 I have free top-tier guests for you this evening. I will speak to Samuel Moyn, Yale professor, and offer an upcoming book on American wars about Biden's pledge to stop trying to radically change foreign countries by military force. I also speak to Ovidal Abahir, an academic and journalist in Kabul, about how now that Western troops have left Afghanistan, they might still influence the Taliban. And finally, I speak to the chair of a young labor about the party's astonishing decision to ban the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, as well as Jeremy Corbyn, from speaking at Labor Party Conference, or at least that's the latest communication from them to young labor, all very odd if predictable. As ever, let us know your thoughts by tweeting on the hashtag Tiski Sauer or commenting below. And if you haven't already, do hit that subscribe button. First story. On Monday night at one minute to midnight, the last remaining American soldiers left Afghanistan and the war, at least for the United States, was over. The nature of the exit has been widely seen as a humiliation for the United States. But last night, Joe Biden gave a defiant speech. He labeled the evacuation from Kabul airport an extraordinary success and the decision to leave Afghanistan as the right decision, a wise decision, and the best decision for America. Defiant speeches which make no apologies to his opponents are what we've come to expect from Joe Biden. But the most interesting part of his address was not about his past decisions, but a declaration about the future of American foreign policy. As we turn the page on the foreign policy, this guided our nation the last two decades, we've got to learn from our mistakes. To me, there are two that are paramount. First, we must set missions with clear, achievable goals. Not ones we'll never reach. And second, we must stay clearly focused on the fundamental national security interest of the United States of America. This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries. We saw a mission of counterterrorism in Afghanistan, getting the terrorists and stopping attacks, morph into a counterinsurgency, nation-building, trying to create a democratic, cohesive, and united Afghanistan, something that has never been done over many centuries in Afghan history. Moving on from that mindset and those kind of large-scale troop deployments will make us stronger and more effective and safer at home. Joe Biden there suggesting the US should give up on military operations to remake other countries and should give up on nation-building. A sharp break there to what the United States was saying for example 20 years ago. I'm joined now by Samuel Moyne, Professor of Law and History at Yale University and author of the upcoming Humane, How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. That book, which is out very soon in the United States, a bit later in this country serves as a critique of the idea that wars can serve the greater good of those being invaded. Does that mean you welcome what Joe Biden said yesterday? I do up to a point. It was a courageous step that Joe Biden took to resist the groupthink of Washington DC. There hasn't been a successful occupation of a country that has done the kind of nation-building Biden alluded to since a really long time ago the time of the American and British occupation Germany or America and Japan or South Korea. In the last few decades what we've seen is a kind of two bad options when Americans decide to engage in regime change. Either they do try to set up a friendly government and fail and that happened long ago in Afghanistan to be honest, or they remove a regime as in Libya under Barack Obama and let it descend into chaos without helping. And so many of us are happy to hear Biden say that nation-building is over. The question is whether regime change will stop and more important what Biden will do with the counter-terror war because he's made very clear and he made clear in the speech last night that giving up counter-insurgent wars by no means suggests that America can or will give up a counter-terrorist war even though it doesn't have a very clear objective that can be achieved either. Glad you brought up that statement by Biden that this counter-terror war will continue because I do think that has been underplayed in many accounts of the speech he gave yesterday and the current US position. I want to go to the relevant moment in that speech where he suggested that because as you say he demonstrated a reluctance to keep troops on the ground but he didn't renounce the right of the US military to use deadly force abroad. We all maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries. We just don't need to fight a ground war to do it. We have what's called over-the-horizon capabilities which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground or very few if needed. We've shown that capacity just in the last week. We struck ISIS-K remotely days after they murdered 13 of our service members and dozens of innocent Afghans. And to ISIS-K, we are not done with you yet. As commander-in-chief, I firmly believe the best path to guard our safety and our security lies in a tough, unforgiving, targeted, precise strategy that goes after terror where it is today, not where it was two decades ago. That's what's in our national interest. Joe Biden there making clear that while troops on the ground in the Middle East might be something in the past, the war on terror is still continuing just by other means. What was particularly odd about that section of the speech was that the drone strike he is bragging about, the one that he showed us or suggested was a sign of the success of the future of American wars, killed 10 civilians, including seven children. And because it can seem abstract, talking about these things in terms of numbers of people, I