 Good evening and welcome to Tiskey Sauer. I am a newly jabbed Michael Walker and I'm joined by Aaron Bostani who for the first time in I think quite a while is in the Navarra Media Studio. How are you doing? I'm doing very well Michael. I'm recovering from an asthma attack earlier on because we've not been keeping the place spick and spam but that's going to change now Michael because you've been jabbed, I've been jabbed. The whole Navarra family is being jabbed and there's now a semblance of normalcy. It's great to be back here Michael. It's great to be talking to you this evening. Is it pretty dusty there? I've still got to wait a couple of weeks for mine to kick in but I am very excited to have Madonna flowing through my veins. Tonight's show is a big one. There was some breaking news just before we went live so we've rejigged things a little bit. We now know we think that the full reopening on the 21st of June is now going to be delayed for four weeks. We'll be talking about the reasoning behind that and the significance of it. We're also going to talk about the other big story of the day which is the G7 and a commitment they have made about vaccines. Is it enough? It's not enough. You could have guessed that already. We're also going to talk about the Unite elections. Very, very important for the left and Keir Starmer making his mind up about players taking the need to protest racism. Better late than never but always late because it's Keir Starmer we're talking about. As ever if you haven't already please do hit subscribe. We go live three nights a week and put out videos every day. Boris Johnson had promised an official announcement by this coming Monday on whether a full easing of restrictions would go ahead on the 21st of June. However, Harry Cole from The Sun reports the decision has in fact already been made. He tweeted this afternoon, new final decision Monday but Sun can reveal chances of freedom day on June 21st now next to zero. Plan to announce delay to June 19th with break clause on July the 5th if hospitalizations remain low but it's not looking good. There's going to be a four week extension to the current situation we are in so that's no clubs, no festivals but you can eat inside in small groups. That's all going to remain the same for an extra four weeks unless it seems that these rising cases are not leading to further hospitalizations. Now this news all comes as the Guardian reports that cases are rising at their fastest rates since the winter wave so the data behind that headline. Daily infections are now rising up three to six percent across England every day and official figures released today suggest the daily growth rate may be as high as eight percent in the northwest and between two and six percent in London and the east of England so that eight percent in the northwest that's really really worrying that's that's proper exponential growth. Now this of course is all being driven by the Delta variant which now makes up 91 percent of new cases across the UK and which is thought to be 60 percent more transmissible than the Kent variant and twice as likely to lead to hospitalizations. Now the necessity of delaying any further loosening is made especially clear in this graphic from the BBC showing that at current rates of growth we are on track to have 15,000 daily cases by June the 21st so you can see that the dotted line shows the current trajectory we are on the gradient of the line the growth rate that we're currently at and they're showing that yes by the 21st of June it could be 15,000 cases a day and up to 40,000 cases a day a little bit later than that this is how exponential growth works. This is a log scale graph so as you can see the cases are increasing exponentially even if the line is straight. Now this is all very concerning of course we aren't going to see we should you know really really emphasize this we aren't going to see the number of hospitalizations and deaths as we saw in January we're not going to enter into another lockdown similar to the one we had in January and that's because most of the population of vulnerable age or people who are younger but are in vulnerable categories have been vaccinated and we know that the vaccine is very effective even against the Delta variants slightly less effective against the Delta variant than against the Kent variant but it seems I think they're saying 95% effective against hospitalizations if you've had two doses so we're in a completely different situation to the one we were in in January but with cases rising at these rates that's still lots of people catching COVID lots of them are going to get long COVID and with numbers this high you will get a significant degree of hospitalizations and that will especially be among younger people right and so they'll say well that means it's it's less likely to convert into a death because even if you go into ICU as a young person you're much less likely to die and you'll spend fewer days there but for me it's incredibly worrying when anyone goes to ICU I'm not particularly interested in how long they stay there just the fact you've gone to ICU with COVID that's going to have really long lasting effects now of course if you think about that trajectory we're currently on that's with the current restrictions and what has dominated media discussion up to now is whether we should move from current current restrictions to even less restrictions now again thinking about the the trajectory we are on on that graph on on the BBC you might ask the opposite question which is you know far from loosening restrictions should we be increasing them and again I don't think we should be going back to anything like the lockdown we saw in January and February and March but I think it is very reasonable for us to be considering what extra precautions we should be taking because we want to get off that trajectory and yes vaccinating people is going to be very very helpful I got vaccinated yesterday I'm absolutely delighted about it but that's not going to kick in properly for two or three weeks going to be ages until I'm double vaccinated and as we can see exponential growth happens quite quickly so the vaccines aren't going to be able to keep up with this on the current trajectory we are on this means that once again focus from epidemiologists is on schools now this is a topic that politicians don't like to talk about very much because it's it's awkward it's a difficult one but it does seem to me that this is an area which has been neglected and which we are all collectively paying a price for again I want to go to a piece published in the British medical journal today and by Deepty Gudisani and Stephen Riker and others which warns that we need to refocus attention on reducing outbreaks in educational settings now the authors complain and this has happened actually throughout the pandemic and it's really really problematic that public health England have been really really cagey when it comes to details on schools they're really really resistant to publishing age breakdowns and publishing how many people are catching COVID-19 in schools essentially because they're like oh we don't want to give the teaching unions a reason to complain which essentially means they're duping lots of people very very worrying in terms of transparency in government also leads to situations like this when we're having lots of outbreaks in schools and that's threatening lots of people's health right I was going to say that I was going to end the sentence actually there by saying it threatens to delay the time when we can all go to nightclubs because that's how it's presented in the media but of course that's not the most important thing here the most important thing is that you're going to get students parents and teachers getting COVID-19 sometimes that's going to translate into very serious illness more often it's going to translate into long COVID and things which are you know again pretty worrying now let's go to the proposals which the authors of this article in the British Medical Journal suggest and their proposals are as follows this is the precautions we should be taking in schools they say first we must reintroduce masks both at primary and secondary levels and both in classrooms and communal areas unions have jointly called for an immediate reintroduction of masks in secondary schools and several local authorities have already reinstated these this needs to be incorporated into department for education guidance as a recommendation for all schools they go on second there needs to be central investment in ventilation air cleaning in schools including co2 monitors and air filtration devices to supplement ventilation where needed risk can also be reduced by moving to learning outdoors where possible including physical education activities third there must be practical financial and remote learning support for families with children who are isolating and lastly the government must provide adequate catch-up resources for children who have lost out on education over the past year to bridge gaps and worsening inequities in education they conclude by saying in some schools are the place where infections are rising fastest yet schools are a place where the basic mitigations of face space and fresh air and not simply missing but in the case of masks have actually just been removed this makes no sense the government must act urgently to protect and support its children at this critical juncture Aaron I want to go to you for your thoughts on these two big developments so first of all the government suggesting or at least the Sun reporting that the government are going to announce on Monday that there is going to be a four-week delay to the removal of restrictions and second this I suppose alarm bells which are being run by epidemiologists and other scientists saying look far from thinking about reducing further restrictions we should be looking at precautions in the here and now especially in schools it's a tough one Michael I mean I don't know I don't know where you stand on it personally but for me I mean what use is there really in children going into schools as a learning environment if they're going to have to wear masks in mid-summer for six hours of teaching maybe it's smarter to do more homeschooling to end the term early I mean that you know I don't know as an intervention it seems quite I mean they're going to be in those rooms five days a week for six