 Welcome to today's episode of The Fix. I'm Michael Walker. Today I'm joined by Ash Sarkar. What's up? Lovely for you. Lovely for you coming here. Thank you for you coming here. We'll also have James later on to talk about the Constitution and the Queen's Speech. That video we started with was Theresa May who just visited North Kensington. She's obviously a persona non-grata in that part of town quite rightly. Also increasingly unpopular across the country. The Tories had another fairly chaotic day today, especially in relation to Grenfell. They announced at one point that 600 tower blocks in the country had the same type of cladding as Grenfell did, which would mean it would all have to be immediately removed. They later retracted that to say there's in fact 600 buildings with cladding and they need to check them. They're all over the place. I talked on Monday about how ridiculous, how shameful it is that the government still were unable to say whether or not that cladding was illegal or not, whether or not it was allowed to be put on a building or not. The Chancellor suggested on Andrew Marder. In fact it was illegal. Theresa May is now prevericating again. So we're going to look at her under pressure in Parliament and her again being completely unsure whether or not this cladding that was looks like it was the cause of the fire spreading should have been there in the first place. On fire safety has not yet actually met to look at how they could be improved. I will just add to the answer that I gave to the right Honourable Gentleman previously. I ask Honourable Members to remember that there is a criminal investigation taking place in relation to this matter. The testing of the cladding, the testing of the materials used, is being undertaken and a statement will be made by the police and the fire and service within the next 48 hours. The cladding on the tower is a standard product that is available for sale. So we've often criticised a vet Cooper on this show. She asked a good question then and Theresa May had no answer. She was claiming she can't say whether or not the cladding was illegal because of a criminal investigation taking place. I mean either it's illegal or it's not. People have been building buildings with this cladding or with cladding that's similar to this for years. If the government after a week can't tell us whether or not that was illegal, how the hella property developers supposed to know, how is it going to be enforced if they don't know. Like someone in the housing department has to know what material is legal and what material is illegal. Otherwise, how are they going to fulfil their responsibility which is to keep us safe? It's impossible. It also came out this week that the cladding wasn't the only problem with the building. So the cladding, the problem with the cladding was that the fire could spread from flat to flat to flat which isn't supposed to happen. Also, sky revealed yesterday that the insulation, that's what sits between the cladding and the people's homes, was released cyanide gas when burnt. They were interviewing a scientist called Richard Hull who said that this was likely the cause of lots of the deaths in the building. The hospital has confirmed that there were three patients treated for cyanide poisoning. And again, this is something that the government should have known. This Richard Hull, this scientist was saying they had warned about this before and it's a tragedy that no one listened until tens of people were dead, possibly hundreds of people were dead. We still don't know. That's another thing that the government's still being fairly unclear about. We also had news this week that I think some of us took good news at first yesterday that people were going to be rehoused. The evening standard told us in luxury flats down the road it sounded like potentially Jeremy Corbyn's call for empty luxury homes to be requisitioned and given over to people who'd been made homeless by this fire was coming to fruition. It turned out that in fact these were already assigned to be social housing. So nothing really has changed. How it works at the moment is when there's a property being developed, the council can demand of the developers that they put a certain percentage of those homes to affordable rent. Affordable rent can be as much as 80% of market rent. It can also be social rent which is like council rent. So these buildings weren't luxury flats being brought over into public ownership. What this was is flats which were already had to be affordable and now being given to this set of people who've been made homeless from Grenfell. Obviously I back that but what it means is that there's 86 families who are now going to find it harder to get a home in Kensington. I mean we found out that there is no fairytale ending for this story right or at least not yet. So the thing about them being housed in these luxury blocks is that they don't actually have access to the luxury aspects of it like the gym and the pool. You've got their wealthy neighbors complaining that you know dignified housing for people who have lost everything might impinge on their very moneyed and insulated existence is somewhat and you've also got problems where undocumented or irregular migrants are worried about their status. There's been a lot of mixed information about whether or not they will be given reprieve and right to remain or if it's just temporary respite and what we're seeing is that you know as much as the council and the government are trying to respond in a media friendly way the kind of instinctual brutality of the state apparatus and also like living in London and New York. Liberalism just kind of keeps insidiously working its way in and snaking them right one way or another and that's what shows us that really it doesn't matter how good the response to this one particular tragedy is although better response is definitely needed there has to be a total radical overhaul of central government of the culture in local authorities and councils and our entire approach to social and affordable housing. I mean I think what's been you're exactly right that however they treat the families who have been lost their homes in Grenfell which should have been much better than it was the issue is structural you shouldn't have to have your house burnt down before you're offered social housing in central