 in March 2020 Boris Johnson's government encouraged us all to clap for our carers in March 2021 they've delivered a slap for our carers yes after fighting on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic Britain's NHS staff are being offered a mere one percent pay rise a figure that's unlikely to keep up with inflation I'll be talking in one moment about that announcement to Dave Carr an intensive nurse and throughout tonight's show I'm delighted to be joined by Galdem's Moyer, Lovian McLean Darlia is under the weather today but I'm delighted to have Moyer on tonight to fill her her shoots how are you doing Moyer I'm doing well I'm excited to wear Darlia shoes she probably has pretty good shoes to be fair you might know Moyer from her her brilliant articles at Galdem but if you only get your news from Navara which in a way I kind of hope some of you do maybe you know from my own my own ego for this little company's strength you might recognize Moyer from the brilliant interview she did with Ash a few weeks ago about influences we are talking about so much on tonight's show not just that pitiful one percent pay rise but also I will be joined by James Meadway for some post-budget analysis we'll also talk about Kirsten Paul polling I'll be joined by Daniel Kai who is on day 27 of the British gas strike and we will finish by telling you about the latest gaffes from the Tories candidate for London Mayor there really is something for everyone which means it's all the more important to share the show link tweet on the hashtag tiskey sour comment on the twitch stream and send us your youtube super chats now for the past 12 months NHS staff have been putting themselves day in day out on the front line in the fight against covid many have become sick and tragically according to the office for national statistics over 850 health and social care workers have now died of covid 19 it's no surprise then that thanking NHS staff has become a staple of political interventions in Britain from clapping for our carers whatever you need that's what you are going to get remember that line will also you'll probably also remember this video released by Boris Johnson after he was discharged from intensive care having been treated himself for coronavirus I want to thank the many nurses men and women whose care has been so astonishing I'm going to forget some names so please forgive me but I want to thank Pauling and Shannon and Emily and Angel and Connie and Becky and Rachel and Nikki and Anne and I hope they won't mind if I mention in particular two nurses who stood by my bedside for 48 hours when things could have gone either way they're Jenny from New Zealand in the Cargill on the South Island to be exact and Luis from Portugal near Porto and the reason in the end my body did start to get enough oxygen was because for every second of the night they were watching and they were thinking and they were caring and making the interventions I needed that's of course a nice enough message one no no reasonable person can really disagree with but unfortunately health workers can't pay their rent with Twitter videos and claps aren't accepted in supermarkets as legal tender so throughout this pandemic health workers have been cleared to thank nurses fund the NHS properly and offer them a pay rise it was therefore a slap in the face too many when the government announced this morning they would be recommending only a 1% pay increase for NHS staff obviously this is a pitiful nominal increase amounting to only an extra £3.50 more per week in take home pay for an experienced nurse even worse in real terms given inflation is predicted to reach 1.5% this year NHS staff are in effect being asked to take a pay cut to discuss this announcement I'm delighted to be joined by intensive care nurse Dave Carr can you tell me how you felt when you heard this announcement since this pandemic started my you know you're lost to words on on the performance of the government you know Rishi Sunak Matt Hancock Boris Johnson I mean you know breathtaking gaffe after breathtaking gaffe after you know ridiculous eat out to help out late lockdowns you know test trace and track isolate that never worked you know uni's back at the same time as as people going back to work and school's not prepared five days of Christmas you know a late circuit but every time we saw this happening as health workers we're thinking these people don't know what they're doing you know these people are making a hash of everything these people are making our jobs so much harder in the NHS and especially Rishi Sunak and I think we should single him out because they talk about them they talk about it's a choice between paying the health workers or people keeping their jobs and you know and having having livelihoods and yet without that what he did over the summer wrecked the economy to the extent um that it's you know they're now taking it out on us and other public sector workers and um and uh you know it's I just I'm just like you can see I'm just lost for words I'm just lost for words on on the way these people have behaved so uh lost the words was was how I felt the this morning when I heard this not surprised really angry but I tell you what I have been hearing a lot of from out my staff at work is humiliation yeah and that's I think that's something we need to to discuss maybe people feel they've been humiliated by the government um with this 1% offer it's it's calculated you know you offer someone 1% it's it's akin to saying you are absolutely worthless in our eyes and I think that's how we feel really angry really upset and humiliated well and now you've told me you're angry I'm feeling bad about the next clip I'm going to show which is Nadine Doris explaining this decision so Nadine Doris is a health minister and she this morning on Sky explained the decision to offer only a 1% pay rise to healthcare staff of course we recognize the sacrifice and the commitment and vocation of nurses and all health workers over the past year we've all been touched by all personally experienced by help from NHS workers but I think it's important to note that the priority of the government has been about protecting people's livelihoods about continuing the furlough scheme about fighting the pandemic and and we've put huge effort into that and we did not want nurses to go unrecognized or doctors and no other public sector employee is receiving a pay rise there has been a pay freeze but the 1% offer is the most we think we can afford which we have put forward to the pay review body that will be discussed then we will wait for feedback from unions and other health sector stakeholders and and see where we move to on this but the 1% is what the government can afford is what the offer is and you know it would be wrong to say that a single person in the government does not appreciate the effort of nurses we absolutely do so Dave what did you make of that particular interview she's saying there you know 1% might not be much but it's better than the rest of the public sector who are getting a freeze and this is the most they can possibly afford I think I think I would have preferred to have been offered nothing along with the rest of the public sector than to have this offer of 1% and then to have us pitted against other public sector workers who incidentally did get a pay rise last year but I think this is you know it's not just about us in the health service it's