Medium partiality. It's gone. It's history. It's gone the way of Prince Andrew's hairline and observer front pages saying that if only Labour adopted a second referendum well then they would win a landslide majority of 600 even though that's more than there are seats possibly in Parliament they could win. This evening I'm joined by Rodin Burton Shaw from Tribune, formerly Jacobin. How are you doing mate? I'm doing well, cheers. For people who aren't necessarily familiar with your work, who you are, who Tribune are, why should they care? Why should they read? Why should they subscribe? Well Tribune relaunched obviously last year but it is one of the oldest left-wing publications in the country launched in 1937 by some of the people involved at that stage in the battle against fascism in Spain here in Britain of course and the Labour Party then subsequently edited by an Iron Bevan and by Michael Foote was for a long time considered the kind of journal of the Labour Left and since last year it now works with Jacobin. We did a relaunch at conference of last year produces regular left-wing socialists straightforwardly as our latest cover would say, unashamedly, unabashedly, socialist coverage on a daily basis online on our website and then four times a year in print. So I would say people need to check us out because the conversation we're just about to have here will illustrate how desperately you need some degree as small as all of us, Navarra, Tribune, all the rest of the left media, that's our proportionally we need some degree of pushback because the media landscape in this country is so incredibly rigged against not only socialism but against the interests of working-class people. I mean I agree with you obviously we're tiny compared to Sky, BBC, Guardian etc but it does seem to me that something dramatic shifted in the last four years. The idea that we'd be having this conversation that Jacobin would have entered the UK market, that you'd have this publication that Jacobin would be a player behind the sort of Bernie Sanders tilt for the democratic nomination hopefully the White House general election hit. I mean it does feel like we're getting some momentum doesn't it? It does. I mean I think the media landscape reflects the landscape economically and politically. This is one of the things right because I think it's worth nipping in the board right at the start because the second you talk particularly here about media bias what you get is an avalanche of journalists saying no one tells me what to think I know I mitigate against my views I'm not self-censoring I remember the kind of pantomime that followed an owned Jones piece on this not so long ago where he simply pointed out the research by the Sutton Trust right which said that I think it was 50% of all journalists and 80 some percent of editors were privately educated and he pointed out that that's a problem one way or another and instead what you got is this people who are supposed to be able to assess things from an objective and broad perspective singling in on subjective cases on individual examples that are exceptions to the rule and saying well look this shows and of course it doesn't show of course it doesn't show but it is a right-wing tactic and it's something that they've used for for a long time if you think of say economics it's the same sort of thing where the right emphasizes micro economics all the time this is the dividing line between the left and the right in economics the right emphasizes micro because it says let's look at the small-scale let's look at individual choices it fits with their narrative about personal responsibility oh it's all a question of what this person did in this instance and so on and they it's a conspiracy to ignore structures structural questions bigger pictures which is what macro economics and it's the same in the media and so what you get is this kind of narrative that says oh because I've not been given a kind of message you know this morning from my editor to say you must say this or you must say that that therefore there's no structural biases that therefore the media is a kind of impartial observer that isn't the case and there's a ton of reasons why if you just get your head up from looking at this individual journalist's story and look at the structure of the whole thing although I mean that's obviously true but there are actually instances of people being told what to write I mean I mean on the left we say people you know it doesn't need somebody to tell somebody else to write something for it to be you know rigged media 1987 it's in Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher the most recent one 1987 Margaret Thatcher wrote the front page for the Daily Mail the day after her general election win right she told Sir David English you know he was like what should I put on the front page she said Thatcher gets historic trouble something to that effect you've got people like David Yellen formerly at the Sun who's gone on record saying that you know Rupert Murdoch I saw the world through Rupert's eyes you've got former editors the Sunday Times saying that Rupert Murdoch would you know pick up the phone and scream at me if we publish something which he politically disagreed with and yes and so we even with all the stuff you know this is the unconscious bar there's also the stuff on the record which shows a level of political interference from the billionaire class in media which nobody should be apologizing for I'm apologizing as an apologists for and yet they do yeah I mean I think that the structural questions right are two fold one is ownership and the other is the kind of people employed by the media so if you look at ownership for instance is a very good media reform coalition report on this just this year where it had 60% of all of the newspapers read in this country are owned by two companies their own by News UK which is Rupert Murdoch and their own by Daily Mail group 60% it goes up to 83% of you include Reach PLC which is the people who own the Daily Mirror three companies 83% now that means that situations like you describe are very easy to happen because if you have somebody who has the extraordinary power of sitting on top one of those major corporations and they have very distinct political views well then they can filter down what they think not just to like one person they filter it down through multiple newspapers multiple days and multiple editors they're the ones who put the editors in place and then the question comes the second one right because that is an important one on ownership a media ownership is out of control in this country in terms of how concentrated it is it's ridiculous but it comes to the second point who gets brought in and there is that famous moment which I would encourage everyone to look at and where Chomsky is on the BBC and he's describing he's having this discussion with Andrew Maher about the media and Andrew Maher says what do you mean you know I don't self-centre I don't self-centre and Chomsky turns around to him and he says I'm not saying you do what I'm saying is if you believed something else you wouldn't be here right now and the point of that is that the media is a machine that picks people who conform to certain understandings of you know how society works if you're a political correspondent you have certain degrees of kind of understanding of what politics is and basically in this country it means that you think that politics is what goes on in Westminster and that you assess the ground of political opinion based on where the middle ground is in Westminster something which is wildly out of step with any polling evidence on public opinion I mean the Andrew Maher is a funny one because he wrote a novel not many people are aware of that I think it was a novel I don't think it was nonfiction which he obviously writes as well and the launch party for it guess where it was 10 Downing Street it doesn't seem like a particularly professional attitude to those in power if you're launching your book I mean that's obviously them doing you a favor it doesn't seem particularly good and it feeds into exactly what Chomsky said we can we can talk more generally about but so this evening show for those who aren't necessarily familiar you didn't see this great thumbnail which was knocked up by a fox earlier on which is not just about media impartiality it's about these documents which were released by labious today the unredacted dossier about us UK trading negotiations finally will end up on some stuff about polling which I think is actually not as bad as people probably think but let's take it for now pretty the first third to half of the show on on media bias I will move quickly to the BBC because I think most people would agree with what we're saying left or right they would say yeah you know what print media is rigged billionaires own all these big newspapers the Barclay brothers Murdoch fourth by Captain Rodimir in the case of the Metro in the Daily Mail mail on Sunday but something weirdest happened with the BBC in the last few days do you think the gloves have come off with the BBC in the last week since the polls started to close look it's a difficult thing because I think that what's been going on to BBC has been happening for a long time and the question of whether something changed or not in the last few days is always hard to know and in these instances if you go and say absolutely I do think that then what will happen pretty simply is they'll come back and you know falsify and say well no here is where you know we have been you know here's our document on say for instance the topics we're covering the last few days here's our discussions on bias and how we tilting one way or the other too much and so on and the BBC produced these kind of quite in-depth guidelines for themselves and they've been made public for this election which people can go and read you just Google BBC election guidelines you'll find them but the problem is that it is evident to anybody who is looking at the BBC's content in recent days whether it be the tax article and headline which was outrageous the idea that because of one tangential tax in terms of the tax which let us be totally frank about this is nothing to do with how much you earn that tax is in place for a simple reason because it wants to prioritize and give favor to people who are married exclusion of people aren't now my parents aren't married I'm at least a quarter third of people I know parents aren't married on what basis should we be saying that those people are discriminated against but also they see marriage is like a central part of building social cohesion into a society what kind of institution is it if people are getting married because of a tax break yeah I mean Jesus we've got a 50% divorce