seven hours at a time what difference is mark is a mask really going to make I think the epidemiologist say it makes quite a significant difference I mean it does in terms of well I mean especially now it's the summer so the window should be open I think if you've got 30 kids without masks they're talking quite a lot that's what happens in schools and you've got loads and loads of aerosols being released into that environment I'm not saying you also know that you know catching catching COVID isn't just about oh if they're all in the room they're going to get it anyway no because it's about viral load right if you've got a mask on the viral load is going to be much lower than if you haven't got a mask on so I mean I think this seems very sensible to me to say continue going to school but wear a mask but no Michael I'm not saying I'm not suggesting that given the size of the misgivings that oh they just shouldn't wear masks anyway I'm saying if that you're you're telling let's say you've got a primary school of a thousand children have general assemblies they have all sorts of classes let's say 25 minimum 35 generally is the sort of more likely number you know what are the numbers actually what what have impact with wearing masks really have I mean that that's me it seems unclear if this is now hitting exponential growth again wouldn't you just wouldn't make more sense just to close schools early I mean and that just seems like that kind of seems like you know you've got a potential a real breach in this kind of dam and you're putting like a plaster over it yeah because in in in time limited spaces if you're going into a shop and it's you know operating at maybe 30 capacity yeah wearing masks is really effective but if you're putting kids into schools from 9 a.m to 4 p.m a thousand people in enclosed environment walking past when they're being picked up at the school gates etc etc are masks going to make a really major difference in terms of logarithmic growth I suspect it probably won't so I mean that's just my that's my two cents I think I think neither of neither of us have in front of us precisely how much masks will lower the risk of catching COVID in in school but I'm fairly confident it's it's significant I would also say in terms of I see the argument you're making which is say if this is going on why not just close them all I mean a response to that and I think that's why that hasn't been suggested in this article from the British Medical Journal is that there are actually many intermediary steps we can take before then and schools have been closed for such a long time that we you know we really are prioritising kids being in school and especially as we're not going to see the same number of really vulnerable people catch COVID we should be taking the more moderate measures and given it's summer I would imagine that you open all the windows you pay proper attention to ventilation not all schools can open their windows by the way so this is this is where one of the real issues the schools haven't been provided with the simple things that one would need to keep themselves safe but imagine you're you're a school where you can open the windows yes I know I think this should be all schools but it's not then if you've all got masks on I can see how you can make the judgment that we can keep this school open and still keep the R number down I assume that's the logic here oh so yeah if you're a child and you're on your 10 11 12 I mean how effective is the learning environment if you're having to wear a mask in mid-summer six seven hours a day like I say maybe homeschooling in that case both from terms of learning and in terms of public safety and public health is a better option it just seems a strange you know we're so close to getting these kids immunised anyway and vaccinated you know we're two three months away from some of these kids getting vaccinated hopefully the vulnerable ones especially um it kind of seems a bit I don't know just my two Bob's worth you know I'm not I'm not I just to be clear though I'm not suggesting that oh no get open the schools they don't need to wear the mask it's not what I'm saying whatsoever before I'm you're saying just go the whole hog and close them if you're going to have to introduce these restrictions anyway potentially right I mean I mean it does feel like by September we're going to be in a much better situation in terms of keeping these kids safe and of course look we've come this far and I know it's very stressful for for families and for parents I'm one of the big arguments about reopening on and it's something I've touched on when I've spoken to people about this it's because I've said and we've spoken about this ourselves Michael you know it feels like things are normal for me actually I don't understand what's sort of big the big deal is about opening up further after June 21st but people with two three kids have said look in the summer holidays it's incredibly difficult to do things with kids under these conditions it would be a godsend so I do get that but look we could be talking about long COVID if this carries on potentially affecting tens of thousands hundreds thousands of kids I'm not suggesting another lockdown like we saw last winter I agree with you entirely on that but I just think on the looking at the potential downsides what are masks really going to do so well they might do quite a lot I mean as I said neither of us are in a position to say they might do quite a lot they might they might well okay we'll agree to disagree I mean I feel like if we're looking if we're looking at this kind of gross right now I don't see what masks are going to do personally but that's another that's another question entirely if we were in a situation where we hadn't imported the Indian variant and you know case rates weren't going up like they are yeah that's a decent argument but it feels like we're on a different trajectory now but I mean I don't want to be there you know I'm standing like a COVID sceptic I'm the complete opposite just to be clear well that's actually I mean I'm glad you raised that point actually because it is important to remember that the reason we are now in this difficult situation obviously even having re-closing schools as a question means that something has gone seriously wrong considering we were in such a good place there was no there was a period where we were doing a show there was barely any COVID in the country we were talking about is the epidemic in Britain over people thought the epidemic in Britain was over at that point and if we hadn't imported the Delta variant it would have stayed over we would have been you know fine right this wouldn't have been a question we would have been reopening nightclubs and festivals and football stadiums on the 21st of June as I said that's not my biggest priority anyway but I mean there'll be lots of people for whom it is and the reason that's not happening is because Boris Johnson wanted a trade deal with India and so left the borders completely open and we imported a lot of a highly transmissible variant right people say oh you know you're making it seem like this problem comes from abroad no I mean we also exported the Kent variant everywhere which caused huge ginormous problems the whole point with COVID-19 is the less travel for everyone the better because once these variants get out you can't put them back in and it's just you know it's the nature of how this works that the variant which is going to take off is the most transmissible one that's why the Kent variant spread all over the world when it was 60% more transmissible than the original COVID-19 and that's why the Delta variant has now spread everywhere when it's 60% more transmissible than the Kent variant and that's why we're in this situation because just being 60% more transmissible given it can lead to exponential growth puts us in a super super difficult situation we'll of course have more details about this on Monday when the announcement is made I'm going to go to a comment Joshua Youngerman with a four dollar donation Michael what powers have you gained with Moderna I've gained a slightly achy arm I think that was it a slightly achy arm and I keep singing nine to five whenever I wake up in the morning because this is the Dolly Parton vaccine she invested apparently let's go straight to our next story and the background to this is that we've been talking about you know the difficult situation that the Delta variant has put Britain in even though we have vaccinated so many people now you've got to think that there are so many countries in the world which are at risk now of having this Delta variant that even we're struggling with when we've got 60% of the population vaccinated they've got 2% of the population vaccinated so vaccinating the world very very important it's our next topic the G7 is expected to pledge to donate 1 billion COVID vaccines to poorer nations over a period of 12 months now it would follow and the UK's pledge of 100 million vaccines by next year and the US's pledge of 500 million vaccines over the same period so that's that's the commitments of those two countries and we're expecting the extra 400 million to be pledged at the G7 now speaking from Cornwall Joe Biden said this pledge would help lead the world out of the global pandemic this is a monumental commitment by the American people as I said we're a nation full of people who step up at times of need to help our fellow human beings both at home and abroad we're not perfect but we step up up or we're not alone in this endeavor that's the point I want to make we're going to help lead the world out of this pandemic working alongside our global partners under the UK chairmanship of the G7 democracies of the world are posed to deliver as well this US contribution is the foundation for additional coordinated efforts to help vaccinate the world the British government the prime minister has led a strong campaign to get people vaccinated across the UK I'm grateful they're making their own generous donation now this all of course sounds good donating a billion vaccines is better than donating no vaccines but is it enough to lead the world out of the pandemic the answer according to nearly all of the NGOs and all the health experts is not really now there are two big problems the first is the quantity pledged and the second is how soon they will be pledged let's focus on the quantity first so as