 Keir Starmer has had a much easier ride with the press than Jeremy Corbyn ever did. His supporters will say that's because he's a more professional operator with a better comms team. His detractors will say that's because he poses little threat to the establishment. So why would they bother? But a story in this morning's Daily Mail shows that even Sir Keir can get smeared. So the story, the background, is this clip which was shown on Sky News of Starmer taking part in the weekly clap for NHS workers. Let's take a look. So the controversial part there is Keir asking, have you got what you need? So the suggestion is that he was only clapping for the NHS workers for a photo opportunity. That video we just showed you there has been viewed, sorry, over two million times on Twitter and it was written up by the Daily Mail. So let's go to that headline. He's only in it for the photo op. Sir Keir Starmer under fire after he is caught asking camera crew, have you got what you need while taking part in national clap for NHS? So they go on. New Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of clapping for the cameras by Twitter users. Sir Keir stopped the NHS appreciation clap outside his house abruptly after the one minute ended and Twitter users claimed that Sir Keir was taking part in the NHS national clap for the photo opportunity. We'll get onto the facts of the matter in a moment, but first of all, it's worth noting this is what tabloid newspapers do when they don't want to be responsible for the misinformation they are spreading. They say Twitter users said this, someone is under fire for this. Who are they under fire from? Unless you state that clearly, this is just you not wanting to be responsible for the story that you're writing. But anyway, the idea is we're supposed to see Keir as a snake. He only cares about his image, not NHS workers. He's not like Boris Johnson who went out and clapped even when he had coronavirus, which had of course nothing to do with the fact that he lives on the road with the most political TV cameras in the country. But anyway, I don't want to cast aspersions. Anyway, let's look at the reality of what happened. So this story completely fell apart after a tweet from the cameraman to the person who was shooting that piece of video, which you just saw. So we can get up what he says in a tweet in response to that. He says, I'm that cameraman he was talking to. He asked me as a way to clear the path to bring his daughter from across the road. So when he was saying, have you got what you need? He was saying, can you have you got what you need so you can move out of the way so my daughter can come back to our house? Not a big story. If you still don't believe me, let's look at this video. So the cameraman also shared this video, which was sort of the full situation, the full event. So you can see what happened. The reality there is that he's trying to get over his daughter to his house. He was out there clapping for the NHS. And yeah, there was a camera there. But I mean, that's they all do that, don't they? I suppose the bigger issue here, though, I mean, this isn't really, we don't have to get to the bottom of what really happened because it's blatantly obvious. The sort of broader political point is key going to get the Corbin treatment. Is this the first chapter in what is going to be a much longer and much more abusive relationship between the press and Keir Starmer? I mean, they butchered Ed Miliband over how he ate a bacon sandwich. They went through him over his dead father. I think if anyone voted for Keir Starmer because they thought, you know, a guy who's got the quiff, much better quiff than mine. And somehow, you know, obviously looks more conventionally primed hysteria that will be spoons. He'll be spared a right wing smear campaign. They're going to be disappointed. The only reason it hasn't really happened so far in a concerted fashion is because it would look too unseemly younger pandemic and then it wouldn't cut through because everyone's focusing on the biggest crisis since World War Two. When we get out of this crisis, then I would expect the full arson of the right wing press to be trained on it. Only Tony Blair managed to avoid it by, you know, establishing a pact with Satan, aka Rupert Murdoch, and therefore getting the support of the son newspaper. That's just unthinkable. And I think what I'd say is I do understand a lot of people who on the left, who think, look, we went through years of outrageous smears against Jeremy Corbyn, the most sickening grotesque smears against him, against those close to him as well. And almost, I just think what needs to be avoided, and that doesn't mean, by the way, obviously, Screech's and I's the leadership. I have my own critiques of the leadership, which I'm sure many of you share, like if I'm a assertive response on coronavirus, and I don't have the pressure of thinking, you know, I don't want to be on the wrong side of public opinion when we're all running around the government, but that's the view I have, and I know you do as well. But I do think, remember when Jeremy Corbyn became leader, and people on the right of the Labour Party and their outriders and sympathisers, every right-wing attack, every time the polling was bad, were like, ha, ha, ha, told you so, rub it your face in it. And I think that's obviously a bad strategy, because in no sense do we should relish the right succeeding or attacking even those figures in the Labour movement who we're not necessarily entirely in agreement with. But also, there's an issue of strategy, which I think people need to be aware of. And for me, it's about the middle third of the Labour membership. These are people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn twice, and then they voted for Keir Starmer. And what happened in the 1980s is you got this big coalition in 1981 behind Tony Ben, who nearly won the debt to leadership, and only didn't do so because the Electoral College men MPs essentially had a veto, or they had a big chunk of the Electoral College, the membership overwhelmingly voted for Ben. But that coalition then crumbled between what became known as the soft left and then just the left, the campaign group left, if you like, and then the soft left. And what happened then is they became enemies, and the soft left allied with the right, and the campaign group left became this marginalised, ever more marginalised, quite bittered, diminished rump, many people on the left, left the Labour Party, or just got fed up, disillusioned and all the rest of it. And we can't have that history repeating itself. And I think the strategy should be defend the Labour leadership from right-wing smears. I don't really think that should be something which should be in doubt. Hold them to account, particularly on the promises they made during the leadership election, and try to establish a broad coalition, particularly