rate I mean that's not going to help is it and it produces the kind of anomalies that actually people who say for instance I really invested in the institution of marriage should be unhappy with that people getting married deliberately to try and avail of tax breaks it had nothing to do with the question of whether people earn under 80,000 or over are going to be paying more tax in real terms because when you're talking to people about the question of okay am I going to pay more tax under a Labour government and you're saying people under 80,000 what they are what people are thinking of his questions like is there going to be income tax increases you know is it going to be that the people who are in my position are going to be paying for this in some kind of very substantial way they're not thinking about something that is on the side which is a marriage tax which in the first instance is very specific and people can only get what the numbers involved you know it's 250 quid or something was the one that was brought up right now people can go I don't know the numbers in front of you so people can go and look at that but it's you know this is not this is not a substantial point and to say that which is how the BBC headline framed it was that basically Labour's whole claim that people under 80,000 are not going to end up paying for their program was false because of this one very anomalous incident that had nothing to do with major taxation was so ridiculous and it really skewed the whole debate about taxation in Tory's favour and of course immediately they put it out it was sent around social media hundreds thousands of times by people who are arguing the Tory case saying look even the BBC says your tax are going to go up and of course they're not the point and you can debate Labour's economic plans right we were just talking off air there before about Scandinavia right it is certainly true that in order to achieve the kind of social equality that they've gotten in Scandinavia there's a much broader tax base and that people who are earning less are paying more taxes right they get a great return for that their quality of life is much higher but that's the case yeah that is not Labour's plan Labour's plan is very focused you're taxing people in the very top percentages 5% in in the income bracket and to some degree people's wealth and business wealth in order to pay for social democratic transactions etc yes exactly in order to pay for a social democratic program that's Labour's plan and any earnest economist would tell you that's what it is right the IFS conceded that today for other criticisms they had elsewhere Paul Johnson was saying this fundamentally is no more extensive state intervention than what they have in Germany I think that was basically what he was saying and that's partly because the I think it was a resolution foundation came out with that viral graphic which was absolutely true which is saying even at the most kind of extreme estimates of how much Labour want to spend they'd still be miles behind not only the Scandinavian countries but a lot of central European countries in terms of proportionate GDP and public spending right so this is not a radical program but crucially for the BBC headline it is a program that is paid for by concentrated taxation on the wealthy and that headline gave anyone who who saw it past their timeline today it gave them the impression that wasn't true and that added to Laura Kuhnsberg's assessment of the NHS documents yesterday oh let me let me go through these so we've got so if we can just get these up folks the first one is this gentleman tweeting uh what was this there was an instagram right we haven't got the screen stay so I can't see but I'll uh I'll work off what Fox says it up Fox the Instagram stories yeah um which but did you see these yeah I did so um a series of of um stories put out on BBC I think it was the BBC stories Instagram page that's right I have to be totally honest I'm one of those old fogwigs who it's really new I don't I don't even have a person on Instagram page Tribune those don't mean you can go and follow it um but uh what it what it had on it was was straightforward what it was in the day the final day of voter registration you had a series of stories which talked about how politics was boring yeah how the campaign was uninteresting things that were meant it could only really for whoever put them together have been thinking oh this is you know young people yeah not interested in politics whereas the evidence was showing massive voter registration and on a really unusual level of youth engagement in the election so you know to put that kind of stuff out you have to ask questions and the problem you see you get in these situations is it it is possible and I'd say people at home you know don't always assume in the first instance that the worst answer it is possible that one of these things or two of these things or three of these things are mistakes but when all the mistakes are happening and going in one direction then of course serious questions have to be answered and the most serious one of those I'm sure you're going to bring up now is the Andrew Neil situation yeah which is incredible if it is true which Labour have have said I mean I've been told that I presume you have as well yeah that they were told that BBC had agreed interviews with all the leaders and that wasn't true that is an incredible untruth to put forward in the middle of an election campaign I'd say people should be fired but I mean that is probably a firing offence I don't know I mean I if they if they've knowingly misled a leader of the opposition which and it could be a get you know it's obviously undermining the impartiality of the BBC and it could be a game-changing event in the election probably won't be but it could be I mean that really I can't imagine many lower things that an employee of a public service broadcaster could do than to actively mislead a politician during a general election yeah look I think it's really bad um because if it is the case that BBC put forward someone who they themselves say is their hardest interviewer is the person who really skewers the politicians and all of those things that they themselves say and one political leader who could be prime minister gets it and the other doesn't and you've told the person who went on beforehand that there would be equal treatment I think that's a really serious problem for the BBC and I think it is serious enough that they're going to try very hard to turn it around I think they're going to try very hard to get Boris Johnson on with Andrew Neil because otherwise I mean people are going to talk about this after the election well the Tories have offered up um Johnson to do more on a Sunday no it's not the same unless it unless it's or unless the BBC put together uh an interview on the same format as Andrew Neil and Jeremy Corbyn they're going to be in trouble after the election and I think they know it enough that they will try very hard to turn that around but you know what I was saying in the BBC is it would be a mistake for us to look at things too narrowly like there is a big structural question which has gone back a long way go on the BBC and it goes back to things like in the late 1980s when John Burt was brought in um John Burt being as director general uh and basically what it was is the Thatcher government felt that the BBC was stacked full of trendy lefty types and not favorable enough to their agenda um and serious reforms um were begun on the nature of the the BBC um and really the question comes down to this is the BBC a state broadcaster or is it a public broadcaster and that has always been attention in the organization and actually if you look at broadcasters around the world that is it that are publicly owned that is always attention right and the BBC always had a very considerable element of what it did which was state broadcasting and what I what I mean by that is is basically you're broadcasting out to the population on behalf of the state yeah it's royal coverage for instance whereas on the idea of a public broadcaster is really the reverse that you're speaking on behalf of the public to to power right so your whole perspective of things is different in politics this is really clear are you mainly uh projecting the views of Westminster out to the broader public uh spending almost all of your political time dealing with the controversies of Westminster or are you taking the issues where there is overwhelming public consensus against the the government and against Westminster in general and taking those questions to the government which way is your is your emphasis and in general I think you know it would be very difficult for people to honestly say that the public broadcasting side of that equation the one which holds power to account on behalf of the people is is stronger in the BBC I mean if you have a thought experiment you know if you get something like a consensus across the the parties in in Westminster in their leaderships over key questions say for instance whether migration policies are racist which was kind of there for quite a long time right before Corbyn came in even if you get you know a kind of pretty strong objective assessment about the degree of suffering that people are are facing the fact that you know the the hostile environment was being created and so on if there is a consensus in Westminster around it what degree do you think the dissent that's out there and put in the public to that policy will feature in in BBC's political coverage very very little if you take for instance nationalisations and public ownership right these are I think really really strong ones well we've known now since before Jeremy Corbyn actually right that there isn't just support for re-nationalising rail mail energy water there is unbelievable overwhelming public support it's the consensus 70 percent 80 percent poll after poll after poll year after year after year and yet it was off the agenda off the agenda until somebody came in into Jeremy Corbyn's position and reflected it so the media didn't put it and particularly the BBC didn't put it on the agenda because they were reflecting the views of Westminster to the public rather than the public's views to Westminster and so that battle right over over state versus public broadcaster is important and there's a history here with BBC which is BBC has always had those two souls right part of it is the state broadcaster and you see that really clearly in say foreign policy where the assumption is always that you know the British state is acting more or less legitimately or in good faith so when things go wrong say for instance even the likes of Yemen and so on it's usually oh well we we muck that up you know that people do they