London in the borough that you're brought up in the school that near the school that your children and also let's not lose sight of the big picture I think it's really important for us to talk about the cladding it's important for us to talk about the lack of alarms so on and so forth but there's a big picture here and that is managed decline right it's something like 63.4% of all council housing in Kensington is due to be sold off right because it was over the threshold of high-value housing right so there's a context here right the local authority and also the kind of crown goes who are brought into manage such council housing have an incentive to not take care of it and to encourage with whatever means they have at their disposal to disperse low-income or otherwise precarious households and so that's the big picture here which I think we really mustn't lose sight of which has been happening since the 80s as well right so Margaret Thatcher didn't like that it was normal to live in a council home so she made sure that anyone on a medium income was encouraged to buy a home move out and then that's how she was sort of intentionally creating the notion of a sinker state by moving out people who had jobs and say no this place isn't for you and letting it fall into disrepair so that you could justify knocking down these places because they were bad for the working class anyway and that is obviously a narrative we need to fight against no surprises there also yesterday a charity single came out which I don't know I have mixed feelings about but it did have a brilliant verse from Stormzy Stormzy the people's poet so I'm not actually going to try and spit this because I think that'd be embarrassing embarrassing not just for me but I think we haven't got the background music on yes that's why we're not doing another technical issue on the face but it was a really beautiful opening verse I think Stormzy is precisely the right person to do this I think he's perhaps one of the most introspective and sensitive of the grandma is out at the moment so like just like reading it I don't know where to begin so I'll start by saying I refuse to forget you I refuse to be silent I refuse to neglect you that's what every last soul up in Grenfell even though I've never even met you because that would have been my mom's house well that could have been my nephew it could have been me up there waving my plain white tea up there my friends on the ground trying to see up there I just hope that you're resting and free up there so incredibly moving it's got that kind of you know signature Stormzy directness and simplicity and openness to it and I think he's also speaking about an experience which is shared by not just many people in the grime scene but young working-class people of color chances are if you know someone who lives in that thorough they lived in or around Grenfell so AJ Tracy who came out in support Corbin and did a video on the lack of affordable housing Grenfell was in the background of that video and also a friend of his who lived in Grenfell who I think is amongst the casualties and he said that he passed had come down to see him like film this video right and so this is something which is striking very close to many of the artists who came out in support of a radical leftist labor alternative it's not about just an abstract sense of like these policies resonate I think after Grenfell it's really hit home just what the cost is if we don't have a radical overhaul in politics what do you think of the notion of a charity single for an event like this I mean I'm because there's there's been an interesting interplay in the aftermath between solidarity actions and charity so the next day the evening standard had a headline London Unites which seemed completely bizarre given all the interviews that had been on on Sky News if you've been watching it that day which was people saying these towers burnt down because the council hates us because we're poor and you say London Unites and then they have a full page spread about their fundraising scheme you know the the sanitization of like the community the community response is not the fault of a charity single or whatever and I think like in a situation where the government response is so lacking and there have been so many unmet needs in terms of you know what the people affected by this fire need that yeah people got a pull together get some peace by whatever means available to them and distribute that but I think that by no means does that mean that the people who are part of this charity single who are part of a you know collection drive are any less aware of the structural problems there and I think in terms of sanitizing this disaster that's something for all of us whether we work in radical media or we're just like chances with a Twitter account to push back against so one of the things that I found really striking when I was talking to you know people who are in government and who are part of like you know kind of media industrial complex is that in private there was a real callousness almost boredom that they had to talk about these things and then in public there were like thoughts and prayers this is a tragedy and that language which is imprecise which is sentimental but not committal that's all we need to be you know and punching through I mean in terms of charity singles that's that Stormzy versus miles away from do they know it's Christmas time yeah yeah which so he's it's that that particular versus clearly in solidarity because he's saying I I associate or I identify with the victims of this we're gonna move on to a next topic just I suppose it's probably about a mile away from those towers there's very different building with people with very different life experiences and they had a particularly ridiculous pompous event yesterday which was the Queen's speech we're gonna watch 30 seconds of that and then we're gonna bring on James Butler our resident constitutional expert to tell us what the hell is going on my government will seek to maintain a deep and special partnership with the European allies and to forge new trading relationships across the globe new bills on trade and customs will help to implement an independent trade policy and support will be given to help British businesses export to market around the world I mean what is the Queen's speech the Queen's speech