Tens Of Thousands Attend Vigil For Professor Jason Arday

0:00This summer, don't squeeze in. Spread out. Find homes big enough for your whole guest list on Verbo. From family reunions to trips with friends, Verbo has spacious summer stays for every group, size, and budget. That's vacation rentals done right. Start exploring on Verbo and book your next day now. Welcome to Novara Live, coming up tonight. Tens of thousands of attended at your Fralga Square virtual to pay tribute to the late Professor Jason Ardae and reformers proposed a £50 billion welfare cut, which would include changes to disability benefits for millions. I'm Helena, a Ken or Justice MCG, and tonight, I'm joined by Banteca Kenby. Banteca, how you doing? Hi, nice to be here with you. It's good to have you on the show. Good to have you on the show. Now, before we begin our show tonight, we have a personal message from Novara Media co-founder, Aaron Bostani. Before our first story tonight, I want to talk about my own role in the weeks preceding

1:00the death of Jason Ardae and to apologize. I'm not going to speak about whether the journalism covering the story was merited, or if there was a public interest in the media following the story. That was covered to some extent on last night's show and you can find discussions about it elsewhere. There are a few things I want to say, though. First, it's beyond doubt that much of the deluge of coverage aimed at Jason Ardae wasn't just racialized, but racist. That applies to likes of Nathan Coffness, who led with the story when the Times Higher Education Supplement did not, as well as many voices on social media. But it also applies to titles like The Times and Telegraph, who categorized Ardae as a DEI poster boy. As my colleague Ash Sarkar wrote yesterday, white people, when they do wrong, are allowed to be individuals. Ardae was made a stand-in for critical race theory, DEI, and black participation in higher education. I'll let many others. I suspect that, if Jason Ardae were a white person, it'd still be alive. Then there's the fact that much of the media,

2:00despite warnings Ardae was at his psychological limit, carried on chasing the story, regardless. They continued to hound him, even when Cambridge announced a new investigation, and after Ardae resigned from his post on August 5th. Reasonably, then, Ardae must have thought to himself that nothing, literally nothing, would stop the media from pursuing him. It was ferocious, never-ending. Compulsive. I've been in situations before where I felt helpless. People have tried to remove my own PhD from me. I've lost jobs because of coordinated political campaigns based on what I believe. But none of it comes remotely close to what Jason Ardae endured. Between the 24th of July and the 14th of August, when his death was reported, the British press published 249 articles about Jason Ardae. Importantly, most of those were published after he'd resigned from his post. The argument for the public interest, given his mental state, which was related to many in the media, including myself, as well as the fact he'd left his job clearly,

3:02should have changed the media dynamic. It clearly should have meant that the media stop and reflect, except it didn't. Of course, Jason Ardae was an influential person. He was successful. That shouldn't be evaded, wiped out, ignored. I've seen him referred to as a obscure academic. That's not true. He was a professional chair at Cambridge, a guest editor on the stay program. He was a panelist on BBC Question Time. And with influence comes scrutiny, that I placed myself as well, by the way. But Ardae was also a vulnerable man, firstly because of his neurodivergence, secondly, because of his state of mind in the final weeks of his life, a state of mind which was widely relayed to the media. Speaking personally, I lost sight of that second part of the vulnerability. After being told of his state of mind by some other trusts and Maya, I said I'd stopped talking about the story, which I did. But that doesn't excuse what I'd already done. Again, I won't touch on our reporting here,

4:04nor seeks to defend it, not least because I, personally, was guilty of something much, much worse. On the 7th of August on X, I refer to Ardae as a con man. Now I'm not the times or telegraph or the sun newspaper, but I do have 180,000 follows on X. That's a decent number. And with that kind of follow-in comes responsibility, not least because it's plausible Jason Ardae himself saw that post. So what was the basis of it? What was the foundation of saying something so decisive and vicious and nasty? It was a lecture. He gave it UCL where I studied in 2021, posted to YouTube. Now I've watched that lecture back. Imagine if someone watched a video of you or me on a bad day or just a middling day, frankly. Maybe you were unprepared because of a family emergency or you were unwell. Maybe you just had bad news. You had too much on your plate. And they proceeded to impune your character

5:04and your credentials on the basis of a single video to almost 200,000 people. If that was me, I'd feel distressed. But if that happened while the media were undertaking an unprecedented excavation of everything I've ever said or done, I'd be despondent. Actually, I'll be honest. I don't know how I'd begin to feel. It's literally unimaginable. So naturally, after reflecting on that post in particular, I'm sorry. I apologize. That wasn't journalism. Journalism is when you seek the facts. It's a quest for the truth. You reach out to sources. You engage with diverse viewpoints. This was anything but it was bio. It's everything I dislike about the modern media. It's why we started Navara. Now it's important to add that I said that on my own ex account, not on a show, not on a Navara media article. But I co-founded this thing. So I accept that for many, quite rightly, the two are interchangeable.

6:06Except an apology isn't enough, is it? I wish I could ask Jason for his forgiveness for what I said, but I can't. What I can do is ask for the forgiveness of his friends, colleagues, and family. Now, they might not want to forgive me. That's their right. That's the point. Forgiveness is theirs to give, not mine to take. It's about them, not me. But when you've done something wrong, something gravely wrong, which I did, you need to seek forgiveness. You need to reflect, learn, and ensure it's not repeated. Professionally, I erred, but ethically, and that's what I really care about. I really screwed up. I can't make amends, obviously. But I'm going to reflect on my behaviour and all of this, and how I can use my energies more productively. More productively to cover those issues are audience really care about those stories that really matter, and how I can make a difference for the better, not the worse.

7:06Our top story tonight. Last night, tens of thousands of people gathered in London's Trafalgar Square to remember the life of Professor Jason Ardae who died last Friday. According to organizers stand up to racism, some 30,000 people attended the event, with friends, supporters, and countless others mourning while standing in solidarity with the academic, and leaving flowers beneath Nelson's column. Many were dressed in black with some carrying signs reading rest in power. In the weeks leading up to Ardae's death, including in the days following his resignation from Cambridge University, he was a subject of an unrenenting media onslaught. As reported yesterday, 249 articles were published about him in around three weeks, alongside relentless social media commentary, breaking user alerts and video reports. During speeches from friends, supporters, and MPs at the vigil, the media was a frequent focus of fury. This was Labour MP, Diane Ebert. Recent weeks, the attacks on Professor Jason Ardae

8:07reached a climax, and he felt he had no choice but to resign. And he must have felt that if he resigned, the attacks on him would stop. But in fact, they got even worse from his resignation to his suicide last week was just three weeks. But the newspapers printed 249 articles about him. This was a vicious campaign, but it wasn't just a campaign against the Professor. It was a campaign against all of us. All of us. And that is why it is so important and to call together and fight for justice,

9:12for Professor Jason Ardae. Yes! Diane Ebert also described the genesis of that delusive coverage. We have to remember that the campaign against him wasn't just a matter of a few weeks. He was first appointed as a professor in Cambridge three years ago. And for those three years, he has had a vicious campaign, a bitter campaign by anonymous people by other professors who just didn't believe that a black man should be a Cambridge professor. Amongst those who were leading people campaign against him

10:12was a professor called Nathan Hathnos. He calls himself a race-realist. He was dismissed by a manual college because of his racism. And he insisted he campaigned over three years against evil. He claimed that Jason was not smart enough to be a Cambridge professor. He claimed that race is linked to intelligence and that without diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, there would be no black academics at top university.

