 Boris Johnson's hike to national insurance has gone down with the public like a cup of cold sick. Labour strategists therefore might feel confident given Stammer vocally opposed it. However, when it comes to articulating an alternative to the Tory social care plan, the Labour leader is far less convincing. When it comes to funding it, I wouldn't look to working people and have a tax hike on that. I would say that those with the broadest shoulders should pay. Well, that means that those that earn their money or their income from things other than work should pay their fair share. There's a whole range of things we could look at here, but people who earn their money from property, dividends, stocks, shares, capital gains tax, they should all be looked at as a broader fair way of raising taxes. So in principle you would prefer a wealth tax of some sort? I think we should look at all of these options and we shouldn't say that the whole way it has to fall on working people, that the people who earn their living from a wage, why shouldn't those that get their money from other means, whether it's dividends, stocks, shares, property pay their fair share. And the landlord example is a very important one. Why should a landlord not pay a penny but the working tenant because they're earning a wage rather than a raise of income tax? I think we should look across the board at something that is fair, but at the moment you would prefer a wealth tax to raise an income tax. I think we look at a broad range here, but the idea that we don't... Can you just answer that? Do you prefer in principle wealth taxes to income tax increases? I think we need to look at a range of options. You're not going to answer. Well, we need to look at a range of options, but that includes the way people earn their money, whether it's from earned wages or whether it's from rent or stocks and dividends. And I think we should look at all that because in the end it should be the principle those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. OK, so just to summarise, national insurance, you think you're anti that because you think it's unfair on working people. Income tax could be looked at, but it seems to me that you think that when you say those with the broadest shoulders, you are looking at those with wealth taxes. You are looking at those... We're looking at precisely the sorts of income that Rachel Reeves identified yesterday, which is income from property, income from dividends, stocks, shares, etc. The income that comes not from your wages because what the government is doing is putting this all on working people. So that's not income tax, then, is it? That is wealth taxes. I'm trying to pin you down because I actually want you to say, yes or no, I think we should look at a wealth tax. It doesn't commit you to the policy. It just says to me that that's your preferred option and that's very clear and it's very clear to the public. Yes, all of those options are a wealth tax. I mean, in the broadest sense of the world and we should look at it. Third play to Beth Rigg B. I thought her exasperated face during that interview was incredibly effective. Aaron, I saw you share this interview on Twitter. It is slightly odd, isn't it? Because Keir Starmer is in quite a strong position here. He's in favour or apparently he's in favour, even though he's not going to be explicit about it of some form of wealth tax. The Conservatives are pushing through a very unpopular increase to national insurance. He should be shouting about it, yet he sounds like the shifty one. What's going on? You know, I made the joke on Twitter that he looked like there was a still from the interview. He looked like a divorcee who was being clobbered by his wife and Beth Rigg B was the expensive central London lawyer who was milking the cow. You know, there's that saying, isn't there? In a divorcee with the husband and the wife, they're pulling both ends of the cow and underneath you've got the lawyer with the others. And that's kind of what it felt like. It felt like he was being told, well, look, Juliet's going to take the London flat, the house in Umbria and both dogs. He looked really upset for some reason. That was strange, because like you say, he was kind of on home territory and she was making his job really easy. I don't think she was doing that on purpose. I think she just, yeah, you know, you're not expecting something that specific this far out from a general election on principle. And he kind of answered it, but then didn't answer it. Do you prefer tax on wealth or on work? And you just need to say in principle, yes, we would like them. You could just say we want them both aligned. I mean, that's going to raise a hell of a lot of money, which is again what he kind of said in a really shifty, poor way. Now this tells me two things. Firstly, I don't think he believes in anything. I genuinely think he would say whatever the polling said was more popular. And even though the polling is quite good around wealth taxes, there isn't that much data out there. So just don't say anything. And I don't think he really has a kind of moral core on this particularly. I know some people disagree, but I don't think we've ever had a leader of a major political party in this country get to where they are and believe in so little. That's my personal view. Keir Starmer is about, always has been. And that's fine. That's life. Career progression. And he is in politics. And if you really care about career progression, you want to get to the top of your game, you know, the equivalent of the leading CEO in the country or what he was previously is the Director of Public Prosecutions as a barrister. The equivalent of that in politics is to become the Prime Minister. And so he would say purely what is useful instrumentally in order to achieve that career ambition. I mean, that's not good. That's my personal view. I don't think that's absolutely good. Again, people can disagree with me. If he had been asked a question about Jeremy Corbyn, or about the left, or about how somebody who'd been suspended or accused of something should be thrown out of the party and they happen to be a socialist or an MP or Ken Loach, he would have been very critical. He would have been very stern. He would have been very direct and decisive. All the things he's not in that clip. And so that, for me, is the biggest worry of all. You know, you might agree or disagree with Starmer on some issues, but he clearly is incredibly comfortable in attacking the left and not really saying very much about policy. You can't run a country like that. You cannot run a country like that, right? That's clearly not a... That's not a program for government. And I think the electorate has already worked that out. You clearly can't run a general election campaign like that. I mean, they can try. And I think they probably will do that. And I think that will start, by the way, with his conference speech in a few weeks. I think Keir Starmer will make his conference speech about the left. I think it will