 Good evening and welcome to a Friday night edition of Tiskey sour. I'm joined by Aaron Bustani. How are you doing Aaron? I'm very good Michael. How are you thinking about you know, Tiskey now on Friday nights me and you we've done so well But now the good weather's here. I'm worried all our wonderful followers are going to leave us Well, I'm worried about myself. You know, I've I've there's never been a moment where I've been like I'd love to be doing something else this evening, but now the sun's coming out the days are getting longer Obviously, I'm not going to go anywhere. I'm not going to go anywhere I can do that on on the other days of the week, but and I hope you guys do the same However hot it is this is the place to be on a Friday night. You can always go out afterwards And tonight show is particularly unmissable We are talking about the fallout from Dominic Cummings' testimony to a commons select committee Especially as it refers to Matt Hancock. He is currently well I say he's fighting for his job in fact Actually quite a lot of Tory MPs and the Prime Minister are rallying around him So he probably will keep it but we can look at the row that that has generated and to what extent the the issues it raises could damage the government and We'll be talking about the Batley and Spen by election During Wednesday's select committee Dominic Cummings extraordinary attack on Matt Hancock had many prongs But the one that appears to have stung the most is this We were told categorically in March That people will be tested before they went back to care homes We only subsequently found out that that hadn't happened now or the government rhetoric was we put a shield around care homes and blah blah It's complete nonsense Quite the opposite of putting a shield around them. We sent people with covid back to the care homes so the core bit of Dominic Cummings testimony was the idea that Matt Hancock had lied So Matt Hancock had told the Prime Minister had told Dominic Cummings That the care homes would be protected people would be tested on being discharged from hospitals and that didn't happen Now that's the new information That's why I think this story has run so far when it comes to the newspapers and the media because there is a claim and a Counterclaim because we already knew That the government had failed to protect care homes much of this information was already on the public record We knew that on the 17th of March NHS trust were told to expand their space for critical care by discharging patients into care homes We also knew they were told tests were not necessary And we knew that that advice did not change until a month later on the 16th of April So you had a whole month in the middle of the The biggest surge in in the covid crisis and people were being discharged from hospitals into care homes without being tested 25,000 patients were Discharged that's what we knew What Cummings added as I've said is he said this was essentially not because of a failure of government in general It was because of a failure of Matt Hancock the health secretary to be honest So he said Matt Hancock assured me and Boris Johnson that this would happen it didn't he's a liar and I'm putting my words in his mouth, but essentially he's he's got blood on his hands for those lies Let's see how Matt Hancock responded. He did a Downing Street press briefing yesterday And as you would expect he pushed back against Cummings claims My recollection of Events is that I committed to delivering That testing for people going from hospital into care homes when we could do it I then went away and built the testing capacity for all sorts of reasons and all sorts of uses including this one and then delivered on the commitment that I made and that is a That's kind of normal way of how you get things done in government You work out what needs to happen You commit to making it happen. You go away and deliver on that commitment And then you can put the policy in place Aaron I want your opinion on this. We have two very disreputable people making a claim and a counterclaim. Dominic Cummings is saying the reason care homes were left in such a Disastrously unprotected space or left to be a disastrously unprotected space was because Hancock said he would do something And then did not Hancock says no I said That testing would happen But I said that that testing would happen when the capacity was there and obviously Until mid april that capacity wasn't there who's lying one of them has to be Yeah, I think there's two things here firstly It's clearly a systems failure if the prime minister and his chief advisor can both be sick And a policy of this magnitude can go wrong You know, that's not just about oh the the the secretary of state for health is a bad person They're incompetent they're a liar. It shouldn't hinge on The content of Matt Hancock's character or his capacity to follow through because many many people died or as a result of this So I think there's a there's a broader question there about is that even possible? I mean you're on top of these issues far more than I am Michael So in terms of the civil service stepping in and so on I find that quite hard to believe We've not mentioned it here, but Dominic Cummings made an adjacent point which was that Matt Hancock also Basically tried to build infrastructure which met his short-term targets rather than thinking in the longer term About how we can actually respond to this More heart more wholeheartedly It was fundamentally a pr exercise for the secretary of state for health rather than solving the problem. I believe that I absolutely believe that and I think that's uh, that's not like I say an adjacent question And it has to be answered But in terms of Matt Hancock is responsible for these deaths I just I can't accept that that's the answer Because it's such a catastrophic failure of government. It has to be more than just one person Surely there are safeguards. Surely there are firewalls Surely there are people that feed back in real time and say actually we should be doing this I mean I was listening to bbc radio 4 on wednesday. This is just one story Michael But there are obviously thousands of stories like this Somebody gets covet 19 In a care home. They go into hospital They're isolated And then they're sent back to that care home. There were I believe 15 cases of of covid as a result of that single person They were told they didn't need to be tested because they weren't kept in overnight Again, just making up as people go along That person goes back into a care home as a result 10 people died And you just think wow So if that's just a microcosm of a broader national problem I come on You can't put this all in one person as much as Matt Hancock is probably lying as much as he should face You know face fury and fire and real accountability over this I think come on far broader questions of of politics has to be asked here This idea to send people back into care homes without being tested I mean, I'm not convinced that wasn't part of the plan which was signed off by lots of people Because if you remember in that Testimony on wednesday one of the things that dominic Cummings showed was was a whiteboard Which was when they'd sort of put their Their new plan b into place It just you know, just with a little black marker and one of the boxes was who don't we save And I'm not saying this. I don't think they wanted to intentionally cull people Obviously, I'm not saying they they wanted people to die But I do think that in those early days of the plan because they were so out of their depth They had got into a frame of mind whereby They wanted the hospitals free for younger people By any means necessary So their big worry was that you'd have people who weren't close to the end of their life Who didn't get the care they needed because the hospitals were overwhelmed So they said well To make sure that these people of younger age don't die We kind of have to sacrifice the care homes. I think that probably was one of the logics and No one wants to admit it now Because also I completely agree with what you're saying there Aaron, this isn't the case of policy isn't just set by Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock in a room And Matt Hancock told Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings. It would happen And he lied and that's how this whole shit show happened No, I think you would have had the involvement of of many different people in the civil service I mean on sage potentially even as well because