 At least 122 Palestinians including 27 children have now been killed as Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza. The UN has said that more than 200 homes and 24 schools have been destroyed or severely damaged in the Gaza Strip in the past five days. It also warned that Israeli airstrikes could limit residents access to fresh water due to power cuts and damage to pipe networks. Now the abject terror of living in Gaza right now was visible in distressing videos such as this shared on social media. Now social media is full of videos full of accounts like that. It's what millions of people are currently living under right now. Hamas rockets have of course also been continued to be fired at Israeli towns and cities so far they've killed nine people including one child and one soldier. Meanwhile so that's Gaza. Meanwhile across or within Israel's 1948 borders right wing Jews have attacked Palestinians. This includes some again horrific footage. This is I mean essentially lynching in in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Now we aren't going to show you the whole clip because it's quite frankly just too too graphic but here you can see young Israeli Jews dragging a Palestinian from a car and brutally attacking him. According to the Cannes News Network who recorded this footage and broadcast it live there were no police present. As I said we're going to cut this out before the end but it does it does go on and to show the mob punching a Palestinian man in the face as he lies semi-conscious on the floor. Really really really difficult to watch. The far right mob you saw there in Bat Yam also attacked Palestinian owned businesses some chanting death to Arabs. Now within Israel Jewish citizens have also been targeted including in the city of Lid where a Jewish man was stabbed on his way to synagogue. At least one synagogue has also been burned, been set on fire. Also in Lid a pregnant Arab woman was attacked and suffered serious head injuries. Now as well as unrest across Israel on a battle between the IDF and Hamas in Gaza we are beginning to see a wave of protests in the occupied West Bank. Now you can see here footage from the Palestinian city of Nablus that was last night. Protests have continued across the West Bank today with at least seven protesters having been killed by the Israeli military. That's all within the borders of historic Palestine. Protests and unrest has not been limited to that region though. There are also protests at the Jordanian border and the border with Lebanon today. We can show you some images from protests on the border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank. Now it's reported that Palestinian refugees in Jordan have since breached border with occupied Palestine. That border is of course controlled by Israel. I'm joined now by Dr Yara Hawari a senior policy analyst at Al-Shabaka a Palestinian think tank. Yara is based in the occupied West Bank. Thank you so much for joining us this evening and we are going to talk and focus on sort of the movements, the violence, the uprisings across the region. I do want to focus though first of all on the situation in Gaza. There was some confusion last night when the IDF tweeted ground forces were engaged in Gaza then they said actually they haven't entered Gaza. They're just I suppose sending in rockets from outside Gaza. What's your understanding on the latest happenings there? Do you think we are on the cusp of a full-blown ground invasion? I think it's entirely possible considering the Israeli political situation at the moment. Of course you know Israel doesn't have a government. It still was in the midst of forming a coalition government. Netanyahu hadn't managed to do that yet and so to be honest this might be the perfect opportunity for him to get that majority that he needs. We know that the Israeli electorate is quite far right and violence against Palestinians particularly those in Gaza to be quite frank it's a winner in elections. I mean the opposition figure Benny Gantz who was being touted as the sort of liberal savior by the European Union used footage of bombing Gaza in 2014 in his electoral video campaign. So you know it's very obvious what the majority of the Israeli public think towards Gaza. I think it's entirely possible that we we do reach that. Having said that I don't think that Israel or at least Netanyahu does want a full-blown-out war especially considering what is happening at the moment elsewhere across historic Palestine. It's facing the Israeli government's facing this huge internal what it calls an internal issue. All these protests from Palestinian communities within 48 within Israel proper and now as well with all these what they consider threats at the border. So to be honest Israel can't fight all of these fronts and so that might be a saving grace for for the people of Gaza and I sincerely hope that the Israeli airstrikes do stop because what we've heard from friends and comrades in Gaza is that this is the last few days have been the worst bombardments they have ever seen and you know there are people as young as 20 who have seen four or five consecutive wars now and they're saying that this was the worst last night was the worst night that they have ever lived and you know we we have reports that you know from friends that they were sending their last sort of messages farewell messages to people overnight so I you know I sincerely hope that the barrage doesn't soon. I want to talk about what's going on inside Israel proper the 1948 borders because as well as the bombardment of Gaza I think this is at the moment what's getting the most international coverage. It's often reported as communal or sectarian violence I kind of want to know if that's a categorization you think is is is fair but we showed there a video of of Arabs attacking or sorry far right Jews attacking Arabs attacking Palestinians we also know there are Jews who are being attacked in in in Israel. Do you think seeing this as communal violence or sectarian violence really gets what's going on how should we understand the the violence and conflicts that we're currently seeing within the borders of Israel. So this is Israel's narrative that this is an internal issue and it should be dealt with internally and that is sectarian and one of the reasons it does that is to hide the fact that it has a Palestinian population within Israel a lot of people don't know that that 20% of the population of Israel are actually indigenous Palestinians who are often labeled Israeli Arabs as a way to sort of hide their their Palestinian identity but it's also to obscure the reality in the context which is of a settler colonial state this isn't you know Arabs versus Jews this is a settler colonialist versus the indigenous people and the indigenous people are fighting for their survival and the and the sectarian narrative also serves the interests of Israel by sort of warding off international intervention because of course the the UN and international organizations are sort of heavily involved in condemning things in the West Bank and and Gaza because they see as their international responsibility but whereas when it comes to Israel internally Israel can sort of fend off those criticisms by saying that it's a domestic issue you know maybe one of discrimination or you know sort of you know sectarianism when actually it's not the case at all what we're learning and what increasingly is becoming understood is that the policies in in the West Bank certainly are also the policies that the Israeli government carries out towards Palestinians in the West Bank are also carried out across the green line and for Palestinian citizens of Israel which is the sort of preferred label we have lived this we have known this since our existence but because of sort of the parameters of international law and that the mainstream discourse that our story and our community has has often been forgotten and and erased something I mean this is kind of a background question but this is being presented as something quite new sort of whether or not you want to characterize it as communal violence but anyway violence between communities in in Israel I mean particularly most prominently it seems like far-right attacks on on Palestinian citizens of Israel is that something which is relatively new or is this an ongoing thing which has only just sort of increased in the last few days to be honest it's it's it's been ongoing I think it's escalated in the last few days we haven't seen this certainly not in my generation this kind of these kind of lynch mobs to this extent across the country you know they have always we've we in Palestine we talk about it as the continuous Nakaba the ongoing Nakaba which of course refers to the ethnic cleansing of 1948 and when we say that we mean to say that it continues this project or process in the region has continued and we have seen it in the the displacement of our people the the fact of our land the you know extra judicial killings ethnic cleansing etc but to this large extent to have these kinds of settler mobs carrying out lynchings and assaults and supported by the police and by the security forces is definitely something I'm unprecedented in in my generation but it's also not surprising to us you know we have always been on edge that this could happen to us there have been many points throughout history where and recent history actually where Israeli politicians have talked about wiping us out that you know we're the we're the cancer in Israeli society the the surviving indigenous population and that we need to be either you know eliminated eliminated or we need to be encouraged to leave or or they threaten us with expelling us to the West Bank or to Gaza so it is certainly unprecedented to me but it's also not unexpected at all let's talk about the the Palestinian resistance to this and