really know what they did the plan has gone a bit wrong here and that was the same characteristic of their coverage of of Iraq there was one particular incident where the BBC stood up to the Blair government and I can come to that in a minute which was which was good but in general you know their coverage of foreign policy is very much state broadcaster but BBC historically has produced an awful lot of very very good television it produced an awful lot of very good coverage politically which was done more on behalf of the public but that idea of public service was so good at during the tatter years that of course they were going to come for the BBC as an institution and Tony Ben talked about this and the effects of it after it happened in the 80s and 90s and what it meant and the kind of what we would call on the left neoliberal reforms that we saw at BBC produced a situation that when the BBC were cutting people like I think when they sat 6,000 people in the 2000s in one very famous incident they came out afterwards and said we're determined to show the public that we're value for money organization the whole logic of the thing had turned into we are giving this thing these things to consumers rather than we're here to fight and represent on behalf of the public and then there were key moments along the way in that kind of trajectory one of which was in 2010 when you had Mark Thompson who was then the director general going into Downing Street meeting with the with the leading figures in the government Andy Coulson and so on at the time criminal as we now know the criminal Andy Coulson to discuss the coverage the BBC's coverage of austerity and when he was going in and people can go and google this story if they want because it does sound incredible but it's true he was photographed a briefing note from Coulson about how the BBC had been too negative in their coverage of the government's austerity and not been fair effectively on covering austerity now why does that happen well it's a structural reason it's not because of this in my view this individual baddie or that individual baddie I mean they exist as well but yeah yeah it's it's about the fact that the BBC is formally accountable to the government it's leading people are appointed by the government and it has to go through this regular battle over funding with the government and so you end up with an organization particularly after long-term Tory governments and where you get the you know a public service broadcaster behaving a lot more like a state broadcaster because they they effectively know that the people who run the state have them a bit over a barrel and one example of that another important one was 2015 right after the unexpected Tory majority the director general the BBC goes in and has a week-long meeting over the future of the organization in a panic because they'd they'd been hoping that Labour's kind of more pro funding position would win and he negotiated a little bit of bits and pieces here and there of extra funding and mostly things being frozen but what we now see which is the over 75s TV license he negotiated right that that that would be on the table that the BBC would have to chase that themselves instead of that coming to the government which is as he then later described I think as recently as last year that was nuclear for the BBC because that put them in a perennial chase after hundreds of millions right a perennial chase after their own tail and funding and so then you've got an organization which is more and more and more cap in hand to not just the government of the day but the state and the advisors to those governments and so on and it's no surprise that that structural situation produces the kind of stuff for us in the BBC I mean I added to that with those cuts I mean John McDonald said this really put it really well a few maybe two weeks ago here you see increasingly the central role for the paper review on the BBC yes so fewer and fewer people are reading newspapers yes but that's just a statistical fact you know the the readership of like the sun the times the telegraph is about a third of what it was 20 years ago some of them have big online reach like the mail online some don't like the sun like the express telegraph I think it's profits fell 94% last year it's running a slight profit but it doesn't seem like it's really got a viable model the times probably does right and what you see from the today program first thing in the morning is oh the front page to say this the day after Andrew and ill into the Jeremy Corbyn which we could talk about maybe later we haven't got time I don't think it was that bad because there wasn't a 45 second clip which would just decide the election which is what they wanted yeah that would be the sort of the you know the the jackpot for the Tories didn't happen and then the next day the sun are calling Jeremy Corbyn a racist on their front page and it's being read by Nick Robinson at 609 or whatever and the BBC's Royal Charter explicitly states that it offers an understanding and analysis you won't find anywhere else as well as being impartial and yet more often than not increasingly with the central role of print media even though that's on the decline actually they're just replicating the frames and agendas of print media so on the today program on the paper review shows you know the day that we had the sunday telegraph the mail on sunday the sun on sunday all run the 1.2 trillion pound story the day before on the saturday evening the two people were reviewing it who were they I don't know one person from the left apparently they had the political editor from the sun was the other person so the political editor of the sun is basically saying yes this 1.2 trillion dollar story pound story which has been concocted by number 10 in liaison with these newspapers is a really important story you think why is a public service broadcaster doing this and as John said when you cut that many people you're going to have to do more paper reviews more journalism yes and it's kind of like you said it's like this or a boros the snake that eats itself and I don't know where it really ends because it's coming to a point now where there is no public service in the journalism they're doing increasingly at the top end well if we accept right and the vast majority the public does that the concentrated ownership of private media is a problem and it's not just as I said 60 percent of all the newspapers that people read on a day owned by two companies 83 percent owned by three but it's also online where five companies have about 80 percent of the market so you add in to Daily Mail Group in News UK reach plc is the third company that has a lot of print and then the two online ones the Guardian and Telegram so that's an astounding level of concentration of media ownership and what is the BBC for if not to be a kind of bulwark against that to serve the public as an institution that is state owned publicly owned and therefore is not subject to the same whims of some billionaire owner and the problem is that right now when you have a situation where the print media as you've just described are doing the agenda setting their headlines and their investigations their whatever stories that they've come up with are what is kicking you off every morning and saying this is what sets the agenda for the day well then you are not doing the job of kind of pushing back against the ridiculous billionaire control of our media what you're doing is just providing another outlet to relay those opinions yeah they're amplifying it and they're a megaphone for it which is cannot be in any kind of sensible understanding what public service broadcasting is about a great example this was I wrote an article about this on the BBC I think the end of last week maybe great example was Stephen Nolan five live somebody calls in says actually I think Jeremy Corbyn's genre of leadership would go down very well on the world stage he's a listener people we're not used to British Prime Ministers being like that and Stephen Nolan apparently just when apparently I heard him Stephen Nolan just says well look at the front pages tomorrow how can you possibly think that nobody will take him seriously look at the front pages yeah this is not you know this is not a this is not an sort of objective metric by which we should judge your Prime Minister let's have a look right at those front pages because I think it's really important and it's important to ground ourselves in the evidence because if you don't what they'll end up doing is coming at you and simply saying you know this is traditional lefty bashing in the media whatever Loughborough University produced a study for the start of this election campaign I think it's their centre for culture and communication it's called and you can go and find that online if you if you search Loughborough University and Labour and the election you'll find it and they looked at all of the stories in the first part of the campaign that had the Tories or Labour covered in them in fact I had all the parties I just had the information for the Tories and Labour in front of me and they gave a point plus point if the story was positive and a minus point if the story was negative and the Tories in that survey from the start of this campaign from the print media got four plus four was their number Labour do you remember it was in the minus eight seven minus 91 minus 91 all right minus 91 so you can go and find that online in Loughborough you can see what their methodology was that is the distinction with the print media you have in the beginning of the election campaign academic research showing that the print media is giving yes it's marginal plus four positive coverage to the Tories minus 91 to the Labour Party and then our public service broadcaster is taking all their headlines and recycling them every morning well it's also the plus four probably isn't even I mean that sounds like maybe you know okay well that's fair but when you think that Boris Johnson in 2006 wrote a story saying Iran should have nuclear weapons yeah right in the telegraph can you imagine if that was Jeremy Corbyn I mean it nobody's talked about it in the whole election Boris Johnson isn't isn't you know we can have a conversation about nuclear I'm not you know I probably wouldn't say that's the worst thing he's ever said not that Iran should have nuclear weapons but it's it's certainly a heterodox thing for somebody on the right to say but that's completely odd with their message on defence and security policy and yet nobody's even mentioned it let's move on before we do just to sort of confirm the point Fox if we could get up that tweet from Rob Burley it was an amazing tweet you know the one I'm talking about yeah and he said we've made all the