11:14We created a university. Well, he is well known for saying that. But stupid thing, how many people at Cambridge and other top universities think exactly the same? Photographer and activist, Missine Hariman, was a friend of Jason Ardaise. And he spoke about how he thought Jason should be remembered. Jason should still be here today. And those who knew him, those who love him, those who have joyful memories of him should cherish it like a bird with broken wings. It is important for Jason's children to know how he lived, who he was. His legacy must be one of change and hope. The impunity of the Fourth of State must stop otherwise more lives will be lost.

12:17In the last 48 hours, these papers have been deleting social media posts and articles without shame, showing their culpability in plain sight. What kind of nation are we if we allow our fellow citizens to be hounded in this way? We have to see the humanity in each other just like Jason did. Otherwise, who are we? I will finish by saying that Jason's name must mean accountability, over impunity, and community that this country should be proud of. Another friend and mentor of Ardaise, Lord Simon Willie, principal of Hampton College Cambridge, described what happened once the academic was appointed to his professorial chair at Cambridge. And when he arrived at Cambridge, I was that happiest man in the world.

13:20But from that moment on, the dogs of hell started on Jason Ardaise, because they couldn't handle a black man, a loving man, a decent human being, to be in a place like that. And over those three years, I've watched them again and again and again until the pile-on. Remember this, hold on to this. This wonderful man never stole a bag of crisps. He was exonerated from plagiarism. Yes. Yes. Yes. Woo. Woo. Yes.

14:22Yes. Yes. But the dogs of hell, the hounds of hell, sought to pursue any inaccuracy that they could say Jason is a bad man. Jason doesn't deserve. Jason doesn't deserve to be in Cambridge. For them, Jason doesn't deserve to be alive. There needs to be some reckoning. Yes. 100%. 100%. 100%. There needs to be some justice. But today, today, today, today for all of you, today, with all of you, say after me, I am Professor Jason Arde.

15:22I am Professor Jason Arde. And I will not be defeated. I will not be crushed. I will not be destroyed. I will not be destroyed. I will not be destroyed. We will stand strong. We will stand strong. And we will win. Thank you. Labour MP for Brent East, Dawn Butler also spoke at the vigil, calling for a clear response to Jason Arde's death. Now is the time to bring down the systems that don't protect us. And seek transparency and fairness. Yes. We can recognise and we must always recognise the racism. But this isn't a battle against black versus white. It's a battle against right versus wrong.

16:22It's a battle against good versus evil. And it's a battle against the races and the anti-racist. Are you an anti-racist? It is something that is an act. You have to actively be an anti-racist. You can't just say it. You have to do it. You have to be it. Martin Luther King said, if you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving those who are doing the oppressing. This battle hasn't changed. It's just a method and system that is different. But you know what else is different? We are different. We are different. There are enough of us. There are more of us than there are of them. And we have the different generations together,

17:22united together. We can hold them to account. But we have to do it together. We can also support each other. We can also mean on each other. We can say hello to each other. We can say we like what you're wearing. We can love each other. The thing that will conquer hate is love. The visual close with Bella Barra-Addy, the MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill, where Jason our day was from, reading this statement from his family. This has been an incredibly painful time for our family. And we are still coming to terms with the tragic loss of our beloved Jason. What has become clear over the past 72 hours is the profound impact he had on people. We are grateful to all who have created light in this dark time through kindness, generosity,

18:25and solidarity. Your presence here to remember him this evening means a lot to us. And while we cannot be there in person, please know that we stand with you in spirit. The public cruelty Jason was subjected to was too much for any man to bear. The outpouring of love, support, and grief since his death means so much to us. Although it is bitter sweet, now kindness is needed in life, not just in death. We'll never know what might have been different had he experienced more of it while he was still here. What we do know is how deeply he was loved. And we wish to especially thank those who knew Jason in life and tried to get through to him, who supported him in his darkest hour

19:25and who saw the person in the middle of this awful storm. Above all, we wish for Jason to be remembered for the wonderful person he was and all that he achieved. A selfless and gentle soul he tirelessly uplifted others through his words and actions. His achievements were great and we do not want misrepresentations about his character to overshadow them. By continuing to share memories and stories of the positive difference he made, we hope to remember the fullness of his life. As we move forward, we ask that people on adjacent in the way he would have wanted with peace, respect and grace. We trust people to act in that spirit and to be mindful of local permissions which may be required for public events.

20:27We hope people understand that as a small and grieving family we are not able to review all end our endorsement to events organized by others. Finally, we'd like to share some words from our beloved Professor Jason Arde. Every human life has a purpose. Imagine what might happen if we're all united in the just cause of valuing human beings equally. There may be just maybe. All kinds of great things might be possible. Let that be our Jason's legacy. And may he rest in peace? Bansekovsky, the visual was a lot of people in attendance was very deeply moving. I think, very unique as well. What were your impressions of it? I think it was a really moving event. The turnout is really significant, right? That tells us a lot about the emotion

21:27that this particular event has struck the death of Jason Arde. 30,000 people at last minutes notice. The visual was only organised Friday night, Saturday morning, perhaps at the latest. That really says something about the way in which this has impacted people. Just with my interactions with people, what I've seen on social media, the outpouring of grief about this has been really significant. I thought some of those speeches as well that you showed were really, really important. Diana, I think, is right about the manner of this being a vicious campaign. This really was a campaign out to get a particular individual motivated a lot by race and by the racism in particular of one individual who seemed to have quite personal awful grievances. I know we're going to talk a bit about Nathan Confassi, who was mentioned a little bit in the segment as well. And she said something else, really important as well. And Diana, but it's someone of the question I think who knows a lot about the race and in the spotlight, you know, to have your right to be there

22:31kind of unfairly questioned, to be unfairly scrutinised by the press, so she's got real skin in that game. But she said something else, really important as well, which was that, you know, it's a threat to all of us. I think she's right about that. There is a real threat to all of us about a press that is able to go on the rampage in this manner and is able to target a particular individual. So kind of, you know, in a way that's completely out of scale and completely disproportionately and is able to do so at least in part by being motivated by a racist individual, a kind of racist scholar at Cambridge. And that's something that should touch all of us and should worry all of us. Because I do agree that this probably won't be the last time that we see more very hard-right, racist kind of mobilisation of these types of things. And using the press and using the media as a means to do it. So I think that was a really, really significant kind of intervention that she made.

23:31100% agree. Because like any minority background as well as any person who is not from like the white majority in this country, anyone tomorrow who's even like a vaguely public figure could be the next target. And in that realm, right, like the media has come under a lot of scrutiny during the speeches but also in terms of the discussion after I feel what happened. I mean, plenty more to come, I'm sure. But what do you like to see happen next? Yeah, I mean, there's questions isn't there about the media. And that's where I think most people's grief and kind of anger and frustration is at the moment is in the media. And you've got kind of two sides to this, right? You've got the mainstream media in particular and thinking about the scale and the proportionality of the way in which they reported this, the manner in which you know, I'm sure many of us have seen screenshots of advertisements, for example, about advertising or pushing a kind of minor story about Jason Ida for clicks and for money. That's really quite gaulling, isn't it?

