for example. However, and this is what the Disability News Service emphasised, during his leadership campaign, Starmer had said he supported a motion which was passed at the 2019 party conference, which called for all social care to be free. So the motion which was passed at the 2019 conference, which didn't quite make it into the manifesto, had pledged to, and I quote, Make the provision of all social care free to recipients has is the case for healthcare under the NHS. So fairly unambiguous there. Keir Starmer was asked whether he backed that motion by the Disability News Service and they report he said yes. It's very believable because we know that Keir Starmer has broken many a promise which he put forward to the Labour members in that leadership election which he has now abandoned very forthrightly. Now the second issue is about the content of what Fangem Debenair has said. So whether or not this is a U-turn is what she said reasonable. Is it good politics? Most importantly, is it true? So remember Debenair said that providing universal free social care to everyone who needs it would cost £100 billion per year. She also said it would cost more than the NHS. They would be quite striking claims if true. However, Tom Kobassie who was chair of the IPPR think tank and a Starmer supporter tweeted in disagreement with those claims. So he said as IPPR found in 2019 making personal and nursing care free at the point of need just like the NHS would mean spending rising from £17 billion in 2019 to £36 billion in 2030. The increase equals 1.31% points on national insurance. It is emphatically not either £100 billion or more than we spend on the NHS. Now however much it would cost the NHS costs about £150 billion a year. So I'm not really sure which got that figure from but as you can see there they put forward a costed paper which suggested that free social care for all that's both at home and in care homes would cost £36 billion per year. So nothing close to the £100 billion that Fangem Debenair was speaking of as far as I'm aware. She hasn't pointed any journalist to where she got that figure from. Aaron lots of people are very annoyed at these comments both because of the perceived U-turn and also because I mean they don't seem to stand up against the facts. Do you think people are right to be to be as pissed off as they are? Yeah I mean look also particularly because it's Tangam Debenair Michael. It's Tangam Debenair. You know I think two weeks after the 2019 general election she said that Ash Sarkar on BBC Any Questions on BBC Radio 4 should be expelled from the Labour party. Didn't give a reason why. I mean doesn't bode particularly well does it? These are people that look for traitors rather than converts. That claim has always been said about the left but I think it really holds for the Labour right and she's firmly on the Labour right from what I can tell. And then of course she just looked at her behaviour in Bristol West you know before becoming an MP she promised the earth. She's gone apparently acorn demonstrations and now she can't even bring herself to you know advocate for remotely progressive policy when it comes to renters in the middle of a pandemic. So obviously Labour have a position on that but I think it's obviously significantly short of where it needs to be. So Tangam Debenair in particular saying these things has clearly rattled a lot of people up, set a lot of people I think justifiably. This is somebody who's got a 28,000 majority in their constituency of Bristol West. Well it's one of the safest seats that Labour has and I think in the May local elections not all of the wards were up for grabs across the whole of the city because you know local elections are a bit strange like that but Labour did phenomenally poorly in Bristol West, phenomenally poorly and it will absolutely be a target seat for the Greens which is an incredible thing to say because it's a 27,000 majority. I don't think they'll win it although they could but I think they're gonna they're gonna definitely get that majority to below I think 5,000 which is a remarkable thing and it speaks to the extent to which you know Tangam Debenair is just not liked by locals, Labour Party members and you know she doesn't really leave a memorable mark with the public. She's very much a kind of an archetypal Labour politician on the on the shadow front bench right now and there's some great people on the shadow front bench but I think she's sort of not cutting through the public and kind of disliked by her own side and so this this intervention this provocation really was was more of the same and I think it's the certainty she says things with which are clearly wrong and unevidence which really gets people's back up and you saw you know Tom Kabbati's response about that you know the costs of doing what what she says would cost a hundred billion or more than the NHS it's clearly absurd and what I find really remarkable with these people from the Labour right is that they everybody on the left is stupid they think that every on the left has no idea what they're talking about they they we're not sort of based in reality we're not doing evidence-based policy and then they just come up with the most fatuous ridiculous nonsense sort of talking about these minor tweak policies addressing so adjusting the cuff links the public doesn't like it the left don't like it and they're sitting there holding their balls proverbial balls saying oh why why isn't this more popular why am I so disliked why in Bristol did we just lose the majority on the council why am I about to see Bristol West go from 27,000 majorities to potentially losing it this is why because you're not you're not producing thoughtful positive policy right