about the rest of the public sector I was I can't tell you how how it makes you feel as a health worker watching the platitudes from these people and watching their smarmy way that they have of explaining away these decisions you know you know sitting in their well-appointed houses on their big fat MP salaries I mean Rishi Sunak is a rich man he's a millionaire you know Boris Johnson you know a rich man these people are they don't know what it's like to live our life so that when you're told we can't afford it you know the country can't afford it it's nothing to do with what they can't if they if they chose to value health if they chose to value public sector like the Tories never have then they would find the money like they find the money for anything else they want to pay for you know what like they discovered the magic money tree at various times in you know during during the last few years when they need it for their own and I think what's really concerning to me is that we have to look at what's happening to the NHS in in in the hole the privatizations the cuts in services the disjointed nature of services my partner works in women's services and they've been devastated over the last 10 years she works in sexual health and there's not a you know a joined up system you know public health has been really decimated social care has been decimated and now we can see what's going on in terms of the pressure that's put on the acute care that I work in short staffed constantly you know morale always low in the NHS hospitals periodically you know not able to cope with what's going on because you know they're just they're just not properly funded this the NHS is about human beings like myself like nurses radiographers poor as clean as all of our staff are the NHS we are the NHS and you know if you can't afford a health service if you can't afford to pay the people that constitute the health service then what that's telling you is that they don't value the health service you know the pandemics dealt with now the vaccinations are around we haven't got to worry about this it's almost like right well you know that's our arses pulled out of the fire stuff them you know one percent you know it's better than everyone else is getting so I think that this offer to us is is a portent of a real real deterioration in the service that we can give because I've been working in critical care now for a long time as a career but in the last year I've seen some stuff that I should understand and I've made some phone calls and held some hands with people that couldn't have their loved ones with them when they were passing away and you know the outcome of what we did with the pandemic in both ways was to stop the last proportion of what the NHS does normally which is the service that people require of it and now we're expected to go back after the ravages of the pandemic are still with us there's still a lot of people in my ITU and deal with the demands on the NHS with this extra load of work that's been put us in these patients that have got sicker so I think the one percent offer to us is an insult it's a stab in the front stab in the back kick up there anything you can think of it's that but it's also more than that I think this is really really dangerous for the future of the NHS if we're not recognised at this point in the history of the NHS so let's talk about what next I know the the Royal College of Nurses they're calling for 12.5 percent obviously a lot more than the one percent and they are already setting up a 35 million pound strike fund so from your perspective from speaking to your colleagues how likely do you think that strike would be are you confident you could win it and I suppose also you would you be willing to settle for anything less than 12.5 percent well I'm part of a campaign that's going for 15 percent and I think you've got to set the bar high and I think 15 percent would just about cover what I've lost in the last 10 years my my real-term salary is being cut by two two and a half thousand pounds in the last 10 years because of below inflation pay rises and changes to the way we work so strike action absolutely I mean I think that's you know one of my one of the senior nurses in my in my hospital said to myself and one of my colleagues I won't mention her name but she said to me my god I hope the government offer you a lot of decent pay rise because the last thing we want after this pandemic is a big strike on our hands and you lot deserve a pay rising we'll know your strike if if you're not if you're not given one and I think that it's almost like we have we you know it's almost like the military covenant if you like we did the pandemic and we did the pandemic and I as an IT units and the rest of us in critical care work way beyond that capacity I mean we could spend hours talking about how cow was compromised and how we managed to ameliorate the worst effects of that we could talk about how you know for eight days in a row we created intensive care units out of thin air because the demand of patients coming into the hospital was so ferocious I could talk you know for ages about how we went from one to one care which is intensive care to one to two to one to three to one to four and in some cases one to five one to six and you know my priority was to make sure those patients stayed alive where I could you know I could talk I could talk about that you know that that for ages and I think that in terms of what we what we what we expect now is we've done that and we expect some payback for that if you like you know we've done COVID and now we want you know the land for you know for heroes if you like after the war we want to be rewarded for the fact that we compromised ourselves sacrificed our lives compromised every you know every aspect of our our careers worked so hard to make sure the public was safe but it's not just about my money in my pocket if we don't get a pay rise we won't keep staff in the NHS and the NHS will continue to crumble it will continue to foul it will be open to the vultures that want to privatize it you look at the way Hancock set up that private test trace track system which was a complete disaster that would have paid for our pay rise you know the the money that they can you know backhand into into their next door neighbors you know accounts for PPE contracts and Dido Harding running the test trace and track I mean the money's there if they want to spend it on us it's there but they don't want to spend it on us because they don't value us because what are we which is public servants so strike action is exactly what we're after now and because they're not listening to anything else we say so the only thing we can do is is concentrated industrial action across the entire sector and actually I want to talk to teachers I want to talk to firefighters I want to talk to other public sector workers but I also want to talk to people that have been furloughed whose jobs have been compromised by Rishi Sunak's ridiculous handling of the coming out of a lockdown too early I want to talk to about people that can't afford to isolate I want to talk to those people that work Uber that've been delivering food all over this period we want to have a united campaign around the NHS with us as the driving force if you like saying right we are the NHS the staff in it is the NHS we need the NHS survivor we need you to support us but we won't forget you know that