 We've often complained on this show about Keir Starmer's habit of abstaining in parliament. Now we've complained about him doing this on the spy cop's bill in particular. Now it turns out we aren't alone in our concerns. Gary Neville, ex-England and Manchester United defender and now hotelier spoke to Sky's Sophie Ridge about Labour abstaining in last week's vote on the system of Covid tears. Paul, we're in tier three. We're being told currently that we will be told whether we're going into tier two on the 16th of December and that we can open hospitality on the 19th. How can that be? We can't order the food in time, you can't open your booking engines, how can people plan, you can't mobilise your staff. So we're in a situation whereby there is no plan, everything's so reactive and immediate and it cannot be like that. Leadership cannot be like that. And I was critical of the Labour Party running the week because they're there to protect the disadvantaged and the vulnerable and the restrictions being in place which protects health is fine but they know that the economic support isn't in place, aligned with those restrictions which means you've got to take a position and be bold and go against it, you cannot abstain and that's where people have managed it at this moment in time. I think are frustrated with the lack of leadership in, I suppose, protecting the residents of Manchester and the communities that are hardest hit. So you'd have liked to see Labour vote against the tier system then? Yeah, I don't like half rose leadership. Take a stance, you've got, you know, you go out in your general election, you're told in your general election to all the people on the doorsteps and get out and vote. So when you're elected and you're in that, you're in that seat in Westminster, you just take a position, you don't abstain, you take part in the match, you're the opposition, you're the opposition, don't sit in the stand, they sat in the stand. The sentiment that Gary Neville expressing there, I agree with and I think that the Labour Party has abstained way too many times on really significant issues. I actually do think that on this particular instance, even if it's been very poorly communicated by the leadership, there was some logic because basically what Gary Neville there is suggesting Labour should have done is vote against to hold out for more financial support for businesses during the restrictions in the various tiers and in a similar way to how Andy Burnham held out as Mayor of Manchester saying I'm not going to improve this until you, I'm not going to improve these measures until you offer more financial support for the residents of my city. The argument against Labour doing that in this particular situation was that if they had voted against then Boris Johnson to get it passed wouldn't be negotiating with Labour, he'd be negotiating with his own rebellious backbenches and the rebellious backbenches are the type of right winger who just want, you know, general restrictions to be looser, the kind of anti-lockdown crowd. So there was a risk that if Labour committed to voting against the proposal, Boris Johnson's sort of policy would get shifted to the right, not be shifted to more financial support but to be, you know, a dangerously low level of restrictions. Ash, what do you make of this? I mean Gary Neville, I think in the general point is correct. I mean, we've seen Kirstama sort of being completely addicted to abstention and I do think the overall impression it gives is someone who is unwilling to commit to anything. This individual act of abstention I didn't actually have a problem with because you've got a twofold problem. One is that it sends Boris Johnson negotiating with his headbangers who think that the best cure for coronavirus is poor people getting it and on the other hand you've got a communication issue with the public. Well, you say that you want lockdown, so why are you voting against it? You've been castigating the government for being late for going in. There's a kind of muddiness of message there. But I think the overall diagnosis which is that Kirstama is someone who seems to lack a core motivating story in a way that Jeremy Corbyn certainly didn't lack a core motivating story in a way that Tony Blair certainly didn't lack a core motivating story. There's still this issue of Kirstama being so reactive, defining himself I think most clearly when it comes to internal party management and taking a hammer to his own rowdy left-wing backbenches that when it comes to speaking to the nation on some of these issues and I'm not just talking about the issues which animate the left in particular like spike ops or overseas operations but on reopening schools having this kind of half in half out yes we want them open no ifs no buts but also is this going to be safe enough. Very much only condemning or supporting things in full throat when it's in the rear view mirror is that you're going to get to 2023 and we're a year out from a general election and people are still going to be asking who is this guy who does he stand for what does he stand for so when the policies start coming out it's going to lack I think an anchor and that's what a leader has got to be he's got to be totemic of certain values and he's got to be an anchor for those policies. I mean it's important to say as well the difference between this one and the spike ops one is the justification for abstaining on this was that otherwise the policy could have got taken to the right by the head bangers on Boris Johnson's back benches that would not have happened with spike ops that dynamic was not there so the only reason Keir Starmer abstained then was because he wanted to keep his hands clean want to say well I don't I'm not necessarily against it I'm not really for it it was literally the definition of sitting on the fence there was no other explanation for that and I think the fact he has abstained so many times in the past is precisely why even when it might make sense to do so it just makes him look like a shift defense sitter because that's the that's the impression we've already been given and you know we're not going to be able to get to 2024 in the manifesto just say we we don't really have any policies but we think everything should be done with clarity and with a strategy which is basically the critique of everything this this conservative government does ask your final thoughts on this one. Okay so you raise actually a really interesting point about what happens when a manifesto comes out because here's a lesson that I've learned from 2019 this is something which I was definitely wrong about I loved manifestos which were just chock full of policies all right UBI give me a bit of that rent controls I'll have that too four day working week I'm not delicious and what Boris Johnson did was the manifesto was real back of a fact packet stuff I mean there was hardly anything in it but he painted things in primary colors broad brush and he as a central figure who was promising to do one simple thing get Brexit done end all of this nasty politics was able to you know sell nothingness and do it really really well so I think we are actually also entering an age where manifestos are less important than the personality animating a set of politics something that Jeremy Corbyn did very very well in 2017 of course after you know four years have been completely reduced in the press he couldn't do that in the same way in 2019 and that's going to be something which Keir Starmer if he just abstains you know on everything that he looks at he's going to lack that moral authority