you have to remember we were in a period of time when The scientists, you know in early March were saying the best-case scenario is 260,000 people die so I do think it is a bit silly to put this all on Matt Hancock having said that I also agree with you He strikes me as someone who has a proclivity to lie I mean the whole thing of Matt Hancock is he seems like a bit of a chance to write someone who is very willing to bluff We all saw him do it to us when it came to putting a protective ring around care homes Or especially when it came to the the testing targets That's what you were referring to before and where where Dominic Cummings is saying he set up this infrastructure Which was just to make himself look good. I've got this 100,000 test target We knew that that target was only met by counting tests once you put them out in the post, right? Many of those tests were never done. They were never used. They were never returned But they were counted within that target What you'll often hear in Matt Hancock's interventions over the past couple of days is he says look actually That target is why we managed to ramp up the test so quickly. We set an ambitious target and we met it Maybe I fiddled the numbers, but the testing capacity still rose I'll leave that for you to decide whether that's a reasonable argument on the lying front Probably more convincing than anything Dominic Cummings could say Is some documentary evidence he might be able to show and Robert Peston had a very interesting Report last night on this front So I'm going to go to a quote from that Peston writes the problem for Hancock is I understand That Dominic Cummings has documents showing Matt Hancock was summoned by the prime minister's office to 10 Downing Street on the 3rd of May For a meeting on the 4th of May to explain whether he had misled Cummings the p.m And the then cabinet secretary mark said well on testing patients before discharge into care homes And also about further testing of residents and staff in care homes A source says there was a fear in Downing Street that mr. Hancock's Negligence had killed people in care homes a charge which the department of health has denied the term negligence is used in the documents Downing street officials asked for information from the Department of Health to understand what had gone wrong Now to me this does seem like this could potentially be more problematic for Matt Hancock again will people just essentially you know Forgive him because it was a difficult period you know everything was up in the air Or is there something in this documentary evidence which says which suggests that he was actively dishonest and that that those active lies cost Lives I don't know what you think about what Peston has I suppose it revealed is too strong a word But what what Peston has intimated towards you saying there is some evidence here that at the time You know this isn't just Dominic Cummings Refashioning a story in hindsight because he wants to make history look a particular way that that vindicates himself This was at the time Matt Hancock was invited to a meeting because of negligence on on his behalf Well, yeah, I presume the emphasis on negligence there repeated by Peston is talking about you know the legality of the whole thing Look Michael my worry is that you get somebody who's set up as a full guy And that's kind of what Matt Hancock looks like right now And that's not to say he didn't do things that he shouldn't have done and that you like I say he probably he already should have been fired Labour should already be asking for his resignation, which they're not doing But I just feel like at the highest levels of government there should be more fail safes than this There are elite civil servants, you know, it may be that this extends. We've already seen for instance mark said well Implicated in this, you know, it may be actually that much of the senior civil service seemed to kind of go along with the whole With the whole herd immunity sort of hypothesis for far longer than we thought I mean, we knew they they bought into it But maybe that actually extended for for a few days or a few weeks longer than we thought Or maybe there was a kind of gray zone where there wasn't really a plan. So I'm kind of I'm kind of uh, how can I put this? I'm cautious about sort of saying this is on Matt Hancock entirely and nobody else because it it does feel like that There could be a set of interests Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove, the civil service higher parts of the Tory party the media Putting this on one person and I think that is a not what happened and be clearly that's that's meant to serve a distinct set of political interests that can't be allowed to happen No, I completely agree with that and especially in that first phase I mean, we've been saying it for for months on this show And also it's not a controversial point that in March in that first wave what we had was a collective failure of the state Right. So yeah, Matt Hancock probably made some personal mistakes potentially told some very damaging lies But there was a big collective failure that a lot of people bear responsibility for When it comes to the second wave, that's when one person is responsible and that one person is Boris Johnson We're going to move on to that in one moment first of all though I do want to stick to this on this care issue just for One more clip I think the fact that we are talking about the situation that care went through Matters and it is important that we are reminded that the fact that the protective shield Which we were told was being put around care homes wasn't Um last night on question time the chair of the national care association Nadra Ahmed said it was absolute rubbish that a protective shield had been put around care homes We put social care On the altar To be slaughtered whilst we worked on the on the mantra that the NHS must be protected And I absolutely understand why we needed the NHS to be running In the way that it was because we didn't know what was coming around the corner I think what we didn't know was the consequence of ignoring social care Do you agree then with Matt Hancock's comment again? This is another thing that's tried to some controversy that he threw a protective shield around care homes Absolutely not. It's absolute rubbish. There was no shield around I think that was an utterance that came about Um in a form of embarrassment perhaps because nothing had been done for social care I mean, I think that's an incredibly important information There's absolute consensus on the part of people who work in care and people who run care bodies That they were abandoned in those early months and I do think the attempt to rewrite history from people like Matt Hancock is is offensive Essentially and both myself and Aaron have suggested it would be wrong to just make Matt Hancock the full guy for everything That's all the catastrophes that have happened over the past 15 months. I also think it would be wrong if we had Too strong a focus on that first wave precisely because in that first wave, there was a real collective failure. Many of the mistakes were you know Different mistakes were to different degrees, but lots of them were understandable in the extent to which this was an unforeseen circumstance Some of the science was wrong. There were You know a real collective failure collective panic, which meant that some things were inevitably going to go wrong I'm not convinced that what happened was because of of malice or Or gross negligence. I mean in many cases it clearly was but but the overall picture wasn't necessarily that later on in the pandemic It a hundred percent was because by the time we got to the second wave We knew how covid worked the scientists Had a very strong consensus, which is that we need to take tough early action. We can't pursue Silly herd immunity policies But what happened then was that one politician one individually one individual actively Blocked the correct decisions and the correct policies taking place. That was of course Boris Johnson And what i'm a bit disappointed about when it comes to the mainstream media on this is that we haven't seen those clips About Boris Johnson in the press as much as we've seen the clips about matt hancock So i want to show you what i think is probably the most Relevant part when it comes to this issue. This is dominant Cummings describing how johnson rejected the mainstream scientific advice In the early stages of the second wave by this point