 It's Boris Johnson's long-awaited so-called Freedom Day and while many people will be nursing their hangovers after their first night clubbing in around 18 months, others are concerned that they are being left unsupported and vulnerable as cases are allowed to search. What should we make of it all? I'll be speaking in a moment to a top epidemiologist. I'm of course also joined throughout the show by Ash Sarkar. How are you doing Ash? I'm good, a bit sweaty but good. My first question for you is were you out on the lash last night what everyone wants to know? I actually wasn't and I'm not saying that sound moral it actually makes me sound like a real sad zap but I was at home playing with a little one-year-old cat and chilling. That's cute. I was up into past midnight looking through my stories of friends at nightclubs having many mixed feelings about it all. We will be discussing all of that tonight. We do also have a couple of non-covid stories for you including Jess Phillips and Nigel Farage. Do make sure you stay tuned for those as ever and you can tweet all of your comments tonight on the hashtag Tiskey Sour or send us your super chats. We'll be going to those throughout the show. Let's go straight on to our first story. This was the moment at midnight last night that all legal COVID restrictions ended in England. Now many might think that video of a Central London nightclub will go down in the history books as the ultimate folly of this pandemic. Over 48,000 people had tested positive that afternoon. However the significance of clubbing and the return to a semblance of normality shouldn't be understated. The BBC did a series of interviews with clubbers in Leeds on what last night meant to them. It's felt like a dream. People are dancing, we're all drinking again, no social distancing. This is what life's about. Absolutely. It's been absolutely amazing. It's like literally life's just back to normal all of a sudden. It's just better to be free again, not be told to sit down all the time. It's so good. Being able to dance, be family and friends. I can literally not stress how much I miss being able to go out and just dance and just have a laugh like it's been the best night for so long. I literally can't even stress like I love it. It's been literally the best night of our lives. Like we've been waiting for this since we turned 18. I just want to be free. I want freedom. Freedom. That's all we want. You want freedom, but you're not worried at all and you're just excited. No, I'm not worried at all. I'm just excited for the new future. Let's get it. Because I'm a massive, massive social person, me. And this lockdown, I found it really tough because I've been stuck at home a lot. We've been the last ones to get the vaccine. We've always been the blame. We've been the blame for the spread of the COVID. And it's just nice to get freedom and kind of like push it all off. I've had my vaccination and we're obviously young people, so I feel like we've sort of missed out on like a gear of our lives. So it's just great to be around people again and just enjoy yourselves. Now, no one should begrudge young people out and having fun. I think anytime, but especially after they've been in lockdown essentially for almost a year and a half. But with cases incredibly high and rising, is it all worth it this morning? Vaccines Minister Nadim Zahar, we repeated the analysis of Chris Whitty saying that when it comes to reopening society, now was as good a time as any. It is step four. It's an important step. There is no perfect time to take the step. This is as good a time as any as Chris Whitty has said with the summer holidays and schools being out, which will hopefully bear down on the R number, the transmission rate. So I'm confident that we're doing the right thing. Almost 88% just shy of that. 87% have now had the protection of one dose and 68% of all adults have the protection of two doses. So I think the vaccination program has allowed us to take this step, take it cautiously with this wall of protection of adults in the United Kingdom. Now, not everyone agrees with Nadim Zahar. We all indeed, Chris Whitty, that the wall of protection provided by vaccines is already enough to defend us from a tsunami of COVID-19. One of the most high profile opponents of the loosening of restrictions joins me right now. Diti Kudasani is a clinical epidemiologist at Queen Mary University. And we've had you on a few times to discuss COVID-19. We always massively appreciate it. Welcome back to the show. Now, thanks for having me. My first question for you, I suppose it's in a way a personal one, watching those clips of young people talking about how joyous they are to go back into a club, but then also from your perspective as an epidemiologist, how do you feel, how did you feel watching that clip we just showed? Well, first of all, I did feel really sad that they have lost a year of their lives. And the reason they've lost that is because our government has repeatedly essentially messed up controlling the pandemic, which has meant that we've had to be in restrictions for 16 months, potentially longer than many, many other countries. And the second thing I felt was anxious because, I mean, those are exactly the sort of events where we've seen super spreading of COVID in other countries. And if we look at the Netherlands where there's a massive surge happening, I mean, it was related to sort of nightclubs opening up. And we saw similar happen in Israel as well. And they had to sort of go back on that. And at this point in time, one in 50 people, young people are infected. And that means there would have been a number of people in that nightclub, likely to be infected. And that's exactly the sort of environment where super spreading happens in crowded places where there's no ventilation, no masking, and no social distancing. So I feel a combination of sadness for them, but also anxiety as to what all of our futures hold. And it is not just you who is feeling anxious. This does seem to be a widespread feeling among the public at the moment. I want to go to some you gov polling. Apparently, most voters think freedom day is a mistake. When it comes to people who usually would imagine going to parties and nightclubs, a majority of them are also still uncomfortable going to a nightclub or the theater or a sports event. That might be music to the ears of the chief medical officers who seem to be pretty keen for everyone to take their new freedoms cautiously. I want to go to a clip now of Jonathan Vantam. There was a Downing Street press briefing today. And I started showing you the scientific advisors more than Boris Johnson, because I think what they have to say tends to be more insightful. Here he was asked at today's Downing Street press conference, whether he agreed that nightclubs should be opening today. I have young adults who are my friends and parts of my family. And they like socializing and they like partying. That's clear. They have also in some cases, and I'm not referring now to my family, but I'm referring to young people in general, because of the sacrifices, essentially, they have made for the older populations in the UK to lock down and prevent those catastrophic levels of hospitalization and dying in the elderly. They have made sacrifices in terms of the kind of social interactions they can have, and in terms of the relationships they can be building at a time when young people want to and have the absolute right to build relationships for the future. So I completely sympathize with that. On the science side, however, it is a case in point that if you pack my garden shed full of people and they are unvaccinated, the likelihood of transmission is going to be far greater than if you pack my garden shed full of people who have been fully vaccinated and have our 14 days out the other side of their second dose. It will not reduce the risks to zero. Nothing reduces the risks to zero other than standing in a meadow completely on your own, add in for an item with nobody