is the speech from the strain it's the speech the Monarch gives in Parliament it's part of the state opening of Parliament which has all of those kind of big ridiculous processions a lot of it comes back from comes you know ultimately from from time Charles I so when you know Black Rod goes and summons the parliamentarians to the Lords that ultimately comes from when Charles the first came down to Parliament and said hand me over these MPs and speak a lentil said make please your Majesty I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak save as this house direct me it's a really important moment in the Commons asserting its sovereignty but yeah so the Queen comes and delivers a speech partly because Parliament functions essentially as an extension of authority that's vested in the crown basically the government basically it's basically it's the government's program yeah for how it's going to conduct so that then gets voted on and if that vote gets through which usually it does then the government that's the government's basis for legislating for the rest of parliamentary term so the Queen's speech is the price it's not written by the Queen the Prime Minister writes it or her government or her advisers or whatever and what it does is it lists all the all the key legislation that they plan to pass in that Parliament which normally would be one year but this time they made it two years for extra stability during the Brexit negotiations this year's speech was more notable for what it missed out than what it included right so obviously the Tories had some pretty bullshit policies in their manifesto the dementia tax fox hunting getting rid of free school meals for little kiddies they've all gone yeah yeah they've all gone what stayed what stayed well I mean the other things that are gone are also important the prison reform is out yeah now that's actually quite important Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons pretty annoyed that that's gone yeah the only good thing Gove ever did in office by the way not great they got rid of it not great but important well you know people they were going to a Bush serious forward office that's gone not very much on extremism now Theresa May had a big crusade about extremism are we on gone on remain now that's still gone that's now the things that remain all the things that the main focus is important because these you know the shape of the legislation here is is strange what remains is there is the what used to be called a great repeal bill it's now lost the weird little just repeal bill just a repeal bill that it so basically most of the major legislation in this parliament is going to be Brexit related and yeah I mean as you said she doesn't want to pass another Queen's speech in a year's time probably because she's going to be very very imperiled and very weak feeling in about a year if she's even still just feeling weak feeling in a year so so there's the legislation itself which is a bit kind of constitutionally weird because it it gives the government or it will probably well it's going to have to grant the government so-called Henry VIII powers now these are powers which will allow the government to basically retrospectively amend legislation they pass yeah without scrutiny so they can issue so Henry VIII ruled by proclamation and that's where the name comes from so the government will have very very broad powers to amend this is when they repeal them so what was EU law becomes British law and in the process of becoming British law they can add some amendments some cheeky sort of so they they repeal it's called a repeal because they're repealing the European Community Act 1972 and but in doing so they preserve quite a lot of EU legislation save in certain areas where they say oh we're just correcting it to fit with British law but actually that correction is going to involve pretty major policy decisions in the area of regulation perhaps workers safety human rights human rights slightly different matter because human rights is is will have its own kind of legislative structure but yeah I mean there will be human rights issues that crop up and those will be policy decisions as well now there are there are also eight separate bills which have been carved out from from this which are in areas like agriculture and fisheries immigration trade tax stuff like that these these are competences which are going to be really important and they're going to have separate bills which are probably also going to be enabling acts in the same way I want to move us on to is it even going to get passed right because now what happens is they debate for a week or I don't know I don't get yeah okay so there will be votes on Wednesday and Thursday labor will have an have the potential to lay amendments yeah I assume what labor is going to do is lay an amendment that says no we're not going to do this we'll do this but you can amend the speech you can amend so the speech you can and the queen don't have to read it again no the queen doesn't have to read it again so queen so what happens the queen issues the speech and then it comes to Parliament and it's there debated now historically so 1924 for instance yeah when the minority government brought a king's speech as it was then Stanley Gordon and the government then said the commons he did it was minority government commons then debated it and the labor said well but we're appending a vote of no confidence government collapses are they collapsed yeah so this time and that brings in the first ever labor government okay so if the labor government this time says we we want to move to a vote of no confidence so basically actually let's let's take it a step back in terms of like assumptions if that vote happens and they lose if the queen speech gets voted down and that would presumably because the DUP haven't the DUP haven't sort of like agreed to go along with it for the tourists because the case is going to be which I said it's quite and the tourists get the DUP on side to vote through their queen speech yeah if if imagine it gets voted down what happens new election well no not immediately presumably the government will resign and in that case so queen speech historically be taken as a confidence vote yeah but because of the influence of the fixed or the structure in the fixed-term Parliament's act it's not automatically about