 Good evening and welcome to tisky sour it is Monday night which means i have the absolute privilege the honor of being joined by ash sarkar ash how you doing. I'm good you know what i can hear my kitten wailing outside the door and he keeps putting his poor under so i feel like a very guilty working mom. Other moments so if i break down in tears and complain about how women can't have it all you know why. You need to teach the little animal independence it needs to know it needs tough love i think so i'm gonna keep you maybe even longer than usual just to spite the little kid. We have four great stories tonight we are gonna be talking about the winter plan which boris johnson is set to announce tomorrow lots of details about that we know already. Therese coffees slapping the face for low wage britain here starmas latest reset i have no idea what number we are on now and emirate car news win. Obviously we're not expert tennis analysis so we're gonna be talking about the political fallout or at least the political responses which it has motivated which it has led to. As ever we do want to hear your thoughts please do tweet them on the hash tag tiskey so i'll put them in the comments box most importantly if you haven't already hit that subscribe button. First story tomorrow boris johnson is set to lay out his covered plan for winter but we already have an idea of its key elements booster shots are in as our jabs for teenagers vaccine passports are out and it seems likely lots of. Other mitigation efforts to be completely ignored let's go through these issues one by one it had been briefed the jcbi that's the group of scientific advisors on vaccines would release their recommendations on third vaccine doses for the vulnerable later this week but today boris johnson jumped the gun asked about booster jabs he said that's going ahead that's already been approved i think that's a good thing. Experience in israel suggest booster shots will be effective though they are controversial with experts in global health who worry they'll put developing countries even further back in the vaccine queue will speak more about that later. A second component of the plan of vaccines for secondary school children. As we discussed last week the jcbi advised against vaccinating healthy 12 to 15 year olds on the grounds of the health benefits would only be marginal however they also encourage the chief medical officers to assess whether the broader impacts of vaccinations including on education might justify their use today the cmo's gave that verdict this is england's chief medical officer chris witty. Will vaccination reduce the disruption and therefore reduce these very significant negative impacts and our assessment is the answer to that is yes it will reduce education disruption. We do not think that this is a panacea this is not silver but it's not a single thing that on its own will do so. But we think it is a it is an important and potentially useful additional tool to help reduce the public health impacts that come through educational disruption so that's been that is been really critical in our decision making and this is. True whether we're talking about individuals physical health individuals mental health or the long term effects that a disrupted education can have on people's life chances so that's very much where a lot of our discussion lay. And we did think that on balance it was likely to improve things we looked at the negative sides and there are some issues around operational issues as a particular vaccination but our view was the benefits that this is likely to lead to in terms of reducing impacts and education outweighed those negative areas. So overall assessment is combining the marginal but assessed benefit that jcbi made an individual level taking on board additionally the issues around education. Our view was the benefit exceeded the risk to a sufficient degree that we are recommending to our ministers in all four nations that they make a universal offer and I want to stress the word offer of vaccination to children 12 to 15 in addition to the ones that are already being given it. Combined with this decision comments from the health secretary yesterday suggest a rollout in schools could start within a week. Well the advice that I've received so far which is from the jcbi which is our sort of committee of experts they gave their advice and said that they thought there were other issues that needed to be looked at they recommended to me that I get the chief medical officers of the UK to give me their advice which is what I'm waiting for now it's rightly that's independent advice I hope. If they give it we will be able to start within a week of of of getting advice that says go ahead and then making that your final government decision jabs in the arm of school children. Yeah I've been I think it's been sensible to ask the sort of education system the schools vaccination service to plan for that they've been planning for it throughout the summer just in case you we get that advice so we can hit the go button without any further delay. The surprise a mission from the plan looks set to be vaccine passports the vaccine minister in the deems are how we had last week described vaccine passports as the best way to keep the night industry open on the Andrew Marshall said to javid signaled. But we just shouldn't be doing things for the sake of it all because others are doing it we should look at every possible intervention properly so you asked about vaccine passports so I think it's fair to think most people instinctively don't like the idea. I mean I I've never liked the idea of saying to people you must show your papers or something to do what is it just an everyday activity but we were right to you to properly look at it to look at the evidence but you're not doing it. Well what I can say is that we've looked at it properly and whilst we should keep it in reserve as a potential option I'm pleased to say that we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports. Viewers of friday show know my thoughts on vaccine passports so let's go straight to ash we only know the skeleton of the covid winter plan what do you make of it so far. Well I think that the opportunity for 12 to 15 year olds to be vaccinated is a really wise decision on the part of the government we saw in that run up to christmas last year where the bulk of the new infections were coming and entering into households for the first time it was via secondary school pupils so I think in terms of avoiding some of the run away infection rates that we did see last year which obviously had a tremendously. Disruptive effect on people's lives people's christmas plans people's education and of course also resulted in an unconscionable number of deaths the vaccination roll out for 12 to 15 year olds I think is a really good idea now when it comes to vaccine passports Michael I think I differ from you a little bit I think in. Selected settings vaccine passports as a condition of say international travel or living in halls of residence at university these are