coming within three metres of you. But it is a case in point that epidemiologically and scientifically, the rest on the policy side is for ministers, but epidemiologically, vaccinated groups of people are generally safer on transmission terms than unvaccinated people. I'm sure Patrick would agree with that. Now, you might wonder why nightclubs are opening, given he is a senior scientific advisor to the government and he definitely does not sound keen. I just want to go back a couple of Downing Street press conferences to remind you of the argument which was made to justify this move, this move, sorry, we're having now. This was Chris Whitty a couple of weeks ago echoing the line that beams it was a hard we said earlier today that now is as good a time to open up as any. There was a pretty high degree of scientific agreement that the delay of four weeks that ministers chose to take was an extremely sensible thing to do. And I think the fact that things are played out as they have, I think reinforces that. But the view is more mixed about exactly what the right timing is from a technical point of view, even before you get into issues that the Prime Minister has to deal with more widely. And these really come from the fact that at a certain point you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalizations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you're not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die. You may change when they happen. And there is quite a strong view that by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when school was going back and when we're heading into the winter period, when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons. So it's a very much more difficult technical decision now, even before ministers have to grapple with all the other things than it was in terms of the four week delay, where I think there was a very substantial degree of scientific agreement. Pete, I want to bring you in on this. I have to say on our show on Friday, I took that Chris Whitty line quite seriously. I still do this idea that opening in September could be almost as bad because the schools are opening then at the same time. Lots of pushback from that. Our audience seemed to be quite against opening clubs at the moment. Can you make sense to me from your perspective the difference between what Chris Whitty is saying there and the implication of what Jonathan Van Tam was saying in today's press briefing? Sure. So first of all, the scientific community is not divided. There's a scientific consensus that this is a wrong move. And scientists all over the world are saying this. I mean, we had a letter to the Lancet that was signed by over 1000 scientists and healthcare professionals. The chair of the BMA has also said it's a mistake. The Royal College of Nursing has raised concerns as have the 23 academies of Royal College of Medical Sciences. And international scientists all over the world, including advisors to current and former governments have also said this is a huge mistake. But if you want to interpret what Chris Whitty is saying, I can tell you what it's based on. It's based on an imperial model, which was commissioned by government, and asked to assess essentially two different options. In one option, and the outcome that they looked at, let's be clear, was only death. Long COVID was not assessed at all. And what they compared was opening up now fully. So the whole let it rip through half the population that's not vaccinated versus opening up later over autumn. And you know, it doesn't look at things like vaccination in children or mitigation in school or booster doses for those who are vulnerable who will have waning immunity over the winter because of the Delta variant, all of which could mitigate the impact of winter. And essentially what they found was a similar number of deaths. Let's be very clear about that. But the other impacts are hugely different. So it's very clear. And the people who did the imperial model are very clear that we are looking at about half a million people developing long COVID over the summer. And all the stuff that they say about impacts over the winter could be easily mitigated by vaccinating children now, rather than exposing them to mass infection, by giving booster doses to those with waning immunity prior to winter. And three, by essentially putting mitigations in place in schools like mass and ventilation that have worked in other places, but we haven't done. So yes, if you live in this very narrow scenario where we are unable to do any of those things and death is the only outcome you're looking at, then of course, it doesn't make a big difference whether you open up now or in winter. And perhaps it might even be better now because essentially what you're counting on is that millions of children and young people get infected now develop immunity. So you get to some sort of herd immunity by winter, which mitigates the impact of winter. But what that essentially in reality means that millions of young people get infected hundreds of thousands develop long COVID and thousands develop chronic disability. And the fact is, these are two really bad options we're being given because the government is not willing to vaccinate adolescents to put mitigation schools to prevent a winter surge and to give boosters to vulnerable people to prevent huge impacts on them over winter, all of which means that we don't need to actually accept either of these options. This sort of reminds me of the first wave in March when we were told that we had to accept herd immunity initially, because even countries who managed to control it really well, like for example, Wuhan, South Korea would see an inevitable second wave, which they never actually saw. I mean, if you look at Israel, which has a higher rate of vaccination than us, they were extremely cautious about opening up even with higher rates of vaccination. And they did not see an exit wave. So it's not inevitable. They are seeing an outbreak now related to Delta. And their actions are really telling they have reintroduced masking mandates and are pushing to vaccinate their adolescents where a lot of the spread is happening. So the options that we're giving are false options and involve hundreds of thousands of people getting very ill, our hospitals once again getting quite full backlogs increasing to 30 million, 30 million, which is what our health secretary is saying. And these are not options that we need to accept or options we should accept. Let's talk about vaccinating kids because we've got news on that today. And I suppose just to reiterate the reason this is very significant for especially the discussion we're having right now is what you heard Chris Witte there say is one of the logics for opening now instead of say in September, when you've got more people who have been double vaccinated, more of the adult population have been double vaccinated is that by that point, you'll have kids in school as well. Obviously that logic is weakened. If we can vaccinate kids between now and school reopening, it seems that's not going to happen. The Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunizations have advised today that only clinically vulnerable children and those who have clinically vulnerable household members should be vaccinated, at least for now. We want to go to or I want to go to a statement from the JCVI. They said as evidence shows that COVID-19 rarely causes severe disease in children without underlying health conditions. At this time, the JCVI's view is that the minimal health benefits of offering universal COVID-19 vaccination to children do not outweigh the potential risks. Almost all children and young people are at very low risk from COVID-19. Symptoms when seen are typically mild and fewer than 30 children have died because of COVID-19 in the UK as of March 2021. They go on. Real world data on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in children is currently limited, but there have been extremely