24:31That the kind of transactional nature of financially, what it meant to the press becomes very clear then, doesn't it? Which is extremely worrying. That's not really a press which is acting in public interest. That's a press acting in the interest of profit. And I can't say anything as well. It's difficult as well because as soon as they published more pieces about it, you're generally all of the ads, you're having whatever it is, it becomes even more of a public story which draws in more audience and then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that the story will become even more overinflated than it already was at the time. Yeah, and I think it will self a very long piece about this, which I think is worth looking at, which kind of really unpicks the media's role in this. And he talked about the concept of the grid used in mainstream media right and the ways in which they're very specifically looking at analytics of what is playing well and what isn't. I think it was mentioned by one of the speakers there that the media attention really rockets up post-resignation, which logically you think it would do the opposite, right? Especially if you're thinking anywhere near the realm of public interest, it should decline.

25:31And instead you get a rocketing up. And that's clearly because they must have seen that a profit incentive in doing that as well. So I think that the mechanism of capitalism within our media system are very much intertwined. But the smell weakness, right, is resigned, right? As soon as there had been like a victory for it as far as the press line on this was concerned. Of course, the broader kind of the right wing and the more kind of race elements of the coverage were concerned. They'd, man, they'd won. Someone's see it gone, like they'd got what they wanted. They'd removed the person who they feel shouldn't have been there because of his race and lots of cases. And so what else do they have left to do other than stick the knife in and do a victory lap around this man's career? It's really, it's sadistic in a way. Yeah, deeply, deeply sadistic. The other side of it as well, which I know the show touched on quite a lot yesterday, is also the role of alternative media, right, or left wing media. And media that says it's going to be different. We want to do something different, right, compared to the mainstream.

26:31That's why we're here. And I think it's incumbent on me to also reflect a little bit about some of my involvement in the commentary on this story. I think there was a lot of grief and a lot of upset about elements of things that I had said. And I want to, you know, in the spirit of just being completely transparent off of my apologies for that. I think one of the things for me to think about as somebody on the left in media and in alternative media is that there are choices, territorial choices to make about whether you try to counter a story like this or a manufactured story like this, or whether you just choose not to cover it at all. And it may be reason why, I think in this case, to say it might have been fair or better, particularly given the wider context of what was playing out with this sheer amount of media attention that was already on Mr. Arday, to have just not talked about it or not covered it. And I think sometimes as well, and this is just personal to me, I know I can't speak for Navarra, and I'm not speaking for Navarra, but for me. I think sometimes in in rushing to not allow the right to dominate the narrative,

27:34because these narratives are scary that the right propagate, right? You know, trying to push out this idea that it's DEI gone mad, and now Black and Brown people have got all these juicy spots in academia at the expense of white people. And I think sometimes in an attempt to try and counter that with a left wing alternative, you know, that can kind of take people, do derail people off that, you know, slipping down that line of thought. So I think you end up talking about the arguments, but you know, I can forget that there's an individual here, and there's an individual who also deserves empathy and consideration, and the person at the heart of this, and for that, you know, I'm really sorry, and I really do forget that as well. So there's lots on here for alternative media to reflect about how it moves forward with this, for there to be a bit of a reckoning with us as well, because if we say that we're going to be alternative media, then we have to mean it, and we have to do it. And it has to be an actual, it has to get all of the coverage was around everyone else at discretion of him as a person, the role that he had, less than institutional critique and lots of cases, which there was institutional critique from some people,

28:36but there was the predominant coverage that we saw from obviously purely right media, but then of course, like a legit left media as well, and of course independent media, also covered individual history rather than what was going in the background, the reason why it was even being covered in the first place, I remember when I first kind of broke out, I didn't even think very much of the story, and then I turn away and I come back and suddenly it's dominating every single headline, every single newspaper, every single magazine is covering it, and even then even outside of the media, on social media, in just the broader like discussion in the public realm, it was everywhere. You couldn't avoid it. Every single person had their own take of you's tweets and Facebook posts and posts on Instagram and TikTok. We're going viral everywhere. It was the talk of this made its way to the United States and made its way to other countries that became a global story. It kind of metastasized out of control, and you know, everything that's a voice that goes into that is feeding into what, again, what we'd heard from how Jason was spoke to his friends and his confidence

29:36about how he felt like he was relentless the way he was being covered. Yeah, and he clearly felt like he had no other way out, that kind of human cost to a story. It's an incalculable cost that the loss of somebody's life, you know, and that has to be some kind of a watershed moment. In a lot of ways, I think, including here in all alternative and left wing media as well. And, I mean, well, this story reminds me of actually, as I can over, Krollow, there's a, I don't know if you knew about the story of Dr. Beth Upton in Scotland, who became part of like a media storm around like a high profile case in terms of the NHS for somebody taking the NHS to tribunal over the fact that she was transgender and people were sharing a space with her, right? And basically, Beth Upton, the doctorate in question, she was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the NHS was found to have not followed procedure. But it became like part of the right wing kind of discussion of the day, of the discussion, do you sure? And again, dreams and dreams of articles, social media posts, it was all part of this thing, and she moved to Australia. She flipped the country to move to Australia because of the level of kind of the press scrutiny

30:40that we should upturned her life again, nothing other than existing or transgender basically. And the media followed her to Australia. They posted stories in this country and Australia, go, what's this doctor did? Look, don't you know who she is? And she basically couldn't even in another country of the world. And again, like when the press can act like this in the way that it did to Jason Arday, again, it's tragic. And it shows the level to which these things can take a mental toll on people. And I mean, because social media, especially, and of course the public media too, and the content media, we are part of public media more broadly, in the internet world, it's just impossible to ignore, it's impossible to extricate yourself from where the discourse goes online. And then, unless we check ourselves, everyone, of course, again, we covered this on our show and people gathered individually. And as we will check ourselves in the level to which that we understand how these things can get out of control so quickly, there's a broader discussion how the public realm has to take account of the fact that in an online world, it's still different to what it used to be in terms of public coverage.

31:42Yeah, absolutely, completely agree. Now, we saw Diane Abbott mention Nathan Coffness there, the white supremacist philosopher who triggered the media deluge that overwhelmed Jason Arday. Posting on Twitter, he couldn't resist inserting himself into other people's mourning, writing this shortly after Arday's vigil came to a close. There's an anti-coffness hate rally in Trafalgar Square with 15,000 attendees. If I were London, there's a real possibility that I would be murdered. A thousands of academics and journalists knew the truth about Jason Arday for more than a year. Now, you know why no one said anything. Now, first of all, I'd like to contend with the idea that somehow that there's been a truth that's been established here. Lots of these things are still up in the air. And plenty of things that have been shown, like the claims that made has been cleared off, for example, the play-duty claims by LGMU, for example. And second of all, I mean, I don't think, you know, necessarily people are being for people who are murdered here. But I don't think you understand anything just how much, like the hatred you peddled in and why people are reacting in such a way. It's interesting the bubble that he's in, where you're so convinced that he's uncovered an ultimate truth of people just too unwilling to hear,

32:46rather than someone who is a peddler of crank pseudoscience, who is denigrating entire demographics, and then wondering why there might be a harsh backlash to his, you know, pretty hateful comments and his despicable ideology. A band-second, what do you think of his comments? It's the usual kind of victimhood mentality, isn't it? Somebody who's actually wielded an extraordinary level of power as an individual, you know, he's managed to not only get Jason Ida to resign, but consequences, of course, far, far worse, then that is now playing victim. You know, now that people are gathering together, as is their right completely to do, you know, country that's supposed to have free speech, and people's freedom of speech protected, the right to gather assembly. That's wrong now. This victimhood mentality, twin with somebody who's actually got an extraordinary amount of power is, you know, the level of delusion that that must require is, you know, really quite astonishing. I mean, when I first heard about this gentleman, you know, and the idea that he called himself a race-realist, but Shinoxie Moron, as you pointed out, right, there's no such thing as being a race-realist, like, race is a socialized, it's a sociological pardoning category, categorization of things, it's invented, it's made.