sensible and proportionate decisions alright so one is that. Obviously something which helps other countries keep as much of a lid on. Variants as they're able to and when it comes to things like university halls of residence where you do have an awful lot of mixing awful lot of close contact between high numbers of people. It just means that one you can stop that from being a site of outbreaks and to it's I think it's not so extreme or disproportionate because you can obviously go to university without living in the halls right it's a decision. The choice not to get vaccinated as it has consequences that you have to live with the reason why I'm much more skeptical of a wholesale vaccine passport roll out night industry for hospitality. Or you know even for for more sort of quitted in settings is that you've got to really have a serious think about who it is they exclude. So we probably be looking at some kind of digital passport which we know is going to exclude a whole swathe of people who are on the receiving end of being locked out of. Of you know smartphone use internet use that does affect significant portion of people in this country and it will disproportionately impact those communities that we know have got low levels of trust when it comes to the government the medical establishment and therefore also have lower rates of vaccination I'm thinking here about working class communities and pain communities so I don't think that wholesale vaccine passport rolled out is proportionate I think that it's also something which could. Entrench a breakdown of trust and keep those people being hard to reach in a medical sense so I I'm in agreement with the government in terms of not rolling out a wholesale vaccine. Passport policy because I do think that is a disproportionately exclusionary and the other thing that I would say just to tack on to the end of it, which is I think we should retain an instinctive. Discomfort with the idea of having to demonstrate medical status as a condition of entry into public life do you think that's an all right discomfort to have. Nightclubs because the health services almost going to be overwhelmed I mean I I'm not saying I'm you know in my ideal world world we wouldn't have vaccine passports but in my ideal world we wouldn't have coronavirus so I think weighing up the different. Issues yes if we have vaccine passports for six months going into nightclubs that might disproportionately affect some people who don't for example don't have legal status which is unfortunate but if the alternative. Is that nightclubs get completely closed all the alternative is that transmission goes out of control I mean it just it just doesn't seem like an enormous cost to me so I'm sort of in favor of all those measures which can prevent hospitals overwhelmed and which can prevent a lockdown and yes there will be some negative consequence to those I think many of them you could limit if you said you can also have a negative lateral flow test instead of a vaccine. Which I think was under consideration in terms of the digital infrastructure I already have it on my phone you know it just doesn't seem that all well into me we won't spend too long in this but I suppose you do you want to respond to those point but that's the things that Michael you and I are people who aren't did we're not digitally excluded in any sense all right we're both you know. Technologically literate both on smartphones both have laptops both have internet connectivity at home we're absolutely not the kinds of people that would be affected. By some kind of vaccine passport roller like we're really not we've also traveled internationally recently which means that we had to demonstrate vaccine status as a condition of entry into. Malta so we're absolutely not the kinds of people who would be affected but there are people who would be affected and who have you know for instance been. On the receiving end of various government policies which have required you know demonstration of immigration status demonstration. Of you know proof of residence on and so forth and that lack of connectivity has been a real problem so it wouldn't affect you or me and I agree with you I think that when it comes to something like nightclubs really. The relevant factor here is the test you put two things together high rates of vaccination and high rates of testing that does ultimately bring the risk down but as we know. There will be reducing vaccine efficacy the longer it is since people have had their initial jobs particularly. If it's AstraZeneca and so testing seems to be the relevant safeguard for access into public spaces rather than vaccine status. I mean that that's still gonna require certification so that would that would contain many of the problems you've already mentioned because that would presumably be done digitally as well so it could all that would all that would also leave out people who are. Can be done digitally I mean I don't know I want I want to a club night and they just made me bring the little testing in a doggy bag. Really that's disgusting it was yeah I mean that was I've gone they made it based on a test but not a test a text sorry. Okay we shouldn't spend too long on this regular viewers will have seen us discuss vaccine passports a lot I think you've got many reasonable points I think we disagree disagree when it comes to weighing up the costs and benefits. Let's look in a bit more detail some of the issues I raised in my intro on vaccinating children I think it's clear this is the right decision what's frustrating is how long it took. Chris Witty was asked about the mixed messages and delays at his press conference today this was his answer what we would really regret and I want to be you know really clear about this is getting the decision wrong. So I'd much rather this is a slightly more complex process involving several stages and at the end of it the medical profession as a whole feels comfortable that we've considered all the various angles public health profession as a whole does and therefore we can communicate that to children and families. Some decisions are completely barn door obvious if you if you're talking to someone who's eighty five and they're choosing not to get vaccinated the short answer is just get the job this is going to have a very high chance of stopping you dying. Whereas actually in this situation it is a more difficult one and I think it is appropriate therefore the people have taken longer to get to this and to make sure we weighed all the different elements up to get this. This right so I think it's always nicer and to be able to package it in a very simple way but it is fundamentally more important to get the decision in a way that people I think feel comfortable and is the center of medical and public health opinion and then we are here but also importantly other health care professionals around the country. Can communicate it as they do day in day out much of medicine is about communicating actually quite complicated things in a way that's appropriate to the age and the particular