 Good evening and welcome to Tiske Sauer which is back in the Navarra media studio it feels like complete luxury compared to the nine months I've spent trapped in my bedroom hopefully the transition is going to be very smooth although do forgive us for any glitches I'm joined by Ash Sarkar how are you doing ash. Now release me from my home imprisonment so what's going on then you want me around apparently we've got to do this as a step by step process obviously there is nothing more. That I would love them to have you sing opposite me at the Tiske Sauer table but I likely tell will get there in the coming days and weeks I am sure. We do have a great show lined up you tonight we're going to be talking about Boris Johnson's plan to break a manifesto pledge in order to fund. Social care and we are talking about Marcus Rashford coming out against the cut to universal credit and Lisa Nandy going on a Murdoch owned radio station. To say she would personally campaign against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North. First of all as ever we do want to know your comments your question so please do let us know those on the hashtag Tiske Sauer or in the YouTube comments most importantly hit that subscribe button first story. In his first speech as prime minister in July 2019 Boris Johnson made the following promise to the British public. My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care. And so I am announcing now on the steps of Downing Street that we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve. Boris Johnson there said his government had a clear plan to fix social care yet more than two years on there is no plan and there is certainly no agreement on what it should look like this was from Laura Coonsburg last night she tweeted sounds like haggling still going on over social care delay in reaching agreements created plenty of space for a backlash before the details have even emerged as Laura Coonsburg makes clear in that tweet the issue causing controversy is how any new plan for social care will be funded and Boris Johnson's government is in a particularly tight spot because of another promise made by the prime minister in 2019 this was a pledge in the conservative manifesto to not raise the rate of income tax VAT or national insurance. Those pledges were personally signed by the prime minister according to numerous briefings that promise will be broken when Boris Johnson announces that national insurance will be increased by at least 1% so as to pay for a cap to the cost of social care to discuss the row over tax rises and the care crisis. I'm joined by James Meadwey welcome back to the show James hello nice to be back enjoying the office I love it here I've been a bigger advocate for flexible working saying people can work at home I still am don't get me wrong but it on one level it is as I say nice to be on my bedroom my first question for you is not so much on the tax rises but on the care crisis itself everyone seems to agree there is a social care crisis I want you to explain what that is what is the problem that we're trying to fix the fundamental problem here is is actually the fundamental problem really remains one of funding and financing that we have a much older population which has many more care needs and perhaps a relatively younger population would have had in the past so there's a lot of pressure appearing in the system just as a kind of demographic factor the country now live in. There is then also a series of separate issues that have come through with the relationship between the NHS and people getting treated to the NHS and passed on to the care system and the final bit of course is the terrible situation pushed on to the care system during the coronavirus crisis and what you've got to during the pandemic over the last 18 months or so what you've got to say with all of this is that to a very large extent if there is a problem in the social care system now this lands very squarely on the party that's been in power for the last 10 years if you mind your memory back to 2010 there was a cross-party almost agreement between Labour and Tories on how to secure funding for social care into the future and the reason this was presented as a cross-party issue is that you want to be able to say okay both Labour and the Conservative Parties have agreed that because this is a very long term issue like we have an ageing population this is going to happen into the future we have to find some way to pay for social care we will therefore come up with something that both parties agree on as the funding system and if they both agree we know to be secure regardless of what happens in various elections and things it was Andy Burnham now Metro Mayor of Manchester at the time Secretary of State for Health who presented his plan for what it's basically an estate tax, a tax when people die that will cover the costs of any care they might have needed the Tories were inching towards signing up to this and then last minute with the election approach and just blew the whole thing open and said we're not going to touch this it's a death tax and that was the slogan they used in the election help them just creep into victory there they then launched the deal not condition in 2011 that's 10 years ago now that recommended basically the funding system that looks like the Tories are trying to put in place now with the idea of a cap on the total payments of care that you might be expected to make so if you have particularly complex care needs late in life you've got Alzheimer's for example which can be very expensive they'll cap on how much you would ever have to pay for that which is of course fair you know there's no way to control who ends up in that situation who doesn't it's kind of fair to do this that was 10 years ago and then they haven't actually advanced this system ever since then so it's entirely of the governments making this lands on them and then there's not quite the last minute but when they really really can't avoid this any longer when there's at least four billion pounds worth of shortfall that's built up inside the system when there's one and a half million people not getting the care they need when they really can't avoid this any longer they come up with about the worst possible way of trying to fund this which is basically saying lots and lots of people in work 26 million people paying natural insurance contributions have to pay more so that in effect a smaller number of actually potentially really quite well off elderly people can have the value of their assets protected which is redistribution in completely the wrong direction you're taking very substantially from younger working people and transferring people with large amounts of assets it's not a fair way to do this almost anything else that's been proposed and there are several different ways you could try and fund this is a fairer and