33:50You can't claim that it's real, realist about what? It's made up. You know, it's completely, completely ridiculous. And of course, that's just a pseudonym anyway for saying, you're a racist. You know, that's who that man is. He's racist, and he's very clearly, I think, been driven by racism in this story. You know, the things that he's talked about in terms of saying, well, you know, black and brown people, you know, they need the eye otherwise, they would never be good enough on merit. You know, it's totally ludicrous. And it ignores, of course, the fact that, you know, there are plenty of middle-class white, you know, male professors, I'm sure, out there, who, you know, probably wouldn't have got to where they got to if they weren't middle-class white and male. So, you know, how do we account for that? So, I just find him to be a kind of highly distasteful individual. And it's one thing for him to be a distasteful individual on his own. That's one thing. But it's another thing for him to have been able to wield that level of power and be taken kind of so seriously, I think, exposed within our kind of wider structures. And that's something of concern, right? It's one thing for you as an individual to just be quite horrible and have these kind of really awful backwards racist views. It's another thing for that to be then twin, of course, with power. That's the really scary thing.

34:54One of the, I mean, very precious few outlets that commented on this story mentioned the source of this. They talked about the claims that Jason had that they'd allegedly been able to dig up, right? But at no point did they pinpoint the fact that all of this kind of media for Rory came because, you know, right when media channels were trawling, right when blogs for the scandalous stories that they could then promote. There was a real kind of that a delirious of duty, I think, from lots of corners of the media to give this guy the cover of not, you know, making it clear that the reason why this discussion is happening is because of what is essentially as far as I can, in my opinion, I kind of racist crank pseudo science, masquerading is proper inquiry. Yeah, and I did a sky new segment on this on this on a Friday evening in the wake of the news and one of the things they said to me was, well, this investigation originally was coming from the Times Higher Education publication. And they didn't mention the origins of it either. So yeah, there's been a real amnesia and a real blind spots, but it climbed kindly in terms of that the reporting on this and where the kind of racist origins of this story have come from.

35:54Absolutely, absolutely. On Sunday, reform UK's Treasury spokesperson Robert Generick penned an article for the telegraph, proclaiming that the welfare state was neglecting young people and briefing a set of brutal cuts to a welfare state. He started to buy admonishing the rise of those claiming disability welfare. Some 6.9 million people are now entitled to receive disability benefits 2.5 million more than 20 years ago. More than 20,000 join the personal independence payment caseload each month. And 2 thirds of those who began claiming in 2017 were still claiming in five years later. By 2031, health and disability benefits will cost 110 billion pounds a year, 3,600 pounds every family in the country. This is not an epidemic of broken backs and loss limbs since 2002, the show of working age people claiming from mental health and behavioral conditions has tripled. This is not generosity. It is suicidal empathy. It's not the first time the right wing have invoked the concept of suicidal empathy. I can't add that as breached containment from the hard right in the US to behave through UK political discourse.

36:56It's invocation suggests that the country is so keen to show empathy for those with mental health concerns that it is causing the entire country to collapse. It implies that somehow the vulnerable and those that care for them are to blame for the social malaise of modern Britain. But the claims that this is down to the rise in pip claims is difficult to justify when 66% of pip appeals are successful and people stay on the health element of universal credit long term. Suggesting that these are not people on the take but those with genuine concerns that the welfare state is there to help. Also, there's no such thing as claiming for mental health. Pip claims are based upon the ability to perform certain tasks. It is not awarded based on condition. Generic them an on to layout the kind of savings that reform UK will be proposing. On Monday, reform will publish making welfare work. A 50-page plan for the most comprehensive redesign of welfare systems machinery in a generation. The scale is enormous. The coalition's welfare savings under Ian Duncan Smith then regard this the outer limit of political possibility to total 20.5 billion. The conservative today proposed 23 billion.

37:56Our changes which go far beyond disability benefits are more than double that. 22 billion pounds of our reforms will take the form of changes to the disability programme alone. Reminder for those at home that Ian Duncan Smith reforms to welfare that reform UK wants to eclipse and scale by a factor of two. A part of an austerity programme that studies suggest calls up to 30,000 excess deaths. The initial reporting by the Telegraph on Sunday reported that reform UK are planning 50 billion of welfare cuts in total, including scrapping pip and LZW away altogether, and instead instructing illegal local authorities to provide non-cash services and support through local disability accounts. Removing or modifying the benefits of almost 3 million people. What's interesting here is that the biggest thing that I think is probably one of the only things you can say about things like pip and the predissessor disability living allowances, what they provided in terms of cash payments were the way of providing the disabled who were able to claim those things, even if maybe they weren't large enough in scale or in terms of their generosity, it gave them independence through cash payments to be able to decide for themselves

39:02what they should use their disability welfare for and how would best help them on an individual case, because no disability is the same. But by taking away cash payments and then saying, look, here's the burden that we can place upon local authorities and then go through all of the different bureaucracy that that would entail, essentially again, further study that the disabled people are a burden, they can't look after themselves, they can't be given independence. There must be treaters of burden upon local authorities and be dulled about support just as the state would require them to have, rather than them choosing what support is best for them. Again, which is going to tie the disabled up in levels of continual paperwork and bureaucracy and also remove the sense of independence that they have been allowed to gain over the last half of many years in which that we've come to better understand the individual needs of each disabled person. Now on Monday, generic unveiled their welfare reforms in a press conference, however there was one substantial change in rhetoric from the briefings at the weekend. Unable to return to work, we'll go through a single rigorous disability needs assessment, replacing today's many overlapping assessments.

40:07Cash support above standard universal credit rates will be reserved for severe cases. And those who need additional help beyond living costs will receive it in kind through disability support accounts. And the most vulnerable will continue to be supported through personal independence payments, reformed and enhanced as PIP health security allowances. It appears that at least rhetorically reform UK have realized that eliminating entirely disability welfare schemes such as PIP, wholesale isn't popular. Prevaring to change tone and imply that PIP will continue in some altered form for a mythical cohort of them most vulnerable that they have yet to define. And this was confirmed by generic true in the Q&A. In terms of people who are currently claiming, for example, PIP, what we're saying today is that PIP will continue, but it's going to be reformed. We're going to create a new version of it. And we're going to ask those people who have mild conditions, principally mental health conditions, to be reassessed.