rare reports of myocarditis, that's inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, that's inflammation of the membrane around the heart following the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines in millions of younger adults. Until more safety data is available, they say, and until it has been evaluated, a precautionary approach is preferred. Deep Ti, you have been, as we've just heard, you're an advocate of vaccinating adolescents. What do you think the JCVI have got wrong? I think the JCVI have absolutely no understanding of the impact of COVID on children and they don't have any understanding of long COVID, and this has been very clear because they're members who are actually advocating infected children rather than vaccinating them. The UK is out of line from most other countries in the world, and to say there's not enough data is frankly ridiculous. I mean, over 9 million under-18s have been vaccinated in the US alone and many in other countries as well, and it's rather telling that they don't actually lay out a risk-benefit analysis. I mean, if you look at the CDC risk-benefit analysis, and I'm reading from data put out by the director of the CDC, if we vaccinate 1 million 12 to 17-year-olds, we see 30 to 40 mild cases of myocarditis. In the same 1 million through vaccination, we avoid 8,000 cases of COVID, 19,000 hospitalizations, 50 ICU stays, and one death. The benefits far outweigh the risks. This is the official line of the CDC, and they've done the numbers. We are having 50 hospitalizations daily among children. We have 9,000 children who've had long COVID lasting for more than a year, so I think we need to change our definitions of what we consider severe. So, while only 30 children may have died of COVID, which I don't think is a small number, 9,000 have had chronic symptoms for more than one year. If we don't think that's severe for a child, then I don't know what is. And we have enough data for millions of children across the globe now to say that we don't have the data and the risks don't outweigh the benefit is completely out of line with the scientific consensus and what almost all countries are doing right now. There are other countries that are agreeing with this line. For example, I think the German Institute, which is similar to the JCVI, kind of independent of government, they're saying at this point only vaccinate clinically vulnerable children. So, I mean, there is a difference when it comes to government regulators. Some people are advising it some aren't. The other thing is, if you don't vaccinate children, you still have the option to mitigate in schools. Don't expose them to huge levels of vaccination. But the UK is the only country that's not vaccinating children and essentially has a plan that implicitly involves infecting millions of children ahead of winter. I mean, the whole idea of it's better now than later depends on millions of children getting infected and developing immunity before winter. And Germany has far better mitigations in their schools, in their indoor environments than we do, and they don't have infection rates as high as us. So, even if they don't vaccinate their children, they are still protecting them from infection. We are not doing either. I finally just want to look at the global element here. Again, to go to some of the scientists who were kind of disagreeing. This is Sarah Gilbert. She's one of the scientists behind the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. She said the benefits of vaccinating children were much lower and poorer than inoculating adults. And she also said that we've still a limited number of doses available to vaccinate the world. We should be using those doses for healthcare workers and for older individuals in countries that don't yet have a vaccine. Just in case you weren't aware of how uneven, I don't mean you deeply, I know you are. I mean, the audience, in case you weren't aware of how uneven the distribution of vaccines are at the moment, here is a graphic of the world. You can see there in North America, 70%, 56%, 68% in the UK and across most of Africa, it is under 10%, often under 1%. And in terms of how this is affecting what a pandemic looks like, depending on what country you're in, this is a graphic from the FT. You can see on the left there cases in the UK and Portugal surging, deaths very, very steady in Namibia cases surging and you're seeing a huge, huge increase in deaths, as was the case here before we had those vaccines. So, Diti, just your thoughts on this. Again, I think that there are, this just seems to me a real moral quandary, but how do you feel about vaccinating children who are, as you say, the risk isn't zero, but the risk is much lower than healthcare workers in Namibia, for example. How would you justify vaccinating them before we give these vaccines away or get out of the queue? Yeah, it's a false dichotomy and I am disappointed to hear scientists falling for it because the UK has procured 500 million doses, that's several times more than it needs to vaccinate its entire population. And the UK, let's remember, has also opposed waivers of patents. They've reduced foreign aid at a point in time. Many countries who are struggling could have used it as part of the Covaxin initiative or to even resource vaccinating. They could have put in place technology transfer agreements for AstraZeneca to help other countries manufacture vaccines at low cost and at high throughput. They haven't done any of that. So, please don't tell me that the UK cares about vaccinating the world. They actually took 10 million vaccines away from India in March when it was in the middle of a crisis. So, taking 8 million out of those 500 million doses, which it hasn't shared much of with any country so far, is not going to make a huge difference to the world, which is extremely short of vaccine. The UK could do a lot if it really wanted to. So, this whole idea of vaccinating our children versus vaccinating adults in other countries is, I think, supporting an ideological narrative, which is that children don't get affected. And we heard Jonathan Bantam actually say that, saying that children are making sacrifices for our elderly, whereas nobody seems to recognize that actually the majority of the 1 million people who are impacted with long COVID in the UK are actually young people. And some of them, thousands, tens of thousands of children. Deepty Guzasani, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on. I say, I'm sure we'll have you on again. I'm sure we'll have you on again very soon because this is going to be, again, I mean, this story is not going away. Thank you so much for joining us this evening. Thanks for having me. Let's go to a couple of comments. All Act Up for Good with £20 says, it's the height of entitlement and a complete lack of solidarity to worry about clubbing with the likelihood of creating mutations while the entire world isn't vaccinated, and fire seed tweets on the hashtag Tisgesauer is the government now pursuing the Ayn Rand School of Pandemic Management. I haven't read enough Ayn Rand to know what her School of Pandemic Management would be, but she believes in just pure self-ego, I think, and no solidarity. So I can definitely see where you're coming from from my very shallow knowledge of that thinker. Regardless of when you think reopening should happen, we should all be able to agree that if cases rise as they are now, and as they will continue to for weeks to come, if there isn't a dramatic shift in policy, proper support should be offered to people who, despite vaccination, are in danger if they catch COVID-19. Now, that is principally people with compromised immune systems. That's, for example, due to diseases such as AIDS, cancer, conditions such as diabetes or certain genetic disorders. However, I suppose, unsurprisingly, given the government we have, no support has been offered. And on our so-called Freedom Day, England's 3.8 million citizens classed as clinically vulnerable are being