 Labour need to be tough on Boris Johnson, that means attacking the Tory leader as the establishment defending lying and it seems groping charlatan, he really is. But it's no good just being tough on Boris Johnson. We also need to be tough on the causes of Boris Johnson. If we get rid of Boris Johnson, more like him will appear. If we want to get rid of sociopathic establishment defending lying groping charlatans, we need to attack the source of sociopathic establishment defending lying groping charlatans. Yes, Navarra viewers, that means we need to abolish Eton. Luckily, as of last week, that seems to be official Labour Party policy. So to discuss Labour's school policy and how Britain can rid itself of the scourge of an education system divided by class, I'm delighted to be joined by Holly Rigby, who started the Abolish Eton campaign. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. Well, and also Aaron Bustani is on the show, co-founder of Navarra Media. I'm second best tonight. Or for a fully automated luxury communism. Available in all good bookstores. I wanted to say, first of all, normally on the show, we have people who are journalists, politicians, academics. It's the first time in a while we've had someone with a proper job. You are a secondary school teacher. You're working at nine to five today. How is that? Yeah, fine. I teach in a state school in Newham. It's slightly surreal at the moment because if you're in year seven, October 31st still means Halloween. So like today, we were writing spooky stories because like, you know, we're getting ready for Halloween and then kind of go into political world and it's like absolute crisis. And there's part of me that just want to be like, do you want to hear a really scary story, kids? Let me tell you about Boris Johnson. But I'm not sure I go down that well. I know they find me because you've been quite visible in this campaign. I've seen you on Politics Live, Sky News. Is the school completely fine with you, talking about how you should abolish your your private competitors? Yeah, I think so. Like I am really lucky that my headteacher has been really supportive. So and allowed me to kind of do that. I mean, I mean, interestingly, I work in a free school. So which is also a really controversial bit of like policy. And they also know that I would like to see free schools face out as well. But I think, you know, I'm really lucky where I work. So it hasn't been a clash so far. And do the kids of the kids watched it? Yeah, actually, well, mostly no, obviously, because most of the kids like don't. But I politics live isn't that big. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They don't tend to be on it like, you know, midday. They're in science lesson rather than politics live. But yeah, I did come into school after the after the Abolish Eaton campaign. We spoke past the policy and one of my like form group in the morning was like, Miss, you popped up on my Twitter timeline. Like, are you famous or something now? And I was like, I don't know. Which is like very, very sweet. And then she was like, why is her anger about this place called Eaton? And then I had to sort of explain, you know, because also, you know, like London teenagers, what do they know or sort of care about Eaton? And then you kind of explain it to them and they they get the kind of injustice of that. But it's just feel quite far away, I think, from from their lives, definitely. We're going to talk specifically about the Abolish Eaton campaign in the second half of the show, what it's going to look like in practice, why we should care about it, why the kids in your school in Newham should care about abolishing Eaton. First of all, we're going to talk about, you know, the result of it, the place that attracts Eaton graduates. You call it a graduate if it's a secondary school, alumni, Eaton alumni. Yeah. Yeah, Eaton alumni, alumni. Yeah, like a shit to fly. It's Tory Party Conference. The policies that were announced, I mean, the main story about Tory Party Conference isn't isn't the policies, it's the sleaze. But we'll get on to that in a moment. When it comes to policies, these are the big ones I've I've noticed. Minimum wage rise to 1050 over five years, a little bit later than Labour, who would raise it to £10 immediately. No more automatic release for violent sex offenders after they've served half their term in prison. So they'd move it from one half of their term to two thirds. And homeowners can add two stories to their homes about planning permission. That was that should be very low down on the list of ways to resolve Britain's housing crisis, but this is the Tories for you. How worried I'll start with you and how worried should we be about the Tory Party policy platform at this conference? Are they parking their tanks on our lawn? Yeah, so I guess the first one is the sex offenders one as as familiar as I am with the law, which is not intimately familiar, fortunately, in recent years. Basically, everybody is subject to serving half their term with the exception of people convicted for drug related offences. So this would be bringing that into line, say with, you know, possession of an intense supply of cocaine, et cetera. I don't necessarily agree with that, but I mean, it makes sense in terms of the sort of severity of the crime and bring it in line with something else. Well, so at the moment, it's tougher if you've dealt drugs than if you've done a sex offence. I believe that's insane. So, you know, that's OK. Makes sense. You might agree with it, disagree with whatever it is. It's another one of those policies, but I'm not a legal expert. But if you are Dominic Cummings, if you were the strategist, you really want the opposition to be arguing that no, sex offenders should only do half of their terms like this policy. Like this this as existing policy seems a bit mad. Yeah, it's mad to have a situation where if they're only going to serve half their terms, why don't you just give them half. Anyway, we need an expert on to discuss the facts about this. I'm just saying that the optics is good for the Tory Party. They're trying to incentivize, like, you know, obviously, reformed characters, rehabilitation, good behavior. Obviously, it's cheaper to maintain a prison population, which is relatively compliant and passive, which this incentivizes. The minimum wage one is really interesting. So, like you say, Labour would raise its £10 immediately. That's always wanted to get it to 1050 by 2024, as well as that the age would go down from 25, whereas at present to 21, it would go to 23 by 2021 and then go down to 21 by 2025. OK, that's really great. But if you actually look at what's happened to in-work poverty under the Tories over the last nine years, it's kind of shocking, actually, when you look at in-work poverty. So it was only a relatively recent thing that most people in poverty, that's people in a household earning 60% or less of the median income, which, by the way, is £22,100. It's very, very low. 60% of that is classed as being in poverty. It's only relatively recently that people with somebody, a household with somebody in work overtook households in the same situation where nobody was working. So historically, most people were poor, other work class suffering from disabilities or pensioners. And increasingly, that experience of poverty is marked by actually somebody being in work. So right now, we've got about four million workers who are working and in poverty when you tie in, obviously, dependents, children, etc. But eight million people are affected by in-work poverty. I believe Hollywood knows better than I will, I'm sure. I think about 30% of kids right now are being raised in poverty. The majority of those will be being raised in poverty where a parent is working. I mean, this is absolutely shameful. So it's welcome that they're making this measure, but it's very much an example of them cleaning up their own mess. And these are the Tories who promised to put workers on boards. We still haven't seen that happen yet. Do you remember that parking their tanks on Labour's lawn a few years ago? So it's all very well and good to say this, but promising wage increase five years from now is probably more good intentions and PR bullshit than actually something they substantively are looking to implement. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that lots of these things seem to be trying to neutralise the kind of like economic offer from Labour that I don't think that the Tories genuinely think that they're going to be seen to be the party of working people, but they need to neutralise the fact that they might be, you know, they need to neutralise the NHS and schools and things like that and kind of say, look, we are doing something nice because they're not going to get away with, you know, like Theresa May's 2017 campaign where she was just the only policy anyone remembered was the dementia tax, right? They need they know that they need to have something they can point to in the debates, and I think that's one of them. Yeah, and obviously Labour's policy is is is much more is much more radical. I think the other thing to say is that it's also just shows that like the left's argument is winning on all of these issues because actually it's because of that pressure from campaigns, from the movements that you've seen this shift towards us, actually. And I think that is why some of the stuff that happened in conference, particularly around work, it becomes even more important. Like if the Tories say, oh, we're going to do a £10 minimum wage as well, then it's really important. Labour says, well, not only are we going to give you a £10 minimum wage, or let's say more, you know, there are some people who are saying that should be higher now. I think manual quarters and the TSA said it should be 15 pounds an hour now. But actually, the four day week, right? Because it's not just saying that, like, you know, we're going to make work pay. We're going to make there's going to be less work to do basically. So if you are in a job that pays minimum wage, you should actually be working the least amount of hours because you're doing some kind of service that is probably less enjoyable. It might not be very high skill or creative. You should be working this as well. So I think that four day week offer definitely needs to be targeting that kind of section of society that the Tories are really trying to get to, I think. I mean, I think what's specific about Tory policy since Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings came to power is it's not very coherent, apart from they do whatever they think might be popular. So I think that might be Labour's kind of argument going into the next general election, that only we have a new economic settlement that we can offer Britain. These guys are just offering you piecemeal, you know, retail offers here and there. The two stories at home, I can see what they're saying. It's all like aspiration. Well, is there is there a big section of the aspirational working class or middle class that want to add two stories to the house? Where can you add two stories to your house? But it's like super NIMBY, isn't it? It's like planning permission is like the sort of Tory Shire, middle England, middle class, like the bloody red tape. You know, it is familiar. They also simultaneously like the red tape. Yeah, they can now see me from the garden and sunbathe. I think this could be a danger to them because the whole point of NIMBYs is you don't want your neighbor to put two stories on the house. Because if you're an elderly couple, you don't need the extra two floors. What you like is the sun to reach your lawn. So if your neighbor just puts up two stories and you've got absolutely no recourse to stop them, I mean, I think that could potentially be risky. It's also for buy-to-let landlords. That's to be real. Two stories at a time, of course. Yeah, of course, yeah, I'm so naive. It's to increase, obviously, it's for buy-to-let landlords. It's to increase capacity basically in the rental sector. That's one way of doing it. Yeah, no, that's so true. Is it not also possibly be a sort of like squeeze middle class? They can't afford to buy a new house. And so that kind of lets them add a conservatory or whatever their loft conversion. So they can this sort of like, you can have the idea that you've now got a three-story house when you don't... Do you know what I mean? They're sort of, I don't know. Well, the problem is that if you... Because I suppose what they're trying to aim this at and where the tour is currently having a electoral problem is young adults or people who are just starting a family and want to move out of their flat and into a proper house. But you can't add two stories to your flat. I mean, if you're already living a house, if you're already living a house, you're all right to raise a family. It's people who want to move out of their flat. So if you have a top floor flat and say, Hackney, all of a sudden you can have like a... A four-floor flat! That's true, right? I mean, all of a sudden, the premium on top-floor flats would just go bananas. If you have a top-floor flat and like Shoreditch, all of a sudden you can have a house in Shoreditch. Can I also say in regards to the minimum wage stuff? You know, this shouldn't be seen as... It was rebranded as a living wage by the Tories. But £10.50 an hour, which would be... Is calculated to be 66% of the median income, which, like I said, £22,000 at the moment. 