confidence but presumably the government will resign there will then be a period in which I mean either the Conservatives will put forward and you know another government or it's a bit constitutionally murky and I don't that's not very likely to happen precisely because the DUP do not want to see a Corbyn government happen there will also I imagine be some Labour's part to form a minority government rather than proceed to a general election and it would be wise for the Labour Party to try and push for another election rather than form because if they do form a government then they're stuck by a fixed-term Parliament's act because then they either have to issue a vote for no confidence in their own government which looks a bit weird or they have to pass a motion for an early general election which require a lot of Tory votes which are required two-thirds majority and some of our more fearful than usual Tories won't want to election because to the people's Labour Party in the late 2017 people's landslide so like the DUP like successfully hustled some more money right well it's not clear there are rumors that they're trying to get money from Northern Ireland but that triggers the Barnett formula which is a big question so that means if they give Northern Ireland the money they have to also give it to Scotland they have to proportionally spend across and this incident is the other big story here is the the return of the regional question and the Westlothian question in another form and which is you know English votes for English laws that's going to be an issue in this Parliament so essentially but essentially all things all things considered we're probably going to get next Wednesday the Queen's speech passes with the DUP backing it the DUP having gone a little bit more money for Northern Ireland that means Scotland and Wales get a little bit more and we have a very weak May government that sort of plods along until the next big beef yeah we're back benches are with the DUP which will be the Brexit legislation I think and that's going to be a real big problem and it should be a big problem because it's a minority government and there is a real question whether this government has legitimacy to negotiate Brexit there's also a big question about whether they have now the parliamentary power to put through the stuff that they would be able to do as a majority government that's a big exciting time thank you James we're gonna pop see we're gonna pop see better than a Corbyn high-five wasn't any yes the baron me and Aaron mentions the Finnsbury Park attack but we didn't go into too much detail I know you have a lot of thoughts on that yeah so sorry that face was something going through here not me yeah dad grew up in North London Finnsbury Park mosque is and the welfare center on seven sisters right it's a place that I walk past basically every day so this was very close to home both geographically but also cognitively and emotionally the basics are that after evening prayers so just like around midnight just after midnight on Sunday night a van driven by Darren Osborne plowed into worshippers who were leaving the welfare center one man died I think two people are still in critical condition others were injured the police there are shall we say conflicting accounts of how long it took them to arrive so Lisa saying 10 minutes people who were there are saying more like half an hour even 40 minutes and the perpetrator has to be held down by members of the lost community and since then there's been a lot of grief a lot of anger a lot of recriminations in the sense of people are looking at the kind of output of the express and the male Katie Hopkins is the world and saying well you planted the seeds of this kind of burning resentment and kind of love thirstiness towards Muslims and there's also been an incredible community response so the vigil was like really well attended those really beautiful words spoken and also really politically salient and even confrontational as being spoken as well the thing that I want to talk about because this is something which I've been mulling over for the last few days is a question of what is the political utility of calling what happened on Sunday night morning a terrorist attack now I understand completely why I'm just gonna let Jetson white people from the discussion for a second why Muslims are saying we want this to be called a terrorist attack we want this person to be othered and vilified the same way that any Muslim would be we want a state response which makes mosques more secure or more securitized and we want a state response which seems to value protecting Muslims and Muslim lives and we also want to kind of repurpose some of the language which has been generally racialized like hate preacher extremism radicalization and apply it to white people and far right acts of violence so I fully understand where this comes from because it's an urge that I feel myself as well where a question it is in two respects one is that I guess a little bit more theoretical which is well are there different kinds of terrorism is there a terrorism which disrupts the logic of the state and is there one which cohees with the logic of the state which in some ways might be seen as the extension of the logic of the state and the other is well why aren't we calling this a racist murder now when the news initially broke it was being covered as a suspected Islamic terrorist incident by CNN and their national security expert seems to me that anyone can be a national security expert I was like I know this man he works in John Lewis so it was being referred to you as Islamic terrorism and I think that's because of this aspect of the van Aaron who was chatting to you before was like well this is now recognized as part of like the terrorist tactical repertoire so I think we can look at that as a kind of racialized component right we're not talking terms of skin color we're talking terms of floating signifiers now and I think that's affected how it's covered because people have been murdered after evening prayers for a long time and half the time you don't even know the names of the perpetrators or indeed the names of the victims they're not treated as national security issues indeed they're not even covered as national news now do we say well let's retrospectively call those terrorist incidents to or and this is