you're doing nothing at all fundamentally we know what the Tory stand for it's helping the rich it's generally speaking reducing taxes it's about bashing immigrants it's about fighting the culture war so what are you for and I think with Thangam de Bonaire she for me personifies that question not being answered right now by Labour Thangam de Bonaire what are you for it turns out not very much and so this story about a care service re-crystallizes that problem so it's it's both about Thangam de Bonaire but it's also so much bigger than her she's really distilling the problem Labour have which is an absence of vision an absence of policy and with an absence of policy and this is something that Stam and his supporters never really got an absence of policy means an absence of political lines which means you can't really distinguish yourself from the government and when you can't distinguish yourself from the government nobody's going to vote for you because you've got nothing to give them to vote for I mean the the thing that annoys me so much about this and what I think is actually one of the worst features of Labour under Keir Starmer is that essentially what you do is you have loads of front-bents politicians who their main argument they're having is with the left of the party they're not really focusing on the Tories at all and so what they keep doing is making right-wing arguments intentionally it seems moving public discourse to the right so we've seen this with Thangam de Bonaire before here's she's saying oh no we can't do social care um because it would be way too expensive and then she massive massively inflates the costs says it would be a hundred billion when it would actually be 37 billion pounds so she's making a right-wing argument that is based in misinformation to essentially try and argue against a policy from the left and we've seen her personally do this before so we've done videos about this before her her comments on rent during the pandemic so she was arguing very strongly oh no we can't have landlords take any losses and one of her arguments for that was to say oh well if a landlord has to sell up it will only get bought by a worse landlord now that is such a false right-wing argument because there's no reason why if a landlord goes out of business that house will get bought by a worse landlord maybe property prices will become a bit more affordable and it will get bought by a family or maybe we could have active councils who recognize that oh there's a flood of housing on the market now because landlords are having a tough time maybe we'll buy them and turn them into social housing no she basically precludes all of those possibilities and says the only way that that politics could go from here is worse so if you want to have change don't because the alternative is worse labor did actually a similar thing on corporation tax there was an argument coming from the government this time that they might raise corporation tax labor start speaking as if they've suddenly you know discovered the laffer curve and they're like no if you increase taxes that will actually damage grow from reduce the tax take like what the hell are you talking about right and it's because they're so terrified of taking left-wing positions that all they're constantly at the intellectual game they're playing is how can we defeat the arguments of the left and if you've got a labor party where the only thing that gets them up in the morning is defeating the arguments of the left which by the way they're not doing very effectively then what is that going to do to British politics it's just going to take ever further to the right and that's what we're seeing happening right now Aaron I want to go back to you on that point and I mean do you agree the the extent to it's probably the most pernicious thing about the labor party I think at the moment is the extent to which they make the Tories arguments for them yeah yeah they are the whole thing about oh it's the Tory B team I mean it's not it's not even the Tory B team it's the sort of academy squad you know it's the they're they're giving the foundations to ideas in real time it's not oh if the Tories lose and these guys are coming in they'll do the exact same thing no they're literally bolstering the Tories in government they're giving the sort of the you know the sort of ideological ramparts the thing about landlords Michael I mean this is I find this unbelievable it's a bit off topic but I just want to talk about it quickly I spent 85,000 pounds in London on landlords I gave 85,000 pounds to landlords in my life between 19 and I think whatever 34 whenever I left 35 right I gave them 85,000 pounds and I couldn't thank them debonair if I hadn't done that then there would have been no incentive for somebody to for me to live I would have been living on the streets what the hell are you talking about 85,000 pounds I was paying with my partner for a one-bed flat and hackney I was paying three times more than my dad's mortgage for a three-bed house in Bournemouth oh but nope this all makes sense in thank them debonair world going back to the Tories Michael and the whole thing about oh if we do this they'll bash us can you imagine can you imagine that the Tories ever saying that you imagine the Tories saying oh look we want to cut taxes for the rich we want to help our mates in the city of London oh we can't do that labor or bash us they'd take good or Boris Johnson you know when when he was talking about uh you know fuck business with Brexit because the Tories knew they had to deliver Brexit otherwise they wouldn't get power and that's what they care about and Boris Johnson went fuck business and I compare that bullseye approach to something like thank