want to play a clip of Rahmin Yusuf, he called in to the BBC. He's the cousin of one of the people who were killed. And it's also his cousin's children who were killed in that attack. Let's take a look. They are killed in this attack, all civilian people, all the children, all those that they work in the civilian field. The army did not start attack. You can ask from the nightboard for those ones that he has friendship with our family. We will laugh in this area about 25 years. You can ask from the other person. What is your family feeling today after this attack? You've lost 10 members of your family. Yeah, we see hell in our lives. We gather at our price of our members and our hands. We see the hell in our lives. I'm sorry, Rahmin John. And what message do you have for the international community? That's one of our questions. Why did he kill our family, our children, seven children, that they all are born out? We cannot identify his face, his body. We just... Rahmin John, we'll have to leave it there. That was obviously incredibly difficult to listen to and put Biden's celebration of that drone strike in perspective. Samuel, I would like to get you to expand further on this issue of drone strikes and whether there is a danger that this war which involves troops on the ground will just become a war which involves drones in the sky. And to some degree that could make it even less accountable because the American public are even further away from the consequences of the actions of the US military than they were beforehand. Well, it's not a fear. It's happened. So I think we have to step back and recall that the war on terror has been sort of two parallel wars, one succeeding another. The first involved invasion, intervention with massive troop numbers, and indeed occupation in the case of both Afghanistan and Iraq. But the truth is that that war has been on the wane for a very long time. Remember that not just Barack Obama but Donald Trump before Joe Biden ran on withdrawal because George W. Bush's popularity was so damaged by the reversals of the Iraq war involving American death, the death of American soldiers. And so Obama, as I narrate in the Guardian Long Read piece from yesterday and in my new book, did something, you decide, diabolical or ingenious. He invented the other war. And it involved not just drones, which Bush had used much more minimally in fewer places and which Obama used maximally and in many places. But also the use of standoff missiles sent from afar. And this should not be left out, special forces, small teams of men who come and stealth, pay a visit, and kill. And that war has been entrenched now for a very long time. So the risk in focusing on the finale of Afghan withdrawal, when Obama had gotten troops down to 8,000 there from 100,000 and Trump to 5,000 from 8,000, is that we miss the expansion of the of the other war, the forever war, the one that's sanitized and less visible, except that kind of disturbingly Biden bragged about its continuation last night. And so what we can expect to see, not just in Afghanistan, but in many other places, is a continuation of that war. It will involve civilian disaster, but even when it doesn't, it involves things we really ought to keep track of. And the worry is that as American controversy around the Afghanistan deployment subsides, Americans and their allies will just treat counter terrorist operations wherever they take place as normal, along with the surveillance, which has has come together, as you know, with the forever war in our lifetimes. One other break, I think in Joe Biden's speech, compared to previous presidents, or at least pre-Trump presidents, was that he was very specific that American wars would be limited to defending the national interest. There would be no, I suppose, grand liberal ideas about remaking nations or neocon ideas about projecting American influence to transform the world. It can sound kind of brutal, it can sound kind of harsh on the face of it. All we're going to do is protect the American national interest defined in quite constricted ways. At the same time, do you think that is for the best, considering how our liberal interventions have gone recently? I do think it's for the best for as long into the future as we can imagine. It's not that in an ideal world, or in theory, we might not welcome democratization if we knew how to do it. The same, by the way, is true of much more limited kinds of interventions we call humanitarian interventions. But in our time, sadly, both of these kinds of projects, one more championed by neoconservatives, the other more often by liberal internationalists, so called, have failed and have generally made the places they intend to improve worse off. If you believe that ought implies can, then I think Biden is correctly recognizing that we do not know how, even to intervene to save civilians from their own governments with military means without changing the regime and making things worse, witness Libya, and certainly don't know how to conduct regime change for the sake of building a democracy. Now, what we do know how to do is what's called, in another context, mowing the lawn, a kind of constant campaign of identifying threats and striking. And in some ways, the lesser goal, which gives up, let's call it hope and improvement, is also depressing because it's not as if when Americans relinquish regime change, they give up violence. On the contrary, Biden announced that he will pursue it with redoubled efforts. Is there a distinction between drone strikes which are done in a way that is hostile to foreign governments and potentially ones which are called in by foreign governments? For example, if it were the case that the Taliban and the Americans agree that they both want to defeat ISIS-K and the Taliban say, well, we give you tacit permission to do the odd strike here and