41:15I think that's common sense because we see the vast increase that we've had in recent times of those conditions. For other people, or proposing table, will actually be better. We'll provide more security because instead of being reassessed on a rolling three year basis, these are people with serious disabilities. We're going to give them the peace of mind that I think they deserve. And we're going to say that they're not going to be a reassessed for the next three years. And then they'll be reassessed in the normal way thereafter. So for the people who really need the benefits the most, this is actually a significantly enhanced position with greater security. Now, I don't buy this for one minute, but what we're definitely seeing here is the invocation of the deserving poor versus the undeserving poor, the people who are trying versus the skyvers. When in reality, if you're going to try and get 22 billion pounds of well-fed cuts purely on the disabled alone, the idea that you'll leave everybody who deserves it untouched and only attack the people who are undeserving is total nonsense.

42:15It's totally unworkable. No amounts of mass will be able to make that up. Because again, the of course problem here is that he doesn't understand what he's saying here. The idea that I know there are low and level mental health concerns that are being taken up by PIP. That doesn't exist because people are judged, as I said previously, based upon their ability to perform certain tasks, you're not judged based upon your individual condition. It's how your condition affects you and how you struggle with such a condition and what extra you'd need to be able to mitigate that condition through cash payments, which is how PIP works. This is the three-card trick that every single welfare reformer tries to do when DLA was replaced with PIP and when PIP will be replaced by whatever crazy mad system reformers are replacing with. The way in which they justify is always the previous system that so many people who don't deserve it through the cracks and allow them to claim fortunately, but we will protect everyone who does need it. What happened when we replaced DLA with PIP when Ian Duncan Smith got his hands on the welfare system, huge numbers of people who did need it and you're not not getting access to what they're doing.

43:15Remember A. Toss Miracles? Remember the obscene stories that we saw about people being declared fit for work or having been declared as if they weren't actually disabled when clearly that they were when they had been in remission from cancer and recovering, for example. These are many, many cases that we saw. It is always the case that people are over-ect in terms of the amount of people who are undeserving of these welfare benefits, especially when it comes to fraud, when it is close to 0.2% I put one to the DWP's figures which actually aren't claiming in the veracity in which they should be. So I don't buy any of these arguments from Robert Jenric for a moment, but when it comes to PIP and them saying, what's not getting rid of it, they're in your reforming year, why the partial you turn? Well, this next clip might be why? Most of your target seats are in areas where people with a high proportion of people on welfare, a phrase in Elcendez and Analysis yesterday showing that your top 20 target seats. We don't just have 20 target seats. Your top 20 target seats are... Sorry to bring the news to the time. We've got a lot more target seats than that. I said top, top 20 target seats are PIP hotspots. People listening this morning who might be feeling frightened hearing that that kind of vital lifeline could be cut.

44:26What's your message to them and do you think that might be a difficult message for you to sell at the next general election? Well, let me be very clear. If I haven't been so already, we are going to protect the most vulnerable in society. Nothing that we talk about today is about pensioners. In fact, part of the motivation is to continue to provide the support that pensioners need. It's by doing tough things like this that we can continue to sustainably pay for the triple lock, for example, for pensioners. We're ensuring that children who are currently claiming, or their families are claiming on their behalf, disability benefit will be protected. And we're saying that those people who really need this are always going to be protected under a reform government. Not a abolishing PIP. People are obviously familiar with that, but we are reforming it and ensuring that it works better. And in particular, looking at the minority of people who, for whatever reason, have been able to claim it, particularly for mental health conditions, which I think most people in the country now agree with us is not sensible, is not sustainable.

45:31That is the issue that we're really looking at. There are former running into the same problem that Labour did last year. Everyone believes that they are part of the deserving poor and that everyone else is part of the undeserving poor. Try and go leading around popular polling support for welfare reform, which is a hard reality when the country actually has to contend with what welfare cuts might entail. There is no gold or lock zone where welfare can be dissected entirely down to those who genuinely serve it and filtering out all the chances. As then the systems allow genuine claimants to fall through the cracks. And it's not just theoretical reform voters have reacted to the weekends briefings with horror. This is what happened when a PIP claimant interrogated General Contour TV. You know when you go out canvassing and you mean people that you have to convince, you're going to have to convince our next call of George's undunded, George, you threw a Robert Generate? Hiya, how are you doing? Hi, how are you? Good. I was in a foreign supporter after thinking about what you said yesterday the last 24 hours you've been lost a couple of votes in our household.

46:31I'll tell you the reason why. Take it you've never claimed benefits. We have been through my wife claims equivalent to PIP in Scotland and she's been through hell three times trying to reclaim it. I'm talking about problems here in several of government last time who tried to reform these benefits. People fall through the net and every politician I hear just says that people who will need help will receive help. So you wife shouldn't be losing that but we are going to reform it so that we get those people who frankly shouldn't be on it.

47:40Ten is self-buff it and back into the work piece which does not mean I don't want to pry into your wife's condition unless you want to share it with us but it does not sound as if she's one of those people who's taking advantage of it. Now the caller is absolutely right. Generic knows not all about PIP or the welfare system or how it works especially when PIP is an income supplement not income replacement. So trying to imply that cutting access to PIP would get people back into the workplace when it has the opposite of reality a sizeable number of PIP claimants are in work. They are in fact less likely to stay in work without their income supplement that allows them to make the reasonable adjustments to their life that are necessary to keep them there. Luckily however for Robert Generic a belligerent Jeremy Kyle stepped into safer skin from some actual scrutiny. So you would accept the people are taking advantage wouldn't you. I would say not as many as he think under the current rules what they should do is upset on the second you tell me that there are two million people see this is where I this is just my opinion and I respect your ring because that's the whole point of the democracy.

48:46The system was set up to help people like your wife it was not set up me to give people with tennis elbow the ability to sit on their ass and do nothing or have six month off because they've gone online on a computer and tick to box and they've got anxiety and it strikes me whatever the political party have done this with the Tories I've done it with reform I've done it with the Liberal Democrats whenever anybody talks about truthful answer as a man here right. Change in the system the genuine mission well I said 25 minutes ago the genuine claimants get really fearful I think oh my god it's going to be taken away but what you don't say to yourself is there are hundreds of thousands of people milking this system that are making it more difficult for your wife to get the money that all the people know she should get pal. That's where you can put it wrong and again you have no experience of this but you don't know of my wife's or my anger or not you've no idea I've no said which is hard right. Secondly the people that are claiming for mental health are doing so under the current rules what any political party should do and instead of this can you get your bed on a Tuesday can you walk your arm arm above head height on a Wednesday you get that it should be set on the sides.

50:00If you're an amputee you get that if you're blind you get that if you've got what a new disease you get at some point. Robert well I just say that it this is not by large about physical disabilities at all it is about these cases of relatively mild conditions I'll give you a few stats at the moment 214 people are signing on the disability benefits every single day for mild anxiety I just don't think that's right and I don't think it's right for those who are not. I don't think it's right for those individuals either because I'm sure in most cases sitting at home watching telly doom scrolling on your phone is much worse for somebody who has mild anxiety but I think we also have to be out and about getting a proper job. I just want to take this mile anxiety claim to task one more time for those at the back no one is claiming pit for mild anxiety to be able to claim pit you have to demonstrate to the wp that you have significant amounts of problems doing daily task there is for ability or daily living there are two different sections for this right when it comes to the daily living component you have to prove to the state you find it very difficult to do so many different things we normal for everybody else right if you are able to cross that threshold and show that your condition is debilitating enough.