we've had a number of guests on on this week who've really put forward an idea that you know in a way whilst what's going on is is absolutely terrible in a way there's there's also sources of hope which is that the Palestinian struggle seems much more united than it has in in a long time you're seeing protests in Israel properly you're seeing protests in the West Bank and obviously Gaza are resisting in their own ways and then now you're even seeing protests you know in Jordan and and Lebanon does this seem to you a more sort of united and powerful form of Palestinian resistance than we've seen for a long time and if so why do you think that's happening now yeah I think so this is just the permanent condition of being Palestinian is because we live in this continuous state of tragedy we you know whenever we see glimmers of hope there's always something devastating going on at the same time so we've become very used to it you know where there's laughter tears really aren't far behind and personally you know I've been I've been crying and and smiling throughout the last few weeks and and I guess it's different for different Palestinian communities in Gaza the situation is is so devastating but I do think there are glimmers the the the way that Palestinians have been mobilizing across historic Palestine and I mean you know the West Bank Gaza 48 which refers to to the state of Israel the Palestinian communities in Israel and also in exile in in the in the diaspora and it's pretty phenomenal we haven't seen this level of mobilization for for a long time particularly because Israel has pursued polity policies deliberate policies or fragmentation of social uh political and geographic fragmentation I cannot go to Gaza I physically cannot go to Gaza the only way that I can have communication with my brothers and sisters in Gaza is online and even that we know is heavily monitored so you can't even begin to understand the level of fragmentation that Palestinians existed and yet we have these protests and we have people coming out and let's not forget but the the sparkle of all of this was Sheikh Jarrah the neighborhood in Jerusalem that was that was facing imminent ethnic cleansing and people all over historic Palestine came out because they saw that it was a complete reiteration of what they have experienced or what their parents have experienced or what their grandparents have experienced you know that the scenes that that we've seen that the videos the things that we've experienced over the last few weeks remind me so much of what my grandparents told me happened in in 1948 the lynchings the the driving of Palestinians from their homes the beatings in the street this is it's it's simply a reiteration it's a continuous process and so the fact that Palestinians despite this this continuation of all the ethnic cleansing of settler colonialism can come together is is has been incredibly inspiring to me and I think also to a lot of Palestinians all over the world and my final question is what is or what the events of the last two weeks I suppose there's been too many of them to list what effect is that going to have on the internal politics of of Palestine I know you're based in in the west bank at the moment it seems like the Palestinian Authority which is led by Mahmoud Abbas is I mean concerned that it's going to become irrelevant I mean obviously I'm asked one of the reasons they started sending rockets is because they wanted to be seen as defenders of the al-Aqsa mosque when it was trashed by the Israeli police forces is you know how will the the PA the Palestinian Authority in the west bank come into play here do you see what what direction they're going to go in are they going to say we are going to join join this round of resistance against Israel or do you think there's going to be a rebellion against them even Michael I smiled several times in during your question because firstly I don't think they are worried about becoming irrelevant because they're already irrelevant the PA it doesn't have any legitimacy amongst its own people the only friends it has is in the international donor community because they maintain the status quo because they keep Palestinian silent they are not a representative body they're not an accountable body they're not considered a legitimate leadership and this their position and their silence and absence during this uprising further cements that and I have to say they haven't even I mean they've been absent but they've also been present on the streets in full her security get up we've seen in the streets of Ramallah and other places we've seen them sort of scaremonger protesters we've even seen them repress protesters and I think they're afraid I think they're afraid of a grassroots movement that unites all Palestinians because it would solidify the fact that they are indeed irrelevant and the fact that this comes off the back of elections which they failed to have that no one was surprised that they cancelled because this is again it's a body that is well past its electoral mandate and no one has any faith in them and I forgot what the second reason I smiled was but I'm sure it was I forgot the second part of your question but something about Abbas but he always I think you've I think you basically covered it I was going to say are they going to try and prevent their own slide into relevancy and you've said they're already irrelevant so it's sort of a I think you asked me I think you asked me if they would join in and the answer to that is no they will not join in in this uprising because this uprising speaks to everything that they are not which is the status quo they are the status quo is uprising is demanding a drastic change from the status quo Dr Yara Hawari thank you so much for for joining us this evening it's been incredibly insightful and thanks so much for all of your updates I'm sure we'll speak soon thank you for having me let's go to a couple of comments Rajya Dee has said on the super chat please join us to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle assemble 12 p.m at marble arch in London tomorrow and march to the embassy I bet that's going to be a really big protest so definitely I completely back what Rajya Dee has said get down to marble arch at 12 p.m tomorrow mtg forest with five pounds asks stupid question but why doesn't the international community not condemn the actions of Israel and put pressure on them solidarity Palestine and love to Navara media I don't think it's a stupid question I think it's one of the key questions of our times to be honest in a way it's it's almost I don't think I can give a particularly sort of sophisticated answer to that question other than to say it does show the sort of abject moral poverty of the United States and the United Kingdom that all they can say is we condemn Hamas rockets and we condemn terrorism and completely ignore the fact that what we're seeing at this point in time is a people who are being occupied who are being subject to to ethnic cleansing and who are being bombed with airstrikes children are being killed and all we hear from from from the UK and the US is sort of these anodyne statements such as oh we hope calm can be brought we hope we can bring people to the table all of it is designed to obfuscate the fact that this isn't just some equal fight between two sides it's not just a struggle between identity groups it's systematic settler colonialism and and repression and occupation and apartheid and any government that had any ounce of moral decency would recognize it as such but the UK the US Europe are unable to do so I mean presumably the big reason is that it's useful for them to have Israel in the Middle East as a as a military ally but as I say I'm probably not the best person to go into real detail on that particular question and we're going to go on to a COVID story first of all if you haven't already like the stream an increase in cases of the so-called Indian variant of coronavirus has raised concerns about England's schedule for exiting lockdown at least 1768 cases of the B16172 strain have so far been identified in the UK the rates of the B16172 strain are increasing sort of almost almost looks like they're doubling every week now that's particularly concerning or has led scientists to the assessment that the Indian strain or the so-called Indian strain is more transmissible than the Kent variant that's because cases of all the other variants are decreasing cases of this variant are increasing so pretty solid evidence that it's more transmissible some further evidence that it is and also the effect this is having on coronavirus rates and can be seen in data from Bolton and Blackburn now in both of these towns in greater Manchester these are places where there are significant levels of the so-called Indian strain and you can see here that cases when they had been falling for months have begun to start rising in Bolton at least quite dramatically in the last week or so or the last couple of weeks the I suppose the reason not to be too worried or to not despair let's say is that as you can see the cases are mainly rising among younger people so that'll be people who one haven't been vaccinated yet and two if they do catch COVID-19 are much less likely to end up in hospital or to end up passing away so so whilst we're seeing some some worrying signs there also some reassuring ones this increase in the so-called Indian variant led to lots of speculation that England's unlocking could be disrupted obviously we are due to have a significant unlocking on Monday probably the most significant one so far people will be able to eat inside in pubs and bars alongside other restrictions being loosened we can meet in each other's houses Boris Johnson said that will still go ahead none of that is being put on hold at this stage there is no evidence of increased cases translating