them debonair we can't do that I'd love to do it by the way she wouldn't love to do it she wouldn't love to do it because she's not a socialist their entire identity is about being nice than the Tories but not being socialist and when you have this a set of circumstances which which is what we presently do which is the Tories moving left on a bunch of policies and left-wing policy actually being really popular with the public at large the labor are kind of stuck because by default they can't offer popular policies right popular policies and left-wing policies have to be have to be just as a triangle has three sides have to be two separate things in there in their sort of intellectual universe that isn't the case public ownership of rail is popular you know rent controls are popular building more social housing is popular scrapping tuition fees is popular all to varying extents but that these are all popular policies increasing corporation tax increasing tax on the rich or popular but that can't compute through a political robot like thank him David now not just as many other people like her in the parliamentary labor party because like I said it's a fact of nature left-wing policy and popular policy two separate things we'd love to do the left-wing policy but we can't because it's not popular and ultimately you do neither you don't do left-wing policy and you don't do popular policy and then you know they get 150 seats next general election and they say what did all go wrong it went wrong when you opened your mouth it went wrong when you decided to to champion the most ridiculous policy which nobody can even recognize or understand or comprehend that alone support that's where it went wrong will they learn that lesson before 2023 I mean I got I hope so Michael we've got some news for you in a moment which will suggest they might not and first of all a very thoughtful comment from Tom Cornford on the hashtag Tisgy Sour far from giving the Tories a stick to beat labor with free social care could easily fracture their coalition of older homeowners and offer those voters both security in old age and a stake in social justice oh and it's also the right thing to do that is the kind of thinking we need at the top of the labor party right instead laborer saying oh are you worried about care being too expensive when you're older well nothing we can do about it it would just be too expensive right they're saying would you like a better future for yourself ah sorry too difficult you know what's what's the point in your existence if that's all the only arguments you make right we're going to go straight on to our next labor story after securing only 622 votes in the Cheshireman Amish and by-election Keir Starmer responded with a clear out of his top team his director of communications chief of staff and political director have all been sacked in the past seven days we're now getting the first signals as to what kind of people will be replacing them Matthew Doyle has been hired as interim comms director for the labor leader Doyle was head of press and broadcasting for labor between 1998 and 2005 and then went on to serve as Tony Blair's special advisor when he was prime minister and then political director of his office for five years once Blair left Downing Street he was working with all sorts of unsavory people in that time period um he also Doyle also worked on Liz Kendall's failed leadership bid in 2015 and as is the common theme in Starmer's circle Doyle was an ardent backer of the second EU referendum here he is in January 2019 encouraging Jeremy Corbyn to back a so-called people's vote when uh when Jeremy Corbyn picks up his uh Islington tribute this morning he'll see a rather impassioned plea from the next generation of labor activists and labor voters who make the point quite rightly that I think that the only way out of this is for us to have a second referendum there's an open letter on the inside which essentially sets out the challenge that says that basically all the issues that Jeremy Corbyn speaks about none of them will mean be made better by Britain leaving the European Union and that ultimately there is no deal that is better than the deal we have at the moment which is why there needs to be a final say referendum so Doyle has been hired I suppose to try and stem the tide away from labor in the red wall he was um one of the big pushes of the policy that completely condemned labor in all of those parts of Britain and we saw him make all of those arguments just sound so so tired now as well don't they um Aaron this is supposed to be a temporary hire he's only supposed to be interim director of communications while they advertise for a bigger hitter does that mean we can't infer much from his appointment or or what do you make of it well quickly Michael that that sky clip you if you want to talk about how you know there's an element of kind of we're a managed democracy when it comes to the media you have Adam Bolton on one side his wife is Angie Hunter she worked for Tony Blair he's very close to all the Blairites you've got Matthew Doyle who worked for David Blunkett close to Peter Manelson worked for Liz Kendall and between them you've got the lady who subsequently became the head of PR for the Sun newspaper right and these these were the people saying well what's in the best interest of Jeremy Corbyn if he wants to win the next general election we're being honest by the way come on wow I mean that is just that that is just the distillation of all that's so dysfunctional and toxic in our media that was not about having a conversation about the the actors and the ideas and the and the policies that was that was an act of political communication that is where you find a weakness