better system let's talk about some of those other ways and I suppose in particular just to hammer home what is the significance of national insurance how is it different from income tax I mean it's obvious how it's different from VAT but I suppose yeah let's talk about how it's different from income tax I mean look there's a myth around it and this states back to when national insurance was introduced the current system really stems from the beverage report in 1944 and it was intended to be what sometimes people think it is which is a kind of insurance pot you pay into it you make contributions and because you put into this pot when you need it like you're unemployed or you retire potentially you have social care needs you take out of the pot often at the end of your life it's never worked like that the Treasury has really only ever treated it as just another income tax it's just a bit more of the income tax that you pay the really perverse thing about actually there's two things that are really peculiar that start to just make it really unfair especially for social care funding first there's a thing called the upper earnings limit where the basic rate of national insurance is about 12.5% and then once you earn more than about 50,000 a year that drops to 2% so it's exactly the opposite of income tax income tax increases as you earn more national insurance you pay less proportionately as you earn more so it's kind of built in on fairness the second bit is that if you are over the retirement age at state pension age 66 you don't pay this in your earnings and of course final bit is that it's not taxed on earnings from things like bank accounts and rental income and this sort of thing so it appears literally on you're in work you have to pay this but if you are a landlord and you're a retired landlord in particular you are not going to face any costs of this so it's really not a very good way at all of trying to fund social care costs the mechanism here is shuffling money in exactly the wrong direction let's look now at some of the alternatives being proposed Andy Burnham this morning supported the principle of a wealth tax in my view we should not be taxing work we should be taxing wealth to pay for the reform of social care because you know it's that generation if I can say it put it this way Kate it's my mum and dad's generation who are coming to the point now where maybe they might need the care system at some point but they didn't pay through their taxes through their working life for social care because social care wasn't in the post war settlements if you like so you can't ask younger workers today you know we would call them generation rent wouldn't we people who've got big student debt it can't ask that generation to pay for the care of a generation who've not contributed through the tax system that isn't right I would say ask all older people through the assets they've got the property assets to make a contribution the beneficiary should make a contribution but then turn to other wealth taxes like capital gains tax to make up the difference that I think is the basis for a fair funding solution Andy Burnham of course doesn't speak for the Labour Party he's a directly elected mayor and once again the official position of the Labour front bench is to not have a position especially when it comes to alternatives this was Liz Kendall shadow minister for social care speaking to Kay Burley the government has started with a with a as it seems we've yet to see the details a tax rise that would really penalise younger and low income workers in fact some of the very care workers who we already know are struggling so I think they need to think again about this okay shadow minister how would you pay for it then well we'll set out our clear proposals before the next election in our manifesto shadow minister you've had two years to come up with a plan we know that Boris Johnson you know we're criticising him for not having a plan you're in opposition you've had plenty of time to tell us what your plan is well I want to see any any increases in spending properly costed and funded and in a way I would say here Kay that is is not just fair across the incomes but fair across the generations we'll need to see what the economic conditions are now shadow minister why have we not seen it till now you know you you would have costed it ahead of the last election in your manifesto presumably you've had two years since to criticise the Prime Minister for not coming up with one where's yours well look we need to see what the economic conditions are at the time and just as the last election we put forward costed plans that's what we will do next time round because I think it's you know people want to know that if you make a commitment so Labour again saying they're going to wait potentially three years before they come up with the alternative they would be in favour of when it comes to paying for social care a familiar liner from the Labour front bench James and what I want to know from you is what alternative you would back and also whether you think it's time for Labour to take a concrete position on how they would pay for social care of course it is on the last part that this is it's not something close to an open goal that the Conservatives have opened up they as you said they went into the election with a promise and it's still up on their website that Boris Johnson sign saying we will not increase national insurance and they're just going to break this and we're going to break it in a way that involves a plainly unfair readers we've just lost James Midway hopefully we'll be able to get him back in a moment while we're waiting for that I will show you some data on public opinion about this James saying it's an open goal I think it's clear the logic behind that statement at the same time the public seem to be fairly positive about rises to national insurance and more so than rises about income tax we might be able to get up this data from you gov and the times they show that 64% of the public say yes to a national insurance rise to pay for social care only 23% are opposed to that national insurance rise and support is also there for an increase to income tax but that support is much lower or significantly lower than support for a rise to national insurance we might have lost James Midway we'll get him back at some point I want to know what Ash thinks about this particular topic if we still have Ash Sarkar on the line what do you make of the politics of all of this okay so in terms of the politics of all of this obviously Boris Johnson is in a sticky position because he has made two contradictory promises one is no increases in taxation and the other is sought out the social care system you can't have both those things at once now in order to sort of square that circle there's also another ideological pressure which is how do you increase taxes without