offered Zilch Nada. Francis Ryan, who's a great writer, had a great piece of the Guardian this weekend analyzing the advice given by the government to those particularly vulnerable to COVID. She explains that the government advice basically amounts to saying that people with underlying health conditions should avoid going in doors or near unvaccinated people throughout the summer. Now, how people should work out who is and who isn't vaccinated is not specified because it cannot be specified. It's impossible. I want to go to part of that article because I think it is really, really important. She writes, anyone concerned ministers hadn't fought this through need, only read their advice on supermarkets. The guidance suggests disabled people survive by going to shops at a quieter time of day. It'll help to most of us who are busy and whose days don't revolve around the wider public's timetable and certainly no help if you are clinically vulnerable and actually work in a shop. Major retailers such as Tesco have responded by issuing their own mandatory mask policies. It is not so much a plan as a pretense where the government is abdicating responsibility for protecting its high-risk citizens by advising them to remove themselves from everyday life. The impact is already clear enough, research by the charity scope ahead of the rule change found only 2% of disabled people said they felt safe. Ministers have essentially invented unofficial shielding, asking millions of people to isolate themselves but to do so this time without even minimal support from the state. There are now no concrete or consistent protections at work for clinically vulnerable employees. Supermarket priority slots have been taken away. Furlough is due to come to an end in September when ministers launch a system of personal responsibility to fight coronavirus what they're really doing is putting all the responsibility on people at risk. Ash Sarkar, I want to bring you in on this story. Throughout this whole pandemic the thing I have found most shocking and most striking is how little support has been provided for people who are clinically vulnerable to COVID-19. Whatever the government policy has been, whether at the beginning when it was the disastrous herd immunity policy, even at the time it was saying well if you're going to adopt this you at least have to have some you have to actually shield people not just talk about it. Throughout the whole pandemic they have basically abandoned people who for medical reasons need to take extra precautions and this seems to be the example which is more extreme than any of the other ones because there isn't any support being offered. They're just saying COVID is going to get out of control outside your house so maybe don't go outdoors. I mean that seems to be what it amounts to but we're not going to give you any support to stay at home or support to do anything. I mean look there's two ways of looking at this and one is that this is yet another cock-up and a litany of cock-ups and essentially disabled people in this country are victim of the government's incompetence or there's another way of looking at it and this is the way in which I tend to look at it which is that this is actually the continuation of a Tory approach to dealing with disability and long-term illness which essentially says well if you make life as difficult and testing and undignified as possible for disabled people maybe they'll just kind of get over it. Maybe they'll just kind of get over it right you know we will roll back on our duty of care we'll make it really difficult to access things like support, live in care overnight care we'll make the universal credit system just utterly humiliating and awful as well as of course those fitness to work assessments which became really notorious under you know the Cameron Osbourne administration all of these things were about either making disabled people feel completely forgotten by the state or actively humiliated and made to feel I think just awful like like they're not citizens all right and that's been the Tory approach the whole way through since 2010 and then along comes a pandemic a pandemic in which if you leave anybody vulnerable you leave everybody vulnerable and what we saw in terms of shielding is that one it was predicated on a complete fiction that the lives of disabled people people who are clinically extremely vulnerable are entirely separate from those who are not clinically extremely vulnerable so take for example my stepdad who is on the clinically extremely vulnerable list now he doesn't live alone he lives with my mum he also lives with my grandma but she's obviously extremely vulnerable as well because she's hella old but there's my mum right so he gets the instruction to shield what are the choices that my mum has to make right in terms of work in terms of how often she leaves the house in terms of how does she make her choices in such a way which you know keep her husband safe so while there was an instruction from my my stepdad's consultant in terms of the support and the guidance offered for you know the non-disabled non-vulnerable person that he lives with nothing so again it's kind of you know predicated on this idea that disabled people people with long-term illnesses aren't really part of society anyway even in terms of people being instructed to shield well what kind of financial support were they're being offered in order to be able to do so particularly for those who might have had you know quite public facing frontline jobs stuff where you can't just work from home well they were kind of thrown onto the mercy of a welfare system which isn't so much a social safety net as you know kind of a just imagine walking along an attic and every so often you just meet a place without floorboards and your foot goes through you know that's what it's like um subsisting on the UK's social safety net and now of course when you've got so-called freedom day um I really think we have to trouble this idea of freedom because freedom which says you know what it's every man for themselves you make your decisions and also you take it upon yourself to not just take responsibility for your safety and your health but the health of people around you people where you're not an expert in what other people's needs are you know you're not an epidemiologist you're not a doctor but you make decisions based on what you broadly feel is right that's not freedom that is a shunting of responsibility collective responsibilities which the government are supposed to take the mantle of and shunting it onto individuals in the public and of course that puts disabled people at more risk and I think it's compounded by these issues of lack of sick pay the fact that you know people are getting pinged absolutely left right and center being told they've got to self-isolate well if you're a disabled person you're being told you know get your butt back in the office or even if you're somebody who's got um you know long-standing health needs and you're being told get back into work in a nightclub what are you supposed to do you're in an economy where people are really you know fighting for every job that's out there they're really economically precarious and vulnerable and they're having to make really tough decisions between um their health or their ability to pay bills their ability to make rent and so I'm not surprised that only 2% of disabled people feel safe because the fact is that they're not that's not fear that's not unreasonable it's a perfectly rational decision to come to on the basis of how this government has behaved at every step of the way I mean I think that's exactly right I mean I think as Francis Ryan highlights what's most ridiculous and I think what really represents how little the government have thought this through is that they they're basically encouraging people if you think you're clinically vulnerable to catching COVID-19 one way you could avoid people is go to supermarkets at quiet times and Francis Ryan's like well