front pages we didn't make the Daily Mirror but obviously in Burleland and the BBC on the BBC right that doesn't really count I mean that to me struck you know that struck me as like the apotheosis of this kind of thinking we've made the front pages wow it's like you reach far more people than like the dead tree press but why do you think he was so gratified by that would you is it a cultural logic yeah it's an influence question I think you know the BBC is proud that it has the level of influence that it does with its coverage of things like elections and I think you're looking at that and saying if you're in his position we've had a really influential interview we've skewered this political leader everyone is covering it and we've you know kind of given the public more information but of course if you the whole question right this is the difficulty is that when as I was talking about at the start no one wants to look at structural questions I mean I've been a journalist for a long time I was a rep for the NUJ I get this debate I've had it over and over and over again and I'm exhausted by it what people say to me oh you know there isn't bias because I'm you know I'm not going in there and deliberately doing this XYZ XYZ but if you're asking the question right well what are the major issues and we have polling data on this that people are concerned about in this election and you choose to spend a third of your interview discussing the anti-semitism situation you should be called to account as a public service broadcaster it was like 12 minutes of 30 right I think okay so slightly over a third yeah and then you're asking the question right well if you're a public service broadcaster and the evidence is really amply available what people are concerned about in this election yes you could have said we'd spend a third of it on Brexit because Brexit comes very high and that would have been tough for Corbyn too and but you spend a third of it on the anti-semitism scandal and for for what what justification and then you well if you get that 40-second click right then then you come into the real question which is well what are the implicit biases that people have that lead them to decide certain things because I don't care who you are in the media right left whatever like if there is no article you ever put together no you know political broadcast you put together that is entirely outside the realm of ideology belief from whatever because even if you're only deciding to report in totally factual terms that x happened at y place at z time why are you reporting that thing why have you chosen that thing to report that in itself is a question of political choice so all the omission of stuff right so for instance which is far more relevant so in Duncan Smith having paint you know smeared on his wall but austerity is appalling but nobody mentions two 70 year old 72 year old labor canvases one having broken ribs one having a broken jaw that's not been talked about by the BBC so yeah I agree I think that there's another problem right as well here in my view and I would say this right or left and I understand it's it's easy in one sense to come back at this if you're a working journalist and say oh well you're a lefty and whatever on the one hand I would say what Tribune does by saying we are unashamedly socialist allows people to read our coverage and say okay this is the perspective it's coming from and we understand that and so it's a lot more honest than going out there and pretending you exist in a world outside of politics which is always fakery it's always an active fakery one of the things that I think even for those people right who believe the journalism works this way that should have precipitated a crisis for them was the Robbie Gibb situation you have somebody who is in overall charge of BBC's political communications right in overall charge of their programming somebody who was a previous chief of staff to a shadow chancellor who was who was Tories and who effectively ran the Portillo leadership campaign now on what basis does somebody like that become if you really do believe that you're operating in it like like Laura Coonsburg said in a situation where you know we would die in a ditch for our impartiality in what on what basis does someone like that become the head of your political program and his brother's Tory MP as well Nick Gibb and then he goes on afterwards inevitably inevitably to become the communications director at number 10 now that should precipitate a massive crisis of people saying look we've had somebody who's been overseeing our political coverage who has now gone and become literally from supposedly you know the hen or whatever to become in the fox this is a major problem right this this gives us a real sense that what we're doing here is not politically impartial but that we've got people with very clear agendas who are behind our political programming and nothing no one seemed to think that that was a remarkable thing and I understand why because there is this history of degree you know porous or how are we gonna say revolving door between the BBC and politics but that in itself is a problem as well you know if you really believe that you're being impartial and these a lot of people that really believe it well then how is that not a major crisis well here's the thing I mean Navarra's I mean I saw in the comments some people say well Navarra's not impartial we like you we know a plane you know claim to be we have an about page we're very explicit about our values socialists internationalists we understand the major challenges of the 21st century we're very clear about you know we would never have an editorial in support of Jeremy Corbyn we don't operate like that but it's quite clear who who we would like to win you know the general election and so on and like you say I think I was Peter Hitchens once and they said what's the one thing you would do to improve the BBC you said just make everybody be honest about their political commitments yes well this is the one thing you could do to improve the service overnight I agree because I you know like I said in these arguments I've had for a long time with people you get kind of two solutions presented to you one is we're going to go for really perfect impartiality right which doesn't work what you can do though is have good processes in place that try to take a realistic perspective of what the public opinion is orient yourselves as a public broadcaster not as a state one that is reporting on behalf of the public and asking the questions of those in power on behalf of the public not sitting around in bars in Westminster and making friends with MPs and relaying their opinions but the other thing is you know that there's that meme a few years ago to enter on the American political scene and it was funny right this idea that like NASCAR drivers all the senators should have to wear their their sponsors and their donors on you know on their gear on their get up every time they go into the Senate right okay I'm not suggesting that but let's be a bit honest about why not because why not Andrew Andrew Neil could do that if you actually look at the his register of interest it's like it's 100 times bigger than anybody else at the BBC but but you know everybody else who knows what the situation is I mean this is the other thing that I find amazing in this country partly because say in Ireland where I come from originally there is a somewhat different situation not to say that the media it doesn't have its own like horses that are backs but there isn't such a clear like divide in terms of what everyone knows what this paper who this paper backs you know everyone knows where the sun is going everyone knows where the mirror where the mail is going everyone knows what the telegraph believes everyone knows the guardian everyone knows the mirror there is a if you want to talk about what's a conspiracy is a conspiracy of nonsense about impartiality where we're all supposed to pretend that these media outlets where you can in three minutes on google see what political positions they've taken in every previous election are somehow to be believed to be impartial I mean it is an absurd situation right so let's just say outright right that if people are coming in and they have those views and say for instance Robbie Gibb comes in having been a long-standing Tory having worked for the party that he comes in and he's heading up BBC's political coverage okay I mean I don't think it's a good idea but okay then he has to be held to account for how much he's countering his own biases and giving more space to left-wing opinion to you know opinion that's outside the box on the left he has to be seen to be doing that otherwise you are just being like dishonest with people you're a journalist you've been a journalist for a long time would you ever something I'll answer after you so I'm not putting you on the spot given that revolving door would you ever work for a labour politician say Jeremy Corbyn becomes number 10 sort of he ends number 10 as the prime minister would you become a press secretary or head of communications first of all do I think that they would ever ask me no no but in the abstract yeah in the abstract yes and I would because I've done it before I've worked in politics before I've worked in the Irish parliament so I've done it before but I've always so when I when I was writing things right right from the very very beginning I wore as a badge what perspective I was coming from and people in like early on when I was a jobbing journalist when I was doing freelance stuff and whatever my editors knowing what perspective I came from would put pressure on me so I remember right writing pieces about the housing crisis and being told that I had you know I couldn't just talk to the tenants that were being screwed over by the landlords but I had to actually go and speak to the property owners association and get their view and whatever and that's fine that's fair because they knew what perspective I was coming at things from right I would have no problem if that was taken forward if people were going out there and saying like Tribune does on our front page and our latest issue that we're socialist because that is allowing people to take the information that we give them and subject it to their own critical analysis when you go out and you say we're impartial and you're owned by a right-wing billionaire and everybody knows what political view your leading staff have everyone knows who you're endorsing in the election and some of your leading people are in like very good friends with leading figures in the Conservative Party but then you are lying to people so I agree let's aim for honesty people want to try and make the impartiality thing work and come up with good