state in life that people are this is very much normal medical practice. Now we show clips of Chris witty very often on the show I always say you know I think he seems like an honest intelligent well meaning guy he gets lots of on called for abuse I think. At the same time on this I don't really think his explanation stacks up so the official story is that the CMOs don't have any disagreement with the JCVI but they took into account broader issues than the vaccines committee did so they're saying the JCVI said the medical benefit for. Children for young people is marginal but we're going to look at the wider impact of vaccination on education. But if that's the case why the hell did we spend the whole summer holiday in powering an organization who wouldn't consider the impact of reopening schools we waited until schools reopened to even consider whether vaccinations might help keep them open something has surely gone wrong that is a massive missed opportunity. Let's move on to boosters again these seem like a smart idea in terms of minimizing disease and disruption this winter there are already clear signs that immunity wanes after around six months in countries such as Israel are already rolling out widespread booster campaigns but boosters are controversial because of the impact they could have outside of Britain namely the more vaccines we use the further back we push developing countries in the queue. That's a real problem only around eight percent of Africa's population is fully vaccinated and despite what ministers say the UK's response to this problem has been poor we promised to send a hundred million vaccines overseas so far only nine million have been delivered criticisms of the way the government has balanced vaccinations at home and abroad have been made by Sarah Gilbert she's the creator of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and last week. She told the telegraph we need to get vaccines to countries where few of the populations have been vaccinated so far we have to do better in this regard the first dose has the most impact as the virus spreads between people it mutates and adapts and evolves like the delta variant with these outbreaks we want to stop that as quickly as possible we will look at each situation at the immunocompromise and elderly will receive boosters but I don't think we need to boost everybody immunity is lasting well in the majority. It's an interesting point and I think especially that idea that it's the first dose that matters most is is really important because it is it's kind of disgraceful that we're debating in this country whether or not people need a third vaccine before most people in the world have even had their first there you know that's that's morally morally very very problematic at the same time this is because we have an issue of scarcity we have an issue of scarcity because there has been no global strategy to boost vaccine production. And because big pharma big pharmaceutical companies have lobbied against releasing patents that's what most developing countries are lobbying for the World Trade Organization World Trade Organization it is being blocked. Let's finally go back to non pharmaceutical interventions this is where I think the government strategy seems particularly bone headed. And that's because once again they seem committed to only taking action once it's too late this was from the FT Sebastian Payne on Sunday. Why tall officials say vaccine passports were dropped because the covid situation is not as bad as some feared at this stage and ministers decided they were unnecessary but government insiders say they could still come later this year if required David only ruled out this month so they could come later. For me there are a couple of issues with this first of all things are already quite bad there were almost 1000 covid deaths last week and according to the health service journal nearly half of hospital trusts have already hit unsafe occupancy levels that's clearly a very big problem because it will wait until it gets bad it has got quite bad. The second problem and this is more fundamental is why are we waiting for things to get really bad before taking preventative measures why wait until hospitals are on the brink of total collapse before asking people to do simple things like wearing masks or trying to make nightclubs safer. Ash I want your thoughts on all of these it does seem like the government has learned absolutely nothing over the past 18 months yet again we're saying oh we won't take this simple preventative action. Because we're going to close our eyes and wait until it gets really really really bad. I mean look I think that there are two explanations for this one is incompetence so this is a government made up of not particularly innovative visionary intelligent people and I think that they are inclined to particularly Boris Johnson to believe they're in bullshit when it comes to going back to normal. There has been a pattern throughout the course of this pandemic this self deluding impulse at the very top levels of government to say well we can do it differently from everybody else we don't actually have to take drastic measures in order to contain this. You know deadly and frightening virus so there's a competency problem and then there is also an ideological opposition I think to taking measures which I think fully acknowledge and come to terms with the reality of COVID-19 on our way of life is something which friend of the show James Midway was saying really from the earliest days of March. 2020 was that this is probably going to impact how we live for quite some time it might be that we're looking at you know intermittent lockdowns potentially moving towards more of a circuit breaker model might be that we have to have a really. You know it's just like a blanket vaccine rollout with regular boosters and that there might be. Restrictions on international travel for many years to come if you accept that coronavirus is something that we're going to have to live with. For a long time well then you have to start making adjustments in terms of what your expectations of the state are and in particular state spending so this is a government which is. Ideologically wedded to end of furlough getting rid of the 20 pound uplift in universal credit despite having one of the lowest rates of statutory sick pay in Europe they stayed committed to that poultry some of 96 pounds a week even though it probably would have saved lives by facilitating people. To stay home when they were ill and they really needed to so there are ideological. Commitments here which I think that the government are really low to move away from fundamentally they don't think it's the state's job to look after people to look after people's health. So if you stay in a right in a in a state of what I would call soft denial about the reality of Corona virus but then you can avoid implementing some of the policies that this country would really need. I mean I mean I agree with everything you said there I do think this idea of thinking about this in terms of