 A 99-year-old man whose life was serialised in a popular Netflix drama has today sadly passed away. Our thoughts are with his family. However, unlike the rest of Britain's media, we aren't convinced that that event means all other news needs to be put on hold. And so tonight we're sticking with a story that will have a material impact on thousands of people currently living in the UK. Loyalist violence in Northern Ireland. I'll be speaking in one moment to Amanda Ferguson, a journalist in Belfast. First though, Aaron, how are you doing? I'm very well, Michael. I'm very well. Did any of your favourite programmes get cancelled at about half-twelve today? Other than loose women, no. We are also going to be talking about Prince Philip passing today. I mean, focusing more on the political and media reaction to his death. And we'll end the show and with a story about three men who will be delighted that their behaviour has been crowded out from this evening's news. That's Lex Greensill and Rishi Sunak and David Cameron. As ever, do share this show. Link to it on the hashtag Tisgy Sour. Keep your super chats coming and comment under the Twitch stream. Now, Northern Ireland has now suffered a week of unrest with some of the worst battles between protesters and police seen in the region in years. That included these disturbances over the Easter weekend when petrol bombs and bricks were thrown at police officers in loyalist parts of Derry and Belfast. You see, it looks incredibly dangerous for everyone involved. We're going to be talking about the reasons that this is happening. First of all, a few more moments to take you through the events of the week. Some of the most serious rioting occurred in West Belfast on Wednesday night, which included a bus getting fire bombed. Now, it's worth noting the bus driver had already been forced off the bus before the fire bomb was thrown. So a horrific event, incredibly stressful and scary, I'm sure, for the bus driver. It wasn't attempted murder, as I think many people interpret it the first time they saw that video. Also on Wednesday night in scenes which were very worrying for many people, the gates at a peace line in West Belfast were set on fire. So for context here, the peace lines or peace walls are barriers which were erected during the troubles dividing loyalist neighborhoods from nationalist ones. Most of them still remain standing, though have been the site of only minimal sectarian violence since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Hence, it's very worrying to see those scenes this week. Finally, we're going to show you how disturbances continued into last night and how the police responded, which was with water cannon deployed against rioters. Now, it's worth noting that using water cannon in Britain would be illegal. So it's only in Northern Ireland where water cannon and plastic bullets are allowed to control protests. So that's the nature of the unrest. What has sparked it? So one backdrop is Brexit. This is the one that's been most discussed in the news and on Twitter. Here, the relevant issue is that the UK's exit from the European Union included agreeing to the Northern Ireland protocol, which puts a customs border down the Irish Sea. Now, this is seen as a threat to the British identity of many loyalists in Northern Ireland. That includes Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP. She has been very vocal about the threat. She believes the protocol poses to Northern Ireland's position within the United Kingdom, even though, of course, it was the DUP's guppering Theresa May's deal that means we have it in the first place. Now, another cause of loyalist frustration, which, again, has been put forward by many as an explanation for what's going on, was a decision by the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland not to press charges against any of the attendees of the funeral of Bobby's story. Now, that's despite them being seen to have breached COVID restrictions. We can see some scenes from that funeral. It was for the former head of intelligence of the IRA and was held last June. It was attended by leading Sinn Féin politicians, including Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister, Michelle O'Neill. And as you can see, there's lots of attendees there. It took place when the limit was 30 due to COVID restrictions as Michelle O'Neill was Deputy First Minister. That means she had been one of the people who had been instructing people how to follow COVID rules for that upset a lot of people. And there has been anger towards the police for not stopping it and then for not prosecuting. We have had Arlene Foster again. She's called on the Northern Irish Police Chief or Northern Ireland's Police Chief to resign. That hasn't happened, but Foster's call was seen to have stoked anger against the police. Finally, we have a third explanation for the unrest, slightly less political in the capital P sense. This is an argument which is being put forward, especially by the police, where they say what we're seeing is a response by loyalist paramilitaries to a recent crackdown by police, which included high-profile drugs rates and arrests. So it's an issue of criminal gangs, essentially, trying to get their own back on the police. And I suppose tragically, however you want to put it, it's often very young members of the community who are being pushed to take these actions. So lots of complex, intersecting explanations there, and that's potentially not all of them either. So which is it and is an end to the violence in sight? To find out, I'm joined by Amanda Ferguson, a writer and broadcaster based in Belfast. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Thank you for having me. What I want to know first, we'll go into all the explanations in a moment, is first of all, can you put into context the scale of the unrest that we've seen over the last week? And especially, I suppose, how it compares to anything else we've seen since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement is what we're seeing now exceptional. Well, the last time that I covered a major series of riots would have been about nearly 10 years ago, when loyalists were unhappy with the Belfast City Council decision to limit the flying of the Union flag from every day to designated days in line with Royal Protocol. And then there have been various incidents of different types of rioting since then. But water cannon hasn't been used in about six years. And nobody was quite expecting what we've seen unfold over the last week to happen. Now, we know that the trouble started up in Derry in the Northwest. And it was really mainly between loyalist communities and the police. Although there were some sort of more minor issues from nationalist youths. And then the violence started across mainly loyalist areas in different locations across Northern Ireland. But I think where events took, essentially where events got the attention of the Prime Minister and of the Taoiseach and of the US administration was when the violence changed from being attacks on police to there being a sectarian element of it at the interfaces. And like several hundred people were involved in the violence that we saw on, I'm losing track of days with Wednesday night. And interestingly, what you were talking about at the start of your program about Prince Philip's death is that there have been a series of protests planned for this evening. But sort of posters have gone up and social media posts have gone up to say that I respect for the royal family that the protests won't go ahead. So I'm sure police are still on standby in case anybody sort of changes their mind on that. And there may be some issues, maybe amongst nationalist communities we don't know yet. The night is only sort of seven o'clock now, so we'll have to wait and see. But certainly it's been very disturbing. And I think one of the most disturbing elements of what we've seen in the last week is how young some of the people involved are. I mean, I just want to focus very quickly on that Prince Philip issue, because I suppose uniquely in terms of a protest movement, especially a confrontational one, I suppose loyalists in Northern Ireland are especially fond of the British royal family. So this is probably going to have an impact over and above what we might expect it to have on a different protest movement, for example. Yes, certainly the royal family is very important to a large section of people within Northern Ireland, to many Unionists and loyalists. So yes, that'll be something that's sort of felt in that particular community. The royal family is very important to the loyalist people. The very visual manifestations of British culture are very important to loyalists. So yes, that will be a factor. But I'm sure the police haven't packed up and gone home just in case it might kick off. And there could be sectarian tensions as we've seen previously. But hopefully there isn't violence because it doesn't do anybody any good. But we'll just have to wait and see, really. So let's talk about the explanations for what we've seen in my introduction. I mentioned Brexit, the Bobby Story funeral and a crackdown on loyalist paramilitaries by the police for basically criminal offenses, drug issues. Which of those do you think is most important and have I missed anything? Well, it's a complicated picture and you've got most of the main elements, right? But there are just a few technical issues with some of the things that you said. The tension around the Brexit protocol has been building for weeks, essentially since the start of the year. But there's a bigger picture to all of this around a sense of insecurity about the future amongst people from the Unionist and loyalist community. There's a sense of being left behind by the peace process, of not seeing a lot of perceptions about it being an unequal society. And I think also other things that are feeding into what we're seeing on the streets is social deprivation. And there is an element of recreational rioting for some people. But that's the fact of this case that we're from. Regarding the funeral, it seems the reaction from Unionist politicians to the PPS decision not to prosecute I think has played a major role in this. It's not the police recommended prosecution. So it was the PPS decision not to prosecute 24 members of Shinfien over their attendance to the funeral. And the reason given for that was that the PPS felt that a reasonable excuse to fence could be used in two different circumstances, either or would have been sufficient in their view to mount a reasonable excuse offense. And the first one was that organisers had engaged with the police. So it's a difficult one because as soon as that was said, then it was interpreted by Unionist politicians that it was the police's fault. What we were seeing, the fact that Shinfien wasn't being prosecuted was the police's fault for their failed operation. But it wasn't just the police operation that played into the decision that the PPS made. The fact that the second reason that a reasonable excuse to fence in their view could have been used was the fact that there was incoherence in the law at the time that the regulations had changed around nine or 10 times the latest being at 11 p.m. the night before