around the 10 pledges Keir Starmer made during the leadership election on everything from hiking taxes on the rich, public ownership, scrapping tuition fees, green new deal, no illegal wars, to make sure that those are enshrined and protected. But I think, I know it's only Twitter, but I do see sometimes, I understand it, people are angry, they see the Corbyn leadership, it got destroyed partly because of internal attacks as well as external attacks. And that sense of, you know, we went through this and now the people who were cheering on Keir Starmer, now how do you like the taste of your own medicine? It's a bad mistake. And it would also make it with disillusioned people as well. It will make people miserable, it will drive people out of political activity. So I think now is the time to build those broad alliances. And the other thing I'd say on it is what I personally did in the Ed Miliband era is I didn't spend my time going for Ed Miliband. Instead, what I did is try to use my media platform to be more assertive and opposing austerity, which obviously the Labour leadership weren't signed up to doing. And then people would go, why are Labour doing that? So I think if you take Navarra, if Navarra are more bold and radical in pushing on the pandemic and on policies because we need really radical policies in this economic and social crisis, that puts pressure on the Labour leadership to go further without ending up where we're seen as the enemy. And actually, strategically, it should be the right of the Labour Party who went for not just Jeremy Corbyn, they went for Ed Miliband and they went for Gordon Brown as well. They should be the ones who should be seen as their traditional role, the saboteurs. We shouldn't fall into that role. That's my view. What do you think? I'm pretty similar to you on that one. And the Tiskey sour audience hears me on Keir Starmer all the time. While we're on this section, I just want to go to one more bit of Keir Starmer in the media today. So that was a Daily Mail smearing him. That was sort of, as usual, the kind of thing that we'd expect with Jeremy Corbyn. Keir did manage something though which Corbyn never really did, which was an incredibly positive front-page headline on the telegraph on VE Day, no less victory in Europe Day. So let's get up that headline, Starmer. We owe it to VE Day generation to protect them from virus in care homes. Not only is that the Tories in-house newspaper, Boris Johnson used to write for it. So Starmer will be very pleased with that. The headline refers to an opinion piece which he wrote inside the paper. And I just want to go to, I think what I thought was the key paragraph in that. So Keir writes, when the coronavirus crisis ends and it will end, we must make sure our vision for the future matches the ambitions of the post-war generation. After coronavirus, we cannot return to business as usual or continue as if nothing has changed. I mean, why I thought this was interesting is he's very explicitly there, I think, drawing on the 1945 experience from Labour. So I think what you can take from that is obviously, as you say, at the beginning of the war, it was scrutiny and pressure from the opposition, which made Chamberlain resign. But then ultimately, you had Labour go into coalition with Winston Churchill. Obviously, if you're in coalition, you're not doing much criticism. And then afterwards, they say, now let's win the piece, even though Churchill remained incredibly popular, Labour won because they got that message out. I just want to get up their iconic poster from that election. There we go. And now win the piece. Owen, do you think this strategy will work anyway? This idea of let's win the piece after coronavirus? That's definitely the right strategy. So what World War II did is it highlighted injustices which were otherwise neglected. So take, for example, the massive evacuation of children. You suddenly got hungry kids turning up on the doorsteps of families who had never really encountered that level of poverty before. It developed this sense of we've made all these sacrifices. We're not going back to the 30s, often called the hungry 30s, yet the hunger marches, so-called Jarrow march, for example, mass unemployment, mass immiseration, particularly the industrial areas, and people didn't want to return to that. Similarly, problematic comparisons caveat with World War II, not with standing. What this crisis has done is exposed that millions of people are always one pay packet away from hardship, extreme hardship. It's exposed the fact that the key workers who we applaud and congratulate every Thursday are always underfunded, underpaid, undervalued. Their service is not properly invested in. It's highlighted the fact that gig economy and self-employed people live extremely precarious and difficult lives. It's exposed the fact that the welfare state is manifestly inadequate and lots of people who've never dreamed of ever coming into contact with the welfare state have now been dragged to course into its orbit and can see universal credit, even though it's been increased into its so-called generosity, is nothing to live on. It's exposed the fact that our social care sector is an absolute disaster. Other injustices, of course, domestic violence, LGBT young people, often with parents who aren't supportive. What it does is it really exposes and exacerbates those particular injustices. The inequality of it, we know that poorer people are more likely to die from coronavirus and BME people, Black people, in particular, significantly more likely to die. It exposes those inequalities within society as well. What Labour has to argue, just as it did with World War II, is now we've won the war, who do you trust most to win the piece to deal with those injustices? That's why we can't backtrack on its radical proposals. I mean, let's not go too far down this comparison, but it is interesting that Clement Attlee was a middle-of-the-road ex-barister who replaced a supposedly otherworldly pacifist Labour leader, George Lansbury, but then went on because of the circumstances of World War II to commit to a very radical programme. Let's hope history repeats itself, but I think that our role on the left has to be to say, obviously, to keep the 10 pledges that Keir Starmer made and everything from public ownership, ending austerity, investment in the economy, taxing the rich, and so on, but also that revolutionary times, as Beverly, she was a liberal, said when he wrote about the welfare state, need revolutionary measures. We are in a social and economic as well as a public health crisis, so Labour's position has to be the same as Clement Attlee. Wherever people think about Boris Johnson, the government, who do you trust to actually deal with the injustices that have been exposed to win the piece? So I think that that is promising, but we've got to push for them to be as radical as possible.