Unfortunately, the prime minister was listening to various people who were saying things like There's already heard immunity in the population. There won't be any second wave, etc, etc So we had this meeting in the cabinet room sunday evening Patrick and chris gave their view john edin, uh, sorry, um a guy called henigan And a woman from um, oxford called professor gupta. I think it was Gave the kind of uh, don't lock down view John edmunds said who was on stage Uh, surely we're going to learn the lessons of march Here's what the data is going to be You are not going to get the only logic of not doing a lock down there will be that you're not going to do it at all There's no way that you're going to make that decision. Um, you know Just do it now. Otherwise, it's all going to be worse Prime minister said i'm not persuaded of that It's a great misunderstanding people have that because it nearly killed him therefore he must have taken it seriously but in fact After the first lockdown his view was he was crossed with me and for others into what he regarded as basically pushing him into the first lockdown His argument after that happened was Literally quote. I should have been the mayor of jaws and kept the beaches open. That's that's what he said on many many occasions He didn't think he didn't he didn't think in july or september Uh, thank goodness we were pushed, you know, thank goodness we did the first lockdown It was obviously the right thing to do, etc. His argument then was we shouldn't have done the first lockdown and i'm not going to make the same mistake again He also essentially thought that he'd been gamed on the numbers in the first lockdown And he thought the NHS would somehow have got through So, I mean what you heard there was a description of someone who is a complete Lockdown skeptic crank, you know someone who would get Whose blog would be in the spectator but who should be nowhere near policymaking? I mean obviously boris johnson is more suited to having a blog in the spectator than being prime minister But what you had there was I mean it was like julie harley bruer style, you know, the the numbers had been gamed Um, we maybe already have heard immunity We should you know, he's he's often saying in in other parts of the testimony You know the cure is worse than that. We don't want the cure to be worse than disease I mean it's all exactly the same as what donald trump was saying and the practical consequences are exactly the same Which is both of them for meh. I kind of I feel better when the The very marginal scientists tell me that this is just like flu So I'm going to listen to them and I'm going to let them determine policy even though I mean by this point the whole of sage Was saying do not listen to karl hennigan and Sinatra gupta by the way, I do think that coming's probably feigned forgetting their names because they're they're quite famous people at this Point if you've been paying attention to to go with 19, I'm sure he did that as a sort of low-key par But the this idea that he thought the numbers have been gamed. I mean that's like a That's like a julie harley bruer tweet, but that was someone who was in number 10 And not only was influencing policy, but was you know, he was he was the person who was blocking The scientists making policy that they're trying to say let's take tough action. He's saying no, I think you know I think the numbers are being fiddled I don't think maybe we've got herd immunity already right and you couldn't just ignore him You couldn't just send some angry quote tweets about him because he was the person Making the decisions and that's why you know 100,000 people died Since the summer right is it the consequences could not be more Severe and I mean that's from my perspective why making matt hankirk the full guy here would be particularly mistaken and a focus on those first Three months would be particularly mistaken because the real criminal behavior was from borris johnson and it was In that second wave when we knew everything we needed to know about covet 19 and I want to go to you on on this and I mean I suppose we It is kind of phenomenal, isn't it where policy is made by You know in a way a sort of conspiracy theorist, right? He thinks the numbers were fiddled And he was completely oblivious to the evidence and he would only believe people who had blogs in the spectator Yeah, I mean you had to sage I believe mocha. You can correct me if i'm wrong But you had to sage basically I think about september 20th saying we need another lockdown now Yeah, yeah, they were you had the opposition saying that and again, it's curious What was the civil service saying the senior civil service? I mean, you know, uh, mark said well, etc Again, we'll find that out in the inquiry But it seems kind of strange because that is meant to be The handbrake on this idiocy, you know, the prime minister given given our system We don't have a presidential system But the prime minister with a large electoral majority if he's liked within his own party like that from the 1980s for instance or Blair With iraq war has extraordinary power sort of de facto presidential powers really But one of the handbrakes and that is meant to be the civil service. So again Kind of I mean to be fair of concerning That's not supposed their job is supposed to be to execute the wills and desires of the prime minister So they would say the prime minister doesn't want a lockdown, but everyone was informing. That's the whole point You had you had all of these advisors in in the In the testimony from dominick Cummings. He's saying they say who's advice was he taking? He said he wasn't taking advice So you had the chief medical officer the chief scientific advisor. They're saying You know and they're part of the civil service. They're they're the top job in them specifically. I mean I mean specifically You know number 10 strategy unit the cabinet office, you know civil servants the ministry of health, etc I mean people that again, who knows, you know, this will come out in the inquiry people that generally speaking prime ministers They're told you're told to listen to these people. I mean a great example recently is What we see with lex green still and david cameron david cameron brings somebody in basically because Just purely on the say server senior civil servant. So we're told he's now passed away. So he can't defend himself That's meant to be the story, you know, again, perhaps again But like with so much in British politics, Michael Some of so much of this is about convention and the good chap theory of politics and the second you don't have a good chap in the top job Kind of goes belly up But again, I do feel like perhaps the civil service a bit more implicating this than Then we think so basically what you're you're relying here, Michael and it could be correct Is that the entire state apparatus the opposition the advisors the civil service everybody Gets this wrong at the beginning everybody And I think that's clearly what happened and that's clearly how the door is going to try and get out of it But like you say by the sum of the second lockdown everybody but the prime minister has changed direction You know, I wonder how clean that break really is Well, the treasury hadn't so I mean there were definitely some there were definitely some people who Who didn't want a lockdown rishi sunak and the treasury didn't Because of the economic costs of it all And I think rishi sunak was potentially also listening to these cranks as well But the people whose responsibility it was to give boris johnson scientific advice Were giving him the correct scientific advice. I mean, we also know the department of health at this point was You know, and that's the other reason why it seems potentially unfair to make matt hanker the full guy because in this In that period of time the department of health was the big driver for let's take early serious action And it was rishi sunak in the treasury and boris johnson speaking to people at the spectator in the telegraph Who blocked that that action? So I I do think I I take your point that i'm sure there are failings beyond boris johnson I do think it in that second phase It is the personality of boris johnson that meant that we didn't have that lockdown I think it seems quite clear that the overwhelming wealth of advice was in favor of taking tough early action That but that boris johnson was incredibly resistant to that So you think on the big story of the second lockdown which ultimately did kill, you