it being seen as an attack on Tory donors and attack on wealth and attack on the interests of capital so I think that's why we've ended up with this appeal to national insurance because one it's got very good brandings called national insurance as James said it enjoys this kind of historic and imaginative connection with the NHS so it's not seen in quite the same way as say income tax or a different form of flat tax like VAT the second thing is that people can only really respond to the choices which are put in front of them so when the messaging going out is okay you're on a social care system like it or lump it you're going to have to swallow this increase in national insurance well the fact is that many people in this country not just the elderly but working age people who have care needs you've got disabilities and also working age people who are interacting with the care system in order to secure care for one of their loved ones they're like hang on we have dealt with this burden of dealing with a really confusing and Kafkaesque bureaucracy in order to get care for one of our loved ones so for myself and also dealing with the financial pressures as well so when you present a choice to people which is do you want this thing on now well they've been suffering for its lack for a really long time and that's where I think it's so important that Labour actually come up with a different idea a different vision a different narrative now it's actually one which is really quite simple in James's article which he wrote for The Guardian one of the things that he pointed out is there are lots of really popular wealth taxes that you could implement which do broadly enjoy public support so one would be a 1% tax on millionaires which would I think garner over 240 billion pounds over five years you've also got an old Tory policy an old Nigel Lawson policy of equalizing capital gains tax with income tax that's also something which would bring in an awful lot of money for the Treasury the other thing you do is get rid of the upper income limit on national insurance contributions that would also bring in an awful lot of money these are all things which when you put it to the public enjoy broad support but what you have to do is I think connect it to an overhaul of the social care system not just plugging the funding gaps but actually making it simple and good and easy to interact with you've got I think around 1.4 million people going without the care that they need in this country one of the reasons is because it is such a nightmare of a system to interact with and just simplifying the whole thing at the moment interacting with the care system it's not like interacting with the NHS so if you're somebody who has got regularised migration status interacting with the NHS even though it's been privatised and bits of it have been sort of parceled off and there have been cuts it's still relatively straightforward I know what the care pathway is if me or a loved one need care because we've got medical conditions for instance like heart issues but if I or my loved one has dementia the care pathway the treatment pathway is not clear so you've got this really quite I think traumatising system which I think was Ellie Mayo Hagan said is like interacting with the worst of the American healthcare system just for this particular set of care needs so I think this conversation is really important as James said to talk about funding but also we need to talk about what kind of care is going to be offered so I think that yeah different story talk about wealth taxes and also talk about just making the system not a complete nightmare to have to deal with because it does seem the issue what all the political sides are talking about is how you would cap costs so people can protect their inheritance and yes we might not be particularly in favour of inheritance but it does seem unfair that whether or not you can pass money on to your kids depends on the lottery of whether or not you get dementia so there probably should be some cap but maybe that is slightly missing the point James do you think we are bogged down in a conversation about capping care costs and not enough on other elements of the care crisis I mean look if you are going to have a system where you make a contribution a cap is not a bad idea because of this erratic distribution of who ends up being really seriously requiring a large amount of care particularly later in life you can't say right now who is going to end up outside the series most obviously but Ash is absolutely right in this the proposals to say something like we would like a national care service which provides similar to the NHS care free of the point of needs and of use and that is funded out of general taxation in some form this would be a dramatic simplification of the system and make the whole thing rather fairer than it is now I mean what has been happening on the slide here is a sort of quiet privatisation of care over a number of years about 80% of care beds now in certain care homes are basically privately owned and it is not just any old private ownership by the way it is private equity ownership that has come into the care sector in a very big way that has gone alongside the fact that you have care is one of the sectors of the economy that just has chronically poor conditions we actually saw this I think during coronavirus with the outbreaks of Covid in care homes but these are care workers are on average paid less than the real living wage they are subject to short term contracts they are not giving the training and resources they need if you really want to start funding all this properly you have to look at significantly more funding going into the system the Kings Fund estimates it is sort of £14 billion by the next five years or so in five years time to actually pay people properly, expand care provision and then potentially on top of that you want to say well ok we want this to be a national care service which like Ash says is clean and simple and integrated with the healthcare system and that requires more money at that point you can't just say oh we will put a penny on national insurance or five p.m. national insurance or basically just trying to absolutely impoverish people who by the way have seen their wages go nowhere for a decade that's the situation for the most working people in this country you have to start saying let's tax well so I think Andy Burnham is right I think equalising capital gains tax is the amount of money you pay for instance if you sell assets like shares or second home or whatever equalise the amount of tax you pay or the amount you pay on income something that exactly as Ash says Nigel Lawson as Tory Chancellor back in what, 1986 did this equalising that is £90 billion over five years bringing the genuine wealth tax of the kind that the LSE Warwick Commission last year suggested would be 1% tax in