the funeral. So calling for the Chief Constable to resign it felt as if the anger was being redirected away from Shinfien towards the police. And then perhaps people who've been itching to get onto the streets or to be violent for a long time perhaps used the angry reaction towards the police to justify what they were doing or there is no justification for the violence that we're saying ever perhaps the sort of toxic political discourse is fed into what we're saying to a certain extent. And to what extent do you think this is also about I suppose loyalist paramilitary gangs who deal drugs presumably if that's what they've been what they've been arrested for? Well essentially the the police have indicated that criminal elements and paramilitary elements there has been an involvement to an extent among people from those backgrounds because some of their activities have been disturbed in recent times and the suggestion that it's not perhaps quite a full orchestration but perhaps elements of illegal organizations are involved in encouraging younger people to be involved or being involved in the violence itself. We have seen the youngest person charged so far is only 13 years old and I think the oldest person so far is around 47 and it seems as if you know there's 75 well it's 74 police officers 75 if you include the dog that had to get stitches after it was hit with masonry but there's only been about 12 arrests so far but I imagine that there'll be a lot of evidence gathering going on at the moment and you'll see that number increase as the days pass and I think there's just a sense that you know young people are going to be criminalized you know over this activity whenever you know lots of different factors are feeding into the fact that it's happening in the first place it's been a pretty grim week you know I've been trying to explain the complexities of Northern Irish or British or Irish you know it's a combination of identities here in Northern Ireland so it's trying to get across that where we find ourselves isn't just because of one thing in particular I think a lot of commentators have tried to focus really in on the Brexit protocol and yes that is a major issue but it's not the only one I want to look at some of the political reactions to what we've seen I'm going to start with a tweet from Arlene Foster she's the leader of the the DUP so in response to that video of the the bus being firebombed which we which we showed you she tweeted this is not a protest this is vandalism and attempted murder these actions do not represent unionism or loyalism they are an embarrassment to Northern Ireland and only serve to take the focus of the real lawbreakers in Sinn Féin my thoughts are with the bus driver now that was read as being a fairly incendiary tweet by many people she's suggesting the real lawbreakers are Sinn Féin presumably and for attending the Bobby Story funeral and therefore you know she's applying that the people who firebomb the bus aren't the real criminals it's an odd tweet for someone who is the first minister then on Thursday an emergency debate was called in the Northern Irish Assembly let's take a look at some clips from that we're going to show you first Naomi Long who's leader of the Alliance party then it's Arlene Foster who's leader of the DUP and finally Michelle O'Neill of Sinn Féin over 55 police officers have been injured in over 36 incidents of disorder deliberately designed to draw the police into areas to be attacked as they try to protect the community the scenes we have witnessed of people forced from their cars bus drivers and passengers ordered off public transport and vehicle satellites are nothing short of disgraceful the injury to front-line officers victims terrorised damage to people's property the harm to Northern Ireland's image in this our centenary year has taken us backwards and no brick no bottle no petrol bomb thrown has achieved or can ever achieve anything but destruction harm and fear and we all know where that influence is coming from it's coming from illegal loyalist power militaries and criminal elements that are orchestrating this balance will they stand back and send youngsters out to do their bidding these people are no role models for our use they're outdated they're antiquated and they're caught in a time warp which is no burn and where the vast majority of people across the society now are or indeed where they want to be so that was just some of the responses to the violence that we've seen from Northern Ireland's political leaders Amanda what's your assessment of I suppose the leadership that's being offered or lack of it or do you see it as politicians stoking the violence or trying to calm it down and how should we look at the I suppose the statements from from different sides here is this something that's mainly being driven by DUP politicians or is there lots of leaders who have some blame to share here well I think that all of the Unionist parties are deeply unhappy happy with the protocol and they all kind of wait in over the the calls for the chief constable to resign I think that the politicians on the Union side perhaps weren't expecting their angry words to sort of influence what we've seen happen over the last week I think it's interesting that you're pointing out that tweet that Arlene Foster has put out had put out that has caused such controversy because I sometimes wonder is I know that Arlene Foster is quite keen on Instagram because it's a sort of friendlier platform for her I know that she gets a lot of online abuse on Twitter and I would like to know whether she actually tweeted is that tweet is something that she has written or whether that's something that has been written maybe by one of her reps I don't know what I don't know the answer to that question but it was very much felt that the focus was all wrong but I think most people can see the difference between attending a funeral no matter how large it was or how offensive it may have been to other families that were grieving and the difference between that and someone throwing a petrol bomb on a bus I think it's clear that the violence that we've seen is unacceptable and I think that some of the politicians almost on the union side at this point are trying to be a bit more measured in what they're saying but I think they're finding it difficult because there's so much contempt amongst the politicians up at Stormont like I was doing a piece for the Washington Post and I interviewed the Justice Minister and she said that the atmosphere up at Stormont's really horrible that there's you know thinly veiled contempt among the politicians and that there's a lack of generosity that's been there from the start among them and it's got worse as time has passed and I think that whenever we had the recall of the assembly it was important for the assembly to be speaking with one voice to demonstrate to the public you know what's happening and what's happening on the streets is out of order and that should be happening but I think that the unionist politicians are still trying to sort of straddle that sense that they still want to get across that they're annoyed with the Chief Constable while also saying to people you know don't break the law but certainly I think that the role of politicians in this has been pretty major. How are the DUP viewed within unionist communities in in Northern Ireland because from an outsider's perspective it just looks like they have been you know the worst politicians in terms of fulfilling their own goals of anyone I can remember in my recent memory what they're angry about now is the Northern Ireland protocol which creates a customs border in the Irish sea between Britain and Northern Ireland but the reason we have that is because they blocked Theresa May's deal which would have kept Northern Ireland and Britain in the customs union essentially or in a backstop whereby there weren't any borders so I mean it seems in a way almost laughable that they blocked the solution that would have maintained the integrity of the United Kingdom and now they're incredibly pissed off that the outcome that they brought about exists. Is that a very I suppose London centric view of me or is that how people are viewing it in Northern Ireland as well? Well I think the people only really started paying attention to political parties here whenever the DUP obviously historically there's interest but whenever the DUP were propping up the Tories at Westminster then all of a sudden all eyes were on Northern Ireland and I think that that is a common thing that happens when something affects you then you suddenly become interested so when the Brexit question came up there was more interest from the other side of the border in Ireland there was more interest from Britain about what was actually happening in Northern Ireland and I remember at the very start of this having to sort of do a dummies guide to the DUP for various elements of society who just weren't familiar with them at all you know the DUP is the the biggest Unionist party in Northern Ireland and you know it gains the most votes has the most political reps and you know of any of the Unionist parties and you know we go over say there's the Ulster Unionist party as well and the traditional Unionist voice the TUB which is really a one-man band and Jim Allister and then the PUP the Progressive Unionist Party which you know has historic links to the UVF and then there's independent Unionists as well so I think that it's complicated because there's things to be the sort of Westminster side of the DUP and then the the Stormont side of the DUP and there seems to be a poor struggle going on internally within the Democratic Unionist Party and they are in a tight position because while they still command a lot of support a lot of people within the the Unionist and Loyalist community are angry with them there are you know sort of voter intention polls indicating that some voters have said that they're going to move away from the DUP to the sort of more hard-line TUB, Jim Allister's TUB party but you know they're still they're still the they're still the main show in town you know they still hold the post of First Minister they're the biggest party in Northern Ireland but certainly they're having a pretty tough time at the moment because it is viewed that they didn't use their influence at Westminster wisely to sort of have a have a softer deal and I think the difficult thing is that they still maintain the Brexit was a good idea but it's the protocol that's the issue and you know I've taken to referring to what most people call the Northern Ireland protocol as the Brexit protocol because that's what it is it wouldn't exist if Brexit didn't exist and there was always going to be a border somewhere and you know it has to be made clear that while the distress that is caused to loyalists and to unionists by the Brexit protocol and there's definitely a need to finesse it and make it pragmatic and make it work for everybody and I think the EU and the UK government both have to work equally hard to do that I think that you know it shouldn't um it should we shouldn't be drawn into thinking that just because there's a different trading arrangement for this part of the world that it suddenly means that there's a united