the people that supported us during the pandemic and these were you know the local people that gave us food the local fire service stations that you know like donated money money to us when we didn't you know we didn't really need it donate time to us you know all of the good will that we got from the communities the teachers who took that action not to go back into school too early and actually that action saved thousands tens of thousands of lives I mean you know the the fact that the teachers had to take that action to take the hand of the government off of the leave as it was playing with they've picked a fight with a big family you know the NHS is a big family and and and and we intend to preserve the NHS you know we're fighting for the NHS and the service that we deliver but we're you know you know the name Doris talked about this being a vocation you know it's a job it's a really hard job and I'm really proud and privileged that I look after people that are real and do my best to save them but actually I'll you know it's a valued job it's a really skilled job it's a really important job not just my job but the cleaners after we've got cleaners that have to come to work on the night bus because they can't afford the tube it's an absolute disgrace in a land where the rich getting as rich as they are and us getting shattered upon from a great height by the UK government after they put us in harm's way and are directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of UK citizens yeah you know a strike is the least they're going to get out of us Dave Carr I've got to say that campaign you described I think is exactly what this country needs right now and I can see lots of messages of solidarity in the comments as well thank you so much for for joining us this evening all of our solidarity and thank you for everything you do thanks so much and what I'd like to just before I chip off there's you know I'm one of these nurses that I retired and I came back into the NHS I had two days off before I packed in you know I retired on the 19th of April and I was back on the front line on the 21st so I'm an old boy you know I've done a long time in the NHS but what's amazing about the campaign that we're running now and this is what I'd really like to get you guys involved in it is you know the amount of young health workers blank white you know the Black Lives Movement really really had a major impact on what was going on inside our hospital and the confidence it gives people the me too the me too movement everything has led if you like to this point now where all of these different threads are coming together and we'd love to work with you guys to actually get our message across because it's very difficult to get it across in the mainstream media so anyway I'll shut my gob now angry let's definitely be in touch because I want to be a part of this campaign Dave thank you so much you know thank you very much cheers um let's go to a couple of comments Sparky Taggart with a huge 100 pound super chat thank you so much a second Pfizer jab bonus for you after a year of self isolation thanks for keeping me sane that is lovely on so many levels thank you so much for that really kind donation but also I am so delighted to hear that you've got your second Pfizer jab so many people have you know been isolated for 12 months now I can't you know obviously the lockdown has been difficult for everyone but it has been more difficult for certain people if they've had to shield for example um Shailendra Singh with 16 pound 42 thank you so much the wonderful David Graber summarized this phenomenon so accurately the more valuable your work is to society the less you'll be paid for it seems like a foundational tenet of tourism to me and we've got someone else who's got their Pfizer vaccine today multi 21 with a five pound super chat thank you so much got my Pfizer vaccine today thanks for all you do I'd go mental otherwise um thank you so much and we're very pleased to be here to stop you um going mental I don't know if that's politically correct or whatever but um thank you Moira I want to bring you in for comment on on that interview this seems you know on on the one hand to be what are the tourists thinking they're riding high in the polls and they've decided to pick a fight with probably the most popular group of people in Britain right now NHS workers at the same time I'm already getting those worrying echoes of sort of like you're all getting 0% so why should they be not grateful for 1% there's this sort of divide and rule strategy that you know whilst you know I'm not convinced it's going to work you know it gets me worried how are you what do you think about it it's interesting because yes NHS workers are probably the most popular group of people in the country but that didn't serve them last summer when they were even more popular and we all recognised their value and all they got was a clap then um I think the most we were able to push through to aid NHS workers at that time was allowing the families of workers who'd migrated from elsewhere to get bereavement funds and access those and that took a lot of effort so the problem with this this is that the Tories know what they're doing and they've been doing it very well for a long time so it's it's returning to that old sort of like playbook um you know we can't I think we can't afford to have this strong economy and pay our workers a decent wage and it relies on public ignorance of what government spending and budget is so I think it was Professor Charles Adams of Durham Uni but you put it as you know the government debt means people are saving and soon people spend money the government get that money back so that they can spend on public services through taxation etc so and at the moment I think it's record low interest rates because of the COVID pandemic so there is very little risk at putting you know increasing wages for the likes of key workers the Tories just don't want to do it because then they'd have more questions about why they're not increasing workers for everyone else I think there was a recent study which showed that the there's an illusion of wage growth in this country which is actually because the lowest paid jobs have just fallen out of society altogether because of the pandemic they've just bottomed out so they don't even um exist on the sort of median scale anymore so it looks like wages have gone up they haven't jobs have just disappeared uh so I don't I don't know what's going to happen to be honest because I there's this these strikes being encouraged which is amazing love would love a strike um and we've got the slow clap protest slow clap protest but last year we saw the same thing with the teaching unions they said you know if we get sent back to school we're going to strike we can't do this and still they're getting so much crap for that like one daily mail headline from February alone reads this teaching unions are accused of hijacking the pandemic to push for pay rises and long-term perks under key demands to reopen schools so that's how we're treating teachers who are also one of those classic clean worker groups on the front line who we've been like yes we couldn't do this without them um so I don't know I would love to think that finally the things that Dave were talking about they're sort of like linking up with different marginalised groups within the NHS and that solidarity narrative is being