billionaires and you get £260 billion over five years there are plenty of other ideas out there that would provide the secured long term funding basis to make social care equivalence to the NHS and better than the NHS we have now that would solve the crisis now and get us something better and for the Labour not to be taking even the kind of baby steps to get out of there to not start to set up an argument so that never mind what we're saying right now they can win against the government on this but they want to set up the argument so that when it comes to the election we're having a serious conversation about wealth taxes, about funding public services properly that means starting that conversation now and saying now what they would want to do rather than saying three years time we'll just surprise you all with some manifesto you have to set these arguments up now failing to do that is putting them further and further away from winning the election in three years time James Meadway thank you so much for coming on this evening always a pleasure to have you on to decode the wonkiest stories of the day and I don't say that in a disparaging way I mean genuinely you make the wonky stories interesting I wave my hands a red affair bit I think that's the key to it Perfect speak to you soon Thank you Let's go to some tweets, conmac tweets on the hashtag Tiskey Sour the fact that the government are considering national insurance increase before a wealth tax or a land value tax demonstrates how the Tories are not capable of guiding us out of a crisis without harming the working class in the process and the PLP are just weak when it comes to having an alternative not just on tax but on anything that might perceive them as too radical and by proxy Unelectable which is a MS myth mainstream media maybe mainstream myth mainstream myth exactly I would agree with that I mean I don't think it's beyond the realms of possibility that Keir Starmer at his conference speech comes out in a wealth tax but I also wouldn't hold my breath for it Rory JL2014 on the YouTube comment says as a disabled adult I can confirm that accessing social care in this country is a nightmare it literally took me years to get and I currently pay more towards more towards it out of my PIP than council does that's a personal independence payment I mean yeah the stories you hear about people who are trying to access social care and it's also important to recognize isn't just an issue which faces elderly people also many many younger adults use and rely on social care Richard Herring on YouTube says BBC had its economics experts on tonight setting out the options guess what wasn't an option a wealth tax that's very interesting I have to look at those clips afterwards Victor Burring on YouTube says house price is up by 11% this year or 23,000 pounds on average achieved by doing sweet FA instead of taxing this toys are instead tearing into the stagnant pay packets received by the working young and penny wise on YouTube says tax wealth not wages I know someone who pays himself 7,000 pounds in wages and 50,000 pounds in dividends avoiding loads of tax his wife does the same I mean we should tax wealth more than wages at the moment we tax wages more than wealth so the first thing we could do is equalize the two that would be the first step towards something that looks a little bit more fair now we can go on to the next story once again Marcus Rashford England striker and Britain's most successful campaigner is attacking the government about their abandonment of poor families this time he has his sights set on the 20 pound cut in universal credit due to come into force in October Rashford tweeted instead of removing support through social security we should be refocusing efforts on developing a sustainable long-term roadmap out of this child hunger pandemic up to now Rashford's campaigns have focused on food poverty and in particular the provision of free school meals over the holidays Rashford also tweeted the following 4.3 million people including 2.5 million children the reality of food insecurity in the UK over the last six months figures higher than those recorded in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic and a massive 27% higher than pre-COVID-19 the intervention from Marcus Rashford is likely time to coincide with an opposition day debate which Labour will be putting forward this Wednesday this has happened before Marcus Rashford makes an issue popular Labour put it forward in an opposition debate and they try and peel off Tory MPs to threaten the government with a loss in the Commons Labour are speaking out against this cut Labour Shadow Work and Pension Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said Labour is giving Conservative MPs the chance to do the right thing stand up to the Prime Minister and defend their constituents from this devastating cut once again this government's record doesn't stand up to reality they promised investment in the North and Midlands but are instead pulling billions out of local economies letters the government last week signed by groups including the Royal College of Pediatricians and Child Health similarly called on the government to scrap the planned cut they said it would amount to the biggest overnight cut in social security since World War II and that it would push 500,000 people into poverty Ash Marcus Rashford has forced you turns on this government before do you think he's going to manage it again? I mean look he may well do and I think we've danced this dance before which is Marcus Rashford essentially operates as an outrider for the social safety net Labour follow the government is forced into doing something embarrassing sending out people to defend the indefensible in the morning TV round and then there's a U-turn I think one of the things that is going to be interesting with this one is that it's not necessarily something as immediately emotive as free school meals provision during half term and summer holidays it's something very very tangible and immediate about that it's food out of the mouths of poor children with this then you kind of have wrapped up in it how people feel about benefits claimants who we know have been stigmatized because of a you know well more than two decades now but a really concerted drive towards seeing benefits claimants as lazy scroungers feckless and all the rest of it so it will be interesting to see whether that moral clarity that Marcus Rashford possesses and I think quite a unique place within popular culture if that's going to be the beginning of something of a fightback and a pushback against those years of negative stereotyping I think one of the things to bear in mind is that when it comes to talking about the social safety net the British media is shit it's just it's just complete trash I'll never forget when this proposed cuts to the £20 uplift was first proposed you