in your enemy and you keep on going and you expose and you dig and you you get in there right that's not journalism that's political communications that's what Fox News does and it was happening there Matthew Doyle in terms of who he is people are saying oh well it'll be like the Blair is he was there in the good old days Matthew Doyle was working for David Blunkett I think in 2006 that was not the good old days that was when people were saying that Tony Blair has to resign every other week right that was the tail end of Blairism that was when the thing was in free fall Gordon Brown comes in ratings go up again but it didn't last very long let's remember 2010 led about 28.5% of the popular vote much lower than 2019 people don't like to talk about it so the idea that this guy's going to come in and change things uh look my view is and I've been told this by a few sources quite senior sources in the Labour Party he's there as Mandelson's man nothing more nothing less and it's about the Labour right particularly Labour first the securing control of the leader's office particularly off the batley in spend because when Labour lose if they lose seems quite likely right now things can change there's a week left if and when Labour lose there's going to be an escalation by the leader's office to impose political control either that has to happen or Kirsten has to resign right we'll talk about that more in a bit all he thinks he can just sort of shamble on zombie like to conference I don't think that's plausible so that's how we should look at it Michael this is not about recruiting the best to upgrade Labour's game it's about having a fixer in there who can help them do the dirty while they show off the left and focus on the one thing right focus on the one thing that Stammer said he wouldn't be about he said I'm a unifier we're about winning national elections that was never the plan it was about destroying the left and ignoring national elections for as long as that took the point is they never thought it would get this bad this quickly because you're running against the government and you lose two by elections out of three to them but you previously held the seat that hasn't happened in a very very long time and I don't think Stammer can survive it so this guy is coming in here almost like you know he's like the wolf and pulp pulp fiction who can we get in there to sort of to you know give loads of front have loads of Marcy have the temerity to stand up when people say he needs to resign and to do a job over several weeks several months whereby the right can take further control of the party even though we've got a lame duck leader that's why he's there we've got a comment from Greg McGregor with a fiver who says Aaron roasting fangham and the Labour right has caused me to ascend spiritually stay strong kings someone enjoying your roasting there Aaron she deserves it she deserves she's the worst MP Labour have I mean it's a really strong competition right you've got Neil coil you've got some other people but she's the worst politician they have look she's got 27,000 majority Michael if that gets to like less than 5,000 majority it's humiliating for her I think she could lose it I really do because you've got a lot of anti-labour sentiment in Bristol right now you've got a very strong Green Party they may just focus on that one seat and the whole thing of we need to back Labour to get the Tories out well that's not going to work in Bristol West because the Greens are second so watch this space she deserves the roasting because she's not very good at big politician and that's and that's look that's her problem if you're bad at something that's your problem no it's our problem we've got somebody moving the dial right when it comes to social care it's our problem if you if you're you know the idea oh we people won't be able to afford it people can't already afford it right people buy a house they they pay off their mortgage our entire life and then this is going to make you sound very conservative you know you should obviously pay inheritance tax that pass it on to your kids or whatever and then they they they pay three quarters the actual in the house goes to their social care right well you've got you know and that's just like lower middle class people it's already expensive thing and the fact you don't understand that shows how out touch you are with working class people right the people you're meant to represent anyway fox is cutting me off here that's why michael he just he replaced your head with my head while you were still speaking I suppose that was a subliminal message being delivered there we're going to go on to our final story we are less than a week away from the battalion spend by election and the contest seems to be getting increasingly dirty on the one hand as we talked about on previous shows outriders for the labor right are getting ready to blame a labor defeat on supposedly racist and homophobic muslim voters those are lines coming from both labor sources and centrist journalists at the same time there are some genuinely unsavory activists piling into the constituency earlier today a video from byline tv showed labor candidate kim led beta getting confronted in the street this is where I live this is my community don't come here and shout at me in the street the muslim community of battalion spend deserve better than this they deserve better than this we are we're the community I'm asking you are you going to support muslim parents do not walk away because you don't want their children to learn about lgbt double nature are you supporting us kim come on here answer the question why are you running kim I'm here to talk to you are you going to support muslim parents