there to try and deplete their capacities, do you see that as something that would be more acceptable than the hostile airstrike? So it depends on your criteria or standards. If you care about international law, it surely is helpful that there's consent. But we know that we don't think the fact that generally illicit governments consent to things makes them all right. And in my view, and what I try to show in my writings is that a world in which you can have strong powers like my government and yours sending violence globally and then in some cases excusing it by saying they got permission from a weak power seems pretty far from ideal. It seems like a recipe for a world of permanent hierarchy, permanent security, sometimes with tacit or other permission, but always through some kind of deal or security arrangement. And so it's a very sad outcome because you're right that Biden has relinquished any hope in a kind of progressive form of internationalism that would be about human improvement in exchange for this more security internationalism. But there's one thing further to add, which is that also in the speech, Biden explained clearly that what American mainstream foreign policy thinkers care much more about than the Middle East now, another legacy from Donald Trump is pivoting away from that quagmire to confronting China. And this, in a way, I think is equally troubling because this is not a recipe for speech for peace. Sorry, the speech last night was framed. I think we'll come to be seen as a big moment in the turn towards embracing a kind of Cold War with China. And we know how bad for humanity the last Cold War was. I suppose the issue there, as Vincent Bevin says, come on the show before, sort of documents very powerfully in that previous Cold War, it wasn't fighting between the United States and the Soviet Union that caused all of the deaths and the horrors. It was in those third countries. Do you see that as happening now? Will there be drone strikes in countries that the United States think there is a risk that they could turn to being more supportive of China than they are of the United States? Is that the future we're looking at? Well, so I think it's a really interesting comparison because first we'd have to kind of think back to what the Soviets world agenda was. They didn't conduct much intervention beyond their own sphere and later Afghanistan where they famously lost before Americans did. But it's true that there was an ideological contest in which the Soviets were deeply involved. It's not clear yet that the Chinese have a world vision, anything like the one that the Soviets did. So there in a sense may be less for Americans to oppose. I think it's really different not just for that reason, but because America is an empire in decline and its trouble with China is that it's in the ascent and it really wants to slow the process. It doesn't seem to me as likely to turn as the old Cold War did on kind of third world competition for hearts and minds. It may turn on markets with climate change. It may turn on agricultural land and resources. Regardless, there's a lot of chance for violence because we know that failing empires, the British as an excellent example, tend to be very violent as they decline in part because of imperial nostalgia, in part because vested interests that refuse really to accept decline. In a way, the last week was a good example of that phenomenon when many in Washington DC had a tantrum, even though Afghanistan had essentially been lost long ago because the loss was so graphic for Americans that it conflicted with their left you like imperial sensibilities. But that kind of thing is going to be more and more regular. I'm afraid. My last question was going to be about that, which was was that tantrum, that huge reaction we've seen both from the US foreign policy establishment, and I have to say basically everyone with any power and significance in the UK has been a cross-party consensus between the conservatives and the Labour Party that what Joe Biden did in withdrawing was a horrific and terrible decision. All of our newspapers are calling it a disgrace that he withdrew. He should have stayed there for longer. Do you think this tantrum is going to have any effect? Do you think Joe Biden might think again before he withdraws? I don't know where that would be, but do you think he might take a step back and think, oh actually going against that foreign policy consensus was dangerous, let's not do it again? I don't think so. I mean, there is a tradition on the part of West Europeans or Europeans of kind of deferring to American hegemony. It worked well for them or well enough in the Cold War. As you noted, as Vincent Bevin's shows so masterfully, there was a lot of global violence, but Europeans were provided peace. And Europeans, including Brits, having handed off imperial power to my country, got into the routine of thinking it part of the natural order. But it's not now. And in that sense, the speech really was significant because it's rare to find an American president admitting limits to the power of the United States, which is in effect what Joe Biden did last night. And that kind of retreat marks the kind of winds of change moment, even if the actual withdrawal from Afghanistan had long since taken place, the loss of massive territory to the Taliban had long since taken place. And even if, as we've suggested, the war on terror will continue with your own special forces for as long as we can imagine. Samuel Moyn, thank you so much for joining us this evening. And I said earlier in the interview that your book is out later in the United Kingdom. It seems that people in the UK can order it on September the 14th, 2021. So very soon, you won't have to wait long for that. Samuel Moyn, thank you so much for joining us this evening. Thank you for inviting me, Michael. Let's