realised on a wider scale I don't know if it is I mean it is it is striking how quickly we've gone from you know we're in a once in a lifetime pandemic let's build back better afterwards to instantly actually sorry we can't afford to pay key workers more that's just the way it is divide and rule same old same old Tory politicians we have 1700 people watching to share the show link to get that up to 2000 tonight um it's a Friday night but you've got no excuse not to be watching Tiskey sale because there's nowhere else you're allowed to be next story it's often only in the days after a budget is announced that the awkward details in the document gain political salience that was the case when Gordon Brown abolished the 10 pence tax band or when George Osborne planned to cut working tax credits so two days on are there any unpopular policies in Sunak's budget which were initially overlooked but that could ultimately stick to the otherwise Teflon Chancellor well Labour seemed to be hoping the pork barrel politics of the Towns Fund might just be one of them the story here is that of the 45 towns chosen to benefit from a one million pound regeneration fund 40 of them will go to areas with a Tory MP Keir Starmer yesterday suggested this was all a little suspicious we have no issue with areas getting funding of course we need funding across the whole the United Kingdom you know we've had um a decade where the economy has been stalling there needs to be investment we all want to see that funding going in but it's got to go in properly to the areas that most need it and it's got to go in a transparent way and if you end up with a list of 45 areas where the funding is going in and by coincidence 40 of them are where there's a conservative MP I think most people are saying what's going on here this looks fishy to discuss whether the Towns Fund really is fishy I'm joined by James Midway who needs no introduction because he's a Navarra media columnist and a friend of the show James as the details of the Towns Fund emerge is Sunak's budget starting to unravel it may be um I look you've touched on one of the other parts of this which is this 1% pay settlement for NHS nurses and other NHS workers I mean this is the product of Sunak presenting quite a tight set of planned spending over the next sort of year he hasn't really said where this spending is going to land that's all saved up for what they call the spending review which is in autumn which will most likely be the next sort of three years they will try and lay out what it's going to spend on what and what's what's interesting around this I think in particular is that there's there's a load of pressure on public spending that was appearing anyway we have an older population with more demands in the NHS more demands of social care more people receiving a pension that sort of thing you're then throwing coronavirus and all the kinds of long-term impacts of this the fact that the thing is going to be around for many years the fact that you have so many people with long COVID requiring treatment for a long period of time and this is a really sort of big hidden unpleasant story I think in the whole thing uh stack all that up you need to spend more money just to stand still so the minute the Tories if you go and dig into the figures the Tories are set to be spending more uh by 2023-24 about 42% of GDP more in that year than in every single year of the last labor government before the financial crisis so they are set to spend more but there's more demands and everything and that's that's the kind of the problem that they've run hard up against there are buried away in the in the budget also some cuts to plan spending there's another four billion pounds cut off plan spending so so it's quite a sort of mix of different things he's got coming out of this he got very mind whatever else happens they are Tories and there are certain kind of priorities that they have and things they're going to want to do and you know how it's going to look but what I thought was interesting about the budget was was there may be Tories but there are variants on the theme of this and the fact that he was going to turn around and do this and as you can see the polling enormously popular increase in corporation taxes particularly aimed at big corporations then throw on top of that this basically big giveaway to companies that will invest in equipment right which is something we've not seen in this country I haven't seen any increases in corporation tax for over 40 years and we haven't seen governments say to companies if you invest in like factory equipment or equipment in general tangible assets rather than intangible assets you'll get a kind of bonus now just be clear this is this is a bonus that's going to go to large corporations right that's how the thing is going to play out but it's a big steer to try and get them to do a certain kind of investment it's a turn away from the sort of very financialized financial services focused set up for the last 40 years or so so that was quite a dramatic thing I thought and obviously the politics of it plays very well I mean it's such a mistake I think the labor to oppose the corporation tax rise because people are very happy to see corporations pay more in taxes and the Tories in there say they're going to do this so there's a lot going on in the budget and there's a sort of short term hope that things might fall apart at some point in the next few days and this 1% pay increase looks like quite a key moment for that the pork barrel Terence fund could be another but actually to me also looks like the Tories are trying to set up quite a long term arguments about where they want to get to for the economy here Yeah so we're going to look at a video now of Rishi Sunak because on the pork barrel issue which Labour are trying to make an issue of and the financial times have as well he seems quite comfortable I want to take a look at his explanation of what's going on I want to talk to you about the towns fund a billion pounds of investment 47 of the 56 constituencies conservative let me put some statistics you Loughborough one of the towns that will will benefit from this child poverty is at 11% unemployment at 3.7% compare it to Salford where child poverty is at 20% unemployment is at 8% what criteria were you looking at when you allocated this money well there's a range of criteria that are that are looked at to make sure that we can help regenerate places that are in need and that's that's how these these decisions are made and we're standing here as you said we're in we're in T side today because twice as many children living in poverty in Salford twice as many people that's just one thing if you look at for example unemployment rates historic investment that people have had there's a range of criteria that are taken into account in the same way when we were thinking about free port locations we look at you know the area's unemployment rate for example we look at the deliverability of the bid so you've seen eight different regions benefit from free ports whether it's Liverpool Southampton or T side where we're where we are but what we mean is we want to get money to places where we want to level up opportunity that's what we promised to do when we were elected a couple of years ago we're making good on that promise so whether that's here in T side or elsewhere we want people to feel that wherever they live wherever they're