know, I think the most people Um, it did. Yeah, we lost them People died after september. Yeah Yeah, so you've pinned that on boris johnson. I mean, that's you know, michael walker That's why we need you at the number 10 downing street, you know press hustles Because it's true. That's not the story right now But I think you know, this is this has still got a long way to play out And I think the worry of the worry of trying to effectively make hanker the full guy so early on is that come the inquiry You've got nobody left and of course again, you know Cummings was saying this quite early on in his testimony They were very happy for hand cock to stay in the room because they wanted the full guy come the inquiry but Like you say when it comes to second lockdown It's it's hard to see how johnson gets out of this unless some civil servants can be implicated or let you say the treasury Again, that presents problems to the tories because then who's who's your successor? But sunak is also up to his neck in this We'll see if he gets the the scrutiny from the media that deserves Hmm I mean Cummings Cummings line on what sunak was quite interesting So he was saying he was pushed on this because obviously everyone in the room knew that sunak has been Widely reported to be against a lockdown Cummings line there was he was saying well, there's not a plan So let's not have a lockdown without a plan But that was precisely the argument that Cummings was saying was silly when the scientists were saying it originally You know because we haven't modeled for a lockdown. We shouldn't do a lockdown You know later on sunak is saying because you haven't planned for a lockdown. Let's not do a lockdown No, he's he's up to his neck in this shit um, daniel ovic gofetz gofetzki with 499 people were predicting a pandemic since sars and mers as a global risk why a labor parroting the unforeseen circumstance bollocks um It's an interesting point. I mean, I don't think it was necessarily an unforeseen circumstance, but it also wasn't the fault of Necessary, you know, it wasn't it wasn't a problem that we can Put down purely to the politicians because it is the case that at the start of the pandemic The I can't remember if it was a world health organization, but one big reputable body anyway had ranked britain and america's pandemic preparedness plans as the best in the world So there was clearly in the west at least obviously, you know Japan china taiwan south korea these guys are all much better at this But when it comes to western science western bureaucracy western governments, they were all equally in a way unprepared for this because they just hadn't you know They hadn't learned from other places ara and I know you want to come in on this because you've written quite a lot about the inability of governments countries in the west to to learn from sars and mers Yeah, I mean pandemics and new pathogens Which come as a result of zoonotic spillover this idea that a pathogen can go or not idea it happens Pathogen can spill over from one species to the next that repeatedly happens. That's why we've got, you know avian flu swine flu While we've got abola hiva aids or manner of things multiple coronaviruses But what I think people need to again try and be not fair to the government because you know We don't need to be fair But if you look at sars you look at mers and it's absolutely correct that the east asian countries were better prepared for this because of their experience with sars in the early 2000s COVID-19 is markedly different in so much as many many people are asymptomatic And and people just simply weren't prepared for a pathogen like this So far more fatal than the flu But at the same time quite a few people don't exhibit any symptoms, which means it spreads like wildfire now That's all you know, we all know this now. We've been talking about this more than a year But that wasn't really being modelled by people and you know people saying that there could be another flu epidemic Which was of course the government's prevailing sort of operating principle at the start of this And there were people like mike davis who was saying there will be Multiple pandemics over the course of the 21st century because of climate change deforestation You know the fact we're just degrading nature to such a remarkable extent But this was a real humdinger, right? Just by virtue of how it operates. It's not that lethal Uh, but it's also pretty bad and it's asymptomatic in lots of people MERS, which is the second coronavirus, which is it primarily afflicts the arabian peninsula You know, I think that's only killed several hundred people. We've known about that for the best part of I think 15 years Compare that to the experience of of COVID-19. So Yes, I think governments should have been prepared for something like SARS, but even if they were I still think we would have seen huge numbers of casualties We should have had a SARS like response. I think by the summer. That's fair But the initial hit and the initial response of the united states other north american countries work canada Yeah, the european union britain to some extent. I think it's not forgivable, but it's explicable I think that's a fair summary. Um, if you're enjoying tonight's stream, remember to hit the like button It's a great way of letting us know that you're enjoying the content and it helps us in the algorithm We are free and a half weeks away from the date which was slated To be the end of all COVID restrictions However, there are increasing concerns that the b16172 variant of coronavirus, which is more transmissible than the kent strain Could knock that schedule off course Now there are a great set of graphics from the financial times explaining why the b161 2 or b16172 or the so-called indian variant That's what people say don't don't name them after the place of origin But it's very hard to to say these full names They have a great graphic which is showing us essentially. I mean why we should be a little bit worried about this variant because it is spreading at You know quite a pace and we can see it's massively out competing the existing strains um, so you can see here Many of the places that are the current hot spots with the so-called indian Variant and in the gray there you can see the kent strain is declining And remember the kent strain was already a lot more transmissible than the original strain And then in the red you can see the new indian variant strains which are dramatically Increasing and in bolted. I mean you can see they've they've just completely Rocketed so cases were 50 for every 100,000 people. They've gone right up to 400 for every 100,000 people So it's not 0.5 of the population Testing positive essentially and that's all or nearly all From that new strain so we can see how much more transmissible is how big a problem this would cause and remember Remember when the the kent strain first started spreading and Cases were rocketing they went up to 60,000 a day and that was because we were like oh It's because we've got this new transmissible strain. This is even more transmissible But um, of course there are some reasons to be cheerful And that's because in this country the vaccine rollout has gone very well And while these new cases are you know rising at a fairly worrying pace They aren't doing so among the oldest among us So on the left here is the age range and the people who are testing positive for covid 19 in bolton You can see there's been a real spike Among younger people So people aged 5 to 24 almost 1 percent of people essentially Have tested positive for this new strain, but when you get down to people who are 60 plus Very very low hasn't surged at all has barely risen apologies. These are these are all covid cases So it's almost 1 percent of people between 5 and 24 are testing positive for covid 19 But we do know the majority of that in bolton is the indian strain So cases rocketing but not really among the the parts of the population most likely to die from covid 19 of course that doesn't mean everything's okay because You know, it's not only old people that die from covid 19 and dying from covid 19 Isn't the only bad thing that can happen and hospital admissions have been rising for the first time in Months and they've risen by 20 percent across the uk in the last week Which is worrying. I mean if you look at these graphs, you can see that from january onwards Daily admissions are steadily steadily steadily falling and that has just reversed now That will be partly because