 Welcome to Tiskey sour apologies if you've had a difficult day today midweek Wednesday sometimes feels rough Boris Johnson's was probably worse he conducted. I mean his is is I have lost count of his uterine in fact but there was a pretty dramatic one yesterday and he had a pretty difficult PM cues and then a pretty difficult session in front of MPs in the liaison committee he is in short a mess. Dahlia someone who is not a mess is is is back on Tiskey sour I think it's been a little while hasn't it how have you been so speak too soon Michael I've had it's been a really like busy months I had. Firstly my body broke and then my tech broke and that's why I missed the last two the last two to keep but I'm so glad to be back. Will you look the opposite of a mess it's it's it's lovely to have your your glowing face back on the show we also gonna be talking about a completely disgusting speech that kids time again to labor friends of Israel yesterday. Another disgusting article written by Rachel Johnson and hopefully if I put it together very quickly a story about a disgusting man Stanley Johnson. As ever if you haven't already do hit that subscribe button tweet your comments and your questions on the hashtag Tiskey sour or put them in the comments box. If Boris Johnson had accepted Owen Patterson's 30 day suspension for breaking lobbying rules the now formatory MP would already be halfway through his punishment instead because of the Prime Minister's attempt to defend a corrupt friend the country has been beset by 16 days of debate about MPs corruption Owen Patterson has resigned the conservatives have fallen behind in the polls and as of yesterday Boris Johnson has shifted to favor the banning of MPs. He's moonlighting as consultants it is a sequence of events that has delighted labor and infuriated Tory backbenchers many of whom now fear they could lose a valued source of extra cash at Prime Minister's questions today. Keir Starmer went in on the attack. Across the country and belatedly across this house there is now agreement that Owen Patterson broke the rules and that the government should not have tried to let him off the hook. Many members opposite have apologized the business secretary has apologized for his part the leader of the house has apologized for his part but they were following the Prime Minister's lead. So will he do the decent thing and just say sorry for trying to give the green light to corruption. Mr Speaker yes as I've said before it certainly was a mistake to conflate the case of an individual member no matter how sad with the point of principle at stake and we do need a cross party approach on an appeals process. We also need Mr Speaker a cross party approach on the way forward and that's why we've tabled the proposals that we have to take forward the report of the independent committee for standards in public life of 2018 with those two key principles that everybody in this house should focus primarily above all on their job here in this house. And secondly but no one should exploit their position in order to advance the commercial interests of anybody else. That's our position Mr Speaker. We want to take forward those reforms. In the meantime perhaps he could clear up from his proposals whether he would continue to be able to take money as he did from Mishkon Duraya and other legal funds. On the Prime Minister Prime Minister as you know and I do remind you it's Prime Minister's questions not leader of the opposition's questions. That's not an apology. Everybody else has apologised for him but he won't apologise for himself. A coward not a leader. As you saw there throughout PMQ's Boris Johnson responded to any question about Tory corruption with reference to Keir Starmer's work for the law firm Mishkon Duraya when he was an MP but before he was Labour leader. As we said on this show before that work for the firm and especially Keir Starmer's account of it is a little bit problematic but the issue pales in comparison to the whiff of corruption in circling the Tories and it was at PMQ's there an obvious dead cat. Unfortunately for Boris Johnson later in the afternoon he was questioned by the chairs of the most important Commons select committees when Chris Bryan asked him about Owen Patterson deflection proved harder to pull off. Do you think that Owen Patterson was guilty or not? I think it was a very sad case but I think there's no question that he had fallen foul of the rules on paid advocacy as far as I could see from the report. I think the question that people wanted to establish was whether or not given the particularly tragic circumstances he'd had a fair right to appeal. He had an appeal. His appeal was heard endlessly both by the committee. Yes but Mr Bryan and I wish to restate that informing the impression that the former member for North Shropshire had not had a fair process I may well have been mistaken but that was certainly the impression that many people seem to have. Theresa May said yesterday that your actions over this case were misplaced ill judged and just plain wrong. Well look I think I've said several times now that I do think it was a mistake to conflate as we did those two things a particularly difficult case. It's not often in House of Commons when a colleague suffers a family bereavement in the course of an investigation. There was quite a lot of feeling about it and for that reason in a spirit of compassion I thought it might be useful to see whether there was any cross-party support. But you didn't approach cross-party at all did you? You told John Whittingdale that there was a cross-party agreement to set up this committee but that wasn't the case was it? So it would seem. Well why did you tell him that? Well I sorry I can't comment on that conversation since I didn't have it but what I can say is that I believed that there would be cross-party support for the idea. How did you believe this just out of your head you came up with it? It was put to me that people by colleagues that people would feel and indeed I was fortified in this by the reflection that many people would have felt that this was a particularly difficult and sad case and many people across the house would have felt a degree of sympathy for the member for Fruckshire North and would have thought. But in a particular circumstances it might have been possible to consider whether the process was capable of improvement and I am very willing to accept that I was mistaken in that belief. The problem is that you say that the country is not corrupt but what Owen Paterson did was a corrupt practice. It was lobbying ministers and officials on behalf of his paying clients. It's a corrupt practice and the danger is that you've just tarred up but by all of this you've tarred the whole of the house with the same brush and yourself haven't you? As I said if you recall what I said Mr. Bryant at the Prime Minister's questions on that Wednesday I began by saying that paid advocacy and lobbying is against the rules and anybody who does that should be properly penalised. That was how I began so the intention genuinely was not to exonerate anybody. The intention was to see whether there was some way in which on a cross-party basis we could improve the system. In retrospect it was obviously mistaken to think that we could conflate the two things and do I regret that decision? Yes I certainly do Mr. Bryant. That was Boris Johnson looking a lot like a naughty child who had been caught out. As I say slightly more difficult for him to throw the distraction techniques in that more toned down setting of a liaison committee question and answer session. Dahlia it has been a terrible two weeks for Boris Johnson the U-turn yesterday in particular is pissed off some of his Tory backbenchers you don't like losing extra cash he looks weak is he on the ropes? I think it's really I mean that clip that we just saw was absolutely just it was very uncomfortable to watch and I think it is very frustrating to see the amount of excuses and the extenuating circumstances that are being given to Owen Paterson that are not given for everyday people who are trying to go about their lives you know if you miss a universal credit meeting or if you miss a meeting you know at the job centre you are penalised and yet we are being asked to have all these