the long term is really important as well because there are there are many measures that we could take to make this winter less difficult. And it's going to be a really really difficult winter not just because of covid but because there are. Flues which we don't have the same immunity to that we would after a normal winter because obviously the lockdown was incredibly successful at suppressing those that's going to make it very difficult for the NHS. Once you also include people going into hospital with covid 19 and also you know how worn out how stressed out everyone in the NHS already is that's going to be incredibly difficult. There are things that we could introduce for this winter that we could have forever and would actually just make our lives better forever. So if you introduce good ventilation in schools for example that won't just be good for reducing levels of covid that will also be good for reducing levels of flu right now I don't think we should have lockdowns for flu. I don't necessarily think we should have contact tracing for flu but if we had things like good ventilation to make flu less of an issue every winter. That's a win win and and these are the kind of easy long term wins that as you say Ash I think this government are ideologically opposed to making and it seems odd to say that why would you be ideologically opposed to ventilation. Who could possibly oppose ventilation the thing they're ideologically opposed to is taking responsibility for health and safety in schools in the workplace because it's just to interventionist for them if we want healthy workplaces and where we don't catch airborne diseases. What are we what are we going to want next sick pay what are we going to want next are we going to want roads where we're not at risk of getting run over by by cars we want to pedestrianize streets forever. They'll want to keep the good things from the lockdown I want to keep the good things that were developed over the pandemic forever which for the Tories would be a disaster which is why it's unfortunate we have them in power. Let's go on to our next story I'm going to go to a tweet con Mac tweets on the hash tag Tiskey sour Michael generating his inner to raise coffee with ashes cat though I'm more of a dog fan I've got to admit it's pretty harsh. Well I suppose you're saying it's to raise coffee because I'm like you know treat and mean keep him keen at the same time I wouldn't advise you to like underfeed your cat or like you know damage it's. It's physical environment I'm just saying it needs to learn to live on its own for a little for an hour at least. Okay, I mean I feel the cat like this is like an iron around approach to kitten rearing and bear in mind that what you're saying to me is that I should let my baby boy my baby son who I did not carry in my own womb but I may as well have I should let him cry. My partners back home now and hopefully smothering him with attention and hopefully wasn't listening to the show earlier and hasn't taken your advice to heart. Okay, maybe I agree with Theresa coffee on cats I definitely don't agree with her on universal credit which is our next story. The Tories are still desperately trying to justify their planned cut to universal credit the end of the £20 uplift to the benefit will leave 4.4 million households poorer overnight and it's been universally condemned by anti poverty charities. Yet to raise coffee the minister in charge of the benefit suggested it shouldn't pose a real problem to anyone if they were concerned about lower incomes they could just work extra hours. The £20 a week is about two hours extra work every week will be seeing what we can do to help people perhaps secure those extra hours but ideally also to make sure they're in a place to get better paid jobs as well. And that's where elements of the £650 billion infrastructure projects supporting 425,000 jobs. We can want to try and help people get on into those better paid jobs often in construction but other elements as well that go alongside these big major projects. So what you seem to be saying is that what you take £20 a week off you and you have to work longer then. I was saying that it's a temporary uplift recognizing the reason it was introduced that's come to an end that reason we're seeing record numbers of vacancies we're seeing elements of employment continuing to go up and I'm confident that we can do the 27,000 work coaches that we have right around the country will be helping people as I say not only get back into work but to get progress in work as well. There are two big problems of what Theresa Coffey said that I say problems I mean it's completely offensive what she went out and said there so first of all for those who can possibly find extra work it's simply not true. That's because when you're on universal credit every extra hour you work the fewer benefits you are entitled to it's called the taper. So if you earn an extra tenor you'll lose up to £7.50 for increased taxation and drops in benefits. It's not the case that you can just work two extra hours and get 20 extra quid. The point was made well by the Resolution Foundation they're the experts on universal credit responding to Coffey's claim that an extra two hours could make up for the universal credit cut. They said if only this were true a universal credit claimant on the national living wage will take home as little as £2.24 from an extra hours work. A small increase in working hours will be nowhere near enough to cover the £20 a week cut coming their way next month. The other reason Coffey's claim is ill informed and offensive is because a large proportion of recipients of universal credit are unable to work. How are they supposed to work those extra hours those extra six hours as the Resolution Foundation says to get that extra 20 quid because of the taper. This tweet was a representative of many responses to Coffey Tyrone Wilson said I am registered unfit for work and you were taking that money off me anyway. This this cut to universal credit is an appalling policy is going to have damaging impacts on so many people across this country. What this clip shows is not only are cabinet ministers willing to cause that damage they don't even understand the nature of the benefit there. They're cutting right she's just completely ignorant she is the most important person in the country when it comes to managing benefits and she doesn't understand how they work. I mean look this is a cruel and stupid government which seeks to implement cruel and stupid policies and the way in which you create the political cover to do so is by saying cruel and stupid things. This is completely divorced from the reality of universal credit claimants and also completely divorced from the reality of the kind of economy that we're entering into. So one you have had a over a decade of lost wage growth at this point. So people's finances if they were in work were already particularly tights been the single biggest fall in living standards since the Napoleonic Wars. You have a cost of living crisis particularly in the