go to a few comments. Con Mack tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour. It has shown that unlawful and undemocratic occupation of territory doesn't work, and at some point due to cost and life, we all had to leave. Hopefully we learn and try a more diplomatic way before militarily. P.S. looking tanned, hope that Aaron's wedding went well. Thank you very much for the comments about my town. I did work on it and for the kind words about Aaron's wedding. Read your comment, read the substance of it. I mean, I think that's a very important point. I suppose what that conversation with Samuel Moyn suggests is that there are sort of two directions that this could go in. One, this military adventurism failed. Let's go for diplomatic means. The other is to say this mission with troops on the ground was too expensive and too politically costly. Let's just try and achieve our aims by artificial intelligence drones in the sky, because obviously while they kill people, no Americans get killed. And we have an American president who seems happy to celebrate a drone strike which killed 10 people, including seven children, without getting any political backlash at all. So you can see how dangerous it is if boots on the ground wars just get replaced by drones in the sky wars. Let's go straight on to our second story, very much related. With the last U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, the effort to transform the country with troops on the ground has come to a close, but Western leaders are still suggesting they can influence how the Taliban, back in power after two decades, will govern. This was Joe Biden on Tuesday. And let me be clear. We'll continue to support the Afghan people through diplomacy, international influence and humanitarian aid. We'll continue to push for regional diplomacy engagement to prevent violence and instability. We'll continue to speak out for the basic rights of the Afghan people, especially women and girls, as we speak out for women and girls all around the globe. So he sounded tough when he said that. In fact, it was fairly ambiguous what he really meant. It was just a commitment to speak out for the rights of women and girls, unclear what that would mean in practice. Of course, any attempt to influence the Taliban will be more powerful if it's multilateral. The G7 met last week to discuss Afghanistan afterwards. Boris Johnson laid out the group's priorities. The number one condition we're setting as G7 is that they've got to guarantee right the way through, through August 31st and beyond, a safe passage, safe passage for those who want to come out. Now, someone will say that they don't accept that and some of them, I hope, will see the sense of that because the G7 has very considerable leverage, economic, diplomatic and political. That was potentially slightly optimistic from Boris Johnson, at least from his perspective, saying the G7 has considerable economic, diplomatic and political leverage. Obviously, it has less of all of those things because of the rise of China, and the G7 has never had any democratic legitimacy. It's the club of rich nations you can't apply to join. As for the UN, which does have that legitimacy, on Monday, the 15 Strong Security Council passed a watered-down resolution on Afghanistan. It called for safe passage for those who wish to leave the country, urgent humanitarian access and respect for human rights. It also said that Afghanistan must not be used to threaten to attack any other country or to shelter and train terrorists. No consequences were specified for if the Taliban did not fulfill those demands. China and Russia, for their part, abstained. So it passed with their permission, but not with their support. So what, if any, policies should Western governments adopt to influence the Taliban? I spoke earlier today to Oba Dullaba here, an academic and journalist based in Kabul. Well, there is a very delicate balance right now. So the international community would really have to make sure they rule the Taliban and they have some sort of leverage on them to make sure that their behavior is compliant with a certain level of international norms. Obviously, it wouldn't ever be completely according to that because the Taliban have a reputational cost associated with being moderate as well because the fighters didn't fight this long for a very modern vision of the world. So that being said, there is a little that can be done. There's room that can be created for civil societies to exist in for civil liberties to at least have some sort of existence within this new system. And then the hope would be that the people themselves along with the continuous support of the international community can expand these circles and make sure that the government has to reckon with their existence. So for now, the use of the fear of sanctions, the promise of foreign aid and international legitimacy as well, all of those are leverages that the international community has. And it has to use them wisely because if they are too strict with regards to giving them, the Taliban might be pushed away and might be more inclined towards accepting isolation. And again, that isolation is not going to be absolute as well because there are countries like China and Russia that are already at the doors of the Taliban and are willing to do business while turning a blind eye to anything that happens within Afghanistan. So we'll have another blood diamond issue of Africa happening in Afghanistan. So there has to be a certain uniform approach or source, a certain level of cohesion between international actors to make sure that all those incentives or all those deterrence work, it has to be on a uniform level internationally. And we wouldn't have any countries straying away and having their own direct bilateral relations with the Taliban government. The two