66% of that a year isn't particularly good. You know, Labour's plan to have a new Ministry of Labour, sectoral wage bargaining, et cetera, infinitely better. Like, the idea that it's somehow an achievement if somebody's earning the minimum wage, you know, this is basically keeping the wolf from the door, not much more than that. So again, the fact that the Tories are having to parade it, despite them causing the problem in the first place and they won't even come good on it in all likelihood, really speaks to the extent where they've actively neglected people's living standards for nine years. And it's crazy, actually. I don't think anybody else has ever done that before. At least with that, she had the right to buy the privatisations, which some of that fed through to working people, buying the equity and the shares, et cetera. It's crazy. But if I was like, you know, Labour or Labour activists, anyway, you'd be thinking now, right, let's make sure that we're really kind of highlighting all the strikes, all of the kind of employment organising that's happening and raising this demand of the £10 wage and showing that Labour is not just the party, you've got to wait for Corbyn to get into government, that you kind of do some organising around it now, which hasn't really happened maybe as much as it should. You know, why couldn't Momentum Phone Bank send a load of people to the next, like, cleaner strike, like any low-paid workers' strike, right? That you get this sense that we just don't announce policies, we fight for them before we get into government as well, I think could generate a bit of energy, some sort of extra-parliamentary energy, which is, I think, quite needed at the moment. We're going to move on from policy because that's not what Conservative Party Conference is really about. It's about people who are incredibly out of touch, saying extremely dumb shit on the TV. So that's what we're going to go through now. Let's start with Esther McVey. So, on the topic of housing, she is Minister of State for Housing and has obviously been getting into her new role. She's becoming an expert in the cutting edge of home design. Serially, following into path. Well, we've got to get more people going into construction full stop. But if we have this new way of doing it, 3D architects, 3D... Oh. It was a bit longer than that, but... That was the main point. When she's got 3D architects and then she says they're doing it on their computers now. So the whole point is... I'll go back to it. Are we going to go back to it? Yeah, we're going to go back to it. Let's go back from the top. The visionaries doing it with it on a computer, doing it with a whole new raft of jobs. Then lots of younger people want to come into that new arena of jobs. Serially, following... Yeah, so she's saying there's the whole new world out there in terms of home building, 3D architects, people who are doing it with it on a computer. What next? The cashier at the bank we put out of the job? We'll be getting money from just walls, I suppose there'll be a machine that dispenses cash when you put a card in. But I hear that's the thing now, too. Well, I mean, I suppose if you were to put two extra floors on your home, but it wasn't 3D, that wouldn't be particularly problematic for planning the mission, not just really... Just a frontage. Just a frontage, yeah. Like on a spaghetti Western. Yeah. Should we go for the next dumb shit that was said by a person who was out of touch? The whole mains, yeah, please do. And what's her job as well? Minister of State for Housing. She's Minister of State for Housing. It's a bit like when Dominic Cummings, when he was Brexit Secretary, was stunned to know that Calais was actually quite important when it comes to trade. Yeah. Yeah, who did I say? Cummings. I'm obsessed. And also obsessed. I meant Dominic Brown. You might not know this, but Britain is an island. Yeah. He said that. Anyway. Let's go to Andrea Ledson. He has the personality and the pizzazz to get Brexit over the line doesn't he? Yes, he does. The Tory party's faithful. Areva, I mean, either they took a lot of cough syrup that morning or they're not particularly impressed or reassured by Boris Johnson's pizzazz taking Britain out of Europe on the 31st of October. So, I mean, it's a funny bunch. There's a big contrast between the people who go to Conservative Party Conference and the people that go to Labour Party Conference. The hall looks like, I don't know, a strange place. I imagine it kind of smells of potpourri and lavender, but then a cough syrup, presumably, I don't know. It sort of looks a bit to me sort of like God's waiting room, doesn't it? They're sort of all like, they all look a little bit on their last legs. One of those women was quite young, the bald woman there. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, yeah, I mean, they don't have any ideas. Like, there's no real kind of, like the Tory membership's been hollowed out, hasn't it? And hasn't really, I don't think it's had much of a like uptake since. So, I mean, why are we surprised? These are the people that voted for Boris Johnson, right? Yeah, I mean, they also don't have to do anything. So, it's worth mentioning that at Labour Party Conference, the main action on the conference floor isn't people listening to speeches and shadow cabinet members pretending to be really up to date with modern technology. It is people passing motions, as you well know, I suppose, because that's what you were doing at Labour Party Conference. Before we get on to those exciting motions from Labour Party Conference, what is really hanging over this year's Conservative Party Conference is Boris Johnson's scandals. So, there were two of them. No, they're not really related actually. So, one is Gropy Johnson. So, it came out that two decades ago, or at least it's been alleged that two decades ago, at a meal, I think it was at a meal, wasn't it? He put his hand on someone's upper thigh. He's denied it. But, you know, other people on the front bench have said they've got no reason to disbelieve Charlotte Edwards. I mean, neither we. But obviously, his outriders have been going out trying to defend his actions. Now, the cabinet members, the front bench, have tended to have kept to, look, we've got no reason to disbelieve Boris Johnson. We're not gonna speak about this any further. But there was one outrider. This is an ex-staffer to David Cameron. He was Chief of Staff in the Shadow Education Ministry when David Cameron was there. He went a little bit further. So, we're gonna go to that video there. I do believe the victim. That's remarkable. So, you don't believe any more in the presumption of innocence. You don't believe that people get anything more than a trial by media and someone like you who won't even look at me saying that someone's definitely guilty. It does have previous though. No, hang on. This is, look, the late Alan Clark said, how do I know my advances are unwanted until I've made them? How do I know my advances are unwanted until I've made them? How do I know my advances are unwanted until I've made them? So, that was Alex Dean, who is a Conservative commentator, ex-Chief of staff to David Cameron. How do I know my advances are unwanted until I've made them? That's how he's talking about workplace harassment. He's a lawyer as well, right? Is he? On his Twitter, it said he's a sort of like PR guy. I don't know if he... I think you may have a law background, but what he's talking about is a criminal offence. You know, it's a criminal offence to do what he's sort of justifying. So, that's kind of a bit surprising. And also, he's referring to Alan Clark. I believe Alan Clark was having an affair with not just a woman, but also two of her daughters at one point. So, it's hardly the paragon of esotic virtue and modesty. But, you know, I mean, I think the thing with that story, the Charlotte Edwards story is most people won't care because it was 20 years ago. And it's a bit like Trump in that regard, you know? People say, oh, you saw some of the sort of... It's shocking to hear it because obviously people, we don't agree with it, but there was a Voxpot with an older lady and she's like, well, if it had happened so long ago, why didn't they come forward earlier? And so, I think, you know, how much would that wash through? But then at the same time, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 on the back of white women, majority of whom voted for him over Hillary Clinton. And I find it very hard to believe that Boris Johnson would be able to mimic that. And so, I think there is also... On the one hand, I don't think this is like a game changer that's gonna end his political career. On the other hand, I do think that there's a propensity for people to overcompensate and say, this has no importance whatsoever. I think clearly amongst female voters who already were more likely to vote for Labour anyway, they did so in the last election. Bame women, obviously in particular, but white women as well. I think, you know, you can't win a majority if half population doesn't like your prime minister. And that's the situation Boris Johnson finds himself in. So it's more substantial than perhaps some of us are saying, but it's not the deal on an end all. So Toby Young, also, so this was another Tory outrider. Toby Young, who was put in charge of... What was he put? He was put on the board. Office for National Students. Yeah, exactly. Until he had to resign after his views on eugenics. Yeah. And all women as well. Because loads of stuff was pulled out of him talking about, like, Carol Walderman's tits and just horrible. Like, that's what I mean. It's that kind of like... It's that locker room, old boys. It's not even locker room, is it? It's the old boys' smoking club, isn't it? Basically, of them sitting around and like, oh, you know, one person once said, if you make an advance and, you know, they reject whatever. It's just this sort of like trap. Do you know what his commentary was on the Boris Johnson Charlotte Edwards case? No. So this was, I think it was yesterday at the fringe. He said, people complained if Boris didn't put his hand on their knee during lunch. It's just gross, isn't it? Yeah, that's the other issue, which in a way is more, I suppose substantial in a way because it's proven and it is political corruption. When Johnson was mayor of London, a woman, it appears he was dating, although he says he was just going