 when England players decided to take the knee at Euro 2020, the government's initial response was to dismiss the action as gesture politics and to refuse to condemn those booing. Their faint concern when England footballers suffered a torrent of racial abuse after the final, therefore, wasn't taken very well by many in the country. As we spoke about on Monday, charges of hypocrisy came from the likes of Gary Neville and numerous Labour MPs. Since then, England players themselves have got involved. To explain the context, this is the tweet from Pretty Patel which she sent on Monday. I am disgusted that England players who have given so much for our country this summer have been subject to vile racist abuse on social media. It has no place in our country and I back the police to hold those responsible to account. Now that tweet from Pretty Patel was then quote tweeted by England footballer Tyrone Mings. He said, you don't get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as gesture politics and then pretend to be disgusted and the very thing we're campaigning against happens. It was brought up by Keir Starmer today at Prime Minister's Questions. Mr Speaker, let me be clear. I totally condemn all racism, including that directed by the Home Secretary, but she's got this wrong. The whole country knows it. His own MPs know it. In the last few days, everybody has seen England's black players have been the targets of disgusting racist abuse following Sunday's match. Disgusting. And this is really simple, Mr Speaker. Either the Prime Minister is with the England players in their stand against racism or it could defend his own record, those of his Ministers and some of his MPs. But he can't have it both ways. So can he tell the House, does he now regret failing to condemn those who booed England players for standing up to racism, yes or no? Mr Speaker, we made it absolutely clear that no one should boo the England team. And what we're doing now is following the racist abuse that our players sadly suffered on Sunday night and thereafter, we're taking practical action. So in addition to changing the football banning order regime, last night I met representatives of Facebook, of Twitter, of TikTok, of Snapchat, of Instagram. And I made it absolutely clear to them that we will legislate to address this problem, Mr Speaker, in the online harms bill. And unless they get, unless they get hate and racism off their platforms, they will face fines amounting to 10% of their global revenues. And we all know, Mr Speaker, that they have the technology to do it. Now we'll talk about the social media aspect of this all in a bit more detail later in the show. But now I want to focus on that claim from Boris Johnson. He said, we made it absolutely clear that no one should boo the England team. Now we are used to Boris Johnson making false claims in the Commons, but that doesn't mean it should shock us any less when he does lie in such an outrageous fashion. Now to remind you of the government's stance on taking the knee at the start of the Euros, this was pretty Patel speaking to GB News on the 14th of June. I just don't support, you know, people participating in, you know, that type of gesture, gesture politics at a certain extent as well. It's all well to support a cause and, you know, make your voices heard, but actually quite frankly, and we saw last year in particular with some of the protests that took place. I speak now very much from what I saw in the impact on policing. It was devastating. And not only that, I just don't subscribe to this view that we should be rewriting our history, you know, pulling down statues, the famous Korsan statue and what's happened there. Toplin statues is not the answer. It's about learning from our past, learning from our history and actually working together to drive the right outcomes. The England fans are right to boo. Well, that's a choice for them quite frankly. Would you be booing if you understand? I've not gone to a football match to even sort of, you know, contemplate that, but I maintain my point quite frankly that we learn from our past. We don't try and rewrite it. Now to remind you today in Boris Johnson, today in Parliament, sorry, Boris Johnson said, we made it absolutely clear that no one should boo the England team. And pretty Patel in that clip said, I just don't support people taking part in that kind of gesture politics. And most importantly, when she was asked, do you think England fans are right to boo? She says, that's a choice for them. Worse than that, she was asked, would you boo the England fans? You know, this isn't even a question of do people have a right to boo. Would you boo personally? Pretty Patel. She says, oh, I haven't been to a football match in a while. So I wouldn't know. I don't have to make that decision. So that is the precise opposite of what Boris Johnson said. He said, we made it clear we're opposed to people booing. That's his home secretary saying she might boo herself. You know, it's it's phenomenal. Now the other interesting part of that interview, which we'll have heard a lot about over the past few days from right wing pundits who were trying to defend the booers is to associate taking a knee with Black Lives Matter, to associate with pulling down statues as pretty Patel was doing there. By the way, I'm not sure why she was at the famous Colston statue. No one had heard of the Colston statue before it got brought down in any case. This issue of the association between taking the knee and Black Lives Matter, I want to bring up a couple of tweets, which I thought were very instructive when it comes to this. The first is from Jason Ocundia, who we've had on the show before. He tweeted absolutely zero interest in getting into the is BLM Marxist brain aneurysm, but taking the knee is not owned by BLM in the way people view BLM as an organization. It's an anti-racist symbol that became popularized in sport by Colin Kaepernick in 2016. Another tweet which gives some really important context here is from Toby Moses, who's from The Guardian, and he wrote, Colin Kaepernick went out of his way to find the most acceptable form of anti-racism statement he could, getting advised from a Green Berets, that's an American veteran, as he didn't want to offend anyone. It didn't matter, people don't have a problem with taking the knee, they have a problem with anti-racism. Darlie, I want to bring you in on this question and particularly, I suppose, from the Tories' perspective, do you think they have really bitten off more than they can chew by trying to stoke, I suppose, a cheap culture war and finding themselves at odds with 11 of the most popular people in the country, the England football team? 12, actually, let's add Gareth Southgate. Yeah, I mean, I think the problem is that the Tories sort of didn't realize they were biting anything off. They basically, they're so used to being given, especially in this arena, being given a sort of carte blanche to act with very little accountability by both the media and also the opposition in this country, quite frankly, that all it took was just a little bit of persevered resistance and boldness for the government to have to sort of eat their words and to be caught out in the fact that they are trying to sort of stoke these cultures, as you say, as a way of mobilizing their base, of smearing their ideological opponents, and then sort of ducking