extenuating circumstances and all this sympathy that Boris Johnson just doesn't seem to have really for many other people other than his his own colleagues but I think it's really interesting that this is sticking and it's unusual for anything to stick you know this government is made of Teflon it seems it's survived so many scandals that you know feel as great or in fact even greater than this one but honing in on this particular moment I think it says something that this has been the thing to dent the Tories in the polls because it is so difficult to excuse I think when it came to the handling of the pandemic even though it was of course inexcusable as we've spoken about so many times on the show but there was all this language that they were able to couch in to get away with it to say you know this is an unprecedented moment it's you know we're doing the best that we can with what we know and you can hide behind false slogans like you know we're just following the science even though Boris Johnson has repeatedly gone against his top scientific advisers I think that the reason that this is cut through is less because of his who doesn't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to this issue but more with the fact that it really lays bare in a way that can't be excused very easily the fact that so many people feel and know on an instinctive level that they are living in a broken political system and I think the idea of sleaze doesn't really convey the the systemic nature of why this is it's not just sort of moral failings of a couple of individuals but it's actually this idea of parliament being an MP being seen as a sort of stepping stone to networks that can get you even more money rather than a job in and of itself that is something that's endemic in our state and I don't think that the idea of sleaze or sort of individual moral failing really really conveys that but the Tories should be very worried because this is it's sort of an echo of history it's something that the Tories have historically not been able to shake very easily in the 1990s you know the sense that the Tories were endemically corrupt and endemically sleazy it wasn't a small part of how Labour won with such a landslide it wasn't the main reason the main reason was the Murdoch press being in favour of Tony Blair but it certainly played a role and I wonder if you know for the people who have living memory of that moment if this is sort of opening and reopening up historical associations between the Tories and this sort of sleaziness this corruption and this idea that basically MPs are not there to serve their local constituency they're there to fatten their pockets with you know the networks and all of the kinds of access that being a politician affords you and that's seen as like a strategic position a strategic career move rather than someone who is committed to a particular community of people and representing that community of people in our parliament got super chat from Kieran Buckley how long till the Tories are back with a 10 point lead in the polls it's an interesting question they are you know as I said in my introduction they have fallen behind Labour in a few polls for the first time in a while the only chance Labour have of winning the next general election is if Boris Johnson just keeps making mistake after mistake after mistake because Labour haven't offered people an alternative vision of what they could offer Boris Johnson and the Tories in fact have a more coherent vision I think or at least a more coherent message to give to the public not that it's necessarily consistent apart from on this issue where Boris Johnson is clearly much more sleazy than Kirsten and Kirsten I'm not particularly honest we talk about that quite a lot but Boris Johnson is more ill suited to public office I think so it could be the case that this becomes a consistent lead for Labour if Boris Johnson keeps fucking up I mean Labour doing a risky strategy where the only way they could possibly stay ahead in the polls is if Boris Johnson keeps messing up and messing up and messing up over and over and over again which is obviously not the best position to be in let's talk about what's going to happen next Boris Johnson's letter to Lindsay Hoyle yesterday means that some form of changes to the rules for second jobs is on the horizon they go to a couple of the key bits so he brings up he repeats some recommendations from the 2018 report from the standards committee something which Boris Johnson had previously ignored but he's now dusted off they read the recommendations here recommendation one the code of conduct for MP should be updated to state that any outside activity undertaken by an MP whether remunerated or unremunerated should be within reasonable limits and should not prevent them from fully carrying out their range of duties and that's sort of seen a bit of a reference to Jeffrey Cox who when he was on the British Virgin Islands presumably couldn't carry out his duties as effectively as an MP would be expected to and then recommendation ten the code of conduct for MPs and guide to the rules should be updated to state MPs should not accept any paid work to provide services as a parliamentary strategist advisor or consultant for example advising on parliamentary affairs or on how to influence parliament and its members MPs should never accept any payment or offers of employment to act as a political or parliamentary consultant or advisers the letter goes on to say these two recommendations form the basis of a viable approach which could command the confidence of parliamentarians and the public that's that's according to the government believes that to be the case this is obviously a dramatic you turn what it means in practice is slightly less clear in particular there are ambiguities as to what counts as a parliamentary strategist advisor or consultant it's that that word at the beginning parliamentary if you're a consultant but it's not a parliamentary consultant would you be allowed to continue with the job it's telling that so far no senior Tory has been able to confirm that that recommendation would definitely rule out in Patterson's Randolph's job so it's not clear that this is going to catch those jobs that people have found so so insulting for MPs to hold Keir Starmer has said it doesn't go far enough he wants to ban all second jobs for MPs with very limited exceptions that's a that's a quote so presumably that would that would catch more people in that net and ultimately more precise rules will be drawn up by the standards committee that's chaired by Chris Bryant after that Boris Johnson will have to decide whether he will whip MPs to vote for it or not Darlia do you think the sequence of events a new set of rules at the standards committee draws up do you think that corruption could be cleaned up is Boris Johnson under so much pressure that he's going to have you know he's going to struggle to sort of go back on all of this and say well actually they can continue with the consultancies as long as they follow these sort of marginal and insignificant rules No I think that it has to be a sort of blanket rule because when you try and go in with these technicalities who's who's holding people's feet to the fire who is doing the oversight here I think a clear message of you know you cannot take on second jobs while you are an MP because being an MP being a representative for your community for your constituency is more than a full time job if you're doing it properly it's more than a full time job and then the slight exceptions can be things like if you're in public office in public service so for example I don't know the public sector in some cases so like when Nadia Wittem during the lockdown worked in a care home again those kinds of very specific roles that's very different you're not representing sort of lobbied interests but you need to have a very very clear mark because it's also not just about taking on second jobs in you know officially on the books it's also about the overall way in which our politicians are able to get away with being so cavalier and taking for granted their roles as MPs so whether it's from you know safe seats being given away to people who are not good MPs people who are not good at being an MP people who don't particularly