I've said in in total the G7 are set to pledge one billion vaccines to poor at nations remember though these are vaccines which require two doses so that's 500 million people they're pledging essentially to vaccinate 500 million people now as you probably know there are 7.7 billion people in the world now the maths aren't particularly complicated here we're pledging to vaccinate 500 million people there are 7.7 billion people in the world in response to biden's commitment prep professor peter hotez who is dean of america's national school of tropical medicine and an expert on vaccines said my take 1.1 billion people in sub-saharan africa 650 million people in latin america 0.5 billion in smaller lower and middle income countries in southeast asia that's two to three billion people five to six billion vaccine doses we desperately need a u.s foreign policy and american leadership to take on this challenge so he's looking at the numbers of people in developing countries where they're going to struggle to produce the vaccines themselves and he's saying this falls dramatically short the who for their part estimate 11 billion doses are needed to vaccinate the whole world to a level of 70 which would significantly reduce transmission and make the disease manageable so you can see what is being promised is simply not enough the second problem as i've said concerns timing so if you donate a billion vaccines in 12 months time that's very different to donating it tomorrow as we know lots and lots of people can die in a very short space of time from covid 19 when it comes to time in the u.s is committed to distributing 200 million doses by the end of this year and then a further 300 million by june 2022 the uk for their part of said they will deliver five million doses by the end of september with 25 million more by the end of the year as you can see this all makes it seem we haven't had the full announcement from all of the g7 countries but it looks as if much fewer than half of the one billion doses are going to be delivered over the next six months so it looks like it's going to be more weighted towards the end of that time period and that's not going to prevent huge outbreaks like what we saw in india we know that when the delta variant hits a country that isn't widely vaccinated it's it's like hell you know the hospitals collapse it's it's like here in january but the virus is 60 more transmissible which means it's going to be well actually more than 60 percent well because that's how how compound growth works disastrous in terms of the ambition that is required who director general ted dross said that too or dr ted dross said that to vaccinate at least 10 percent of the population in every country by september we need an additional 250 million vaccine doses and he said 100 million of those doses will be needed in june and julia so we're nowhere near any of that now some of the most stinging criticisms of the g7 plans came from one of boris johnson's predecessors gordon brown he told reuters i am afraid they have failed the first test even before they've had a weekend of talks because it looks more like passing the begging bowl round than a comprehensive plan to vaccinate the world and if the richest countries can't get together to mount a successful plan to vaccinate the world i don't know who will he also said the government has yet to recognize that if you're leading the g7 and you're talking about global britain and you made a promise last sunday that you're going to vaccinate the world you've got to deliver on it it's a catastrophic failure if we can't go away in the next week or two of a plan that actually rids the world of covet now we've got a vaccine and boris johnson was asked earlier this morning by laura kunesberg why the ambitions weren't up to the challenge why that why the numbers weren't big enough when it comes to what ngo's what the world health organization is saying he said oh look we've created loads of the oxford extra extra oxford astrazeneca jab that's being put in loads of people's arms i don't know why people are complaining about the uk when you're talking about a pandemic on this scale to say look we've done our bit what more can you expect is just it's obviously absolutely immoral i mean because you could have said this as the government in march look we've we've we've already closed the pubs why would you expect us to we've already done what is historically considered to be quite a lot right we've introduced furlough we've closed the pubs why are you now expecting us to put together a test and trace system why are you now expecting us to close the schools right and the reason we were expecting them to do those things is because this was an extraordinary moment when we say build a test and trace system when we say pay people money to self isolate we're not saying oh you haven't done anything you're done fucking loads but you don't fucking loads because we're in a global emergency which requires extraordinary measures so to say oh well why are you complaining at ours because we've already helped developer vaccine and we've already donated 500 million quid or whatever the answer to that is because these are exceptional times we clearly need billions and billions and billions i think the estimate is 50 billion invested in this to make it happen in the time frame which is required and we are the country they say oh we've already spent so much money on on on things domestically yes we're one of the few countries in the world which is able to borrow on the financial markets for essentially zero percent the these countries with two percent people vaccinated they can't borrow on the financial market so the idea that oh it's time for us to look look out for our own is just the opposite of what we should be saying right now when it comes to other leaders of the g7 two of them at least can say that even if they have not pledged enough vaccines they have done one useful thing which is to suggest they will support removing the patent on vaccines so the two leaders who have our Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden oxfam today were protesting outside the g7 calling for the other five leaders to join them and i think we can probably see now a protest of them on the beach you've got Macron and Joe Biden on one side Boris Johnson Merkel and all the other leaders on the other we are of course yet to get much concrete news from inside the g7 they started talking for the first time this afternoon as was perhaps predictable though even if we haven't had any concrete pledges we have had at least one gibberish intervention from the host let's take a look i think that is what the people of the of our countries now want us to to focus on they want us to be sure that we're beating the pandemic together and discussing how we'll never have a repeat of what we've seen but also that we're building back better together and building back greener and building back fairer and building back more equal and how shall i more in a more gender neutral and perhaps a more feminine way how about that apart from anything else so those are some of the objectives that we have before us at carbis bay uh completely bizarre intervention is saying we're going to have a gender neutral building back better but i mean i suppose his job is to entertain Aaron what i really want to know from you is not about the gibberish Boris Johnson speaks but um about the insufficient pledges which have been made when it comes to vaccinating the world i mean it doesn't touch the surface does it michael um we've got like you say 500 million people could potentially be helped by this offer i think last week the who gave sign off to was it the sign of farm vaccine one of the chinese vaccines and the plan is and the plan is just for this one chinese vaccine to produce i think three billion doses over the next 12 months now clearly some of most of that's for sale or it's for the domestic chinese market but those are the kinds of numbers involved from a middle income country and our chance to our second largest economy but it's not a hugely wealthy country when you look at it per person and it does feel like global leadership on this has been taken with people call it vaccine diplomacy because we're meant to talk about all the global bad guys russia china evil you know evil russia and china gg peng and vladimir putin well the reality is in 12 months time it's perfectly possible that those two countries have produced far more vaccine than the g7 has and given it to countries in the global south i mean that seems quite plausible right now could change and of course it's a baseline it could be higher but as a commitment and look michael you know our viewers don't need to be reminded this after after 18 months of this crisis but it's in this it's in the rational self-interest of the g7 countries to vaccinate as many people as humanly possible you know it's of secondary importance to vaccinating their domestic population because of the possibility of various you know strains being generated and creating new public health crises at home so it makes no sense from a rational interest point of view or from a trying to you know present or project a picture of american or you know western leadership on the global stage it doesn't make any sense at all and i think there's two reasons why the first is that the the electorates of these countries have been so massively shaped by miserable list misanthropic politics for about 40 years really since the reagan thatcher revolution that the idea that joe biden would say well we're going to produce which isn't these the terms that he needs to be talking in we need to produce you know 20 billion doses well people say hey hold on a second we need to put america first and actually if you look at pure research data over the last couple of decades you know particularly the last couple of years i mean i think it was actually in 2020 it's much more pronounced amongst republicans but even amongst democrats you know there's not a huge desire to actually help the rest of the world anymore uh and you could say well and there's some sort of positive manifestations of that uh with not wanting to start new wars at least you know openly like in iraq and afghanistan but there's also not really much of an emphasis to help the global south through multilateral efforts with vaccinations so i think that's part of it is the sort of domestic electorate we see that with the