what if you have a job right well supermarkets are quiet at a particular time because that's quite an inconvenient time for people to go to the supermarket right so what you're assuming is that anyone who is disabled anyone who is clinically vulnerable can go to the supermarket at any hour in the day and and they can choose the unpopular hours while everyone else gets to go at the time they please and it is just I mean it's offensive for a start and how how easy would it have been for them to just say look as I say obviously there's disagreements about the strategy what it should be when it comes to COVID-19 but if the strategy is as it seems to be to say look we've got most of the population vaccinated but because vaccinating people can catch COVID-19 we're going to need to accept quite a lot of mild disease until we get to that herd immunity threshold right if that's your policy then while you're having that two month surge where you've got a hundred thousand cases a day you should be making life as easy as possible for anyone who wants to make sure they are not one of those people helping us to get to that herd immunity threshold because if they are they could be seriously in danger and that I mean that is the government's policy so the minimum they could do is make sure that it's really really easy in these two months if you're desperate not to catch COVID-19 to not catch it and and they just seem to be doing absolutely nothing to that end whatsoever. I want to go to a couple of comments. Tom tweets on hashtag Tiskey Sour, Deepty Goodasani, love her, she's been amazing throughout this whole nightmare. Mel tweets Deepty spilling the deep tea and Julie and I were 15 pounds. Could you give a birthday shout out to my sister Ellen? She is literally a communist and introduced me to Navarra. Love the show. Thanks for all your hard work. Happy birthday Ellen. Happy birthday Ellen. Yeah I was thinking as she's literally a communist she's going to want that from you. Do you know something Ellen? Not some social democrat happy birthday from... Listen not this fucking wet wipe over here who's my lovely and esteemed co-host but happy birthday Ellen you're clearly a woman of taste la lucha continua. Yalla next story. In the week running up to our freedom day 322170 people tested positive for COVID-19 and that number included the health secretary Sajid Javid. Now to add to the chaos Javid had been in close contact with Boris Johnson and Rashid Sunak meaning they would have to join the 1.7 million people currently self isolating in Britain. Or would they on Sunday morning Downing Street sent out this press release that said the Prime Minister and Chancellor have been contacted by NHS Test and Trace as contacts of someone who has tested positive for COVID. They will be participating in the daily contact testing pilot to allow them to continue to work from Downing Street. They will be conducting only essential government business during this period. Now this obviously caused outrage. As I said there are 1.7 million people we think at the moment currently self isolating. What the Prime Minister and the Chancellor were going to do was say oh actually we've got access to this scheme which means that we can just take a lateral flow test every 10 days. No one else it seems knows how to get access to this scheme. It was obviously outrageous yet Robert Jenrick was forced to go out and defend the position on the Andrew Marsh show. It's about moral authority. This is about as it were the population listening to the government listening to the government's advice and deciding to abide by it. And this is the kind of thing that makes people ask why should we self isolate. Why should we keep our apps on when the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and other ministers seem to get outside this system get around it. I understand that but this is a pilot scheme that is involved with a range of different public sector organisations not just number 10 Downing Street. I've listed some of them already. It doesn't involve others. I mean my department isn't part of it and so the normal rules would have to apply to me and many other members of government as you'd expect. Up and down the country people are asking themselves why should we self isolate when the government are not. I'm going to give you an example of somebody called Ruth Adams and she runs a company in Bristol which happens to make bathrooms and she has deleted her NHS app to stop her business from going under. She says if someone else is told to self isolate then that would be an absolute catastrophe. I am not going to take the risk because this company couldn't stand to have another member of staff not available for work. Why can't she be on the pilot. Well the NHS app and test and trace are a very important tool in our toolkit to tackle the virus at this critical stage. The evidence from a survey for example in the last three months of last year showed that it had helped to avoid 600,000 cases and to ensure 8,000 unnecessary deaths were avoided. So it is important that these 500,000 people that they do take it seriously and follow the guidance because it is one of the ways in which we as a country will get through the difficult days. That was an excruciating interview reminiscent of the days when government ministers were sent out to say it was acceptable for Dominic Cummings to drive to Barnard Castle to test his eyes. Frustratingly I'm sure for Robert Jenrick there was also this time around a screeching and predictable U-turn 30 minutes after he went off air. This was Boris Johnson speaking from Checkers. Hi folks like so many hundreds of thousands of other people across the country. I've been pinned. I've been asked to self-isolate by the test trace and isolate system after I've been in contact with somebody who has COVID. In this case of course the Health Secretary Sajid Javed and we did look briefly at the idea of us taking part in the pilot scheme which allows people to test daily but I think it's far more important that everybody sticks to the same rules and that's why I'm going to be self-isolating until the 26th of July Monday the 26th of July and I really I know how frustrating it all is but I really do urge everybody to stick with the program and take the appropriate course of action when you're asked to do so do so by NHS Test and Trace. So he says I did consider it then he changed his mind. They had sent out a press release saying that Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson would be taking part in this scheme whereby they didn't have to self-isolate and obviously it was the policy for quite a while because Robert Jenrick was sent out to defend it on the television. They U-turned after they saw the political backlash that erupted. I don't know how they didn't see it coming. Ash what did you make of this particular shit show? I mean it does make Boris Johnson look pretty chaotic pretty bad at politics doesn't it? Yeah but he is he's a really chaotic guy and in some ways I think he's quite tenured. He's a very gifted campaigner but I think when it comes to governing and judgment calls I think he's absolutely dreadful and what this speaks to is just how dreadful the Downing Street operation actually is and how much they're able to get away with because we have a completely toothless opposition and a completely supine media. This government was supposed to be all about take back control. The only thing that it's taken is all of us for idiots. A secret pilot where you don't have to self-isolate and it just so happens to be the people chosen not to self-isolate were Michael Gove, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson. Absolutely no favoritism there. It's just science in it. It's that good old double blind testing. I mean it's complete nonsense and you can see with the swiftness of the U-turn that they weren't going to be able to stick out the public condemnation and then that was also the cost in terms of public trust and buying self-isolation would be too