of this new strain partly I presume and because of the relaxation of lockdown rules Again, we think those admissions might not translate into deaths because they are generally generally younger people and this is a very interesting graph showing us the breakdown of different age groups or breakdown of of inpatients Depending on on their age group in the first in the autumn wave. Sorry and then in the current wave You can see that the bulk of people in the autumn wave in hospital were between 65 and 84 Now the majority of people in hospital are between 18 and 64 So essentially we know they're going to be they're less likely to die But lots of young people going into hospital Not a good thing The two big policy questions from this are should we now Pause the great unlocking on the 21st of june We potentially keep some restrictions in place or put that unlocking back a few weeks so that we've got more people Vaccinating that's a big policy question. There's also the question of I suppose personal behavior and what what I personally take away from this is I think I haven't had cobit 19 yet and I'm going to get vaccinated on the 8th of june And all of this makes me think I'm probably not going to socialize indoors until then because whilst We're not going to have a scene like we had in in in january We aren't going to see bodies piling up in the same way we did then because so many of the vulnerable population are vaccinated It does look like potentially Over the next month quite a lot of unvaccinated people are going to catch cobit 19. I'm currently still unvaccinated I'd prefer for that not to happen There also are I do think we should be considering pausing the the great unlocking because given the pace of vaccinations We will be in a much stronger position in quite a short period of time. I don't see why we wouldn't just wait that extra three weeks Um, Aaron, I want your thoughts on this briefly Do you think we should go ahead with the the big unlocking on the 21st of june? Or do you think we should delay it a little bit? I don't think it really masses that much. I mean, I think it's probably wise to delay it See how things go But I think you know in a week in a week's time We're going to have a better idea Of where we are right now I think today we had 10 10 people have died within 28 days of a positive test And I think we had four and a half thousand new cases And the majority of which are this indian variant And people then they see that and they reply and they say, oh, we're going to have another lockdown here We go again and that's just a recency bias and like you say No, we're not we're not going to see what happened in in Christmas or over christmas or last year because of the vaccination And four and a half thousand cases, you know has to be seen in the context of opening things up again You know, there was clearly going to be an increase in the number of cases purely by virtue of the fact people aren't all stuck indoors And we have opened up to an extraordinary extent Right schools universities people are being encouraged to go back to work now pubs restaurants and so on So I think if you look at for instance schools and universities being shut over the summer That's clearly going to help. I think the major concern is what's the state of play come? You know next october november and I think by then I think it looks almost certain the entire population will have had two doses And we'll have boosters as well. That's the the main thing And and so yeah, okay 10 people have died that that's terrible But you know, I don't mean to sound like somebody in the spectator, but people people die from the flu every day as well and we're also going to have to get used now to The fact that this is here forever, you know, covid 19 and multiple variants are now here They will sadly take people's lives as flu does as a range of viruses and pathogens do already And it's not it's not wise necessarily to focus on all we've got four and a half thousand cases today Without also saying well, how many cases of flu do we have active in the human population right now in the uk, right? That's the main thing and so I think yes, maybe push it back be wise and let you say michael I think for people who haven't been vaccinated very sensible to continue to take precautions I think we all should frankly, but I think particularly for people who've not been vaccinated but I really would push back on these these, you know, these claims that all we need to have another lockdown here We go again because a that's not going to happen But also b, you know, we now need to kind of understand the new reality of this this thing being with us No, covid 19 is now part of cold and flu season Right Probably for the rest of our lives And that's that's obviously not a good thing, but we need to get used to it We do. I mean, I agree with everything you've said there. I I suppose what I just add and emphasize is that We are in a fundamentally different situation now than we will be in three months time or a year's time because whilst yes, we shouldn't close night clubs because You know forever because there's some risk of covid 19 It happened it just so happens that right now we have a huge proportion of the population not vaccinated in about a month Or two months we're going to have you know, almost all of the adult population Basically immune from this virus So so it does seem to me as in why not do the whole Mass immunity thing before we do the unlocking, you know, considering there's about a month in it Makes sense to me that you do them in the order where you say let's all get vaccinated before we open everything instead of saying Let's open everything and but don't worry because we're all going to be vaccinated soon It seems to me this is it's about an order not a how should we live for the rest of our lives? But we won't dwell on this this will definitely be a story which we are talking about over the coming weeks Because as Aaron says, we will be getting more information about this Um, if you are enjoying tonight's show, please do think about becoming a supporter at the baron media dot com slash support We're going to go back to that testimony now Throughout the pandemic. We've often complained that the bbc's political editor is too interested in amplifying the claims of the prime minister And his advisors are not interested enough in holding the prime minister to account Now many saw confirmation of laura coonsburg's coziness with downing street in this claim made by dominick comings I was working to say roughly 100 hour weeks at that time Less than an hour a week for sure less than 1% much less than 1% was spent talking was spent talking to the media I did occasionally talk to people The main person really though that I spoke to in the whole of 2020 Was laura coonsburg at the bbc Because the bbc has a special position in the country obviously during a crisis that comment obviously set twitter a light When dominick comings name checked laura coonsburg in his evidence to that commons select committee Do you think that puts her in a difficult position at all? Hugely Hugely before I say that michael, I just want to say you know if he's working 100 hours a week dominick comings That means he's working six days a week 17 hours a day And no wonder he was making such catastrophically bad decisions And if that was the modus operandi for the for the for the people advising boris johnson for the prime minister himself Which I don't believe it is by the way I don't believe boris johnson works 100 hours a week And if that was the modus operandi for the for the for the cabinet No wonder they made all these mistakes and errors and they've had to subsequently lie and misrepresent what happened God you can't you can't organize things you can't run things properly if you're if you're working like that Yeah, you can do that for a week You can't do that for months on end because It's not just about your mental health or you know about looking after yourself. You're You're making really important decisions. You can't be sleep deprived like that going to to laura coonsburg, which was your question I think she has major problems michael because you know we and the great thing is with twitter This is all publicly documented And if you look for instance when the dominick coming story broke about him going to barnard castle She was replying to people She was literally the reply guy to people saying xyz about dominick comings and she was saying a source tells me Actually, that's not what happened. This