tories they're cutting you know foreign investment foreign aid rather i think from 1.7 percent to 1.5 percent i mean i think that's right and it's hugely popular to revotes so i think that's that's one part of it and another part is you know really there's just no strategic leadership coming from the west right now the fact that joe biden is this transformational us president you know we were joking a year ago he couldn't recognize his sister from his wife it's a very very strange moment michael because we have these rising powers particularly china also just in east asia the asian economy is a huge uh and we're moving towards this world of multiplicity and still the west isn't really recognizing the scale of the challenge and saying we're going to produce a billion doses wow this is so underwhelming you really aren't even meeting the sort of minimum expectations and like i said before we talk about rational self-interest no absolutely and the rational self-interest being that the longer it takes for us to vaccinate the world the more of these variants we're going to have and some of them might be um somewhat resistant to vaccines i mean in terms of who's going to produce more the chinese or the west i think that's very much still up in the air i think what is for certain and you know you say a billion for sinopharm i think astrazeneca is looking at three billion you know that there's lots of companies planning to produce lots of vaccines i think more what the chinese example shows is is that one vaccine diplomacy has actually applied some pressure on on the west i don't think they'd be talking about removing patents at all if it weren't for the fact that there are alternatives in china and russia if you look at when there was a unipolar moment when the hib crisis was going on it took like a decade for them to suggest um making hib drugs affordable the other big lesson from it is what you really want is a homegrown manufacturing industry for vaccines right that's what china has that's why they don't have to rely on this begging bowl from the g7 who are never going to stand up to the plate in you know inadequate time i'm going to go to you super super quickly because we also have a story on on the special relationship coming up yeah it's important to say this michael the cold war was good the cold war was an amazing moment in human history because you had these two technologically advanced societies in competition for soft power what does that mean it means the space race it means getting rid of smallpox it means an unprecedented amount of leverage given to labor movements in places like the united states and western europe because there's this political alternative elsewhere and like you say once that disappears actually we see a real backtracking on sort of basic commitment to human rights and and dignity and and a bare minimum in terms of a global human standard that's beginning to come back it seems with the rise of china and i think personally that's a good thing i think that's a wonderful thing both for for the chinese people it means that 850 million people have been taken out of poverty since 1990 sorry but that's an unadulterated good thing in and of itself and then secondly yes it puts pressure on the wealthy countries of europe and north america america to get their arcing gear and maybe one day god maybe do something about places like you know sub-saharan africa and clean drinking wars the fact that six million kids die of preventable illnesses every every year i think once you have a unipolar world people stop talking about that we're moving away from it and i think that's a good thing yeah i mean liberals often talk about that the moment the unipolar moment as the one where there was finally some hope that we're all going to have a liberal future it was terrible the unipolar moment was really fucking bad um you are watching tisky sour on navara media if you are a supporter of our channel of our organization thank you so much you make this all possible if not please go to navara media dot com slash support and as you know we are for the equivalent of one hour's wage a month um we really really do appreciate it in a recent profile in the atlantic it was revealed that boris johnson disliked the term special relationship to describe the us and the uk now apparently the prime minister considered it to be needy and weak however speaking to bbc on the day johnson first met president joe biden he backtracked somewhat i look i don't mind i don't i don't mind the the the phrase special relationship but because it is it is special and there's uh but it's you know it's a it encompasses a reality which is that the the uk and the us have a a real congruence of views on some stuff that really matters to the world and so we believe very strongly in in democracy we believe in human rights we believe in the rules based international order we we believe in the transatlantic alliance uh joe biden believes in that absolutely passionately and uh we want to uphold that we think it's been the the the guarantor of peace and security for a long time so how would you describe we also we also happen we also happen to share uh objectives on tackling climate change and loads of other things it's so it's a relationship you call it the deep and meaningful relationship whatever you want the the indestructible relationship it's a it's a relationship that has endured for a very long time and has been um an important part of uh peace and prosperity both in uh in europe and around the world so what the mainstream media are focused on is is where we're not we call it special or indestructible or whatever word boris johnson was was was trying to choose there what i want to focus on is the concrete claims made there so boris johnson said the uk and the us have a special relationship because we have a congruence of views and values we believe in democracy human rights and the rules based international order and they believe in action on climate change um and also suggests that together we've secured peace and prosperity for the world um lots of big meaty concrete claims there aron is boris johnson correct michael you're going to be really surprised to hear no i think he's completely wrong a few things firstly america wasn't substantively democracy until the civil rights acts in the mid 1960s arguably britain still isn't a democracy its head of state isn't elected its second chamber the house of laws isn't elected but let's talk about the the nature of the relationship where does it come from the term itself was generated by winston churchill it becomes over after the united states enters the second world war but it starts before then because before 41 and pearl harbour and and fdr and the us joining the war effort against the axis powers church is quite clear that there's very little chance of winning this particularly if we don't want to rely too much on the russians when i say we i mean the british emperor wasn't just britain it was a british emperor the indians and well the indian subcontinent and second world war biggest volunteer army in history 2.5 million people we didn't stand alone the british empire but it needed the americans to get involved and that required a certain amount of ass kissing and so what church was really good at and this is why it's so surprising johnson is saying what he's saying of course churchill is his hero uh he was saying there's a special relationship congruence of value share culture share language shared interests so let's have this special relationship and that effectively was how it presented itself the us to get fdr involved because most americans didn't want to get involved in the second world war they viewed as a european war waste of resources didn't want to do it didn't want to touch it and actually in fact many americans you don't hear very often in the sort of american establishment were actually quietly sympathetic to nazis and we don't need to go there but even people who weren't like progressives didn't really want to get involved militarily so this was fabricated by churchland them in the mid 40s or the early 40s and after the second world war what it really means is that britain is no longer this great world power it loses indian subcontinent 1948 so what we have to do is we have to basically hold ourselves to the coattails of america as this rising imperial power and we can still kind of we can still pretend that we're a great power because we have a special relationship with the us or vicariously remain a superpower by virtue of being so close to the us which in 1945 indisputably the world's hyperpower i think two-thirds the world's gold reserves you know own world's only nuclear power the idea that it's somehow comparable to soviet union which is just lost like tens of millions of people is is so ridiculous again it's a piece of post-war propaganda to say that we're kind of these two equivalent superpowers so that's where it comes from about the end of british empire the the end of british hegemony after 1945 what's our place in the world well we're still best powers for the strongest kid in the classroom the classroom bully the united states uh it wasn't about shared interests in terms of democracy in terms of civil liberties and rights no it was about a shared economic interest in terms of how can we ensure britain's interests despite the fact we're losing malaya bits of africa the indian subcontinent how can we prop those up for as long as possible given the fact we are just ultimately a medium-sized country in the north atlantic now the uk and so that was a strategic decision to align ourselves with the us so we go into the korean war you know we do a bunch of things that's basically kissing america's ass we were all the way through to the second gulf war in in 2003 finally america has a bunch of these special relationships right you can look at israel in the middle east it's both a cultural one but also a military one it's a huge recipient of american uh foreign aid saudi arabia is a really special relationship japan in terms of pinning back east uh china east asia very special relationship australia australia in in the asia pacific very special relationship germany it doesn't want it to be a sort of a leading power in europe for quite understandable reasons you know so special relationship there so yeah maybe britain does have a special relationship with us but it's like one of seven or eight and i think the