out of responsibility when the seeds that they planted kind of come to fruition, as we have seen over the weekend. And we saw that with Rashford taking on the government's cancellation of free school meals. He didn't win that because he had this elaborate infrastructure of focus groups or necessarily really powerful connections in the media. He won it because he showed clarity and perseverance in his opposition. And that's not something that we see mobilized against this government very often. And this just shows me that this government actually doesn't really hold up that well to that kind of bold and clear opposition. And so the problem is really that they haven't experienced much of it before. And so it's so interesting to see how easily they've kind of folded or sort of been exposed in this whole scenario. But I think it's really interesting and inspiring to see this kind of boldness and political literacy, particularly amongst sort of the younger generation of black and brown footballers on the England team. And I think I understand what Jason's saying about not wanting to kind of get into the BLM stuff, but I think I don't think that we necessarily do ourselves a favor when we try and act like this isn't inspired by the mobilizations that BLM did as a broad coalition surrounding economic justice, climate justice, et cetera. So I think we kind of shouldn't really dismiss that connection completely. But one thing we do know is that they are really not accepting the kind of mealy-mouthed, aesthetic-only multiculturalism of generations past. And the England football team is one example of this, the Kill the Bill organizers, which were largely sort of younger generation, Gen Z, black and brown people is another example of this. And we're seeing this generation just refuse to settle for just mere inclusion, but are actually entering these institutions with an eye to transport them. So in many ways, the black and brown sort of footballers on the England team could have allowed this tournament and could have allowed themselves to be used as a kind of giant pat on the back of always in England so unproblematically multiracial or allow themselves to be used as a cover for the kind of systemic racism that still pervades this country. I'm sure that would have come with a lot of benefits, but they actively chose not to do that and actually to make a stand. And it's hilarious to see how quickly the government have been caught out as a result of that. And it's really, really exciting to see as well. We're going to talk in one moment about how, I suppose, one attempt for the government to use this successful running the euro is to give themselves a pat on the back seems to have fallen through. I do want to, I suppose, quickly clarify, I do think you're right, we shouldn't underplay the connection between the BLM movement and the success of people talking about anti-racism, now people taking the knee, that is because of the successful organizing of people in the Black Lives Matter movement. I think there is a difference though between saying that means the Black Lives Matter movement has ownership over this symbol. I think this is the case for all movements really. So often when it came to extinction rebellion, if I'd go on the radio at this point, you should do a lot of right wing radio, they're obsessed with looking at all of their different demands. They want, I can't remember what their demands are now, they want a constituent assembly. It's kind of anarchist, isn't it? Anyway, I should have prepared that before, so I could tell you exactly what those demands are. But my point was always, look, this is kind of besides the point, I really respect extinction rebellion because what they've done is they've put climate change onto the top of the political agenda. By me thinking they've done a great thing and wanting to get involved in climate change activism or whatever, that doesn't mean I endorse all of their principles. And I don't think they'd want people to think that either. Sometimes you do get activists, you say, oh, I'm so annoyed that people are getting involved in BLM who aren't anti-capitalist or people who are getting involved in extinction rebellion, who are pro-technological solutions. But they're a minority. The idea is, you start a movement, you spark people's interest in an issue, and then a successful movement actually abdicates ownership of that issue. And you let people interpret in their own ways. And I do think that is exactly what is going on here. Politicians like to associate themselves with success and they like to try and share in the goodwill of the public field towards celebrities. It's why Tony Blair invited Noel Gallagher to Downing Street and why David Cameron posed with Mo Farah after the 2012 Olympics. It was no surprise then when the iPaper reported that Downing Street were planning a reception for the England football team. The first to reach a final since 1966. So the iStory, this was on Monday, they wrote, England's Euro 2020 team are set to be toasted at a reception with the country's leaders to celebrate their first tournament in 55 years. The i understands there are plans in Whitehall to host Gareth Southgate and his squad for a reception at either Downing Street or a Royal venue. But there will be no bus tour for Harry Kane and the team after their defeat on penalties to Italy because COVID rules, which would make it difficult, do not lift until July the 19th when players are likely to be on holiday. So they're saying that there will be a reception in Downing Street. What you might expect is them going around on buses. I know there are lots of people who would like to show their appreciation for the team in the street. That's not going to happen. That was never going to happen, sorry, because of COVID rules. But we did expect there to be a reception in Downing Street. Now that story dropped on Monday at 7pm. 40 minutes later, England defender Tyrone Ming tweeted at Pretty Patel accusing her of stoking the fire of racism and that led many to speculate whether that planned event might be off. Of course, those moments where you have a politician posing with footballers or singers or actors, they're supposed to be a simple feel good story. I'm the Prime Minister and I'm associating with the people who you relate to. It wouldn't have been particularly good for Boris Johnson if that ended up being a moment in front of live TV cameras where some of the most respected people in the country were telling him, mate, to be fair, you were pushing racism. You've been responsible for racist comments in the past and when we needed your support, when we were taking anti-racist action, you abandoned us. That wouldn't have looked very good at all on the BBC. Neva would have looked very good if the players refused to turn up after receiving an invite. Anyway, lo and behold, the following day, Aubrey Allegretti from The Guardian tweeted, I'm told that plans to have the England team to Downing Street for reception this week have been shelved with attention turning instead to the PM's levelling up speech in a few days. That's right, the event was off. It didn't stay in their diary for very long at all. Now, this, of course, led to lots of speculation. Was it the government avoiding potential embarrassment? Was it that the invite did go out to the England team and enough members of that team said no, that they thought this was not