 Good evening and welcome to Tiskey Sour on the fifth Friday night of the third lockdown. I had to work that out just before we went live. I'm pretty sure that's correct. Darlia, how has your week been? Oh, it's been okay. I feel like this lockdown has gone easier since I've abandoned like all pretense of functional life. Like you won't catch me in a bra in like third lockdown and I'm eating whatever I want to eat. I'm like letting myself have whatever I need to have. So that's improved it slightly. Great. Darlia's had a relaxed week. I have to say I've had a fairly relaxed week. Someone's had a stressed week. This week hasn't gone very well for someone. It's Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer has had probably the most difficult week of his leadership. Lots of people who've been going light on him for months are suddenly starting to ask very serious questions about his leadership. That's going to be our main story for tonight. We also have some really important stories. No sort of Piers Morgan shouting at XYZMP. We're talking about Indian farmers, one of the biggest protests in the world ever apparently against reforms to the agricultural sector there. I've got a great interview lined up and we're going to talk about Boris Johnson humiliating himself by approving a coal mine just as he is pitching Britain as the most forward-thinking country when it comes to climate change. At the end, we do have a bit of a silly story for you, which is a blow-up in a parish council. I'm sure you've seen the video millions of people have, but we're going to give you the analysis and also show you parts of it again. I've already watched it about five times. One of the best TV events or on-screen events, I suppose, of 2021 so far. Before we go to our first story, you know the score. Do share the show, link, tweet on the hashtag, Tiskey Sour. Put your comments in the comments box under YouTube or under the Twitch stream and we'll be going to those throughout the show. Kier Starmer has perhaps had the worst week of his leadership so far. After getting a relatively easy ride from the press and labour MPs up to this point, the knives are apparently out. The flare-up started after a leak in the Guardian revealed a strategy to make Kier increase his authority by performatively standing in front of flags. This enraged many on the left while provoking ridicule from the right. For some examples, across the political spectrum, Clive Lewis in the Guardian argued Starmer's 1950s-style caricature of patriotism was both dangerous and phony. You might have seen Clive Lewis on Wednesday making a similar argument on Tiskey Sour. It wasn't just in the pages of the Guardian that people were complaining though. This is Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph. She argued that empty patriotic gestures could not substitute for vision. This seems to be the biggest complaint about Kier Starmer at the moment. There was a BBC article in fact that she just before we went live saying, labour is in search of a vision. It's not the best headline to have in the BBC. We can go to one more uncomfortable headline for Kier Starmer. This is Rod Little in The Sun, not someone whose opinions we should take particularly seriously. But he says no one would be fooled by Kier Starmer's new patriotic labour party. The fact of that presentation getting leaked on one of the issues which Kier Starmer is particularly uncomfortable on, both patriotism, which he thinks labour has a problem with, but also on being a little bit fake. That's not exactly what you want out into the public domain. And then to add insult to injury, the leak which presumably Kier Starmer can't be blamed for was followed by an unforced error in the House of Commons in a response to a jibe from Boris Johnson about Starmer's support for staying in the European Medicines Agency. The Labour leader cried foul only to be caught out. It provided material for this Tory attack ad. All of this, of course, is to allow us to get on with the vaccination programme. And if it had listened to the right Honourable Gentleman, we would still be at the starting blocks because he wanted to stay in the European Medicines Agency, Mr Speaker, and said so four times from that to Spatchbox. Kier Starmer. Nonsense. Don't let the truth get in the way of a pre-prepared gag. Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister knows I've never said that from Mr Spatchbox or anywhere else. Why would we want to be outside of the European Medicines Agency, which ensures all medicines in the EU are self-safe and effective? Mr Speaker, let me get three without the details. The European Aviation Safety Agency, which deals with safety. The European Medicines Agency, and of course, Europol, which I work with for many years. These are the bits of the EU which we should be seeking to retain, not to throw away. We will also seek to maintain membership or equivalent relations with European organisations, which often benefits the EU, such as URATM, the European Medicines Agency, Europol and Eurojust. Now, that's not the kind of video Kier Starmer wants to be going viral, especially when he is trying to distance himself from his previous enthusiasm for the European Union and support for a vote to overturn the 2016 referendum result. However, perhaps most worryingly for Kier Starmer was a piece by Stephen Bush in the new statesman. Now, Stephen Bush is one of the most prominent labour commentators currently working in the British press and also quite sympathetic to the party's current leader. So the piece was headlined. A consensus is forming among the commentary out that Kier Starmer is not up to the job. Does it matter? Now, Bush is relatively ambivalent about whether it does matter. We'll talk about that a bit in a moment. But first of all, I want to go through some of the most informative quotes in the piece, because he's talking to lots of people with connections inside and outside the party and he writes, MPs complain that he has no politics and that Starmer's labour has no clear identity beyond bland reassurance. Backbenchers who feel they would do a better job than the shadow cabinet complain that its members are mostly anonymous. In turn, shadow cabinet members complain that it is hard to make an impression when their quotes are stripped of anything exciting or provocative by the party's press office. Starmer's director of communications, Ben Nunn, is widely criticised as remote and inattentive. So you're seeing their similar arguments actually from labour MPs as we often make on this show that Kier Starmer doesn't seem to know what he's standing for. That statement about shadow cabinet members struggling to make a splash because all of the interesting lines get taken out of their speeches is especially notable, I think, as well as a direct attack at one of his most prominent staffers. On the other hand, Bush also pushes an accusation of opportunism against Kier Starmer's leadership, writing, the Labour's proposal that teachers should be vaccinated before or alongside at-risk groups has been rejected not only by the government but by scientific advisers and the Labour government in Wales on the ground that it would risk more lives and would not significantly reduce the likelihood of transmission in schools. For all that the idea is popular with voters, most of the coverage it attracts is hostile and the campaign risks tiring the party as opportunistic and unserious. Now, we've spoken about that particular vaccination policy on this show. I actually think it has pros and cons. I think the way it's been handled by the Labour Party is fairly opportunistic, but at the same time, I think there are good arguments to vaccinate teachers as quickly as possible. I want to bring you in, though, Darlia, because those quotes from MPs, from members of the shadow cabinet and also he's saying from commentators, there is a consensus now emerging that Starmer might not be up to the job. It's all happened quite suddenly, hasn't it? Yeah, and I think that, you know, credit to Moir from Galden because every time I try and think about what phrase encapsulates what is so uninspiring about Kirstammer and all I can think about is just wet white, wet white, because it's just the perfect, like, it's the perfect term to describe, like, why, like, just why he's so just kind of like icky, because it's like an ickiness as well as a kind of like just backbook, like, you know, spinelessness. But in terms of, you know, whether