brits likes to talk about it far more than the americans do because ultimately it's flowing this huge cultural political vacuum of the fact we're no longer this leading power which you know people forget eight years ago britain was the britain powers was leading economic and military power we no longer are and so we live in the shadow of the united states by talking about the special relationship would have been interesting if that's how laura coonsburg responded when when boris johnson gave that answer we could talk for ages about this particular issue but i know that fox wants us to get through this because we've got so many stories tonight um we're going to to go to matt hancock's evidence to a select committee yesterday on fursday matt hancock gave evidence to the health and science joint select committee on the covet 19 pandemic the session was highly anticipated because it followed two weeks on from dominic comings levelling extraordinary allegations at hancock that was at the same committee now the health secretary was helped by this opening statement from committee chair greg clark now we took all evidence from the prime minister's former adviser dominic comings on the 26th of may mr comings agreed at the hearing to provide written evidence to substantiate various verbal claims that were made at that hearing mr comings was asked to provide this evidence to the committee by friday the fourth of june in good time to inform our questions today to the secretary of state we have not received that evidence nor any explanation as to why that has not been available now as jeremy hunt and i both said in our last hearing it's important that if serious allegations are made against an individual they should be corroborated with evidence and it must be counted as unproven without it now that opening statement essentially meant the session was a little bit less dramatic than many of us had been expecting because it was basically giving matt hancock a bit of a get out saying yes dominic comings may have levelled all of these claims at you but we're not going to push too hard on them because he didn't back them up fair enough to my mind though there were still lots and lots of interesting statements made by matt hancock in his testimony minutes over four hours long and much of it was not very convincing so these comments on the government's failure to pay people to self isolate was probably what was most telling the very specific thing we're trying to understand because this is a lesson to learn exercises is why in that middle period of last year we weren't successful in preventing the second and third lockdowns and when bernice harding gave that evidence in february we were in the middle of our third lockdown now just on that point of financial support some people say that one of the reasons people didn't isolate is because we didn't just give a simple promise that if you isolate because you're asked to by test and trace we will make up as the state any salary loss that you have would that have helped well the challenge that we had with that proposal is the extent to which it might be gained because after all a contact gives tests and trace their contacts that is what contact tracing is made of and so you wouldn't want a situation in which you if you tested positive you could then list your entire friendship network who all get a 500 pound payment and that was an extraordinary explanation from Matt Hancock so he's saying there was this policy which maybe could have worked to limit the spread of COVID-19 but we couldn't we couldn't adopt it because it could be abused and some people could use their friendship networks to get money now where was a policy area where people were able to use their friendship networks to get lots of money basically every other aspect of policy when it came to COVID-19 so when it came to PPE what we saw is people who were in friendship networks with the conservatives were able to charge charge way above the odds for PPE which often didn't work Matt Hancock didn't say oh well we won't be able to do this because some people in friendship networks might be able to abuse the system and get money he said no I'm going to do that and by the way when you point out that people in my friendship networks abused the system to get money I'm going to say yes well even if that risk was there this was so important because this pandemic was deadly and we save lives by doing it for some reason that logic doesn't apply when it comes to this hypothetical that some people might have claimed 500 pounds by gaining the system obviously the difference here is they wouldn't have been in the friendship network of Matt Hancock they would have been you know probably working class people in the country for whom 500 pound means a little bit more than it does to Matt Hancock and his friends now you might say look I've misunderstood he wasn't saying the problem was that people would unjustly claim money and it would be a waste of money and you know we'd be rewarding cheats you could say no his worry was that what would happen is that people would get COVID-19 on purpose and so the policy could backfire instead of reducing the transmission of COVID-19 these payments could actually increase it now for this one I'm not going to give my own argument I'm going to go to a behavioral scientist on this and one of the advisors to sage it's Stephen Riker he sits on the spy b group so that's the the the body which gives behavioral advice or behavioral science advice to sage now Riker replied the following under the clip we've just shown you so he says it was Tory anti-welfareism which determined the decision the old discredited notion that the problem is benefit cheats when a far greater problem is lack of benefits or and of benefit take up it reflects an elitist mistrust of the masses the same ideology which led the government to delay lockdown because of supposed behavioral fatigue and to delay testing and masks on the ground that people wouldn't wear it they were wrong on every count and we paid for it in lives and economic devastation it shows that the failures of this government aren't coincidental that it isn't a matter of a few incompetent individuals or baddens or of narrow minded groups it is dialed deep into their ideology it is expressed in so many interlick ways and it comes down to the fact that they see the public as a problem when the evidence shows that collective solidarity is the best asset in a crisis I think that last sentence is what's so important there Stephen Riker is someone who has studied how the public behave in pandemics and he said actually what the government should do is draw on people's collective solidarity that is the best way to contain diseases it's not to assume that everyone is incredibly cynical and is going to try and gain the system even if that's what Matt Hancock's friends do it's not what the general public are going to do that's according to behavioral scientists who have studied pandemics in lots of different environments but instead we have a government who assumes the worst about the general public and what assumes the best about their own friends or at least accepts the worst from their own friends and what we have is a situation where 40 percent of people who are contacted didn't self-isolate because of this I suppose this quack idea that if you introduced some kind of benefit to make life more liveable for ordinary people they would go out and lit lamp posts to get COVID-19 on on purpose Aaron we've been complaining for months that the government hasn't paid people to self-isolate this is this is such an obvious gap in their pandemic response and it's almost inexplicable while they haven't why they haven't introduced it what did you make of that explanation from Matt Hancock well it's quite a vanilla sort of neoliberal argument you know we saw this repeatedly actually towards the beginning of this crisis and this is where you saw cracks in the kind of neoliberal economic orthodoxy because there's very same people who said well austerity would be a really good idea 2009-10 the exact same people it's not the exact same economists were saying well look we can't pay people not to work because it doesn't create the right incentives that'd be a terrible thing actually for the economy and clearly that is the stupidest thing you know aka by the way we don't want to disidentify as work no that's absolutely what we want to do we want to we want to have a demobilization of the economy to get on top of a pandemic right the public health argument was you want to definitely not have people having the incentives to work absolutely that's absolutely correct and it sort of I think puts into into clear view how utterly stupid the arguments around austerity were you know crack poor arguments Michael and it's easy to look in the rear view mirror at 2000 70,000 80,000 10 and go well they were all so wrong but we basically lost as a as a country as a society we've basically lost 13 years because today I mean we're we're still using losing years but in terms of life expectancy in terms of child poverty in terms of access to buying a home you know in terms of being above the sort of the poverty threshold 60% of the average wage we've basically lost 13 years debts going up because of these idiots and I think we should be grateful that actually people are beginning to realize it's not entirely all it's cracked up to be and actually they shouldn't be listened to and actually yes when you hear them and you say well that doesn't sound like common sense you're entirely right it isn't common sense you shouldn't listen to them a lot of them are idiots and ideologues and zealots and fanatics and I think Hancock summed up pretty well very depressing and very well but let's go straight on to our next story the stakes in the election to be the next general secretary of unite could not be higher now unite has 1.4 million members as we rebuild from the covid pandemic there is a chance to pressure employers to change the way we work the militancy of big unions will really matter do they have leaders who want to roll over when employers and the government demand certain things or will they be willing to stand up and fight for a shorter working week for the right to work from home when people want to for better sick pay for example who leads unite matters for all of those things it also matters for the Labour Party now unite is Labour's biggest donor and it