sources of leverage which come up in conversation most in the West are aid and diplomatic recognition. I want to take those in turn. So to begin with aid, the suggestion is that because the Afghan economy and the Afghan population is so dependent on international aid and support from NGOs, that could be a potential source of leverage for Western governments. The argument against using that as leverage is that all you will be doing is punishing ordinary Afghan people and the Taliban could come around and say, look, if you want to starve the Afghan population, we'll just blame you and stoke up resentment against foreign countries and it will be ordinary Afghan people that suffer. Do you think that is the danger of using aid as leverage that it is just ordinary Afghans who suffer the most? Well, it's not just the aid problem, it's also the isolation problem that will both lead to the common man suffering. But there's another side to it as well that I want you to look at, Michael, and that is the fact that the war economy is gone, which means that all of the money that was going into fighting the war is not there. But on the other end as well, the Taliban themselves were generating $1.4 billion annually as revenue. And that's money that can be injected into the economy along with other bank accounts or capital that the Taliban had. All of this is going to be either freed up or injected into the economy. So Afghanistan has quite successful government-run enterprises as well. And if managed correctly, there's the wood industry, there's the coal industry, there's the cement industry, there's the national minerals as well. All of those, if managed correctly, can actually produce a prosperous economy. So the idea is that foreign aid stopping might not really change things drastically in the short term. And that's what would make the Taliban really be indifferent towards that fear. Also, because the sponsor states that were willing to sponsor them during the fighting will sponsor them as well during this transition. So maybe foreign aid doesn't really hurt the Taliban or the economy as much in the short term. With regards to international recognition, and the whole idea of sanctions is very closely linked to that as well because it makes putting sanctions on the Taliban, their leadership, much easier. International legitimacy is going to be important because if you look at the Taliban history 25 years ago when they were in power, it took them only a few months to approach the United Nations to ask for some sort of international recognition. And then they were by the end of it really trying to meet with US officials to try to reach an understanding with regards to international recognition there as well. So they do understand how important it is to engage diplomatically with the world. But I guess the problem right now is it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't kind of situation for the international community because they have to find a working relationship with the Taliban. The airport situation cannot be managed until something like that exists. The ISK threat cannot be managed until some sort of understanding exists. So that's why I guess cutting off these ties is going to be problematic for every side. And so a very difficult balance honestly to make sure that the Taliban are deterred from acting out and they are incentivized enough to comply as well. So doesn't look like the West has the formula right so far. But we are hoping that they do for the sake of Afghanistan as a nation because the people within Afghanistan who are going to try and fight for their vision of the world and their vision for the country in order for that moderation to prevail, they will have to be an international community standing behind them. And if they just choose to not grant international legitimacy or just walk away, they're going to leave the Afghans on their own. It's going to be a very uphill battle. I want to talk a bit more about that battle and the general issues of what's going on in Afghanistan right now. I learned from a brilliant piece you wrote for the Economist recently that your grandfather was a leading member of the Mujahideen and in that piece you wrote for better or worse both the Talibs in whose jihadi environment I grew up and the progressive Afghanistan I live and teach in will have to learn to live with each other. From your perspective, are we any closer to finding out if that process is taking place? I'll give you a short example, okay. So the Taliban walked into Hirat University and they said that we want classrooms to be segregated. We want female faculty to be teaching female students. And then the university argued back and said they didn't have enough classes that there weren't enough female faculty. And the Taliban said, okay, fine, we will let old pious men teach the female students but classes have to be segregated. And when the university kept protesting, they were told that they had to submit a counter proposal. This is improvement. This isn't something that the Taliban would have done before. Understand that both sides of the conflict see each other as enemies for 20 years, enemies that have always been seen in their worst behavior. Look, we have a law for peace times and law for wartime and literally the rules that govern us change depending on the circumstances that we are. So does our nature. So we've seen the worst of the Taliban and from the Taliban perspective, they've seen the worst of us for 20 years. And now those lines are gone. Now there's just Afghans amongst themselves trying to figure out how to move ahead. And for that to happen, there has to be a conversation. And that conversation looks like giving them alternatives like, okay, fine, if you don't want a male teacher physically standing in class, can it be online? Is there a way with regards to the reasoning