into unmanageable pressures on the NHS even in Bolton and infections deaths and hospitalizations nationally remain at their lowest levels since last summer so and this is a a balanced decision I do not believe that we need on the present evidence to delay our roadmap and we will proceed with our plan to move to step three in England from Monday but I have to level with you that this new variant could pose a serious disruption to our progress and could make it more difficult to move to step four in June and I must stress that we will do whatever it takes to keep the public safe so Boris Johnson there saying there's no reason not to go ahead and with the May round of unlocking he was less committal though about June so mid-June were expected to basically end pretty much all COVID restrictions he hasn't committed to saying that will definitely happen I mean in terms of whether that will happen one variable is obviously how resistant this new variant could be to vaccines we now are pretty confident it's more transmissible than the Kent strain is it more resistant to vaccines that still somewhat up in the air Chris Whitty though the chief medical officer gave quite a comprehensive answer about the current understanding on this issue the assumptions that scientists are currently made and so he gave this explanation when answering a question on whether surge vaccination should be introduced for people in their 20s and 30s in areas where the so-called Indian variant is most prominent there's been a debate about this but the JCVI the joint committee on vaccination immunization who which brings together all the experts on this has been very clear on this now the fundamental issue is that we have a finite supply at any given moment in time of vaccine so if you vaccinate one person by definition you're not vaccinating another now what do we know certain things about these vaccines we have very high confidence that the vaccines provide very substantial protection against people dying and people being having severe illness and people being hospitalized less protection against people having more mild disease and some protection but less still against transmission and the expectation is with new variants that if you start to lose some vaccine efficacy you lose it in the opposite direction so in a sense you first lose the very low protection of people having asymptomatic or very mild disease then you lose the protection against the more severe disease and finally against the really most severe disease and people having mortality now the reason I'm giving that long preamble is it's to explain why it is that the thing we know this vaccine absolutely can and should do is to protect those who are most vulnerable and that is very heavily predicated by age with this particular virus so therefore if we took people took a vaccine away from groups let's say in their late 30s and transferred them to groups of people in that who are 18 or 20 who are much lower risk of severe disease the view of JCVI and I think this is the majority view it's not an absolute view but the view of JCVI has clearly been this would lead to a net disadvantage overall so the sensible thing to do is to prioritise the vaccines to those who are most at risk in all the places across the UK because this the virus is at risk absolutely everywhere but there are very strong aims to try and accelerate and make easier vaccination in the areas which are most affected by this virus so it's not that we're not trying to take the the geographical spread of this new variant the B617.2 into account we very much do want to do that so I thought that was both a very good explanation one of why they're not going to introduce surge vaccinations in areas which are most affected by this variant but also in doing so sort of explaining what is and what isn't worrying about this variant so he's saying that what vaccine escape would most likely mean I mean the case of any of these variants is that you would be more likely to catch it than you would the original COVID variant but he's saying they have a reasonable degree of confidence that whatever variant you catch if you're vaccinated that will stop you going to hospital and will stop you dying so that the most serious impacts of COVID-19 even if this this variant has some vaccine escape should be mitigated I think we have Aaron Bastani um on the show how are you doing Aaron good evening Michael can you hear me I can hear you loud and clear how are you feeling about the so-called Indian variant of coronavirus are you worried about it do you think that this could change your assessment I remember last week we were talking about the unlocking and how we're quite confident that it's going quite well has this changed your assessment it's a tough one Michael I mean I think for people out there obviously they're listening to this this story's come out of nowhere really in the last week in the last several days in particular I think people obviously you have a recency bias and you think well the last time we got bad news from nowhere in a context of supposedly good news was December last year and we then had a three to four month lockdown and so that's just going to happen again isn't it I think we both agree that's not likely what Chris Whitty said is that's not likely the worst-case scenario is we may need another lockdown but we will see nothing like the hospitalization rate the mortality rate and even though there's been a major uptake in the number of documented cases of the Indian variant of course there are many more than the documented cases that doesn't seem to have fed through so far to hospitalizations and a high death rate why because actually the people getting it appear to be younger that's a good thing in a way because it shows that the vaccine is the AstraZeneca vaccine is effective against this particular variant that's really good and so it's very much sort of wait and see I mean I think you know we and again it's a recency bias well we heard politicians say wait and see repeatedly last year and that turned out to be terrible but in this instance wait and see is very different it's not wait and see in the context of local lockdowns or oh we think people should wash their hands it's wait and see in the context of we have really good vaccination program hundreds of thousands of people being vaccinated a day in excess of 15 million vulnerable people now having two doses so that's very different when they say wait and see or even when you and I say wait and see so in a way this was this was inevitable we knew that new variants would come along we knew that there would be flare-ups so to speak I'm kind of heartened by what we're seeing so far but as Chris Whitty said the sample data is simply too small to to draw large generalizations and conclusions I personally think that things should open up next week but I think people should be aware and I thought Boris Johnson struck the right tone here people should be perfectly aware that that may go into reverse at some point but but I think I think it's I think it's worthwhile opening things up and to and to basically like he said level with people we may have to go into reverse although I don't think that will necessarily be the case I mean I mean we'll see like everybody's saying the data isn't that isn't that isn't that conclusive it could be very bad you know some of the models suggest this could be terrible but the most likely sort of sequence of events is that it's manageable and it's nothing like what we saw after December and for me I don't think we're going into something we like December there have been modelling actually I think there's one from Warwick University which is suggesting if it were 30 percent more transmissible than the Kent variant or 50 percent more we could have a situation worse than than last December I think that was on the assumption that all restrictions would be dropped which is precisely why all restrictions shouldn't be dropped I also don't know what other assumptions assumptions they'd they'd made in that particular paper and one thing this is changing for me I think is how confident and comfortable I feel going inside from Monday onwards because I was partly thinking I was thinking you know I'm going to wait till I get my vaccine to go to the gym and to go to pubs etc I was getting into a frame of mind where I was like look there's barely any COVID-19 anywhere right I can basically relax this is making me feel like actually with this more transmissible strain it could we could quite easily get into a situation where among the large sections of the population who aren't vaccinated this does start spreading quite fast which means I still want to take those same precautions that I've been taking up to now until I've had my vaccine Aaron you want to come in on that point very quickly I mean I've the reason why I was a little bit late to today's show is I got caught up in meetings in London and I have to say Michael I mean obviously you're living there so it's kind of your it's your normal but I've not gone in there for a for a while I go in there obviously very infrequently in the last year but today felt really different and it was notably busier there was a police officer on the underground not wearing a mask there was a busker singing which I just found he was wearing a mask but I was just like this is ridiculous if this guy's got covid he's he's potentially giving it to thousands of people over the course of a day and then on the train coming back there were two large groups of people nobody wearing masks drinking and like you say Michael the data's been so positive for so long all of a sudden you lose all those inhibitions and that's the real worry because this I think this looks really manageable if people don't don't behave like that you know if we wear masks indoors if you keep to the rule of six if you try to keep