or not this is actually a leadership crisis, it depends, you know, I've always said that, you know, the main purpose of the Starmer leadership is not necessarily to, like, sorry, to win favour amongst the public or to build Labour's base, but it's rather to purge the left and to make sure that another left insurgency like we saw under Corbyn is never possible again, is, you know, structurally impossible. So to change the structure of the party away from one that is members driven and towards one whose power is much more concentrated in private private donors and the PLP. But he does need to be seen generally as legitimate in order to be able to achieve those things and competent in order to be able to achieve those things. So in those terms, we might start to be seeing some cracks in actually the efficacy of his leadership on the terms on which his leadership exists, you know, and whether or not from that kind of centrist base, whether or not he's really the best man for that job that I outlined before, because, you know, his entire purpose was to kind of build back that legitimacy amongst the Commentariat. And, you know, the fact that he is, according to Stephen Bush, maybe losing that is problematic because he doesn't have any source of power. Because normally I would say, you know, losing the Commentariat shouldn't matter. So long as you build up a base of real people who are really enthusiastic and willing to go out and fight and go out and build the message in their communities and fight for the party, but which is something that Corbyn's Labour kind of failed to realise was the key or was a key to actually gaining power. But in Stammer's case, he absolutely has no interest in doing that. So for him, losing that kind of Commentariat and that kind of palliness with the media does have an impact. But, you know, I think the key thing here is that he is coming off as inauthentic and having very poor judgement, you know, and that inauthenticity point which has been discussed by Ash and by Clive Lewis and all of that on this show, it takes us back to that pre-2015 moment when all you would hear on the doorstep is there's no difference between the two parties, their liars, their phonies, they just tell us what we want to hear. And one thing that made Corbyn so popular in, you know, kind of 2015 to 2017 was that he did break through that. People could say, you know, I might disagree with him, but I appreciate that, you know, both he and I know exactly what he stands for. But that then was weaponised and turned against him. And so, you know, but this attitude and, you know, that kind of Brownite, Milibandite attitude of focus grouping rather than movement building, it's outdated and it's a proven failed strategy. And what needs to happen is a harnessing of what drove that initial support for Corbyn and a re-strategising of how to better deal with the blowback of being seen as principled and honest and, you know, kind of connected to real communities. And, you know, that also connects to the flag waving party question, which is, you know, not it shows that it shows that inauthenticity, but it also shows incredibly poor judgement because I don't agree actually that that whole flag waving thing is just optics or just aesthetics. I think it's it's a best intellectually naive, at worst, sort of intellectually dishonest to not connect that term. And that leaked report to arise in reactionary politics around race, immigration, gender, sexuality. And I think that on the left, we sort of pretend that it's just optics sometimes because we recognise that it's not something that you can just message your way out of the attachment to that kind of particular sort of middle Englandism. It's not something you can message your way out of. It relates to very deep systemic political and economic crises and how people understand the world around them. So you actually have to do very complex and time consuming work to push through that. So instead of doing that work, we kind of want to pretend that we can just concede on the optics and yet somehow kind of retain that politics and that that's not possible. And the reason that that is catastrophic as a strategy and demonstrates poor judgement, as well as laziness, is because people who are driven by that kind of politics to vote, for whom that is the primary motivating factor that makes them want that decides whether or not they'll vote for one party or the other, they will never trust Labour to deliver what they want on those issues. And that's a good thing. And you know, but then the people who Labour need to win will read that shift for what it is and they will see through it and see that it's not just optics. And time and time again, we have seen the most recent example is Georgia in the US, that to win in this context, you have to do a long term work of mobilising the disenfranchised in order to either create new electoral coalitions or build electoral coalitions on new basis and on new terms, rather than trying to kind of recover ones that have been smashed over a very, very long period of time. So I think this whole thing shows poor judgement and it shows it in authenticity as well. I'd agree with those conclusions. I disagree with quite a lot of what you just said because I mean, I think you can't just take the lesson from Georgia that you had to mobilise people in urban centres because also you had to reassure people who voted Trump in 2016 and turned against him because of his terrible coronavirus response and Joe Biden was quite a reassuring face there for people. I think it would be a little bit intellectually dishonest to say the lesson from the 2020 election in America is that centrism doesn't work when you've had a centrist candidate who has won. I think you're going to need a unity between the left and the centre. I actually think some reassuring of people who have voted Tory in the past is going to be absolutely necessary. I just think that Starmer needs to also stand for something. That to me seems like the most worrying part of his leadership and what many people around him, be they commentators or MPs or shadow cabinet members, have also realised because for me, I do think you're going to have to reassure people who are patriotic. If their principal reason for voting is that they want to strengthen Britain or that they want to wave a flag around, they're probably not going to vote for the Labour Party but there are lots of people who care about different issues. One of them is they want to be reassured that the person who wants to lead the country also loves the country. I don't really see the problem with having some flags around. Jeremy Corbyn had some flags around. I think the real problem here is that Keir Starmer doesn't have anything to add to that and it's incredibly unhelpful that this strategy document has been released because what you then get is it's now almost impossible for him to present that as authentic whilst at the same time he doesn't have any principles to pat it out. All you see is this sort of tragic PR display with nothing at all behind it. I don't know if you want to respond to that before I go on to our next point. Well I think that to come back to the point about about Georgia and you know that kind of I think you're right to distinguish between people for whom this is the primary thing and that was I think what lost the 2019 election to the 2019 election to an extent and that because it became a Brexit election, you suddenly had a big sway to the population for whom that was the primary driving force between determining who they voted for but that much bigger subset of you know people for whom it's maybe one of many factors but there's also a lot of other things that can potentially trump that. I think that has proved in the fact that you know Bernie Sanders did does incredibly well amongst Trump voters which tells you that Trump's base was not exclusively driven by that, populated by people who didn't mind that there was you know so I think this whole thing of like oh you know like not all Trump voters are racism like okay but all Trump voters are okay with racism and explicit racism but the fact that Bernie Sanders was so popular Bernie Sanders never to my mind very rarely conceded on kind of that that point. The fact that he was able to do so much better than someone like Joe Biden did amongst Trump voters tells you that there are definitely other things that we can build on without needing to concede on you know that kind