going to be viable? Both plausible to me. A Downing Street spokesperson has denied it was Eva. So they said the PM would have been delighted and honoured to host a reception for the England squad to mark their outstanding performance in the European Championship. However, number 10 was informed prior to Sunday's game that the FA's preference was not for an immediate reception in the event England were to lose. We continue to discuss suitable ways for the PM to thank the squad and coaching staff for their heroic efforts through the tournament. Worth noting that story was in the eye on Monday. So there was clearly some mix-up somewhere all the spokesperson isn't telling us the whole truth. Dahlia, who do you believe here? What do you think has happened behind the scenes between Monday when it was being briefed that there was going to be a meeting in Downing Street between Boris Johnson and England's footballers and Tuesday when that meeting, that reception was off? Sure, Downing Street spokesperson, I'm sure that's exactly what went down. It's clear that one of two things happened. Either the players refused because of their sustained criticism of the government from their policy on free school meals, although I guess that is one particular footballer, but also down to the fact that they didn't back the footballers when they really needed the head of state to say, hey, stop booing and abusing our players and in fact actually seem to kind of encourage people to see it as whatever gesture politics means. I'm sure that, you know, it pretty much tells concern with just the gesture of anti-racism. I'm not sure how she's going to feel about the actual actions of anti-racism, but so either the players refused to or they said, okay, we'll come, but don't think that we're just going to stand there and smile. And I think that from what we know of Garrett Southgate, the fact that he did come to the defense of his players and he did say, I might connect to this kind of English patriotism or this particular kind of representation of England, but my players don't and I back my players. I wouldn't be surprised if he said, if this is not what my players need right now, I'm not going to let them, I'm not going to make them do that. And frankly, if I was in any of those footballers positions right now, especially the footballers of color, the last thing I'd want to see after the devastating loss on Sunday is Boris Johnson's face. But I think it was absolutely right, I think, and it was so meaningful that if we are going on speculation that there was some kind of tension there that is the reason why this was put off and it's not what the Downing Street spokesperson has said it was, which is just sort of a calendar issue or a protocol issue. The players have been very particularly tire-onings has been absolutely clear that the government's attempt to distance themselves from previous stoking of racial hatred, not just in the particular case of taking the knee, not just in this particular trying to create this kind of massive division over what should be something that we unify around, which is taking the knee, but a generalized capitalizing on racialized fear, which has come to define not just this government, but the people within this government outside of that particular roles within the current government, whether it's Boris Johnson's involvement in the Vote Leave campaign and the particular racialized formations that underpin that, the police and sentencing bill, which we know will disproportionately impact working class people of color, the government's legitimacy has been built partly through culture wars, through the grounding of fears of propertied, largely white people feeling fear and disgust towards racialized people, towards precarious people, towards migrants, and that includes the stoking of racism actually. It is largely propertied white voters, but it's also the stoking of racialized racism within Bain communities and we saw that, for example, in the stoking up of Islamophobia amongst Hindu communities through those kind of classic divide and rule tactics. And so in that context, it's unacceptable for the government to then use this team and use the intense and heightened emotions that we all have around this game to attach itself to the widespread condemnation of what is essentially the fruit of their labor and by what I mean is the government's labor of dividing and stoking up racial tension through the culture war prism. If you're enjoying tonight's show and you usually enjoy our shows, do consider becoming a financial supporter. That's what makes this organization and this show possible. If you are already one, thank you so much. If not, please go to nabaramedia.com Next story. The abuse leveled at Sancho, Saka and Rashford after the Euro 2020 final has brought renewed pressure on social media companies to sort out the racism epidemic on their platforms. And as part of that push, one specific demand is gaining momentum. That's to require social media companies such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to make presenting your ID a precondition for opening an account. Over 670,000 people have now signed a petition to that effect. So specifically the petition calls for the government to make it a legal requirement when opening a new social media account to provide a verified form of ID where the account belongs to a person under the age of 18, verify the account with the ID of a parent guardian to prevent anonymized harmful activity, providing traceability if an offense occurs. As you can see, that's now been signed by 676,000 people. Now the petition was actually started earlier this year. It was done so by the model Katie Price. It's got a bunch more, hundreds of thousands more signatories in the wake of the Euro 2020 final. That's including because Katie Price herself shared it. So to her 2.6 million followers, she said on Monday, the vile racist abuse England players are now facing proves why this petition is more important than ever. It's a tricky question and I'm going to use my privileges as host to throw this difficult question to Darlia. What do you make of the demand for an end to anonymity on social media? Do you think it would be a sensible response to racism online? I mean, this is an absolute minefield and I think that this idea of a sort of one stop solution is really misguided. Someone, I have received my fair share of online abuse. I have great understanding, great empathy for what it's like to receive this kind of abuse, to be exposed on a scale that you just would never have been exposed on before the internet. You are sort of hyper visible in a way, particularly as a woman of color in a way that people can just say the most obscene things to you, but also not just say them, but actually do things online that really are harmful in terms of your reputation, your safety and without any accountability, it makes the internet a very scary place to be. But creating ID requirements to participate in social media is a really dangerous game. Firstly, it hands over a huge amount of power to a small number of companies that own these, what are basically now essential telecommunications infrastructures that structure our entire world, it hands over a huge amount of very, very rich data to those companies without handing over that depth of data, will empower those companies even beyond anything that we could imagine and