Ireland or anywhere near an economic united Ireland the constitutional position of Northern Ireland is down to the people it will only change if people vote for it in a democratic vote so that should always be remembered and I think that sometimes um you know some of the fears and the um you know perceptions that there are there amongst the the unionist and an oilist community they have to be listened to and have to be addressed but they're not always grounded in reality and finally I want to talk about that prospect of a united island I suppose first of all you know how how um likely um do you see that as something that would happen in the near future but also I suppose less speculatively I agree we can't you know put this violence down to the Northern Ireland protocol there's lots of interconnected issues going on but you can sort of say if if the the Northern Ireland protocol on one level is is leading to this kind of disruption imagine if there was some kind of move towards a united island or a border poll I mean how ready do you think Northern Ireland would be for for something like that and or when would it be ready for for something as as divisive as that well I think that you know conversations around a border poll and Irish unity have been happening for many many years what Brexit has done is accelerated those conversations and it's now moving to a point where the sort of demographic and political landscape of Northern Ireland is changing and you're saying that um we're kind of falling into three categories now it's almost like a place of minorities it's like a third unionist third republican a third uh other and those others do include unionists and Republicans it'll probably be that middle ground section that maybe vote for the Greens or vote for Alliance that actually decide the outcome of a border poll because the people who are unionists are set they know that that's their thing the people who are Republicans are set but there's those people in the middle who could be perhaps be persuaded and but there are also people in the middle who already have a position but they just don't be the need to vote on traditional party lines on that matter because they know that the only vote that actually counts whenever it comes to is a border poll now I am of the view that Irish reunification will happen and maybe the medium to long term it's not going to happen in the next year or two but I certainly think that that's the trajectory that we're on I think that most people um most people have a sense of that or an understanding of that or a feeling that that is something that might happen and I think that feeds into a lot of the fear and a lot of the distress that we have at the moment because there's a realisation that Northern Ireland is changing that it's not it just doesn't look quite the the place it was whenever Ireland was partitioned or 50 years ago or 30 years ago or even 20 years ago and I think that we're mature enough to have decent conversations around that it's up to unionists to sell the benefits of the UK it's up to republicans to sell the benefits of Irish unity and but certainly you know no matter what happens it's going to be you know we saw with the brexit referendum of course it's going to be tricky and it's not going to be an easy conversation but what I would rather do is hope and pray that well not that I would pray because I'm not religious but hope that um it would not sort of descend into the real pit that the brexit referendum debate did because um I think that would be really bad for society but I think you know whatever happens that board of pool happens it's a democratic vote it's up to the people to decide and Northern Ireland remains part of the UK for as long as the people wanted to and if they decide that there's something different in their future nobody's going anywhere we're all going to either be British or Irish or both or neither either before or after that happens so we have to work harder on the reconciliation part of the peace process because it's not just some random event that happened in 1998 and that's it done with it's something that constantly has to be worked out Amanda Ferguson thank you so much for for joining us this evening all super interesting thank you that was Amanda Ferguson a journalist in Belfast um let's go to a couple of comments Teresa Easton with a tenor thank you very much I would love Navarra to give the Roma community a platform so we can learn more about how the police bill is going to affect them and what we can do to support them um thank you so much for your comment we'll definitely be covering that issue more in the future but also I should say we did um we did we did a great interview last Friday on exactly this topic um so I do recommend you go back and check that and then also the Friday before that we also covered um the impact on the Roma community of the police and crime bill so there is there's quite a lot of Navarra media content you can go and consume already but we will definitely be um reporting more on that because it is a I mean the police and crime bill makes it a very key issue a key ongoing issue and before we go on to Prince Philip because we are going to go on to Prince Philip Aaron um I want your take I mean we've seen lots of sort of FPP is saying haha Boris Johnson it's your fault that these buses are burning and it all seems a little bit crass um but at the same time you know Boris Johnson did promise there wouldn't be a border down the Irish Sea then he put a border down the Irish Sea I mean it does seem like the Conservative Party have played pretty fast and loose with this issue yeah I think that's one variable for sure um but I think that's kind of this idea is monocosal that you know if this hadn't happened if Britain had voted to remain in the EU or if the Brexit deal had been different or if Brexit had been overturned this wouldn't be happening I think that's I think that's actually deeply insulting to many people that live in Northern Ireland which whichever community they're in this is a this is a set of grievances which go back a very long time they're immersed obviously and not just nationalism but also religious sectarianism and there is of course also the economic context you know I think that's something that we we can't ignore you're looking at a year of an economic depression alongside all that you will have rising crime generally speaking we've not had it in the UK but you know generally speaking during an economic downturn you have rising crime you have young people who perhaps would get involved in forms of confrontation otherwise wouldn't uh so you know I think if Britain comes out of this pandemic and Brexit with just what we're seeing now I think that would be judged by the powers that be is not successful because of course the horrendous scenes but I think that there were expectations of something like this being highly possible in the long term I think you know what I guess that was really strong I think the that does feel now there's inevitable pull towards Irish unification although like like she said you know there is strong arguments be made by Unionists they you know could argue that we can have the best of both we can have access to the single market while also being part of the UK you could see how they could leverage it in a really I don't think progressive way I don't personally think that Northern Ireland should be a part of the UK but I also recognise it should be up for people in Northern Ireland to decide but you could see how that could be quite a convincing argument but what's really surreal is that nobody really in Northern Irish politics seems to be doing that the DUP like you said Michael just seemed to be supremely useless politicians you know in so much as they had a position on Brexit they torpedoed the May government and now they're getting there come up and they're reaping what they sowed and they're they're not quite happy with what they've got and you think well you could have stopped this and you chose not to where's that coming from so it's a strange one it does feel like it it does feel like the inevitability of Irish unification is partly the result of just really bad politicians on the side of Unionism it's also I think they're probably I think it's probably early enough to say now or late enough to say now that there probably is a positive correlation between long lockdowns and riots because I'm sure we've seen more riots than we we usually do over the past year or so and I think that probably is because people are so pent up and they've been so pent up for so long um before I move on to our next story I do want to remind you you can tweet your comments on the hashtag tisky say we will be going um to those throughout the show Britain's media and politicians have apparently had plans in motion for this moment for decades when a royal passes away our lives are not supposed to carry on as normal which meant at around 12 15 today anyone watching any program on the BBC saw it interrupted by the following message we are interrupting our normal programs to bring you an important announcement you're watching BBC news from London a short while ago Buckingham Palace announced the death of his Royal Highness Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh in a statement the palace said it is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty the Queen announces the death of her beloved husband his Royal Highness the Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh his Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle further announcements will be made in due course the royal family joined with people around the world in mourning his loss BBC television is broadcasting this special program reporting the death of the Duke of Edinburgh so that message and that national anthem was played not just on BBC one and BBC two but on every single platform the BBC have so if you listen to six music if you're listening to one extra at about 12 15 and you heard that announcement and the national anthem of course I don't need to tell you the Prince Prince Philip the Queen's husband has died at the age of 99 you heard it in that in that announcement there now as you can imagine it wasn't just the BBC and their various platforms that burst into action on receipt of that news it did feel at times a little bit like living in North Korea every TV channel every radio station or almost every radio station reverted to specialist coverage of the Duke's death one of the scenes that I thought was sort of most striking as well was that this wasn't just confined to television and radio if you were walking around in the streets you would have also noticed what happened this was Piccadilly Circus today well they've taken down whatever advert was there and replaced it with the news about Prince Philip will be be taking you through a few of those moments that we've seen today some of the key standout moments from the television we're going to talk a bit about Prince Philip but to be honest from the perspective of a political analyst I'm kind of more interested in the phenomenon of what has happened today as I say yes it's incredibly sad when anyone passes away especially for I mean especially you know if you've been married to them for over 70 years which