growing up opportunity is coming to them investment is coming to them now he might not look you know a natural in oversized high vis jacket but he certainly seemed quite comfortable in that conversation I was wondering what you thought James about whether or not this pork barrel issue and it's called pork bar I don't actually know why it's called that but it's from American politics where you've got congress people who always add an addendum to a bill which is to say just send some money to my district please so I get reelected that's where the word comes from do you think this is an argument that he's actually really happy to be having because basically you've got the opposition saying you're sending money to towns that voted for you at the last election which is not necessarily what you want to be shouting if they're precisely the towns you're trying to win back well it's good that's a fair point and pork barrel I think comes from American children's story in like the 1860s you know that you kind of hand out the pork to people who asked for it and this is one of these American things we kind of copied over here but it's quite a graphic metaphor in any case if we're all arguing about the Tories are spending money then this is probably not too bad for the Tories to have that as a thing I would prefer us to have an argument about why are we not doing more to deal with the the enormous profits that some companies have made over the last year why are we not doing something to tax wealth for instance you know equalizing a simple thing equalizing the amount you pay an income tax the amount you pay on capital gains tax capital gains tax mostly paid overwhelmingly paid by very wealthy people IPPR estimates this will be 90 billion pounds that you'd raise from doing this over five years right if you want to pay rise for anybody working the NHS that's not one percent that isn't taking a piss then this is a good way to start thinking about that we're not talking about these things again in just the niggly details there isn't a big picture story about the alternative so instead we're talking about the details of the Tories big picture story right here's some money for these places that haven't had so much money for so long yet because the Tories has been in government for 10 years but we're still talking about their stories not ours you were scrambling a little bit there James but we're going to I'm going to keep you on because we're going to go to Starmer in a moment and I want all of your thoughts on that for now I want to show you our audience something that's I suppose worrying for many people who don't want to see decades of Tory rule which is that of this budget which is becoming apparent now is going to imply you know very miserly and more insulting pay increases for NHS staff of that budget you gov has found that 55 percent think it was fair think the budget was fair and just 16 percent think it was unfair now this is the highest rating recorded in the 12 years that you gov have been asking this question so you can see there on on the graphic the last 12 years and by a long way this is the budget which people think is the most fair whether or not that sort of understanding of the budget continues to be dominant will depend a lot more on the next map and we're moving on to Keats Starmer's poor polling now by focusing on attacking the left instead of the Tories Keats Starmer has royally pissed off Labour members now new polling suggests the public aren't impressed with the Labour leader Eva you gov's latest voting intention poll suggests the Conservatives have a 13 point lead over Labour so the Conservatives run 45 percent which is plus four from last February or late February and Labour are on 32 percent which is down four from that same date now as you can see from the you gov Westminster voting intention tracker this is the biggest gap that we have seen since last May when and that was obviously of course before Dominic Cummings infamous trip to Barnard Castle now this surge in support for the Tories of course you know we can't ignore the fact that the vaccine rollout is going well it's probably has a lot to do with that at the same time Keats Starmer has been having lots of personal problems of his own making over the past few weeks whether that be indecision a lack of substance or the general impression of being driven by opportunism and all of these problems were foreseen by one of my guests tonight who in December labelled Keats Starmer a wet wipe it was a story that apparently got under his skin Moira do you think this poor polling is not necessarily caused by the article you've written but do you think that the wider public are like you recognising that Keats Starmer is a little bit of a wet wipe I mean it's quite clear that for people who are paying attention earlier such as as who unfortunately it's our jobs to pay attention that this man was someone who perhaps didn't know what he stood for himself and I think that's that's the problem with Keats Starmer he he's someone who has only been a politician since 2015 so he's vastly inexperienced at this job and it's amazing that he was even elected Labour leader and I think it's because his background as a lawyer you know as a QC he's a knight of the realm gave him this sheen of almost being more prepared for the gig than he was people didn't really know he came from he was a new face almost and he spoke I wouldn't say a good game because he didn't do anything to really convince the existing Labour members but there wasn't there wasn't so much as I wouldn't say there was stiff competition um so he spoke again during his his campaign to be Labour leader and immediately set about not doing anything he promised which never goes well another you got poll recently I think on 15th of February found that 41% of people now think that Starmer is doing badly as Labour leader well whilst 35% think he's doing well this is the first time that those two lines have crossed so for the first time now his ratings are overall negative compared to before where it was overall positive and it's only going to get worse the more the vaccine rolls out and his Labour front bench the problem is a front bench under Starmer shows a lack of vision that is is not distinct from the Tories in any way they'd merely sort of exist to not oppose in a strange way for example one million more people are now going to be paying income tax by 2026 and the Labour front bench has has supported that in principle while simultaneously opposing an immediate rise in corporation tax just doesn't make any sense like it just does not make any sense it's his approach seems to be there are as many beige ideas at the wall and hope that something sticks and the problem is it's both contradictory so you don't get any trust there and it also lies a lack of vision so no one knows what your bigger aim is and at this point there was such an open goal to set out a vision you know post pandemic we could have had this really big ambitious plan from Labour that was the perfect time it's like we want to go into the war metaphors it's the 1945 classic rebuild a new state but Labour didn't do that they just sort of been like now's not the time for policy but also we have policies but we're just not saying them and yeah just gradually rise corporation tax don't take the big businesses they can't even there's an open goal on things like corporation tax and they can't even shoot it in