area of housing also transportation and you've also got a really uncertain employment market. The furlough scheme has sort of managed to keep businesses afloat. We don't know what the impact of lost income over the pandemic is likely to be when that goes away completely and some of the other sort of job retention schemes start to you know often need to forever. So it might be that we're looking at rather than this continuing increase in employment and by the way we should take a really serious look at what kind of jobs are being created. They're not high quality well paid secure jobs that often very insecure low paid temporary forms of work. But we also might be looking at in some sectors in employment crisis right when more people are pushed on to the mercy of the benefits system. So it's completely economically illiterate. It's also just completely cruel. What have we learned from this pandemic if not that you can't improve society at all by punishing some of the most vulnerable people. We've seen that with free school meals that it was no good trying to use the hunger of children to discipline their parents. It was just cruel. It was just stupid when it came to establishing furlough which was the government had to be bullied into it by Corbyn and John MacDonald back in the early months of 2020. Initially there was a complete denial from the government of that you would need in order to preserve people's health support of their incomes. And we've also seen the really reckless decision to keep statutory sick pay very very low. So I think that we should look at you know Therese Coffey with a degree of disdain. I don't think she's a particularly able capable or intelligent minister. But it is a product of an ideology which believes that the best thing the state can do is act malevolently towards the people who are most in need of its care. I want to look in a bit more detail at the consequences of this cut because it is is incredible the number of people who are going to be significantly affected by this and the degree to which they will be the Resolution Foundation say that one million households will lose 10% of their disposable income overnight 10% that's enormous for an overnight cut huge numbers of households will be hit everywhere. So this chart again from the Resolution Foundation shows a proportion of non pensioner households who will be over 1000 pounds worse off per year. Once that comes into effect in the Northeast it's a quarter of households in London, Northern Ireland and the West Midlands it's 22% as you can see from from this chart it's above 14% everywhere. Ash I want to get your opinion on the politics of this because I think one of the reasons the Conservatives got away with austerity is because they targeted relatively small groups of people you know obviously an enormous number of people were really badly affected by austerity but they'd go for the disabled who aren't a huge proportion of actually there are a lot of disabled people but the people who were incredibly negatively affected by those cuts they might have for all their labour voters anyway for example. This set of cuts it seems to be striking potentially lots of people who might have won the Conservatives the past the last general election lots of people saying that they should call this the red wall tax. Labour should be sort of hammering that home why are the Tories so confident they can get away with this. Well I think that sometimes when we talk about the politics of the new Tory coalition we sometimes talk in terms of geography when we need to also be talking about age and asset ownership. So when you think about those swing voters who are really responsible for delivering the Boris Johnson landslide in 2019 they're not necessarily working age people within red wall seats. The vast majority of them are older they own their own home and it's something like I think 55% if I'm remembering the statistic correctly of Tory voters own their own home outright. So we're talking about people who are in a very different economic position to people who are within the employment market. The main thing which is responsible for their economic security isn't what's in their wage packet it's in the value of their house and that continuing to go up. So you've got some divergent economic interests here and I think that the calculation is very cynical one which is you can push policies which are essentially an attack on working and working age people. So slashing the £20 uplift in universal credit or adding 1.25% increase in national insurance contributions which are disproportionately going to affect working age people because they're not those who the Tories are really looking to shore up their electoral base. And that's why they tend to do well in towns where home ownership is 50% and over it's also why they've tended to do much better in places with ageing populations. Now whether or not they're able to get away with it well it depends how much this politicizes and is able to coalesce a political subjectivity a worldview and movement of working age people. Now you were right in terms of some of the most vicious attacks of austerity were on people who were either minoritized in some way like disabled people or generally disempowered and disenfranchised when it came to political power. So you know people who are unemployed people who are out of work but it was able to politicize huge swathes of the country people who worked in the public sector people who worked for the local council and that kind of ended up being one of the bed rocks of Corbinism. That was a kind of you know pretty well represented demographic was those sort of public sector workers whose you know sense of civic duty and fairness was affronted by the imposition of austerity but also they'd seen firsthand their ability to deliver services being you know severely impinged and restricted by austerity. So that was something which I think was was responsible for that wave which which you know put Jeremy Corbyn in the position of Labour leader and very nearly deliver the keys to number 10 in 2017. Now it might be that these policies when looked at all together the national insurance contributions policy and also the slashing of this 20 pound uplift has a similarly politicizing effect but it's only powerful if you've got either an individual or an organization which can make something of it. Now I think at this particular point in time with this particular leadership that's not going to be the Labour Party the problem is is that Keir Starmer I don't think has a theory of change I don't even think he really has a theory of how society works. He's just got like a few kind of rhetorical gestures and you know sound bites and kind of you know soothing noises that he makes you know towards retirees every cell phone beat doesn't really have an idea of fundamentally what's wrong with society or how it is he wants to fix it so I don't think that he's going to be in a particularly strong position to capitalize on it. We don't also have that kind of mobilization which you saw in extra