51:14Is debilitating enough that you can't do those things then you qualify for pip if you can't demonstrate that then you don't and I will reiterate 66% of pit claims are granted on appeal having previously been denied this is what the cases when people have not just mild anxiety lots of cases anxiety disorders there is a different by being anxious and having an anxiety disorder those two things are totally different the fact again the Robert generic is trying to pedal this nonsense is lie this fabrication. The mild anxiety is somehow part of the things you can claim pit for when again you're not even assessed on your condition you're assessed on how your condition affect you and on top of this people who are claiming for anxiety or having an anxiety disorder can also be claiming for other disabilities at the same time these things will all note it down if you suffer from a really different conditions I would be willing to about the lots of people with physical disabilities also have a lot of anxiety around those things to as long as you are above the threshold you score enough points.

52:14So in terms of how a feature daily living then you can claim if you can claim it and you are suffering what is as far as I can see significant impacts on your daily life your condition is not mild on make that expertly clear and also I disagree with the quality I think the way the system works in far as how it judges who was supposed to be eligible is good I just was the assessment criteria was a little less humiliating and clearly it is very difficult given how many appeals I had and how successful those appeals are. The generic wasn't the only one to have to face their own electorate this is what reform council are calling him faced when guest hosting LBC do not agree with getting rid of it I have a heart I am a cancer patient I work hard time the classic rest cancer palby to do in carrier I'm 30 to some protection goes I'm out of the job I'm out of my home on 57 years old I'm a pal is got a palliative hair care husband 15 different disabilities he worked for a RMS the HM government keeps us and years ago get rid of his pit no trips to hospital he's got a liver failure I'm using a collective I don't even get a comfortable property despite having me over a lot of when I'm checking out my supposed to vote for reform I'm so sorry I'm sorry I'm going to do nothing it is with I hear you I hear you and we we generally care about the people in vulnerable positions like you is this why we got into politics and and it's not

53:41about cutting benefits from people who actually need it it's about telling those who could work that they should work to protect exactly the benefits for the vulnerable that need it and I'm so sorry that you're dealing with cancer it's a very tough time and and you're in haringay I'll come and see you Elizabeth I'd love to I'm sorry Laila you got into politics to protect the vulnerable and the disabled I call bullshit like I'm only did you yet again claim that you needed to scratch peep to get people into work when quite literally speaking to someone who just told you they claim pip whilst working the fact people like this can't even scrape the mental where with all together to Google how does pip work for hosting a high profile discussion program but to claim about the disabled to come to Clara sorry to came to claim to care about the disabled whilst both the party you belong to and the rest of the right wing is not the only way to do in this country haven't been engaged in a multiple year long campaign of manufactured consent for the mistrust of the disabled is quite frankly despicable the UK has an incredibly strict in humiliating disability welfare system is only saving grace is that

54:44pip afford cash payments to allow the disabled some degree of autonomy and reform wants to take that away to a band second what did you make of those clips yeah it's always interesting isn't when you see reform kind of cornered on these things when they talk about their kind of natural comfort zone I think that's a very important question you know they can kind of really write the rules and set the paradigms and set the narrative but once we take them away from that comfort zone and away from their ability to just kind of laps into that we see a different side of them and we see a side of what I think like they are really kind of struggling a bit completely agree with what you said with regards to the actual quite high threshold that there is for access to pip and the idea that you can't just claim it off the back of you know mild mild anxiety but I thought it was also really interesting that you know Robert Jenwick said you know lots of people have got mild anxiety and that just can't be right but he's got zero curiosity as to why lots of people might actually have got a lot of mild anxiety regardless of whether or not that allows him to access people or not which is that there is a kind of whole infrastructure and way of living now which has been dismantled you know by his politics this is his politics of action and he is dealing with the

55:45consequences of that which is what we're seeing now you know this neat crisis is another kind of outgrowth I think in many ways of that as well and then we're going to talk about young people in a minute too so there's just this kind of zero curiosity from Robert Jenwick you know they just can't be right yeah he's to look in the mirror I think actually to have a look at some of your policies reform is now in a bit of a real contraction you know can they really build a base of voters out of enough people who essentially are not going to be reliant on various different types of welfare right mean you are talking earlier about this idea of shrinking middle class which I think is definitely happening I spent several weeks ago a bit of time in Johannesburg in South Africa for example where there's this very start class distinction whether there's virtually no middle class you know there you're either very poor or you're well off but that there's kind of no middle ground no middle class which is kind of snapshot of where really we could get to right there was a study done a couple years ago in 2024 from the financial fairness trust that said that you know middle class is ending up to 60 K a year was struggling materially so you got this kind of shrinking base of people in this country and and if reform are trying to appeal to those people well those people increasingly they don't exist you know so they need a bit of a material lens I think really on on on their politics to understand their votes is actually a bit better rather than being I think kind of lazy and just trotting out the same

57:04word well worn conservative toy party ideas about you know welfare and expecting that to work you know they are in effect perhaps going to be a victim of their own policies many of these people are in effect rampant near liberals however much they want to dress themselves up as being for the working man they may well find themselves to be a victim of those same those same policies and that same ideology you know when it comes to the the ballot box. Well that's the thing right is that lots of people who are proposing this I remember generic is a Tory cast off himself it's a party for the Tory cast off right and you mean to really say the point there that they don't understand who they're own electorate is they're still working a lot of these X Tories on the premise that they are speaking to the electorate that voted for them during the George Osborne period right the aspirational middle class. Obviously the homeowners are clearly still part of more of the older generation to tend to vote for both the Tories and reform but in terms of the areas of the country it's not the London commuter bell it's not the more kind of affluent areas of kind of rural Yorkshire that these places that are voting for reform though it's post industrial poorer more a lot of white areas lots of more working class areas of this country and you know there's a lot of correlation here high

58:09instance of people who claim pip in these constituencies was mentioned in the question to Robert generic at their press conference and all that ends up meaning is that they've totally misaligned where this policy is supposed to go and they've immediately disapused huge numbers of their voters in terms of not really there is an X Labour voters and lots of cases or you know or non voters who've been brought into the fold by reform speaking for a very specific specific a lecture of people who are concerned with immigration but less so concerned on cost of living economy and stuff like that that's all of the polling shows whereas conservative voters rank the economy is higher than like migration and probably they probably can serve as have welfare similar or probably higher than reform do in terms of their policy perspective. I was also a note Andy Burnham's response to this too on the on the on a provider that we understand that some of these people can be X Labour voters X Labour constituencies post industrial like Northern towns and in the in the country like Alex can you roll the clip of Andy Burnham's response please. Some rules you look at and just think how can that be fair one of them is the 9 30 a.m. restriction on disabled people's bus passes need to get to work college a hospital appointment we better hope it's after 9 30 it makes no sense

