 The battle between Manchester United start Marcus Rashford and Downing Street over free school meals has resumed this week So in round one Rashford campaign for free school meals to continue over the summer holidays So normally free school meals are something you get when you go into school because of the lockdown because schools were closed They were introduced as vouchers The government had argued that they wouldn't be giving out those vouchers during the summer term because it's not during the summer holidays Apologies because it's not the normal time When kids would get free school meals Rashford launched a really successful campaign against that got loads of against the fact that they'd be cut For the summer holidays got loads of traction and ended up getting support from the Labour Party who put forward an opposition motion Which looked like it it was going to win and the government had to u-turn so people on low incomes got vouchers for free school meals throughout the summer What Marcus Rashford has noticed now and why we're in round two of this fight It's because whilst the government were willing to pay for free school meal vouchers in the summer For for students on low income sort of accepting that in the coronavirus crisis People are short of cash and you shouldn't let kids go hungry in the summer during a global pandemic I mean in my mind you shouldn't let them go hungry any time about I'm putting you in the head of the Tory logic on this But they don't want to do the same for this half term and for the Christmas holidays, even though as You know anyone can see we're still in the middle of a global pandemic and loads of people are out of work And it's a it's gonna be a really difficult Christmas for for many people Marcus Rashford has rightly come out and said You know you need to do this again You need to provide school meal vouchers for people over half term and over the winter He's been promoting a petition and let's get up the tweet from Marcus Rashford, which was from late last week So this is sort of really sparking and the next round In this in this battle and so Marcus Rashford tweeted the British public care 225 K and rising and then I linked to the petition Which at this point 225 K people have signed we will accept no less than the free ask. There are 1.5 million children We are not reaching with the free school meal scheme because of the universal credit cap 1.5 million children in the UK in 2020 with no support and then we can go take a look at those free demands And so it says the expansion of free school meals to every child from a household on universal credit or equivalent Reaching an additional 1.5 million seven to 16 year olds Expansion of holiday provision food and activities to support all children on free school meals reaching an additional 1.1 million children and free increasing the value of the healthy start vouchers to 4 pound 25 per week and Expanding into all those on universal credit or equivalent reaching an additional 290,000 pregnant women and children under the age of four now I mean something that Marcus Rashford is very good at doing I mean obviously using his platform to try and achieve, you know, great ends is he put stuff in, you know It's so difficult to disagree with that. How can you disagree with giving enough money so that kids can have Good meals throughout the school holidays. How could you possibly oppose that? Well, there was a vote on it today in Parliament So just like last time Labour have sort of backed up Marcus Rashford's campaign by putting forward an opposition debate This time it went to a vote and it lost So conservative MPs voted against the free school meals for a for a million children It was defeated at 322 to 261 votes Appalling tragic if one of your MPs voted against this write them a letter now because they're a disgrace But what I do want to show you now is is how they are Defending this because obviously you have to tell yourself quite a quite a complicated story to justify You know withdrawing meals from people from kids on low incomes, but they do manage it So this was Tory Minister Paul Scully Defending his plan at that time to vote against extending free school meal vouchers over the holidays Do you want to feed hungry children or not? That's a simple question some of the conservative colleagues have already come out and Marie Morris has tweeted she'll be supporting us I think Robert Helfman is on his way to supporting us. This is a matter of conscience It's about principles before party Are you going to put money forward to feed hungry children in one of the toughest winters of our generation or not? Oh, if you're not going to you have to go back to your constituencies and face the music We've had a situation where Children are in been going hungry in and there are Labour government and for years what we've done We've put a universal credit system in place which allows Flexibility of people to go back to work and on then topping up their their incomes So they don't have the cliff edge of the old benefit system that we saw under the previous Labour government So so we are have been starting to tackle those issues of the people that are at that point On the on the pay scale and making sure that their children can get fed Oh, did you think that the children have gone hungry for years? Is that? No, it's not which is why I'm saying that we we're actually been looking at how we can help parents over a long Over the long term rather than the kind of Situation that tulip is sorting out. What can we do that's actually going to mean that the lowest paid can can actually Help feed their children for weeks months and years to come that will be increasing the national living wage That we've been doing introducing the flexible universal credit that allows them to top up and go back to work Which ultimately is the best way of of making sure that you can work with your children and give them the Children have gone hungry for years. That's his That's his justification to the country, but also to himself why he's happy to vote to take away Free school meal vouchers for Children on low incomes when they're out of school term. So we say no no people have gone hungry for years during half-term So this is a normal year. So kids should go hungry again. I mean for one. It's not a normal year I mean there is unemployment and people struggling with incomes to a much greater degree than they have, you know In recent memory because of this coronavirus pandemic, but also how is people have always gone hungry? So now they should go hungry. You know, how is that a good argument? It's it's unbelievable The way that their arguments