parliamentary movements between you know 2010 and 2015 and only time will tell if those kinds of organizations will begin to generate themselves but so this could be damaging I don't think it will be right now but it certainly could be. We're going to talk about the Labour leadership a bit more in a moment I want to go to some comments on this story specifically Victoria tweets on the hashtag Tiskey sour another cruelty to this is that the government persuaded people who were on ESS that's employment support allowance to go to universal credit because they would receive more money. Now that's a I hadn't actually thought that that's a very interesting interesting point because employment support allowance that was the existing benefit for people who were for example deemed not fit for for work people who struggled to get into employment universal credit was to replace that lots of people for universal credit wouldn't do the job properly but according to this tweet and it sounds very plausible that 20 pound uplift encourage some people to make the transition from ESA to universal credit. Only then to find that a few months later that 20 pound uplift was cancelled so I can imagine that being terrible if you're one of those people who transition to universal credit for that extra money for it then to get cut. Babs tweets on the hashtag Tiskey sour what Ash Sarkar just said about furlough is true Corbyn and McDonald had to bully Tories into it McDonald wrote the paper how it would work the Tories torrified it so the rich would benefit then rolled it out. Interesting. I'm not I'll have to check out what specific McDonald paper is being referred to there but I do know that Corbyn and McDonald were you know they were out there on the front line saying let's introduce this they were of course am still in charge of the Labour Party at that point and presumably sort of referring to our first story. We have today can't well with 10 euros saying there is a new DNA based vaccine in development doesn't need to be stored at low temperatures can be delivered to places with less infrastructure. Interesting. Is that an MR is that a DNA vaccine or a or a mRNA vaccine. I'll have to check it out. That sounds obviously very promising if that is the case. Let's go to our next story. Labour strategists are still concerned that no one in Britain has any idea as to what Keir Starmer stands for. But they have a plan to change that it's to publish a 14,000 word essay with no policies. This was reported in the Sunday Times they write so Keir Starmer is to publish a 14,000 word mission statement to Labour members on the eve of the party's annual conference later this month. The Labour leader's lengthy essay for the Fabian Society is an attempt to reset his leadership and to answer those who have questioned what he and his party stand for. A source close to Starmer described the contents as an intellectualized version of his conference speech. However, the essay is not inspected expected to include any fresh Labour policy announcements and will focus broadly on the themes of security and opportunity. A senior Labour figure said it's supposed to set out the Starmer credo. It's essentially the answer to those who say what do you believe in and what do you stand for? And I am sure that it will suffice to do that job. Ash, we've got another reset. I'm not sure what number this is, but when it comes to showing what Keir Starmer stands for, do you agree with the senior Labour figure who says the 14,000 word essay will suffice? I mean, look, I'm going to be really happy if it contains the phrase we must go forwards, not backwards, upwards, not forwards and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. You know, that's the really inspiring intellectualized vision that I can get behind. Look, there's a certain irony has been pointed out by others that one of the things that Keir Starmer and his team keep saying is that Labour need to stop the naval gazing. They need to stop looking inwards. They need to look outwards at the country and speak to people. And yet their only solutions have been to continue the forever war within their organisation, punching left at every opportunity they get and then going, you know, it's really going to speak to you. You know, the everyday voter dealing with the cost of living crisis, a 14,000 word essay. That's what you really need. When I'm talking about, you know, Keir Starmer needing a theory of change and an idea of how society works, I actually couldn't care less to read about it. Just fucking do it. Just demonstrate it in your messaging and your policy platform and the attack lines that you choose. Show. Don't tell. That's basic politics 101. And it was something which you really saw with, you know, Corbin and McDonald actually. I remember when they tried to do their populist relaunch. I think this was January, either 2016, 2017. Memory escapes me. And it was something which was being like badged as a bit of a relaunch that didn't go that well. And they were definitely doing too much telling and not enough showing. You then got them in the context of a general election and a manifesto and they were animated by it. And it became a lot more clear and a lot more purposeful. And you'd think that Keir Starmer having, you know, lurched from failed relaunch to failed relaunch. We had the Hartlepool relaunch. We had the Batley and Spen relaunch. You know, we had the, we're going big on fairness relaunch. We'd have the dog theft relaunch. You'd think that he would go maybe this, you know, kind of new Coke rebrand every five minutes isn't actually going to do it for me. And I should try and offer something to the country. And like, look, I'm probably going to have to read this fucking thing for my job. But I just want you to know, Michael, that I don't want to. I don't want to read 14,000 words of Keir Starmer. I want to read the new Sally Rooney, you know, in the bath. With some candles. Don't read 14 fucking thousand words from the most boring man who's ever lived. Hopefully it'll come with an executive summary. I hope it's summarizable because yeah, 14,000 is like a dissertation. Like that's, you know, I suppose people say maybe, maybe political leaders writing books is a good thing. Like Bernie did it. Bernie Sanders did it. Pablo Iglesias did it. You do have to have some interesting ideas though. And probably you have to, you know, even if there's no fully fleshed out policies, you have to say some of the things you would do, were you to enter power? I just want to go to a couple more details from it because we just, just a couple of bit more information from it, which is that the article is being written with the help of his former aide, Paul Evendant, and the former Times columnist, Philip Collins, who wrote Tony Blair's final conference speech. You know, if I had gone for a Tony Blair, I'd go for one of the ones around 97, you know, when he was still winning, not the one when he was already considered completely toxic. Although I suppose Starmer's considered quite toxic. So maybe that's Philip