structures great but as a start let's just have people being a bit more honest and not having a kind of ridiculous situation where a long-term Tory staffer ends up running BBC's political programming then runs off to do the communications for number 10 and everyone's like this is how it works we're still impartial who's going to buy that here's another one would be Andrew Neil Jeremy Corbyn interview Boris Johnson, former editor of the spectator who's the chairman of the spectator Andrew Neil who owns the spectator the Barclays brothers who also own the telegraph and the Sunday telegraph billionaire tax dodgers who have their own private island that is just unbelievable like if you put that in Russia if you say Vladimir Putin is going to be interviewed and he Vladimir Putin worked this organization and the chairman of that organization is the gentleman who's going to interview him and the people that own the publication the spectator equivalent in Russia are you know multi-billionaires and by the way the transcript from the entire interview can now be read online on the spectator I mean on what planet does anybody think that's remotely normal and I think it's one of those things that's a useful thought experiment if you think about that interview and you think about the fact that Jeremy Corbyn was misled into thinking that Boris Johnson was going to do it and that was a lie that to me is you know it's reminiscent of politics in a country which isn't a democracy and it's a maybe it's something we'll finish on but increasingly I look at the media and it's not one I would it's a managed democracy it's like Russia you know which is to say you still have the elections you still have you know regular terms etc but something very sinister and strange is happening well I wanted to put it out there right because not that I suspect we're going to have many right wing views tonight but let's just put her out there that the system and the way the media is structured I mean my own view is that obviously you know we're in it we're in a case now where there's a general election and for the first time 2017 this time so second time we have no major media outlets who reliably backs the leader of the opposition so that is an incredible situation to end up in it very rarely happens and it's because there is a kind of political media nexus which is constantly policing the bounds of acceptable opinion and very rarely allows people who are outside in but we do have one here and it is a situation right where Jeremy Corbyn doesn't have somebody who's a reliable supporter who's you know the mirror and the Guardian the mirror is going to centre left the Guardian liberal left they've given supportive coverage they've got some very good people working for them but I think we all know if they were given a choice tomorrow would they replace the Labour leader they're both their leaderships would say yes but that isn't that isn't new so like in 2010 the Guardian backed the Lib Dems over Gordon Brown the Daily Mirror was kind of actually backed him but they were kind of ambivalent about him yes so actually we're on the fourth election now post Blair this is a really like long-term structural question we now have to ask ourselves about the Labour Party moving left because of a crisis of our economy a crisis of political legitimacy that's going to carry on whoever's the leader after Jeremy Corbyn whenever that happens and for elections since 2010 and like you say there's not really been a major media outlet which is going to go you know balls the wall sorry for the French for for the leader of the party yeah I agree but I think that the key question here right is if that is the case that there are reasons why the structural reason is that the left broadly speaking and the policies put forward and Corbyn's manifesto evidence this are trying to improve the lives of people who've got actually quite little in terms of wealth so if you've got a country right where you've got 10% of the population owning 50 to 60% of the wealth these people empowered to project their views through the media by simply buying and owning media and then you you're the BBC and you're sitting between a left which is representing by and large or they're attempting to represent I know the culture was changing things to some degree but attempting to represent and putting forward positions that are good for the majority of people who own very little property against people putting forward views from the right who are extremely well funded and they're well funded because class still matters because they represent the capitalist class because they represent a small portion of our society who owns the vast majority of the wealth and now if you're sitting in the middle between those two and you're saying well on the one hand we have 60% of all the newspapers people are reading every day owned by the billionaires behind the Daily Mayor group and behind News UK which is Murdoch 60% of the newspapers just there and on the other hand you've got a Labour leader supported by effectively none of the newspaper owners maybe our job is not to sit there and pretend this is a fair fight you know the referee analogy is used all the time but I would also say this because I know as I was coming up to the start that we'll you know we'll there's inevitable right-wing criticisms you get to the lines we're putting forward here so let me just ask do people also believe that say for instance under Harold Wilson when you had an attempt by Cecil King a major media mogul to depose a sitting Labour Prime Minister do people on the right also think that that is you know in favor of someone else inside the Labour Party that that is good that somebody wait for Labour government gets elected that the person who say owns reach PLC and has the mirror behind them should be able to have that much power do they believe that when Tony Blair right when he was going to try to get elected he flew out to Australia to meet Murdoch and then Murdoch backed him in the elections now if you're on the right and you think that's you know perfectly good and sensible situation I mean maybe you do because you've got a more real politic view of things and you understand your side does a lot better when the game is a bit fixed like this than our side does but it's obviously wrong and it's obviously unfair I don't I mean rail politic is one way of putting it but I think also increasingly centre right politics its default is anti-democratic that's not just in Britain that's around the world and you look at politicians like Ted Heath, Howard McMillan they had a certain even a Churchill who was a racist a bigger etc that shared experience of world war you know colonial overseer etc but that shared experience of world war clearly was some kind of a cement after world war two after world war one in terms of quelling down there were great glass antagonisms because there were high rates of industrial action etc but there wasn't this hatred this enmity now which the ruling class have for working class people they despise they utterly despise them if they didn't if they couldn't exist they'd get rid of them and I think that's increasingly the default like I say for centre right politics and I think it's quite new I mean I really do think it's since the mid 70s and it's clearly growing I think Paul Mason you know we had him on the show maybe a month ago to talk about his book people slag off old Paul sometimes because you know he makes big claims but the thing with somebody who makes big claims like he talks about you know the sort of the the collapse of the neoliberal self becoming the the fertile breeding ground for fascism mark two is I think you make big claims sometimes they have analytical clarity which other people lack and I think this is what we're talking about and I'm not saying if if the Tories were a majority on December 13th we're no longer democracy but it does feel like this is ebbing into something really dark and this this election has brought it out and I think they're burying their teeth not just in print but also in the BBC because you actually have an you have an anti-system alternative and that's what it took if Jeremy Corbyn does nothing else it's revealed actually you know the surface level veneer we have for impartiality and fair play in the media yeah so I if we're gonna do whatever methanarratives is that the kind of the approach we're taking here that if we're gonna do big picture questions right um well then my view is it can only ever really be a veneer the rights perspective on democracy if you exist in something that at least is a formal democracy and you represent the parts of society that have massive concentrated wealth and on the other side there's a ton of working people who live by their wages and who are empowered every now and again to get a vote to change things you cannot possibly allow a fair game because if there was one I mean like that argument that Mark's made you know and his belief which was it'd be too simple to say totally believe this but he felt you know that that democracy and the broadening of the franchise would inexorably lead to the rise of the socialist movement because people would be empowered to you know take control and vote for redistribution of wealth which by anyone's standards you know should should happen uh it didn't happen and one of the reasons it didn't is because the democratic game is very carefully policed and the institutions that police it are things like the media and so I think there's it's always been a veneer the degree to which the right really respects democracy there's a very good book by Corey Robin the American academic where he looks back at this in the history of conservative thought and so on and it has been a very very long war against democracy the other thing I would say of course as an Irishman bring this up but when you get capitalist crisis what happens is the practices that have been on the periphery migrate home so in the immediate post-war periods the British centre right may have looked like they had a more communitarian perspective in Britain but you wouldn't have taught that if you lived in Kenya you wouldn't have taught that if you lived in Belfast Iran yeah exactly exactly and then what but what happens now one of the one of the reasons this is very important election uh when we're talking about say international stuff you were saying earlier on about the caller in talking about Jeremy Corbyn the statue on the international stage it is an international election it's an it's an election of international significance and the reason for that is that we've gone through this long period now a decade long period uh where the capitalist system has not been able to restore a model of shared prosperity of sustainable growth what what we've