there for technology lessons. Jennifer Arcuri, she received public money and access to trade missions. And Johnson did not declare any interest. So this, I mean, this looks provable and really fucking bad, Aaron. I think the thing is as well with Toby Young, who by the way, also went, he literally wrote about this in print media about A, dealing drugs to people, but B, he also, he's written, admitted to sexually assaulting a lesbian woman because he dressed up as a woman. And he dressed up as a trans woman. I don't know how he wrote it, obviously he didn't put it in that kind of language. And then he ended up kissing a gay woman. And again, that's sexual assault. He might not see it as that, but it is. And I think the idea that this is somehow like, oh, this is behavior from 30, 40 years ago. I don't think it is. 30, 40 years ago, if you, it was obviously a lot worse than it is now, but there was also an unwritten code of ethics between men, because it was incredibly patriarchal. But if you groped somebody's daughters or, wife or even their ex or whatever, they're still friends, leg like that, there were consequences. The idea that there weren't consequences for this kind of behavior, obviously it was not through the legal system, like it should be, and hopefully increasingly is going forward. But the idea, I just don't, I think these people don't think rules apply to them. And actually 30, 40 years ago, people did think that rules apply to them. If you tried to kiss somebody's girlfriend, they'd probably punch you in the face, that kind of thing. And I think people like Toby Young, people like Boris Johnson, come from a world where they don't think there are consequences for them, whatever they do. And so I think they are quite not unique, but... That's interesting. So it's not just a generation thing. No, I think it's a class thing. It's also a class elite thing. But I think there's kind of separating out what Boris Johnson did and has been doing and sort of like the general misogyny that surrounds those kind of comments. And that obviously needs to be called out by all of us. And then there's like an understanding of what actual political impact that's gonna have. And I think that it is probably quite, I think Erin's right, it is probably quite limited. Like, you know, I think you said before about sort of the Trump and Berlusconi, like the moral outrage on its own is not gonna be the thing which will win Labour the next election or be the downfall of Boris Johnson. Now that's not to say we shouldn't say that we stand with Charlotte's Edwards as somebody who has like made this claim, obviously, and that we believe her, that has to be done absolutely. But I think that it's naive to think that this kind of, yeah, a sort of morality, personal attack on Boris Johnson is really gonna have that much impact. I mean, don't rely on it. That's the message, isn't it? Because it's not like the Democrats lost the presidential election in 2016 because they brought up the fact that Donald Trump had said he wanted to grab women by the pussy, et cetera. It's not that they should have been silent on that. It's that they shouldn't have just assumed that that was gonna deliver them the election victory. And I think- It was the entire thing, yeah, yeah. Do you think there is a danger that Labour are falling into that? And I wanna bring up one more issue before we get onto a bolsheet in which is civility. This is very much related. So this has exploded as a story over the last week. And it is one which I think it's had genuine cut through in the sense that I do a bit of talk radio and people are calling up and getting super angry about it from both sides or when you listen to LBC as well. I mean, it seems to be something which has really captured the imagination basically because everyone can have an opinion on it. Is it okay to call something the surrender act, for example? And I mean, that's, there are many Labour front benches who are trying to make this the issue that Boris Johnson is whipping up hatred. I think there's something to it, but I'm also worried about it. You're shaking your head. What do you think about the civility debate? I suppose you work in a secondary school. You're probably always telling your kids to be civil to each other and moderate their language, aren't you? Yeah, I mean, yeah, obviously to an extent. I mean, but then at the same time, I just think it's such a sort of liberal hysteria. Like it's just a kind of, and also I think it just, it's so easily turned against the left, right? It's one of those things that today it's okay that we call Boris Johnson out for his language. But then, you know, when Pfizer Shaheen went on politics live and called Boris Johnson a twat, I want to be able to do that. Like without someone being like, that's not a very civil thing to say. And actually like, you know, sometimes particularly with this sort of like depth of anger in this country at the moment after 10 years of austerity, 30 years in neoliberalism, people, ordinary working people express their anger in very, very clear and passionate ways that might not come across as civil. And this idea of civility is very eaten debating, you know, Oxford and eaten debating chamber. You know, it's just, I don't personally think it sort of resonates. And actually we could have spent the last week talking about, you know, 9,000 jobs lost to Thomas Cook and the 29 million that their bosses took. And we spent a week talking about civility. Like this is, I mean, they might be talking about something LBC. I mean, they talk about all sorts of things in LBC, but like, I just don't think that the Labour Party should have been really pushing this as a line. I think putting out videos of Ed Miliband being like, we are not such war, you know, you know, like we sort of are, like this is class war, isn't it? Like, you know, in this country, there has been that class war. And I think we're sort of, we're distracting with this, with the civil, with the discussion over civility. And I think it will be to our own demise in the long run, actually. Yeah, I think there was one, one example of this was with the, was it a banner drop at Tory party conference? Yeah, exactly. The charity's killed 130,000 people, time to sort of level the numbers, whatever. Stupid thing to do. Distracts from the really important stuff to talk about, Thomas Cook workers being laid off, you know, stagnant wages for people, the Tories letting down, you know, the British public when it comes to public services, Brexit, everything you name it. But at the same time, it was really interesting that Joe Swinson, a lot of Tories, obviously, but media commentators who are purportedly progressive or left wing, didn't say the 130,000 numbers isn't true. You know, that was actually just accepted as correct, which it is, by the way, because it was in the BMJ, but they say, oh, this is so appalling, and it's so coarse. I know you pretty disagree with me. I mean, I think it was dumb. No, no, no, no, let me finish. Politically, it was ridiculous. It was stupid. Legally, it's probably incitement, but it is strange how we have a political or a media class, which is more eager to talk about that than to talk about the first bit. Or as surely you could say, well, who wrote that? Do we know? Is that kind of anger justified? Where would it come from? If it is justified, what do you do about it? If it isn't justified, why not? That isn't the conversation. You're trying to contextualize something, right? 130,000 people died as a result of government policy. What media's meant to do is provide context and to explain that to a wider audience. But instead, it was almost like, just say no on Grange Hill in the 1980s, but for the public at large, and to not get angry about politics. People can get as angry as they like about politics as long as they're, you know, within the parameters of the law, right? As long as you don't go around assaulting people or harassing them or, you know, launching a campaign of intimidation, if I go to somebody's door and they say, I don't like Jeremy Corbyn, they slam the door in my face, that's politics, right? And if somebody equally says, I'm not gonna talk to a Tory activist, because, you know, I've had to go to food banks because of you, I hate you, that's, again, that's politics. And I find the whole thing very dangerous ground for Labour because it takes off, you know, it takes us off exactly where we need to be, which is people's material needs, their interests. Home ownership, wages, their job, their working hours, their elderly care, their kids' schools, that's what they really care about. You know, they might not want incivility, but it's not, it doesn't really matter. It's here today, gone tomorrow. Yeah. I mean, I agree on this. I mean, I just think you shouldn't threaten. I mean, it is threatening, isn't it, to have like some hanging or that. It's illegal. It's illegal. You'll be next. I mean, I presume that's the level of playing field. Yeah, it would be incitement. And do we know who did it? No, we've got no idea who did it. But I mean, there is a discourse on the left which is sort of to say that it is legitimate because the cause is righteous. And why I think that's super dangerous is going to like bite the left in the arse is because you really want to mix up the issues of death threats and righteousness of a political argument. Because if you're a Brexiteer, you can say, I'm angry that the verdict hasn't been delivered that I voted for two and a half years ago. But if they make death threats, whether or not you think their anger is righteous, do you really want to mix up those two questions? Like I think, no, just draw a very strict red line, which just to say that politics is brutal, politics is a battle, but we draw a line at threats of violence, whether it's done by the left or the right. I don't see the problem. Which I think it's fine, but that happened after the debate had already started around civility. Oh, totally. I mean, that wasn't fine, that was a stupid thing to do. And there's plenty of untasteful political acts. When it comes to private schools, for example, class war, there was this video of class war, the group going to Eaton and basically shouting at teenagers, they're Eaton students. And it's just like, come on, at the end of the day, these are 14 year olds. So obviously your message isn't going to come through. And so the thing is, the problem with the civility argument is it's just like, it's just a constant policing of language and a hollowing out of politics, which I think is basically what you're saying. So yeah, I think it's a bit of a dead end. It does this thing as well, which I think is really fundamental to liberal politics, where it elevates sort of discursive politics as like the primary form of politics. So it's like, you know, on the left, we, you know, a sort of pastiche of the left is, you don't really care about sort of labor unions, but you care about if you use a word like, oh, I've called you an idiot. Somebody might say that's an ablest word. Why would you ever do that to me? Somebody might say, you could argue it's an ablest word. I think, you know, it's used so often. Is it idiot? Some people say it is, right? But the point is it's used so often in daily parlance. I mean, yeah, it's about the intention, isn't it? So, and I think there is this weird thing with liberal politics, but elevating the discursive. And I think, you know, the left has to be very, very worried about that, whether it's coming from the center as it is here, or whether it's coming from the sort of more online left milliers, which have been emergent since the crisis. Yeah, it's a really stupid thing. Politics, if you're focused around words, and that goes back, I guess, to the Trump-Johnson stuff, you know, the stuff that Trump says, that's not gonna win you an election if you say Trump said a bad word. It's not gonna win you an election. You might lose him some votes, but it's not gonna