outdoors as much as possible etc etc so far the data suggests this is entirely manageable but you know people have also had to be incredibly restrained for a year so you may have these super spreader events legal or otherwise which which create lots of problems you know I expect lots of young people over the summer to hang out with each other have massive parties and that's that's entirely explicable because they've been subject to you know horrendous restrictions for 12 months but you know that's the one sort of black swan event you could say where or a sequence of black swan events where you have lots these parties they're super spreader events and all of a sudden that does go back to their their parents and grandparents because remember yes the vulnerable maybe they've been vaccinated but it's not 100 efficacy so if you did get you know this sort of ripping through the population again you would see large numbers of people dying again again nothing like December but we would start seeing that the present death toll which is negligible tick up quite quite significantly so I think that's something that's really important I mean I almost got into a fight with these kids you know 20 kids and I said not one of you's wearing a mask and they started like having to go with me and I said well look if there's another lockdown don't complain but at the same time I know if I was their age you know I'd be tempted to do the exact same thing especially if you've been hearing the rules for a year so you know I think personally we've not we this goes back further we've not been given the incentives to young people to actually adhere to the rules as strictly as they should we can't just sort of stigmatize them and beat them down you know they should be getting I personally think young people should be getting sort of financial incentives and rewards what they've had to put up with over the last 12 months but perhaps that's a perhaps that's a you know an out there opinion I'm quite marginal in that respect a universal trust fund or something like that I think would be a nice gesture wouldn't it from from society for everyone who's stayed in for some of their most formative years is one of the questions that this I suppose is new worrying statistics about the Indian strain have brought to light is the big question of why we didn't close down the borders slightly earlier there were obviously so many people saying look everything's going really well we're on tracks to loosen the lockdown have quite a decent summer unless a variant comes along which disrupts the vaccination program which disrupts the schedule we are currently on that's why lots of people said we should have universal hotel quarantine the government said no we actually only put India on the red list a week ago even though we've known this strain was around for a really long time by the way the big story here is also like think of India man they had they had to deal with this strain which was more transmissible than our Kent variant no wonder you had so many people catching it and hospitals being completely overwhelmed I mean we're worried about this now and we've got 60% of adults vaccinated in India they had to deal with that when they had about 2% of adults vaccinated so I suppose what can you say other than wow I do want to go to the issue of the British borders though and how this is a bit of a fuck up from Boris Johnson really he got warned he didn't listen this question was put to him by Sam Coates today at that press briefing and Boris Johnson tried to justify his record on the on the border's issue the the what I think the relevant committee was looking at was the threat of variants of concern coming from abroad and that stage India was not identified as having a vac a variant of concern so that was why the decision was taken Pakistan for instance I think had I think three times as much of the of variances of concern they had in particularly the South African variant so that was the that was the reason for that decision but don't forget that everybody coming forgive me from India or indeed anywhere else had to face very very tough quarantine rules they had to bring there they had to so if I say that to produce their passenger locator form and and so on they had to they had very very very tough restrictions they had to fill in their passenger locator form I mean that sentence is completely ridiculous obviously unless you have mandatory hotel quarantine these these restrictions basically mean nothing I mean I know from people I know well like the amount that people follow that guideline where you have to stay in your home for at least five days after you enter from elsewhere is is not followed particularly strictly also people take public transport from arriving at the airport to their homes so the idea that there were tough measures there were not tough measures and that's why we're having these these current worries at this moment in time I have a comment from that age with a fiber long COVID is an important factor that is still being ignored or at best is being sidelined a very important point I do think it's it is silly for us to say the only big problem would be if there's hospitalizations and deaths I get really worried every time Boris Johnson says oh but hospitals won't be overwhelmed like is that really the the what we're measuring everything against anything's fine unless the hospitals collapse like come on there are quite a lot of intermediary phases between worry and and everything is fine anyway we'll go straight on to our next story a dawn raid to detain two asylum seekers and potentially deport them has been disrupted and blocked by protesters in Glasgow dawn raids are opposed by the Scottish government but are under the control of the UK home office the raids were seen as particularly provocative because they took place on the morning of Eid now we can take you through some footage and which shows you exactly how these extraordinary protests developed so first of all here we have some footage this is obviously the immigration enforcement van and which is being stopped from driving off it's already got detainees inside by neighbors of the people who have been detained you've got people there gathering around the van other people sitting in the street and that means the immigration enforcement van cannot move on you can see there there are already police arriving to try and manage the situation now that was an incredibly successful move for those 10 or so people you could see in that video to make because after that scene what you had was callouts on social media hundreds and thousands even people arrived to that street and ended up forming a cordon around the immigration removal van it was not able to move for the scale of the protest and the type of protest that took place and we can show you the following clip this is the a clip of the police ostensibly trying to make their way through the crowd to escort a paramedic to the van this is what happened so at the end of that clip you could see the policeman at the front telling the protesters about the paramedic and pointing and saying that's why we we want to come through um it's not however that clear um that the police were needed to escort a paramedic through a nonviolent protest now according to some who are at the scene the police may have been using the paramedic as an excuse to get amongst the protesters um afterwards the paramedic was let through without the police escort what you could see there there was the scale of the protest lots of people sitting down to stop the police getting through and you can see hundreds of people already outside that van now not long after that clip we just showed you lawyers addressed protesters and police saying the only way the crowd would disperse is if immigration enforcement released the two men held in the van and it was confirmed the protest had been successful when the police released the following statement so this is from Mark Sutherland his chief superintendent of police scotland um he said in order to protect the safety public health and well-being of all people involved in the tension and subsequent protest in kenmore street pollock shields today police scotland has following a suitable risk assessment taken the operational decision to release the men detained by uk immigration enforcement back into their community meantime that decision was announced to the crowd by lawyers present before the men were released we have an agreement it is in writing these men will be released safely they will not be arrested there will be no enforcement action against them and i have an agreement that they will then the police will form a cordon around the van with myself and the two men to the mosque where they will be released an incredibly moving image of solidarity there the men who were detained fanking the the hundreds and thousands of protesters who had prevented um their detention um now one of those detainees lack veersing spoke to itv um after after that protest and after they were released do you have anything that you want to say to the people who came to support you today thank you that's very very much thank you that's all people thank you speaking in his native punjabi lack fear then told us what happened i was taken unannounced from my flat they barged in and took me into the van i was anxious and upset wondering how i would be treated as a detention center i'm so happy that my fate brought me to live here in glasgo where the people are so connected that they'll come out onto the streets to help one of their own and i'm a really really moving um clip now it's all a clear example of direct action getting the goods and the power of solidarity what's also interesting is that the mainstream politicians across most of scotland's parties other than the conservatives spoke out against the raids very different to what you