had Laura Koonsberg going on TV saying well it's not really a cut but you know it does kind of feel like one as if taking £20 out of the pockets of some of the most deprived families in this country is simply a matter of perception as though it's merely subjective and the way in which I think you know the establishment media in this country talks about the social safety net simply as kind of another chess piece in a grand political game I think is one of the reasons why politicians have been able to get away with such brutal and draconian policies for so long and the positioning of Marcus Rashford because of how strong his independent social media following is because of the fact that he is unconnected to the kind of horse trading and dirty business of self-serving and venal Westminster politics he can often cut through that kind of noise and obfuscation so I really hope that he's able to inflict another U-turn on the government and it's something which I think Keir Starmer could learn from which is don't get tied up in process and procedure and all will have a look and I'll be subject to a review and rest assured that I will float an idea or hint of a policy in six to 12 months time just say the thing you want to happen and fucking go for it You talked about the dishonest media there this is also a topic on which Tory politicians are consistently dishonest and the main driver of this cut is understood to be Rishi Sunak who wants to find ways to lower government spending as the pandemic nears its close or at least moves on from its emergency phase this is how Sunak defended the cut to universal credit back in August One of the things I'm proudest of over the past 12 to 18 months is that we have looked after the most vulnerable in our society and all the figures show that that those on the lowest incomes have seen the most support from this government at what has been a very difficult time and we're not done supporting people my firm belief is the best way to help those families is to make sure that they can have well paid work and we've got a suite of things that we're doing the national living wage is going up we're also helping them with new skills training to find better jobs the kickstart scheme where the government is fully funding high quality jobs for young people at risk of unemployment those are the types of things we're doing and they will all make a major difference Extending that temporary uplift in universal credit though is clearly going to help the most why won't you do that? No, I don't think that will help the most that temporary uplift was indeed temporary it was the right intervention for the particular part of the crisis that we've experienced but now as the economy is reopening and businesses are hiring again the right thing to do is to help people find really well paid jobs which is why the kickstart scheme is important it's why we're giving companies huge cash incentives to create new apprenticeships for people and it's why the Prime Minister's lifetime skills guarantee is crucial 10 million adults who don't have a level 3 qualification will for the first time be able to get one from the government we know that that can have a transformative impact on people's ability to get a new job or get a better paid job those are the right ways to help people There's a really disgusting argument there by Rishi Sunat because again he's sort of making it this zero sum game between having a decent social security system whereby families don't have to live in poverty and struggle to feed their kids or good well paid jobs and there is no association between the two of those it's not the case that bosses think oh I won't bother to pay people more because they're getting money through universal credit anyway that's not how it works that's not how bosses decide on wages bosses decide on wages based on who is willing to work for them at what wage and things like the power of trade unions so if Rishi Sunat really cared about increasing the wages of Britain's workforce he wouldn't be cutting social security benefits he would be empowering trade unions he would be raising the minimum wage to something which is genuinely enough to live on not just something he's called the living wage even though he's plucked it out of finair and it has nothing to do with what the living wage foundation say is actually a wage that people can live on it is potentially a smart argument though it's Rishi Sunat trying to sound progressive trying to sound left wing I care about high wages and that's why I'm cutting benefits Ash do you think the public will buy it? Well maybe because we've got really stupid media ecology as I've already pointed out so what the public will believe is often a reflection of how hard politicians are being pushed on the hypocrisies and outright lies within the arguments they're making so maybe maybe not one of the things which I think is really important to point out is that over a fifth of universal credit claimants are in work and are judged to be earning so little from the work that they're doing that it's not come subject to work conditions like you have to prove that you're searching for work x many hours a week so that means that somebody is essentially in a full time form of work and not earning enough to survive to feed themselves, to clothe themselves to keep a roof over their heads to look after their kids and their loved ones and what Rishi Sunat is saying is well what we need to do in order to encourage people into full time work which as we've seen universal credit claimants are already in is hurt their income even more by taking away this 20 pound uplift it doesn't make sense it's a completely dishonest argument which I don't see either Rishi Sunat or anyone in the government being pushed on hard enough and I also don't see Labour I think doing nearly enough to get these kinds of arguments out there because what it would require is taking a step back and saying actually it's not just the welfare system that's broken it's employment it's the way job creation is working is what kind of jobs are available for people you don't see that kind of political sense making and that kind of narrativising which links together these seemingly disparate bits of people's economic and social existence into a unified explanation of what's going on and I think that that is the single biggest weakness in Labour at the moment and that's also conversely one of the biggest gifts given to the Tories because it creates all of this room politically for Rishi Sunat to come out and spend some absolute fraff about how he cares about high wages and how he cares about quality employment and that's why he's getting rid of the 20 pound uplift which is actually helping support people who are already in work and are on poverty wages sorry I'm angry about this the level of outright deception and dishonesty and the room which is given by some of the