for jurisprudence that you're giving that we can move around that? It sounds like turning to the Taliban and saying when they say women should not join the workforce as of now because our fighters aren't trained to deal with them. This is their official statement. And until they do, women should be safe inside their houses, which isn't really a good point to start from. So we have to turn to the Taliban and say, you know what? Establish a police force, bring back the same police that existed within the city, ask other people to run these tasks, people that are trained, not your own battle-hardened fighters, but give these people a space to start working, right? And that's where the international community starts putting pressure as well. So these happen every day, every interaction between people who were in the cities and the Taliban who just came in. And we're breaking each other's barriers, bringing down each other's walls. I know this sounds very idealistic, but this is the organic way of reaching some sort of cohesion and reconciliation. Look, I speak their language, I speak their culture, I know all the nuance of it. And when they stop me in my car and I'm wearing a suit and tie, and the way I interact with them is a pleasant surprise to them, right? And this is how we change each other's perceptions. And it really is up to their leadership as well as to whether they want that to happen. Because if they ever imagine to create a sustainable society and government within Afghanistan, that sort of reconciliation has to happen. And then there are academics I've specialized in reconciliation. I've lived reconciliation through my life. And I'm hoping that if nothing else, if none of these political measures, these long-term measures work, at least if I can educate a generation or two after me, they will stand up for their rights. And it might take a decade or two, but this country will still change, will still transform, will still become better. Because I know I don't want to be a reductionist. I don't want to reduce this argument to an analogy, but you don't just throw away a child because they aren't perfect for you. And circumstances are that way, especially one's own country, one's own people are that way. I know circumstances aren't ideal, but that shouldn't mean we should turn our back on our country. So we'll try our best to dig through whatever dirt we have to get somewhere that is sustainable, that is happy eventually for our people. That was Obeyla Bahir, an academic and journalist speaking to me earlier today from Kabul. We have a super chat from Paloma Ozia and she says, I'm disappointed that Sharon Graham's win has been given no mention on tonight's show. It was disheartening enough to see her campaign written off. In terms of the first part, we're not going to cover all the news stories that happen while we were away. We try and keep things fairly up to date. So that does mean we missed some stories. On your second point, I will put my hands up. I did write off Sharon Graham's campaign. I thought because Steve Turner got way more nominations than he would be the main challenger to Gerard Coyne. And so we suggested that Sharon Graham should probably stand down and we have been proved hella wrong. So absolutely I put my hands up. We were wrong about that and congratulations to Sharon Graham. It seems like it's going to be pretty exciting what she does to the trade union. Our priority was always that Gerard Coyne didn't win. Turns out the tactics of it, we got wrong. I was incredibly surprised when I found out that Sharon Graham had won. But it is very exciting. It shows that there is a movement and a campaign that had some energy to win against all odds is an exciting thing, especially if it does someone of the left. And Coyne did come last, which was very good to see. I do think Steve Turner was a great candidate, but Sharon Graham obviously ran the better campaign. Let's go to our last story. This September, Brighton will host the first labour conference since Keir Starmer became party leader because the last one took place just online. It was just speeches online. The conference is expected to be a stage managed affair with less time set aside for policy battles. And with all the attention intended to be focused on the leader's speech from Keir Starmer. But the overbearing management from Labour's bureaucrats in what is supposed to be a democratic party has already got under the skin of some key players. Jess Barnard is the democratically elected chair of young Labour, which represents every Labour member under the age of 26. Take a look at what she tweeted this week. A few months ago, myself and Lara McNeill, who's the NEC youth representative, met with David Evans, that's the party's general secretary, once we were told the party would not be holding a young Labour conference this year, despite it being a rulebook requirement. We tried to negotiate, made the case for democratic engagement, but were outright refused. I asked David Evans if he would inform young members that this was his call and if he would provide young Labour with more resources at national conference to make up for it. He agreed to both. Months ago, the entire young Labour committee submitted our proposals for Young Labour Day at conference, well within the deadline given. Everything we do and all our speakers have to be approved by the party. I have been pushing for an update on this multiple times a week, with no joy. The most concrete information I have been given is that anyone from Palestine solidarity campaign will be refused as a speaker, as will Jeremy Corbyn. I've requested this in writing with reasoning, appalled that PSC, who have had a space at conference for years, would be silenced. In short, according to that, Fred party bureaucrats cancelled Labour conference, then came to a compromise, which was