work as conservatives, you know, it's kind of on a par with you use an iPhone there for you Therefore, you can't criticize capitalism. So well, you know, you could have thought that there were children who couldn't find food in 2009 if you looked hard enough, we know the data is around 2.3 2.6 million children were in relative child poverty in 2009-10. That was the last year of the Labour government Before this pandemic I last year that had come up to 4.1 million. So it's it's almost doubled Clearly with COVID it's it's going to Go far higher still and the idea that well Parents going into work having the minimum wage topped up some living wages minimum wage will help them It is categorically untrue. Anybody who wants to do their research, and this is more than welcome to do so Come online look at the data regarding in work poverty You're more likely to be in poverty now if you're in a household with somebody that works and that doesn't that's quite New development and you can basically map on the rise of child poverty within work poverty, and this isn't new This has been this has been out there for a very very long time So rise in child poverty aren't because people haven't got jobs It's because they have jobs and they're not being paid enough or they can't get the hours And this is now going to be exacerbated with COVID are the people having hours cut or they're going to be on furlough Or they've lost their job altogether So it just seems utterly ridiculous thing to say How many children we live in relative poverty by the end of this year, you know We might be looking at six seven million We don't know that that could be the ballpark even as four point one million at the beginning of last year That would be you know in order of four times greater than the last Labour government So for every kid in poverty then you've got four now. Let's be real That's a that's a really shambolic way to run a country. That wasn't a hundred years ago It was ten years ago and the money's there, you know was was Eat out to help out was that creating a dependency culture the fact I could go to Nando's and eat a lunch for five pounds No, because they assumed you were already middle-class and middle-class people can't be dependent It's only working class people who can be dependent on the state. It's only their benefits. You have to be cut I want to go to some more Tory justifications of this and I mean stupidly Decided that they were going to express their opposition to the free school meals campaign And by getting into a Twitter hour with one of the country's most popular people Marcus Rashford man United striker So to introduce this I want to first start with the tweet that both of them were responding to so it's Ben Bradley and Steve Baker Who respond but they're responding to this tweet from Marcus Rashford this morning So paying close attention to the Commons today and to those who are willing to turn a blind eye to the needs of our most vulnerable children 2.2 million of them who currently qualify for free school meals 42% newly registered not to mention the 1.5 million children who currently don't qualify So we say I'm paying close attention to the Commons because there was going to be that debate and that vote It has been lost because the Tories voted against it, but let's go to these responses So Tory MP Ben Bradley Decided to wade in and give his sort of justification for why or his explanation of why he believed Marcus Rashford was wrong on this Government has a lot of responsibilities Supporting the vulnerable helping people to help themselves balancing the books not as simple as you make out Marcus Extending free school meals to school holidays passes responsibility for feeding kids away from parents to the state it increases dependency We've already said, you know Dependency is something in this Tory ideology that only applies to working-class people middle-class people who are dependent on the state That's fine Industries which are only viable circle because the government will hand them huge contracts 12 billion contracts and not do that job properly I mean, that's dependency culture but even you know apart from that even if you Deeply if you take away the politics from this and just just look at this from a human level what he is suggesting there That and even even if you think that you know People should be disciplined to go back to work otherwise They'll have financial difficulties whatever even if you buy into that sort of neoliberal neo classical ideology You have to incentivize people to go back to work by making them poor He is genuinely suggesting that we should leverage Hungry kids to discipline their parents. We're saying how do we get parents to work harder? Not to I mean We're obviously in the middle of a pandemic. There aren't jobs if even people decide. Well, it's not a decision anyway But what we don't want them to want the point that we don't want to make because yeah That was spread the virus But the point I want to make is that he there is genuinely suggesting the way we get parents to behave in a way that we like which is you know, it's rational Utility maximizing workers is to leverage the suffering of their kids and Also, I mean an important point to make about dependency here, right is and this is sort of like a standard sort of Marxist or social democratic idea about dependency, which is that workers are dependent on their bosses to some extent and The more that the alternative to working in any job is, you know Complete horror the more dependent they are. So if you live in a decent welfare state in Sweden in the 1970s I mean to an extent it's still decent. You've got your health care guaranteed You've got your housing guaranteed you're guaranteed that your your child isn't gonna starve if you get fired by your boss You have the security to organize against your boss You have the security to maybe decide. Oh, no, I don't want that job because they don't treat me, right? I'm gonna hold out and wait till I can get a job Which I feel is more suited to me where I'm treated better where my dignity is respected Now that's possible if you've got this sort of safety net behind you But if a worker is told you either keep this job, you either take that job or your kid starves How much power does that give that boss, you know If that boss is someone who's committing sexual harassment in the workplace and you tell them Well, if you if you don't have a job, then that's your responsibility and your kid should starve That is making that person so much more dependent on a boss Than anyone will ever be dependent on the state It's crazy, isn't it? It's just we're we are we are looking