high. My favorite tweet I saw on Twitter said that if Boris Johnson got found guilty of murder he'd be able to enroll on a prison abolition scheme. A prison abolition trial. Sorry I got that slightly wrong. Yeah ridiculous. Anyway they are now stuck in their homes. Will I say stuck in that he's in checkers. He's in a country mansion for 10 days. Downing Street have been spending most of the day trying to stress or trying to I don't know convince journalists that he did go there on Friday. It wasn't the case he was contacted, told to self-isolate and then drove to checkers because he would prefer to spend it there than at Downing Street. Maybe we'll never know at least until the Tim Shipman book comes out or or Dominic Cummings tweets about it. Let's go to a comment. We've got a big donation. Thank you very much from Frog 2 with 50 euros and Jack Williams with a 10 pound super chat says pro restrictions are or not. Surely both sides can agree that ventilation is important. We'll prevent transmission and reduce the initial dose of the virus that you might get from someone else. I think that's a very important comment. I think also that connects to something I was thinking today I tweeted about it as well was I'm asking for sort of feedback is now we are getting to I mean we're probably not quite there but we're getting to a point where most of the population will be vaccinated. I think personally we're not going to get to zero COVID and we are going to have to live with COVID-19 and we're going to have to think about what are the long-term measures we want to take and that will be things for me like ventilating or buildings very well. It will be things like proper sick pay. It will be things potentially I wouldn't mind masks on the tube at winter like they do in some East Asian countries and not only would this keep any you know resurgence of COVID-19 fairly low that would hopefully also stop flu getting out of control. Now no one wants lockdowns whenever we have seasonal flu but there potentially are basically I mean when I say cost free ventilation presumably costs money for the buildings you know implementing it but in terms of how that affects our lifestyles we can reduce the deaths we have every winter from flu without doing anything we probably notice and if we can I feel like we might as well and so probably short-term things which help us with COVID if they're of the type like ventilation we can keep them for the long haul win-win. It's gone to our next story. Fledgling right-wing TV channel GB News has been in a spot of bother since launching a month ago. Andrew Neil has run off on holiday he's exasperated by technical problems no one knows when he's coming back. Last week viewing figures hit zero and they've recently had a presenter fired for taking the knee canceled by a right-wing boycott from their own viewers to try and resolve the problem. They've hit the Nigel Farage button Farage will be presenting an hour-long show on weeknights the observer had these details and this is about GB News in general. The new channel is facing plummeting viewing figures and a split in management between those angling to keep broader based regional news coverage and those planning to boost coverage of the cultural wars and if a bigger helping of Farage is not enough to entice audiences another famous potential savior could be on hand soon. Piers Morgan who left Good Morning Britain in March may step into a high-profile role on the new TV channel. Morgan 56 is in protracted negotiations with management but must first deal with his contractual ties to ITV. That's a very interesting story I mean there's a couple of elements here Ash. One Nigel Farage has come to the show now I was seeing over the weekend Andrew Neil sort of tweeting all these things about how Nigel Farage says stuff about evidence so now for him to be the chair of the channel and have Nigel Farage come on board all seems a little bit a little bit odd. This idea that Piers Morgan would go there would he you know flee to this sinking ship? I mean look people would do pretty much anything if you waive enough money under their nose and so I think the key things are would the technical difficulties be tightened up and dealt with before they attract another big-name broadcaster like Piers Morgan and can they tempt him with both you know a promise of having you know a large enough audience share a really good social media game and you know a bountiful pay slip which could get him kind of lowering himself to this you know glorified teletext channel. I don't know I don't know but I think for Nigel Farage it's a move that makes sense he's no longer on LBC and he's somebody who really has I think throughout the entirety of his career as a politician really relied on having that main line into broadcast news media. I think that's been like a core component of his strategy he's the kind of person who you know if he was asked to go on Love Island he'd have been popping up in Casa Ramota to talk about the horrors of immigration. He's an opportunist and this is I think for all of its constraints and all of its you know hiccups since launch and opportunity for Farage. I do still think that GB News faces some existential challenges and they're ones which I think like go a lot deeper than just you know criminal camera work and lighting. I mean I swear to God if anyone in Navarra lit me that badly I would have absolutely burnt the organization to the ground by now like really dreadful work but all those things I think can be straightened out just with money time and professionalism. They need to replace the awful robot cameras with ones actually staffed by humans. You could have like nicer lighting so you don't make Mercy Muroki who yes I believe is an agent of evil but let's face it the woman has got glowy luminescent skin like you made her look like a thumb lit from behind I don't know how you do that. Those things will straighten themselves out but I think some core problems remain. One is that what GB News I think is trying to do in the broadcast media environment is operate as a convey about from the far right and the kind of more conspiratorial far right through to legitimate mainstream politics right that is something which they've set out to do and that's kind of been Dan Wooten's job and there are lots of ways in which there's a soft edge of that. So for instance when you had GB News launching you had Andrew Neill doing this long speech about the evils of cancel culture and wokery and metropolitan elites and how bad it poll is you know that's kind of the soft edge of that politics and then you've got that weird you know kind of like far out shit like that mad woman who was you know trying to talk about the difference between like pedophilia and the other one like I was just like who are you like you know Pdo's appointed PR person you know you've got that really weird stuff. No actually she was the Hebo's appointed PR person. Actually we can't say she's an advocate for Hebo here because that would probably be. She wasn't she was just saying she was very important to make the distinction. Yeah she thought that was important distinguish between a sexual interest in underage teenagers and a sexual interest in children. Yeah great yeah that's the hill you want to down but like they've tried to be that convey about and I think that there's a problem which is one you've got a pretty right wing broadcast news media environment all right so if you're a right wing person you're pretty well served and in any way what you want is to maintain your sense of grievance you can watch the BBC and go this is still not right wing enough you know they enjoy that they get a kick out of that shit and two is like is there a you know audience a mass audience for a hyper polarized broadcast channel I don't know because the internet exists for that kind of stuff you know broadcast news media is not money spinner it's not you know audience shares are plummeting the reason why you want to you know own one or invest in one