win you an election. I mean, the one thing I, I mean, I think there is one argument that can be made about Boris Johnson and that strategy. I'm not 100% sure about it, but I think there's something to it, which is, is it worth it? So obviously to say, obviously there will be a lot more hostility and a lot more anger in the country, and there was an MP who was violently killed three years ago. And that is partly because people do see some people as traitors, et cetera, et cetera. And whilst I don't think it's particularly credible to say that words like surrender are unacceptable in politics, and I think that when most people hear that, they sort of say like, really? So it seems kind of fine to me. I don't think it's a particularly accurate description of that particular bill, but I do think you can make the argument which is that Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have come up with a strategy, which is that they will get us out of the European Union on the 31st of October at all costs. And it's them who've obsessed about this date. And it's because they've obsessed about this date that they have to, you know, use any means possible anger in the country and use that anger to threaten MPs to vote for their cause. And I think threaten MPs to vote for their cause, to try and whip, is it worth, is it, is this worth it just to leave on the 31st of October? I mean, he could have also had a strategy where he says, okay, look, I've lost this round. Let's try and win a majority and we can go out on the 31st of January. But he was so obsessed about this date and there has been, you know, social consequences. But yeah, I think you have to move it away from words because I think people listen to the radio and there's someone saying, you can't say something. I was on five live the other day, there was a Labour MP who was calling in and saying, you know, like it's so this, you know, the language used it so hostile. And then he was like, yeah, but you, you called Boris Johnson a liar. Can you call Boris Johnson a liar? And she was like, oh, well, you know, and she was really tiptoeing around it. It's like, of course you can fucking call Boris Johnson a liar. I mean, the amount of, if you've got yourself into a position in an argument where you're uncomfortable about where you can call Boris Johnson a liar, bonkers. Look, it goes back to what we were talking about in Tuskegee a week or two ago, like the Bernie Sanders pivot. Yeah. Which means like, is there no instability in politics? So you go, I don't think there is. But here's the thing. This is what really matters to most people watching this. I'll tell you what's uncivil, is the fact that they can't afford to pay for their kids' school uniforms. It's the fact that kids- People would respect that a lot more. Kids go to schools and they're hungry. Quite a few, you know, millions of children across the country. People can't afford to get the bus to work so they walk and they're worried about maybe being late or they're shopping in pound shops when they used to shop at the supermarket. Like that, and people go, yeah, that's fucking right. How is it? But the point is that the pivot doesn't mean you dismiss it because you do say, and what Bernie Sanders is good at, you say like, I do think that there are MPs who are receiving death threats and obviously there was an MP that was killed and this is incredibly important. And I do think probably people should tone down their language, especially when it comes to the 31st of October, because to me it just doesn't seem worth it, all this hostility just for this arbitrary day. But the real issue in this country, and then you move. So you sort of cover it and pay enough respect to the people that are upset about this and then swift. And what we're having is Labour MPs phoning up and chatting for 10 minutes about whether or not you're allowed to say liar or not. But I think also just one final thing on this is that like, I think we had to be really clear that Jo Cox was killed by a fascist. Like she wasn't killed because of uncivil language. You know what I mean? This was somebody who, yeah. And I think we had to be really like, separate out what those two things are. Because I think if you lied to the two, you then basically, you sort of don't really get the full weight of what fascism is and what actually happens to Jo Cox. And I think it becomes a little bit like cheap to bring the two together. That anytime anyone says anything like a bit off color in politics, you can say, oh, but Jo Cox. Like, no, this is, you know, I think, I think it's just careful to... I mean, Aisha has a reek of once I was chatting to her before doing politics live and she was saying, oh, because you know, there was the fire engine left outside. What's her name? Joan Ryan's office in Parliament. Oh, God, yeah. Which wasn't me. Chew Chew. Which wasn't me, right? And she said, and I can take the argument. You can say it's a bad idea or whatever. But then she started equating it to Jo Cox. And I said, look, somebody's left a Thomas the Tank Engine or whatever it was outside her office. The man that killed Jo Cox was a committed fascist. He owned a Reichsadler in his house, right? You know, this is like the kind of the iconic symbol of Nazi Germany, the Third Reich. He had like, you know, copies of Mein Kampf. He read, you know, voraciously from like white supremacist far right texts, manuals, journals. So the idea that somebody who's done a stupid thing that's been posted on Twitter is somehow commensurate with an ideologically committed fascist is fucking nuts. I mean, I suppose the thing was that they were saying, so the MPs were standing up in Parliament saying, we are receiving death threats and they include phrases that you have coined or phrases that you're using. So it is somewhat different. But yeah, I think we all agree that focusing the next general election on what words Boris Johnson can and cannot use or even what Pfizer hasn't touched, not to diminish the importance of it, but that it's not gonna be the next general election. The equivalence is really dangerous because the point is, right now, British police are openly saying that the biggest terrorist around this country is white supremacists in the far right. So I think the idea, and people say lots of dumb stuff from all sides of politics, they might even get in physical altercations, be arrested, whatever, that's one thing. But we have a growing threat of people actually very seriously trying to hurt or kill people they politically disagree with and these people are white supremacists. And I think that sort of equivocation between these two things is really dangerous because it lets them off the hook. Let's move on to abolishing eating. I know we agree, we disagree with you Michael. We're going to abolishing eating. But first of all, you're watching Tiske Sauer, you're watching Navarra Media. As you know, this is only possible because of your kind support. Please go to support.navarramedia.com. And if you do not already, please donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month or if after the next section, you decide to not send your child to private school, please donate the equivalent of one year's fees a year, I suppose. I think on average it's 15K, isn't it? It's 17K now. If you choose not to send them to Eaton, you can send us the whole 42K. Yeah, lovely. What Eaton should be very much appreciated. 42K, 42K on average. Yeah. So yeah, please do that. Anything else? I suppose like the video. It means more people see it. Keep your comments coming. We'll go to questions at the end and give us some one-off donations because this is going to be one of our last Tiske Sowers filmed in this studio. I know you're going to miss the shipping container in Burmesey, but we're going to move closer to the tube. It's going to be more gorgeous. The heating's going to be better. I mean, it's quite nice temperature now because it's like autumn, but in summer we're streaming with sweat and in winter it's freezing. So it's going to be gorgeous in this new place. Very temperate. So donate us some money. Let's go on to abolishing Eaton. So you launched this campaign. Tell us why. Yeah, so I launched, also worked and launched the campaign initially with two other people, Stephen Longdon, who is a teacher in Manchester and Saul Gamso, who's an academic in Durham. And then we were kind of joined a little bit after that by Rob Pool, who's another state school teacher. So this is definitely a campaign set up by educators and by teachers, which I think is quite unique in the Labour Party's history of these campaigns. And I guess there's two kind of parallel reasons why I think the campaign's important. There's the kind of educational side of it about making the case why it is fundamentally unjust that we spend 300% more on a private school education than on state school students like mine. And so obviously they end up getting better academic outcomes and then they go on to dominate the universities and then they go on to, and that's their kind of passport then into the top professions in society. And actually then what that says about our democracy, because actually if you're a state school student like mine in Newham, you're statistically less likely to end up in politics, in the media, in law. So if you've got any ideas that challenge the status quo, you're just not gonna get there, right? So you get this kind of reproduction of the establishment. So there's kind of the educational part of it. And then there's the sort of more political Labour Party part of it, which is really that I think we were thinking about, you know, the Labour Party is having a tricky time the last couple of years. And I think that Boris Johnson, particularly with trying to frame things as the people versus parliament, we were trying to think, well, what can we do in education that very much makes Labour again against the establishment, against the elites? And I think that in some ways the Ebola sheet and as a hashtag has been perfect because it basically just allows us to say over and over again, look, these are a bunch of posh boys, these are entitled old boys network, you know, doing the best for each other and sort of quite neatly reframed the many, not the few message for Labour. So it's kind of had two like parallel like projects almost within it, I think, both important. But yeah. I think that's why it's been so popular because kind of people have recognized both, right? Right. People have always thought that private schools or people on the left have always thought that private schools are completely unjust and a ridiculous archaic inheritance from our feudal past. But at the same time, people are desperate to talk about class war again instead of Brexit. So they're like abolishing it. Yes, fuck yeah. Let's do that. Well, some people got into the Labour Party to fight on these sort of issues, right? Not to fight on Brexit. And actually the thing about saying abolishing private schools rather than saying, let's tax them a bit more is that it makes the fight so massive. Do you know what I mean? Like it makes the fight so big that it genuinely means that, you know, on the Monday of conference, it was on the front page of the times, right? Rather than the sort of discussion over composite, you know, over Brexit, what was on the front page? Or what Tom Watson has said. Or what Tom Watson has said. Something internal that, to be honest, we love talking about because we love little internal Labour Party gossip, but it shouldn't be the outside message. It shouldn't be on the front of the time. Right, exactly. Tell me, let's go on to the concrete demand in a moment, but first of all, how did you sort of practically organize this? You wrote a model motion in which you got some CLPs to pass, those local Labour parties, constituency Labour parties to pass. Yeah. Is that what happened? Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, to be totally honest with you, when four months ago, me and Stephen and soul sat down and came up with a hashtag and wrote a motion, we didn't quite expect the level of attention that it would get four months on. So we wrote this motion. Lots of it really was more about the principle around how we felt about private schools. We are not coming from think tank backgrounds and things like that, but some of the other motions that went to Labour Party had a lot of kind of the policy work, went in behind it before it got there. Ours was very much just like a sort of like outraged cry, like just get rid of them. So we have these kind of three resolve sections in the motion about what we do, which is removing charity tax status, limiting the percentage of students who can go to university places, and then the sort of most radical end is redistributing endowments, properties and investments, which the media have called seize the assets, which I kind of happy with. Well, it kind of is that. I mean, how else would one redistribute the assets of privates, which are huge, right? Because they've got, I mean, because they're very old institutions often and they've got lots of property and lots of land. And I presume, I don't know if Eaton probably doesn't make a profit. Is it held in trust? How does it work? Well, they're charities. So they don't make a profit. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, Eaton has got 438 million in investments and properties that has come from the historic endowments. And, you know, those endowments were set, were kind of put there in place from sort of wealthy benefactors for the education of poor scholars. So poor boys basically, and they've obviously got this massive sort of windfall now that's sitting in the coffers of Eaton. Now we don't actually know how much all the other private schools have because they are these kind of secret fiefdoms and they don't really publish like in their accounts, like how much they're worth and things. So one of the things that we've said is would be a sort of transitionary thing as we'd say, well, let's do a really like deep and detailed audit of like how much these private schools have in terms of assets. And then we'll know how much we're getting when we seize them. Let's go through them one by one, show sort of like why this is a good idea, how it would work, what would be the barriers to it. So that obviously the one which seems most straightforward and I presume probably will be in the next Labour Party manifesto is to remove the charitable status of private schools. So the charitable status at the moment means they don't have to pay VAT. Yeah, so it's VAT, they also don't have to pay business rates. Yeah, and they get a number of other tax privileges, but it's like they, yeah, so they get these kind of basically these privileges. And I think that it's, like everybody agrees with that. You know, when we kind of go- I think even Michael Gove proposed something similar. Yeah, Michael Gove, Layla Moran, like who's the Lib Dem Education Secretary. You know, there is consensus over this thing about our charitable status. Actually, Theresa May wanted to do it before 2017 and then obviously all the wind was taking out the sails and she couldn't do anything. But so, you know, so for us, we kind of said, well, obviously we're going to do the thing that's already common sense, but the point of Labour should be to push further than this, which is why we had the other demands in there. And if that, let's be pessimistic for now, if that's the only one that gets implemented, how impactful would that be? Presumably that raises the cost for parents of sending their kid to private school, which is going to reduce the amount of, which means more of them are going to send their kid to state school. Is that the idea? I mean, the thing, the reason that we are kind of a bit wary of just dealing with the charity status is that basically it would really affect the smaller private schools. And actually you probably see, if you add a VAT to school fees and you took the charity status, then you'd probably see the smaller independent schools close. So that brings those students into the state sector. It brings their kind of social capital, their cultural capital and their literal capital. Because what we know is that in state schools with kind of parents from sort of middle class backgrounds, they tend to raise more money. They sit on governing boards. They have much more vested interest in improving the schools themselves. And they're outraged, right? It's like, why people feel so invested in NHS? Because everyone uses the NHS, middle class people use it as well. So it obviously expands the pool of people who did that. The problem with removing the charity status, that is not going to touch the most elite private schools. It's not going to touch Eaton. It's not going to touch Wellington. It's not going to touch Halebury. And actually, we're trying to make an argument about not just about education about society and about privilege in society and how that privilege is entrenched and how it's reproduced. And the charity, the charitable status doesn't really deal with those things. So, yeah, I mean, if at this point, we kind of feel that like the horse is bolted on abolition. Do you know what I mean? Whatever, well, like no matter what goes in the manifesto now, like when Angela Reina goes on TV or Corbyn goes on TV, people are going to be like, oh, yeah, but you really want to abolish them, don't you? And she won't really be able to say no to that now. So in some ways, because of this bigger picture of the reframing, many not the few thing, I guess we're maybe a bit more relaxed about what goes in the manifesto because the principle is there and I don't think you can kind of put that back in its box now. We've got a clip of Reina in a moment, and we'll talk about which of these are actually going to get adopted in the Labour Party manifesto. First of all, I just want to finish the free elements of it. So the 7% cap on university admissions, I mean, that's a really ambitious one. What would be the consequence? I mean, to be honest, if that happened, private schools would just collapse in a moment, right? Because the whole reason that people send their kid to private schools, because they're more likely to get into Oxbridge or an elite university. If only 7% of kids at Eaton could go to Oxbridge, then you wouldn't send them there. Right. Yeah, and again, that is like policy as principle because that allows us to make an argument about elite universities as well, right? Because our motion makes it very clear. We're talking about private schools, but we're opposed to hierarchy, elitism and selection at all levels of education. So that makes us that point very, very clearly. And people know that's wrong. Every year, when Oxbridge does its university admissions, there's another thing that says how few BAME students they've taken, how few students they've taken from private schools. I mean, practically you could make it work because actually the state still invests in universities and they could say, well, we'll withdraw our research funding if you don't implement this. That's the big issue. That's what I was going to go on to because you might have another situation there. Presumably, unless some new laws are created which have some sort of implications on civil rights or the rights of organizations to act independently, this is going to be based on state funding. And you could imagine that the elite people that run Oxford and Cambridge say, fuck this, we've got enough in endowments to ignore this government dictate. So we're going to become completely private organizations, fund ourselves, rely more heavily on international philanthropic capital in the same way that Harvard or Princeton do. And you just get Oxbridge detaching themselves from the state and becoming even less accountable than they already are. Is that a risk? I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like the same thing like people saying, oh, you know, well, they're just going to move Eton to Ireland or they're just going to move Eton to France. You know, there's all these things that obviously the establishment is going to try and do whatever it can to sort these things. I do think in some ways like, Oxbridge particularly has got too far down its sort of woke like attempts that they try to say that they're trying to diversify, they try to say that they're in the state. I think it would be quite hard for them to just be like, well, we don't care anymore actually. We're just going to continue educating the privileged like we were before. So yeah, I mean, yeah, it's possible. And the final one, redistribution of endowments, properties and investments. How does that, I mean, I can see the argument which is that there's all these, and I make the argument about that like Oxbridge people say, we should just ignore it. And then the whole privileged nature of it would go away. But no, it's the reason that rich people want to go to Oxbridge isn't just for the networks and for the prestige. It's because they have resources thrown at them. And we do want to get those resources out into the education system at large. But how do we do it? Well, like I said, I think- It's somewhat aspirational. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say this is on the aspirational end of our policy agenda. I mean, I do think that doing, I do think that firstly, doing this audit of the private school to stay so that you do get a sense of like how much it's worth. Because I think in some ways, it's not just practically challenging, it would be quite politically challenging at the moment. But you could kind of raise the stakes of like look how much these private schools have by doing this audit. And then you might be able to get to a state where it's politically more possible and then you can start answering questions about practicalities. Now, yeah, I mean, like I said, it's more like policy as principle at the moment rather than in practice. And so the thing is about education is it's slightly different from like, the new economy organizing that's happening and the new economy thinking in that the left doesn't really to pay that much attention to education. We don't have think tanks. Like this is kind of like state school teachers, like trying, you know, just being like, well, this seems like quite a good idea in theory. Like can somebody like do a paper on it now, please? Like, and we do, and you know, I do think we need that. I do think that there needs to be kind of more serious like policy thought, but also theoretical thought on the left about education in general, which would definitely help us. I think quite a lot. You mentioned think tanks. Would you like to start an educational think tank? Well, I mean, I think that, I mean, right, look at what Commonwealth's done, you know, look at what autonomy's done that these are the sort of new burgeoning ones. And then you've obviously got Neff and things like that. And actually, IPPR, exactly. And you know, they have had a huge impact on what we've seen at conference, right? And in some ways, like, you know, the four day week is probably the most likely thing of all of the demands to get in the manifesto because there's been all this policy work done on it before. And that is the reality of politics at the moment, right? There's this kind of like the think tanks, they do the lobbying and then almost like conference, like rubber stamps it like as an issue. So yeah, I do think it would be really good to have a kind of education think tank or at least one of the think tanks like doing some education work, you know, like whether it's starting off alone. Would you like to do that? Because obviously the power of this is it's come from people in the sector who are workers. I mean, and where arguably obviously they've got their material interests of policy exchange, kivitas, whatever these different right wing think tanks, obviously they're never going to write policy