that young Labour could have an increased presence at the national Labour conference. Then they didn't reply for months and then said only that Jeremy Corbyn and people from the Palestine solidarity campaign would be banned from speaking if that had all happened under Jeremy Corbyn. I'm sure the press would be decrying such behaviour as Stalinist, yet because it's Stammer, they don't give a damn. Well, we at Navarro Media do, and I'm joined now by Jess Varnad. Jess, could you talk me through some of the interactions you've had with the party that led you to write that, Fred? Yeah, of course. It seems so dramatic when you hear it read back to you, and I guess it is. I mean, it's been a real kind of hell of a few months for us. For me in particular, because I guess as chair of the committee, a lot of the duties fall on me to be the one that is negotiating with the party and kind of the party bureaucracy, and it has been a very much one-sided relationship of me pushing and pushing and pushing and feeling like I'm harassing the staff members for answers which they either can't answer or won't answer. Whether that is a factional decision or a matter of incompetence or lack of resources, I know the party are going through a tough time, but increasingly it does feel like a factional situation and that because we're a left-wing committee, because I'm a socialist and we've made it really clear that we are going to organize our socialists in the Labour Party because that's what young members like us to do. We're being given not just the cold shoulder, just complete silence, and I think it's increasingly disappointing as well because I think we have really, really tried to approach the relationship with good faith, particularly the meeting with David Evans that I referenced. We were really, really disheartened and really upset that we were told outright that our conference would be refused, but we agreed to it. We acknowledged the challenges that the party was facing. We acknowledged the challenges of the pandemic and all we asked in return was a little bit more resources to make sure that after two years of everything that young people had been going through, the demographics most likely to have lost their jobs or had to work on the front line during the pandemic, that we make sure that there is a space for them to organize and discuss their politics in the Labour Party in a safe and supported environment. Let's talk a bit more about the Palestine Solidarity Campaign because I mean that's what I found most shocking from your Fred and I think what lots of people did and I mean the reason I found that strange is because one the Palestine Solidarity Campaign is the most prominent pro-Palestine organization in this country. In the same year there has been a brutal attack on Palestine, on Gaza. Also people who are currently in the leadership of the party have been fairly open to working with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the past. I want to bring up a tweet from Lisa Nandi. She signed up to the pledges put forward by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign during the leadership campaign. So we can get that up there. Yep, I have always, I haven't always will support Palestinian rights. That's why I oppose Trump's plan and have campaigned against British businesses profiting from the occupied territories and support any embargo on arms deals which violates human rights. I'm happy to back these Palestine Solidarity Campaign commitments. Keir Starmer has also spoken at a Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Hustings in 2015. What's going on there then, Jess? Did they explain why they thought that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign shouldn't be able to speak at Labour Party Conference? No, I mean this is I guess probably in an ongoing situation. I mean PSC have confirmed that they will be given their usual stool at conference. They will have their usual fringe event and we have since heard that there won't now be a blanket ban on PSC through due diligence checks as we were initially told. So I stand by my account of what I was told by the party but we have since received an apology. So what I'm taking from this is hopefully this was a mistake but this does need to mark a point in which the party starts to acknowledge that they cannot continue to make arbitrary decisions like this. There needs to be accountability. There needs to be due processes and I hope that they reach out to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to apologise and make amends because obviously this has been a really stressful time for them not knowing where they stand with the Labour Party which they have always felt was a place at which they could organise. So the story is perhaps what about chaos within the Labour Party then, sort of a Stalinist purge of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign? Is that correct? I guess time will tell. It's really hard to know. I think it's a bit of a turning point and definitely a turning point for us in that young members have a constitutional right to organise within the Labour Party as do people who want to support Palestinians. We have in the rulebook that we have a right to hold our conferences. We have a right to organise within Labour and it doesn't say young members can only organise within the party if they agree with Kierstama. That's not what it says and the party have a decision whether they keep looking over their shoulder, keep looking to control, keep looking to shut down and that will eventually just disenfranchise all their young members, not just left-wing ones, all of them. Or they can say, right, we've won power, we've got control of the Labour Party, let's use the space to put forward our vision, whatever that is, start looking forward and stop looking over their shoulder at what young members