59:20and I'm changing it from April disabled people will be able to use their bus passes for free at any time on any day scrapping the 9 30 a.m. restriction is something I did as mayor of Greater Manchester as well as bringing in a two pound cap on bus fares now I'm doing both nationally so more people can make full use of Britain's most popular form of public transport and you can get where you need to be full less. So whilst of course the Labour party talk to about disability reform will talk about that just a second are the very least Andy Burnham's is clearly notice that there's going to be a lot of negative backlash reforms announcement on pips and he is immediately gone and said okay well look well we're going to jump into the media system we're going he's the thing I'm going for the disabled right to think is that there's a notes like the the change in strategy from the burn administration yeah I mean definitely right there's there's a deafness to this and I know some people will be able to do that. So I want to say it's just comms the comms are a lot better yeah for sure that the policy strategy not just the way much the policies have been communicated the policies themselves and the policy strategies I think is remarkably better you know kiss some if you think about it in many ways I think he paid a big price for himself you know career wise in terms of really not taking his base seriously really not understanding who Labour voters where he completely took them for granted you know and that was kind of a real you know a kind of real fatal mistake I think for the kind of kiss some Morgan McSweeney

1:00:45so I think Andy Barnum and Andy Barnum pardon me is being very smart and very deaf I think in this announcement you know that that's not to say that I think there won't still be really big decisions to come on welfare I'm going to be you know watching that first budget like a hawk because it's going to be really interesting and really important to see about how they get that balance right they have talked about the idea of the welfare bill overall coming down. So I don't know if there's going to be some difficult decisions to be made along along the way but but for now I think that he does seem to be kind of lasering in with these small you know human to be it's big what feels big right but in terms of the individual policies that small right and I think that's quite a smart strategy to kind of keep feeding in those gaps and just doing these very small concessions towards cost of living which is on everybody's mind and doing some way that serves and shows up his vote to base 100% it is clear that there is an attempt to make sure the carries favor now to be able to generate the some level of public support public benefit of the doubt and public buy in to him as prime minister before then launching into the bad stuff later which is again the biggest mistake that Kirsta I'm at is when in the government go everything sucks you're going to get poor and there's nothing that you can do until things get better later on which immediately sourdough public relations towards him and now we see the difference Kirsta I'm at least popular prime minister ever Andy Burnham plus 19 in the approval stakes which is higher than we've seen for any mainstream politician in decades as far as I can see and again I think you're right I'm pretty certain that we'll end up seeing those winging cuts

1:02:07and eventually once the public kind of there for that doubt has kind of been been set but until then it's clear that you know immediately soon to hear reform and answer policy the you know affect people in labor's former heartland voter bases and you go look I'm going to support the people the reformer clearly trying to tell not to vote for them anymore which again despite me disagreeing with the broad scale of labor's welfare policy it's certainly good strategy. One other thing that I noticed from the rhetoric of Robert Jenrick is that in both his telegraph article and his speech on Monday his main target was young people in fact he was explicit in his speech in wanting to ensure pensioners didn't deal with any welfare cuts at all having for a friend that someone might dismantle the boom rocker see and again like they didn't talk about attendance allowance only pip now this follows on from labor's plans to tackle young needs those not in education employment or training it follows on from the experts article that echoed labor's rhetoric about how the status failing the youth by allowing them to claim welfare in the first place in the long run the current numbers and the things specially in UK terms even though it is rising currently these figures are also higher now than they were in the 2000s when working age welfare was a higher percentage of GDP than it currently is after I DS as welfare reforms.

1:03:15It also follows data showing that your youth unemployment is higher cross Europe or those statistics do vary EU youth unemployment is around 15% roughly similar to the number in the UK and there are countries such as Greece with high youth unemployment and less generous welfare to so I don't really buy that welfare cuts will encourage the youth into work. In fact this review of European welfare systems showed that quote generous social benefits for young unemployed people are a crucial element in every route to keep the neat rate low directly contradicting right wing received wisdom on long term youth unemployment. Another proposal genic float as we dutch style approach to sickness support linking employers to insurance schemes to cover those off work sick but appears the government is already looking at the Netherlands for welfare reform ideas. According to a policy announcement published by the summer government the government is open to almost 180 dutch style youth hubs over the next two years to tackle rising youth unemployment as a nation needs number hits one million. That report goes on to describe how while visiting the Netherlands the work and pension secretary saw how Dutch a younger impent youth points are bringing youth services under one roof helping them record Europe's lowest neat rates.

1:04:22And it also says that the secretary of state vows to learn from the Netherlands approach where young people are given multiple chances through work study pathways employer partnerships and apprenticeships to build a system where inactivity is the last resort. Now there's nothing intrinsically wrong with looking to other countries for successful welfare state. It's just a shame they all seems to ignore the data showing that other countries getting better outcomes by being more generous not being more draconian. What I will say that is that the constant refrain of the youth being the main problem for the welfare state when the only makeup only 20% of working age welfare recipients is especially gawling when the biggest welfare expense and the fastest growing welfare expense is the state pension of which every member of the unipathy refuses to touch like the triple lock is staying in place for the foreseeable. Now on the subject of the unipathy the tories have made their pitched the youth and it's not exactly barnstorming. Remove young people's working protection to save summer jobs that or say yeah take away workers rights from the demographic of the voted overwhelmingly for the party who just passed the employment rights act.

1:05:23Now this is what the shadow chancellor and regrettif said about the plans. Simplifying rules about when young people can work and take breaks will help save the summer job and give employers the confidence they need to hire a young person only the conservatives have the team and the plan to get Britain working again and stand up for summer jobs by slashing unnecessary red tape and scrapping the job destroying parts of the employment rights act. Don't worry kids and other tories tank the economy gave us a demand unstable employment gives on demand unstable employment and over saw the biggest drop in living standards since the Napoleonic wars this even the summer jobs now so why not forget the 14 years of mismanagement. Mansecker what do you make about the skew in terms of welfare coverage towards specifically targeting young people and is there any party that actually has a comprehensive plan that speaks to young people rather than reviving the boomerocracy. Boomer communism seems to be the flavor certainly on the right right I mean we were talking earlier about this idea that when sort of like reform start making inroads there was this concept of like generation right you know maybe an emergence after a long period of generation left is emergence maybe like you know young men.

1:06:32But don't leave who would be voting for reform would be courted by them perhaps because they were more socially conservative and that simply hasn't materialized. And I have existed in the first place. Yeah because it's a myth right you know lots of column inches about it never really kind of materialized in quite that that same way right you know and that's not because there aren't men who are socially conservative or young men who you know are perhaps some of the anti migration sentiment appealing. But I just think there isn't a material reason for them personally to to vote for reform or for vote for the right in general you know there was a point at which in sort of 2024 if you look back at the 2024 reform manifesto I believe they can. And they had a few points in there wasn't loads they had a few points in there where they were trying to appeal to younger people you know and that they talked like for example a policy of lowering interest rates on tuition fees for example so recognizing that there was a bit of a burden on younger people with regards to to that and soon enough I think once they started getting traction once they started building up more of a base and and attracting as opposed more X Tory voters they kind of quietly abandoned that stuff and then the framing became very different.