the Queen and Prince Philip have done I'm sure this is very sad for for the Queen my sympathy with her but you know this is one guy for me what's interesting here is what the state does what the media does when a royal dies so we're going to go through some of those key moments let's look at sky so because despite all the broadcasters having a year of practice for this moment really really intense plans often when I saw people who were sort of looked like they're about to break down in tears I couldn't quite work out if it could have been stressed because of the the grandness of the event they knew they would be going out on every TV channel or it could have been that they thought they have to look really sad I mean they've basically been told to look really sad I think or maybe they feel genuinely for Prince Philip I don't know anyway I want to show you a bit of a gaffe on sky they the host on sky delved into the circumstances in which Prince Philip met Elizabeth take it back to the beginning for us Alistair and and tell us how the young Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark met the then Princess Elizabeth well they were related they were related so they are both the Queen and Prince Philip are great great grandchildren of Queen Victoria which makes them third cousins and I'm all for live and let live I don't have any strong opinions on third cousins maybe I do I haven't really thought about it anyway that wasn't the issue that I think any of the broadcasters wanted to focus on today there was one issue that none of them could avoid though and I think most of the broadcasters struggled with this one which is Philip's history or Prince Philip's history of bigoted remarks or insensitive jokes however you want to characterize them now to see how they tried to strike the balance we can take a look at part of the BBC's pre-prepared mini film about the prince this has been playing repeatedly today he channeled some of his restless energy into a boisterous social life he and a group of male friends met every week in rooms above a restaurant in London so ho there were long convivial lunches visits to nightclubs and glamorous companions by the 1960s Philip's life was more settled he and the Queen had completed their family with two more children Andrew and Edward who joined Charles and Anne and he had found a new role for himself is it the 18th or do back now from his office in the palace he promoted issues in which he had a personal interest 40 minutes to get around the world well it's going to be a bit of a rush it may leave you a little bit muddled yet diplomacy seemed alien to him he urged British industry to pull its finger out and complained on American television that the royal family didn't have enough money inevitably if if nothing happens we shall either have to I don't know we may have to move into smaller premises we know he blundered on a state visit to China with the Queen he made what he thought was a private remark about slitty eyes it was a diplomatic gaffe which dominated the headlines and added to his reputation for making misjudged remarks yet Philip had a sharp inquiring mind and was determined to make a contribution of his own the groundbreaking 60s film royal family was made largely at his instigation because he felt it was time for the family to show a more human base to the world the salad is ready and for many years he toured the globe as president of the then world wildlife fund speaking out about the need to conserve nature we depend on being part of the web of life we depend on every other living thing on this planet just as much as they depend on us so the well they called it a gaffe you might call it something else I'm in 1986 Prince Charles told British students during a royal visit to China if you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty eyed I mean that's that's just our racism isn't it that's that's not just a gaffe obviously he had a very complex life it's not just a racist but I mean that's quite black and white there um Aaron I want to bring you in at this point I suppose both on how you think the media of I mean they'd call it his colorful past you might call it some some bigoted remarks you've made but how have you seen this whole I mean it's been a massive event hasn't it the way that the the media and all the politicians have been forced to or have willingly I again I don't want to to presume have responded to this event yeah I think I think it's kind of surprised us the extent to which it's it's taken on this profile but then look back Princess Diana even the Queen Mother you know the Queen Mother actually constitutionally didn't have a particular role that was huge you know that was and that was really driven on by the BBC most people didn't really care that's not to say that you know people shouldn't warn her passing or whatever you go knock yourself up but I don't think most people you know thought it was this top of the agenda story and it's a similar thing with Prince Philip and it does speak to the role of the monarchy and and the fact that you know it's a it's a constitutive key constitutive part of the British state and I think you know people could say oh this is terrible whatever and again I'm not I'm not minimizing that or say you know obviously my commiserations got to his family it's anybody who's lost the loved one or a member of their family you know knows where that comes from obviously but at the same time if you were told well Monday you know we were told on April 12 things are going to go open again actually that's being put back a couple of days because Prince Philip's died I think most people say hang on a second that's a that's a bit much you know they wouldn't want disruptions their life which of course is what we'll be seeing with the Queen, Queen Elizabeth II when she passes away that's going to be this is just a dress rehearsal for that and it's that it's going to be an extraordinary few weeks you know there's a huge operation behind that massive resources there will be you know regime coordinated mourning and you've said North Korea I mean there's no other analogue really around the world so this is just a this is a foretaste of what's to come and of course it's sad for the family but I think most people if you say Prince Philip what do they think like you say the gaffes that often means just playing our bigotry and of course it is also important to say he was 99 years old you know this is a guy who was born in 1921 before the Wall Street crash before the Great Depression before the Cold War Hitler hadn't even you know had the beer hall push Mussolini hadn't even come to power so I mean it is really an entirely different world and that to me sums up what what today's been about you know we're seeing the confrontation and this is a contradiction and attention within the British state more generally right between modernity and between feudalism the monarchy is a fundamentally feudal institution and the way we're having the state choreographed mourning is they want us to mourn like with feudal serfs again that's not an exaggeration that's that's the role here the monarchy is meant to be you know she's she's the incarnation of the state it's if you believe in that stuff it's a really big deal when her husband dies when the father of the next king of england dies when the grandfather of his successor dies of course most people intuitively in the modern real world don't think like that so they look at this kind of state coordinator stuff I think that's a bit much isn't it well you're right it is a bit much well it's difficult when you say most people because I've got no idea and I mean that's why you know I'm not particularly noisy in these sort of like oh it's a disgrace that we're doing all this because you know maybe obviously my sympathy goes out to the queen and his direct family but if there are people who had no I you know who'd never met Prince Philip who are all so sad I mean sure you know I want to reign on their parade but I do have to at the same time and this is sort of you know partly conflicts with that I did find it quite distasteful actually when we're you know we've lived through a year of a pandemic there were many days when like over a thousand people died in their 24-hour period you know and again you know he's 99 it was often people who were at the in older age elderly people people's grandparents and for none of those did we you know interrupt every single program on television for none of those we did that so I think what what I find a bit off is how this is all forced upon us and it's not even questioned that this is more important than anything else that's happened this year when actually in the grand scheme of things I mean it's not really is it I mean it's important to some people but when we've had thousands and thousands of people die you know due to an unnecessary cause and yes the the TV channels have mourned a bit but we haven't really seen newscasters who look like they're about to burst into tears which is what we've seen all day today it's just to me I find it very very odd if anything comparative age of people that are dying from COVID-19 has been a reason to diminish their deaths you've seen this time after time oh they would have died anyway yes it's 120 000 deaths but actually if if you look at it as you know years lost it's close to about 30 000 deaths you know wait so on one hand you're saying that actually older people dying prematurely isn't so important now this guy who's 99 years old oh my god turn off all the TV channels for the next six hours you're entirely right it speaks to a fundamental hypocrisy which of course is the only answer is all life is hugely sacred it should be taken incredibly seriously and people should mourn obviously if somebody they know is passed away but yeah there is a strange dissonance here isn't there of the minimization of certain people dying and I'm not saying by the BBC or whatever but we all know those voices Julia Hartley Brewer and Dan what's his name Michael help me out from the mail on Sunday Dan no not Dan Wharton him as well Dan Wharton in the comments Dan Hodges Labor Troll that's it my apologies because his different names was mum so I thought what's the name these people were making a concerted effort to sort of minimize casualties as a result of fatalities rather as a result of COVID-19 and it stands in stark contrast yeah I don't I don't get any pleasure from from gleefully talking about the passing away of Prince Philip I've never met the guy I personally find it quite strange you know I'll be honest I was happy when Margaret Thatcher died because she went out her entire political project was about destroying half of the country but it's different for somebody who went into a role they never really chose so I have no personal malice to him Michael but I think it's such an important thing that you said there it really does show that you know not all life and death is treated equally it just isn't you know and that's the that's the that's the myth that we try and console ourselves but it's just simply not true this guy was 99 years old you know like you say the only I suppose the only time actually you know what Michael the only time somebody has died and it was during COVID was Captain Top where it did