who don't want their children to learn about yeah so speak to this gentleman we are gonna chase labor we are gonna chase labor every step now that was a really really horrible video on every account you've got to remember kim led beta her sister five years ago was killed in the constituency by a far right activist so to have a group of men aggressively haranguing her in the street is really really horrible to watch at the same time some important background there is that kim led beta is a gay and so you've got these people shouting at her are you going to be backing lgbt education in schools really really well I mean obviously it's outright homophobic but also she's clearly being targeted because of her own sexuality to absolutely appalling disgusting it's also important that the man harassing kim led beta isn't in any way representative of the muslim community in battalion in fact he's not even from battalion and so he's called shakil afsar and he was one of the leaders of the anti lgbt protests in Birmingham in 2019 there's actually an interview with oan jones of him from those protests back then so he is not a representative constituent he's a he's a reactionary and a troublemaker now the original tweet from byline tv identified afsar as a george galloway supports obviously george galloway who's who's standing against labour ostensibly to try and get rid of ki stama now that was also repeated by ki stama by the way that this was a george galloway and support for a part of his campaign now that has been pushed back against by galloway so he tweeted today the extremist who harassed my labour opponent today has i'm told previously been thrown out by my security from one of my public meetings he is a provocateur however um despite that attempt for george galloway or by george galloway to distance himself from um this this activist or this provocateur speaking to byline tv after that incident kim led beta told them or said that galloway had in fact been laughing on the other side of the road sadly over the last sort of 24 hours things have become slightly less civil and it's been a tough day today i have to be honest we were out campaigning outside one of the local mosques and suddenly and then suddenly there was a big group of mainly men i would say who sat at shouting at me in the street trying to say they were asking me questions but they certainly wouldn't give him any chance to answer any questions um some of them not local um george galloway was at the other side of the street laughing and i was extremely intimidated and this is not good for our area this is not what people need i don't need this my family don't need this and our community doesn't need it that is not how politics should be done we need debate we need discussion we probably need disagreement but we don't need abuse and we don't need intimidation um but i am worried about some of the um more sinister elements of um other people's campaign shall we say and it's very upsetting to think that other people think they've got a right to come in and cause disruption and so division it's the last thing this community needs so what we're seeing here is on the one hand as we've talked about on previous shows an obvious attempt by labor outriders to tar the general populace of batley as reactionaries but we're also seeing i mean as you saw from that clip and that response from kid led me to that this is actually becoming quite a an unpleasant by election in in many ways that scene i think everyone who watches this show will agree was was appalling um how this fits into a broader narrative about the by election is a difficult question though lots of people saying different things online lots of people who've been on the ground and here i'm going to defer to you aron because you were there last week and in fact you have a feature on the by election published today on the website at navaramedia.com i do recognize checking that out um so having been there um only a week ago aron what's your reaction to the video we just showed of kim levy to getting harassed essentially by an activist who wasn't from the constituency but you know he's trying to tap into something i suppose yep so on the one hand you've got obviously the backstory about you know the school teacher in batley i'm surprised in a way it didn't happen sooner even if galloway didn't stand you know you've had issues with the uh the reform party laurance foxtron i got there i believe we're talking on friday night i believe tommy rominson's going there tomorrow um there is a there's a large minority population their large muslim population not just kashmiri also gujarati and so it could be something of a flashpoint for the far right you had bmp counselors in the area i think 15 years ago uh so it's it's it's going to be a very volatile situation of course the tragic death of joe cox in 2016 so i should say death the murder of joe cox by a fascist so it was always going to be quite uh potentially you know politically volatile situation especially like i say with the teacher more recently my experience when i was in batley and span was really good the people i met were really nice and that included uh people who were going to vote labor uh people that were going to vote for galloway i even met some ex-labor members who were going to vote for galloway under no illusions i should add and i tried to put that as as best as possible down on the piece because i think a lot of the the shibbolets and the kind of the assumptions that are made around this are really they're very frustrating you know one is oh why don't local people understand that galloway is a charlotte and he's in it for himself many of them think that and they're still going to vote for him or um you know uh it's