care about the constituency they've been given but being given a safe seat as a sort of return on a favour which is something that we actually happens a lot in our political system or whether it's you know MPs doing the bidding of particular industries while they're in government and then suspiciously when they are for whatever reason no longer in government go on to serve on the boards of these industries you know a good example is Angela Smith of Funny Tinge fame when she you know left she was like suspiciously in line with the private water industries politics she was chair of the APPG on water and was suspiciously you know backing from the back benches moves to privatise water or continue privatising water and you know it was all kind of strange and then when she leaves her job as an MP when she loses her seat she suddenly ends up on the board of a major company in the water industry so it's not just about you know this isn't having a blanket rule I think on not allowing people to have second jobs while they are MPs is really important but it's also a broader culture of what do people what kind of people is the role of MP actually drawing how can we make being an MP more accessible to people who don't have these other interests other these other other sort of ulterior motives for why they want to become an MP so that we can stop this idea of an MP being seen as a means to an end a means to a more powerful or a more lucrative career but rather the job in itself and that seems to be that kind of culture of being a constituency MP is basically extinct if it ever really did exist and I think so I think it's not this is an important step but I think bringing back this accountability of what it means to be a constituency MP to be embedded in your community and to represent that community in Parliament effectively is absolutely crucial and that's something that's absolutely been lost in the way that the British state is run because I was having an interesting conversation with Aaron about this on a recent show as well where I suppose the distinction he was making I think you're making a similar one as you can say what we need to do is tighten the rules so that the same bunch of people can't fulfill their desires to essentially get rich partaking in actions which might be seen to be against the public interest or we can have democratic reform that mean we have completely different people in Parliament I mean obviously they're not mutually exclusive but we can focus on one or the other so you might argue that what we need is open primaries or what we need is proportional representation so we don't have people who are so secure in their incredibly powerful privileged position that they just get to stay in some safe seat for 40 years and actually never really have to prove themselves to do anyone because once they've been granted that job it's a job for life and you know they might as well go off and try and get some extra cash doing consultancy work yeah absolutely I grew up in a very very safe Labour seat and seat that's never been anything other than Labour no one in my community can tell you the name of our MP I you know I happen to know who the MP is because I'm involved in politics but he's so absent from the local and that's not because people in my community don't have issues that they need their MP to attend to that's actually the complete opposite but it's because there is just absolutely no interest there's no investment there's no he doesn't feel any need to to be connected to us to be connected to our community because we are guaranteed numbers to him and people know that and people feel that and I think the reason why the concept of sleaze really sticks and people feel quite it kind of sticks in a way that a lot of other things haven't stuck to this government is because it is sort of an avatar for how people feel about this broken political system and how unrepresented people feel by this broken political system and whilst they might not know the ins and outs of why exactly that exists there is a sense of I know that my MP is actually not serving me and is actually not interested in the things that matter to me and people in my community I don't know exactly and this kind of I guess gives an explanation as to why and I think it's part of the explanation but it's not the whole explanation but I think yeah that that idea of of how do we create a culture where the constituency MP and being a good constituency constituency MP is the sole focus of our of our government that is going to require more democratic accountability which a lot of MP is going to be very uncomfortable with because it removes that as you said job for life comfort that that's so many so many feel and it's why we lost the red wall I think I honestly do think a big reason why we lost the red wall is because a lot of MPs in northern seats believe that they were in a safe seat and we're lazy and people people reach a breaking point when it comes to that kind of thing and sometimes they just need one thing to push them over the edge that might have been Brexit and might have been something else but that disillusionment and disenchantment and that association with labour between labour and passivity and incompetence and distance from local communities that was festering for a really long time and it fell in one sort of in one moment but it was a much longer history that I would connect to this changing culture of what MPs think they can get away with I do think it is important to keep repeating you know that when it comes to like this blatant sleaze working for consultancies getting shed loads of money on the side Labour and the Tories aren't the same there are 28 Tory MPs who work for outside consultancies there's only one Labour MP who does what you were just saying I did remind me of a labour thing which is that in the constituency where I'm from not where I live now the MP also well the MP doesn't live there because he lives in a different constituency with his wife who is also an MP who is the sister of an MP and this MP who lives in a different constituency both his parents were labour MPs so you do get the idea that something not quite right is going on here if you can guess what constituency I'm from put it in the comments let's go on to our next story that's very well actually first of all let's go to some great super chats Saul with a fiver if we're banning MPs from having second jobs what about banning them from being landlords to always being a parasite in the housing market acceptable I agree with that so I mean I would ban all landlords I think landlordism is just you know completely unproductive part of our economy that there's no rational reason to keep but I would I think it's even more damaging that we have people representing us who are landlords who have tied to this vested and unproductive interest I find myself being less and less able to stomach the pantomime of politics been seeing some controversy over today's PMQs can't bring myself to watch it otherwise I might cringe so hard my spine will smash my pelvis into diamond Wow that's a very graphic description of how you feel the point you make there is interesting I didn't focus on it on this show because I like you found it incredibly tedious and boring there was a controversy today because Boris Johnson tried to you know as I said tried to pretty cynically bring up Kirstama working for Mishkondiraya then the speaker had to tell him to sit down he said this is unparliamentary then Kirstama called him a coward and that was unparliamentary it was all you know it's just completely ridiculous so I didn't go into that but that has been a big story on many of the channels today and Bob Bobbing with a fiverr says Johnson sounded horse today wheezy and chesty in his coughs in short he looks and sounds ill given he is loose with masks has he got COVID again interesting theory I would presume the guy is taking you know lateral flow test every day obviously I don't know the answer that question I would hope he is we'll have to wait and see I suppose we have 2000 people watching only 400 likes give us a like helps us on the algorithm next related story Boris Johnson's last minute U-turn on moon lighting MPs has thrown a cat among the pigeons on the Tory back benches and after Prime