would likely see if that had happened in england so scottish labor the greens and the smp government all opposed the home officers actions on thursday after the police announced the release of the two detainees scotland's justice minister hamza usif released this statement to take this action at anything is unwelcome in scotland to do so in the heart of the muslim community on the day of eat where there have been outbreaks of covet is reckless and dangerous health and frankly looks like it was intended to provoke i've spent hours hours trying to get the home office to abandon their operation first they passed me off to a civil servant and when none of their eight ministers would take my call and be objected after that they eventually gave us the most junior ranking home office minister to speak to the first minister and i and to say he was unhelpful again would be an understatement belligerently told us that they would continue to enforce immigration law as they saw fit now i'm pleased and delighted in fact that police scotland who of course have operational independence police scotland have taken the decision in the interest of public safety in the interest of public health to release these two individuals but immigration policy is of course reserved to the home office and although these two individuals and i'm pleased they have been released on this occasion the hostile environment created by the uk government's immigration policies is something that is simply not welcome here in scotland and i will be urging the home secretary to speak to me and the home office to speak to me and to engage with the scottish government so that we simply do not see a repeat of these scenes but more importantly to tell them that their hostile environment is just not welcome in scotland that was humza you sift the justice minister um for scotland now you probably already um have recognized that that's a very different way of speaking to the uk home office just to confirm that a source of the home office told the bbc news nights louis goodall um on fursday night it is completely unacceptable for a mob to stop the lawful removal of people living in our country illegally we are 100 back the front line in removing those with no right to be here so a very um i suppose dismissive fairly unpleasant in my reading um statement from the uk home office now to discuss um the protest i'm joined by rosa sally rosa was born in iraqi kurdistan and moved to scotland as a refugee when she was 12 as a school child she became known as one of the glasgo girls when she and a group of friends successfully campaigned to prevent a classmate being deported um you're also at the protest yesterday rosa thank you so much um for joining us today hi michael thank you very much for having me yes i was at the protest and uh very overwhelmed by the people organizing and winning i think was a huge victory uh for glasgo and throughout the world i think everyone's looking towards glasgo yeah well what was it like the the demonstration i mean it seemed to grow sort of exponentially but it wasn't particularly organized was my sense well i mean it couldn't have been organized because this was a you know a spontaneous protest really wasn't it someone just noticed a van in the street put it on social media and then it spread by word of mouth and ultimately you had yeah you know hundreds potentially thousands of people blocking an immigration ban yeah i think uh initially the van was stopped by a man called deklin um which i have come aware of that he actually was under the van for over eight hours and it wasn't organized in such ways because everything was by social media and people were sharing videos that this is a removal actually happening right this moment however people were contacting each other to come along and support and stop the enforcement by the home office so that kind of organization actually happened after later on and community coming together the neighborhood in that street in polo uh uh in polo shield and they all came together um and it's a very multicultural uh part of glasgo and different communities live there um and it was just wonderful how people um hundreds of people coming together shoulder to shoulder standing against the uh illegal enforcement i would say uh of asylum seekers because it seems that they didn't have any legal advice uh the two asylum seekers and once we were there we um there were a legal advice actually given to the asylum seekers and we tried to communicate through one of the police officer there at the time to communicate and sign some forms so they can have legal representatives and you are i mean in an incredibly well placed to speak about the politics of migration in in scotland because you you arrived in scotland as a child as a as a refugee as i said in the introduction you you campaigned as a as a school child to prevent one of your friends being deported you now work for an smp mp you've stood to be an msp so you you really know both sides of this equation you know the politics of the smp the governing party and and you know what it's like to to be a refugee in in scotland what can you tell me about the politics of of migration in scotland and especially i mean from someone in in london from england watching all of this it seems like whilst the smp don't have control of the the migration system the politics of of migration in scotland that is much more humane than it is south of the border do you think that's a a fair assessment yes i think that's the first statement that you've made uh our politics is much different and the smp of course the party that i represent and support um i would say we want to create a system that is based on fairness and dignity where humans are treated with human rights um and there are no raids um and there are no detention and we have we have we have made statement that we will remove then gave all detention center once we become an independent country um would the smp i suppose just to clarify for for for our audience the smp don't have control over migration policy that's currently a competence held in west minster but obviously um the smp wanted ultimately in independent scotland but presumably also in a in a devolved uk if the uk were to stay together what would the smp's policy be because you know lots of the opposition to what happened yesterday some of it was i suppose somewhat ambiguous were they opposing it because it was on ed were they opposing it because it was a dawn raid or were they opposing it because they oppose detention and deportations in in in principle the final one would be the more the more radical fundamental position is it your understanding that if the smp had control over migration policy they'd stop deportations in scotland altogether yes i would say that there will be no deportation in scotland and there will be a humane system based on human rights and dignity a system where actually the caseworker would speak to the asylum most claiming asylum to stay in this country so there will be more communication between the asylum seeker and their caseworker so it's more humane more direct more communication at this moment in the current system there is no communication between the decision maker and the asylum person that's claiming asylum in this country so there's a disconnect between those the people really in in in that question so it's very problematic the way the system is set up and unfortunately i do not believe there will be any reform because i have been experienced in i came to this country as a asylum seeker and i'm grateful you know because of my friends and my community campaigning for me to stay here um and it wasn't given to me that easily and um because of that i think i see the the failure of the system the how is flawed and uh we need to fix it however i do not believe in fixing it because of the Tory government of pretty patel um they they meet they want to meet targets of deportation and it's just numbers to them there's no human humanity in their system and of course it is a hostile environment they're creating for many asylum seekers at this moment the immigration the immigration rules are becoming more restrictive day by day so if you go back 10 years ago people could have applied for a lead to remain in this country in on indefinitely if you stay in this country for 10 years however and now they have extended to 20 years so you can see that's just one example there are many many examples even family reunion people will marry a broad spoils visa if you're rich enough you can marry a someone from abroad but if you're not rich enough unfortunately you cannot you cannot fall in love with someone abroad this is the immigration system we have in place and every aspect of it you look into there's restrictions and barriers and at the end of the day is people's lives that have are being affected rosa salih thank you so much for speaking to us this evening and also i mean you know well done for participating in in such a successful protest our solidarity goes out to to everyone who is involved in in Glasgow and Thursday um Aaron do you want to come in on that story because i mean it is in recent memory i think one of the most effective and inspiring demonstrations i've actually i mean probably ever in my lifetime i've seen in this country it's certainly up there isn't it well scott's was said it's a different country michael i mean it's certainly up there isn't it stan said 15 was pretty impressive i mean the idea that this is only happening in scotland i don't think is accurate this this just happened to work you know i i'm aware of and i'm sure there are many other ones there there's been anti raids activism pushback direct action trying to stop obstruct the exact same thing in london many times i've seen in bristol in many places in england and i've got that's not to say that it's you know i would love it to be in