Collins' speciality. We also have, you mentioned naval gazing. Apparently this is supposed to solve that. This is also from the Times. A senior party insider said Starmer wrote the essay while he was on his summer tour and meeting voters. The party lost at the last general election. It's about where we are now as a party and where we are going. It's about turning the page and ending the naval gazing. So this essay is about ending naval gazing. Now, Ash, I'm not sure what the opposite of naval gazing is, but for me, it's not 14,000 word essays. Michael, can you imagine if I sent you 14,000 word WhatsApp message all about me and what people think about me and what I might do next and what maybe I got wrong in the past and what I'm like now. And then I said, but by the way, this is really not about me. It's not naval gazing. This is really about you. Would you believe that? Would you think that's the single most delusional shit I've ever heard in my life? What's the meme? I think you shared the meme, which is, I'm not going to read that, but I'm happy for you or I'm so sorry, whatever it says. Yeah, I mean, I ain't reading all that. I ain't reading all that. I mean, look, this is the theopotheosis of naval gazing. And I think that's something serious here. And you can kind of see by the tapping up of Philip Collins, whose main big idea in the last 12 months has been Starmer should purge the left and purge it hard. That's been kind of the main thing that he's been saying. And so by tapping up Philip Collins to write this thesis on, you know, Starmerism and labour and blah, blah, blah. I think what that shows is that it's going to outline what the priorities are of this particular faction. It's not about getting the party ready for power. It's not about getting the party ready for a general election. It's about consolidating the grip of a particular faction on the Labour Party machinery and using electability as a flimsy pretext to do so. You know, spoiler alert, spoiler alert. That's what I think is going to happen in this in this piece. One thing that I would say is that I feel that, you know, Starmer has almost learnt the worst lessons from lairism, which is all triangulation and no punch, you know, nothing pithy, nothing memorable, certainly no real attack when it comes to going for the conservatives. And Tony Blair, obviously, his politics are about as far as far from mine as I can imagine, particularly on foreign policy and public ownership and the stuff that really, really matters to me. But in terms of a political operator, being a political operator, he had a killer instinct. And he also knew like actually when it comes to your vision, people just want to know what's going to fit on a flashcard and you just hammer those lines again and again and again until the public really gets it. This is the opposite. This is just all waffle. So unless it's 14,000 words of, you know, a novel really about, you know, four young hipsters trying to make it in the world of literature and having sexual adventures along the way, I don't think anyone's going to be interested. Maybe we'll be shocked and it's actually a sort of 14,000 piece of literary genius. But I mean, we often show Starmer interviews on this show and generally his one aim in them seems to be to not be pinned down on actually believing anything. So I imagine it's going to be 14,000 words of not trying to commit to anything. But we could be proved wrong. Who knows? Let's go to a comment. Saul with a fiver. Thank you very much. Congratulations to Sarah Woolley, general secretary of the BFAWU, the Bakers Union, who's been elected to the TUC general council today. That sounds like the Bakers Union. Good union, good politics. So I imagine Sarah Woolley being elected to the TUC general council is a very good thing. I have to say I'm slightly behind on that particular story, but thank you for the update. Let's go to our final story. Emma Radikhanu winning the US Open was extraordinary. The 18 year olds victory in the competition was the first time ever that a player who had to qualify to get into the tournament as opposed to gaining entry through their rank won the final competition. Just three months ago, Radikhanu was ranked 338 in the world. In her first Grand Slam this July, she made the fourth round and the rest is history. However, Radikhanu's win hasn't just been celebrated for its incredible sporting merit due to her immigrant background. Radikhanu was born in Canada and is of Chinese and Romanian descent. It's also served as fuel for the political take factory. Responses ranged from the Anadine like this from London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Emma Radikhanu's story is London's story born in Canada to Chinese and Romanian parents. She moved to London at two years old. Here in London we embrace and celebrate our diversity and if you work hard and get a helping hand, you can achieve anything. Her win also reached the more outrageous corners of FBPE Twitter. Will Hudson is a columnist at The Observer. He tweeted the following. Bit by bit the Brexit case collapses. Afghanistan foretells a new era of America first. She's Chinese menace grows and now Emma Radikhanu's tennis brilliance fearful of nothing. Daughter of immigrants is testimony to the value of openness. We need to stand with and in an open EU. So Emma Radikhanu winning the US Open is evidence that we need to rejoin the European Union. This guy's considered quite a serious thinker, an author of multiple books for a while. He was head of a college at Oxford I think and a regular columnist at The Observer. When it came to online controversy, most debate was prompted by those celebrating it who were deemed to have no right to. Nigel Farage was top of the pile in this respect. He tweeted a global megastar is born. Emma Radikhanu winning the US Open is truly incredible. Unsurprisingly that tweet got ratioed because of Farage's previous statements about migration and in particular his statements about Romanians. David Lammy tweeted, Emma Radikhanu is half Romanian. Here is one of the countless stories that demonstrate the immense value migration brings to the UK. But you said I wouldn't want to live next door to a Romanian. You have no right to piggyback on her incredible success. Dr. Shola Moschogbomimu made a similar point. She tweeted, forgot she's half Romanian and Chinese. Nigel, a xenophobic racist hypocrite would kick people of Emma Radikhanu heritage and talent out of UK without second thought. Nigel Farage is shameless on Emma Radikhanu. Victory when he won't live next door to Romanians and constantly demonizes immigrants. Ash, I want your thoughts on this. This has become familiar, especially it seems this summer that sporting victories end up being a moment for lots of people to make political points, especially when it is people who are of immigrant background, often second or third generation when it came to the football, who are then made as examples of why immigration is a good thing, why multiculturalism is a good thing, and then also from the right for I suppose very cynical