Minister's questions Patrick Maguire from The Times shared some leaked WhatsApp messages from Tories expressing their concern MP Kevin Hollenrake was among them he messaged this Tory WhatsApp group saying is anyone else concerned that allowing the commission to determine which of us are prioritizing outside interests over their constituents and are then investigated and appropriately punished makes us subordinate to an unelected official Simon Hall says yes now I imagine viewers will have lots of sympathy with the concerns of this MP Kevin Hollenrake and Simon Hall who agrees with him that is unless you've ever had an ordinary job which paid much less than 82,000 pounds and where your conditions just as Hollenrake is complaining weren't set democratically and where it would not have been seen to be normal by the way if you just had a second very well paid job another Tory MP Nigel Mills said the following as written yesterday the rule could either catch nothing and so be pointless or prohibit nearly everything with the decision being subjective and retrospective we would be far better setting out an earnings and or hours cap than having such a vague rule Jackie Doyle Price then responds all leaving things as they are poor poor Jackie Doyle Price who despite the outrage over Owen Patterson, Jeffrey Cox and Ian Duncan Smith just wants to leave things as they are could the Tories not just ignore the pesky public and continue working in lucrative lobbying jobs and no one thought of that it's so simple none of these leaked messages however constitute the most ridiculous defence of the status quo offered by a conservative this week that accord instead goes to Andrew Rosindell here he is speaking to the BBC after Boris Johnson announced plans to ban consultancies I'm very cautious on this because I know that some of my colleagues have jobs and outside work that they do and that means them having to give up changing their lifestyle we have to be careful about this we have to realise that we're dealing with human beings who have families and responsibilities so whilst as I've said before the duty first duty must be to Parliament constituency into the work we do for our country any changes I think should be evolutionary I'm very cautious on this because I know that some of my colleagues have jobs and they might need to change their lifestyles these are human beings with families and responsibilities that was Andrew Rosindell suggesting that a person with an £82,000 salary might not be able to fulfil their family duties unless they get a side gig as a lobbyist I am of course filled with sympathy for these people whose basic salaries put them in the top 5% of earners and I'm impressed that Rosindell takes seriously how painful it can be to have to change one's lifestyle due to cash flow problems or at least Rosindell takes it seriously with respect to MPs because for everyone else well it turns out Rosindell couldn't give a damn here he is in July this year explaining why he supported the £20 cut to Universal Credit I think that this is a balance it has to be judged very carefully I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but maybe they don't need it so there needs to be proper because people are all different in different circumstances so you can't box everyone into the same category but the government has an overall responsibility to deal with the national finances as well and that's what they must now do I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but maybe they don't need it how do you know the interviewer asks because people are all different in different circumstances let's look at what those differing circumstances might be so if we're talking about Universal Credit excluding support for housing and childcare this is the rate people were entitled to before and after last month's £20 per week cut this information is from citizens advice so what this shows is if you were single and under 25 before the cut you got £344 a month after the cut that went down to £257 per month if you were single and over 25 you got £411 a month before the cut £324 a month after the cut living with a partner and you're both under 25 you get £490 between you before the cut after the cut over a month you get £403 to share between you for a whole month living with a partner if you're both over 25 before you got £596 a month now £509 a month so to be clear what all this means is that Andrew Rosendell thinks that single people over 25 might be able easily to live on £324 a month and that while they might like an extra £80 they probably don't need it Andrew Rosendell also apparently thinks that couples over 25 won't need more than £509 a month between them finally what's not shown on the previous chart is the child element of Universal Credit that's around £250 for each of your first two children because of reforms introduced by George Osborne third children aren't entitled to any money that's how that Tory government fought and worked this all means that a family on Universal Credit is expected to live on roughly £1,000 a month that's of course to pay for food bills council tax school uniforms clothes heaven forbid maybe even a holiday once in a while but Andrew Rosendell thinks such a family might well not need an extra £80 a month even if they might want it now let's compare the situation of people on Universal Credit to members of parliament those people who Andrew Rosendell thinks do need that extra cash MPs are on £82,000 per year that will of course be taxed so we can use a tax calculator to work out their take home pay and this is what you get so as you can see here if you earn £82,000 per year your after tax income is £56,000 per year per month that works out as £4,600 it is these people earning over £4,000 a month who Rosendell thinks needs extra income not the people making as little as £273 per month I want to go back to the clips after we've you know now that we've seen these statistics and the kind of incomes that the two groups he is talking about are on and reflect again on what Rosendell said so this is Rosendell on MPs I'm very cautious on this because I know that some of my colleagues have jobs and outside work that they do and that means them having to give up changing their lifestyle we have to be careful about this we have to realise that we're dealing with human beings who have families and responsibilities so whilst as I've said before the first duty must be to Parliament the constituency into the work we do for our country any changes I think should be evolutionary now again let's look at Rosendell on low income Britons on universal credit I think that this is a balance it has to be judged very carefully I think there are people that quite like getting the extra £20 but maybe they don't need it so there needs to be proper because people are all different in different circumstances so you can't box everyone into the same category but the government has an overall responsibility to deal with the national finances as well and that's what they must now do now after going through those figures and then re-watching those clips there's one particular line Rosendell uses that jumps out at me he says people are in different categories you can't box everyone into the same category and I say that jumps out because that's what this is really about isn't it it's not about different circumstances because if we look at the objective circumstances these two groups of people are in a cut to any MPs overall incomes is a thousand times less concerning than a cut to the income of someone on universal credit that means that the only way you can square that circle is to say that the MPs cut is more concerning than the cut for the people on universal credit is to say that comparison doesn't make sense because we are looking at people in different categories in one category we have people without value people who live on low incomes and have probably had fewer opportunities in life if they suffer it doesn't matter they might want an extra £80 but they don't need it in the other category we have people with value people like MPs who've likely been showered with opportunity and now command high incomes for this category of people having to remove one's child from an expensive public school or having to forgo a holiday in the Bahamas well