all about palestine yes palestine is one issue but this is also a place which is seen as magistrate clothes it's prison clothes seen as a and e downgraded the minute you get into batley as a town batley and spent in several towns in one village the minute you get into batley as a town you realize the roads are really shocking and it's like all of those really important things for those people which really matter are completely sidelined by the national media because they want to talk about the personalities and people have pushed back on my piece about galloway why don't you say that he's xyz you want to google george galloway you can see a thousand one stories talking about that i want to talk about people in batley and spend what they care about why they're voting the way they're going to vote because realistically galloway may come second he may come third i think it's very unlikely he's going to win but he's going to get a lot of votes and we have to examine why that's not because all the people voting for him are stupid or racist far from it and it's a very broad range of people that i spoke to by the way that will be voting for him that's a really important story and fundamentally i think if you can understand that story you can get a really good grasp on why labor has such big problems right now really big problems and they're not going away by the way they're going to intensify they're going to get much much worse of course solidarity with kim led by today disgusting scenes and i think they shouldn't just be condemned i think george galloway needs to make quite substantive measures and moves to sort of stop people doing that and really trying to discredit it you know in a really you know in a really strong and affirmative way but that's not that is not the story that is not the story the story is about left behind places in this country and it's you know it's mocked by the media oh left behind because naja forage is the champion of left behind no there are some places which really are left behind the number of people who are economically inactive and badly is really high the high street is is has been totally smashed people i spoke to gonna vote galloway said 15 years ago the high street was lovely and now it's all just takeaways right as much as people like a takeaway you need more on the high street those are the things that the media should be talking about but they're not there's been that piece there was oh and jones brilliant video people should watch that and there was a great piece by maya in the guardian a piece of reportage but other than that you're basically and sorry i should say lewis goodall at news night too other than that you're not seeing the journal sort of the journalistic industry the media are not covering what matters to these people and i think that explains a great deal about the sort of levels of political apathy we see in this country do you think though that i mean you say that george galloway should come out strongly against this and try and stop it happening i mean in a way i think you know it's hard for any leader to stop anyone doing something in their name i mean in this case it's not even clear you know that that harassment was done in his his name at the same time that we do we do know that george galloway as well as running on a sort of like i'm pro palestine and anti labor does run on nowadays a sort of social socially conservative platform where he's always railing against woke culture and gender identity etc etc so it does seem to me that whilst he is you know happy to distance himself from this person who's harassed kim led beta i think he seems quite reluctant to actually speak out in in favor of gay rights because he thinks that that might lose him some votes and that he is leaning into as well as talking about you know important issues like palestine and cashmere he is trying to make sure that he doesn't put off anyone who is socially conservative and homophobic because he is desperate to court their their votes do you think that's an unfair characterization of the strategy he's pursuing here i think it's plausible i think it's an important point to make michael i mean do i think that george galloway has a problem with gay people i don't think there's any i mean his stuff on trans rights i think that's a different conversation in terms of you know gay people i've not seen the evidence i mean if people can submit that i think his person position on trans rights is somewhat different and obviously i don't agree with it but what you're saying about he would never call these things out he would never sort of publicly admonish anybody who who may be a social conservative i think that's correct but you know he's not unique in doing that you know there are many many conservative mps and i think actually many labor mps who who lean into those same things but because he's a one man band it's a lot easy to pick out you know brexit was a classic example you know i don't think brexit was racist but clearly there were many many racist arguments anti-migration arguments that went into the brexit debate and many mps knew that many people who vote for them in their constituency labor mps knew that many people in their constituencies would no longer vote labor if they say actually immigration is good you know so i think that's a sort of tendentious argument in so much as that applies to all politicians now the question is how destructive is it well i think in this immediate context it's a seat where an mp was murdered it's where a woman is being confronted by a group of men i think in that particular context yes you need to have a really strong you know sort of questioning of of his views on these things but i think it is unfair to say he uniquely