of like the politics and in turn the optics because these things aren't completely disconnected and while maintaining still like a politics that does not revolve around privileging British people above everyone else in the world. I want to go to a comment because it sort of connects to a point I wanted to raise I said I'd suggest why Stephen Bush suggests this might not be such a problem that commentators and MPs are having doubts about Kirstama. Michael Deary with a fiver says given Stammer's history of falling in line with public opinion how long before he releases a statement criticizing himself which is a very good comment very witty at the same time it is worth saying Kirstama isn't that unpopular with the public so he is still more popular than the Labour Party he is still historically compared to other leaders of the opposition not doing that badly I think he's got similar ratings that David Cameron did he obviously went on to when sorry when he was at this stage of his leadership of the Conservative Party he obviously went on to win a general election slightly less than Tony Blair but you know if you're looking at public opinion there's there aren't really huge alarm bells ringing although it does seem like this indecisiveness this not standing for anything is slightly cutting through for me if I was his strategist you know it's not a disaster but standing for something if it's for example sick pay if it's for example proper support for shielders if it is for example always following the advice of sage that's not going to lose you any votes so it's just going to be you know it's just going to go in the plus column and not into the minus column I want to move on to one more story which was released this week about Kirstama this is one that I think he'll find less electorally worrying because we know who he think are the stickiest voters he's most concerned if he looks pro-e-u or if it looks like he's not serious about Britain so this one might not bother his strategist but it probably should bother us so the Guardian have reported that Kirstama has been urged to give evidence to a public inquiry into undercover policing as environmental activists have concerned he have concerns he was involved in a cover up now what's going on here so the inquiry which he has been asked to give evidence to not by the people running the inquiry but by the the activist for whom it is it is relevant scrutinizes the deployment of 139 undercover officers to spy on more than a thousand political groups since 1968 now activists have concerns about abuses of power by the police during the period Stammer was director of public prosecution Stammer had that role from 2008 to 2013 that's how he got knighted that's why he's here during that time the time he was DPP 20 activists were unjustly convicted of plotting to occupy the Ratcliffe-on-Saw power station now those convictions were overturned after it was revealed an undercover police officer had infiltrated the group and then concealed evidence during their trial so that's why it was overturned because not all the not all the evidence that was that should have been available was made available now the undercover police officer in that case and you might know their name it was Mark Kennedy he was one of five undercover officers who was accused of deceiving women into long-term sexual relationships under false pretenses a really appalling story you might know of it as you know the spy cops scandal so what does this have to do with Keir Stammer well he was director of public prosecutions at the time and the complaints in this letter principally concern his commissioning of a report by Sir Christopher Rose into that miscarriage of justice now the report blamed the incident of a junior prosecutor and according to The Guardian Rose's report was silent on the exact role played by Stammer during the the miscarriage making no reference to whether for example the chief prosecutor knew about Kennedy and the withholding of evidence or took part in decisions about abandoning what was a major prosecution so it's it's left very unclear how much did Keir Stammer know we're left in the dark the article goes on to say the campaign has also list a series of unanswered questions including whether Stammer helped bury evidence of other miscarriages of justice caused by undercover officers in June 2011 Stammer commissioned Rose to examine only the case of the activists who planned to occupy the Ratcliffe power station but by the time Rose's report was published in December 2011 there was growing evidence that the concealment of key evidence in trials of campaigners went beyond the case of the Ratcliffe activists and could have affected a number of other trials Rose concluded that the Ratcliffe case was a one-off Stammer accepted Rose's conclusion and said there was no need therefore to examine other prosecutions to see if other activists had been wrongly convicted but then subsequent investigations by campaigners and the media revealed much more widespread wrongdoing by the state suggesting that many more activists over a number of years had been wrongly convicted now there are obviously quite a lot of unknowns that's quite a complex story but the real key issue here is that Keir Stammer commissioned and accepted a report which had conclusions which were wrong so the Ratcliffe case was not a one-off the report said it was so the Ratcliffe case that was the coal power station the case into these 20 people who were subject to a miscarriage of justice because of concealed evidence the report said that was a one-off we now know it very much wasn't there were many many undercover police officers operating in an incredibly problematic irresponsible way and it's very convenient for the state to pretend it was a one-off and this is where the real questions come in about Keir Stammer because when he stood to be Labour leader he positioned himself as a radical fighting for activists the idea was that just as he rose to the top of the legal establishment by standing up for what is right he'd rise to the top of the political establishment by standing up for what is right however the evidence suggests that actually once he gets to the top of the to the top of the ladder he tends to make decisions which just reinforce the power of the state or in the case now he's become Labour leader reinforce the power of the Labour Party establishment suspending people without due process getting rid of his predecessor so it seems that when you give Keir Stammer power he uses it to defend and protect the powerful not the people not not the ordinary people not the common man Dalia I want to go to you about how worried we should be about these particular revelations Cops be cupping right like if it walks like an op smells like an op talks like an op then it must be an op and this is why like I was never convinced by Keir Stammer I know that there was like some on the left who thought that he might be able to kind of harness Corbinism and sort of make it more respectable you know but the fact that he was you know the head of the DPP and also you know that he never made any effort to engage with the left institutions the whole time he was Brexit Secretary just told me everything that I that I need to know but this is again like the catastrophe of Stammer which is that you know this is one example of like where as more and more people's lives get touched by the criminal justice system especially as mental health services get underfunded so a lot of that gets outsourced to the police this disproportionately affects working class people black minority ethnic people who should be labors based but obviously are not going to be labors based because of these kinds of decisions you know whether it's and whether that that touches people individually or whether it touches members of their family we are things like this are going to lose people who are absolutely essential to a winning coalition for labour so when Keir says he's fighting for the for marginalised people people will just know that he's inauthentic and they won't trust him much like the people who are obsessed with patriotism and who vote depending on who sings Royal Britannia with their chest the most are also not going to you know won't be convinced by Keir Stammer by Keir Stammer's flag hugging so this is all kind of part of a broader sort of just lack of leadership but also of kind of like just showing his sort of his class interests and and where his how he analyzes