we like. But there's also a structural critique which is, you know, they don't know the sector, they're not teachers, they're not workers who actually have to do this stuff. So is that something that you would be opposed to? If somebody said, hey, Holly, look, here's loads of money, go start an education think tank. You think that's a good idea you'd want to be involved? I mean, for me, I kind of, at the moment, I like having like one foot in reality. Like I like the fact that like I do Navarra, I've done Navarra today and tomorrow I go and teach Romeo and Juliet because I think that for me, I mean, one of the issues I think, and this is sort of a broader point about Corbinism is that all of the people who came into Corbinism through the social movements, the anti-war movement, the student movement, the Palestine movement, the anti-austerity movement now work in politics. There's very few people left sort of not like in the sort of traditionally political world. And I'm not saying that. Certainly in London, right? Yeah, yeah, in London. Very rare. Yeah, yeah, it's very rare. And so I think that for me personally, I quite like having that like one foot in both still at the moment. Now, if someone said I'm setting up an education think tank and we want to do some workers inquiries with teachers and we want to, you know, get a load of you in your own union because obviously I'm, you know, really active in the National Education Union and we want to do these workers inquiries and we really want to involve you like as your voice in that process. And yes, but I do think there's got to be some people who kind of retain that foot in the grassroots and yeah, in reality. A few more questions. Yeah. What's the NU you think about this? National Education Union, your union. Yeah, it's a tricky one. It is tricky because we represent independent school members as well. So the NU is like the old NUT merged with a union called the ATL and the ATL was the more right-wing union and it had the independent school workers. So I think it will be a challenge. Definitely, I think that when it comes to the NUT section and I'm sure probably like most of the leadership, they agree in principle, obviously, that private school inequality is wrong, but obviously they're going to be in quite, it's quite a contentious issue and it will be kind of making that argument, you know, sort of like the, you know, people who work in nuclear power plants and, you know, and trying to make the argument, yeah, we work in the system but we would rather people have in more socially useful jobs than, you know, those kind of people who work. Well, they're still teachers, just they teach kids who didn't pay to go to the schools. Right, exactly, exactly. So private school teachers move into state sectors but, you know, it is difficult because private school teachers' conditions are better than state school teachers' conditions. I mean, my feeling about that is we shouldn't be wary of that. We should just be saying, well, we obviously should be lifting the conditions of state school teachers. Like we obviously should be paying them more, giving them way more autonomy, raising the status of them and things like that. But yeah, I mean, we will be from this point onwards, like trying to kind of move this forward in our union is going to be a next step of us in the campaign because we're all NEU members. So trying to think about what that looks like. But yeah, I mean, in Finland, that was an issue. The kind of the conflict of those who were teachers in the independent sector and the state sector. Can you tell us about Finland? Yeah. Finland is always held up as the example because people say this is a bit extreme. Look, take away the tax privileges but to abolish private schools seems like, you know, an infringement on some rights that we normally consider to be kind of normal in liberal capitalist democracies. But Finland did it. I think that the only country that we know of that did abolish private schools, how did that work? Yeah. What did it look like in practice? Yeah, so I think it was a phasing out and it was also an integration. And I think that is, I mean, people accuse us of like, oh yeah, well you're saying integration but you do really mean abolition. It's like, well, no, what we're saying is that those private schools just become state schools. And the way that happened in Finland, actually it's happened in the UK as well, Liverpool College, actually quite an old private school has actually now become an academy and that is just a sort of simple transfer of where the funding then comes to the local authority and those teachers move in. Now, Finland did this over quite a long period of time. It definitely wasn't like, you know, kind of an overnight thing. And the other thing to say about Finland as well is that obviously Finland has a much narrower class based society and much narrower inequality as well, which obviously makes the process like quite a lot easier. But we would say, well, we don't think that like abolishing private schools is going to end inequality on its own anyway. So yes, obviously we think we should also narrow inequality which is also going to be reflected by kind of integrating private schools. So yeah, I think, yeah, definitely look at Finland but I think keep in mind that that's a wider societal change as well. Max Shanley says, Finland is the real life Neverland. Which I think is kind of true apart from the weather. There's a guy that's saying, like, oh, get rid of all the good schools. Like, I mean, it's just such a lazy way of looking at it. If you think about Britain's labour market. Don't insult the audience, Aaron. These are our benefactors. Maybe he donates to us, I don't know. Right, that's it, subscription cancelment. It is a lazy way to look at it because I'm being deadly serious. I've met lots of very unintelligent people from public schools who go to top universities and it's because they learn how to, they basically get very good at passing tests. They get very, very good at passing tests. And that's a broader criticism of the educational system more generally, but basically private schools, you pay money to do, amongst other things, learn how to gain that. And that's not good from the perspective even of an employer. Let's try and be like a progressive person who works at the CBI or the Federation of Small Businesses. You want a labour market who's intelligent, good with numbers, flexible, problem solvers, cooperative, maybe speak multiple languages. Like, no, but that's all the models of eye-back kind of student that you'd have. We don't have that here. And a big part of the reason why is this over-testing, but also like private schools is just 50% of the kids at Oxford and Cambridge are coming from these schools because they're so good at passing these tests. Does that therefore mean that 50% of the most talented engineers, doctors, teachers, the professions that are really gonna drive us forward as a civilisation? Are they really coming from those schools? Of course they're not. We're missing out on so much talent, so much human potential because of this system of just testing, testing, testing, testing, and that's what you're paying for private schools to get good at the testing, testing, testing. Not good. It holds us back as a society. I genuinely believe that. We would all benefit from getting rid of Eaton. Was it Tom Wolland who asked the question? It wasn't Tom Wolland. Don't worry, Tom. I thought it was the same. No, because he's just said, not insulted Aaron is right, and I thought maybe the powers of persuasion were still alive and well, even in this society of polarized tribes. Many people will say that, right? That's the thing. They're not the best schools. They're not the best schools. They're the schools by which people who have the ability to pay can get into university. There are some simple things that they do in private schools, which we would like to do in state schools, which is you have 20 people for a class, for example. If you put more money into a school, you will get slightly better results, which is what they do in private schools. It's not rocket science. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's loads of things. It's the smaller class sizes, definitely, because average class size in this country is 30, whereas Eaton's teaching in classes of 12 or 15. Then there's the sort of level of pastoral support that you can give to young people, you can give to children, you can give them so much more focus things on that. Then there's all the experiences that you can give them, the sort of cultural experiences, the alumni experiences. So yeah, I mean, there's like, and obviously if we had Eaton as a state-run institution, we can barely find spaces to run, to have FE colleges and special needs schools, right? Like I teach in a school in Newham and tomorrow afternoon, I will be teaching year nine in a corridor because we don't have enough classrooms in order to teach that lesson. So just on a sort of material like space, like we would, you know, it would bring so much more in, I think. So should we take some, I mean, if you've still got more questions there and we'll go to those as well, but I want to take some audience questions as we go. Also, we've had some great super chats during this show. That will go straight towards our moving fund. As you probably know, we launched our fundraiser, one of donations to try and move studio just a bit down the road, to be honest, but it's going to be a nicer space. It's going to be closer to the tube. We set a target of 15,000 pounds and we got that within about three days. So thank you very much for your generosity. We were very moved, tears were shed. But then because of the time we got it, we created a stretch goal of 25K because we want the best studio that, well, not the best studio that money can buy. I mean, that would be a bit bigger than what we can buy, but we wanted the best studio, the radical left in Britain can buy right now in 2019. So try and help us get to that stretch goal. Go to support.navaramedia.com. Let's see what questions are. Oh, oh, this is interesting. Don't trust them. What will be done to tackle the consequences of a ban on private schools? IE, families moving to catchment areas of good schools and the associated problems with this. Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is like one of the most common things that comes up, like, oh, well, you know, actually lots of state schools end up with a sort of elite catchment area by house price. There was a big piece in the Times actually saying, is it cheaper to send your child to a private school or to buy in an area of a good catchment area? Obviously, private schools are not gonna solve all inequality. Abolishing them is not gonna solve all inequality. And actually, you need to do radical things in the housing market so that you don't basically get a sort of like ghettoization of society of like poor, low quality housing and then sort of like these sort of, you know, manners basically all around one school. I mean, some people float ideas around like, you know, lossary system so that you basically don't have parents being able to gain the system so that you get a fair distribution of a sort of comprehensive intake. But I think that probably that, I think this is probably more likely to be solved like through decent housing policy in some ways than these lossary systems are quite difficult to manage. I suppose the lottery system is that there's a danger. I see the argument for it, there's a danger that that could really piss off people. Because in a way it just seems a bit arbitrary. People want to go to their local school, don't they? So you could imagine labour and outside as their policy and there's this huge scare campaign about the fact that everyone is gonna have to get a bus for two hours or an hour to get to a school when they live next door to one. So it seems like you should... I can see the logic of it, but it's got some... They tried it in Brighton and that was exactly what it was. Is that what happened? Did they have to go back on it? I don't know what they've done now, but that was definitely, it was quite controversial at the time. And I think that it definitely is solving it through progressive housing policy and trying to create more mixed communities through housing and trying to quell this property bubble which just sees inflation, inflation, inflation, like a good school comes and then property prices go up by loads. If you had something that was really trying to deal with that, I think you'd be better off. And the main thing we need to do is because mixed communities for the last 20 years have meant selling off council homes and gentrifying them into past incredibly expensive luxury homes. You can say, well, this is about integration, this is about mixed communities. If it's about integration, you have to build a big fucking council estate on the middle of Kensington High Street. I mean, integration goes both ways, which is something that, I mean, we haven't been offered and I think needs to be a stronger demand from the government. Yeah, yeah. And that one, that is a really good example. Like for example, when I was teaching Elephant and Castle for five years, they knocked down the Haygate estate and now they've put in like loads of new flats and obviously none of them have, they've met up to the quota of how many people were supposed to come back. But also like people who buy those flats don't have children either. These are people who are coming in like... Homosexuals. Yeah. Hey, that's not true. What, kids now? Yeah. It was a joke, I mean. I don't know if there's a disproportionate amount of homosexuals in the Haygate estate, even. Isn't it like... I know of a few. It's absolutely to be honest. There was like Malaysian, Chinese, like people who bought properties like Bitcoin. I mean, the first... I was about to say Malaysian and Chinese who will have kids as well, but... No, no, no. The first place that those apartments were advertised before it was even built... Yeah, people buy them as assets instead of as assets. Was in East Asia. So like the idea that this is being built for people to even live in, not even let's forget even working-class people. People who live in London, work in London, too, live in, that was not the primary aim. It's about assets that can generate an income for the owner. I'm gonna throw this question at you, Aaron. It's completely unrelated to the school's question, but somewhat related to what we were talking about earlier. Jimmy O'Keefe asked, do you think the Queen will get rid of Boris? Well, interestingly enough, Harry and Meghan are now gonna sue the Daily Mail, which is big. That's happening today. Are you gonna have a sort of segue those two together? Yeah, no, I am. Which is to say, if you look at Boris Johnson, you see Pretty Patel's speech today, for instance. Pretty Patel's speech today was like, you know, a 3G computer-generated algorithmic machine intelligence had created an artificial politician basically to synthesize all of the racist invective that these papers say all the time. And she literally was just saying with a big smile on her face. So I look at the Johnson political project really as an outgrowth of this disgusting, degenerate thing we have in this country, the tabloid media, particularly in the middle of the sun. What are they suing them for? I don't know the particulars, but the point is how it's being interpreted to the Daily Doors is basically that the House of Windsor is going to war with the tabloids, which hasn't happened before. And so maybe it won't be business as usual. Now, will the Queen be a part of that? I doubt it. Well, they went to war with one of them because the Daily Express was, I think it was the Daily Express was instrumental in the whole, well, it's called a conspiracy theory, but I don't think it's been confirmed either way. Did the royal family kill Diana? That was a Daily Express conspiracy theory. And the documentary by the dad of Lily Allen. Oh yeah. Keith Allen. I'm not going to say, I'm not going to make a judgment on who killed Diana but watch that documentary, Keith Allen. Do you know, there's- Diana, I can't read that name. If it's a Corbyn government- It's very persuasive. There are loads of people voted for Trump. This is the bit that now gets clipped up by Redraw. You know, there are loads of people voted for Trump because they thought he'd like release the files about UFOs and stuff. I think a big part of the Corbyn office should be like, I will release the files about Princess Diana's murder. And people will be like, literally they'll be like Facebook groups of like 50 year old women. 50 year old women in like fucking Telford have been like, I'm going to vote for Corbyn. And the husband's like, what? Like we've got like a, you know, gold plate and fucking private pension. I go to the golf club, you fucking hate socialists. And she's like, yes, but they're going to release the Diana fucking papers. Have you seen the documentary? It's super interesting because he sends it under. It's a really interesting model for a documentary because obviously there was a big court case in the High Court. I think it was for with Mohammed El Faiad against the Royals. And he, Keith Allen puts in a sort of mole journalist into the journalist tent. And half of the documentary is sort of reporting how the journalists don't give a shit about the facts of the matter. And they're just there kind of bored of laughing at Mohammed El Faiad. Like it's good, it's worth watching. I'm not going to comment on the truth or falsity of it because I haven't done quite enough recently just saying it's a compelling case. Gary is a bit skeptical. Gary is skeptical. But look, if we can get sort of affluent, we know that women are generally more likely to vote for Labour. If we can just get that, you know, an extra 10, 15% of more affluent, generally Tory voting women on board, this could be a really effective wedge issue. Releasing the papers and Diana's death. And David Kelly, by the way. Dr. David Kelly. I mean, really serious about David Kelly. Oh, this feels like it's cheating because it's by one of the co-founders of Abolishit and Saul Gamshu is asking, Labour has a record, so I hope you didn't plant this question before you came on because that would be very naughty. Labour has a record of pulling back from or limiting more radical education reform in government, e.g. Ellen Wilkinson and Crossland, which you might have to explain. How do we stop that from happening again? Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, we sort of like touched upon Angela Raynor and then kind of pulled back but I think it's important to... Actually, let's show that clip. Do you want to show the clip? Yeah, let's show the Angela Raynor clip before we come back to that. Can we do that, Gary? It's video four. Would you like, after five years of a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn, to have no private schools left in this country? Is that your object? I want a comprehensive state system. So no private schools at all, all of them out? Yes, I want a comprehensive state education system, and I want to stop subsidising private education, which is elitist, which entitles 7% of the population to do better than the rest that they get spent of everybody else. We have to invest in everyone's education. And would you agree with appropriating their assets as part of squeezing the might of business? Well, we've said that, obviously, we would act within the law. We've said that our social justice commission will look at the situation in regards to assets and what private schools currently have, but private schools have been subsidised by the taxpayers for far too long. This has to stop. I was actually surprised at how radical she sounded there because she was like, if you want to get rid of all private schools, integrate all private schools, and she was like, yes. Because I was surprised by that, and I thought, actually, maybe take a step back. She's saying, I would like that to happen, which doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be Labour's plan. But I mean, I suppose, yeah, answer the question that was asked in the context of that video. Do you think that Labour will recoil from the more radical elements of the policies which you have, I suppose, won on the conference forum? Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I think in some ways like the abolished Eaton proposals have been the ones that people have briefed the most heavily again. So there's been, you know, like in the new statesman, there was these things coming out, like, oh, well, we're never going to do it. This is like loony left, whatever. And you can kind of see why that is because I think people were worried about, you know, going on Andrew Martin, being asked about the seizing of assets. So we were like very pleasantly surprised when Angela went on and was like very, very clear about, you know, saying, yes, I want to do this in the first five years. Now, how that translates in practice, I don't know. Because as Sol said in the question, like Anthony Crossland in the 1960s, before he became education secretary, was very much like making the abolition of private schools his issue. And then he gets into government and he doesn't do very much about it at all. And the history of labor is basically kind of like strong words and very little action on it. You know, actually in 1945, Clement Attlee obviously created the NHS, created a massive expansion of comprehensive education. But the reason that he, they didn't touch private schools at that time is because Clement Attlee's two interests were Cricket and Halebury, his old school, right. So this kind of like beacon of the welfare state was so attached to his kind of elite public school that that was why it was never touched. And so, you know, there is a long history of inaction on this question. I do think there seems to be more sort of like momentum this time round. And there has been for quite a long time. There's been two really great books, Engines of Privilege by David Kinneson and The Posh Boys by Robert McKay. So I do think there's a sense of injustice that is building at the moment, which means action needs to be taken. I mean, Angela Rayner, not traditionally of the left, you know, she didn't vote for Corbyn first time round. She's been very loyal to Corbyn, though, in the last two years. I think partly her constituency voted leave. So I think she's kind of supported the leadership line around that question. So she's kind of been seen as somebody who's a real ally. I think that education left more broadly has been quite frustrated with her that she hasn't made huge amounts of attempts to do much on radical policy-wise. But I mean, who could disagree with her going to Andrew Maher and saying, yes, I'm going to do it in the first five years. That is huge. And if she doesn't do that, it's starting to look more difficult for her not to, basically now, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I was surprised. I did think that maybe she was like, we want that to happen. And we'll sort of encourage it to happen, but not necessarily sort of do it by dictating. Yeah. Aaron? You know, it was very... I suppose the question is, is that an effective politician or is it an effective political line? So I think Angela Rehn is the sort of politician who knows that when the party's behind a policy, when it's popular and she's going to back it, she's just going to go all in and she's just going to... Which is what you should do. You have to look decisive when you're confronted by a BBC interviewer. So I don't think she would have been anything other than that. Whenever I've seen her sort of being pushed like that by leading journalists, she's actually very good. She's always on the front foot. So to what extent does that mean she really believes in it? I don't know. But