as a politician sort of gives gives these things can't blanch because i think i think lots of politicians do that i think that's that's a lot of politics michael i don't agree with it you know again it's one of those things where on navara we talk about these things i obviously don't agree with it i'm a passionate defender and supporter of lgbtq rights if if if there was a political party that was a postman anyway i wouldn't vote for it but i i do think it's unfair and inaccurate to say that all parties don't participate in what you're talking about to a degree no i don't think it's exceptional but i do i do think that it's uh grotesque i suppose to be fighting a campaign against a gay woman who's being harassed essentially for being gay and not saying anything um which suggests you're supportive of lgbtq rights because you're courting people who don't believe in lgbtq rights i think you know that there is something quite morally disgusting about that i suppose and i'm not saying that's completely exceptional i mean i know there are loads of politicians who do this about all sorts of issues i mean we talked about it a lot on this show when it comes to gypsy travelers for example but just i mean i think it is worth you know being clear here that galloway's refusal to come out in favor of gay rights is a real real real problem no i mean i said that at the start i said i i i said he should have a really strong position on this he should he should condemn it in the strongest possible terms and he should say he should say explicitly solidarity with kim ledbetter this is not in my name and and take concrete steps to stop it i mean when i was in when i was in batley and spen and talking to various people around his campaign they were aware that these elements do exist and that they would come in uh and these are two separate questions in a way michael so on the one hand this gentleman is not part of the campaign the people that were intimidating her are not part of the campaign but then you're separately saying because of george galloway's and that's one let's put that into a discrete box for a second and there's a separate point you're saying where george galloway needs to publicly state his support for lgbt rights because of this first thing i mean they're two they're two separate questions the first thing is reprehensible the first thing is reprehensible the second thing i i don't agree with i don't think it's progressive i don't think a socialist has that position but i do think they're different i think the first thing kind of makes you a monster right the second thing i think again we're saying lots of politicians behave like this if i was in batley and spen people say oh you support galloway if i was in batley and spen my my preferred candidate would be kept kim ledbetter i think a lot of people feel like this kim led better for me is the best candidate but a lot of people also look at kerkeli's council which is labor was labor run they look at kia starma and they say i like kim led better but not as a labor candidate so if i live there personally i mean i'll be honest i probably wouldn't vote i probably wouldn't vote or i'd vote kim led better but and the what's really telling here michael is that the labor aren't going after the tories they're going after george galloway the reason being i think because the tories have got this sewn up already and it's about coming second that's my suspicion and that's the kind of that's the kind of the subtext that the attacks on galloway yes of course it's justified because there's something something appalling and abhorrent happened today but i think we're going to see more of this over the coming days because the enemy for for labor now in batley and spen it's not the tories at george galloway that tells you again something quite big about the kind of erosion of of the red wall and batley and spen is not a typical red wall c it was conservative till 1997 has a large muslim population but you know i mean that is really telling michael if you said four months ago labor will lose hearty pool by 7 000 votes and they'll be targeting george galloway and the batley and spen by election your jaw would have dropped and you would have said wow we gear stomach and not survive that the question is kenny we've got a final question um side chambers side chambers with 10 pounds asks or says i read aran's excellent article on the upcoming by election as he's been to batley can he confirm whether keith is now cutting through did you hear anyone complain about keith starmer yeah two people two people both called him keith two people two separate people called him keith one one i think is referred to in a guardian piece or was in no one's video there's that guy at sort of a chai shop kept on calling him keith but it was it was a couple of people calling him keith yeah and i looked to impress this point i'm sorry if you can hear my dog barking i think you've seen the cat in the garden uh to impress this point you know i i spoke to a bunch of people and they were all so angry with labor michael british muslims pakistanis like i say gudjaratis as well they all knew about the iftar story all of them knew about the iftar story they all thought labor that so that basically labor has problems with bds which by the way a vast majority of labor members support bds against israel they all knew about sort of keith starmer's positioning over islamophobia not doing very much about it and that they were all familiar with the fact that you know labor had made a big statement saying that israel has a right to defend itself and they said well why not palestine and again it cuts this point michael that we repeatedly hear oh these votes are stupid or they're racist a lot of