the role of the British state as something that punishes as something that prosecutes as something that covers its back even if it means leaving its most vulnerable people in in the dark rather than seeing kind of like seeing it as something that should care for people and should take leadership and stand up for people but you know this is all again part of that broader package of lack of leadership that you know that being scared to depart from what the Tories are doing and just sort of offering it in a slightly like lighter less bombastic package and that's why if you go back to the clip that you played at the sort of beginning of the show when he lied about his comments on the European Medical Association when you could have gone you know wait a minute like you're saying that this vaccine strategy is this massive success but in reality the fact that we are only half vaccinating people even though this is not we don't have data to to suggest that this is necessarily going to work and in fact it could lead to a rise of muted strains that are resistant to all the vaccines is precisely an example of the lowered regulations that I was worried about when I pointed out that the risk of leaving the EMA but because he's so scared he has no sort of core no core in him other than power climbing he doesn't know how to deal with that situation so he just sort of lied and that's not going to win for labour and not only is it not going to win labour power but doing that strengthens the power of the Tories because it essentially reaffirms the terms on which the Tories are gaining power and it also makes it seem like there's no alternative to the things that the Tories are offering so it's a loose lose essentially. I should probably say I kind of disagree on the vaccines thing I think it was it was advised by the JCVI to leave a 12-week gap between the first vaccine and the second vaccine there's loads of evidence that that's good for the AstraZeneca vaccine slightly less that that's good with the Pfizer vaccine but at the same time the only reason they tested it with three weeks in between the first and the third dose was because they wanted to end the trial quickly so I don't personally think people should be too worried about the gap in between the first and the second vaccine but we're probably in a bit of a danger of getting off getting sidetracked now so maybe we should park that that disagreement and that issue for a future show about COVID-19 you can make your own minds up on that one right Simon Bennett with £40 very kind just been paid and my subscription has lapsed very very bad that is very very bad please wish my partner Tasha a very happy belated birthday and keep up the excellent work happy belated birthday to you Tasha I hope you had a wonderful day like this stream before we go on to our next story go on it helps us in the algorithm why wouldn't you Boris Johnson has received plaudits recently for committing Britain to ambitious emissions reductions and the Tories like to claim the country will be setting a sterling example when we host the latest UN climate summit in November this year however a decision to allow the construction of a coal mine in Cumbria has now left any claim that Britain is a global leader on climate in tatters now this is based on a criticism which has been made by James Hansen who is who was NASA's lead researcher on global warming and whose testimony before the US Senate in 1988 was one of the key moments in sort of raising the profile of climate science and and raising understanding and knowledge of the dangers of climate change a very very prestigious man in this letter he said an open letter to Boris Johnson in leading the climate conference you have a chance to change the course of our climate trajectory earning the UK and yourself historic accolades or you can stick with business almost as usual and be vilified around the world it would be easy to achieve this latter ignomy and humiliation just continue with the plan to open a new coal mine in Cumbria in contemptuous disregard of the future of young people and nature the contrary path is not so easy but with your leadership it's realistic very very strong words there from someone who has an incredibly deep understanding of climate change James Hansen's criticisms were not isolated either that they echo the objections of the climate change committee and this is an organisation which was specifically set up by the government to give them advice on how to meet their own climate goals so they should have a lot of weight when they speak on issues like this and they wrote to community secretary Robert Jenrick last week to say the opening of a new deep coaking coal mine in Cumbria will increase global emissions and have an appreciable impact on the UK's legally binding climate carbon budget the mine is projected to increase UK emissions by 0.4 mt co2 e per year I'll have to ask my guest what that actually stands for this is greater than the level of annual emissions we have projected from all open UK coal mines to 2050 the decision to award planning permission to 2049 will commit the UK to emissions from coaking coal for which there may be no domestic use after 2035 85 percent of the coal is planned for export to Europe now as I have demonstrated some of my ignorance about climate science by not knowing what some of those symbols stood for I'm delighted to be joined by someone who does have immense knowledge about the climate change issue I'm joined by Adrian Buller from the think tank Commonwealth thank you so much for coming back on the show yeah thanks for having me back apparently fox actually has the the information it's 0.4 megatons of co2 emissions per year I assume you knew that as well yeah co2 equivalent emissions that's a little e under it but yeah he almost got it okay I knew I knew I knew I knew I knew we'd need your expertise on that one my first question for you is that the government say you know this isn't coal which is being mined for coal power it's not a return to coal power plants what this is is that we need to use coke for a specific process to produce steel and that at the moment there is no alternative to using coke to produce steel so either we mine it in Britain or we just have to import it to burn it in exactly the same way that we would we would otherwise what's your what's your response to that yeah I mean they've given a lot of justifications for why this is a good idea one is that you know making steel from coal is currently our only method in the other is you know job creation in the midst of COVID economic fallout both of which actually really don't stand up to scrutiny if you try and sort of begins poke holes in them so on the yeah it's absolutely it's metallurgical coal which is exactly what it sounds like it's used to produce steel um but ultimately already at this point you know they've committed to 85 percent of it being exported so it's not going to make that much of a difference to the fact that we already import you know the vast majority of our steel from Australia and Russia um as well as uh a little bit from the US as well I think it's like a you know a 30 each roughly um and so it's not going to make a huge dent in that given that we're committing to like exporting the vast majority of it to Europe um so in terms of like security of imports it's not huge and then you know there's plenty of it to go around the UK steel industry is already you know not producing a huge amount after you had you know collapse of British steel in 2019 you've had um both Tata Steel and Celsa seeking bailouts as part of uh you know COVID-19 and its impacts you know it's not the highest priority for us to be like increasing our amounts of coal and you know the biggest thing for me is that we need to be you know if we have any kind of stake in actually reducing our emissions people who say that won't have a huge impact on emissions are talking about the like process of producing it which is so negligible compared to the impact of actually burning and using it which people are just willfully ignoring when they make that argument and so to have any chance of even coming close to our own carbon targets which in my opinion are already not stringent enough you know as you pointed out the Committee on Climate Change says we basically need to stop extracting from this line at the latest by 2035 and they've committed it with the license up to 2049 so you've basically left this almost 15-year kind of hangover where