hundreds of towns and cities of course it's not but but these kinds of actions have also been seen in england um that they just haven't worked or they've not had the critical mass i think it's interesting that this had the entire street out and i'm not going to say that would happen in england you can imagine it happening in maybe bristol brighton parts of london parts of the whole parts of manchester and what i would say to people watching that say oh i want to move to scotland that's the wrong attitude for me you know you should say how do we build that kind of thing right here in my community where where i live because i think it's very easy to do not easy to do it's it can happen it's not impossible and you know there's lots of stuff about you can read about how to sort of push back on this because immigration enforcement officers they used to be called border force they do technically have powers of arrest because they're constables but fundamentally the way they work is they can treat non-uk nationals like absolute shit but if a british citizen starts to push back on them and say what are you doing if they try to sort of passively obstruct the arrest like as what happened in in glasgo yesterday it makes it really difficult for them so actually direct action against border force or immigration enforcement is really effective it does work the police weren't there to help them do that by the way the police were there to quote unquote stop a public order situation the police don't exist generally to solve crime they exist to keep the peace uh in this instance to deport me you know um undocumented migrants but you have to understand that if you have a sort of confrontation with immigration enforcement like in glasgo it's not the same as you being at a protest and being in direct confrontation with the police it's it's a very different sort of set of legal and political relationships because they don't fundamentally immigration enforcement don't have the they don't have the the political consent to go around arresting um attacking assaulting uk nationals in order to get hold of and um and a kidnap effect that's what they do non-uk nationals so i think it's one of those areas it may look like oh we can't do anything oh wow you know the overwhelming power of the state but actually direct action in this context as we saw in glasgo can be ultra ultra ultra effective so if you want to to do what happened in glasgo in your own community get involved with anti-raising networks and so on i mean i know that you've been the past michael have been very sort of critical and skeptical of the no borders activism and maybe that's something you want to talk about very briefly because i think it's important to say you know it's it's perfectly possible for a liberal or somebody on the center left to say we should shut down you know yarlswood and all these attention centers we should quadruple quintuple that you know the the number of people in this country given asylum for a range of reasons and we should clearly be far more positive and open in terms of economic migration particularly from people from the global south i think you can sell those things without saying no borders now we've had we've had problems with that on the left because you say you have to sign up this big project for no borders i think it's possible in england as well as in scotland wales northern island to build a mass movement a mass movement against any kind of immigration enforcement like what we saw in glasgo yesterday but it's not going to be ideologically homogeneous and i and i think if we're really interested in actually building class power against this stuff we've got to accept that i mean i'd push back against the idea i've never really had a problem with no borders activism i have a problem with or i'm not persuaded or convinced by the the no borders as i see it a bit of a dogma which is to say that you know there's two positions which is no borders or borders and i mean my reaction to no borders actually was a bit like my reaction to extinction rebellion it's sort of you know i don't necessarily sign up to all of the tenets but ultimately and the practical things they're doing are pretty goddamn good so i'll back those while we're fighting for a human a more humane migration system you might as well resist the inhumane one um let's go straight on to our next but related story a leading left wing member of Labour's NEC has been suspended from the party after a tweet calling for Pretty Patel to be deported in the wake of protests in Glasgow which blocked a dawn raid detaining two asylum seekers Howard Beckett who is also in the running to be the next leader of Unite tweeted the following Pretty Patel should be deported not refugees she can go along with anyone else who supports institutional racism she is disgusting now after posting that tweet many people commented and responded that the tweet was potentially racist or had racist implications by calling for a politician from an immigrant background to be deported in response Howard Beckett deleted the tweet and apologized apologized however Labour still announced he would be immediately suspended that's pending an investigation Howard Beckett spoke to Sky this morning and reiterated his apology for the tweet he sent I've already issued a personal apology to Pretty Patel Adam as I said that tweet was removed after 30 minutes and I issued an apology saying that it was never intended to be interpreted literally I'm against all forms of deportation I of course knew that you could never deport a home secretary but I'm against all forms of deportation and I apologize to anyone who read that tweet literally and I reference Pretty Patel specifically in that apology because that tweet was wrong but I do not want that tweet to remove us from the debate about the treatment of refugees in our countries it is vital that we talk about the most vulnerable in society and the racist behavior of this Tory government I think that apology was there was an element of disingenuous in it because I don't think anyone thought he was literally saying Pretty Patel should be deported the reason the tweet was seen as problematic was because to call for any person of color to be deported it's very close to sort of the language of go home it suggests they have somewhere to be deported to whether that was his intention I think it probably wasn't which I'll talk about in one moment the other issue is regardless of what you think of the tweet was this done for factional purposes possibly Lewis Goodall from Newsnight tweeted this last night and so he tweeted Howard Beckett suspended from the Labour Party Labour source Keir is prizing McCluskey's cold dead hand from the Labour Party Aaron I want your instant take on this what do you make of the Ferrari around Howard Beckett's tweet and his subsequent suspension one word ridiculous he said a stupid thing he deleted it within 30 minutes he apologized great let's move on the fact that this somehow became an internal Labour faction story when the real story as we've already discussed was working class people in Glasgow ensuring that two local citizens and residents weren't kidnapped by the British state I mean it it's it's it's nauseating and it's excruciatingly dull and it doesn't serve any progressive interest whatsoever we have all said stupid things and particularly on Twitter right myself included and I think if you can't have a politics which accepts that people sometimes make mistakes then you're not going to go anywhere and you know of course if there's a pattern if Howard had said this five six seven eight times yeah of course then you see a pattern of behavior and you say well come on this isn't good enough but there isn't as far as I can see I'm happy to be corrected but I've never seen anything like that before so figure of speech he's apologized move on I had people on Twitter saying to you know it's outrageous he should be kicked out of the Labour Party white people and I said well look if you if you think he should be kicked out of the Labour Party realistically if you want to universalize that as a principle you're not going to have any members left and I said well you think you shouldn't be able to participate in public life oh no he just shouldn't be in the Labour Party well what's what's the sort of intellectual basis by which you're saying he can't participate in the Labour Party but he can be in United why why because if you actually want to be serious and adult about this and say this is beyond the sort of the the the pale this is impermissible for somebody participating in a political organization you have to have thought about it thoroughly and clearly people like that haven't I mean I think there's two issues here which is one is it worthy of suspension absolutely not and two was it a problematic tweet because there's lots of people saying there's nothing wrong with that tweet at all he's clearly saying it because she's the home secretary not because she's of Indian background now I think absolutely I agree with you Aaron this is not this does not warrant suspension and apology should be more than enough I do at the same time think whatever his intention and I'm really I'm almost certain that was no racist intention behind this even if it is fine to say or even if in a way it seems similar to say let's deport Theresa May which people have said by the way I was also persuaded by people sort of showing examples of graffiti with let's deport Theresa May people talking about this this chart demonstrations obviously in the first half of 2010 so people said let's let's deport Theresa May when she was home secretary that it's not alien to say this it's not clear that he only said this because she is of Asian background at the same time I think you do need to be more sensitive when someone is of Asian background because racism does exist