they're like Arsenal at the moment which is Kirsten Armistine so yeah all in all really poor he's just he's I think that he won't be Labour leader by the next election I think he might not even be Labour leader by the end of the year if the 6th of May goes poorly. Maybe he is taking inspiration from Arsenal I should say Labour are drawing upon the 1945 analogy but they're just doing it in speeches which no one reads because they don't contain anything else that's interesting so it's all very well as Kirsten Armistine is saying we need like in 1945 to build a future that's completely unlike the past but then you have to fill that out and you fill that out with the decisions you make and the decisions he's making is to still remain on the fence I do want to show a clip of him this morning though because I mean it seems to me that he's been waiting for the Tories to make mistakes which he thinks are completely uncontroversial for him to oppose and it seems to be that this this one percent pay rise for healthcare workers is something that he has recognised as something which is a win-win to oppose it is uncontroversial enough to stand up for a higher pay rise for healthcare workers even though he won't say exactly how high it should be in any case let's take a look at him speaking about this issue to the BBC this morning. Public sector workers should get a pay rise they shouldn't have their pay frozen they've been they have been keeping our country going throughout this pandemic and he's absolutely wrong to freeze their pay at this time at the same time by the way as giving Dominic Cummings a massive pay rise 40% pay rise so all public sector workers should get an above inflation pay rise that's your position. We have repeatedly said that the freeze on public sector pay is wrong we've challenged the government on it I challenged them in the budget response on it and we'll continue to challenge them on it. So you want pay rises for everyone you don't want any tax rises is that financially responsible? We have to have a plan for the future to rebuild the foundations of our country you don't do that by freezing the pay of those on the frontline throughout this pandemic public sector workers whilst at the same time giving people like Dominic Cummings a pay rise that is the wrong priorities. But is your position financially responsible? Look you have got to reward those on the frontline who have been keeping our country going for the last 12 months or more and freezing their pay is a pay cut for them that is wrong in principle. But Secure obviously the country has built up a huge amount of debt because of coronavirus so just if you could address that question if you're saying pay rises for all public sector workers no tax rises is that responsible? What I'm saying is the what we need now is for a recovery as swiftly as possible and you don't you don't build that recovery by cutting expenditure and by putting up taxes that is the wrong thing to do. Now those interviews often look a bit awkward because basically both the interviewer and the interviewee is trying to get a 10 second clip for the news bulletins 12 or 6 or 10 so that's why it can seem very repetitive it's not necessarily a bad thing that he seems so repetitive in that answer. James I want to bring you in for the content on this one you know for the substance of what Keir Starman was saying because you've been writing persuasively that Labour can't pretend they're fighting the Tories of the 2010 era because this isn't a Tory government which is as interested in austerity as George Osborne was but at the same time when it comes to public services kind of are they and can Keir Starman legitimately fall back on that sort of safe ground for Labour to just say look what we do differently is we treat public sector workers and we'd fund public services better than the Tories are doing. Yeah they can do that and they should do that but I'll take that as a sort of bare minimum of what you might expect Labour to be doing it's sort of the problem they have I'm going to slightly repeat myself here and do a bit of a Keir Starman moment if I'm not careful but the problem they have is that this is the minimum thing you're doing and you're basically opposing the government which is what you do if you're the opposition and then at no point are you laying out how this is going to look in the future that what the Tories have realised and I reckon they got winded this at least in public from about September last year is that the coronavirus isn't going away not anytime soon and that the impact of this is therefore very very long term and it changes what you can do on the economy suddenly every question on the economy goes from being like how do we manage the economy better oh well let's you know fine tune this tax or don't do that tax or whatever the kind of stuff frankly that that Labour wants to talk about a little bit too much right now and instead they're starting to lay out a kind of political reshaping of the economy because that's what the crisis has opened up like any big crisis after 2008 there was this opportunity to reshape the economy politically and what we got was austerity it's political reshaping of the economy so no longer just managerial stuff you're kind of trying to alter what the economy itself looks like one way or the other austerity meant shrinking the state over time so they have this opportunity the Tories have grasped that that's why they're doing things like this corporation tax increase why they're throwing around lots and lots of other pots of money and doing different things all over the place they got that sense of it it's building on what they were moving towards anyway but they've got that sense of it Labour don't have that so they have this basic fallback position saying we should uh you know we should pay more to NHS staff and we should absolutely do that the crunch will come by the way if Labour have to support a strike and I would like to see them do that but you know let's see where they get to on this so that's the minimum of what to do what they need to be doing is getting to the politics of what does rebuilding out of coronavirus or with this endemic coronavirus that we're going to have actually look like what are the jobs that people are going to be doing why for instance they're not talking about building a national care service and overhauling how we do care work in this country it's massively underpaid it's been hit pawlingly uh in the last year it's been squeezed for years in funding they could really go out and lead on this and they're not it's just this continual on the back foot responding to what the Tories are doing not trying to shape the kind of arguments we could be having about all of this it's a bit of a disappointment isn't it um James Midway you were not a disappointment you're never a disappointment thank you so much for speaking to us this evening and we'll we'll speak soon thank you um if you haven't already do like the stream it helps us on the algorithm now today is the 27th day of strike action by british gas engineers who are fighting a threat by the company to fire and rehire them on worse terms now the dispute revolves around a number of conditions in the new contract which reduce workers rights on the job without guaranteeing any extra pay yet again bosses expect to be granted something for nothing however there were suggestions this weekend strike could have been