you effectively legally can't be extracting from it which means any jobs or any kind of benefits are by definition temporary and you're just going to have this cliff edge in 15 years anyways and so it just doesn't make any sense when you could be investing in you know the very necessary process of decarbonizing steel which is something we could be leading on and is that is that a plausible technology which would be around the corner with with the appropriate government intervention is there a way of decarbonizing steel production so that we don't have to use this this coke yeah so funnily enough Commonwealth is actually putting out a report on this next week so watch that space but aside from that plug absolutely so I mean a lot of these technologies are sort of nascent and in a similar way to you know carbon capture and storage but there are groups that are really leading on it so there's a company called Hybrid Steel which is sort of a Swedish finish public sort of invested in public led program to switch to hydrogen based steel production and it's you know had a lot of early success and basically you know Boris Johnson's entire rhetoric is his climate politics are very much technocratic and based on us being technological leaders and you know I have my issues with that but even if he wanted to be true to his own agenda this is exactly the kind of thing that they should be pursuing this is you know leading on the technologies that we need steel is inevitably inevitably going to be a part of you know building renewable infrastructures etc the fact that we would sink a ton of money and temporary jobs that are going to be lost into a dying form of production rather than investing in what needs to you know happen to change in the future is nonsensical and I think you know within the cabinet you've seen so much disagreement and outrage at generic that reflects how nonsensical a decision that that it is and why do you think they are doing it then because I mean you know from a sort of political electoral perspective it does seem like the government are quite serious about painting themselves as as leaders in in in the green economy or whatever and I know you've said you don't think the targets they've set themselves are ambitious enough but I mean they are ambitious compared to other countries so it does seem like the government are putting a bet on you know green transitions as something which are worth their while to at least be seen to be committed to so why then would they invest in this coal mine which presumably isn't going to add that much to GDP I mean that just shut them down because they weren't particularly you know productive sources of wealth or whatever also she wanted to destroy organized labor that's a different story why would they be why would they have approved this yeah so I mean it really came down to Robert Jenrick right so he effectively made this decision apparently not only without the consent but without even the knowledge of other you know members of the cabinet and it sparked what seems to be based on impress leaks as much as you can trust those a lot of internal division because it is a foolish decision in terms of optics as the host of COP26 economically doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of job creation even the company themselves has said like at most this might create 500 jobs which given the amount of sort of impact how bad it looks and the fact that those jobs would probably fall apart long before the mine says it will be open because of you know our carbon targets economically not a big impact so I think it really just was something that was absolutely like a cock up if you like that I can't think that did he sit next to the wrong person at a fundraiser maybe it seems to be how lots of generous decisions are made exactly so I mean I don't want to say that because I don't want to get sued but effectively yeah I would I would say it comes down to that you know he said that his justification was oh this should come down to to the local councils to decide but it really felt like it was directly encouraged and there was really no scrutiny of the decision or any kind of like assessment of how it fits into any of the you know other plans that we have when it comes to the climate crisis and it's just yeah completely just a stick in the mud and I think you know he's paying for it and as he should and can we finally look forward to COP oh my god I'm going to explain now is it COP26 right COP26 yes I got it right can we look forward to to COP26 obviously it's being hosted in Scotland the government are making a big deal about the fact that you know they are going to be playing a leadership role in negotiating the next phase of the Paris agreement is that true I mean what role will the British government be playing in those negotiations and also what should we be looking out for and hoping for in in COP26 yeah I mean the COP presidency is a really important position because I mean it sounds a bit ridiculous but ultimately like your ability to host and to get everyone you know to get along with each other has a huge impact on how these things go and that made a huge difference in Paris they just took a like I swear they took communications and like PR course so that they could make those negotiations work and come out with the Paris agreement and so the presidency is a huge role and I don't think that right now we're particularly equipped for it because in order to have the legitimacy that it takes to sort of take control of those negotiations have people take you seriously as the president and sort of follow the initiative that you're setting in a really really important year if COP26 goes ahead this is when we sort of ratchet up the nationally determined contributions the NDCs that countries have made in terms of their own you know voluntary commitments and disagreements so it's a huge sort of landmark year and the Biden administration is rejoining and so in theory this could be something where the UK has an enormous role in driving forward the global climate agenda making everyone's commitments much more stringent but if we're doing this kind of garbage and sort of constantly undermining our own credibility and legitimacy it risks and you know this isn't an overstatement it risks undermining the potential success of of the conference as a whole and sort of the level of ambition that everyone else sort of comes with thank you so much for for joining us this evening and giving us all of your incredible insight there was so much detail I feel like you really understand the climate and steel I'm very I'm very impressed I love it you know I just love decarbonizing steel with hydrogen I don't know what to tell you sick well I hope we manage it you know and I look forward to your report coming up yeah all right thanks for having me thank you for coming on um darlier I want to bring you in on this for the political angle um what do you make of this do you think this is something that's going to stick to the conservatives they're sort of trying to move away from them being the nasty party they're supposed to be the party you know which is you know both economically responsible but also serious about the climate is them opening a new coal mine something which is going to cut through or is this you know a bit of a minority pursuit paying attention to what mines do and don't get built I mean there's there's plenty of potential for it to be used that way and again if the opposition had any sense of metal or strategy then they would use that because you know the phoniness of Boris's climate strategy is not just limited to this coal mine as well as the outrageous audacity that he has to rip off the green industrial revolution from John McDonald and from the Labour Party which again Kiyosama's just like bent over backwards and let them do that with absolutely no um kind of like fight back at all and no sense of like oh you're kind of taking a lead from us um and you know but it was always you know the climate strategy of of the Tories with this coal mine but also you know outside of this coal mine it was always insufficient and it was always merely pageantry it's nowhere near this idea of being a climate leader it includes things you know like net zero by 2050 which is three degrees of warming which is well past you know the tipping point that has been highlighted in reports by the IPCC and it would cost the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of millions of