and one instantiation of racism is people being or is an assumption that people have a different home to go to which was I think clearly could be made there so I think bad tweet 100% bad tweet was it demonstrative of the racism of racism of Howard Beckett no is it right he deleted it yes should he be suspended absolutely no Aaron do you want to find a word on this on this story oh I thought we'd go on for longer but obviously uh obviously it's a short one no I'd say you know hate hate the sin not the sinner and like I say I just found the whole thing I found the whole thing just utterly absurd and Michael the thing is look I'm I'm half Iranian if somebody says something that to me and they apologize I go great thank you I move on I don't hold on if you believe me if and I'm I'm I'm white passing if every brown black person held on to every everything like that everybody would be constantly like ah like this he said a stupid thing he apologized and what's really important what's really really important is like I say it's not a pattern and what what I would sort of criticize how for because I've been saying this has been completely blown out of all proportion is that he was he is seeking a elected office at a very high level he wants to lead one of the largest trade unions in the country and I think somebody who's running for that kind of role shouldn't be saying that and so I suppose we could have a debate where you say look if this was just a regular person a regular person on twitter this is absurd it's ridiculous it's obscene we're talking about this actually it's obscene given the sort of the deportation policy and the rhetoric that pretty Patel is responsible for but the fact he's seeking a very high office within you know okay it makes it that bit more important but even then come on I don't know if we're going to talk about the HRC but the political response from the Labour Party I mean that just shows you that people like Keir Starmer people around him don't particularly care about the advice that was given to the Labour Party by the HRC last year they're discarding altogether the idea that a disciplinary process should be impartial. Is it what's the evidence for that who made the decision I'm not quite aware of the process is the idea that the decision was made by Keir Starmer and his team instead of the the disciplinary bodies or whatever it is in HQ? Well I mean so he or like we do we need to see the timing don't we so he said what he said last night we then found out through the media he was suspended he didn't find out from the governance and legal unit glue the media were told first and then he found out and then you get these briefings to various reporters so the the speed with which it was conducted the fact it was given to journalists first and thirdly the fact you have a source go on record and I trust Lewis Goodell I don't think he would just say that if Peter Mandelson texted it to him maybe he would but I think it's somebody who's got some proximity to the leadership I think you put those three things together it doesn't it doesn't look good in terms of an impartial disciplinary process you know normally you get an email that's what happens right you get an email you've said x y z how would you respond that's what happens you don't get a kind of public ferago which is brief first journalists before the person who's suspended so no I I I think personally you look at this you look at Jeremy Corbyn lots of similarities and how they were about suspended and both fly in the face of what the HRC recommended and by the way Michael it's important to say this Peter Mandelson on the day that the HRC report came out the days that followed its publication Peter Mandelson said I don't like this I don't I don't want an impartial disciplinary process I want a political disciplinary process so I can get all we the labor right can get rid of people we don't like uh so this shouldn't be a surprise that the the Stammer leadership factions in control of the Labour Party that doesn't mean by the way that Keir Starmer's on the phone get Howard Beckett out it means people that he trusts in certain positions are driving that agenda and he's not pushing back on it whether that's the gentleman that sits above the governance and legal unit his name is Alex Barros Curtis he is something of a bridge between the leader's office and the disciplinary mechanisms with the Labour Party by the way that means his job is entirely at odds with what the HRC recommended his job effectively consists in politicizing the disciplinary process doesn't make much sense does it I tweeted an article I wrote about that last year earlier on today in any case you look at Corbyn you look at this come on this isn't what the HRC was recommending and I think it shows actually the the the hypocrisy at the heart of the whole debate over the last several years which is a shame because we all said you know on the day of the publication of the report not everybody but in Navarra media I think we generally agreed these recommendations are actually pretty useful pretty good you know yeah you should have a disciplinary process which is fairly applied to everyone regardless of who they are that's not what we've got in my opinion I mean I don't think many people would say that's what we've got let's go to our final story of the night and of the week right the world has changed since the 1990s but Britain's zombie Blairites still have their head in the sand so what happens when a Blairite is confronted by the fact that the positions they used to consider hard left are in fact now very much in the mainstream we discovered the answer this week on politics live when Blairite comedian Matt Ford clashed with Labour peer Shammy Shakrabati can we support President Biden and the Pope now and all these noble laureates and saying let's have the trips waver that was recommended by the WHO and not just side with big pharma but actually share knowledge and technology and recipes and capacity to vaccinate the world Matt you're looking skeptical I just think this big pharma thing big pharmaceutical companies yet not just kind of an immature thing to be saying like without pharmaceutical companies we wouldn't have these vaccines and I think AstraZeneca and others deserve huge credit for putting their brightest minds at the service of the planet and this kind of weird hard left view that all private enterprises negative or sinister is odd and it certainly doesn't chime with the public who are grateful that AstraZeneca have done without AstraZeneca I wouldn't have had two jabs I wouldn't have the protection I've got well thank God for pharmaceutical companies well Shammy your weird hard left view is it true that you wouldn't have had the development of these back view is apparently being supported by President Biden the Pope yeah but Shammy there is there is an important serious point about the fact that would these companies would these pharmaceutical companies have developed these vaccines if the patents were in the way that you have described sort of open and free to everyone well I'm supporting a temporary waiver in pandemic circumstances and I would also say that yes of course science is a collaborative thing but governments and charitable institutions have invested a huge amount in these vaccines including the Oxford vaccine I think it's like over 90 percent of the investment in the development of the Oxford vaccine came from government and charitable I'm not here to mudsling joke these issues are too serious all right well we're going to move on because we're going to talk about Matt Ford there who's like a big fan of Tony Blair he's one of these centrist comedians who aren't actually funny I've never seen them tell a joke but they seem to get invited on shows on the basis that they're not just any other political commentator they're a comedian I think he does impressions actually he was there suggesting when Shammy Shakrabati was saying look this isn't a hard left position because it's held by Gordon Brown it's held by the Pope it's held by Joe Biden he then says and what about Jesus and the Easter Bunny now I mean what planet is he on because the Pope and the Gordon Brown and Joe Biden they're all real people right you can't say she's just magically picking up made up people out of out of out of the air we're going to talk about the you know the defense of AstraZeneca he made there and some of the sort of more nitty gritty of who invested in what was it public was it private finance first though Aaron I want to hear from you because for me you know whilst that was a ridiculous not particularly informative clip I haven't seen any better representative of better representation of zombie blairism than seeing someone dismiss a position as hard left and then finding themselves to the right of the Pope and the US president what did you make of it I mean it was quite I thought it was quite illustrative actually because people like to sort of present you know the carbonites as unhinged and informed ignorant you know they pursue protests over power and actually that was the complete inverse that interaction because Matt Ford had no idea what he was talking about Shemin Chakrabarti a highly decorated woman in her field was at liberty a human rights lawyer massively intelligent hugely articulate and she was giving an evidenced thorough you know sequentially you know premised argument and Matt Ford is going to use to Bernie and you just think you know you've been calling the people on the left in this country kind of ignorant and and not with it and yet you're mocking like you say Joe Biden and and the Pope but then Gordon Brown I mean Gordon Brown was Tony Blair's number two for a decade so I think to me it really illustrates like you say Michael zombie blairism because they just have so little to offer and and you could do that when you were