that's a tragedy Darlia I really do think those two clips of Rosendell explain so much about Tory ideology it only makes sense if you put people into different categories the category which is your wealthy chums if they have to forgo something they want to do that really matters if someone on a low income has to forgo what they want to do it doesn't matter tough luck I mean it's so vile isn't it it's even just the language of as you mentioned of not banning second jobs in order to protect MP lifestyles it's a euphemism for a lot of the things that we talked about before which is that there's this idea that being an MP is about power and wealth it's not about serving your voters it's not about serving your constituency it's about being in those upper echelons of power being in those powerful rooms and seeing being an MP is a stepping stone essentially to a more lucrative future and a more powerful future a means by which you can have access to the kinds of networks that you wouldn't have access to if you weren't in government it's essentially about being a node in a network of power and if you can't have a second job if you have to live on a measly 80k if you can't create the kinds of connections and the networking that having a second job in industry would lend you then what's the point of being an MP it takes all the fun out of it it takes all the glamour out of it but the language is also when he sort of says oh you know we need to think of MPs they are real human beings with families and as if those for whom missing out on 20 pounds with universal credit and you know that means that is the difference between being able to heat their home in the winter and not being able to afford their energy bill as if those people aren't human beings with families and this is where it really does expose Tory ideology I think because for many they just cannot and do not conceptualise working class people or people on low incomes as being human in the way that they are human people who you know this MP in this position he sees himself in someone like Owen Patterson and others who would be affected by such rule changes but he doesn't see himself or anyone that he loves or cares about in a universal credit claim and this disdain for working class people this dehumanisation for working class people comes from the corp of Tory ideology which sees poverty as a moral failure rather than a systemic injustice and it's it you know poor people they're just bad people they make they're unintelligent they make bad decisions and so they have their lot coming to them they need to be disciplined like children because if you give them anything then they'll just misuse it because they don't make smart decisions it reminds me of when Ben Bradley the hero of the white working class said that we shouldn't give working class people free school meal vouchers because it's the same thing as just handing cash over to crack dens and brothels so this kind of stereotyping this caricaturing of working class people and the dehumanisation that goes along with it is rooted in that Tory concept of poverty being a moral failure and it's almost like a prosperity gospel which is in the sort of US evangelical church where if you're rich then being rich itself shows that you're a good person because the act of being because you wouldn't be rich unless you were a good and smart person and so the opposite of that is that if you're poor you're not a good person and you're not a smart person and that's why you're poor and that's why the Tories treat working class people with such ruthlessness and yet when it comes to their class bedfellows they seem to have nothing but sympathy and understanding and empathy as we saw earlier on when Boris Johnson was answering to the Owen Patterson scandal to how he handled it and that is basically it's basically a way of it's the ideology that runs through so many things about the Tories that is not just limited to this particular scandal but it goes through the pandemic it goes through rushing people back to work in the pandemic for all of these things it's through basically just not seeing the working class people of Britain or anywhere else as human beings in the way that they recognize themselves and their colleagues as human beings and it just it's so so sickening and vile to watch it's the only way you can explain what's going on in those two clips you know what Dali is saying might sound radical you know there's just another left winger going on again but there's literally no other way that you can explain what you saw in those two clips you know I just feel like it's incontrovertible Tad Cantwell with a tenor says at the very least all landlord MPs should hand over their rent contracts to the state and not get a penny from it ever while in public service quite a good idea as I say I'd like all landlords to hand over their contracts to the state so we can transfer them into social rent but that would be a good start Chris Tyson with Two Quid keep up the good work on our media thank you so much for those kind words joining union GMB helped me yesterday of course we 100% concur with that do join their union they I mean they can help you out in all manner of things and Christian Williams with a fibre if MPs second jobs go they'll simply pivot and take a single step down another murky path well ideally that murky path would involve them leaving parliament so people who are more fitted for the job can take up that role but I'm sure you're right they will look for loopholes if this opportunity to enrich themselves is removed let's go to our next story Keir Starmer has given a speech to Labour friends of Israel the Labour leader was guest of honour at the annual get together and he shared the stage with Zippy Hotavelli the Israeli ambassador as you can see here the LFI thanked Keir for attending and they added pointedly it's so wonderful to be able to welcome the leader of the Labour party to our annual lunch once again as you can probably guess the relationship between Jeremy Corbyn and the LFI was not so close more notable than Starmer's presence at the lunch though was what he said we can take you through some of the highlights or lowlights depending on how you feel about occupation and racism first a key theme of the speech was to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism on this Starmer said anti-Zionist anti-Semitism is the antiphysis of the Labour tradition it denies the Jewish people alone a right to self-determination it equates Zionism with racism focuses obsessively on the world's sole Jewish state and holds it to standards which no other country is subjected and it seeks to paint the actions of Israel as akin to the crimes of those who sought to annihilate European Jewry in the Shoah this statement upset a lot of people understandably and I think Geir Starmer here is totally wrong so let's go through it with a fine tooth comb first of all we would agree I would agree that comparing Israel to the Nazis is ill judged, usually offensive let's put that to one side as for the rest of the statement Starmer says that what he calls anti-Zionist anti-Semitism denies the Jewish people alone the right of self-determination now, this would make sense it would make sense if there was another ethno-state built on the land of other people that anti-Zionists all accepted with open arms but I can't think of one there are states which are built on the land of other people the United States for example but if the United States defined itself as an ethno-state where people of only one ethnicity were welcome to become citizens then I think we'd probably have some problems with that Geir Starmer also said so-called anti-Zionist anti-Semitism equates Zionism with racism again, I'd agree if anyone believed Zionism was uniquely racist then that would be problematic but there's a strong argument that Zionism as a form of ethno-nationalism is racist if we don't accept that citizenship in Britain is dependent on ethnicity why should we accept it in Israel? that's not making an exception for the Jewish state that's being consistent finally Geir Starmer says so-called anti-Zionist anti-Semitism focuses obsessively on the world's sole Jewish state and holds it to standards to which no other country is subjected the repost of that statement is much