people um around the world and also a lot of the strategy relies on things like um on extraction and you know you know things that basically reproduce a lot of the same ecological problems that um the carbon-based economy did but you know the scale of investment in his climate strategy is laughably poor and insufficient and it's not even binding it's always framed as you know an ambition and it or it relies on like hypotheticals or techno fixes that haven't even been developed yet so you can either take a radical position and say you know this is insufficient for the issue of the climate crisis but even if you want to be conservative as Adrian says there's plenty of scope to attack this on the terms that Boris has outlined because this does fail on on his own terms um I think that you know activists that are building towards that the climate movement is kind of building towards interrupting and kind of poking a hole and bursting that bubble as it were in the pageantry of the so-called climate policy um of the of the Tories but it would really help if some of that could be shored up by some creativity within the House of Commons especially from the leadership from the opposition sorry. They're not the they're not the most creative bunch are they I mean we might we might disagree about a number of things when it comes to Labour's leadership but I think we can we can agree they haven't sort of come up with any surprises um boring is is probably my most overwhelming emotion when I um think about Keir Starmer and the leadership of the Labour Party. Well let's go on to our next story now. Since November hundreds of thousands of farmers have been camped outside Delhi demanding that new laws deregulating the farming sector be repealed. Now the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful and garnered widespread support in a country where 60 percent of the population make their primary income from agriculture. However last week saw more violent scenes that was because protesters or when protesters on tractors broke through police barriers um those protests took place on Republic Day which is a national holiday that marks the anniversary of India officially adopting its constitution on the 26th of January 1950. On that same day people stormed New Delhi's Red Fort protesters stormed New Delhi's Red Fort which is a landmark associated with Indian independence and that caused particular backlash among the general public. However the protests have continued and they are receiving international support from unlikely quarters or perhaps unlikely quarters. Maybe it's unfair to say unlikely. Earlier this week Rihanna tweeted this news story of Indian authorities cutting internet access around New Delhi. I think we can probably get that tweet up. We will also see a tweet of Greta Funberg who highlighted the same story tweeting in solidarity with farmers protests. Now this prompted fury on the part of supporters of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi with effigies of the pair burned at pro government protests and security services and police have reinforced barricades blocking entry to Delhi while intermittently cutting internet access electricity and water supplies as well as using tear gas against protesters. So you can see the barricades which have been set up around Delhi. Now to discuss the latest developments in the mass protests against Modi's agricultural reforms I'm delighted to be joined by Sukhman Dhami the co-founder and co-director of ENSAF a human rights organization that works to end impunity and achieve justice for crimes against humanity in India. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you Michael for inviting me to this conversation. So my first question for you is we have talked about this this topic on the show before but it seems to have been only escalating since so these protests have been going on for for three months. What do you see as the direction of travel? Do the government seem like they might be willing to compromise or the protesters look like they might be tiring themselves out? What do you see is happening is happening next? I don't see either side backing down frankly. I think the protesters especially have a lot of support and solidarity throughout the country and increasingly throughout the world. This movement is a farmers movement and a farmers protest but they've been joined by labor leaders, union leaders, castes, religions, regions. There's a unity that hasn't existed present in this movement and I don't see it losing momentum. It's actually looks like it's gaining momentum. And you work in human rights as sort of your principal domain. Could you talk a bit about the relationship or the reaction of the Indian state to these protests? There's been lots of complaints of basically authoritarianism and shutting off the internet, police brutality. I mean you saw those blockades around Delhi. They look quite severe. This looks like a sort of military occupation almost. Could you talk a bit about how the Indian state have reacted to these protests? From our observations and according to all reports, there is an escalation in violence and it appears as if the government is preparing for a larger scale crackdown. We do know that journalists in particular have been targeted as well as the leadership. For example, there's a case in particular that I want to call attention to. This is the case of Naudeepkar. She is a adult rights activist, a labor activist and a women's rights activist. She was arrested and according to credible reports, she's been sexually assaulted and tortured in custody and she's been charged with things like murder and sedition and other spurious charges. There's also been an incident where an individual was shot. Authorities claim that this individual was killed in an accident. However, reporters who have investigated this shooting have in turn been charged by authorities with sedition. Regarding the fortifications and the barricades, we do see a weaponization of these. They've installed sharp metal spikes around these areas. Obviously, to corral and barricade in the protesters and likely inflict serious bodily harm. I think these are all indications that the government is comfortable with escalating violence and they're increasingly using censorship of the internet communications. There have been reports that even Twitter's employees have been threatened with serious jail time. I think there's every reason to be concerned and alarmed. I would say that this is a time for the international community to scrutinize India's actions and perhaps send international observers to make sure that people's human rights are respected. What are the political calculations which are being made by Modi at this point? Because people who even vaguely follow Indian politics will know of him as someone who is used to cracking down on protest movements and not having much concern for human rights. But the previous movements that I'm aware of that he's cracked down on really hard are against minorities, especially against a Muslim minority in India. Whereas this time around, it seems like he's set himself up in opposition to a group who make up almost the majority or basically the majority of the Indian public. I think 50% of people who work in agriculture, about 60% of people their principal income is from agriculture. He's not repressing a minority here and it is a democracy. How is this going to get away with this, basically? On its surface, this legislation doesn't target minorities and these farm laws ostensibly apply to the whole nation. However, there are some regions and states of India that are predominantly agrarian and heavily rely on agriculture for not only their economy and livelihoods but also the very formation of their cultures and communities. Some of the most heavily affected regions are the state of Haryana and Punjab. Punjab is one of the regions in India like other regions in India that could be classified as a minority majority state. For example, in Punjab, the majority of the population belongs to the Sikh minority. In that sense, this legislation heavily impacts the state of Punjab and therefore heavily impacts the minority Sikh population. That being said, it also heavily impacts the rural poor and the Dalit community who also heavily rely on the agricultural sector for their livelihood. And I think in this sense, Modi and his administration didn't anticipate the level of resistance that we're seeing today to this legislation. He