1:07:38And it was all about you know young people of easy get them back in the office you know they're on benefits they've all got all these you know mental health issues that are many mental health issues and that needs to change and so there was no there was nothing really that they were they were kind of giving a young people and this was something even Rupert low you know whose politics of course I do not endorse you know he noted that there was a gap on on the right as well where he said I think he actually said at one point I see why young people are voting want to vote for that. And I think it's going party because they they talking away that is appealing and actually appeals to young people's material circumstances and you know on the on the left of things I suppose with the Labour party Andy Burnham is making young people are kind of cornerstone it seems of his his policy making which is really interesting and feels quite strange because I don't know if I've ever lived through a period of time with that was a thing. But I've been a part of me almost doesn't know how to react to it like all this is this is strange and and there are some things about it which good you know he's talking about having more jobs for young people. Create job more job creation for young people that type of staff potentially subsidising you know employers they can you know financially perhaps look at hiring more more young people as well and that's all great and but at the same time I think there are also bigger issues going on than just really kind of like a labor shortage or a labor crisis right.

1:08:53You know young people's well being I think is is also a real problem and that's that's much much earlier right then before you're at the age where you're starting to look for a job so this idea of just simply kind of creating more jobs. Checking them off the welfare and then that will kind of fix the so called need crisis I think is maybe a bit limited right you know there was a really good article in I think it was the London review of books and whether we're looking at at some of this and they said that there was a considerable number of young people who were regarded as needs and who were not actively looking for work. And not out of a laziness or because you know they they just want to be on benefits they weren't claiming welfare either but because they just weren't active they weren't trying to participate almost in a sense in in society really and so I think a lot of that is about on the kind of pathway that young people go through in the transition to young people go through thinking about what's happening much much earlier you know what's happening in schools the pressure that young people are under the material conditions families you know being a child growing up in a family where you're having a home and having a roof of your head is becoming increasingly difficult. These things all massively impact your ability once you're you know 18 19 looking for a job or looking to get into education training these things all massively impact and I think what your ability to be able to then participate more in these things so it would be nice to have a government who is also willing to look at that whole pathway that young people going to all the transitions and really try and do that kind of holistic work of the many different multifaceted factors I think that are impacting young people's ability to participate in life.

1:10:20And that are really creating this this neat crisis and another problem as well as that was in terms of the retail policy it like it's it's genuinely feels like these people are telling young people not to vote for them right they have you culture reaction values that young people just do not gel with all the statistics show that this is the case right the whilst I think there are probably some young people who at least. Some what kind of compelled by like anti migration rhetoric like the youth in this country is very diverse the ever stretches into outright racism even implied racism it puts everybody off right and on top of this when you look at for example their approach to planning their poster housing your poster can you get public spending for example like the net that is what nationalization which all of the young people in this country day will the vast majority of young people in this country do not which party they vote for the very Tory voters one nationalization but a block housing developments there. They continue to want to support land lord is and allowing them to keep up more power and opposing any kind of legislation to take away the power of landlords again because those landlords are the most likely going to be either the corporations who have always been supported by the right being or indeed the old generations who got onto the mortgage boom of the 2000s or indeed to got cheap rates in the 2010s when we're in the liquidity trap.

1:11:36So many vested interests both in terms of pension spending into things like the triple lock for example in terms of the way in which for housing having turned into commodity having been provided in terms of whole ownership in such huge amounts to the older generation to move away from young people because you can't have both right you can't have a continually appreciating housing sector and an affordable and available housing sector for new buyers to get into those things are pulling each other apart and they know they can't put old people in negative equity. They know they can't reduce the people's house prices who want to sell it to go and pay for the adult social care that they refuse to provide because they want to slash access reform councils are cutting access to social care around the country and so all they can do is continue to enable the boom the gerontocracy and push house prices up shovel even more spending into pensions when again the pensions are the biggest part of the welfare bill that is rising again I'm not I don't want to scrap the state pension or cut the state pension or means test the state pension. I just want to not have the state pension grow bigger than the economy and grow bigger than wages because that isn't that's not an effective use of expenditure and I think fundamentally it's unfair to the working people who ensure the productive capacity is there to afford the triple lock right I don't want to cut it anything I want to keep at least that the current rate it is and then increase it with wages is my is my proposition here but all of the vested interest and outside of like capitalist vested interests electorally side with the old generations and have done for a very long time and the current generation of young people who are not going to be able to

1:13:04grow up in this country they're pretty angry they they are so get camey baton on George Osborne's podcast for things talking about like how reform is grievance politics and the greens are grievance politics on the populace left and right young people have a legitimate grievance yeah there were legitimate grievance in this country and the social contractors been wrestled away and it's not because of disabled people it's because of politicians taking the easy way out and pandering to a giant cohort of older people again not that same as having a welfare state of old people as bad clearly I suppose it normal cut it but housing especially and the narrative about how they talk about young people they literally talk about young people like the devilish shoe is is is going to leads to a further consolidation of the vote among young people amongst the left and that cohort is growing yeah and when you think about if you take about yourself back to the 1980s and you think about the kind of leeway that Margaret thatcher has at sort of the the start of neoliberalism she's got a bit of leeway to do things where she kind of can reward people who are not very well off she can do the whole selling off of camps or houses for example you know terrible policy of course but it's a policy that provides real dividends

1:14:07in the moment certainly in the 1980s that's all for her you know and and you know quite a lot of younger people voted for Margaret thatcher right you know they voted for her because she was able to kind of provide something for them materially if we fast forward to now you know 2026 you know there isn't really any of that stuff to be able to give to younger people anymore as you said right and so that the class politics and the class war that I think the liberalism has always been waiting on people is now very starkly along age lines as well and I think your age is now becoming you know almost an identity group that means it kind of is synonymous with your class I mean this is an interesting thing right and so far is when you break down how people vote ideologically the class dividers broken down whereas it previously working last people voted left and then why class people voted right and it was a kind of a push pull over the middle class center to be able to win general elections that has flicks now and now the biggest ideological derivative is age in young people vote left and all the people vote right that's that's completely changed if you map ABC ABC one in terms of like the kind of choppy and our social credit really believe in it but it's a reasonable kind of

1:15:11appropriation that against C2 DE and then you mark it by age versus left or right they overlap there's no difference team that too is once you control once you control for age and you plot it so it shows that the biggest divider between whether or not you're left wing or right wing is age but controversially there is still a definition between populist and establishment which is class linked whereas if you actually take these two left and right blocks worth of voters and you map them by whether they're financially secure or whether they are financially insecure the financial insecure people go for the populist options which is reform and the greens and the financial secure ones go for labor Tory lived them regardless of age regardless of age or though I mean although within those cohorts yeah the older ones are mostly voting right wing and out of that right wing cohort there's a reform voter precarious block and a Tory voter who are establishment block and then amongst young people there's a broader kind of green populist financially insecure block and a labor establishment financially secure block fascinating you hold so much information and data in your head I'm always very impressed by that

1:16:12I'm sorry I'm not really used to you we've got plenty of time to look through to look through all the different articles so it's a blessing it's a blessing really anyway thank you very much Banteca for joining me tonight important show tonight thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it I'm absolutely pleasure absolute pleasure and thank you as always everyone for tuning in at home as well come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6pm for now you've been watching Novara Media good night