happened instead now now if in rebutting other journalist stories Using a single source and that source was dominick comings. She should absolutely be fired from the bbc's chief political editor She should absolutely not have that job michael because that is not journalism She was rebutting a story about the prime minister's chief advisor Using nothing but the testimony of said advisor Come on. I mean somebody who's doing just uh, you know a journalism a level knows that's not how you behave and I seriously think 99 of bbc employees know that They they know that's not appropriate. So if the political editor to be to be doing that I think that's a really serious problem now We don't know that for sure. Maybe the source wasn't dominick comings But given he's saying that the only person I spoke to in the sort of media corps was laura coonsburg I think she should be asked questions about that. I think if there is an inquiry It should also extend the relationship between the media Uh and number 10 and the people around number 10 that includes of course most probably laura coonsburg But also robert pestin because in questions of political communications in a moment of crisis But also in terms of actually holding politicians and their advisors accountable A clear failure has happened here, but I never thought it would be as bad as that michael I never thought it was be as bad as that and dominick comings isn't isn't daft You know, he knows he's implicated her there and he's caused problems for her there. So I think he He's probably cognizant of the fact. There are going to be consequences But like I say if that is the case she has to go she has to go she should resign Of course, she won't resign. She should be fired, but of course the bbc won't fire her I personally think laura coonsburg is amongst the worst journalist at the bbc So heaven knows how she's one of the most senior people there. I mean it makes absolutely no sense to me Let's get up those tweets you're talking about When it comes to her being the reply guy So this famously involved and the story which the mirror broke I think they broke it in in conjunction with the guardian of dominick comings Breaking lockdown rules to go to durham I'm sure let's get up the the tweet from pipa croix from the mirror. So she Um does the original tweet boris johnson's top aid dominick comings was investigated by police after breaking the government's own coronas coronavirus lockdown rules. It was a huge story Um, you know completely broke the internet laura coonsburg comes in to reply to pipa croix saying Source says his trip was within guidelines as comings went to stay with his parents So they could help with child care while he and his wife were ill. They insist no breach of lockdown Now I think regardless of what dominick comings said that was an incredibly misjudged tweet from laura coonsburg I also do think she has a tendency Um to just power whatever a source tells her and not you know, do any really real critical analysis I mean some of the documentaries you see the brexit documentary. So she's talking about boris johnson He just wants to be loved. You know, it's all, you know, she's kind of in love with these characters She's reporting on unless they're jeremy corbin, of course And I do think that makes her an exceptionally Uncritical journalist to focus though on You know, precisely what was said in that Um testimony because I'd push back at you slightly aron because I think probably what dominick comings has said Doesn't really implicate her because it's never a secret that advisors speak to journalists Rob burley who was head of political programming at the bbc until a few weeks ago tweeted something to A similar effect and when twitter was popping off about this. So he tweeted if Laura coonsburg wasn't talking regularly to comings while he was in number 10. There'd be a problem It's literally her job to talk to and assess the veracity of such sources to keep the public informed And so I suppose what I put to you aron is I mean, I think the problem with coonsburg is that She doesn't assess the veracity of those sources. She often just repeats them source says this source says that and she doesn't You know, either give us the information we need to judge whether or not that source was biased or had a conflict of interest Etc. I don't think she does that. I don't think she's a particularly good journalist But I don't think the fact that dominick coming said I speak to laura coonsburg Is bad for laura coonsburg because we you know that that's that's not that's supposed to happen So let me rephrase this. There is no issue with dominick comings in abstract speaking to laura coonsburg The issue is we know he we now know he spoke to her and we know what she wrote at the time That's the problem So if we can just pull that tweet back up again, michael if we can just get that thing that rob burley one or the Yeah, please rob the rob burley tweet. Let's go over this If bbc laura k wasn't talking regularly to comings while he was in number 10, there'd be a problem. I agree It's literally her job to talk to and assess the veracity of such sources to keep the public informed She was misinforming the public michael. There was a claim made by pippa crera Well evidenced well sourced multiple sources, which was a serious bad news story for the government and laura coonsburg is saying that's not true Right, that's not true on the basis of a single source That's not true of it Okay, she's questioned. Okay. I don't know. Okay. She's questioning the veracity. We can look at her phrasing again, michael But it wasn't really it was pretty certain. She's questioning the veracity of that story Well-sourced story on the basis of one source Who's a person mentioned in that still mentioned in that story, michael? So no, I don't think she was in any way doing her job I think rob burley's living in cloud cuckoo land, you know, if that's what he thinks if he thinks that's acceptable Particularly by the by the way, if that is if her source was Dominic Cummings, it's completely unacceptable. He doesn't know what he's talking about And I wonder the bbc's and the state it is If you've got rob burley saying that's permissible. It's clearly not It is clearly not the bbc style guide for a very long time. I say this time after time You were meant to have in a story two separate sources corroborating the story unless associated breasts or Reuters Except your laura coonsburg when it's your twitter feed then in in that case it's okay If you just have dominic Cummings saying something come on Let's get out. Let's get up that tweet again from laura coonsburg source says his trip was within guidelines as Cummings went to Stay with his parents so they could help with childcare blah blah blah blah blah Um, I mean in her defense here again, I think that was a stupid tweet I don't think her reporting is very good But it's you need two sources to say something's the case You don't need two sources to say source says because she's you know, she's she's being explicit with what she's doing I suppose you could say if if it's Cummings she should say it's Cummings because its source says his trip Who's the his there is the his the source is the they insist are they the same person? But precisely they insist no breach of lockdown they in Come on Michael. Come on. Come on. I don't think it's a good tweet. I'll just say No, you know, you know, technically I think you're right You're absolutely right because she's not saying it didn't happen She's saying sources, but come on Michael if if you're relying on a single if it was somebody other than dominic Cummings Should she write that I would agree with you But the question is she's talking about this third person who's bringing into question the veracity of this this account of multiple people Which we now know happened, right? Um, people can talk talk talk about, you know, multiple people saw the guy I think the the the consensus was even though he was kind of let off the hook that he didn't go up there for the reasons He said and he did lots of things wrong such as traveling across the country when he thought he was sick Getting out of the car multiple times when he thought he may have coronavirus anyway I I think it Michael it does hinge on to if you have a bbc political editor Rebutting a story about the chief political advisor for the prime minister She says source says one source and the source is the person who's the story She has to resign. She has to resign. Come on Because that