 We are told Keir Starmer has completed unconscious bias training, but does he need lessons in identifying racism which is a little bit more explicit? That's the question I asked myself after watching him respond to a caller on LBC this morning. So the lady had phoned in to ask Keir Starmer what he thought about her husband who she said had been one of the fans booing at Millwall's match when the players took a knee. Starmer said he disagreed with the booing but then failed to challenge her on something she said which was far more worrying. Let's take a look. He is of course and I respect his view of course so it doesn't mean I agree with it. I think that what's happened over the many years, this is the counter argument, it's quite a powerful one, is that there is racial inequality, there is injustice and from time to time it becomes an issue, it's looked at for a few weeks and then it goes away and this is an attempt to keep the focus on it until things really change. The round now focus just on taking the knee and the important issue of getting black managers, black directors of football, black chairman or chair women of clubs, I mean that's been lost because we just take the knee. No I don't think it's one or the other, I think you can do both and it's a way of drawing attention to it but in the end it's for each individual to decide how they want to tackle injustice. Gemma why did your husband, sorry you didn't quite explain if I may go there again, why did he choose not, choose to boo, sorry. Because if anything the racial inequality is now against the indigenous people of Britain because we are set to become a minority by 2066 and taking the knee, bringing that into, bringing the political sphere into the football arena and we just have to look across to the Middle East, you know Israel has a state law but they are the only people in that country to have self-determination. Well why can't I as a white British female have that same right? Final point to you on this, Sakir. But Gemma we all have those rights, this is about recognizing some injustice gone on for a very, very long time and I think people were genuinely moved this year and want to make sure that that injustice is dealt with and you know people will look at it different ways but I think the vast majority of people do want a more equal society. Gemma thank you. Now I mean I think actually Kirsten's answer in the first half of that clip was quite good, I think his defense of people taking a knee was very thoughtful and very persuasive. The second half though, I mean let's go over what that caller said. So the caller said that actually it's white people who are oppressed in this country because they're about to become a minority by 2066. Projections from some demographer now that sort of become core to the great replacement theory. I'm sure Ash will talk about that in more detail in a moment. What I want to focus on now that the caller suggested we learn from the nation state law in Israel and pass a law which is basically saying let's pass a law guaranteeing self-determination for white Brits. So she's saying why don't white Brits have the same right to self-determine that Jews in Israel do and in response Kirsten says we all have those rights. No we don't all have those rights, we don't all have the right to live in an ethno state where our ethnicity is treated as privileged over others. I mean it's essentially apartheid, right? Now obviously I'm not saying that that clip shows you that Kirsten supports apartheid but I do think it is quite troubling that that is essentially I mean that's how you can interpret his words. He didn't challenge that woman who said let's have self-determination for white people in Britain like they have self-determination for Jews only in Israel. He sort of just brushed it off. Ash I want to bring you in on this. Kirsten, he has done unconscious bias training but he I mean either he didn't recognize what I thought was quite blatant white supremacy there or he felt that it wasn't appropriate to challenge it. Well you should really be getting a refund on that unconscious bias training shouldn't he? If you can't pick up on really obvious white nationalist conspiracies and when it's right in front of you and look I mean you've both done radio phone and shows and sometimes you don't get to say all the things that you want to say and you kick yourself a while after but I don't think that's quite what happened here. I think what has happened here is that Kirsten was listening for what he knew to prepare for which was the question on millwall and booing and BLM and taking the knee and it meant that he had just tuned out these I mean it's not even a racist dog whistle where it's an absolute honking white nationalist vuvuzela and what that indicates to me is a certain lack of racial literacy is what I would call a lack of racial literacy from Keir Starman. We've seen this you know a couple of times before when he you know called Black Lives Matter a moment and not a movement when he you know dismissed defunding the police out of hand which is fine if that's a policy decision that you disagree with and want to distance yourself from but with this kind of degree of disrespect for the activists who had generated it he doesn't have that kind of discerning ear and ability to react and to respond from a place of I think very deep confidence and knowledge and that's going to be a problem and it's not going to be a problem because the left who are phenomenally disempowered within labor are going to kick off that's not going to be a thing that troubles him. What is going to trouble him is that this phenomenon of great replacement conspiracism and this kind of you know subterranean media infrastructure ecology which is sort of being generated and nurtured by the alt-right this kind of phoning into radio shows in order to wedge in your white nationalist talking points that is only going to grow and unless you have a labor leader who's able to identify when this is going on and have some kind of prepared response to it which is making you know a real impassioned defense of the kind of society that he wants to see a multiracial multi-ethnic and multicultural democracy then a labor leader is not going to get anywhere near a downing street than his predecessors I think and there's also one more thing that I briefly want to touch on if that's okay and it's about the matter of the great replacement itself because whenever I call the great replacement a conspiracy theory I have a million and one far right thunder heads in my mentions sharing this one clip from a video that I did a few years ago called Against Integration and it's a nine second clip in which I highlight some statistics which had been reported I think in the Daily Mail indicating demographic change in London ago all right lads we're winning and the reason why they clip this and they