point scoring. What do you make of it? Is this well-meaning people making a reasonable point or is this slightly, is it an odd way of doing politics, let's say? Well, look, let's take the Will Hutton tweet first, where he in the same breath is praising Emma Radikhanu for her astonishing performance at the US Open, but also referencing Xi Jinping as the Chinese menace, because this to me seems to be just a classic, perfect specimen of FBPE racism. It's something that we heard a lot from people during the EU referendum, which is actually being in the EU, doesn't even have an impact on non-EU immigration, so if you wanted to get rid of all those awful Pakistanis and Bangladeshis you could, or after Brexit actually happened being like, oh my God, it's so unfair that my lovely Italian barista has to apply for settled status, but any old Indian could come to this country. There was a lot of that within the remain site, something which really alienated me from other people who voted remain, was the sense of ranking of different countries, different backgrounds in order to make the point that you wanted to make about EU immigration. I think that Will Hutton's tweet falls into that trap. Of course, what Nigel Farage is saying is completely hypocritical, but that hypocrisy when it comes to the good immigrant, the one who excels in their field, the one who puts their head above the rest and does so in the name of Great Britain and glory to the flag, that's always been something which racists have been quite comfortable with not just celebrating but sometimes appropriating. It's also a way for them to demonstrate like, hey, I'm not a xenophobe. I'm not a racist. I really celebrate immigration when they pull off a once in a lifetime sporting achievement. I think that that vein of hypocrisy is pretty well established when you think about British political discourse. Then I think you've got the third thing that you were talking about which is is this a good way to think about the politics of sport and the meaning of, you know, fame and immigrant excellence when it's happening on the public stage. I think we've got to draw a bit of a distinction between when sports stars of colour or cultural figures of colour more generally are speaking out against racism and are politically expressing themselves in a very explicit way, which is what we did see with the England football team. The commitment to taking the knee is something that we've also seen for instance with Lewis Hamilton in Formula One where the murder of George Floyd was really a catalyst for his, you know, outspoken turn where before he was much more of a guarded kind of sports star and someone like Emma Radikani who hasn't yet said this is how I want to engage with the world. This is how I want to think about not just my own ethnicity and my heritage but also what I want that to mean and what kind of political work I want that to do because when you take that outside or beyond somebody's own hands I think we then fall into this quite pernicious trap of the good immigrant again which is you abstract and dehumanise you take this human being who's got a rich wealth of experiences and thoughts and heritages and influences that they're pulling from and he flattened them into a symbol of either the kind of nation you want or the one that you don't want. So the good immigrant is, you know, by its, by necessity by the way in which we construct this image just the flip of the bad immigrant right both are dehumanised and de-individualised so I think that we do have to be wary of extrapolating further and saying and this is the political meaning of Emma Radikani well of course she says something about this country and the fact that this is a diverse country where the fastest growing ethnic background is mixed heritage people that's the change that's happening to this country and we're going to see that reflected in sports, popular culture, politics and more but I don't think that you can say and this means that we have to, you know, rejoin the EU ask her, ask what she thinks about it before you make her into, you know, your little mascot for your cause celeb, I don't know That is very, I mean, maybe she's, I probably, I mean I doubt she's a Brexiteer because of her age for a start before we go because I do want to keep you a bit later than eight just maybe to, you know, so you can work on your independence from the kitten. I want a comment on one story that broke before the show that I saw you tweeting about which is that Andrew Neil has confirmed he is quitting GB News weren't you surprised, what do you make of the story? No man, of course I'm not surprised he was there for all of two minutes before he was like, this is undignified I'm going to bounce to the south of France you know, I think that he was embarrassed by one the amateur presentation of the channel the fact that I had all of these technical difficulties things kept going wrong and that also you had, you know, blibbering idiots like Dan Wharton howling into the void and I think Andrew Neil was like, oh shit maybe this cheapens me and makes me look kind of dumb because here I am amongst this, you know, menagerie of fools and grifters so no I'm not surprised that he's quit at all I'm just surprised that it's taken him so damn long what's going to be interesting is going to be to what extent is establishment media going to play a willing role in rehabilitating Andrew Neil and his legacy will he find a spot on one of the establishment channels I think maybe there's still a lot of goodwill certainly people falling over themselves to crow about how able and, you know, intelligent and, you know, relentless journalist he is but it'll be interesting to see if, you know, at the executive level whether or not he severed those relationships for good he's on question time this first day so he's not going to have long away from the platform of the BBC the BBC, I'm sorry this is like the problem with the BBC every fucking time, right they see someone spitting in their eye and then they go do you want a really prestigious slot with great ratings because you, the person who's tried to undermine our organisation you know, perhaps calling for the abolition of the licence fee in some cases you're exactly the kind of person who we want to signal boost the BBC has as much of an instinct to self-preservation as I did while dating in my second year of uni someone would treat me badly I'd go come here babes I like what you've got to say say it more I've got nothing but disdain for it that was very well put let's wrap it up there go hit the like button Ash, it's been an absolute pleasure as always I'm jealous you get to go back to a kitten now do you remember they are for life though you'll have to tolerate it when it's a slightly less interesting cat and it thinks you're a boring person which is what it will grow into it will never think that anyway come over and meet your nephew Michael I would love to we'll be back on Wednesday at 7pm so make sure to hit subscribe for now, you've been watching Tiskey Sour on the bar media good night