best paid and most well regarded journalists in the country for that deception and dishonesty really winds me up I mean you should be angry about this and I suppose you know what's particularly upsetting about this is Rishi Sunat is still the most popular person in the Cabinet and as we talked about in the first part of this show the Tories are about to break their manifesto pledge to increase income tax national insurance or VAT because they're going to increase national insurance which as James Meadway explained is the most regressive way to pay for social care and now they're ending the 20 pound uplift or I mean essentially let's call it what it is it's a 20 pound a week cut to universal credit which is going to put some of the poorest families in this country into further poverty and he's still incredibly popular and as you say that is because this isn't covered in the right way how often do we hear people who are claiming universal credit on the television I think if we if we gave them the same kind of access we give to people like Lawrence Fox and it would be pretty hard to make these kind of cuts which are going to hit so many working families and so many people out of work I don't want to do this sort of moralizing good benefit claimants versus bad benefit claimants it's often very difficult to get a job and as we're seeing with things like you know shortages on shelves employers are going to have to pay people more if they want people to go into work that's brilliant but that is not happening in every sector right which is why we should not start by cutting social security and hoping that wages will rise no if Rishi Sunak wants less people to be in poverty on the kind of wages where they need to claim universal credit then make sure everyone is earning enough that they're not even eligible for universal credit if no one was eligible for it because wages were so high that would be great that's not the case that's not what we're currently seeing in this country so instead what he's doing is cutting it while wages still remain incredibly low let's go to a couple of comments thank you Tarana Amadi Parker on the YouTube Super Chat we know you're a regular viewer so thank you for that and of course all our regular donors you are what makes all of this possible I'm particularly grateful to all of our regular donors now I'm back in the Navarra Media Studio I can see the beautiful surroundings you have helped us yet let's go to oh and if you aren't already you know the score do go to Navarra Media dot com slash support Phil tweets on the hashtag Sunak saying the government have looked after the most vulnerable is a disgraceful lie the most vulnerable are those on legacy benefits the majority of which are sick and disabled and can't work the Gov chose not to increase their welfare payments at all during the pandemic that is completely outrageous the people who were left behind during the pandemic so people who are on universal credit yes they weren't living in luxury but that 20 pound uplift really did help people who are on legacy benefits who hadn't yet got moved on to universal credit got nothing and there were many other people who as we talked about on this show the government's COVID policies completely left behind telling people to shield without providing any kind of proper system whereby they can get the support that they need just saying oh you've got a shield and we're not going to help you help you do it we're not even going to give you the right to not go into work if you have been told you can't go I mean completely outrageous policies this government towards people who are disabled or for various other reasons cannot go to work or need extra support from the state let's go to our final story Labour are continuing their campaign to regain power with only one policy being nasty to Jeremy Corbyn in public Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy continued that trend in an interview with the Murdoch-owned Times Radio this weekend can you envisage a situation where maybe he then would stand as an independent in Islington North and do you think he'd lose he'd lose the Labour Party you know Paul I've got no idea absolutely no idea what he intends to do I know but what if he did the party would win wouldn't it well I mean look we we stand in seats we stand to win and we fight them very hard and we would and I would knock on those doors for our candidate and do what I could to support them but I would just say this to you as well is that Luciana Berger who I know you know well and it was a very good friend of mine through our years in Parliament said when the EHRC report was published this is no longer about Jeremy Corbyn he's tried to make it all about himself and this is about the Jewish community the hurt that has been caused to them and the trust that needs to be repaired and that's what I care about that's what I'm focused on and it was heartening to spend time at an event in Manchester with hundreds of members of the Jewish community just this week and to hear how slowly and painstakingly we are starting to rebuild that level of trust and that's what I'm focused on not the individuals who've caused so much pain over recent years Asha I want your take on this can you imagine Lisa Nandi canvassing the residents of Islington North to boot out Jeremy Corbyn Can I just say something about Lisa Nandi's comments about the hurt caused to the Jewish community and how seriously she's taking it if she was taking anti-Semitism and racism seriously she would not be on Tom Newton Dunn's show she wouldn't be on there for even a second and the reason why is that man a political editor for the sun he published an article which was this mad conspiracy theory map which had all these different little fact files and you could click on them and it supposedly exposed a hard left network surrounding Jeremy Corbyn I was named in it many people you know you might have been named in it yourself I can't remember Michael and when you clicked on those fact files you can see who was cited to put this map together Arian Unity literally a neo-Nazi organisation there's another one called the Millenium Report which is notoriously anti-Semitic and it also seems that this map this mad conspiracy network map was actually lifted from you know far right bits of the internet from something which was called the Traders Map so this is something which I think had the real risk of perhaps inciting violence inspiring what's called stochastic violence where you create an environment which makes political violence more likely and also was steeped in and drenched in far right conspiracy theory and anti-Semitism so if Lisa Nandi cared at all about these issues which she's supposedly taking so seriously she would go I refuse to be on a show being interviewed by this man on issues to do with anti-Semitism and racism you know what the hypocrisy would be