what I think we place it within the context of racist murders that have a history in this country extending well before 9-11 now like as part of the research that I was doing into this idea I realized that other than Altaf Ali and Stephen Lawrence I couldn't name any other victims of racist murders and that in my head there's a kind of paradiesel period between the death of Stephen Lawrence and 9-11 in which state multiculturalism is hegemonic and nothing bad ever happens now this is bullshit in that time there are two murders which I think are a particular significance one is Donna O'Dwyer in 1994 and the other is Michael Menten in 1997 let's start with Michael Menten for a second so this was characterized by a real reticence on the part of the police to characterize this as a racist murder he was killed in Edmonton which is I went to school there and it grew up around the corner from there I never knew this man's name like there's no rec named after him there's no Michael Menten fund and he was killed by two young racists who was set alight and the police for ages were trying to argue that he set himself alight the other case Donna O'Dwyer and the reason I say this is significant is that her flat was set on fire by a man with like neo-nazi sympathies who collect all the memorabilia and lots of ways he's like Thomas Mayer now we don't refer to either of these as terrorist incidents because the kind of method here isn't recognized as part of the terrorist repertoire though I would say it's certainly spectacular so what do we get from placing it within this context well it means we're talking about ideas around Britishness, citizenship, migration, empire, we're not looking for a state response because both of these cases were characterized by a real miscarriage of justice right we know that the state will not protect people of color I'm wary of a response that demands more police around mosques more armed police around mosques because there's no way to do that without it being more surveillance for Muslims it's interesting to be able to say more police for mosques and not more police for Cardiff which is where this guy came from and it says that actually what we need is a community grassroots anti-racist movement which obviously engages with the state and its demands for justice but doesn't set its definitions of justice around the definitions of the state I don't know what you guys I suppose one reason why people want it to be called terrorism is partly to have the sort of equality between when it's done by a Muslim person but also so that the media and the police give it a certain amount of seriousness and give it a certain amount of time because I suppose in both of those examples you gave as in Stephen Lawrence part of the problem well a big problem was endemic racism in the police but that translated into a passivity you know kind of sort of just not taking it very seriously cover up of a passivity right and so by calling it terrorism that has a repertoire attached to it which means that the media and the police take it seriously and I obviously we should expect that the police in the media take racist attacks seriously I suppose that's the the argument really isn't it that we should be fighting for the police to take racist attacks seriously instead of making something have to be called terrorism before it gets the attention and that's why I say I understand this completely but I don't think that our only word for serious should be terror no I agree but the identity position is necessarily conflictual and because one of the things that I think is quite important is to recover the history of terrorism prior to you know sort of post 2001 and that involves going back and looking at the history of rhyming terrorism also left wing terrorism in Europe which is a you know good 120 years old little older in fact and that tells us that there is a specific mode that terrorists undertake which is all to do with sort of mediatization you know terrorism arises as part of the first big globalization the first rise of like massive print media and it is to do with that kind of mediation the highly spectacular targets and the provocation of state responses thus to sharpen the contradictions which is I think one of the things that's going on here so I think we can see it as a resurgence of a particular kind of terrorist activity among the far right precisely because they can't make the electoral gains that they have wanted to do in the past and they can't make the kind of mass street violence that they wanted to do in the past with the caveat that there was you know very strong EDL March in Manchester the other week but again that kind of like mass street demonstration doesn't seem to be you know attractive to the I'm just gonna cut in there because I think this is we definitely need to discuss for a longer period of time on a podcast but we've got a minute left so I'm gonna give you the final word on this issue and then we're we're ending this is your story you get you get final I think that we need to ask serious serious questions about what we want from the state in terms of protecting us I don't want to see more cops around most or indeed any other places of worship because they should be spaces for vulnerable people sometimes disruptive people and they should be welcome to all now that is not to say most should be considered open targets I just think that we need to think about other forms of protection and we should not in any way trust the media or mainstream politicians when they say well now we're taking this seriously because where were you all this time thank you for that final point thank you so much for a lucid dating what the hell was going on in Parliament yesterday and thank you as ever for joining us and thank you for watching if you've got any thoughts on the show tweet us comment in the live feed we love your chat and see you on Monday over the last 10 years things have really changed but for the darkness every cause has an effect for all the talk of change the present moment is really one of crisis a crisis of democratic representation of identity a climate crisis of a failing economic model which isn't working for most people we can't have a media that's beholden to advertisers or the political ambitions of oligarchs which is why in 2013 we founded 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