controls key votes at the party conference and on the party's NEC now what I think is probably going to be the priority for centrist in the Labour Party is to change the leadership rules to bring back the electoral college so someone like Jeremy Corbyn can't be elected again I think if a right winger leads unite replaces Len McCluskey a left winger then that will be you know almost a given I think that will happen so it really really matters that the right don't win this unfortunately it seems they could and that's because the left vote is currently split between three candidates and the votes of the right will be united now we can get up the candidates now the left candidates are Steve Turner and Howard Beckett who are both currently assistant general secretaries to Len McCluskey also on the left is Sharon Graham who leads the organizing department so those will all be competing if they all remain I mean if they all remain in the race they will all be competing for votes from the left and on the right is Gerard Coyne who has no other competition from the right now Coyne has stood in the past he stood in 2017 against Len McCluskey and he only narrowly lost so in those elections Len McCluskey got 45% of the vote and Gerard Coyne got 41% of the vote again in those elections the left vote was split Ian Allinson was also appealing to left-wing voters and I mean if he'd got a couple of percent more it could have been Gerard Coyne who'd won then if Gerard Coyne had won in 2017 Jeremy Corbyn would not have lasted as leader for of labor for as long as he did now the reason there are four candidates is that to qualify for the ballot they all needed to secure nominations from at least five percent of united's branches and workplaces in this instance that meant candidates needed 172 nominations as we can see here all four made the grade so Steve Turner got 525 nominations Sharon Graham got 349 Howard Beckett 328 Gerard Coyne 196 now you might look at that thinking why are we worried about Gerard Coyne he's got so few nominations well the issue is among organized workers in their in their branches where they they vote on this Gerard Coyne is not particularly popular but the fear is that now he's on the ballot he'll have a very organized campaign they'll be advertising on social media to less organize united members and that could get them over the line as you saw before Gerard Coyne got 40% of the vote and he definitely didn't get 40% of the nominations that time around so he'd be expected to overperform this phase of course all of this means that the left really need one candidate they need a single candidate to be able to beat Gerard Coyne in fact speaking on the show back in February that's what one of the candidates said this is Howard Beckett speaking on the issue of multiple left candidates running against Gerard Coyne the right wing will not get on the ballot Mike Michael you're here not for me first because it is a high bar that they would have to meet and our branches will not will not allow that to happen but if for any reason I was wrong you can do two things first of all knock me over with that feather that I've referenced and secondly put the lock in the door until the three candidates who described themselves of the left reach an agreement as to who the candidate should be that was Howard Beckett on an episode of Tiskey in February he you know reassured us that Coyne wouldn't get on the ballot he did get on the ballot and he's now said well and he said that if he does lock us in a room don't let any of us out until there's just one candidate standing they have been meeting so this idea of them all being in a room that has happened but it doesn't seem as yet as if any of them are willing to stand aside we can go to some of the statements now let's start with Steve Turner and so he released a statement on Thursday saying as you will be aware at close of nominations yesterday I had reached 526 nominations from branches across our union this represents by far the largest number of nominations received by any candidate and it continues to grow as the validation process is completed given the leading position I hold and the consequences of a split vote for our union I had a responsibility to meet with other candidates to investigate the opportunities to secure a single nominee for the ballot those discussions have started and are ongoing and I trust you understand that a running commentary would be unhelpful he's clearly not planning to stand down he did get the most nominations somewhat understandable let's go to Howard Beckett's statement I'm not going to read the whole thing because this was quite a lot longer you can look at it on his Twitter if you want to see the whole thing he said at today's meeting my campaign made the case as to why our candidate see far outstrips others and his best place to win the election we were the only team to present proposals at today's meeting with the aim of conducting a transparent and fair process in order to agree one left candidate as I want to ensure that our program for improving the working lives of our members remains paramount after the election I have as yet not had a formal response to those proposals and discussions will continue now I presume one of the reasons he might not have got a formal response to those proposals is that you know Steve Turner will say look there already has been an open and fair process it was the nominations process and I won that he also by the way won the caucus within the united left that's why lots of people are saying look Steve Turner's the obvious candidate here perhaps Howard Beckett's trying to you know get some guarantees from him I'm in no position to say potentially most worrying is is Sharon Graham statement which suggests she has you know no interest whatsoever in standing down to allow for that to be a unity candidate she posted on her Twitter this morning thank you for all your messages of support I have today submitted my acceptance of nominations and officially confirmed that I will be standing to be the first woman general secretary of unite I look forward to working with you on our program for positive change I of course have reached out to other candidates to join my team and await their response in the meantime I am focusing on winning for workers so she's invited people to join her team Aaron this could be an absolute disaster couldn't it there are now of the three big unions so GMB unison and unite two of them are controlled by people who are very supportive of Kirstama who would not object to something like returning the Labour Party to an electoral college system where no left-winger can be elected again if unite also falls to the right you know the left can say goodbye to the Labour Party and it looks here as if we could have three left candidates splitting the vote in a first past the post election what do you make of it or yeah so a few things firstly you're absolutely right the stakes with the unite general secretary vote are super high and people say well we should be talking just about the the the sort of the labour organising element of unite and of course we should that's the point of a union but it's also a bit I think it's a bit silly to say that unite and its political leadership over the last 10 years hasn't obviously been a major factor in a resurgence of the parliamentary left in this country right I think that's a pretty fair assessment you shouldn't just vote for the general secretary on that basis but you can see why it's relevant for many many people in terms of in terms of what has to happen I mean I'm quite optimistic in terms of if there was a single left candidate they would beat Gerard Coyne you go back to the last time you know Ian Allison like he said was very close but if you put his and and and Lemma Klusky's votes together it's about 60-40 which you know it's not a landslide but I think 60-40 for me is kind of like that's the beginning of a big win you know it's 20 point difference so and on 12% turnout and I don't think it would be lower than that and I think many people didn't vote thinking that Lemma Klusky was just going to win I mean he had more than like a a thousand nominations so I think a single left candidate would do really well on a message of not just giving money to Labour willy-nilly but actually getting political leverage and return because that's what members want Gerard Coyne's pitch is I will give Labour resources and money without asking any questions or trying to have any impact over policy why the hell would you do that he's basically going out there saying he's like the anti-trump I am the worst negotiator you could possibly imagine I'm going to give you this money and I want nothing in return that seems to be his pitch right now so I don't think that's going to be very alluring to many people between those three candidates Sharon Graham Howard Beckett, Steve Turner, Carl's on the table I think it should be Steve Turner I know it's journalist Michael we shouldn't be saying that but I think as a left you look at the nominations you look at the internal caucus process I mean I would need to hear strong countervailing arguments from the other two why it shouldn't be Steve Turner and we've not heard those I mean that's possible right they might be able to say I know for instance Howard Beckett has contested the validity of the process to an internally adopted candidate okay so let's say it was a draw he still got the most nominations from you know the wider membership of Unite Sharon Graham saying you know I want to be the first woman general secretary well look a woman leads the TUC a woman leads the UCU Unison has a woman general secretary it's fantastic and it would be a wonderful thing for Unite but I don't think that's sufficient to say it's not the labor leader for instance never had a woman leader you say it's time has to be a woman no I think we have to be pretty clear that somebody's won the most nominations from branches they won the internal left caucus I don't I don't think that's sufficient to over overwhelm that my personal view I mean again people would disagree so for me it should be Steve Turner initially all we're seeing here could just be jockeying for position my worry is though and if it was just two you'd say fine you just need to get one person to agree but it's three which means two people are gonna have to stand down and that I think presents a real collective action problem and