like you say, if you say that in public on television, presumably when you're in office, it's very, very difficult to backtrack. We've got some breaking news, which is one thing we like on Navarra media is when complete dickhead MPs get triggered. And one of them has been triggered this evening, which kind of relates to you because he got famous. I hadn't heard of him before he was defending the group of people in Birmingham who were protesting LGBT-inclusive education so this was Roger Godstiff, a real reactionary bastard, and he has been triggered by his CLP. So congratulations, Paul Green CLP in Birmingham. You are doing the God's work. Yeah, very well done. He was also very much a Labour first fixer. Navi talks about that obviously because people's political sort of pedigree and he's relevant if they're left-wing. Labour first fixer in the West Midlands, it's their heartland. He was voted in 2011 to be the not voted, statistically he was the laziest MP in Parliament. He was the least likely MP to turn up in 2011. So good riddance. I think they're pretty bad on that. Let's wrap up kind of soon. There's one question, it's always a risk when I ask one that I don't understand myself but maybe you will. So Coping Method asks, what are Holly's thoughts on Ken Robinson and his ideas about education reform? Do you know who Ken Robinson is? I do know who Ken Robinson is. Can you explain his thoughts before you respond to what you think about them? Yeah, so Ken Robinson basically says we should be more about creativity, that we've kind of warehouse children and have production line for a long time and that they need to respond to 21st century education. Yeah, I mean totally. He's been a sort of like a big progressive thinker and also he's got quite a good critique of the way that schools have basically followed a Victorian factory model that the creation of comprehensive schooling was to create a better workforce basically for capital and that actually we need to do something more imaginative, more exciting. So yeah, I mean there's so many things that we need to do for more of education like we need a massive transformation of our curriculum. I'm still having to teach a Michael Govian curriculum which is dense 19th century imperialism basically and Ken Robinson says, well actually why don't we have something that is trying to seek to look problem solving on some of the, let's look at the problem solving for climate change in schools or automation or whatever it might be and do that more creatively rather than this kind of very like traditional curriculum. Is this the dude with the TED talk? It's the dude with the TED talk, yeah. It's like the most watched TED talk ever. Yeah. I'll have to watch it. A final question actually. How can we standardise quality of UK comprehensive schools? I'm kind of going to read into something here which is that Labour have also announced and I think this could potentially be a risky move electorally. They've announced that they're going to abolish off-stead. So what do you think about that as a teacher? Is that risky? I mean there is an argument that off-stead has been good at raising standards in underachieving schools because it's made it more accountable to parents what's going on. How do you feel about abolishing off-stead? What would go in its place? How do we make sure that comprehensive schools are all running to a reasonable standard without it? Yeah I mean there's one other thing I despise more than private schools and it's off-stead. So like for me that's like it's quite a big deal. I mean it's going to be massively popular amongst teachers because like off-stead is the sort of dark hand always over your shoulder when no matter what you're doing in the classroom you know that the call could come and now it comes 12 hours before they come the next day they see you teach for 20 minutes and then they tell you you're good outstanding whatever. And actually it's rubbish that it's improved standards because what we know is that off-stead grades are directly correlated with socio-economic background of the students so you're more likely to find an outstanding school in middle class areas and a requires improvement school in working class areas. So I mean I think that you know Labour needs to make a very credible argument about what would replace off-stead and I think it's done that and it's basically said that the local authority will be sort of checking up on the schools and where a problem arises then you'll have an inspector that goes in to help that school where it's struggling. But if there's no kind of serious problem then like let schools you know get on with it and teach and you know and trust teachers that they are doing the best by their children. And I you know do we need to standardise every school like is what I'm going to be doing in my school in Newham going to be same as the state school in Mansfield like you know we might need to have a conversation about what we think is a right and entitlement to a curriculum and an outcome for all children in the country but actually I think you need to have kind of like community responsive schools so that you know in my school in Newham lots of students from other countries and things like that is going to be different so if you're in a school in Kent for example and I think that's okay. Let's wrap it up Aaron any final points anything you want to say. An ode to Roger Godsef. No way still I mean he still might be re-selected right. Well this is going to be really interesting because what's going to happen at this point. And in terms of if you're thinking about whether or not to re-select your MP this is actually the best time to do it. If the thing you're worried about is media or a big row with the incumbent. Some people aren't going to like this but I think basically what's going to happen is anyone who gets triggered and who you know the NEC feel comfortable replacing will get replaced by someone who the leadership like or someone who you know the powers that be within the party like so you should make a decision in your CLP completely ignore the media completely ignore if Kevin Schofield is going to say a tweet that no one's going to fucking read and if you think the NEC would give you a better MP than the one you currently have just fucking trigger them and it will all be over in two weeks. There might be a selection I think it's totally right that members demand a democratic selection because that's the right thing to do but at the same time we're going to have a snap election and I think if I were a betting man I would say that probably if you trigger your MP and you demonstrate that there's you know a groundswell of opposition to them you will get someone who's NEC imposed and you need to make a decision if that's what you prefer. It's not necessarily true I think it's what's most likely to happen and I would judge that there will be lots of people who would actually be fine with that it's in ideal but it's probably better than your shit MP it's not everyone not every MP is shit obviously in a civil the civil place that is Navarra media we have to respect that they work and they represent their constituents. If you don't think gay people should be able to get married you shouldn't be a Labour MP. Also if you do nothing but trash the party in the media then probably you're not particularly useful Labour MP and the NEC might find someone better who knows maybe they won't. In any case. My phone's on the floor so you can ask me about that and you can. Oh yeah go on sorry I took them over. There we had a little detour into Roger Godsef I think. I was just buying time for you to formulate them properly. I think Holly's doing great work with her colleagues as well. I think this year has really gone to show the power of motions at conference not just as in passing policy but also generating a conversation more broadly both in and beyond the Labour Party. Whether it's the Green New Deal, whether it's a Bolsheetan, whether it's the four day week freedom of movement as well to a lesser extent because obviously slightly overshadowed by the fact that Boris Johnson broke the law and I think people now who are really passionate about various issues Labour Party members get organised and get campaigning and that model was actually in a weird way I think was kind of pioneered by the second referendum people last year and people realised wow, a small group of you can actually basically help dictate the terms of debate on a specific issue in the Labour Party and to a lesser extent in the country at large so what would we like to do next I think is a really interesting question and I've been thinking about that so for instance free buses for everybody kind of thing UBS of free buses for your campaign free buses for all you can have a picture of that bus outside Joan Ryan's office as your as your go to stuff like that but you know I think that's how members should now be thinking you know if people are oh god I'm so pissed off with like say Labour MPs Trashing House and Public etc I think start a campaign around visionary policy which will get you and your friends and others energised which they've done Final thoughts? Yeah I would totally agree and what I would say as well is that like don't wait until like there's so much parliamentary shenanigans at the moment and I think that if the kind of Labour base is going to stay kind of energised then I mean we certainly will be campaigning around a Bolashita and we're not going to wait for policy to happen right we're still going to be doing things I think yeah like you know Green New Deal let's take on you know the big energy companies you know four day week let's go to Sports Direct and say you deserve to have a four day week and I think trying to build that sense of movement so yeah I think that's going to happen I think there's going to be a connecting up of all of the different sort of policy base campaigns and trying to sort of escalate things talk about some real issues no more shenanigans is how I feel right now so let's get organised Maybe we could like maybe Navara could submit a motion like a model motion about you know the British government should nationalise B Sky B Yeah great and give all its resources to us Yeah that's a good one I like this idea of just I like this idea of loads of chances putting in CLP motion getting 100 to sort of put them forward which is all like maybe we could have a department which gives my particular calf some tax advantages in any case let's end it there thank you so much for coming on and I am very impressed that you know took out a time of your teaching schedule to come and join us here I know it's quite a stressful job in your work quite hard as it is School night so yeah thank you to your students for watching you should have advertised it to your students maybe they've got deep pockets I don't know Yeah probably not in your own Thank you Aaron always a pleasure Thank you You're watching Navara media You're watching Tiskey Sour As you know this is only possible because of your kind donations So if you are already a subscriber to Navara media thank you very much if not please go to support.navaramedia.com and donate the equivalent of one hours wage a month I think we won't have another show this week so as always we're having them every Tuesday we're often doing more than one a week because there's so much going on but there's actually a lot going on in Navara land this week because we're going to be moving studio at the start of next week so probably I won't see you until next Tuesday I mean next Tuesday will be our last Tiskey here right next Tuesday will be our last Tiskey here unless something big happens in the week or whatever so you'll be able to see a nice what's it called what's it called where you've got like a naked wall a feature wall where you've got the bricks Oh like an exposed brick that's the new place we'll have a naked wall in our new studio you've been watching Tiskey Sour good night