empower the scale and the depth of governance that they have over our lives and particularly the linking of real identities, offline identities and online identities means that the scale of and the depth of data tracking and surveillance is likely to be much more endemic, it's likely to affect us a lot more. It makes that kind of data tracking much harder to resist and it also means that a lot of people who might be vulnerable to state or other forms of violence would actually be made more vulnerable, particularly if they're engaged in politically or socially risky activity and need to use pseudonyms. So I'm thinking of political activists, I'm thinking of sex workers, groups like this and we also, it obviously creates this dynamic where online citizenship and offline citizenship are also linked in a way that's a bit, that's quite problematic. Only people who have particular state documents can access the internet or can access at least key infrastructures of participation within the internet, i.e social media and we know that a lot of citizens, this means that non-citizens could potentially have issues accessing social media, but it also means that a lot of citizens who don't have particular forms of ID could also find themselves shut out from social media. There's a reason why we always resist voter ID laws because they impact the participation of the most vulnerable. So where does this lead them? There's a risk really of deepening that digital divide. What we need is to actually think a bit more creatively about how we deal with the issue of abuse online and that includes platform design, it includes platform moderation, it includes accountability and transparency on a lot of these platforms and the role that platforms have in shaping the conversations that are being had on it and that's particularly what's really missing from this is the fact that these platforms are owned by huge, very powerful, but very unaccountable private companies. Companies like Google, companies like Microsoft, Apple, these aren't just private companies in the way that we've understood them, they are infrastructures. The scale is very different to anything we've dealt with before and they are subject despite being infrastructural in that way, they are subject to very little public scrutiny. As an academic who tries to study these platforms, I can tell you it's impossible to get any meaningful information on how they are run even as an academic and they aren't obliged to give you anything because they're not beholden to any kind of public sphere law. So I think that I understand that the impetus and the urgency that we need to address this issue, but I think that there has to be a better solution than requiring the uploading of ID which brings with it a huge number of issues, particularly when it comes in the context of in the UK, expanding authoritarianism within the state and expanding authoritarianism, particularly when it comes to political resistance as well. I have to say I tend to agree with you there, the public unfortunately don't on this one. It's actually one of those issues where there's quite a lot of consensus. People are really in favour of having some form of ID check. This is a YouGov poll, a YouTube poll, much more scientific. This was from Tuesday, they asked the public when it comes to people's identity on social media which of the below comes closest to what you think should happen. So one option was everyone should have to display their real identity on their profile. So that's to say if I am Michael Walker, the only Twitter account I can have is Michael Walker, that is 37% of the public agreed with that. The sort of compromise one is everyone should have to disclose their real identity to the social network when signing up, but they could have anonymity on their profile. I suppose that would mean that if it was the case that someone was abusive, then the social media company could help the police track them down or whatever. And the final one is everyone should be able to use social networks without having to display or disclose their real identity. Only 11% of the public backed that particular option. Interesting actually that anonymity, it is younger people who value it more than older people, which I mean it's also younger people who use social networks more. So that might be something skewing the results somewhat. I think as well as what Dahlia said, my biggest issue with having identity either publicly or that you have to show the social media company would be that these are all international platforms, right? So it wouldn't be so simple as saying for people in Britain, you have to show your passport or your driver's license or whatever, because obviously one of the great things about social media is you can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world. And so whilst, yeah, as Dahlia says, there will be people who are left out within the borders of Britain if these ID controls were introduced, undocumented migrants for example, there will be people in, you know, entire countries across the world who would be very, very uncomfortable going on social media and uploading a government document, even if you give it to Twitter, you say, oh, you give it to Twitter and Twitter refused to give it to the government. What do we see over and over again? It's repressive government's pressure, these tech giants to give them the data and the tech giants, their big interest is their profit, their profit, their bottom line, and they came in. So if I was a dissident in an authoritarian country, I would not like the idea of me having to show Twitter my government approved document before I was able to tweet. So I think it probably is a bad idea, although I do have a lot of respect for where it's coming from. I suppose short of requiring ID, a less intrusive answer to online abuse would just be better moderation and that definitely doesn't seem to be happening right now. There seems to be a lot of low hanging fruit, actually, that the social media companies could be picking to try and reduce the amount of hate on their website. It was reported earlier this week. This was in the i newspaper that multiple people were told by Instagram that posting monkey emojis under post by black players did not breach the site's guidelines. The centre for countering digital hate also found that of 105 accounts they identified targeting England players of racism, action was only taken against five percent of them against one in 20. The CEO of that group, Imran Ahmed, told BBC Newsnight that he thinks, or he told BBC Newsnight what he thinks is to blame for that inaction. The real problem has been that there is no incentive for them to do so or rather there's no disincentive for them not taking action and that's because for the main part our regulators and legislators have failed to actually put into place a cohesive regulatory framework that would require them to take action to enforce their own terms and conditions, their community standards as they call them and make their platforms places where people can exist without facing abuse on a daily basis. That was Imran Ahmed explaining that the social media companies aren't sorting out the racism on their platform because no one is forcing them to there's no cost to them for allowing racism to run rampant on their platform so they're not going to do anything about it. It's a simple argument, it's also very