called off that was after british gas and gmb who represent the workers entered negotiations at the government's conciliation service a cas now that new deal on which the union stayed neutral so they didn't recommend workers to vote either for or against that was put to workers in a ballot and yesterday we learned the outcome vote workers voted by 79% and on our 88% turnout to reject the offer hence the strike continues daniel kai is a british gas engineer who was written for tribune this week on the strike um and he joins me this evening welcome to tisky sour who's good um so you've been on strike for for 27 days now that's that's a significant strike um can you start by explaining what it is about the new contracts that you and your colleagues are so opposed to essentially the reason for the strike is fire and rehire so if fire and rehire gets called off tomorrow then we'll return to work and the reason they've employed fire and rehire is because the contract is overly unfair so the main headline figure is that our average week is seven hours seven hours they want to move it to 40 but without uplifting our wages so had you expressed intention to sign the contract by christmas last year being given and given two grand as a one-off payment basically this was their way of saying that's you you're now on the 40 hour contract um and this will take you over basically which is crucial because it doesn't even equate to nine months of extra wages never mind the rest of your career um and the thing with british gas is that there's so many guys that joined from leaving school and they stay right the way through to retirement um there's guys i worked with 20 30 40 years um experience so to have that laid at the door um during a pandemic of all things i mean i think i think the the biggest kick in the in the gut is that we've been going into the homes you know all all throughout you know um and you know none of us complain about we just go and do our job um but to have this you know threatened against us whilst we're you know potentially working in covid positive homes it's it's horrible really um it's yeah so the main headline figure is basically the uplift in an hour's working a week without paying for it so um had you not expressed intention to sign by christmas then um you were on your own so that they were saying right we're not going to give you any money so anyway the strikes began in january and around about three weeks ago the union and british gas called around the table again to with a cast to discuss how to move forward i want to know a bit about the organizing of this strike because i mean as you're describing fire and rehire it's a very sorry yeah fire and rehire it's a it's a very threatening thing for a company to say unless you accept this you won't get well you won't get these bonuses we're offering you purely for for accepting this and if you ultimately don't accept this you're gonna lose your job so i wanted to know from you i suppose how the workers managed to unite to have such an effective strike because i as i understand it you know you all work on your own you know it's not there isn't a a shut floor where you've got loads of workers working together but even though you're all working visiting houses on your own you've managed to really build quite an effective strike action so i mean how did that happen what was the process there so the way that we've kind of come together i have to really hand it to the gmb here they've been holding near weekly um the webinars um which you've all been dialing in to um and they've been keeping us up to date and um in particular the organizers have really found a way of you know um getting the message across and keeping the spirits up because what you found during this strike is it's a bit of a roller coaster of emotions you're you're high one day because you think well this is we're turning a corner here and then you get an email from the business the following day and you're you're down again you know it's the like i say the gmb have done a really good job of rallying it as well as that there's also been um engineers from across the country on twitter you know linking up together um the sort of solidarity there i think has really emboldened the strike um it's great to keep in touch with you know people that you would never really meet just to get their thoughts on it and it's great to know that you're not alone in this you know others are feeling the same as you and yeah daniel kai thank you so much for for speaking to us to explain the strike and all of our solidarity um i mean it seems completely outrageous this fire and rehire threat and you know massive respect for going out on strike for for 27 days um keep it up i suppose um thank you so much for speaking to us this evening um we're going to go to our final story before i do that i'm going to go to a comment which is from lianna mark with 10 euros thank you so much hi michael please wish my big brother shone lucas a happy birthday for tomorrow happy birthday for tomorrow shone lucas he's a big fan and it'll make him happy i love to make people happy um novara brings us together three times a week what a lovely comment um happy birthday to shone lucas now shone bailey is the Tory candidate to become london mayor at this mayor's election he starts the race as the underdog currently trailing sadeek khan by 21 points that's according to the latest you gov poll and his headline grabbing policies such as offering incentives for businesses to drug test their employees or allowing large corporations to rename tube stations after themselves don't appear to be doing much to boost his popularity also concerning for the Tory party who have apparently discussed replacing bailey as their candidate is his propensity for gaff's bailey's habit of putting his foot in his mouth was apparent again this week when he said this to the london assemblies economy committee this was a debate universal income thank you chair and thank you to our guests it's a very interesting conversation i would just like to to pose a few things i'd like to answer and firstly your estimation seems to have no no nodding towards the human condition i've been a youth worker for over 20 years i know some people would absolutely fly if you gave them you know a lump sum to deal with every week i know some people who would buy lots of drugs so so where where is the the care in this where is the care for the person how do you get past just university giving people money yes the the reason bailey gave for opposing a ubi was that people would just blow it all on drugs that's how much respect he has for the people of london who he wants to govern now you'll have noticed from that video that the authority bailey brought to that discussion was his 20 years as a youth worker so it's more than a little embarrassing that his latest piece of electoral literature poses some doubts about that pedigree um so this is from a leaflet that went through people's um or some people's letter boxes in london and you've got here um beth um one of the young people shorn helped as a youth worker who's giving her you know review of of shorn bailey her experience of shorn bailey and beth writes i used to get into trouble a fair bit you know typical stuff for a lad from a council estate so i struggled to get a job but then i met shorn he looked past all that and helped me get myself together and turn things around now maybe beth does describe