staggering so I have a real problem with the way in which Labour MPs supposed progressive, supposed anti-racist normalised this man who has never been held accountable for what was published under his name so that's the first thing that I would like to say the second thing is about this question of you know Jeremy Corbyn and the way in which Keir Starmer's leadership and also members of the Shadow Cabinet have sought to define their own political identity against Jeremy Corbyn so one, it's stupid absolutely nobody in the electorate is one over by simply making a negative case by going here's what I'm not we've seen that time and time again which is voters outside of very specific circumstances like perhaps with Trump they actually don't like that they're like can you just tell me what you're going to do what you're not going to do the second thing is that for all of the attacks leveled at Jeremy Corbyn and for all the ways in which his personal approval ratings suffered because of those attacks in 2017 40% of the electorate and in 2019 32% of the electorate still went out and voted for him so when you go out and you say Jeremy Corbyn has caused so much pain he's essentially second only you know to botchalism in terms of you know poison and evil the thing that you're doing is you're essentially saying to that 40% and then that 32% and so are you you are associated with this person if you liked this man's policies if you liked what he stood for if you respected his integrity and his principle that means you're also trash so you're kind of insulting a large portion of your potential voters and then the third thing is whether or not Labour could win in Islington North if Jeremy Corbyn contested the seat obviously people tend to vote more so based on party and who it is that they want to be prime minister polling has borne that out however you do have these isolated cases where the appeal of a particular politician who they are what they stand for and their name recognition is able to upset that general political trend that's exactly what happened with Ken Livingston who had to run as an independent for the London mayoralty and won and beat the Blair selected candidate Frank Dobson I believe it was Ken Livingston was the victim of a procedural stitch up in order to try and keep him away from the London mayoralty and he won because he was offering something which Londoners liked and his name had a significant amount more recognition than Frank Dobson's when it comes to Islington North what plays in Jeremy's favor should he decide to run as an independent candidate I also wouldn't blame the guy if he just wanted a break from the daily smears and lies and his stereo of presenting him as the greatest evil this country has seen since Coronation Chicken I couldn't blame him if he wanted a break but the things that run in his favor is that one regardless of whether or not you agree with him politically or you like what he stands for he is a famously dedicated constituency MP there are so many people in Islington North who have stories about when their council flat was in the state and Jeremy Corbyn said I'm going to make sure this gets sorted for you, stuff to do with immigration status, stuff to do with attempted deportations Jeremy has been really dedicated and committed to his constituents and then the second thing is name recognition Islington North is a safe Labour seat sure but also when he was excluded from the Labour Party there were these vox pops being done and somebody said this is Jeremy Corbyn country and it's because what he was offering in terms of his economic vision, his social vision the fact that he wanted to achieve a more just economic settlement without throwing minorities under the bus it made him really popular in Islington North so I would be wary of hubris in this case and I also think that to run against Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North in aggressive hostile way and all that entails I think that it would hold back the Starmer leadership and Labour's chances more generally it would just look really unattractive the most sensible thing that the Starmer leadership can do is go okay this man is an MP he was elected as a Labour MP and he is a Labour Party member that means he's a fucking Labour MP and just get over it just take the L and move on but instead they're in this impossible position about once having no leg to stand on about why this man shouldn't be a Labour MP so nowhere in the rule book there's absolutely nothing that says that this man shouldn't be a Labour MP but so you know holding to essentially defying their own guidelines and their own laws and internal structures but also saying we define ourselves against this man we draw all of our political identity from not being him it's a contradictory position to be in and it's a stupid one it's a rod they've made for their own back so yeah Lisa what are you doing on Tom Newton Dunn's show do you actually care about racism and anti-Semitism at all or is it just a cheap political line she cares about it when people in the Murdoch press have decided that someone is a racist they've decided Jeremy Corbyn is a racist she'll lean into that if the racist is actually within the Murdoch press she wants to keep her hands clean she doesn't want to upset those people Lisa Nandi of course doesn't just speak for herself and Keir Starmer's front bench and so is subject to collective responsibility Labour supporters have responded to her comments on Times Radio by therefore re-sharing some of the statements Starmer made during his leadership election about the then outgoing party leader well look the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn in that election we've just had were terrible and they came back at us on the door they vilified him and they knew what they were doing and they knew why they were doing it that was Keir Starmer when he was courting the votes of Labour members he said the media vilified Corbyn and that they knew what they were doing and they knew why they were doing it when Corbyn said the same thing after the release of the EHRC report he was suspended and now Keir Starmer has his shadow cabinet ministers saying they'll campaign on the doorstep of his LinkedIn North to boot the guy out of Parliament there is more though than Keir Starmer's acceptance speech I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn who led our party through some really difficult times who energised our movement and who's a friend as well as a colleague that video there where Keir Starmer calls Corbyn a friend shows that he isn't just a liar he's a snake Ash it's plain to see how duplicitous Keir Starmer has shown himself to be will he get away with it No, I don't think he will and I would think that the reason why this will go badly for him actually has very little to do with Jeremy Corbyn and how people feel about him as a former party leader