had is um you know in Britain you've got the longest wage stagnation since victorian times you've got anemic growth and you've got an economy which seems across the west to be more and more focused in on finance tech pharma and a kind of you know base outside of that that's very very thin huge numbers of people working in terrible zero hour low paid jobs in hospitality and retail and these are like no big big employers and so what you've got is a system all right which is in a 10 year long crisis effectively it isn't didn't end when the recession ended it's still in it because they haven't found the new model of prosperity they haven't broken through and it's going to be resolved this crisis one way or the other it's going to be resolved by the right and this new right which is emerging all over the world um and which by the way I mean I remember being active in 2014 and 2015 and thinking to myself that we were better positioned to gain from this crisis than the right ever since then it's been an absolute route the right have gained place after place after place they've gained as an outside right winning you know anti-establishment campaigns and they've won over the main parties the right parties so and some cases they've done it in both right so in Spain they both managed to get casado in as the head of patio popular and take things more right and they came through with vox right where you've got and now they didn't manage to win that that last election but you know vox are a massive influence now and I said biggest part yeah and you know a base an unreformed fascist party basically right now you could make a case about saying well they're not attacking democracy and whatever but they're embracing so much of Franco's legacy that you know everybody knows the unsaid thing in every sentence when they say Franco was great is we should get rid of this democracy which they believe was built by this conspiracy of of lefties who tore down you know Spain's greatness and so the right has made these great gains and ultimately this crisis because capitalism is an international system ultimately it's resolved on the left on the right if labor lose this it has huge international significance if the Tories win a big majority and Boris Johnson gets to veer off in a right wing direction with his friends and Victor Orban and Donald Trump and whatever it has huge significance and similar with the American election next year you know if Bernie Sanders makes a breakthrough there is a real possibility that you can consolidate and grow a left wing alternative and that the crisis will break left but this crisis right now looks like it's breaking right and labor are trying very very hard is one of the few international examples of somebody trying to provide an alternative from the left I think it's important for people to be watching you know that people who are watching you know you can have a left wing party do sublimely in Catalonia or Sweden but the reality is like say if this crisis to break left you're going to need left wing parties leaders ideas becoming hegemonic in two or three major yes powers realistically and so and there's a whole moment the implications of what happened on December 12th go far beyond the issues they do because this is like the Corbyn moment you know it was tied in to what was happening in Greece with Syriza and people knew it happened with Poremos and like so there's a whole kind of post-2012 stretch for the left right where the left migrated from being very concentrated on social movements and so on the occupying moment all the rest of it into trying to compete for political power and winning the state and it did a true you know the rise of Syriza and Greece, Poremos's emerge from Kinsieme in Spain, Corbyn winning the leadership of the Labor Party then Melonshawn's campaign 2017 there's a whole kind of stretch of these Corbyn and Bernie are kind of the last two standing if they both get beaten then we're into a new phase of the left and there'll be all kinds of very interesting debates to follow this about whether people continue emphasizing the party which you know as tribune editor contributes history and give my own politics I think we should that we should continue trying to fight this this line but better or whether people are going to return to social movement orientations people are going to believe as was the popular belief in like 2009 to 2010 that you know mainstream politics we can't really do much to it we have to try and influence it elsewhere it one of it is one of the flaws of the Corbyn project I would say that you know we haven't seen at the same time a big increase in kind of class struggle that has happened at the same time we just haven't we have a little bit not to the scale CWU now it's which is great yeah there's a socialist union they're having this they had industrial action recently which was literally outlawed by a court a huge turnout and we should give them solidarity today and the you see it come up again see I think people don't realize what a low level we're starting at so you look at the CWU the postal workers union you look at the UCU strikes last year and the increase they saw a membership you look at the fire brigade's union rejoining the Labour Party having a level of public voice after grandfather probably wouldn't have had they would have been brow beaten by the Tories if there hadn't been like a a stronger general left both in and outside the Labour Party you know it's not perfect you look at if you I would encourage people to go and look right I think days lost to strike action in the 1970s and now now you know you can have you can have upticks and so forth you can but there's there's a reality here which is the class game has changed massively and one of the things you would hope for yeah would be the Corbyn moment would produce another another way we haven't really seen it no I'd agree with that but in sort of response to the argument from the social movement types they view it as a zero sum game and if people are doing party politics it means this stuff is neglected and the reality is actually to the most interesting industrial actions of the last decade in this country have both happened alongside yes I agree with that that's true yeah becoming ascendant within the Labour Party so I think that's that's a false interpretation to say oh it's a zero sum game anyway we're going to have to move on before we do we're going to go to some questions shortly I mean we we've only you know what we were always only going to talk about the media on the show tonight you're watching or perhaps even listening if it's on iTunes or through SoundCloud Tiskey Sound my name is Aaron Bustani I'm joined this evening by Ron and Burton sure if you like what you're watching or listening to why not subscribe go to support.navarromedia.com make a one-off payment or an ongoing subscription we advise or we ask for or we hope for the equivalent of an hour's wage so if you're on minimum wage maybe pay that maybe don't if you can't make ends meet obviously if you're earning 20 pounds an hour we would hope you could perhaps afford that otherwise we've got right now 1915 people watching but only 286 likes so we want a lot more likes hit the thumbs button please and also if the beat hashtag BBC Imparciality if that's still going on Twitter why not share this show on the hashtag and say the BBC has all sorts of problems we need more people like Tribune Navarromedia breaking through into the mainstream we'd really appreciate it right we're going to probably just not talk about the labour announcement yesterday on on the US UK trade negotiations what I would say is we have a video probably coming out tomorrow if not Monday with two doctors looking at those documents why they matter and why yes the UK is looking at privatising the NHS and opening up to US business after a very likely no-deal Brexit if the documents are meant to be believed what we will touch upon briefly before going to questions is the polling very briefly five minutes yesterday 10 o'clock Sunday Times in Newgav put out this poll which gave the tourism majority of around well it's say in the high 60s but it had gone down from 100 at the weekend to 68 yesterday so let's say it's 50 to 60 on present on present data what did you make of that look I think we are facing an uphill battle but that's the story of the left you know it's very very rare that we get ourselves in a situation given what we just talked about the kind of structural obstacles we have before we win things and we were saying earlier on about the CWU right and CWU got an absolutely outrageous mandate for their strike 97% yes on us whatever was 76% turnout I think and the courts just said no these are the kind of obstacles the left faces day in day out the media the courts the way that the legal framework is the fact that say for instance in a Christmas election you know how many people how many of our people who we need to vote for us are working terrible shifts on December 12th terrible miserable Christmas shifts and they've been working them for a week and they don't want to go out and vote there are all kinds of big structural problems against us but we're still in the game I mean what that poll shows is that if the trends continue for the rest of the election Labour has a good chance at taking a Tory party a Tory government which was once again trumpeted as impossible to defeat and reducing them to either minority government or Hong Parliament which opens the door to all kinds of abilities to us to whether Labour are in whether the Tories have to rely on support and whatever and from other from other parties it opens the door to all kinds of potential to put pressure on and stop the worst parts of the Boris Johnson agenda so every fraction of a percent of vote that goes to Labour between here and the election day is huge I mean every person extra person who turns out in a marginal is potentially the person who stops the next round of the reforms that lead to a fit to work that lead to a bedroom tax that leads to you know austerity policies which as we know have killed thousands of people in this country yeah so my take on it if you want to like the objective assessment my view is that that methodology when it was applied in 2017 was much closer to the election it has some merits probably more than most polling but there's very little evidence of the last decade that polling companies are that much more reliable than economists when it comes to forecasting I mean here's the thing so it probably isn't right because there's a margin of error etc even they make you know there's lots of caveats which are made by you go themselves but I think it's really useful for the left to just presume it's right because all the seats it's talking about the Tories winning