these people are very politically literate very politically literate highly informed and they're making decisions actually with quite a lot of information right you might not agree with them i don't mind i agree with them labor members might not agree with them but they're not making them from the position of ignorance and for me this is a bit of a rerun of the sort of brexit vote people go if you voted brexit you must be stupid you mustn't have all you don't have all the information yeah okay that's some people but some people just don't agree with you some people think that sovereignty matters more than economic outcomes right that and then you have a separate argument about well what sovereignty in the 21st century that's fine that wasn't the debate we had in 2016 by the way so you know it really does irritate me because a lot of these people are making their decisions to back galloway and they've got really good information and you know they don't agree with and you'll hear it repeatedly i spoke to an amazing young woman she ran a low collection there early this year she got 620 votes as an independent quite good she's now back in galloway she was a labor member for six seven years she's 25 years old she's a youth worker and she said labor around here isn't isn't doing the business they take batley and spend they take batley and click heat and other parts of the constituency for granted because the council also includes huddersfield and all the resources and all the care i mean you might say well that's not true that's what she was saying goes to huddersfield and not to us sort of town huddersfield i think is a town but the sort of town versus city thing in microcosm and you know she's a 25 year old woman youth worker was delivering packages to people through sort of mutual aid during covid 19 sending these food packages to vulnerable people you know and and according to people on twitter this lady is a starliness she must be a homophobe she must be a racist no she's none of those things right 25 year old social campaign a hugely impressive young woman she's exactly the sort of person that labor should be hanging on to to become counselors instead they said to her no you won't be a counselor for 10 years so wait your turn and she decides to do her own thing and so you know i think it's really important michael we don't just label all these people these thousands of people you know as this one thing and you again i saw it on twitter journalists in their 60s saying i met george galloway it was john sweeney i met george galloway in 1990 he said starlin was good if you're driving through batley and you're worried about the the school and you're worried about in terms of its academic performance and you're worried about the rows and you're worried about jobs and your kids can't get housing he don't care about george galloway and what he said about starlin in 1990 you're being told by george galloway great catchphrase it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease i'll make the most noise i'll get the best deal for you right and you look at the potential downside if you're somebody in batley and spend well there's an 80 majority right now for the tories what difference is 81 make and that is a really compelling argument for galloway and why people either won't bother voting why bother voting what difference does it make in a general election they probably would vote labor but not a by-election or voting for george galloway another one you know another sort of shibboleth oh well in bradford he was terrible i met people from bradford west and they said no he was a really good mp he saved the odian building i've never heard this before why because i don't live there we never hear this from the national media he saved the odian building according to them he got uh westfield finally to invest in the city and he saved the national media museum that's what they said i said what's he achieved in bradford they say three things really really big things again sort of pundits in london don't know any of this and they write it off and they say well anybody who thinks this guy you know is worth listening to you they must be stupid and racist and idiots well there we are and as well wrote the piece michael because what matters is reporting about the people of batley and spend and their concerns and their anxieties not george galloway george galloway in a way is really insignificant all those things will still be there after july the first win or lose george galloway right and he probably won't win they'll all still be there and labor will still have that problem with that coalition of people and there'll still be huge misgivings about the local labor council and there'll still be huge problems around austerity and lack of investment in public services so we can't just glaze over all that and keep on talking about the personalities on social media that is not good for the left it is terrible for that if we've been doing it for 10 years look where we are very interesting thoughts i'm glad you you went up to batley so that we can get your your insights on this and we of course will be talking a lot about the batley and spend by election it happens next fursday it's going to be a huge moment for for labor whatever the result potentially for britain um we are going to leave it there for now arabic science been an absolute pleasure as always being joined by you this friday night thank you for having me sorry for for my dog going bananas outside i hope it didn't ruin people's listening experience i it barely came through in my head fans um thank you as ever for watching tisky sour um if you do want to support the work we do please go to 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