it's got much more to do with what it says about Keir Starmer because as you said saying one minute he's a friend and a colleague I pay tribute to him he's led our party through really difficult times he's been attacked, he's been introduced he's been smith and then to turn around no way actually all of those attacks and smiths were completely correct I never even liked that bitch everyone can see that for what it is which is naked opportunism one of the things that the electorate really responds to is a politician who is who they are do you know what I mean they just are who they are that's it Boris Johnson you know who he is he's someone who will say anything to get elected he's made that clear he's done the Brexit done and he did he's both slippery and lacks integrity but he's never promised to be anything else you know what you get with Jeremy Corbyn his strength was his weakness and vice versa which is there was no changing who he was he couldn't really be super agile and responsive to the moment but that's also what made him an appealing conviction politician whereas Keir Starmer has ended up with no policy no vision he says he's a man of conviction and integrity but also turned on someone who he said was his friend you know merely a year ago what do you end up with it's absolutely nothing and I think that you know you can see the desperation in the Starmer project at the moment which is despite the government having handled this pandemic in a completely catastrophic way in a way which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in this country despite there being rampant runaway inequalities despite people being in meshed in a housing crisis despite there being climate change happening now extreme weather events and you know completely inadequate responses from this government Keir Starmer has failed to make a dent in this government's polling and he only has one idea that's punch left and it's not working and the more it doesn't work the more he punches left because you've got Mandelson and that whole gang of you know ancient Blair rights around him dripping poison into the year saying well if you just do this a little bit more it will definitely work now it won't work what it will do is get the Labour Party in a shape which is more conducive to someone from the right of the party winning the leadership they'll do this by disempowering the membership by presiding over prescriptions and expulsions and that's what they hope will happen is that they'll end up with you know Blair 2.0 to rule over the ashes of the Labour Party and not win any elections right that's all they want and Keir Starmer is either I think to blinkered or perhaps to unstrategic as a politician to see that for what it is Lillia I think it's I mean it's what do people know about Keir Starmer other than that he doesn't like Jeremy Corbyn I mean and even that his one selling point to the public I don't like Jeremy Corbyn falls apart because just two years ago he was saying he was a brilliant colleague and a friend and he said oh things have changed since now and then things have changed because he made a statement after the EHRC report which changed everything and I mean that just doesn't wash you know even the people who think that Jeremy Corbyn mishandled the anti-Semitism crisis none of them think that his comments after the EHRC report were worse than what came before yet for Keir Starmer that was the dividing line the dividing line was before he said oh actually the media did exaggerate the extent of the problem that was when he suddenly became persona non grata he suddenly became someone we should be actively campaigning against on the doorstep before that he was a friend who he wanted to be prime minister doesn't make any sense so it because also what Jeremy Corbyn said after that EHRC report wasn't anything new it was what Jeremy Corbyn had been saying the entire time that Keir Starmer was in his shadow cabinet campaigning for him to become prime minister which was to say yes there is a problem but also it was exaggerated that wasn't new no one heard that statement from Jeremy Corbyn he said oh I didn't didn't realize he believed that no we knew he believed that right he said it consistently throughout the whole period now some people might say oh that was a bit strategic maybe you should have used a different tone fine whatever the point is nothing changed between 2019 when Keir Starmer was trying to make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister and 2021 when Keir Starmer is saying he's trash on the bottom of my shoe and I wish he would have nothing to do with me I want to deselect him as an MP I want to stand someone else against him you know it doesn't stack up you can't have your only selling point as I'm a man with integrity and I hate Jeremy Corbyn when just two years ago you said I'm a man of integrity and I think Jeremy Corbyn's the bee's knees it doesn't stack up it doesn't make sense let's go to one final comment Robert Scully with a fiver Ash I love your measured and interesting points of views Corbyn borrowed my vote from the Tories in 2019 and thanks to Keir and Co I will be going blue again now obviously none of us at Navarra Media advise you to go blue to vote Tory but I am pleased that we have one with very different viewpoints to our owners watching the show Ash do you have many Tory voting fans do you normally hear from them only in the DMs from anonymous accounts never openly no I'm actually really glad that somebody with different political views is watching our stuff and I hope just in case there are Tory voters watching I hope that you can see that we take the Tory party seriously and that we are actually interested in the differences in thinking and outlook and ideology and strategy within the Tory party and that it's certainly not about just being like they're all ogres we might come to a different view but we have dealt with the Tory party and as rigorous a way possible that for me is the mark of a media organisation which is both partisan and fair but you're not just relying on the same cardboard cut out narratives all the time that you're actually looking through it in detail and assessing it with the kind of discerning and critical eye that news media deserves that's what I hope that any potential Tory viewers are getting from our stuff Ash you were describing something very different to Tom Newton Dunn's interview with Lisa I agree with you that's what we aim for thank you so much for joining me this evening thank you for having me maybe next time it will be in the same postcode Michael what are you afraid of small steps, small steps we will get there and thanks to all of you for joining us this evening and for your super chats we'll be back on Wednesday at 7pm so make sure to hit subscribe if you haven't already you've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navarra Media good night