primarily Brexit seats Grimsby Mansfield forget the bellwethers like Mansfield Grimsby Bolsova and I think we have to presume that that's correct but what's what I think we need to take sucker from is that you're looking at about 80 seats which according to that data right now would be won by the Tories there's a six percent difference between Labour and the Tories and if that's six percent in those 80 seats are flipped in the next two weeks Labour the next government now is that inevitable no is that likely or probably I think it's I personally think it's likely but probabilities is a big claim that's my view because I would say well at the next two weeks the last week yes in which case you have a Labour-led government you have Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister and that you're talking about basically 50 to 100,000 votes all of a sudden it looks like a US election where you're looking at Pennsylvania and Ohio and that's going to swing it that's basically what these 60 to 80 seats are and so people are going to get downhearted about that what I found really amazing was it said that the Tories win the popular vote by 11% but if that's and actually other people like comrades have said actually their poll from the day before was at 7% comrades had the Tories on 41 Labour on 34 for you Garth's model if that is the case then it's a hung parliament so actually the sort of what constitutes success here is actually surprisingly low you know the Tories could win the popular vote by 7% and it's still a hung parliament and so you know I'm really optimistic but it's not full top you know people gonna have to work their arses off because the next two weeks in terms of media coverage in terms of kickback you know if the polls close even further it's going to get a lot worse if they yeah but this is the thing right if you had said to people out there a couple of weeks out from an election where you can vote to increase minimum wage tear down the anti-union laws properly renationalize the NHS have a green new deal deal with the real problems in housing and build a million council houses yeah if you told people we're a couple of weeks away and we're in the game and all this can be achieved it's like people would bite your hands off for that yeah and I know as a as a you know long time leftist if you told me that you could have somebody who is like a couple of weeks out from that election who's in the game where it's really possible yeah that you have a socialist who could change the whole debate of the economy not just in britain but across the west who could really meaningfully take on the interests that are tearing apart the societies and all that needs to happen is in the last two weeks people put everything into it and we fight a good campaign and then it could happen I would have bitten your hands off for it I mean just but the fact that the fact that this project after four years of all the obstacles that we faced is still in the fight is remarkable well I think if people should take courage I think if if labor get more than 35 which I think they will get more I think they get 35 tomorrow if labor get more than 35 bear in mind labor won a general election in 2005 on 35% that would have been two elections where corbin's got more than Blair in 2005 brown and miller band despite everything and people are saying we've got questions in a sec please put the rocket emoji next to them somebody said you know nobody wants to hung parliament I don't want to hang parliament but a coalition not including the lib dems I think it'd be brilliant I honestly think it'd be brilliant because it brings in the smp who would here's who would help push constitutional for whatever I would do in a minority government situation I wouldn't even go for a coalition the first right what I would do if I was labor in a minority government situation and this is why people who like labor as manifesto should not be worried about it it'll come with problems I'm not going to deny that also some within the plp but here's what you try and do with it you take your massively popular policies increase minimum wage housing renationalizing rail mail energy water you put them down on the table and you dare that parliament to vote against them and you build popular support for your project on the basis of the fact that you're going to have liberal democrats and tories and whomever else in that parliament trying to vote down that legislation I tell you what will happen is even with all the media attacks on things where labor have such a clear mandate to improve the lives of people those parties are going to find a heart to frustrate it they're going to find a heart to frustrate the renationalization agenda they're going to have to they're going to find it really high in the minimum wage thing after the longest stagnation in wages in this country since victorian times they're going to have to come out and say if labor put down a bill no we don't want that we don't want an increase minimum wage okay let them say it and let every one of the country see them say it and take a massive loudspeaker and say they've done it I agree but I would say is because I think it's going to be a hang parliament what I would say is you want that majority you want the magic number of whatever it is three two six without the Lib Dems ideally I think because I think they're just going to be awful so between Plyde the Greens the SMP and Labour you know it's almost like if the SM obviously there's some great Scottish Labour MPs that we've had Paul on before from Glasgow fantastic Paul Sweeney I obviously want him to win but if the SMP if it's the SMP that take all those six of the Tories in Scotland great news right um so you know I don't I don't I don't see such a bad picture in terms of that poll and I agree with you actually hung parliament I think it isn't as bad as we might think for Labour this is going to be a very long struggle like this is my perspective go out there and you fight for every vote in the selection because the difference between um the number of Tory seats and the number of Labour seats is literally the difference between life and death for working class people so you fight for every vote that being said this is going to be hard no matter what the outcome is if you end up with a say a massive Labour majority the Labour leadership will still have to deal with their substantial part of Parliamentary Labour Party who do not want to who do not want the programme to pass who it's the right of the SMP or Plyde or the Greens so it's going to be hard no matter the situation if you're going to try and take on the vested interest in this country the extraordinarily concentrated wealth and the political power it has then you're going to be in a struggle it's going to be a long one either way so you can't be afraid of whatever's coming around the corner and the outcomes what you can do is go out in an election period when we have the opportunity that just doesn't exist in the intervening years when the press are systematically misinforming people about what Labour stands for what Jeremy Corbyn stands for and whatever when we have a very particular opportunity to go out there and people are switched on to politics and listening and we have a programme that represents their interests we've got to take advantage of and go and fight for every every last vote and then say at the end of it we make our assessments but we're not afraid of the fact that there could be struggles around the corner with a minority government to Hong Parliament and whatever yeah right we're going to do five to ten minutes of questions we've been very ill disciplined this evening however we've got more than two thousand people watching which is great we've had about a hundred pounds for the super chats which is amazing thank you to Alan who gave us 76 quid and that's brilliant just to say every single penny is helping us to really step up we've got a great new studio we've got all this new equipment we're in Bermond's East Central London we're going to be wearing new shirts you know my new shirt this is actually this is from from Uniqlo so don't people shouldn't get any false ideas about me wasting money on shirts so yeah it all helps thank you so much and if you want to add to that go to sport.environment.com so questions by the rocket emojis I'm taking them let's see I guess the first one is and I saw it asked earlier did Labour make a mistake in backing a second referendum if people read Tribune they know my my view on this so I wrote a piece with the kind of ambiguous title of hold the line after the Euro elections because I anticipated that there were you know the culture warside of brexit has a real problem for Labour like the Labour Party if it's going to fight as a class party going forward it has to be trying to fight on the basis of people's interests and improving their lives if you if politics gets realigned on kind of American style lines where you've got people with liberal social views against people with conservative social views which is mostly where the they were trying to push the brexit debate then the worry is for Labour that you turn into a democratic party style thing with no space for working class people no space for unions and so forth so I was really worried about that for the long term structurally I'm worried about it in this election too and Labour were in a bind on it it was very hard because you're losing votes I think both ways but I I wouldn't have made the concessions on the brexit question leadership did I think there is a chance we pay for it in in the north in Wales and so on in the election but fingers crossed we won't because the other side of it is if we really allow brexit to determine our future here the brexit issue to determine the whole future of the Corbyn project I think it would be a massive mistake there's a great case to be made to all of those people who are like long-term Labour voters in the north of England in Wales particularly who are thinking now of turning to Tories on the basis of brexit and saying you know what have these people ever done for the places you live in the communities you're from what have they ever done for your kids what have they ever done for you or have they ever done for this public services you rely on what about the buses in your area and the cuts that are what about the cuts to local councils what about the peat the queues outside job centres of people who can't you know who are who are dealing with an absolutely draconian system that is forcing people to the point of of suicide in cases like fit for work what about all of that and I think if we make that case strongly we can win people regardless of the brexit issue yeah I mean I think I think the position has been taken by by Labour is a strong one