simpler yes, Israel is treated differently it is held to different standards there is as far as I'm aware no other nation which has occupied another country for over 50 years and for which practice is apartheid that a Labour leader would proudly address at an annual dinner let's move on to another part of this speech so later on Starmer says we will continue to support Israel's rumbustious democracy it's independent judiciary and it's commitment to the rule of law Israel is a nation with a vibrant media free trade unions and a lively tradition of debate, dissent and disagreement as well as the rights won by the struggle of the women's movement the LGBT community and religious and racial minorities on these points I'll leave it to Bet-Solem Israel's leading human rights organisation and Human Rights Watch to respond both organisations have this year called Israel an apartheid state because in the words of Bet-Solem in the entire area between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River the regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group Jews over another Palestinians I await to hear one of Britain's leading political journalists asking why human rights lawyer Sir Keir disagrees with Human Rights Watch and Bet-Solem I won't hold my breath there is, I assure you too much that's awful in this speech to show you all of it Israel is referred to as embodying progressive values Starmer says other forms of racism get taken way more seriously than anti-Semitism and of course he opposed BDS boycott, divest and sanction but the bit I thought was uniquely offensive was the following thing that Starmer said so he, as a key part of his speech he says Labour leaders from Harold Wilson to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown recognised Israel's importance to the community here at home celebrated its achievements and stood by it in moments of peril they rightly saw their counterparts in the Israeli Labour Party from Golda Meir to Chaim Herzog Abba Iban Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Perez have comrades in the international struggle for equality, peace and freedom and this is the bit social democrats who made the desert flower as Wilson put it social democrats who made the desert flower that is the most colonialist, paternalist and frankly racist thing I've heard a British politician say it in quite a while Israel made the desert bloom obviously there was no one there before the first Zionists arrived and that presumably didn't happen and Arabs I presume can't grow things I can't see how else you interpret that particular phrasing finally the last bit of the speech I'm going to show you is how it ended so Keir Starmer said under my leadership Labour will stand shoulder to shoulder with peacemakers and progressives will stand up against those who demonise and delegitimize Israel and its people or who say Jews don't count because under my leadership at the Labour Party every Jew will count and will stand by our party's long and historic commitment to the world's only Jewish state Israel now as I hope I've already shown Starmer's speech unequivocally shows that in his Labour Party not all lives matter because Palestinian lives don't matter but what about that claim that at least under him every Jew will count I'm joined now by Barnaby Rain a Jewish activist who has written extensively on anti-Semitism and the Labour Party Barnaby did that speech make you feel like you counted do you feel seen by this Labour leader? No indeed I thought perhaps the claim that under his leadership every Jew will count was a terrifying warning to me and bad at maths I'd better get my act together or Kirsten will be forcing me to count this was not a speech on anti-Semitism it contained no attempt to explain where anti-Semitism comes from or why it persists it contained only one example as far as I can see other than the Holocaust of anti-Semitism a recent farce at a theatre and from centuries of theories of anti-Semitism and people thinking through its origins the only authority mentioned was David Bedeal who is not a serious scholar of anti-Semitism it was a speech on Stammer's commitment to support for the state of Israel but very damagingly it was presented as a speech about fighting anti-Semitism which is of course very dangerous because if you tell people that defending me means defending violent expropriation you risk bolstering anti-Semitism you perform a conflation which is of course anti-Semitic Stammer doesn't care about that because he sees anti-Semitism just as he saw Brexit or any other policy choice as just an opportunity to think through how to deal with some polling problems not as a serious anti-racist would see it as a moral problem and I say that because he's happy to bolster a conflation between Jews and the state of Israel which is deeply damaging to Jewish safety and security but which currently serves not Jewish interests but the interests of empire capital looking to use Jews as part of a racist campaign against other minorities to protect, to cast Jews as a kind of protected minority of white society against the savage hordes brown people, Arabs, Muslims and also anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists so that Europe's history of anti-Semitism is projected and deflected and cast as a problem that comes from outside so this is nothing to do with protecting Jews it's to do with protecting white society and using Jews as a kind of a bulldozer battering ram in that right wing campaign I mean it poses a serious problem I think to Kier Stammer's narrative as well because what Labour have been saying or since Kier Stammer became leader and why they've been expelling so many people including many Jewish people is because they say that if you say that any of the anti-Semitism row was about Israel you are essentially denying anti-Semitism and partaking in anti-Semitism then in a speech where he says this is how I'm going to end anti-Semitism he feels the need to condemn BDS to say Israel is progressive to, I mean essentially deny the Nakba how does he say the anti-Semitism row had nothing to do with Israel and two, here in this speech where I'm going to oppose anti-Semitism I'm also going to declare my love to the land of Israel it seems confusing to say the least I don't think there's anything strange about Kier Stammer I don't think there's anything strange about the British Labour Party the strange thing was Jeremy Corbyn that was briefly a period in which within the Imperial Metropole there was a party leader who had a genuine history of commitment to anti-colonial struggles and anti-racist struggles which is the norm which is British politics is about the defence of empire overseas and racism at home that's always been the mainstream just think about this you mentioned Stammer's appalling comment that Israel made the desert flower in that same comment he praised Shimon Peres as a leading social democrat Shimon Peres is a man known across the Arab world for saying I am at peace as Prime Minister after the IDF his army killed 106 civilians sheltering in a UN compound in Lebanon this is a man who did a secret deal with apartheid South Africa to try to provide Israeli nuclear weapons nuclear technology to a state run then by admirers of Hitler Shimon Peres is a man who after the 1967 war said his ambition was to build settlements everywhere a man who blamed Palestinians after Israeli soldiers killed children playing on a beach in Gaza just a few years ago so to coin a phrase to the Labour Party leadership I think that people don't count some victims of racism don't count because the Palestinian people are not simply a victim of Kier Stammer's racism in castigating the movement to boycott a racist state in saying that they merely lived in a desert until settlers came along and made it flower in praising as social democratic heroes I think he called them comrades in the struggle for international peace people who are murderers it's not just that the Palestinians are subject to Kier the racism of a state apparatus systematically based on their exclusion Shimon Peres was one of those fans of the norm after 1948 where Israel placed Palestinians under military law until 1966 since then of course the West Bank and Gaza have been occupied their victim world of racism