persuasive. I also want to mention one more interesting insight from that report on Newsnight because it's become a big talking point over the last couple of days which concerns where this online racist abuse is coming from. So Gareth Southgate in his press conference on Monday he suggested that the majority of racist abuse targeting his players might well have come from abroad. He raised the figure of 70% of this kind of abuse generally coming from abroad. That statement was backed up by Newsnight who explained that of the 105 racist accounts we've just talked about the available evidence suggested that 59 of those were operating from outside of the UK and of those they could locate either based on information on the account or the IP address or whatever, only five appeared to be from within the UK. Darlia, I'm sure you've heard many people raise this idea that lots of these comments aren't coming from Britain, they're coming from abroad. How relevant do you think that would be if that were proven to be the case? If most of the races and targeting these players was from elsewhere, wasn't from or in England? Well I mean it's not a zero sum game is it? Racism is a global condition so I wouldn't be surprised that some of this abuse came from abroad. I would also say that if you have an account that is set up exclusively to troll people you're probably using a VPN, you're probably not just like using your regular IP address or you're trying to conceal that and I also think that anyone who was on the internet on Sunday knows that more than 105 accounts were sending racist messages to the players so I'm not entirely sure what people are getting at when they talk about trying to make this seem like a kind of foreign problem because we know that racism is a problem here so I'm not really sure what that kind of conversation is getting at but I think that and this sort of links to the question of anonymous online presence and in order to tackle online abuse should we have basically cracked down on anonymous trolls or anonymous bots and I think I think that we're getting a little bit diverted here you know obviously you know anonymous abuse online it's a huge issue it causes fear it makes what we're told is you know public open space which you know the internet isn't actually that but we're meant to believe that it is that makes it very difficult to access for a lot of people but I would say that you know the most dangerous form of racism and the most pervasive and powerful forms of racism are not coming from bots or Twitter accounts with 30 followers they're coming from our tabloid media they're coming from you know the messages embedded in the policies of our government you know if you were to ask Raheem Sterling you know what makes him feel like he is under disproportionate racialized scrutiny I don't think he'd name Twitter eggs I don't think that that would be sort of the first place he'd go I think he'd actually talk about you know the obsessive and demeaning headlines that he's been receiving in the tabloid media for years now you know the fact that his every move from like buying his mama house to having a tattoo on his leg is being obsessed over by the press and used to create an image of him as you know undeserving or sort of you know tacky or whatever they're trying to sort of promote about him you know or even the fact that when he scored the first goal against Germany the tabloid front pages were covered with basically every white person that attended that match except for the actual goal scorer you know the first goal scorer and so that complex that you have particularly at the hands of you know the tabloid media which even when it is targeted at you know an individual person of color every it still has an impact on the culture and the way that people of color feel in this country you know everyone read people you read when I read those headlines about Meghan Markle and I see that hyper obsession with her I feel that you know it sends me a particular message and it's that that that combination of both being you know invisible and overlooked but also being hyper visible and really surveilled you know that's probably what you know Raheem Sterling would talk about or the other players on that on that pitch and you know those forms of racism they aren't anonymized they aren't online but they're pervasive and dangerous and the fact that they're not anonymous doesn't mean that they're not being held that they're being held accountable so anonymity clearly isn't the key factor here because you know known known pervasive racism are also not being held and accountable and that's that's not to belittle how distressing it can be to receive online abuse but I think it can be a little bit too convenient for like the press and the government to sort of blame this all on you know social media trolls in their mum's basement rather than you know looking kind of towards the more powerful institutions because those trolls learnt this from somewhere you know the fish rots from the head down and I don't think that we get anywhere by trying to pretend that that problem only exists in that one specific realm because we have ample evidence that in very visible and you know institutions that should be really accountable and definitely are not anonymous that have you know names and faces you know and all of that that the problem is still not being resolved so I think that we shouldn't there's a little bit of scapegoating happening here and evading of responsibility as much as I also understand that the conversation around you know online abuse and online anonymous abuse in particular is a really urgent one and is really distressing no I mean I absolutely agree with you that you know this issue of online trolls isn't the most important issue when it comes to racism in this country which is why when we talk about racism on this show which we do a lot we're in a very small minority of those moments talking about social media we're generally talking about government policies about structural racism I suppose I would just say on terms of in terms of this this issue of anonymous trolls and who is sending the posts you know one thing it does make me think of a bit is the labor anti-semitism crisis when people were saying well look people are getting this abuse and so they feel like the labor party is you know flooded with anti-semites and then people point out well actually lots of this trolling is coming from non-members lots of this trolling is from anonymous people some of it seems to be from people posing as as as labor members so it is it is difficult to make a judgment about English football fans or even the English public based on a few people on social media and I do think there is a danger of saying oh look I've sort of seen people on Twitter basically suggest look oh there was this this vision of of progressive patriotism that Gareth Southgate was putting forward because of these emojis under Saka's account that's dead now that that's completely over and I do think we should probably put social media abuse in context obviously as you say it's incredibly significant for those it's targeting but a few people can seem like a very big deal and as I say that's not to say racism isn't a big deal in this country it's a massive deal in this country but I do think we need to keep the social media development of it in proportion do you think do you think that's fair Dahlia? I