herself as a lad from a council estate i'm of course all for gender fluidity people can refer to themselves how they like but might it be more likely that actually she doesn't exist um moya i want your take on shorn bailey's gaff prone mayoral campaign oh shorn bailey we love shorn bailey the labour sigh up um he loves fake news he loves to defend the police um he's already been reported to the cps in january for a leaflet alleging a 21 percent hike in council tax across london um and it's it's it's funny because these are the tactics that won the tories the 2019 election 88 percent of their ads were misleading but it doesn't work in london when he does stuff like his tfl bailout fax website uh people because it's a labour city people just like what are you doing this this makes no sense i i think it's i think it's fascinating how bad a candidate he is and i do wonder if it's that perhaps the tories have given up on taking over the city at the moment because it's firmly in city cairns hands it does seem to be a bit of a labour stronghold right now um and we instead should look to what they're trying to do to the powers of the mayoral uh mayorality um you know there's i think the bailout the tfl bailout was a really good example of this it was came with all these conditions they had to increase debts they were increasing fares it was like it was sort of backed into a corner and there have been i think murmurs from you know the people who keep an eye on localised government um that the tories instead are now pivoting from trying to like put a Tory mayor in place which you know Sean Bailey's not going to do it i don't think unless something goes very wrong you call would um but instead they you centralised government uh are going to try and just limit the powers that the london man has and you know there's been changes to planning laws that reduce local government power that affect london there's been a point in johnson allies like i think andrew gilligan to the tfl board withholding funding um when other districts do get that funding which so it's making khan seem incompetent and i i mean i'm not going to comment on khan's actual tenure but making him seem incompetent by dint of limiting the powers that he has and i think i i read somewhere that the london mayor is uh has almost the least amount of power for any um mayor of a capital city in in europe i believe it was so i that is a way in and boris johnson i think has never really i don't think he's ever considered himself as stepping down from london may even though he's prime minister i think he still sees himself as someone who can govern london better than city khan khan and wants to make it so that he can do that so perhaps that's perhaps all that while we all laugh at bailey we should be looking to what the tories are doing instead to make sure they have control over london and this like economic capital no i think that's that's a spot on analysis actually but it is you know the the tories are giving up on london electorally so instead they're just going to try and reduce the electoral um i suppose autonomy of london so they're trying to reduce the powers of the mayor instead of bothering to try and win the mayoralty it is interesting though that it's you know we think now of london as an obviously labor city but boris johnson was mayor of london for for eight years it was only four years ago well now five because the election was uninspired but five years ago that london was governed by a Tory and now it just seems completely unimaginable let's go to one more gaff from from bailey um even though he's going to lose and obviously the the Tory strategy is going to be to to defeats at etcan by other means by non electoral means but let's just go to one more bailey gaff um for the hell of it um so this is very recent as well this is from december i think when asked from january in fact when asked by inside housing how his shared ownership scheme would help homeless families this is another of his big policy offers um bailey suggested they could just save up for the five thousand pound deposit to join up um so you can see their homeless families could save for mortgage deposits says conservative candidate for london mayor now i think in terms of have the tories intentionally put a bad candidate in for london mayor i think it's probably more likely that no one who is of stature in the Tory party wants to stand for london mayor because they're so confident they're going to lose which is why um you've got shawn bailey who is stuck there um what do you see happening in in the london mayor elections do you do you think that it is just going to be a home run for sedeek khan or do you think he should also be worrying about for example the green candidate or the lib dem candidate or should we basically you know just we don't need to bother watching the the mayoralty election it's probably going to be quite a boring run where we know who's going to win and no one else is going to come close uh it's an interesting question because at the moment the predictions are that sedeek khan could be the first mayor in history to win it on first preference alone however i do know that more of the labour left um which is so funny that i'm even referring to the labour left the labour left just within my own personal circles are considering voting green so there could be a slight increase in the green vote but it could also be at the last moment that because of the Tory stranglehold over the rest of the country everyone just goes you know what i'm going to play it safe and i'm going to vote for sedeek uh so it's difficult it really is difficult i think the lib dems all lose lose votes personally but who knows uh the the politically homeless as they love to call themselves might just end up being like protest vote for the lib dems which is hilarious to me but no i think i have my overall prediction and i'm terrible at making predictions so this will probably be the opposite is that sedeek will win on first preference as shawmbaylee will get very low votes the greens will slightly increase their um vote share and it will be labour just disgruntled left wing young labour voters who are voting for shawmbaylee yeah but the greens will come third so the greens will come ahead of the lib dems which i think the greens will come ahead of the lib dem yeah that'll be the one i mean obviously it's good that sedeek can gets reelected but it's not very exciting so the the change we want to see is the greens beating the lib dems ideally beating the Tories that would be exactly fantastic that would be wonderful sedeek can't under pressure in four years time um we are going to wrap up the show there um where it's been an absolute pleasure to be joined by you for for tisky sow this evening we'll have to have you back on soon thank you so much it's been it's been wonderful i'm sorry to nickle switcher well at least you remember his name i couldn't remember what the guy that's why i called him an old guy because i was like i should have written in my i should have written in my notebook his name was anyway um if you haven't already um do go to navaramedy.com forward slash support and at the equivalent of one hour's wage a month if you do so already thank you so much please also do subscribe to the youtube channel hit the like button it helps us on the algorithm i'll be back on monday at 7 p.m for now you've been watching tisky sour on navaramedy good night