be a rerun of Kinnick in 1985, partly because his comfort zones have just said, partly because he's literally got nothing else to say. And he knows that the media, generally speaking, is going to lap that up. They're not going to push back on it. Whereas, of course, if he says, I support policy over policy B, there's a bit more criticism, and the Tories will weigh in. He attacks the left. He attacks Corbyn. He attacks people like Navarro Media. That's just great for him. And the Tories get on side, and it takes the heat off him and removes some of that political pressure, which he insists on putting on himself by being so bad as a politician. If he was asked about Jeremy Corbyn, he said, look, this is an issue of leadership. I have to take a strong position because that's what it means to lead a party because I want to lead a country. If he's asked about policy, he says, well, don't ask me. I'm just a leader of the opposition. We haven't done a manifesto yet. I'm not here to take leadership on the issue. I think it's a very important comparison to make how he is when he's asked those questions, whether the option given to him is whether or not he's going to attack the left and the ones where it's whether or not he's going to put forward a different vision for the country. One politician who is attempting to put forward a vision for the country is Andy Burnham, Mayor of Manchester and probably Keir Starmer's biggest rival at the moment. He's written a piece in the evening standard. Slamming Boris Johnson's social care plan isn't enough, he says. Labour needs its own ideas. So in this piece, Andy Burnham is obviously saying, what Keir Starmer's doing is enough. He needs to put forward a positive vision, a positive alternative. And he explains this is what he wants it to be. Labour should create a national care service. Labour should ask all older people to contribute whether they need care or not. Everyone benefits from this approach because it means no one has to worry about care costs in the later stages of their life. And by asking all older people to contribute, the cost comes right down. More than 10 years ago, I promised this approach as health secretary as part of my plan for a national care service. My 10% care levy on all the states was labeled a deaf tax, but I still stand by it. I accept that my care levy wouldn't pay for the entire social care bill, so I would supplement it with a range of wealth taxes such as a higher rate of capital gains tax. This is a truly far-reaching Labour policy, and I think the country is now ready to back it as we get ready to gather in Brighton. The political tide might just be turning in Labour's favour, but we've got to be ready to catch the wave. A clear challenge from Andy Burnham, a very pointed intervention. There is pushback from Keir Starmer's team. They're defending the position of not having a position. This is from Patrick Maguire, from the Times he was told by a senior party source. We're far from a victory, but the polls show that the social care scam wasn't the brilliant wheeze number 10 was spinning earlier this week, and our decision to focus attention on their plan, expose it, and not get spooked into making a big announcement of our own in response, despite some flak was the right one. What do you make of Andy Burnham's intervention and also that defence from a senior party source that actually not having a fully fleshed out policy gives them more space to attack the Conservatives without this distracting, well, how much would Labour's cost? What are the holes in Labour's policy? Sure. Who do you think is right here? There's some truth to it, of course, and I don't think Labour needs to line by line, fully cost how they would reform social care in this country. However, I think that's a fundamentally misrepresentation of the criticism that you or I would make. Do you support the principle of wealth tax on work? That's really simple. He didn't do it, and I think it's an open goal. It is really an open goal, so I don't think that's... I don't think it was a master stroke to not say that personally. In terms of Andy Burnham, he gets a lot of flak. People say he'd be Starmer Mark II, he's a Blairite, or that's where he came from, right? His trajectory is certainly from there, but you have to also be fair. In 2010, when he ran for the leadership, he was talking about a national care service then, as Health Secretary under Gordon Brown, who was talking about social care more than a decade ago. So I believe him when he says, we need to do X, and this is how we'll fund it. And I also believe he's thought about it. It's not last-minute politicking to get some popularity, because he's been saying that same thing for so long. And Burnham is a former SPAD, former Special Advisor. So we can lambast SPADs all day. There are many X SPADs in politics, Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, David Miliband, the list goes on. That whole John Ashworth, that whole group of post-Blair sort of advisors going into labor after 2010, basically defined the party. And that's why Corbyn really upset so many people. He wasn't a former SPAD, but they do know a bit about policy. And they are quite familiar with questions around whether it's social care, education, tax, defense, whatever, because they've been doing this for 10, 20 years, in the case of Burnham, about 20 years. Keir Starmer was a lawyer until 2015. And so I'm sure he's going to learn a great deal. He's going to get down to the brass tacks of political economy and so on. But he doesn't know a lot of this stuff. We go back to that story, which was in The Sunday Times a couple of months ago, about him basically doing economics for dummies 101 with Charlie Falcon and Ed Miliband. What makes us different? I mean, people might think I'm making this up. Go check it out. Charlie Falcon, Ed Miliband, Keir Starmer Sunday Times. He was asking, what makes us different to the Tories when it comes to the economy? And they had to tell him. I don't think Andy Burnham has those problems because he's been doing this for so long. And that's why I think what he's saying on social care is totally authentic. You might say, well, I think he's talking a lot of crap. He's being opportunistic on XYZ. And that's because he wants to be leader of the Labour Party, he wants to be the Prime Minister. I may or may not agree with you, depending on the issue. I don't think that's the case with social care. Keir Starmer, as people would say, even what Andy Burnham is saying is that opens up a lot of avenues for them to attack the Labour Party when, at the moment, the Conservatives are having a difficult moment. I wouldn't necessarily advocate something as concrete as Andy Burnham is suggesting right now, even though I think it's a good policy position. But there is a big middle ground, which is just for Keir Starmer to say, I support progressive income taxes and I support wealth taxes. He doesn't have to give amounts. Neither of those things are unpopular. So, yeah, it just seems like an own goal to me.