mean I think I would go go back again to you know I don't think that you need the online evident the online trolls to all be you know even if every single one of them was not on authentic account there is still ample evidence that you know and you know you and I have different opinions on the whole progressive patriotism thing but I would argue that when you look at you know government policy when you look at the the messages and the systemic messaging that is done by the most powerful media companies and media outlets in our country you don't actually even need the online stuff to demonstrate evidence that there is a problem here that you know when everything that that even if you are representing England you know literally doing the most that you possibly can to integrate into English patriotism you still for even if you enter the bloody English royal family as Meghan Markle did you are still subject to this particular surveillance and this particular racialized scrutiny and you know you just need to step one foot wrong and your entire the entire premise of your belonging is questioned in a way that it just isn't for other people so like to that I understand what you mean when you say you know we shouldn't let social media the social media bots or whatever they're not all bots but you know what I mean the small but vocal minority on social media be the brush that we taught everyone with but we don't need to we can look at how the most powerful institutions behave and we can see everything that we need to know about the issue at hand. No I think that's very well put in a good place to move on to our next topic which is the latest when it comes to COVID. The Tory government's decision to drop all legal requirements to wear masks you know is an unscientific I'm going to start that one again. The Tory government's decision to drop all legal requirements to wear masks is an unscientific and deeply irresponsible move not only will it enable the spread of COVID-19 but it will condemn those with weakened immune systems to their houses we're hearing this over and over again people who had got used to getting on public transport going to shops now saying if everyone's taking off their masks I'm not going to do it anymore it's all been for very little benefit. Us wearing our masks it wasn't a big deal to begin with why have when the costs are so high they decide to get rid of them why have they done that we have some clues it seems that this is all because Boris Johnson wants to keep his back benches on side I'm going to go to a story in The Financial Times by Sebastian Payne he reported that a growing number of Tories argued that the need for masks has passed thanks to the vaccination program one back bencher Miriam Cates recently claimed incorrectly that there is no scientific consensus on masks she won't be wearing one because freedom is very important a senior government minister confesses that Johnson's hand was forced quote colleagues have reached the end of their tether with restrictions we couldn't have got continued restrictions through on Tory votes and there's no way we could have passed with Labour it would have been the end of Boris so he indulged his libertarian side they said so we are now in a situation where people with suppressed immune systems are going to be scared I mean rightfully scared to be honest to get on tubes and go into shops when we have we have 43,000 people in the last 24 hours test positive for COVID-19 if they're not wearing masks then if you have got a weakened immune system which doesn't respond particularly strongly to vaccines then you are going to be worried about leaving your house right and the reason this is happening is because Boris Johnson thought it would be too embarrassing to pass his latest round of COVID restrictions with Labour votes so he's had to ignore the science ignore the scientists ignore the millions of people who are now being told they have to shield at home again only because Boris Johnson wants to win these few extremists on his back benches because he thinks it would be too embarrassing to get through this with Keir Starmer's vote so we know that Keir Starmer would vote for he tends to do that right so this is purely about Boris Johnson's pride and it's going to have some real really terrible consequences actually um I've said these back benches are extreme um there's another anecdote in the piece in the FT which I think really demonstrates this so Payne writes like most workplaces masks are currently required for shuffling around its corridors that's the houses of commons or the Palace of Westminster staff at Manning the libraries and coffee shops are fully masked while the Libertarian Conservative MPs march around with their faces uncovered bristling whenever officials remind them of the very guidelines that the government put into law now darling I want your take on this I mean we've said it before we'll say again we are governed by giant adult babies and I mean that's very much demonstrated here we have Tory MPs who are marching around the Palace of Westminster without masks and this is before the 19th of July right this is when it's still a legal requirement to wear masks in enclosed indoor spaces you've got members of staff who are going to be paid much much less than those MPs are saying could you please put on a mask and they're saying I don't want to put on a mask you know how are we governed by these people what the hell is going on I mean this isn't Libertarianism right like Libertarianism in this context is such a joke because I didn't hear peep out these MPs when you know the government considered putting undercover police into nightclubs in order to protect women even though you know police have a record of assaulting women without ever being held accountable for it or you know the policing and crime bill which gives the police the right to intervene in protests that are considered a disturbance i.e. most protests or you know the prevent legislation which flags people particularly in educational institutions if they have you know a sustained critique of British foreign policy but they're up in arms when it comes to wearing a piece of cloth on your face for a short while in order to help reduce the transition of I don't know a plague it's just and you know and and as you said to enable people who are you know might be double vaccinators but have compromised immune systems and so don't respond as well to vaccines or you know that 10% chance of still catching the virus and having bad symptoms which is still there in the vaccines particularly with the delta variant on the rise and you know the dominant variant that we have now that's that's a really really scary prospect um you know that it's the pandemic is most certainly it's not over for any of us but it's most certainly not over for them and something so simple would help increase the mobility and the freedom of movement of so many people um but the fact that that minor concession isn't going to be made for the broader freedom of everyone it's it's so pathetic and it's so miserly and it has nothing to do with you know genuine concern for freedom because these MPs are happily part of a very authoritarian government you know one the one of the most authoritarian that we've seen in a really long time it has everything to do with being ideologically opposed to the idea of giving anything up yourself for the sake of anyone