take on a sort of a sense of oh this is national mourning but again it's because that person symbolized something right and I mean maybe you have some thoughts on that well he wasn't born into it right I mean again it was a little bit arbitrary but he had at least you know he'd earned his status as a bit of a national hero whereas Prince Philip was I mean married into it and now we all have to essentially pretend that he worked his way into it again it's it's like you're saying it's we have to sort of acknowledge and celebrate his feudal status as if he has given so much to us and that is a sort of feudal ethic where you have to say oh our lord we are here because of them and it's like where is the achievement I don't really get it which is to say I'm not going to be on the street shouting Prince Philip achieved nothing because it's not you know it's not really the time but whilst we're being forced to sort of mourn this as if it's more important than any other day if I just I find it distasteful okay no I think again going returning to that thing I said at the start about how you've got effectively two sort of conflicting ideologies you know as a as a feudal monarch or a feudal monarch's husband or children you don't need to work hard it's not meritocratic but of course you know the prevailing ideology since since the 1950s are arguably the modern ideology of the second Elizabethan age has been about you know if you work hard you get what you want and you know an ethos of public service and this was something which was conscientiously kind of aspired to by the royal household uh after the 1950s you know after uh Elizabeth II takes the throne because they understood that you know what we can't just carry on as usual you know playing cards and and having a great time we have to we have to cultivate this sense that actually we're doing this in the public interest of course it's nonsense of course it is complete nonsense the country would be perfectly fine with an elected head of state or actually with no head of state at all one might argue or purely ceremonial president like in Italy or in Ireland or in Germany uh of course but in order to perpetuate consent for this institution we need to hear all this garbage and this is garbage but how hard-working it was and how influential he was and what he changed he was a regular aristocrat who married a woman who purely by coincidence because her uncle you know abdicated the throne becomes the queen of England that's it you know he wasn't he wasn't a remarkable man he was a normal aristocrat who wanted to enjoy life and consequences turned out in such a way that you know actually he turned out to be an historically important person in so much as he's the he's the father of the future king of England but again that there is nothing you know incredible about him or you know world changing or epoch defining you know Britain Britain tries to persuade itself it's so understated and so you know stiff up a lip and then you just hear constant superlatives about everything in everybody you know where's it come from i think that's such a good point actually yes really not i find it quite undignified the whole thing let's go to a couple of comments ricochet tweets on the hashtag tisky sour is michael walker wearing black clothing because of prince philip and he's a closet monarchist traitor off with his head well i have you know for one this is dark blue and two i don't really need a special occasion to wear black or dark color um so no i'm a republican i it's a coincidence that i'm wearing this t-shirt now um and mtg forest with a five pound donation says i doubt the media will give similar for and dedication to those who've lost their lives during this pandemic or holding the tauries to account now i agree and again i this isn't even to say you know i think the media in in many occasions have dealt quite sensitively with the human cost of this pandemic not always but but sometimes but none of it compares to this and i think the fact that we have and i don't i don't actually think when a thousand people died of coronavirus we probably should have interrupted every single program on the television at 12 15 i just think it's a bit over the top but doing doing something so over the top for this issue to me does seem to diminish those other sad events i mean that's how i come to it let's go through some of prince philips i mean they're called gaffes on the media some might call them bigoted or at least grossly insensitive you can decide how you'd like to describe them but we're going to hear them a lot over the next 24 hours referred to as colorful um but we're probably not going to get them plastered across the television very often so so because we're an alternative media platform let's give you the the alternative rundown of um things prince philip has said remember he you know if he has a job in terms of public service it's to be a bit of a diplomat so if he's undiplomatic that's you know there's a bit of a problem with the public service anyway i'll take you through them this was during the 1981 recession lots of people are unemployed and prince philip says everybody was saying we must have more leisure now they're complaining they're unemployed um which is he was sort of moral leader for our country uh in 1984 after accepting a small gift from a local woman in kenya he said you are a woman aren't you i mean that's the stuff where he's speaking to people in the former british empire is to me the most the grossest um 1988 we are now he was speaking to a german news agency um and he said in the event that i am reincarnated i would like to return as a deadly virus to contribute something to solving over population that's worth noting you can be reincarnated as anything he's chosen a deadly virus to contribute something to solving over population now when everyone says on the the news i've heard it so many times a day his redeeming factor was he was an environmentalist you've got to remember when aristocrats are environmentalists normally what that means is they want to control the birth rates of the poor it's it's almost universal actually most really posh environmentalists are kind of eugenicists it's i don't want to say was you know capital e ujib but i mean that that comment speaks for itself doesn't it um let's go to 1995 to a scottish driving instructor remember these are supposed to be the the people keeping together the union and he says how do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test i mean it's incredibly it is i mean i don't know i'm not scottish i feel like am i allowed to laugh at that i don't know but you can you can see you can see what he was thinking or at least if you if you're if you're not averse to being a little bit racist it's a well-constructed joke um 1996 we're in response to cause to ban firearms after the dumb blank shooting um prince philip says if a cricketer for instance suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat which he could very easily do i mean are you going to ban cricket bats uh which is why you can see this is a hereditary job if there was if there was any meritocracy here someone who made that argument i mean unless you were in america where you could probably become a republican president saying that kind of that kind of stuff i don't i don't think that would that would work here and again this is another racist one which i think are the most um just outrageous ones really to then have all of this hagiography that brushes over it today this was from 1999 commenting on an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near edinburgh prince philip said it looks as if it was put in by an indian um that was in 1999 i wasn't even that long ago um 2001 this one is quite i mean this is funny um to a 13 year old andrew adams who told prince philip he wanted to go into space he told the 13 year old you're too fat to be an astronaut no i mean obviously that's incredibly cruel but it is just very surreal to have someone who is you know their job is to is to basically be this sort of cuddly figurehead and then you're telling 13 year olds they're too fat to go into space very bizarre um 2002 to an australian aborigine during a visit he says still throwing spears very gross um 2009 another racist one after looking at the name badge of businessman at all patelle at a palace reception for british indians he said there's a lot of your family in tonight oh my god you can see why they took him off royal duty can't you um and my final one this was to malala use use use us i i've often heard say malala use it for malala use of sigh um he told her children go to school because their parents don't want them in the house now the context here is that malala survived an assassination attempt by the taliban and now campaigns for the right of girls to go to school without fear now as i've said some of those some of those in a way were constructed in a fairly in a funny way i wouldn't make the jokes but you know now they're there i mean he was a 99 year old who said some bigoted things you know there will be many 99 year olds who said some bigoted things over a period of 99 years i suppose um but it was also his job to be a diplomat and i suppose all of the media platforms are struggling as to how to describe this they're all talking about it very euphemistically they were gaffes i've heard people on the radio you know the official news readers say colorful language and it is a bit like oh it's a bit awkward isn't it sort of covering for him in that way yeah i think so i mean i think people like the word gaff because a raises obviously some horrific things he's saying but also people say just call it what it is racist you say well if it was just racist that's one thing but it's not racist it's misogynistic it's fat phobic it's racist it's you know it's every he's even slacking off scots multiple times you know he doesn't he doesn't really leave many people out so i think bigotry is probably the best the best way to put it i think you know that term gaff i mean it's a strange one but what i find really interesting michael is and i know this is this is tisky sass of course i always i always talk about jeremy corbin is that we have had a media for years saying that jeremy corbin is a racist that you know socialists in this country are racists then we have somebody who has an encyclopedia you could fill the shelves up with all the files of him saying bigoted comments prince philip nobody's going to say the word right and i think that really does say a great deal about the the state of the conversation around racism in this country you know we've just had the the seal seal seal report you can correct me on on that pronunciation tony seal but it was the report that came out at the end of march and you know its conclusion was basically britain's the least racist country around basically that was the conclusion and when we see donald trump say these things to piers morgan in 2018 saying i'm the least racist person there is we laugh right in a similar way that we laugh at prince philip because it's it's absurd it's a stupid person saying something really absurd but actually that's kind of britain's national ideology is that actually we are the least racist country in the world and the thing with prince philip