is for influence but it's not actually about like attracting a huge audience I actually think GB news would have done a lot better if they just set themselves up as a YouTube channel but no one wants to hear that you know the answer is turn to posting full time but they really should have I want to go to some more developments at GB news this one is really really interesting and so Gita Hari is the presenter who was suspended after taking the knee on GB news let's take the knee on air he has now quit the channel so he's been taken off air now he's quit saying I'm not I'm not coming back his resignation letter to the channel's chief executive said before I took the knee on air I discussed it with my producer director co-presenters and head of newsroom after I did it GB news captured the moment and proactively cascaded it on social media two days later you told me you wanted me to take a break for the summer you did not say you were briefing papers and issuing a statement that accused me of breaching your editorial standards I asked you to change that on the night pointing out it's defamatory you ignored my texts and refused to take my calls I now see that you've hired Nigel Farage who immediately declared in public that he will not be taking the knee please explain how that does not breach editorial standards but I did now this is phenomenal so he's saying he discussed taking the knee with his producer with his director with the co-presenters and with the head of the newsroom so this wasn't a surprise when he took I mean we said before clearly a presenter taking the knee would not have breached editorial standards anyway the whole point of that channel is it's supposed to have opinionated hosts you know that that was supposed to be their raison d'etre then the moment a host expresses something that's anti-racist they have to go but in any case the fact that all of these people high up at the channel agreed with him before then briefing against him is just like the height of unprofessionalism like again I mean ash this is proper amateur hour stuff isn't it May I don't know why you're surprised all this is is Homer goes to clown college do you know what I mean this is you know some of the most unprofessional romper room individuals that the British media environment has to offer being given 60 million quid and told you know what why don't we get you guys to staff and run a news channel based almost entirely on the stuff that your racist uncle says at Sunday dinner right so from the start it was it was a completely you know joke offering with a serious political intention right to kind of further warp and distort you know the public sphere in this country but in terms of the people who they got to try and you know achieve this you know monumental shift in the discourse you know they chose Andrew Neil who came with all that prestige from the BBC they also chose Dan Wharton and Michelle Jusbury like I'm not being rude all respect to them but you don't really look at them and go you know what you are titans of political discourse you are real serious heavy hitters no man they're three toddlers you know doled up in a trench coat and being told like you know go run a news channel um so of course this whole thing is is unprofessional from top to bottom of course these aren't consistent standards which you know a news organization should be able to publicly identify standby and defend uh to its staff who are being held to those standards they're making everything up as they go along you know they've probably just got like you know one poor chimp you know manning all the cameras and you know a golden retriever like in charge of like lighting editing and production right it's a complete circus um but I do think it points to something serious which is there is a fundamental contradiction between being pro-freedom of speech and saying that cancel culture is an evil um that it must be you know ironically cancelled and and drummed out of political and public life and having a hardcore uh anti-woke editorial line you can't be pro-free speech whilst maintaining hardcore anti-woke editorial line right because pro-free speech means people can say what they like as long as you have overall balance across the channel then you know it's fine and having a hard line anti-woke editorial line means that means that you you have to enforce that line and I think that the position that GB News have found themselves in this completely absurd spectacle of you know the scorpion stinging itself again and again is both ideological sure right that 60 million in investor funding came because there were certain you know political cultural aims that had to be achieved but I think it's also the problem they found themselves in which is to build and sustain a broadcast news channel you do have to you know build up and develop quite a broad audience all right um you know even though it's a really challenging time to do so in terms of you know broadcast news audiences that is the thing you've got to do right you have to have some kind of broad appeal it's kind of interesting that one of the things that Sky News did is yes it you know sort of was part of this big shift uh to the right in terms of the British media environment but also came with so much goddamn sports coverage that it was also saying well you know here's the um you know here's the honey to go along with your medicine we're not just going to be wholly ideological um GB News have absolutely didn't read nut jobs or try and build outwards the problem is is that if they do try and build outwards by having a variety of opinions they lose that small hardcore audience and they'll effectively end up with um you know audience share of zero um so i don't i don't envy the position they've they've put themselves in a really glad environment isn't in that kind of position that makes me happy that makes me happy too jeb super trapped with a fiver here is a fiver for ash's colorful dress solidarity i also am a big fan of that dress i commented on that before we went live um and we have if with a tennis says encouraging everyone to look at not giving up on twitter solidarity with victims of state violence in island devastated by government plans to deny them justice um now that hashtag is in a relation to to relative to those who were killed in the troubles by british troops obviously this is uh very relevant at the moment because there is a plan and by the government to give um those soldiers amnesty um in fact it might already have gone through i should double check on that um we're gonna go to our final story jess phillips will probably be most familiar to our audience from her disastrous and cringe worthy campaign to be labor leader last year but when she isn't spending her time being an mp with crap politics and going on television to shout at socialist mps she is also an author she's written three books in the past four years they're called every woman one woman's truth about speaking the truth including lying about swearing to diana abba the woman who was uh subject to the most abuse of anyone in parliament um she's also written truth to power seven ways to call time on bs presumably by getting pretty close relationships with with rupert mohdox various outlets and also everything you need to know about politics my life as an mp that's the new book um i think the title is actually quite apt for jess phillips phillips everything you need to know about politics my life's an mp me me me her upcoming book is as you can tell if you can count the third to be released in four years the times and sunday times have given many a long sympathetic interview to jess phillips um enabling her to speak truth to power presumably that's what they're interested in she has given them another this is the fifth in the last two years and as you'd expect all manner of topics came up including navara media the times right we speak days before the vicious battalion spend by election amid momentum activists demanding starmer resign as leader if labor loses it