so on the one hand on the one hand I'm optimistic on the other hand you know even if one person ultimately agrees to that and can seize the standing down you still have a major issue and if Gerard Coyne does win my call it's a huge defeat it's a huge defeat for the left huge you know maybe Luke eight curses watching this and sniggering and now he'll post it to Twitter later on it's huge you know it would it would mean not just a backward step for the left the parliamentary left because again that's not what trade unions are fundamentally about but what we would see with Gerard Coyne as the general secretary of united is basically like Margaret Hodge now on Twitter just talking about Jeremy Corbyn talking about the past sabotaging I think actually the Labour Party in key ways I think not not intentionally but I think just incessantly talking about the past looking inwards not providing a story and a project for the for the for the broader public to get involved and get excited about and I think the left has no chance if it doesn't do that both with regards to Labour but also the Labour movement so really big stakes and if Gerard Coyne's win Gerard Coyne wins sorry terrible terrible day can't happen we shouldn't say that as journalists but it really would be terrible before we go on to our next story we want to hear from you not just about the stories we've been talking about tonight but about Navarra media in general that's because we're currently conducting a survey of our audience to find out what you like about our content what you don't like and any ideas you have for Navarra media for the organisation we're going to take those into account as we decide how we're going to grow now if you want to go to navarra.media slash survey you'll be taking you'll be taken through to it all it should all be very self-explanatory and that link is below in the description of this video it takes just five minutes to fill in and we really do appreciate it next story under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch the Sun became Britain's best-selling newspaper in the 1990s its circulation peaked at five million per day it's toxified this country's discourse about migrants and benefit claimants and its support has always been seen and well for the last 40 years at least as necessary for any party leader to become prime minister however Rupert Murdoch now thinks the brand is worthless the FT report that Murdoch has written down the value of the paper to zero the company's most recent accounts so that during the pandemic news group newspaper which operates the Sun and the Sun on Sunday nursed pre-tax losses of 210 million pounds our and i want your thoughts on this the sun has shaped british politics for the worst for over 50 years it was bought by Murdoch in 1969 i really didn't realise it was that long ago how much does it matter that he now judges the paper to be worthless it's not worthless it was never about making money it was all about influencing political outcomes the Sun hasn't been making money for a very long time not serious money anyway not enough money that you would invest in its long-term future build new infrastructure you know have really forward-looking recruitment programs and so on uh where its value lies Michael now for Rupert Murdoch look he's an old man he's in his 80s it's about ensuring uh political control over the right people for long enough he might be around another 10 15 years and and and that that's also what the Sun is about doesn't need to make money it's been losing money you know for a pretty long time um so i don't think there's a future for the Sun as a commercially viable project but i don't think that's why Murdoch bought it in the first place he bought the news the world i think in 68 bought the Sun a year later i mean the story of the Sun and Rupert Murdoch is a remarkable one Michael you know when he bought it he promised he promised the trade unions behind his publication that it would remain a labor voting newspaper uh and like i said that was in 60 you said it's in 69 i think they endorse labor in 70 74 they went Tory and in 79 there was a 1600 word leader article in the Sun there's like an lrb article right 1600 words saying why people should vote Margaret Thatcher 1600 words a year later the first editor under Murdoch a year later Larry Lam guess what he was given a knighthood by Margaret Thatcher you don't understand the political revolution we had in this country with the Tories with Thatcherism then with Blairism fundamentally not any big changes to the economic model of the country you don't understand that with also without also looking at the history of the Sun newspaper so yes it's brilliant that it's not making money i mean it would be terrible if it's profitable as well as politically influential uh but but that's not the fundamental reason why why Murdoch has it um and he has a he has a bunch of other projects which are also hugely influential it's only one part of the empire however you know there are parts of his sort of stable times radio the sunday times you can see how they are viable and profitable media projects for the 21st century the sun isn't one of those so partly to be celebrated but that was always that was always the game right he is not making money from his uk outlets it's about shaping the anglophone political sense of possibility the big money he's always made has been in the states in in terms of the the money though i see what you're saying about this was never really about profit when it came to the sun it was about influence but the reason it's not making a profit is tied to the fact it is losing influence no if it's circulation has dramatically fallen that's why he's not making a profit anymore then presumably whatever is written in the sun whatever the whatever party the sun endorses at the next general election is going to be less important than it was you know a decade ago or do you think i'm i'm mistaken there i don't think you're mistaken clearly the sun isn't deciding elections like they claimed to in 1992 right it was the sun what won it and i mean i'm not going to give them the the q doors to say that was correct but it was it was it was more plausible than it is now and of course remember in 2017 you know the daily mail had i think the first 16 pages of the daily mail on the day of the 2017 general election was a hit job on Jeremy Corbyn it didn't seem to have an impact but i think you have to accept Rupert Murdoch as a variable right you've got Harper Collins i think is establishing house you've got talk radio you've got the sun you've got the times you've got the sunday times and he operates in fundamentally an alt-right media ecology in this country which by the way is the mainstream media is it's not it's you know what's our you know fox news and bright but no in this country that is lbc and the daily mail and the sun and the express and the telegraph the alt-right is the mainstream media here and i think you know his outlets are a big part of that and sadly because you know the bbc because of cuts but also i think because of politics really does still take a lead in terms of its political agenda from the newspapers and that alt-right you know tabloid sphere which a significant extent is is is influenced by Murdoch's papers so yes he's not as influential as he once was but i still think people like Murdoch the Barclay brothers Viscount Rodimire none of who had none of who pay tax here as uk nationals and yet they think they should be allowed to shape the political debate in this country about the appropriate levels of tax and public spending and so on obviously disgusting human beings i think they really do still play a major role in in the politics country and the sense of all the political possibility i think it's changing so for instance lbc i think is a real new kid on the block i think for me lbc is actually the closest thing we've got to to fox people talk about oh we're gonna have you know gb news i think lbc's kind of already done it you look at what nick ferrari says the stuff they were doing with corbin ferrage on there you know i they make complete what and what i say what do i mean by saying it's like box news there'll be a completely deranged story and you know forks or ever and the mechanism by which that becomes a mainstream story i get since the bbc or or wherever is generally lbc but more often than not so you know yeah we're seeing some changes but murdoch and his there's outlets are still incredibly powerful not for people under 35 but you have to remember of course this is a country it's median age is 40 and the the economic and political power because of our electoral geography uh but also because of you know house values and so on is overwhelmingly in the hands of all the people and they still take a lead i think from people like roofer murdoch generally speaking i think that's a very fair assessment it might be worthless but the guys still got quite a lot of power our final story for the evening while the england football team have taken a brave stance against racism by taking a knee at the start of matches britain's political leaders had remained fairly silent on monday boris johnson spokesperson refused to condemn fans that booed players as they protested against racism and kia starmer has said as usual nothing that has now all changed so six days after the initial incident the prime minister's spokesperson said that boris johnson wants fans to cheer england's players on not boo them so he's saying no i do not boo them there's finally it's not quite a condemnation but at least he's taking a position he was not going to do that or he didn't do that earlier in the week now a couple of hours after that story broke the guardian published an exclusive interview with kia starmer in which he accused the prime minister of failing to show leadership this is kia starmer now saying the prime minister should have condemned the people who booed taking a knee now starmer told the paper the idea you boo the team is completely wrong this is the response to what is an important collective decision by the team about their expression of their opposition to discrimination and racism that's a decision they've taken and i think they're right all of us should support them and all of us in a position to do so should show leadership as garif southgate has done and have the courage to call it out and say it's the wrong thing to do the prime minister