who is less vulnerable than you and it's that you know that narrow individualism that just doesn't work in a pandemic which a pandemic that highlights how interdependent and how connected we all are because you making the decision and saying you know I don't want to take on you know I don't want to to wear a mask like it's not about you making the decision whether or not you want to take on personal risk it's about working collaboratively to reduce the overall risk risk for everyone and saying you know saying that it should be everyone's personal decision to take on to take on or not to take on a risk by by wearing a mask it's like saying that it's someone's personal decision to get behind a wheel while drunk like it's not about whether your actions are a risk to yourself it's about the fact that such an action is a grave risk to those around you and we have reasonable restrictions in place like an alcohol limit when you drive in light of that and this is no different and like I say almost every show you know this really just it comes down to a stigmatization that this you know this government and conservative governments of past of past times a stigmatization of collective responsibility or the idea of collective living you know this idea that anything that you do if it's for someone else or if it's not to directly benefit you then it's not worth doing and that is almost a hallmark of neoliberal ideology you know there is no such thing as society there is only individuals it's that kind it's nothing to do with freedom it's to do with that particular kind of individualism that when it plays out on an on a societal level just just manifests as the reproduction of horrible horrible power inequities no I mean I agree with everything you've said there is as actually nearly everyone in the country does and nearly all of the health scientists do this idea that it increases freedom to get rid of these masks at this point in time is is nonsense everyone knows it including many leaders across Britain we're going to take a little tour now on Tuesday and Nicola Sturgeon confirmed that Scotland would be keeping the mask mandate in certain enclosed spaces that's obviously contrary to what's going on in England and we can take a look at her explaining her logic certain mitigations such as the mandatory wearing of face coverings will remain in place not just now but in all likelihood for some time to come it is important to stress that measures like the continued wearing of face coverings are important not just to give added protection to the population as a whole but also to give protection and assurance to those amongst us who are particularly vulnerable and who previously had to shield that shouldn't be an impressive thing to say because that should be the bare minimum that any political leader should be saying right now but obviously it looks impressive compared to Boris Johnson Nicola Sturgeon did take the opportunity to make a dig at Boris Johnson and the UK government it is my view that if government believes measures like this matter and this government does we should say so we should do what is necessary to ensure compliance and we should be prepared to take any resulting flak from those who disagree we shouldn't lift important restrictions to make our lives easier and then expect the public to take responsibility for doing the right thing anyway now that is very very well put she's saying what Boris Johnson and the Tories are doing in Westminster they're saying oh actually you should continue following the restrictions but now it's nothing to do with us as we've just explained that's because Boris Johnson doesn't want to have any more legal restrictions because of his extremist backbenches so he's essentially saying yep we do think you should be careful but it's all up to you now doesn't work in this situation because obviously everyone's health is dependent on everyone else's actions not their own individual actions and we can go to Wales now they are also taking a different approach to the English free for all restrictions they will be eased from this Saturday they're moving to alert level one um these things mean different things in in all of the the nations of the UK so in this instance that means for indoor gatherings people are allowed to meet with up to five others and indoor events with 200 standing or 1000 people seated will be permitted and restrictions on outdoor gatherings will be scrapped and so that's all from this Saturday speaking today First Minister Mark Drakeford also announced that on August the 7th most restrictions in Wales will be gone that will be by moving to alert level zero at that point there will be no limits on the numbers of people who can gather in public or in private and businesses will be allowed to open um Drakeford um I suppose unlike our our government in England has suggested that this could all change if cases do not remain low like Nicola Sturgeon he has also suggested that some restrictions such as mass will be in place beyond August and into the foreseeable future here in Wales we will not abandon all those measures which have done so much to keep us all safe at alert level zero and from the 7th of August therefore people should continue to work from home wherever possible where a return to the workplace is necessary we will continue to ensure that Covid risk assessments will be a legal requirement for businesses employers and event organisers it will be a legal requirement that these assessments are drawn up with the involvement of employees and the mitigating measures set out in those risk assessments must be implemented in Wales as well so is at alert level zero face coverings will continue to be a legal requirement on public transport in health and care settings and in all indoor public places with the exception of education settings and hospitality and the aim of the government will be gradually to ease these requirements as the risk of coronavirus decreases now how refreshing was it to hear a political leader they're putting the the safety of workers first in his intervention how how rare is it for us to hear any of the Tory ministers in Westminster say what we are going to put an emphasis on his workplace safety in collaboration with employees that's the kind of thing we never hear from that Tory government I wish we did and finally we can take a look at some of the stances taken by England's Metro Mayor Sadiq Khan this morning confirmed that mask wearing will remain compulsory on London's buses and tubes I think after Monday we should continue making it compulsory to wear a face mask on public transport we're often you can't keep your social distance it adds an additional layer of protection but also reassurance the evidence we know from the government's own scientific advisers the evidence from the world health organization is you wearing a face mask makes it less likely that the virus can be passed on it reduces transmission in the indoor space where you can't keep your distance but also the Centre for Disease Control in the USA have now said actually on top of it being the most unselfish thing you can do wearing a face mask may reduce the chances of you catching the virus so for me it's really important that we make sure public transport continues to be both safe but also reassuring that was clearly a very sensible position from Sadiq Khan interestingly Grant Shaps who is the Transport