distribute it is they think that it represents not only me saying oh the great replacement is real but saying and I'm a part of it I endorse it and I think it's really good the actual much longer video is about the research produced by sociologists called Ted Cantal and I cite those statistics because I think that what it shows is that he handled this data in a very biased way he looks at rising diversity and because he judges it by the fact that you have a smaller proportion of white Brits in diverse areas he goes oh that's a segregated neighborhood I just grew that fundamentally the great replacement is a conspiracy theory which essentially says that there is a kind of shadowy you know cabal of elites often coded as Jewish it's you know very very close to you know lots of other anti-Semitic myths this great great replacement that's pulling the strings to try and you know eradicate you know the indigenous white race from Europe and America and sometimes Australia this is of course complete ho come what they do is they take these statistics which show demographic change and there's all kinds of demographic change right there's religious demographic change there's racial demographic change obviously there's also age demographic change which no one seems to have that they've got of a problem with and they go see your your races under attack no what's going on and what drives these numbers is that you know those waves of immigration which were once kind of temporary people would come over they'd make some money they'd move back there's changed people have settled down they put down routes they have children they fall in love you know they make lives with one another they actually perform the kind of integration which everyone's telling me is the right thing to do and that's what what drives this this great replacement conspiracy theory it says that essentially demographic change is the result of these nefarious forces which are which are trying to rob white people of what's rightfully theirs it's very closely linked to anti-Semitism also very very closely linked with lots of really horrible stuff to do with you know anti-abortion you know very very conservative on reproductive rights and I think it's important that when this is going to be I think such a core part of of you know the far right story going forward and you can see that there is this porousness between the barrier between mainstream opinion and all right opinion because of the kind of like you know huge electoral upsets of you know Donald Trump having one in the 2016 American election you know you've also got hard right Brexit you've got this current composition of Boris Johnson's cabinet and then you've also got a media ecology which is constantly drawing on these figures and elevating them to pundit status this is going to be something which is going to I think you'll hear about it more and more in our politics and Keir Starmer if he wants to actually be a trusted figure on anti-racism and I've got no doubt that that is something that he wants to do um if not always has the tools to be able to do it's going to have to work out a strategy for it because tuning it out responding to the question that you wanted to hear rather than the comments that you did actually hear simply isn't good enough say he wasn't listening actually gives him more credit than he deserves I mean he's an intelligent man he was clearly listening to what was said and he didn't he even didn't recognize that something very something drawn from white supremacy was said or explicitly white supremacist was said or he didn't feel comfortable challenging it and one thing that I think actually stood out for me is that he clearly wasn't paying attention in the whole summer long debate that we had about the IHRA definition of anti-semitism because if he had he would know that one of the big problems with that one of the big complaints people had was that by saying that Israel has a right to self-determine essentially that that can be used to justify the nation state law which is to say that if a people have a right to self-determination then they have a right to be an ethnic majority in a nation which is precisely what's what's motivating the nation state law which is to say that yes look there's concerns in Israel the Arabs are you know reproduce it I'm using their horrible language that the Arab population is growing faster than the Jewish population so to secure the rights of of the Jewish population you have to put and basically a bit of an apartheid clause in the constitution to say even if Jews no longer are the majority they still are the only people with rights to to have ownership of that nation essentially and this is being taken up by white supremacists in this country who are saying ah look there is a danger that whites will no longer be a white people sorry I don't want to use their language white people will no longer be the majority you sound like you know de Klerk or something what I mean that that's that's what the caller was suggesting and because Keir Starmer wasn't paying attention to Ira he wasn't paying attention to the nation state law he didn't notice that I noticed that in like half a second right and that completely went over his head because he's not paying attention to liberation struggles around the world and the nature of ethno nationalism is something that he he's he's not alive to and that means he completely missed a point there I want to talk a bit more context for you which is that thanks to researchers on Twitter we know that the caller was was not actually Gemma from Cambridge as she claimed but someone who goes by the name of Jody Kaye and so she has a YouTube channel promoting far right conspiracy theories and is a supporter of the far right patriotic alternative group apparently she was she's actually in she was introduced as Gemma from Cambridge as I said but she is in fact a yoga teacher in Ibiza the far right were also pleased with how it went so this is a screenshot from a far right telegram broadcast it was found by the crowdsourcing collective red flare on Twitter definitely were a a follow and you can see there this is a far right account charlie big potatoes official I don't know whether the name comes from they say an absolute masterclass of griping which is to say you go on sort of mainstream platforms and put in conspiracy theories unbeknownst to the to the to the host from Jody Kaye here as all Keir Starmer can do is try and worm his way out of answering any of her points well done Jody now obviously that they're being completely opportunistic they're claiming this is a victory because it makes them look good but it is undeniable that Keir Starmer didn't successfully challenge and in fact by saying we all have those rights in a way by accident I'm sure by accident reinforced and legitimized the quite horrific views which were being put to him