was wrong when he refused to call it out he didn't have the guts to call it out he hedged his bets and in doing so he undermined the team on the verge of this competition he didn't have the courage to side with the players that is leadership compare and contrast him and garif southgate on this he didn't have the courage to stand by by the england team on the verge of this competition and he's wrong about that and that's a failure of leadership now that's all very well i agree with everything kia starmer has said there the problem is it took him six days to say it so if you're saying the Boris johnson was didn't show a lack didn't show leadership because he didn't condemn the people booing the england players neither did kia starmer right until six days later now why did it take this long now it could have been that they were waiting for a focus group to deliver back their results or it could have been that like the rest of us kia starmers team were on twitter on fursday and saw that you guv had actually done a poll on this and that their silence was very much out of step with the general public so you guv did a poll among fans across all of europe because obviously countries all across europe who were entering euro 2020 and they found overwhelming support for people taking the knee basically everywhere most strongly in in portugal which i found somewhat surprising but also very strong in england so in england 54 percent of people support players taking the knee only 39 percent of people oppose it that rockets to 78 percent of people when only asking ethnic minority britains only 12 percent of ethnic minority britains oppose taking the knee aron starmer has finally come to the right position but he sure has taken his time does he demonstrate the failure of leadership that he accuses Boris johnson of 100 percent i mean what he's saying about gareth southgate is embodying a certain kind of leadership i entirely endorse i think it's absolutely true i think what gareth southgate's done is show real moral courage which is incredibly you know you see it so rarely in british public life that's kind of like oh wow he's doing something not to be popular because often people make these statements so i stand with the lgbt community or you know black lives matter and then they become really unpopular and then they go oh god yeah you're right or you know or solidarity with the palestinian people uh under occupation and they become unpopular people criticize them they might start losing jobs they might start having you know have people who who they respect say that's wrong actually i don't agree with you on that and they don't have moral courage and so they say oh you know what you're right it's complicated they might even take back what they initially said and what gareth southgate said i should double down not a belligerent way and he said no actually i've thought about this as a team we've collectively decided this this is what we're going to do and that's leadership and so star was right to observe leadership and highlight the facts but like you say michael this is another classic example of of kia starma ambulance chasing a political cause you know people call him captain hindsight i think for good reason and i think this is an example of that and it has that double problem for him because like you say the leadership qualities the moral courage and i would not use those two words with kia starma by the way moral courage put them out of the window um they they really highlight his own deficiencies because those are the exact things he doesn't embody you know you might not agree with brexit and i don't think boris johnson agreed with it at one point but the whole point of that political project that took the tourists to a major majority a couple of years ago was there's this thing we're going to do it we think it's the right thing because that's what people voted for you know and and that's a politics again that labor and kia starma put themselves in opposition to or any any number of causes over the over the what 18 months since he's been the leader more than a year you would never associate him with moral courage so yeah i think this is a this is doubly bad for him i think at this point though michael i mean it's a bit of a tangent but i think just kids kind of a bit of a joke right um i mean i i you know i was watching like arsenal fan tv on youtube and they're like taking the piss out of kia starma you know that's really cuts through the guys a bit of a joke so jeremy corbin was a joke he was jeremy corbin for many people was a joke because they found they found the sort of sort of political aura around him ridiculous because he was attached to all these stories but what i think people what i think people dislike about kia starma is actually strange enough what he was pitching it's just that his pitch has really not gone down very well you know i don't really believe in very much and i'm going to be a technocrat and i'm going to be professional and wear a suit and people go oh wow you're just a technocrat you just wear a suit you don't really believe in anything and and it's kind of like for me that's what's really interesting with starma is that people dislike him not because they've not seen enough of him not because they don't interpret him properly or because he's been misrepresented in media they identify precisely what he's trying to sell and that's what they don't like and that's really interesting i think that's interesting because i mean what really struck out this week was that you gov have shown that kia starma now has ratings which are you know just as bad as jeremy corbin was at this same stage in his in his leadership and now you can say oh why are you critiquing someone for being just as unpopular as the guy you supported well jeremy corbin was subject to a really big smear campaign kia starma hasn't been and what's interesting you know you might say oh well we're being biased because we're maybe he has been subject to a smear campaign and we're not recognizing it even kia starma's stands don't say the media have misrepresented him you know no one is out there claiming oh the reason people don't like kia starma is because he's been misrepresented he's clearly been correctly represented the media have reported kia starma as he is i mean it's because they don't find him threatening why would they bother to smear him but but they they have reported him as he is yeah the public don't like him and he's panicking now because it's because what what can you do if they're seeing the real you and they don't like it that's exactly it i mean it's unique michael we're looking here at a story in british public life which the media actually accurately representing it doesn't happen very often it's happened with kia starma i mean you know i'll be honest michael you know and i think you and i were similar on this we want we were open minded about kia starma and i think the pitch that he had when he became leader i'll be 80 percent of corbin's policies but i'll be wearing his suit and lead into my credentials as a former director of public prosecutions actually if you really mean that i think that's a that's a really great thing to aspire to as labor leader obviously he didn't but i i never thought he would be this not even bad i never thought the numbers would fall apart this quickly you know you look for instance amongst eight i didn't i definitely didn't 18 to 24s you got i think labor on 35 the down like 20 something you got like the green second on like 24 i mean we've got this on twitter today and the choice on 21 and people say well 18 to 34 year olds don't vote i mean this is your base minorities renters graduates the young public sector workers we saw a poll recently actually an astonishing number of nurses back boris johnson not particularly fond of kia starma you know labor are really looking at a real hiding at the next general election like it's frightening and i think we're going to get a glimpse of a batley and spen and what's different with batley and spen and i will bring this back to southgate thing what's different with batley and spen to say harley pool is harley pool is super explicable in terms of long-term trends batley and spen is really different you know yes it was a marginal yes it you know has elements of people that wants to leave the european union and so on it was a big file right there not long ago i mean obviously the terrible events around joe cox demonstrate that i think i think the bmp of the national front you know back in the day big locally but what they what they really show i think in batley and spen is the potential of labor's vote the potential of labor's vote to balkanize and in batley and spen you're seeing that with labor and george galloway right potentially so some labor voters may be going over to the tories some may be going to other parties for whatever reason and then you've got george galloway and that's going to happen i think in lots of places you know labor's problem now is losing voters both to your left and to your right which is something that jeremy gorbin 2017 almost miraculously actually over you know he overcame because it was the exact same challenge that was confronting a milliband in 2015 so going back to the garris southgate thing you know it just reeks of desperation like so many of these things just don't say anything here you weren't on the story look we're content creators in the bar on media michael you know you don't talk about a story from three weeks ago on tisky sour do you but people aren't interested anymore if you want to show political leadership if you want to influence the debate kia you should do it when you should have done it which wasn't you know on friday you know it was on monday or it was last week and it was a it was a real open goal as well by the way you call your well if you want to call yourself an england football supporter don't be the team not hard it's really not that hard that's very well put and a great note to end the show on our and it's been an absolute pleasure as always spending my friday night talking to you about politics my pleasure michael one day we'll be back in the studio at the same time thank you as ever for watching tisky sour if you are a supporter thank you so much if not please consider going to navaramedia.com forward slash support we'll be back on monday sometime same place for now you've been watching tisky sour on navaramedia good night