Secretary this morning on Sky suggested that he endorses Sadiq Khan's move this is I suppose another demonstration that the government's policy is all over the place because just a week ago they were saying this has all be left down to personal responsibility now when they said personal responsibility I don't think many of us are mentioned by the personal responsibility they meant mayors taking responsibility right I think we thought that was going to be individuals individuals getting on the tube it shouldn't have been but that's that's what they were putting forward now this as I say a good move from Sadiq Khan there are two big problems still though so the first is that workers on Transport for London are worried that it's going to be harder to enforce this now that the law isn't requiring masks indoors if there are people who are saying I don't want to wear the mask is it going to get more difficult for transport workers to have that conversation with them now they can say oh no but freedom days happened etc etc the second just a significant in fact is that TFL is organised in a much more centralised way Transport for London organised in a much more centralised way than public transport across most of England so in most places the Mayor or the local authorities don't control the whole system Andy Burnham for his part has suggested well I mean he does he only has control over trams he's going to mandate masks on them and most of the Metro mayors or most of the Labour Metro mayors at least have suggested that they will be mandating masks on bus stops for example but if they don't control the bus routes if they don't control the train lines and there isn't that much they can do at this point in time the national rail carriers and so that the privatised rail companies have suggested they won't be enforcing the wearing of masks it's worth just highlighting the numbers at the moment because this bonfire of COVID regulations is coming at a pretty odd moment there were 42 000 people testing positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours the seven-day average is up 27 percent on the previous week deaths are also up 42 percent which is fairly worrying although they are still at a low level 49 death reported in the last 24 hours and patients admitted is probably the most worrying one actually on the dashboard at the moment because the number of patients admitted to hospitals has gone up 53 percent in the past seven days that means that it's more than doubling every two weeks darlia my final intervention i want from you is on this question we are having this bonfire of regulations while we are seeing COVID levels skyrocket do you think we are due a u-turn u-turn or do you think the government are going to ride this one out i think it's really hard to say actually because you know i've said this a few shows ago i think saja javid is like really ideologically committed to this in a way that matt handcock was sort of a bit more all over the place and obviously having someone who's all over the place in a pandemic is incredibly distressing and deathly but it does mean that eventually he could be persuaded to do the right thing whereas i wonder if saja javid is a bit more ideologically set on this but the irony is that when you look at those graphs and particularly when you look at the hospital admissions and you look at that starting to creep up and you look at the fact that the more that the virus is being transmitted and the more that the virus is spreading the more likely we are to see new variants mutations and mutations that perhaps don't have as much of a strong that the mutations that are not as resist easily resisted by the vaccine all of this means that despite the fact that freedom is being used as a cover in order to well not use as a cover but uses a basically very weak justification for removing masks this very policy is what's going what's most likely to lead us into another really restrictive lockdown like having high compliance with masks on a consistent basis means that we're going to be much less likely to have to go into lockdowns that genuinely are massive restrictions on our freedom and also have really really significant social and health impacts as we know whether it's mental health or it's the backlog of hospital hospital staff and etc so ironically what is being done in the name of freedom is actually going to present the biggest threat to our collective freedom and i think also you know as much as it's you know positive to see a city can't sort of coming out and saying you know whatever the government is saying we want to still mandate that that masks should happen should people should wear their masks on public transport i i don't know how effective that's going to be when you know the national government has already the message from the national government is that this is over and that we don't need masks um you know i know that both of my parents are working in healthcare contexts and are older they're dreading going to work after the 19th of july because they're worried about having to have these individual conflicts and fights with patients to get them to wear masks in a room where they're being seen rooms that are might i add generally not even ventilated and you know in these contexts it's such an abdication of responsibility it's such an abdication of leadership by this government to leave this to you know individuals hashing it out with one another on the street and especially in workplace contexts where you know the power dynamic means that a worker it could be very difficult for the worker to tell you know a client or a customer to put a mask on whether they're you know working on the tube whether they're an uber driver whether they're a hospitality worker and it just goes to show the cowardice of boris johnson that you know in the face of his back benches he's so scared of his back benches that he wants to leave this and outsource this responsibility to you know the transport and the healthcare worker to implement what he doesn't have the guts to do people are really worried that now there's going to be all of these arguments in the aisles about who is and who isn't wearing a face mask and at the moment you know we've talked about people like judy hartney brewer a lot people who think that is an incredible infringement on their freedom to not wear a mask and who are willing to be incredibly obnoxious about it because of the overwhelming public consensus on this they have been relatively you know the silence marginalized in this in this process what boris johnson is doing now is he is putting them center stage the judy hartley brewers of the world are now going to be shouting at shop assistants you know i'm not going to say she is because i don't know she has done that but i mean that that's the attitude you get on on such meter which is i'm not going to wear a mask in this establishment and you are going to hear those arguments more and more and more after the 19th of july it's completely completely unnecessary um darlia gabriel it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to you as always this wednesday evening thank you for having me mike that's been lovely um thank you for coming on and thank you everyone for watching and for your super chats tonight we'll be back on friday at seven p.m so do make sure to hit subscribe for now you've been watching tiskey sour on of our media good night