that is so bad. That is so bad. What else is happening here, Michael? You know, we saw it with the the election coverage when there was apparently a labor activist assaulted matt hancock's advisor We knew that was rubbish. We only knew that was rubbish because there was a video, right? How many of these stories are there, Michael? And again, it doesn't matter if you if you're the daily mirror political editor or if you present news night Okay, she is the bbc's most senior political editor It's a huge job and she falls so far short so frequently I can't understand how anybody could defend her rott burley. I mean he was working for the bbc. He's paid to defend her Sure, but any reasonable person looking at this who's grasping the facts being honest Come on And by the way, she's had that job since 2010 and I can be quite honest here BBC politics coverage since 2010 has been increasingly dire, you know coons burgification You just look at the whole thing whether it's brexit, whether it's johnson Whether it's austerity where people really in receipt of the facts. Were they being informed? No Let you say she just sees it as some kind of personality play some drama between ultimately some quite boring wet Affluent privileged people. That's not what politics journalism is meant to be about Michael I mean we agree on all of that. I mean as I've talked about on many shows before I suppose what i'm pushing back on is how relevant Cummings Testimony was because I do think the only thing he said is something we already knew And the only thing he said is also something that's not that problematic What's problematic is what she did with the messages not that he was messaging her in the first place I want to bring up one more clip because whilst I'm saying I don't think necessarily laura coonsburg should be particularly worried about that testimony Even though she should be worried about her reporting that she's done for the past 10 years I don't I don't think that testimony changes much If you were watching the BBC news channel or BBC 2 You might have been slightly suspicious that some kind of conspiracy was taking place. Let's take a look I was working say roughly 100 hour weeks of that time Less than an hour a week for sure less than 1% much less than 1% was spent talking was spent talking to the media I did occasionally talk to people The main person we're going to say goodbye now to viewers on BBC 2 continuing with our coverage of dominant Cummings evidence Here on the BBC news channel Give guidance to her on certain very big stories. For example, I'll give you an example of the sort of thing I did That was Okay, the first clip we showed you was also from the BBC. It's from BBC parliament So it's not they're not trying to erase that testimony from history But the idea that the moment he talks about laura coonsburg It just so happens that on BBC 2 and the BBC news channel where most people are watching this They talk over at exactly that moment. I imagine I mean, I imagine it's probably a coincidence Maybe someone in you know, the editorial room sort of panicked and said, you know talk over There's now knowing that they wouldn't be able to erase it from history. I've got no idea what went on there Aaron, what's your what's your assessment of of that very Interestingly placed voice over when coming I don't I don't think it's a coincidence I don't think it's a coincidence. I don't think it's a coincidence I think it like you say it's a it's a it was I think it was a reflex response And it speaks to the the culture of the BBC Which is we're never wrong You know any exposure to us which is necessary immediately either get get rid of it or deny it That there is a complete lack of accountability with the BBC and even even with the Bashir stuff By the way, the Bashir stuff is just crazy, you know The world could end in seven days and it would be reported less than Martin Bashir was a fortnight ago With regards to the princess diner interviews. I found the whole thing Unbelievable in terms of how it was reported particularly by BBC You listen to the today program in the morning You listen to you know world at one the pm program The you know the world tonight whatever there's sort of four flagships of the six o'clock news Everything was the first story the BBC Martin Bashir the government and the next day the government's responded So-and-so has responded to the government the government's now doing this Bashir non-stop for for a week Look, I mean and the former the former Director general of the BBC it only went what a year ago 18 months ago. The whole thing is very strange The whole thing is very strange But I do believe the BBC has a serious profound cultural problem. It can't take criticism. It can't do criticism It was set up in an era where it is. Yes, it's a state broadcaster I believe it's also a regime broadcaster in terms of crisis like a war like a general strike Which which we know from documentary evidence. It was very much a regime broadcaster I think it's very bad at dealing with internal dissent and it's very bad at dealing with external criticism of its work And that's because it literally comes from a different era And I like the BBC. I really believe in public service broadcast But it has a problem with regards to its its cultural attitudes on these things. It's very very bad It's self obsessive So either it either sort of fixates on internal criticisms the detriment of reporting on anything else Or it ignores it altogether. Surely there's a kind of middle ground here We saw it again in the last election 2019 There were multiple instances Michael of the BBC doing very strange stuff Laura Koonsburg talking the day before the general election about electoral ballot returns Or the editing of a response to Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn during a hustings to make it look more favourable to Boris Johnson Or the fact that an activist was wrongfully Wrongfully presented as having assaulted a conservative adviser, you know one or two of these okay, but it happened time after time after time After a while Michael, you know, you want a conspiracist to see a pattern a pattern is a pattern Do I think that's an organised conspiracy? No But I think it speaks the politics and the culture of the BBC Which is very bad for both public service journalism, but also actually Incidentally any progressive political project in this country because it was it will always align itself with small c conservative interests The status quo and the powerful not good enough because that's not what we pay for A very persuasive summary of that story Let's move on to our last story and which is about the Batley and Spen by-election could it be the one that brings down Keir Starmer? A date has been set for the by-election that could decide Keir Starmer's future Batley and Spen will go to the polls on the 1st of July There is a by-election there because the incumbent MP for the constituency Tracey Brabbin Is moving on to become the West Yorkshire mayor Now This contest currently has a labour MP could be a big challenge for the party They only won by a narrow margin in 2019. We can get up those results So in 2019 Tracey Brabbin won, but we have only 42.7% of the vote You can see the conservatives were on 36 Percent there's only a sort of three and a half thousand majority for the labour party Slightly different dynamic to win Hartley-Paul because the brexit party didn't get much in this constituency They only got 3.2% but you have a wild card, which is the heavy woollen district independence Whose candidate was Paul Halloran. They got 12.2% so it'd be interesting where those votes go Now the heavy woollen district independence, they do have some crossover with UKIP some of the same personnel So it's quite possible. They have a similar Voter base, but it'll be interesting to see where they go. It's not not as obvious As when it comes to the brexit party the obvious comparison here as I've already Intermitted is Hartley-Paul that was the by-election that labour lost To catastrophically Really earlier this month now it's similar in the sense that it's you know A traditionally labour vote in place and it did vote for brexit at the same time It didn't vote for brexit to quite the same degree that Hartley-Paul did so in Hartley-Paul There was 70% leave in battalion spend and we think about 60% leave I say we think because the boundaries of the EU referendum weren't on this constituency But that seems to be the best estimate that it was about 60% so brexit