retains the seat by a squeaky 323 votes phillips believes the hard left stoke george gallaway's campaign with its crude appeals to muslim voters and was gleeful about the prospect of labor losing but they would make the same charge about me wouldn't they under the corbin years she compares activist journalist owin jones and navara media writers to noisy overexcited children who have had too much sugar who cares what they think frankly wow ash we are overexcited children who have had too much sugar do you accept that analysis i've actually been trying to cut sugar out of of my diet but i don't know about you but i suppose she was she was getting at something else respond to jess phillips i mean it's a fair cop gov you got me back to rights i like life i'm an excitable person i'm sorry um i mean look oh no it's true it's true i'm an excitable person i'm a happy bouncy person like so soon me that's what i like about you michael's what i like about aron it's what i like about everyone that we work with is that we're actually really passionate about what it is we do and we also find like meaning in politics and the principles that we stand for um you know we don't go around you know like kia starmer does or various members of the labor front bench where the only message they take around the country is we're shit and we know we are you know don't vote for us but please vote for us but we understand that if you don't vote for us it's because you know we're dreadful um you know we're absolutely beyond salvaging but also if you don't vote for us on your brown that means like you know you're anti-Semitic and you're homophobic um you know we i think try and make a positive case for our politics as well as on this show being uh you know critical and skeptical of received wisdoms and the kinds of you know propaganda that you see in establishment media i'm really comfortable with just phillips looking at all the things we do and going i don't like that because guess what jess the reason why navara media exists is because politicians like you on the labor right have absolutely failed people in this country for decades now right you weren't speaking to people's material needs you certainly weren't speaking to a lot of people's social values and i'm afraid that when people look at that wing of the party what they see is a set of politicians who are venal who are self-serving and who also don't have any backbone and you look at i'm afraid just phillips herself she markets herself as you know i am resilient i'm tough i'm a straight talker you know i'll say it how it is actually the first time she came under any scrutiny as an individual uh you know when she was standing for labor leader she threw in the towel after the first round she couldn't take the heat now that wasn't because you know the left were mounting a particularly spirited campaign um i didn't think that was going on when faced with really the mildest uh you know kind of observation and questioning she crumbled um so we might be over excited we might be noisy but at least we tough it out um at least we will be people of our word um you know we'll say that we are it's a hold the government to account and also be critical of the labor party uh where they are deserving of that criticism and we'll stick to the thing that we say we'll do um it's not as if the first time Navarra media came under any scrutiny or hostility or you know antagonism that we were like oh god this seems pretty hard you know i liked it when i was in my little echo chamber of you know blue tick journalists and friendly times uh you know profile writers that i'm gonna crawl back into there no we didn't do that so i'm perfectly comfortable with Jess Phillips not liking us i've just been pondering the title of her new book everything i know i mentioned it in the intro but it's just everything you really need to know about politics my life as an mp like how obnoxious and arrogant can you be it's like it's like i wrote about everything you need to know about youtube my life hosting a very particular left wing politics show is that does she really just politics can be summarized by her life you know it's it's it's amazing and especially as when when people are actually asked what do you believe she had nothing to say at all so essentially politics for her is just what she does what her plans are tomorrow and it doesn't have have any meaning beyond that yeah but look so so here's the thing about Jess Phillips like i've spent a lot of time like slacking her off just now and she is i think a very capable enabled self-promoter a very ruthlessly capable self-promoter and what i think she's worked out as well as i think some other labor mps is that you can try and build outwards right you can build outwards by taking people along with you by talking to people who really disagree with you and saying here's what i can offer you here's what we this movement this party project can offer you or what you can do is kind of cultivate very chummy relationships with people who exist within this very incestuous little circle of you know murdoch journalists and you know bluetik commentators on twitter i know i am one but i'm the cool kind of like a regular bluetik i'm like a cool bluetik um you know kind of cultivating i think quite quite a slavish audience and saying those are the people that i'm going to picture and because she's you know in a relatively safe labor seat it doesn't really matter um that she's not doing that work of saying well here is how a labor government is actually going to better your life essentially what you know what she can do is go you know here's the work i'm going to do is a constituency mp that's fine and then the rest of the time it's going to be all about profile building all about making sure that i am in the news that i am you know consistently being framed as like you know almost the queen over the water like you know well why can't they get that straight talking jess philipson um you know that's a great shtick um but like i said it's not something which which stands up to actual pressure right she had the opportunity to run for labor leader she bottled it um and so she's gone back to doing what she does best which is write a book with me myself and i the jess philips story in the title and you know pitch herself as you know the kind of uh sensible moderate as opposed to the kind of loony infantile childish nasty left um to to the times i mean it's it's a great grift it's it's it's it's a living you know are you going to begrudge her a living kiss thomas said that he was all about jobs jobs jobs this is hers which you already got one she's an mp and she gets paid quite a lot to represent her constituents which was my constituents my constituencies my constituents that you've written three books in four years like maybe you should do a bit more representing your constituents anyway we've wasted enough time on jess philips let's go to a couple more comments jane hayward with a fiver here's a fiver for the home it goes to clown college was that something you said ash during the show oh yeah oh yeah it was a great abstention is that mitching maleccio with a tenor i care what you think frankly i assume you're talking about ash sarca and con mac tweets on the hashtag tisky sour basically for us just wanted to go up against michael walker's tisky sour slot um help us beat nigel farage's 7 p.m slot by subscribing to the channel and telling all your friends about it as you hopefully already know we go live every monday wednesday and friday at 7 p.m we're gonna wrap up tonight's show for now ash it's been an absolute pleasure as always mate my favorite part of the week is being you know trapped in a sweat box and made to talk to you i'm just i'm desperate to open open my window too much noise comes in fox makes me close it but i'm like literally drowning in sweat so we are going to wrap up there thank you so much for watching we'll be back on wednesday at 7 p.m for now you've been watching tisky sour on the bar media good night