is if you actually acknowledge what he's saying it goes so far and it's been given such a free pass for so long you know you're letting out a real can of worms so like you say that they absolutely cannot use the r word mad of his time forthright you know loose lips but you cannot call him a racist and i think that's quite revealing really and it tells you about the complete absence of sincerity about having a meaningful conversation about race and racism in this country like you say he's a complex guy i don't he died i don't want him to be remembered by everybody forever as a racist castle prince philip right but you know let's just let's just call facts facts you know he was a guy who said lots of racist things doesn't seem a particularly difficult thing to do i mean that's that's that's how literally most people will associate you know prince philip with their sort of mental you know mood board they would say oh yeah he said some really really crappy things actually some might find them funny or whatever but that's what he would be associated with and even the people that find them funny would accept they were racist and yet we're not really we're not really talking about that and i think that's really important i think that really tells you a lot about the british media and about our political culture hmm yeah i think i think it is it is offensive to to not say the r word as you said um obviously this happens in a context this def happens in a context where we've been talking about the royals much more often than we would have been doing and everyone has really and because of the interview with megan markle and prince harry on oprah um now people on british television seem to be on their best behavior today so i haven't seen many people draw the connection between that interview and um this def judging correctly that while it would be insensitive and also it would be ridiculous this was a 99 year old in ill health um dying quite an unremarkable def um fox news in the us though um we're a bit more cavalier did y'all watch the crown yeah i know it's fictional but uh but it's based obviously on this true story and just to to watch their ups and downs throughout that and then the fact that they stuck together 99 years old right and they also you know married 73 years was pretty amazing and also if you factor in this uh there are reports that he was enraged after the interview and the fallout from the interview with oprah winfrey so here he is trying to recover and then he gets hit with that he also was a reportedly very uh uh very transparent about his distaste for uh furgy when he was married to uh prince andrew andrew for a while he was he was a little bit different uh for the royal family's taste i guess so 99 years old he passed away that went viral because people were quite outraged about drawing the connection to megan markle which i think is quite outrageous but also i do find the way americans talk about it a little bit refreshing because it's just so much less sincere they say did you watch the crown i love the crown i love the royals everyone loves the royals and then he just lists people that prince piddles didn't like he's like yeah furgy he didn't like furgy did he as if that's got anything to do with him dying very very strange um in any case i do i do find that a more refreshing way to talk about the royal family even if it is um fox news let's go straight on to some of the political responses to this obviously we focus on the media response which will be i think the thing that affects us most if we turn on any of the channels today there's also of course been a political one let's take a look at borris johnson's state like the expert carriage driver that he was he helped to steer the royal family and the monarchy so that it remains an institution indisputably vital to the balance and happiness of our national life he was an environmentalist and a champion of the national world natural world long before it was fashionable with his duke of edinburgh ward scheme he shaped and inspired the lives of countless young people and at literally tens of thousands of events he fostered their hopes and encouraged their ambitions we remember the duke for all of this and above all for his steadfast support for her majesty the queen not just as her consort by her side every day of her reign but as her husband her strength and stay of more than 70 years and it is to her majesty and her family that our nation's thoughts must turn today because they have lost not just a much loved and highly respected public figure but a devoted husband and a proud and loving father grandfather and in recent years great grandfather again it's all a bit we must turn our thoughts to them today we must do it must we is it not our choice also worth noting again the redeeming factory is an environmentalist remember he's someone who wanted to be reincarnated as a virus because he thinks there's too many people on the planet um the two things are are connected uh let's go to geert starmas i don't think anyone was expecting a particularly wild tweet from geert star i'm not going to complain because he didn't tweet that he was a republican um but let's just let's look at what he had to say anyway um he went with the united kingdom has lost an extraordinary public servant in prince philip prince philip dedicated his life to our country from a distinguished career in the royal navy during the second world war to his decades of service as the duke of edinburgh however he will be remembered most of all for his extraordinary commitment and devotion to the queen for more than seven decades he has been at her side their marriage has been a symbol of strength stability and hope even as the world around them changed most recently during the pandemic it was a partnership that inspired millions in britain and beyond i think probably sensible going for the relationship between an old couple or something that people can relate to more than i mean he also i mean prince philip dedicated his life to our country whatever i'm not going to complain about it jeremy corbin though um did have a great tweet in response so the first tweet jeremy corbin sent out i really really rate this and was the following let's get it up the people of bolivia have chosen a path of social change which puts people on planet before private profit i assume that's meant to say join me and bolivia friends and bolivian speakers on april the 19th to show our solidarity side it's obviously boiled a lot of piss on twitter because jeremy corbin the first thing he tweets about bolivia it's not about prince philip but he's a backbencher now he doesn't have to do these ridiculous things he doesn't have to pretend that it's his priority today that someone he's never met actually he might have met him as when he was leader of the opposition anyway someone he doesn't have a particularly close relationship with has passed away at a very old age he can talk about an issue that you know really matters which is concerns about a coup in bolivia unfortunately i don't know what happened maybe he is planning to another run at the job because he did end up deleting that i was quite surprised and went with something more i suppose traditional he said losing a loved one uh so many families have this past year is always heartbreaking my thoughts prince philip's family and all who loved him aron if you were a you know politician an mp someone in the labor party someone who was trying to be prime minister what would you tweet on a day like today well michael that's that's why i'll never be the prime minister well because what would you do you tweet something that would ruin your career i probably wouldn't tweet anything i thought i thought jeremy corbin's tweet was perfect when he tweeted that i thought it was i think it was obviously a scheduled tweet right i was like this is perfect like just ignore it and talk about something that's really important just so good so powerful but they deleted it i was really upset i retweeted him but he deleted it i mean that's probably what i do i mean i probably wouldn't be that smart i probably i probably would i probably would say the thing about starmer about i know it's a couple passing you know the you know they've been together but look the thing that i'm going to read back what you said about uh what kia starmer said that the the the royal couple offered for millions of britain strength stability and hope what the fuck you know i've lost all hope don't worry darling think about the royal couple think about you know the duke of adinburgh and her royal highness queen elizabeth the second oh thank god you're right i feel hopeful now what are you on about they do that to some people though my grandparents used to get hope from the the royal family before they passed away they they went to some i think they were married they were married in the same year yeah well you know when they're sort of when they're struggling with dementia or whatever you look at that letter from the queen that said congratulations on your royal whatever it is it's strange i don't get it but it does it does mean stability i get stability i get i mean that's the big argument for monarchy and i get that stability but hope i just find it really surreal and it goes back to borough shots you know they have they recrafted you know the royal family because quintessential modern british institution like no it's not one of the sons is an alleged pedophile you know one of the one of the one of the grandsons has left the country because he can't stand any of you just come on because one of you passed about the skin tone of his of his unborn child and everyone's like brought him into modernity by taking a video camera to val moral in the 1960s yeah this is 60 years ago you know talk about you know dining out on something that was in the bus i just think the whole thing is just again it's just surreal i said it earlier on michael you know this we are now it just everything every sort of adjective has to be a superlative everything world-class health system test and trace you know world-class defense uh this is you know the the best health care system in the world which by the way you know probably yeah that's the one time it's accurate in this country uh and now this one prince the Duke of Edinburgh wonderful man who nobody believes this it's really really strange i really wish mark fish was still with us because there's like there's this this whole public discourse which nobody you're saying your grandparents believe it fine honestly michael i don't think many people believe it i don't think many people think prince philip was an extraordinary man i don't you might be i think you might be surprised i think they might say he was he was a great husband to an extraordinary woman right and that was his job maybe but uh he was come on he was just a he had a walk on part let's be real and and he knew that and that's probably what you know that's probably what he excelled at he didn't screw up you know if he didn't he bad he did lots of bad things i'm sure very little bit gone out he got out i watched the crown i know you know i know what happened in that bar above uh you know in soho in the when they first got married but you know so yeah okay he he he did his duty and that's what