square in the face at an utterly depraved Genre of politics utterly depraved completely devoid of any ethics You because they would then say well, you shouldn't you should have thought twice about that before you had a child You might be sexually, you know harassed one day Well, there's laws against this. That's not how it works I mean, it's just we're looking at people with absolutely no ethical compass whatsoever Who are more likely to get upset about being called scum in the House of Commons than voting for a you know voting against the proposed piece of legislation which would Keep a million kids away from hunger over the next several months. Which do you think is more important? I know I'm we're gonna get up another another this this this tweet exchange is even Dumber and this is from Steve Baker who Marcus Rashford wholly owned so Stephen Baker is a sort of Steve Baker Sort of a hardcore Brexiteer back bencher and so in response To that particular tweet and from Marcus Rashford, which I read earlier Baker Steve Baker quote tweeted it No one will be turning a blind eye and it is wrong to suggest anyone would not destroying the currency with excessive QE is Also one of our duties now. This is Bananas so the he is crazy and he's the craziest MP of on the Tory benches The policy before sort of extending free school meals over the summer holidays cost 120 million pounds now half term in the Christmas holidays Are only three weeks one week at two weeks. So it's half of that So that we're talking about 60 million pounds and he thinks that 60 million pounds is gonna mean we have to print so much money That it destroys the pound Well, presumably he's talking about the fact that we are gonna run at least a 200 billion pound deficit this year probably significantly higher But in any case like you say more's the reason if we're spending a deficit of 200 billion What difference 120 million gonna make and by the way, you're not particularly productive if you're starving Right. There are some basics that we need to we need to think about here But he is the most crazy. He wants Britain to go back to the gold standard Michael. So He is particularly ridiculous and evil And you might have noticed if you had a keen eye, we can get that up one more time that same tweet Because at the bottom it says the only people who can reply to this are people who follow Steve Baker or people mentioned in it So he's sort of calling out Marcus Rashford With this idiotic point and he hasn't let Marcus Rashford reply to him So Marcus Rashford smart guy that he is Quote tweets Steve Baker we can get this up. He says at least turn on your comments and let me respond Steve I very much welcome conversation on this And then the most surreal bit is Steve Baker's response to this Do you have 3.4 million followers Marcus to my 96k the power is yours here Everyone knows feeding hungry children is a top priority I'd like to see universal credit boosted But if the economy and currency collapse the poor will be devastated Alleging a blind eye is just wrong now We've already talked about why it's ridiculous to suggest that paying 60 million pounds first and poor kids to have free school meals Is not going to collapse the currency this is someone who wanted a no-deal Brexit by the way He's spent the last four years fighting for a no-deal Brexit, which is I mean I don't think it would be the worst thing to ever happen But one thing it's not gonna have a good effect on it's the value of the pound So this guy thinks that a no-deal Brexit which has already cost billions in preparation is gonna be more damaging to the currency than 60 million pounds to make sure the poor kids the more ridiculous bit here though is Is this idea that you have more power than me? Like only one of you there's Marcus Rashford and then there's Stephen Baker Only one of you got to vote today in Parliament on the motion to extend free school meals over half-term and the winter holidays It was Steve Baker Steve Baker voted against it. So he said I might be elected an MP I might be the person who makes the law But if you've got more Twitter followers than me, you're more powerful than me Such an online comment, isn't it? I may have you know, I may be one of 650 legislators in this country But you know, how many engagements did I get this month compared to you not much? People are saying by the way people are saying in the comments this story is a bit too online I don't think that's I don't think that's fair and I'll tell you why Normally, I agree that it's important not to obsess over social media stories I agree with that entirely But I think clearly that the scope for pushback in terms of the government's mismanagement on COVID It's quite limited because people can't protest people can't go into meetings People can't do all the things the associated things that would normally happen in a political crisis That's that's that's how people respond collectively. And so I think in a moment like that Yeah, this is going to be one of the primary ways we're going to see Rifts and you know Pushback whether it's through local politicians like Andy Burnham, you know, and that was incredibly Mediatized of course, I'd prefer a hundred thousand people on a demo or a general struck Of course, I would but realistically in the context of a pandemic That's not what happened these kinds of stories in that context. I think really matter The obvious thing in in response to it's very online is that there was a vote in Parliament today on it, right? So so there was a material opportunity for the Tories to change their policy They did change it last time which shows that this kind of thing matters I mean obviously him being a top man United in England striker means that he does have a lot of influence And I think there are many Tories who worry that this is doing them damage the fact that they haven't you turned again this time And as to the tweets, I mean Why I like looking at Tory MPs Twitter feeds is is not so much because I think you know, obviously the electorate doesn't read Tory MPs Twitter feeds But what they do expose is their justifications for doing things because I think often, you know Sometimes they get caught out when they go on TV But in their official communications normally they've at least got you know a PR person to say I'm not sure you should say that you know, that makes you sound like a psychopath but when it says that on Twitter, they're like Poor kids should go hungry. Otherwise the parents won't bother working You know, that wouldn't go out in an official communication But on their Twitter they they're stupid enough to think that's a convincing argument