has over the years tried to woo Dalits who constitute a large portion of India's population. However, all his policies have largely worked to further impoverish them. And this legislation is another example that is going to adversely impact the Dalit community in addition to farmers and many others. And finally, I want to talk about, I suppose you've brought up the international angle and why you think it would be a good thing for observers to be sent in there. It seems as if those tweets by Rihanna and Greta Thunberg really did strike a chord. I mean, you saw government agencies make public statements denouncing those tweets. Do you think it is external opposition, which Modi is going to be most fearful of at this point in time or the effect that pushing through these reforms or repressing the protesters could have on India's international alliances that could ultimately be what decides who wins in this conflict, essentially? I think that is a real concern of the administration. India is sensitive to its international standing and reputation. And the world is also aware of the gross human rights violations that have been perpetrated recently and in the past by India's security forces. And there's no reason to believe that its security forces aren't prepared to repeat those practices like enforced disappearances and unlawful killings and torture. We know that in recent weeks and days, for example, India's anti-terror body, the National Investigation Agency has issued according to our sources over 100 node summons to community organizers, farm leaders, labor organizers. And this is especially concerning because this body and its courts have wide powers to prosecute people on various charges that don't comport with international standards. We also know that, again, according to our sources on the ground, that maybe upwards of 400 people have been detained and their whereabouts are unknown. And so, again, because of India's practices in places like Kashmir and Punjab, we know that police, military, paramilitary forces are more than capable of violating people's human rights. And so the fact that this issue has been internationalized is likely related to India's previous atrocious human rights record. Sikman Dhami, thank you so much for joining us this evening, all incredibly insightful. Thank you, Michael. Let's go to a couple of comments. Kate Nichols, great show tonight watching this is the only way I managed to is the only way to manage my care based anger. Could I ask Michael for a half birthday shout out to my kitten Loki? Oh, I was thinking why only half birthday? Like why do you not like your kitten enough for a whole birthday? But I assume actually they're six months old. So happy half birthday to Loki. And Max with or Max says, can you please wish my dad Jim happy birthday from me and his fam and pals 61 today and loving his second life as a leftist since becoming a Tiski Easter. Amazing. Happy birthday. Happy 61. Very pleased to hear that. Also very important target demographic for us leftists to win over. So I'm very, very, very pleased with that one. We're going to go on to our final story. The successful rollout of the vaccines means it's at least plausible that within a few months we'll be able to have meetings in real life instead of on zoom. However, there could be elements of the online platform which we'll miss. I personally have grown fairly fond of never leaving my room. It's quite nice. I can do these shows on here. It'll be nice to go back to the studio. But at the same time, there are clearly downsides. There are also other benefits of having meetings on zoom. For example, hosts can eject abusive attendees with relative ease where once a fight might have broken out, if it were in in real life in a room. On Thursday, a clip of an incident along these lines went viral. This is from a meeting of Handforth Paris Council. You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver. No authority at all. She's just kicked him out. No, she's kicked him out. Don't. Don't. She's kicked him out. Don't. This is a meeting called by two councillors. Illegally. They now elect a chairman. No, they can't because the vice chair's here. I take charge. Read the standing orders. Read them and understand them. Read the standing orders. That's been viewed 4.2 million times. The last time I checked, presumably a little bit more than that now. Dahlia, have you ever been in a meeting quite that aggressive? From what I've heard, probably if I have been, it's probably been in local government meetings because- I thought you were going to say if I have been, it was probably me. Just me screaming. I think there is this tendency to really romanticise local government and stuff, but without realising that oftentimes it could be incredibly charged and difficult and chaotic spaces. I feel like if I have been in one, it's probably been in a local context like this one. That was a 30-second clip which went, as I say, completely viral. It's also been leading the news today. I don't think enough happened today, but there is also a longer video online. There's an 18 minute highlights video. Very entertaining. I've watched the whole thing. We're not going to show you the whole thing. We're just going to show you some choice segments so you can get an idea of what that anger was about. Why was he so annoyed that she wasn't the chair? We'll get to that. It's actually quite complicated. She wasn't the chair. Jackie Weaver hadn't read the standing orders. Let's start. This is how the meeting starts. When do we plan to start? I think we could start any moment, Chairman. I think it's perhaps helpful just to go through the same things as we went through before, which is just to encourage people to switch off their microphones, because it does reduce the background, which tells us that somebody else wants to come in. I'll continue to admit people if you'd like to start the meeting, Chairman. You didn't imagine that. The second sentence said was, fuck off. It was unclear who was saying fuck off to who or who thought they were muted, but it really did set the scene for what was to come. So in the next clip, you'll start to work out what some of the beef was about. Can we be assured that we won't be thrown out of the meeting like we were last time? As long as we have reasonable behaviour from everyone, no one would be excluded from the meeting. I was thrown out of the meeting, so was Councillor Brougham. As a point of order, Chairman, could we start them? We haven't started the meeting yet. Do you want to speak anyway? I really love the guy. Quite rightly. Then you get Julie's iPad to come up, to sort of really remove some of the tension. So the man you saw there who's tagged his hand for PC Clarke will come to that later, because he wasn't actually the Clarke. Again, another source of controversy. He was Brian Tolver, who was chair of Hanford Council. He is furious that Jackie Weaver, she's sort of the main character all of this really, she's been sent to host the meeting by Cheshire Association of Local Councils on the request of other councillors who had complained of poor behaviour. The next clip we'll show you. I suppose suggest why those complaints might have arisen. Are you here as the proper officer? I am here offering support to Hanford Parish Council in the conduct of this meeting this evening. Is that as Clarke or proper officer? There's no difference between Clarke and proper officer. Of course there is. Yes there is. You must know the basic law. Are we going to start this meeting? It isn't the role of somebody who however kindly volunteers to do the clarking for a meeting, to act as a proper officer if they haven't so been appointed. That's against the law. And let me also quote to you the standing orders of Hanford, but will you stop talking? Oh my god. You're going to be shocked by that. You're going to keep getting more and more shocked by what you see. I've only seen this short clip where he yells at her. I don't know why, but this is triggering me really hard. I really like that line. I'm going to use that before. You don't know the basic law. You don't know the basic law because I don't know what it means by basic law. Do laws apply to the stand? Are there laws about the standing orders of parish council meetings? I'm not sure. We'll need a legal expert for that one. Let's go to our next clip. I think we have some more poor behaviour here from the elected chair who has provoked complaints. Points of order