I didn't agree with it initially but increasingly when you look at the sort of trajectory of what's happening with brexit under the Tories I think and also it's really key that Jeremy Corbyn's neutral if if they had this policy but Jeremy Corbyn said we're going to back remain I think it would be a profoundly undemocratic policy and I think it would rightly upset enough people that they would be you know despite everything you just said which I agree with they wouldn't vote for Labour I think I think it's a decent policy I think and given the situation given the conditions I think it's probably the best one we could imagine any more questions let's see one was should Joe Swinson resign as leader of the Liberal Democrats well thankfully that's not a decision that I have to worry about very much as somebody who's not do you think she okay will she let's say right now that that times you go have poll yesterday gave them an increase of one but obviously in real terms they would lose eight because they're present on 21 because of defections do you think she would then have to resign after that look I think that the Lib Dems are in a position where the kind of politics they represent is difficult to find compelling people to put forward as a leader it is possible that there's a kind of palace coup with a Davey and I know he has a considerable kind of support based still who are frustrated that he lost out to Joe Swinson but honestly other than that who are they going to put forward so I don't know I mean I don't think the Lib Dems are going to do fantastically well in this election I worry that they're still they haven't fallen back to 2017 levels yet I think there is a real battle on for people to try to convince Liberal Democrat voters who have voted you know people who are leaning Lib Dem now who voted Labour in 2017 who voted Labour in 2015 who don't like austerity who are not fans of fracking lobbyists and whatever else to get out there and make the case you know that Labour represents a far better version of the future than the Lib Dems do so I think it's I think it's really you know that is really worth doing either way and a straight answer does she does she resign afterwards no she tries to hold on I think even if they don't do great and may have a chance of doing so because the alternatives are so poor best way to hold the BBC's account from Andy Madderley we need a much more much bolder attempt at media reform and the media reform thing should not be because of course what when we when we talk about this what will be the first thing everyone say you want to use the state to make the BBC echo your views that's not the case actually what would be in the interests of public service broadcasting in general is a far more independent structure on the BBC where it is not so cap and hand to government is ring-fenced funding that it can be guaranteed is not going to be put on the chopping block when it pisses off the Tories take for instance tonight what's happened with channel four and the climate debate where the Tories have come out and expressly said you are mean to us we're now going to review your public service provisions that's straightforward I mean that's that's they can't be any more clear about how you're using public service broadcasting than what they've just said if we don't approve what you're doing we will threaten to defund you that situation has to be removed for the interests of the public in general BBC should have a much better structure in terms of accountability that has more people if it's going to be a public service broadcaster not a state broadcaster that has more ordinary people really as part of it who are putting pressure on them and then you've also got to ask the question of where new where people come from where it's staff are coming from and you know the processes of hiring have to be thrown open there because as we've just said it is evident that the kind of people who are rising to leading positions certainly in their political coverage have a very narrow particular worldview that in many cases doesn't reflect public opinion so I think we need a bolder media reform agenda in the Labour Party I would encourage people to read the work of Tom Mills, Dan Hine and so forth who've looked into some of this I think we need a much bolder media reform argument but the big structural things can be dealt with we you know we can say to the BBC that we're going to make real difference in terms of their independence by not forcing them into chasing their tail over the license fee and by not having such clear accountability you know responsibility to government of it's leading people leading figures. So final question it's well it's two questions I've put into one basically firstly would Corbyn in power increase the likelihood of United Ireland be as quick as possible with that one and then secondly what's the state of the Irish left right now? I think it's a very complicated one the first one I mean I wouldn't give a clear answer on it because I think the problems you're going to get people underestimate the degree to which there is significant opposition even in the labour movement in this country to to unity referendum and so on and again there are structural reasons for that so I don't know what the outcome is my own view on the on the unity question obviously I'm a supporter of it but I think it has to be a particular kind of campaign and I do worry a little bit about the campaign that's shaping up there I mean I'm not wildly interested in winning over Unionist big business interests simply because they're annoyed at Brexit for like that's to me not the idea of a socialist republic that James Connolly fought for if we're going to have an Irish unity referendum I think it has to be not just stitching together two broken states and creating a 32-county tax haven it has to be actually fighting for a fundamentally different society in Ireland a new republic and it has to be led by a popular movement and I hope that's what develops I don't know if it will be the state of the Irish left right now I'm okay I can get it in the neck from people for if I criticize things have an effect off but I think it's a very difficult position I think it's a very difficult position I was involved in you know the water movement which was a real high point for the Irish left historically we were getting hundreds of thousands of people out in the streets and doubling multiple times in a year in a southern state of 4.4 million it's incredible numbers and you know the hard truth for everyone involved all the parties all the unions all the figures is that that momentum was not consolidated things went backwards for that and I think Ireland is in a difficult spot Sinn Féin is the biggest left party and has a lot of good left-wing people and so forth but not a very ambitious platform in my view and may have got more ambitious of the last Irish but in terms of the manifesto and so forth not a very ambitious platform and a lot of people in its leadership are concerned about fighting a unique referendum which means that they don't piss off too many people they don't piss off too many particularly business interests and holding events with you know liberal business people in the south arguing that we could have great economics in a 32-county island because we'd simply extend the tax haven and have tax mutualisation as they call it. This is the Sinn Féin position right on corporation tax. Yeah yeah you see the Sinn Féin as harmonisation with north and south. This is the thing right so Sinn Féin sort of and sort of don't they're trying to ride two horses here because in the south they're a sizable party with a working class base which which was the biggest you know beneficiary of the austerity years in terms of left-wing politics in the north they're a cross-class nationalist party with you know millionaire newspaper owners as their mayors or previously and so forth like it's it's a it's very hard to be those both of those things yeah and so yes they're in favour of tax harmonisation I mean that's in the documents because right now it's corporation tax right and by the way no one pays it this is the other thing you're going to hear like here as well and corporation tax people say oh 25% 20% ignore the headline numbers no one pays it go and look at the loopholes that are put in place for corporation tax and it will drive you insane the number of companies based in Ireland who pay 0.1% of their tax and corporation tax because of these loopholes is is insane so yeah I mean I think Sinn Féin for that reason they didn't do well in the euros and local elections which just happened there they lost some very good people who for instance is MEPs and so forth I think they're in a difficult spot I think the Irish left in general there's a bit been a bit of a turn to the right but there's a fundamental thing which is the nature of the Irish economy you've got this ring of people doing very well out of the tax haven situation which being frank is what we have I know a lot of people dispute it but ridiculous tax haven you've got a ring of finance pharma tech legal and accountancy doing very well and then you've got hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people locked out of that prosperity our headline GDP numbers are farce because they count all of these companies that are letter boxes and Dublin as Irish companies which is a which is a nonsense the actual truth is the Irish economy is is very uneven is open to whatever the next economic crash comes very open to it because of the situation that we have in terms of being reliant on foreign direct investment and there are hundreds of thousands of people who can't afford decent places to live who are stuck on jobs that pay them too little who are reliant on terrible public services by the way one good reason not to allow the Tories get their way with your NHS the average cost is 70 quid every time you go to the GP in Ireland that's what it's like now imagine if you're somebody who's struggling on the bed breadline you have to pay that what happens is people just don't go and they get sicker that's what happens when you don't have a proper public health system so there's huge numbers of people in Ireland getting screwed over by the status quo and my view the standard kind of Marxist view is eventually those structural problems will replicate themselves in politics and we'll have another left-wing upsurge you've been brilliant we went over significantly tonight but it was a great it was a great great chat thanks everyone for tuning in I believe we're having a show tomorrow night with Michael Walker Ash Saka maybe somebody else too my name is Aaron Mestani you've been great this is Tisgy Sar we'll see you tomorrow


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