matters most of these people it's the blue bloods but he was a bit part player let's get a comment elena sikorski with 1999 thank you very much hello from nottingham please wish my partner louisa happy birthday 30 tomorrow watching navara keeps us both grounded and entertained hoping one day navara will grow enough to have correspondence outside the big smoke absolutely um i'm hoping for that as well but with your financial support thank you so much that becomes ever closer and happy birthday to louis yes that was it happy birthday to louis good age 30 um means you can get the astrazeneca vaccine something to look forward to if you do want to support the show please do go to navaramedia.com forward slash support and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month we're going to go to our final story which i'm going to race through in response to a freedom of information request the uk treasury has released texts sent from chancellor rishi sunak to former prime minister david cameron about potential government support for green seal capital now cameron who worked as an advisor for green seal until it collapsed had been seeking to use his connections to get the troubled financial services company access to emergency government loans the treasury has not released the texts from david cameron they say he sent them with the expectation that they would be kept private but they have released the replies from rishi sunak they released the messages rishi sunak sent to david cameron when david cameron was asking for rishi sunak's help for the company he worked for well it's all very familiar all a little bit gross hi david thanks for your message i am stuck on back to back calls but we'll try you later this evening and if it gets too late first thing tomorrow best rishi then on the 23rd of april hi david apologies for the delay i think the proposals in the end did require a change to the market notice but i have pushed the team to explore an alternative with the bank that might work no guarantees but the bank are currently looking at it and charles should be in touch best rishi a source close to sunak and cameron has told the bbc that that david cameron messaged the chancellor multiple times on his phone so he was really trying to use all of his connections to benefit this company which he was now working for um he also contacted two other treasury ministers he was really really going through his phone book it all looks very embarrassing for david cameron very undignified what about rishi sunak though so the word in question that can look dodgy and labor have been focusing on sunak's claim that he had pushed his team to explore options for green sill um which labor is suggesting signals the firm got preferential treatment due to personal connections rishi sunak got a text from someone he knows and then he pressured his civil servants to give extra attention to this particular company that to most people would look like unfair advantage the alternative interpretation of the one that rishi sunak probably wants you to believe is that actually he was just fobbing off cameron in a polite way so he's saying oh i'll try my best but i can't guarantee anything it's the kind of thing you say when actually you're not going to try anyway well there's no smoking gum with rishi sunak i think that i don't know if you disagree but i think you know it's difficult to make any conclusive points with rishi sunak i mean he may he may have you know made some really bad calls may have some really bad motivations but generally speaking for me i mean this just sums up our former prime minister dodgy dave you know dodgy dave is the beast of bolso but then it's getting what's called him it just he's just playing so hard and fast with what should be serious matters of public probity and you know this is one moment where he's been caught out and you know it's been it's been done and executed in such a mundane fashion you know you wonder what else is there on david cameron i find it hard to believe you know he was always adhering to the rules and you know missed the probity and that this was the exception i find that incredibly hard to believe and bear in mind that this is the man whose head of coms at number 10 down and she was andy kulson right i really think you know cameron is an underwhelming personality and also you know he just wasn't in the job for very long and his political agenda wasn't particularly gripping it was austerity right from 2010 to 2016 he was in a coalition but actually i think i think with the passage of time i think cameron will really go down as as a deeply a moral kind of unscrupulous political figure at least blare blare was part of a broader project which he believed it yes he had that kind of messianic thing but with cameron it just what does the guy believe in you know and i think there's a great quote that's attributed to him by a biographer uh when you know somebody said to him i think oxford eaton they said why do you want to be what job would you like and he said i'd quite like to be prime minister i think i'd be rather good at it he just sums it up and i think you know in many ways cameron is this kind of vacuous suits really personifies and embodies everything that i personally despise about the british establishment tanon less mediocre entitled thinks he's absolutely fantastic and the sun shines out of his backside but ultimately i think and i'll use the c word here and it's not the one you're about to you know think i'm gonna say if you're watching this i think he's i think he's a corrupt person that's my that's my that's my personal view i think he has questions to answer on the panama papers on coalsen on this you know i i think the overall picture of as a person who frankly is is is quite low when it comes to values when it comes to behaving in a principled way i don't think it's particularly important to him i mean absolutely and i'm we're going to go into a bit more detail about this green seal scandal because it is i have to admit i hadn't been following it that closely but it is really outrageous when when you get into it obviously what we've shown you so far is those texts that just makes david cameron to seem pretty desperate but he didn't get what he wanted but there were many situations where he did and the outcomes do seem pretty pretty corrupt so let's go um through the background of this story involves introducing a few people um the most significant of them is lex green seal you would have heard his name as these stories have been discussed now lex green seal was a banker at city group he specialized in supply chain finance um that was before leaving to form his own company which was green seal capital now what is supply chain finance i had to learn this as well when i was going through this story um so what it is it's where a bank lends money so that firms don't have to wait for their invoices to be paid so if we take a super basic example of how this could work imagine i write an article for the independent and i have to invoice them i don't get a salary like i do for navara media so i send the independent an invoice for a hundred pounds but i don't want to wait the 30 days that it will take for them to pay me because i want the money now so to tide me over instead of waiting i get a bank to lend me the value of the invoice now minus a fee and then i'll pay that loan back when the independent actually pays me so in this example the bank pays me 95 pounds as soon as i send the invoice i pay back the the bank a hundred pounds when the invoice actually gets paid that's um what supply chain finance is obviously in that scenario a bank makes a fiver that's the fiver that lex green seal wants so that's who lex green seal is that's the industry he's in next character who is quite important is jeremy hayward now jeremy hayward was the country's top civil servant during david cameron's time as p.m he had a lot of power and influence he passed away recently from cancer sadly um he was also close friends with lex green seal um that was because they'd worked together at morgan stanley which was a wall street banks all so all seeming quite cozy these relationships between the banks and government now because in the early 2010s it was very fashionable to bring business people into whitewater offer their expertise and hayward fought green seal was a good interesting guy um he brought green seal into government to impart his knowledge about supply chain finance let's go to a sunday times report um so they report that towards the end of 2011 hayward engineered a whitehall role for green seal the banker would spend six months exploring whether supply chain financing could help the state to pay suppliers more quickly he was given a security pass and four civil servants who were told to explore his ideas write a report and submit it to ministers in due course he even got a desk in the economic and domestic affairs secretary at of the cabinet office so what you've got here is someone who was friends with jeremy hayward top banker he just gets a gets a chair gets a desk in in in number 10 no normal um hiring processes going on there now the particular project green seal was focused on involved setting up supply chain finance for pharmacies so this was based on the idea that pharmacies were waiting too long for the nhs to pay them for doling out their prescriptions and he thought that a supply chain finance company could help them with their cash flow now most civil servants didn't think most civil servants mentioned in the article didn't think this would be a particularly useful thing for private banks to provide and there's an obvious reason let's go to the sunday times so they report again officials could also see a fundamental flaw in green sills proposals why did the state with all its resources need a bank to pay its bills promptly why not simply pay them on time itself as prime minister brown had introduced a policy which required the government to play suppliers in five days all the government needed to do was enforce it an x minister said the official suspected that green seal was trying to insert himself into the relationship between the government and its supplies and take a slice of the huge flows of cash between them she's got here classic example of the kind of corruption we get in in the neoliberal state which is you've got a service that doesn't need doing he's saying oh we've got this problem that the nhs isn't paying pharmacies in time so what i'm going to do is financialize this relationship and i'm going to put a company in between them and i'm going to lend the pharmacy the money while the nhs waits to pay the civil servants like why don't we just get the nhs to pay the pharmacies on time and we cut out this weird financial company middleman now obviously green seal is not going to accept this lex green seal wants to push this and so did jeremy hayward so green seal got access across government departments not just health to promote it one of those departments was defense go back to the times they're right defense officials had several more meetings with green seal in the following months according to sources green seal had two specific proposals using supply chain finance to pay for the maintenance of the royal air forces fleet of 14 voyager air to air