mocking the left in a position of power when Jeremy Corbyn was late you know Labour Party leader you could do that you just you could just throw stuff and stuff with stick but now that you know people like Matt Ford having to be potentially listened to the Labour right being potentially listened to as a as a political constituency that wants to govern the country they'd quite like to run things but they have nothing to offer you know and so for me yeah it was very emblematic of like zombie blairism and the complete inability let's be quite honest of people the agrocentrists as you and I are very familiar with them on Twitter the agrocentrists are out of ideas out of how to be popular out of how to politically engage with people and they have absolutely no understanding of the political moment that we inhabit in 2021 with the climate crisis with the aftermath of the global financial crisis with COVID-19 with the rise of China all these incredible generation defining phenomena and and they're just smirking and mocking people and looking stupid and thick quite frankly although I have to correct you on one thing Michael I did a podcast on that forward I have to say on a person if he was perfectly affable politically I think he's a bit he's not quite there but he does a pretty good impression of Donald Trump don't hate me so he's affable don't hate me even no maybe he's much nicer behind the camera than in in front of it that's potentially true that's the case for lots of people let's get into the policy side of this now because Shamish Akrabati referenced there the funding of the Oxford vaccine we can look at some details of what she was talking about this was reported in The Guardian a while ago research which was conducted by the advocacy group universities allied for essential medicines UK and so they looked into the funding of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and conducted two lines of inquiry so on the one hand they looked at the source of funding for the final vaccine product so who funded that that final stage development of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine they also looked at hundreds of millions of pounds in research grants from the year 2000 onwards and that was for published work into the technologies that went on to be used in the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine so they're trying to have a holistic image or holistic picture sorry of all the investments going into that vaccine that led to that vaccine and what they found was that the overwhelming majority of the money especially in the early stages of the research came from UK government departments British and American Scientific Institute the European Commission and charities including the Wellcome Trust less than two percent of the identified funding came from private industry the researchers said a finding they said posed a challenge to the views of people such as Boris Johnson who has said the record fast development of COVID-19 vaccines was because of capitalism and was because of greed now this was all reported in The Guardian the authors of the original report did say you know we can't say you should treat this two percent figure as gospel it turns out that the funding of scientific endeavors is often quite opaque and also it's quite difficult to properly ascertain what research any final product drew from but what they were clear about and what The Guardian was clear about is that whether it's two percent whether it's 10 percent whether it's 30 percent it's very clear that private industry is putting in a minority of funding when it comes to these vaccines and taking a minority of risk basically a small amount of risk most of the risk is being taken by the public we can see this in this is a chart used by The Guardian laying out the various sources of funding that led to the Oxford AstraZeneca jab and you can see this was based on freedom of information requests and you can see that funding for that jab 38.8 million pounds came from the UK government 26.2 million pounds came from overseas governments 22.6 million pounds came from charity 13.2 million pound came from public-private partnerships and only 1.9 million pounds from industry from other sources there was 1.1 million pounds obviously public-private partnerships some of that money is going to be private but you can see the big free categories there the vast majority of the money that went towards that vaccine was from UK governments and overseas governments and from charities so the idea that you needed future profit margins to incentivize the development of that vaccine is for the birds really I mean the risk was taken by the public sector so why should the intellectual property not be owned by the public sector Aaron what do you make of this particular argument I mean Joe Biden has now come around to this position I don't think the UK government has I know that Angela Merkel was one of the people blocking the idea that we should have patent-free vaccines when it comes to COVID-19 the argument against patents is pretty strong isn't it yeah I mean right now I think it looks like it's just the although you know no longer the US but at one point it was just the US, Brazil and basically the EU and the rest of the world was opposed to this it more to say as well Michael it's not just the AstraZeneca vaccine or vaccines like it which have been subject to massive public funding mRNA as a technology was entirely untried and untested before the pandemic a very unique way of administering a vaccine mRNA and it had the funding it did fundamentally because of federal government in the in the years leading up to this because there's very low sort of very high risk very low return on that kind of research genuine innovation and so generally speaking only the government wants to or will fund it and so we wouldn't have mRNA technology i.e we wouldn't have you know the biotech the Moderna vaccines without funding from the US federal government over the last five years you know there's an abundance of pieces on that please just google it government funding mRNA vaccine you've got government funding of course for the procurement and the and the scaling up of production the last year again the private sector's not doing that are we going to talk about the free market the free market so rational is it going to administer the vaccine we don't need the government at all nobody says that because everybody knows it's wrong-headed and stupid and the same thing goes to the research phase uh and you're absolutely right Michael it gets the heart of who benefits from public investment in these kinds of things we have the same debate in regards to satellite technology you know space x it's the exact same debate we've had socialized investment so why the gains being privatized you know Elon Musk now one of the wealthiest people in the world primarily it should be said from Tesla but why is he gaining so much from decades of historic investment by the by the US taxpayer i think most people would say that's unfair you know you look at the first rocket that ever passed and they called the Karman line which effectively means it went into space it was a v2 rocket in 1944 you then get the Russians get on that vibe they launched Sputnik i think in 57 and of course you have the Apollo missions in the late 60s should be said by the way the assassin 5 still to this day the most powerful machine ever created by the human beings that was modeled fundamentally on the v2 is built by the Germans Verne von Braun who worked on the v2 program was one of the masterminds of the of the nasa space program but fundamentally that was all done because of the state now a private company doesn't do that a private company doesn't send a first stage booster that you would say you know into space what's for the second stage two stages let's not get too complex here they basically don't put a rocket into space until i think it's 2008 with SpaceX so you're looking here at a kind of the delay is more than 60 years 60 years was the difference between the state doing it 50 years if you want to talk about the Russians and the Americans and a private business doing it and that obviously completely denudes this myth oh all innovation comes from the private sector the state is useless public investment always waste money no actually it turns out in real innovation it's almost always the state and the point is private uh enterprise crowds in as soon as it becomes profitable and that's exactly what we're saying here and this isn't by the way a particularly marginal left-wing argument anymore somebody like mariana mattacato would talk about it you know very overtly people like her are now being listened to in policy circles by people like you know joe biden's team today kia starmer said in the garden or rachel reeves actually kia starmer tweeted it we want to be like uh joe biden in the u.s also rachel reeves is going to talk to guess who mariana mattacato so the idea that oh the east of bunny or jesus or elvis no actually it's it's really smart people matt ford who teach at the highest levels of economic policy like mariana mattacato who talk about this and by the way rachel reeves is now listening to her maybe matt ford should be a little bit more informed about things if he's going to go on tv and talk about them very good conclusion um to that section and to the show our and it has been a pleasure speaking to you this friday as always it's been my pleasure michael and it's been a pleasure being joined by all our viewers this friday evening thank you so much for your comments your super chats your tweets and thank you so much for anyone who is a navara media supporter you make all of this possible if you are not already a regular donor please do sign up at navara media dot com forward slash support for now you've been watching tisky sour on navara media good night