according to our standing orders are determined by the chair. If you want to raise a point of order as a councillor, you ask if you can raise a point of order. You state it and then the chair decides it is not for the Clarke to raise a point of order. It is not for the Clarke to decide on a point of order. And you must be aware of that. God knows what you're doing in order if you're not aware. Shall we elect an alternative chairman? I'm just in a meeting at the moment. Can I give you a call back when it finishes? Julie's iPad, I think, is really the star of the whole show. Because every time you've got this enormous tension rising, it's embodied. Yeah, because it's not even Julie. It's Julie's iPad and then you've got, sorry, I'm in a meeting. That's one thing I think I will miss from Zoom meetings. Let's go to where the drama really starts. This bit is a bit longer because this is the real action. This is the best bit of that 18-minute clip. Let's take a look. We'll start the meeting and I want to repeat what I said at the beginning of the last meeting, that this meeting has not been called according to the law. The law has been broken. Will you please let the chairman speak? To disrupt this meeting, I will have to remove you from it. You can't. It's only the chairman who can remove people from a meeting. You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver, no authority at all. She just kicks him out. No, she's kicked him out. She just kicks him out. Don't. This is a meeting called by two councillors. Illegally. They now elect a chairman. No, they can't. This is the vice chairs here. I take charge. Read the standing orders. Read them and understand them. Stop calling behaviour. Chairman, a copy of this will in fact be sent to the monitoring officer. Where's the chairman? Read the standing orders. Where's the chairman gone? I'd like to elect a chairman for this meeting. You don't have to elect a chairman. There's a chairman already installed, the chairman of the council. Councillor Birkle, we've been through this. What are you talking about? You don't know what you're talking about. The chairman of the council is the chairman of the council. Could I ask you to be respectful to Jackie Weaver, please? She's kicked Barry out some way, but don't. Barry, no. Barry has gone. We're trying to have a team's meeting, you fool. We're trying to have a team's meeting, you fool. We can't want to see you go fat. We just don't. Jackie Weaver, I find that the person on Alec Bruton's Zoom is being very disrespectful to everybody. Coming from you from Birkin, that sounds good. My first point is to apologise to Jackie, but welcome to Handforth. John Smith is one of my favourite ones. He's the voice of the audience. Because he seems really impartial, because the guy on Alec's iPad on the couch, he's obviously laughing in quite a contemptuous way, whereas John Smith is laughing in a neutral way. He's our voice in the room of just being like, what the fuck? Also, stop doing that. It's like, this is the definition of power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts, absolutely, because clearly being involved in the parish council has completely gone to their head, and I'm just very, very scared right now. Is this what's going on in our communities? Isn't the message more that even a little bit of power can corrupt almost absolutely? Absolutely, exactly. I suppose it must have been Alec, if it was Alec's iPad. Yeah, it was Alec, who moved into this sort of golem style of speaking where you couldn't work out what he says. Where are you in Microsoft? It's fantastic, the whole thing's fabulous. Anyway, Tolver, so he was the chair, he was the chair who was ejected from Zoom, even though Jackie Weaver didn't have the authority. Apparently she didn't have the authority because you have to have a vote before you eject someone from the room. She constitutionally didn't have the authority, but spiritually she absolutely had the authority. Well, most people's takes on this actually has been that she had the moral authority. I do kind of fall down on that side. I think I struggle to have sympathy for Alec or the chair, who apparently hadn't held a meeting for a few months anyway, so I don't know if he'd been doing his chairmanship properly, but I'd seen some arguments from people on the left. They were saying, why are we on Jackie Weaver's side? She's the bureaucrat. She's been imposed from the top down to undermine local democracy, and the chair is quite right to be a little bit annoyed, which is the position he has taken. So he spoke to the Associated Press today. Jackie Weaver's been on the airway. She's the one getting the platform. She's been on Women's Hour. She's been on Times Radio, but the chair who is Brian Tolver, he did get to have his say. He spoke to Associated Press and said, I cannot think of any other council meeting anywhere that was taken over by an unqualified member of the public like this, removing half the councillors from the meeting, denied half of the voters of the village from being represented. It was an appalling attack on our democratic rights. The sort of calling her an unqualified member of the public, I suppose was a bit hard, because she was brought in by the local council association of Cheshire. So obviously, the sort of larger body had recognized that there was a bit of a problem in one of the units below them. On the request of some of the councillors, they bring in Jackie Weaver to mediate. She attempts that, and then lots of people throw a bit of a hissy fit. Are you sure you're on Jackie Weaver's side, Dali, or is there a sort of shadow of doubt in your mind that maybe the chair and Allid, with his golem voice, with his subpoenas, he was sending subpoenas, which I don't know how he was sending the subpoenas. It's like a legal request in writing. The only time I've heard subpoena is in American politics, where the Senate can subpoena someone when there's a congressional investigation. I didn't know you could do it in local politics in this country. Maybe you can't. But do you have a shadow of a doubt as to whose side you're falling on? You don't think democracy was crushed? Was this a coup? I think it's really good that we've gone from speaking about Modi and the Indian farmers and the attack on democratic rights. But I think that if I was Jackie Weaver, I would have injected myself. I would have just been like, you'll have issues. It's not my problem. Goodbye. So that was the correct position, I think, to just exclude herself from the whole narrative. She was chill. If you watched the whole video, she goes on to say, because someone asked, why had the chair written in his little badge, which was quite funny, because then she was like, is that a real badge? They were all completely confused about how Zoom works. But she was saying, no, he's just called himself the clerk, which doesn't make him the clerk. You can call me Britney Spears if you like. She had some wit about her. I think she enjoyed the whole affair, to be honest. But it would have been more intimidating. We have a couple of comments on this. Nishat 1976 with 14.99. Great show, guys. But you have no authority. We do have... I can shut... Actually, I can't shut down this show. Fox has the authority. It's Fox who can eject me or Dahlia or just shut down the whole system. I actually don't have any authority in this situation, neither does Dahlia. Henry VIII, fake with a fiber, says hashtag clusterfuck of a meeting. I think that's very much true. A meeting which begins with fuck off and ends with welcome to hand forth. It's almost like a screenplay. And maybe many dramas will be made out of that particular Zoom call, although it basically stands in for one itself. Let's end tonight's show there, Dahlia. It's been an absolute pleasure spending another Friday evening in lockdown with you. Yeah, it's been lovely. It's been a fun show today. It has been a fun show today, hasn't it? Thank you all for watching and for joining us as you do every Friday, as you should do every Friday. Make sure you do subscribe to the channel if you're not already hit the notifications button so you know every time we go live. And of course, if you want to support the work we do, if you want to help us grow, expand, please go to navaramedia.com forward slash support and donate the equivalent of one hour's wage a month. For now, we'll be back at 7pm on Monday. You've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navarra Media. Good night.