which some people and others don't and this is really important for socialists you know Marx said Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin in the black it is branded because the politics of domination colonial domination, subjugation humiliation has to be our enemy we have to speak a language of universal freedom for everyone that has to be the basis of our opposition to anti-Semitism and that has to be the basis of our opposition to a Zionist state apparatus premised on the ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians and the ongoing violent expropriation in Sheikh Jarrah today in Silwan today if we can't oppose those things then we're not serious socialists so look at how politicians speak about Palestinians today and you get a clue about how they talk about the rest of us if they thought they could get away with it Barnaby Rain, thank you so much for joining us this evening and speaking so powerfully as you always do on this topic Can I just say one more thing before I go? Yes you can Barnaby The thing that was so farcical about this speech was that while it wasn't a speech about anti-Semitism it was a speech about Israel it showed absolutely no real interest in the cultural facts of Israeli politics it reaffirmed again the farce of the two state solution which Naftali Bennett the Israeli Prime Minister publicly disavows which Zipi Chotovelli sitting in the audience the Israeli ambassador condemned the Board of Deputies of British Jews for supporting the two state solution she opposes it but she sat there applauding while Starmer said of course he supports it it didn't just support the existence of the state of Israel this speech supported the current Israeli government celebrating the fact that the Labour Party participates in it it's a government and this is what we should be talking about not just Kier Starmer it's an Israeli government that's building 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank while Starmer talks about a two state solution that's demolishing an EU funded Palestinian school in the West Bank while it builds homes for Jewish settlers which recently killed a 13 year old child killed by the Israeli army and which is making six of the leading human rights groups including Batsalem that you mentioned labelling them as terrorist organizations so this is the present fact of the Israeli state while Kier Starmer sings these hymns to minority rights and the progressive values of the Israeli state strange hymn to the Oslo peace process that's been dead for years this speech was like a secondary school essay from a student using out of date materials from a highly inaccurate source it was just showed contempt for any of the facts of what's happening on the ground in Palestine and it showed contempt for the Palestinian people who just don't count as far as he's concerned Kier Starmer praised Trump's hardline attempt to exclude the Palestinians forever from any kind of peace process this is more right wing than we've ever seen it's really really very worrying racist absolutely we'll speak soon I know you've got an article with Navarra coming out as well let's go to a couple of comments Mike Knotts 20 quid thank you very much keep up the excellent work I'm a monthly subscriber I'll bump it up you guys are ace on the stories we covered earlier in the show Honey Summer says on the super chat this is such an important expose of Tory ideology I only wish we could see this in the mainstream media have 20 quid whether you need it or not thank you so much thank you for that I feel like we always we put all of your donations to very good use we are very keen to expand this organisation so we can continue doing this more often let's go on to our next story we have a new entry for the most ill-judged article of 2021 it's by Rachel Johnson who is Boris Johnson's sister and she's decided it's the perfect moment to defend Jeffrey Epstein's best friend Gilane Maxwell so the headline from Rachel Johnson in the spectator it's hard not to pity Gilane Maxwell the subheading we met briefly at Oxford the context of this article so the timing is that Gilane Maxwell is about to stand trial in New York charged with sex crimes, conspiracy and perjury related to the actions of the financier Jeffrey Epstein the indictment charges that Maxwell would try to normalise sexual abuse for a minor victim by among other things discussing sexual topics undressing in front of the victim being present when a minor victim was undressed and or being present for sex acts involving the minor victim and Epstein so that's what the prosecution is saying Rachel Johnson though the Prime Minister's sister thinks this might all be a bit harsh let's have a look at her reasoning it's hard not to feel a bat squeak of pity for Gilane Maxwell 500 days and counting in solitary confinement I intersected briefly with her at Oxford as a fresher I wandered into Bailey old JCR one day in search of its subsidised breakfast granola and nescafe offering and found a shiny glamour zone 40 eyes, holding court astride a table and high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris's thigh she gave me a pity in glance but I did manage to snag an invite to her party in Headington Hill Hall even though I wasn't in the same college as her and Boris I have a memory of her father Bob coming out in a towering robe and telling us all to go home I'm sure Fairweather friends would not reveal they went to Gilane Maxwell's party as Barbara Amiel's brilliant memoir The Rovers you only know who your real chums are when you're in the gutter it's important to note that wasn't an introduction to an article which goes on to list Maxwell's alleged crimes and discuss how people change or how people are complex or how people who you like on the surface could have dark underbellies no, in a column which also discusses dog breeds and whether political correctness has gone so far that we can't say women's hospital this is all she has to say Galane Darlia, what is Rachel Johnson doing? why is she doing this? I mean, firstly she's kind of throwing her brother under the bus there which, you know, love to see it but this is also, it's a great example of really thinking that you're about to come and say what is on everyone's mind and just telling on yourself in the process like, no Rachel, it's actually not hard to not pity someone when you pity someone like Galane Maxwell, when you consider the seriousness of what she has been she has been allegedly implicated in and the wealth of quite credible evidence that is stacked against her, like if she is guilty of what is being alleged she has caused untold trauma to many young women who have been voiceless and nameless for many, many years and let's not forget she essentially went into hiding and so obstructed the process of finding out what actually happened of bringing justice for so many of these these women and it's not political correctness to not pity someone who was allegedly involved in a sex trafficking, in the sex trafficking of young girls for rich men it's not cancel culture for people to be grossed out by it, in fact the only thing that's gone too far is the idea that political correctness has gone too far and also the irony there as well of her that weird like transphobic dog whistle where she says, you know she's talking about this in the context of you can't even say women's hospital anymore which I presume, I mean I haven't read the article but I presume is a dog whistle to the idea that trans women or trans rights is somehow undermining feminism which is I don't understand how she can't see the irony of throwing that in the mix and as I said she's pretending a woman who is accused of grooming young girls for a sex trafficking ring in order to serve rich men bizarre move there but weirdly I think this also actually speaks to what we discussed earlier on in the show which is the way in which the certain echelons operate the kind of boundless sympathy and camaraderie that they have for one another no matter how awful they behave, you know, no matter what they do and yet the carceral and punishing mentality that they have for everyone else it's kind of the same logic, it's just done here in a more haphazard way because Rachel Johnson just happened to pick on one of the most unsympathetic characters in