are doing. This does seem slightly paranoid doesn't it? I want to go to some responses to your Fred. The most dramatic was from Oliver Cam. We've had our own altercations with Cam before. He's come from Navarra Media more than once. He's a Times columnist if you didn't know that all ready. Oliver Cam responded to your Fred, good to see that Labour is getting a grip on this parasitic pressure group which has no members of its own as any young person who joins the party is deemed to belong and whose views are incompatible with Labour's values and traditions. He followed that tweet up with the following. Labour supports a two-state solution between a secure Israel and a sovereign Palestine. Young Labour urges the abolition of Israel which could only be accomplished by means of a second Holocaust against the Jewish people. Hence, Young Labour's views are alien to the parties. That second tweet particularly grotesque. How would you respond to Oliver Cam though? I'm still in shock that he's getting away with writing this in the public domain. Obviously, I completely refute that. Everybody knows that that's just an absurd thing to accuse Young Labour of. Young Labour is a broad organisation. We have not adopted an official position on a two-state solution. The initial part of that tweet doesn't even make sense. Absolutely, of course, we are not supporting it or calling for a second Holocaust. It's one of the most vile things I've ever seen written on Twitter, let alone about Young Labour. Obviously, I will be taking legal advice about this. He has since, if you've seen, written another article where he's doubled down on the accusations against both myself and Young Labour. We have approached the party for legal support as well. We will see where that takes us. I think we are at a point where we have to start pulling together to challenge these people. There is absolutely nowhere it's acceptable that someone who calls himself a reporter in the times should be allowed to get away with writing completely defamatory, made-up lies about young members. This isn't people who are elected MPs on 80K wages who can go and fund their own legal battles. This is young members who are all volunteers, myself working a full-time job on a very minimal wage. He has just completely taken his position of power to spread hate, lies and fear. I think that's the worst bit of fear amongst young people and society, which is actually just about a group of young people who are trying to fight for a better, fairer world. I have a very relevant super chat from Sol, Solidarity Jess, and on a different matter entirely, if there's a crowd fund to Sue, Cam, I'll donate. If the Labour Party don't stump up the money, because I think they're probably more keen to stump up that money when it's against their factional opponents rather than to defend them, then you might do well on a crowd funder. Finally, I want to ask you about my young Labour strategy more generally. From this interview, it sounds like Labour is slightly all over the place when it comes to how they are dealing with you. It also seems pretty clear they're not keen on you having much voice or say within the party. What can you do to challenge that? Obviously, it seems like potentially this tweet thread was quite effective, but what else will young Labour be doing to challenge the manoeuvres by Keir Starmer to basically silence young Labour because you're too left-wing? Yeah, and that's a really good question. I'd just like to say for the record, the tweet threads are always a last resort. I hate having to bring it into the light of day because it's not pleasant, and I guess there's a lot of staff who are also deeply unhappy in the middle of all this, and it's not nice, but it does feel like a last resort sometimes, and lo and behold, things are moving now. But I think in the future, we are looking at other options. Obviously, this year for the first time, we're partnering with the World Transformed to deliver some panels at their event. So look out for those. Do make sure you come along and support us, including one on Palestine. So please be there. A little plug, but we're also looking to build our relationships with lots of other left organisations, including the trade unions, just solidifying at those links because, obviously, if you understand the structures of Labour, we're entirely financially dependent on Labour Party. We have no funds of our own. We don't have any staffers that are directly accountable to us. There is one staffer in the Labour Party in Southside who works on in Labour. That's it. So you have an organisation that is entirely dependent on the Labour Party, and so I think we need to start thinking about how we broaden our connections with other left organisations, and we're working really hard to deliver that. And also just making sure that we are delivering face-to-face actions. When there is key issues arising, when people are organising on the ground, young Labour is going to be focused on being in those spaces where members are rather than wasting more of our time in party bureaucracy and trying to fight barriers that are just put up to silence young socialists. I'm trying to get emails replied to. Jess Barnard, thank you so much for coming on this evening. It's been a real pleasure and lovely to be joined by your cat as well. I know. Thanks so much for having me. That was Jess Barnard, chair of Young Labour. That means our first show back has come to a close. I'd like to say a thank you to all our free guests this evening. We'll be back on Friday. I think I'm going to be with the now married, or the newly married, Aaron Bustani on Friday. Thank you all for watching and for your super chats. Make sure you hit subscribe if you haven't already. Thank you if you're a regular donor. For now, you've been watching Tiskey Sour on the Vara Media. Good night.