refueling planes and construction of euro fighter typhoons green seal wanted to insert his company between the defense giant b a e systems which builds the fighter jets and its suppliers the meetings which were ultimately unsuccessful followed a similar pattern officials were palpably confused as to why they were meeting why they were meeting and who would benefit from the proposals other than the bank which made the upfront payment right it's exactly the same things going on these civil servants to say why do we need why do we need this middle man who's making a profit when we could just pay the people directly green seal didn't just visit health and defense he also visited nine other departments and agencies offering the same service to confused civil servants now according to this article the civil servants were generally always unimpressed but with hayward jeremy hayward and david camron backing the supply chain finance scheme it does get implemented in the end for pharmacies aron can you best can you guess who benefits so we're at this point green seal's been pushing for this to be implemented supply chain finance they've said fine we'll do it for pharmacies who do you think makes that cut you tell me michael i'm guessing it's not the taxpayer it's not the taxpayer who makes the cut let's go back to the times so for the first six years the scheme was run by city bank green seal's former employer which he had left weeks before entering whitehall then in 2018 green seal capital won the contract itself from july 2018 until last month green seal provided 1.2 billion pounds in loans to pharmacies taking a fee for every loan so what we have here lex green seal gets invited into the center of government to push through a policy which benefits no one but financial services and it just so happens the financial service company it benefits is his own this is essentially the definition of of corruption and it gets worse because it's not just lex green seal who benefits it's also david camron that's because david camron on leaving office went to work for lex green seal with the remuneration of his advisory job there including shares in the company worth around 60 million pounds 60 million pounds now it's lost all of that value because the company's collapse we'll go into that in a little bit more detail in a moment but first i don't know i want your comment on this it does really have everything doesn't it you've got predatory and pointless financial capital which is becoming an intermediary in relationships where it just doesn't need to be and then corrupt politicians who are allowing financial companies to play this role even though all the experts all the civil servants are like this is completely pointless we don't want this to happen they're like no no no if we can think of a role for a financial company let's give it to them even if it's useless yeah there's a there's a sort of the theory of the state which is why you know britain hasn't operated with a constitution and a lot of its protocols aren't aren't codified for so long is because there's this theory of the state you call the good chap theory of the state and people are good chaps and you know they don't do anything untoward and they're not corrupt and they're not they're not nakedly brazenly selfish and looking purely out for their own interests of course it was never generally true but i think i think in the in the last couple of decades it's just kind of come apart people talk about Boris Johnson but it didn't start there i think you can go back to Blair with Campbell and i think really particularly with with dodgy dave i think it's kind of crystal clear what's going on here and so you've got an interesting story and i think on the left we have a unique perspective on this because it's not just corruption this is this brings together yes sort of personal avarice and corruption but also alleged corruption but also you know neoliberalism financialization this impulse this desire this craven pursuits of just profit from anything outsourcing for privatization and now of course we have the idea of a private firm being the intermediary between a creditor and a debtor when it comes to you know the state uh mucking around with money going here and there and and it makes absolutely makes no sense at all makes no sense at all is our private business do this none at all which as you've said is the reason why most civil servants push back but the the same could apply to so many points of economic common sense which everybody accepted during the camera and premiership for instance you know uh the state shouldn't be borrowing money it's better for private corporations to borrow the money and to pay for things and we'll pay the private corporations now that kind of sounds familiar what do you think uh pfi is right and that wasn't introduced by Cameron or by Boris Johnson or even by Tony Blair i believe initially it comes with major and then of course it's really it's mainstreamed with with Blair and Brown so we are looking at sort of 20 25 year lead into this stuff just becoming incredibly normal and so yeah in isolation i think the average person that if they were exposed to the facts as lucidly and as as simple as you've laid them out my god i think it's a really clear exposition of what's happened i think most people go well that's really that's absurd this is this is crooked well actually you know it's only i think in in many ways it's only the most sort of transparently crooked um variant of what has actually been the norm in public policy for a very long time you can look at carillion you can look at you know east uh sorry west coast or east coast main line going into private ownership and public ownership and private ownership you look at the privatization of royal mail you know time after time after time you can see the big banks being taken into public ownership and then privatized at a loss and a bunch of individuals making loads of money uh George Osborne of course puts those those shares of private banks i think it was Lloyds and uh and HBC they're sold a massive loss well not a massive loss it's a complex story but basically they could have made more money for the taxpayer than they ultimately did and i think most people were aware of that at the time so yeah this is not an aberration you know and yes Lex Greensill has questions to answer so does Rishi Sunak so does David Cameron but it's actually you know it's it's uh it's just uh it's just a snapshot of a governing orthodoxy which we've had for decades and i think now people people are looking at it with Carillion with Grenfell with Serco with G4S particularly with the test and trace stuff and they just hope this is a wacky way to carry on why do we persist in giving public funds to private companies to not do a very good job and and so yeah this is this is the most egregious manifestation of something much bigger i think it's also um a snapshot of modern capitalism because it tended towards collapse so the the fees that the state were paying to Greensill um for providing this intermediary service between buyer and seller which wasn't really necessary that wasn't enough for him so to increase the profits when he got this fee he would then parcel off the debts as securities and the whole thing unraveled so he ended up in loads and loads of debt it's all collapsed the company is worth nothing and now thousands of jobs are at risk including thousands who work for Gupta Steel who were financed by Greensill um so i mean two just a terrible just a terrible story about terrible people who was providing no useful service to society but creaming off profit for themselves also worth noting David Cameron just in case you needed any less respect for him as part of his job for Greensill he also went on a camping trip with Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia that was soon after the killing of Khashoggi on behalf of Greensill again to try and sort out more of these pointless lending industries um in Saudi Arabia because there's lots of oil money rolling around um Aaron we're going to end here any final any final comments on Greensill and David Cameron yeah i think you know it talks about the absence of state capacity means that increasingly governments which favor neoliberal policy bring in private business and private corporations to do things and of course that means less state capacity which means you need to get more of those people in these spivs right there's no other word for them Marianna Mascato talks about this really well in her most recent book I interviewed her in Navarra media people can check that on the youtube channel and i think you know it's something you we yeah we have to really push back on it and i think you know the British state has just been hollowed out of capacity you know across whole swathes of of of services it provides not entirely clearly we've had an amazing success with um the vaccine roll up for instance but it's it's nowhere near as resourced and as capable as it was you know two three decades ago and so you have this kind of carcass which is being fed on by these vultures like Greensill and the question is how much longer can can that go on for and there has to be a point where people people say enough is enough and we might not be there yet by the way you know these things can carry on for a really long time um but i what it indicates to me as well is that sort of labor's pitch on you know competence and i don't think that's good enough i think you need to label this as you know a manifestation of a failed ideology and of course Kirsten is reticent to do that and i by the way i think Kirsten was smart enough i think the people around him are smart enough to isolate the problems with this and actually draw a line between say pfi and Greensill the problem is labor right MPs and so on aren't and and those are the people he's kind of in the pocket of at the moment he's at the mercy of at the moment and so you have this is one of those moments where if Jeremy Corbyn was labor leader if you just had a left-wing labor leader they could lay out the facts and i think with carillion was a great example right this is a microcosm of a far bigger problem right you've got these huge themes these huge categories we talk about all the time white supremacy or neoliberalism or you know market capitalism people only really understand them through the through the for the micro and i think you know if you can't tell a story about the failures among capitalism through Greensill you can you can never do it and my worry is this just gets reduced to a story of personal corruption which is it's not let's end it there it's been a long show it's been a very big news day um Aaron it's been a pleasure to spend my Friday evening with you as always it's been my pleasure Michael sorry i was just looking at some of the comments it's been was on you that's fine it's been a long as i say it's been a long show i'm loving these Friday shows Michael i'm looking forward to next weeks um yes we will be back next Friday we'll also be back next Monday um the next show is of course on Monday at 7 p.m um if you've enjoyed the show do hit the subscribe button hit the like button and we'll see you at 7 p.m on Monday you've been watching Kiske Sauer on Navarra media good night