But not as brexit another difference of Hartley-Paul is that it also has a much larger ethnic minority population That should be more favourable to labour. It also includes a large Muslim community Now that is why one particular candidate seems to think he can go into the constituency and cause an upset. That's George Galloway, he will be standing I think as an independent and this is a video of his launch The political class here has taken the voters That I see around me entirely for granted They assume that you're a vote bank That you'll vote for them whatever they do or more often whatever they do not do They know the things that matter to you, but they don't care For example during Gaza you were crying They were supporting Israel in the bombardment The leader of the Labour Party Against whom I'm standing here doesn't matter who else is on the ballot paper I'm standing against Keir Starmer Why? Because Keir Starmer has made it clear. Let's be fair. He's been honest he said I am a Zionist Without equivocation The meaning of equivocation Is Unconditional he unconditionally Supports Israel Well, I unconditionally support the Palestinians And I have been doing so For 50 years not yesterday or last week But for 50 years I Unconditional without equivocation support the right of the Palestinian people to be free And I think there are thousands of people in batley and spent who agree with me on that So you can see there georgia galloway trying to make palestine a big issue in this Election labor have been fairly weak on it. He's saying, you know, I I You know Unconditionally stand with the the Palestinians what presumably lots of people in the constituency will like to hear Aaron he has caused massive upsets before he has beaten labor in You know constituencies with large muslim populations This time around I think it's unlikely he'd he'd win But the way he's sort of pitching himself against Kirsten or I think he's Trying to help labor lose essentially. Do you think he could manage that? Yes, he's let's look at this kind of uh as a as a sequence of of what he's got going for him and against him First it's only a month long, which is a problem for him. You know, he can't win in a month No, he can't Secondly, you've got covid so the extents that he can have rallies Hustings, you know, if there are hustings indoors multiple hustings He's going to clearly cause major problems for labor if we were having this like with Hartlepool Less so right because people are going to hear less from him So I think there's a lot of kind of moving parts here. I think in 2017, you know He only got two and a half thousand votes in Manchester Gorton and a by-election But two and a half thousand votes here, which I think would be the baseline It's sort of that's the bottom. I think here would be enough probably to really screw labor You know three and a half thousand majority you've got like you say these independents who have kind of quite far to the right You've got brexit issue and so on I think if you get two and a half thousand then labor lose this and you and like you say michael, you know People say well, he got 20,000 votes in scotland or whatever George Galloway's forte is foreign policy in the middle east He won 2005 by unbethnal green as a respect candidate michael He beat labor and burned bethnal green as a respect candidate during that campaign michael He he went to bangladesh Right. He didn't just campaign into our hamlets. He literally went to bangladesh campaigning Right. It's just unbelievable and then bradford in bradford west. I believe What year was that 20? It wasn't 2014. Was it 20? Anyway bradford west before 2015 when he lost a nashaw By the way, when he lost a nashaw, he still got eight and a half thousand votes He's beaten labor twice running as a respect candidate Running as somebody who's very principled on foreign policy and and to be fair to him The only thing he's ever been consistent on is foreign policy stuff You know, so he said horrific things about for instance nashaw He said some really really bad things about many people he's run against His views on the union is kind of tilts the right and cultural issues Recently is kind of odd. He's he's a political narcissist But he's very good at this michael and I think if if if the cards roll his way I think he'll do better than two and a half thousand votes and that and that means he's he's going to win You know, I put some some photos in the in the script Um, what we just saw there was george galloway at his launch Uh, and actually there was a photo going around of kim ledbetter. Who's the labor candidate? She actually went to the same place Uh, but the people they were wearing the palestine t-shirts. The difference is those people wearing the palestine t-shirts Uh, had sort of vote george galloway when he was there So we can already see he's getting endorsements from people that kim led kim ledbetter's not getting A shorter campaign also doesn't suit labor necessarily because they're meant to have this ground campaign Although clearly under kia starma. That's gone. So I think the shorter campaign the presence of george galloway I think the weakness nationally of kia starma. I think labor loses by a couple of thousand that may change Right that may change kim ledbetter as a candidate was a hail mary of a candidate They rarely work. They very rarely work. Actually, I think that that demonstrates labor's desperation here But they can work So we'll see but I think she has big problems and I think she'll lose and the question is if she does lose What happens to kia starma? I mean it probably is worth Emphasizing for the record that while you know it on the face of it, you know george galloway standing against kia starma for being unprincipled on The israel palestine conflict that might seem fair enough on some level. He's also Has a history of being a very unpleasant person Very recently I mean especially very recently when he was running against nashah Part of her back story is that she was in a forced marriage and suffered Abusive in that marriage. He said she was basically lying about all of that Gave him quotes and newspapers saying the ex abusive husband has denied being abusive, you know real Real nasty campaigning So i'm 100 percent not backing galloway in this constituency But at the same time he is exploiting weaknesses that I think you know Kia starma has has brought upon himself to some degree Also in the constituency someone who I think will be much less of a threat to anyone Is laurence fox? It's unlikely he'll be standing but he is pictured here with paul haloran. So he is the the candidate who I Explained to you earlier came third Last time around it with the heavy woollen district independence. He got 6400 votes I presume probably laurence fox wants him to stand for his What's his part the reclaim party? But I would have thought that paul haloran will say that actually I can do much better as a As a as a local independent and with your party that has you know, no supporters I think george galloway is probably going to be able to amass more of a following than laurence fox in that constituency Aaron quick fire round will labor win or lose this constituency and more kids time ago We'll see I think I think they'll lose it the question is how badly if they lose it like hartley paul 7 8000 votes, which I can't foresee if they lose that he has to go and he will go And from why I'm tired by sources isn't the last couple of weeks really in the last week The labor rights losing confidence with with kia starma 2 That includes bureaucrats that includes people on the n.e.c. That includes mp's. They're not defending him anymore And I think they don't want to be associated with somebody who goes down really badly And it looks like they may go down really badly and badly in spend See with 10 pounds moved to batley over the last weekend So excited to take part in watching kia lose another labor seat but in person very exciting stuff It's a very entertaining comment. Well, do keep in touch. Let us know what's going on on the ground in in batley I think Aaron's planning to go up soon For now Aaron, it's been a pleasure as always spending my friday evening with you It's been my pleasure, michael Thank you for having me and batley and spend is going to be an amazing story for us to cover and I can't wait to go up there And thank you for watching. Um, if you haven't already do hit the subscribe button for now We'll be back on monday. You've been watching tisky sour on navara media. Good night