the news right at the moment she kind of overplayed her hand but yeah, I just showed the whole hypocrisy and the lack of sense that underpins so many of these kinds of columns which cancel culture and political correctness going too far and how really it's just I want people that either remind me of myself or people that I have some kind of social connection with or people that I feel connected with in some way to be able to get away with whatever they want and meanwhile everyone else has to live by the rules of society and gets punished if they don't and that's really what lies at the heart of a lot of these sort of intelligentsia so-called newspaper column dire tribes on this issue I really like that phrase in defending the indivensible she's kind of overplayed her hand here if you're going to defend someone in this spectator maybe not Gelaine Maxwell on the eve of a trial into whether or not she actually partook in sex trafficking let's go to our next story also on the Johnson's Stanley Johnson that's Boris Johnson's father has this week been accused by two women of sexual assault the first allegation was from Tory MP Caroline Noakes he said she was touched inappropriately by Stanley Johnson when she was a prospective parliamentary candidate at the 2003 Tory party conference the following I now regard it as a duty an absolute duty to call out wherever you see it be the noisy aggravating aggressive woman in the room because if I'm not prepared to do that then my daughter won't be prepared to do that you do get to a point where you go up with this I will not put very powerful statement there the second allegation was from New Statesman journalist Alva Ray tweeted after that story about Caroline Noakes broke Stanley Johnson also groped me at a party at conservative conference in 2019 I am grateful to Caroline Noakes for calling out something that none of us should have to put up with not least the Prime Minister's father now what you've seen here are two statements by clearly incredibly brave women these are also allegations which are you know years apart which if they are true suggests a very concerning habit on the part of Boris Johnson's father who was a politician in his own right he was an MEP at one point these are allegations we cannot confirm either way I would tend to take them incredibly seriously what we can say for certain is that Stanley Johnson's response to these allegations was disgusting it was despicable here's what he told Sky when they put these allegations to him I have no recollection of Caroline Noakes at all but there you go and no reply hey ho good luck and thanks so this is someone who has said she was inappropriately touched by Stanley Johnson in 2003 sexual assault essentially she's also given a very powerful statement about the reason she is saying this now is because she wants to set an example to other women that you should not suffer in silence it's important that we speak out about these things so that we change the culture and in response Stanley Johnson says hey ho thanks good luck I mean Dahlia both the allegations but that response it's sickening isn't it it's sickening I actually don't doubt that Stanley Johnson doesn't have any recollection of Caroline Noakes because that's how sexual assault and sexual harassment often works especially when it's done in the context of a powerful man and a less powerful woman and also in a kind of workplace workplace context normally the harasser doesn't really care who the person is and considers it a kind of non-event that they probably forget before the night even ends whereas for the victim it's harrowingly unforgettable and that's how this often goes and that's why it's such an engine of inequality in our society because it creates this heavy sometimes unbearable burden on a certain part of the population disproportionately women that the others just don't have to bear and that's why we talk about sexual harassment and sexual assault as an inequality issue as much as anything else but as you've spoken about these women have nothing to gain by publicly speaking out about this why would you randomly wake up one day and decide to lie about something that Stanley Johnson did there's nothing really to gain here and so for him to feel emboldened which I'm sure he does because of the way that Rachel Johnson behaves the way that his own son behaves as the Prime Minister of this country he feels completely emboldened to do this because he feels to reply in this way he's shrouded by kind of cotton wool and we've allowed him in a sense to behave that way but it also sheds a light I think on how this story often unfolds where you have one person who has been holding this in and holding this swallowing it and that causes all sorts of knock on effects that you might not even know is related to that original thing that happened to you and the other person just walking through and walking through their life and remembering it it's really really chilling actually to see it play out in such black and white terms we of course for legal reasons should emphasize Stanley Johnson has denied this we can't say either way whether or not this happened just that these allegations should be taken incredibly seriously but in the abstract I think actually that's a really important point you make I suppose it also explains how one man without respect for women I'm really talking in the abstract here can affect so deeply so many people's lives because they just walk around the world unthinkingly abusing people which is a life changing event for the victim of that but the person who was the perpetrator there it's just another day it's not even memorable, it's barely notable the way you talked about that as a particular inequality of sexual assault I think that's really interesting to think about in that way as much as I feel like that's a super important point anything else you want to mention on that story Dahlia before we begin to wrap up yeah because I think the point obviously and as you said this is all alleged and I think that's why it's important to talk about this in that abstract way what does this tell us about this broader thing if you feel like if you hear that someone has been harmed by something that you someone that has been harmed it's the lack of curiosity and the lack of any kind of respect for the fact that someone feels that way and the quickness with which you can dismiss it rather than taking it seriously and having some process that we can go through in order to find out what happened and in order to redress any harms that have happened and I think this is the problem with the way that we talk about sexual assault and the cavalier way that so many people treated it was like in his response you just sense that he didn't really get the gravity of what was being articulated and whether or not he remembers or believes it to be true or whether or not anything happened it's still the lack of respect and the lack of tact that is just so appalling really to watch and so endemic so representative of the things that I was talking about absolutely I think how that is representative of a much wider issue is so important to keep in mind interesting comment here here's a tenor to stop talking about Bojo's sister and start talking about Ghislaine's alleged involvement with Epstein pretty please I am taking that comment to heart and I will plan some sort of show soon on the precise details of the Ghislaine Maxwell case as I say the case hasn't started yet so there will be a lot more news around this for us to report on I would also I'll be looking out for a guest on this I think if you haven't seen already we did do a brilliant interview with the guys from True and Non on the Epstein case but I might reach out to try and get them back on to talk specifically about Ghislaine Dahlia a pleasure to have you back on tonight's Tiskey Sour it's lovely to be back I would really love to watch that show you should definitely sort of I really liked the first time they were on so I'll try and make that happen thank you for watching tonight thank you for all of your comments and your super chats we will be back on Friday at 7pm there'll be lots of videos going out tomorrow on our YouTube channel so do check those out for now you've been watching Tiskey Sour on Navara Media good night