Britain Could Face Food Crisis As Droughts Spread

WEBVTT
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Welcome to Univara Live.
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Coming up tonight, UK farmers have warned that food shortages
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are likely following very poor crop yields caused by droughts.
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Student loan holders face a ticking time bomb of debt
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and higher taxes. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighs in on Woke 1.0.
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Which she says was crazy.
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And several football federations are calling for FIFA president Gianni
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Infantino to resign. I'm Michael Walker, and today I'm joined
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by the original... Woke One was crazy.
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Finka. Ash Sarkar. I don't know, maybe you don't like
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that description.
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You know what?
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I'm just so happy to be here. Call me what
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you like, just call me.
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Perfect, love it.
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Before we get started, oh, tickets are on sale for
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our next downstream IRL event at the Earth Theatre in Hackney.
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Ash Sarkar and Aaron Bastani will be joined by cultural
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theorist Catherine Liu and writer Darren McGarvey, which is on
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the 21st of September. Darren McGarvey, I understand, is the
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name of Loki, L-O-K-I. Ash, what can we expect from
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that event?
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Basically, this is going to be a mega blockbuster event
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digging into the commodification of trauma and the way in
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which institutions, as well as cultural changes and the attention
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economy and all this kind of stuff, incentivizes a way
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for us to lead with the worst things that have
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ever happened to us in a sort of race for
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resources or funding or even just attention and status.
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So where Darren McGarvey is coming from, and.
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I think this is a really interesting thing, is that
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he's looking at the way in which systems, including, you know, recovery, rehabilitation,
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welfare system, the way in which it sort of makes
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you perform a certain kind of trauma in order to
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navigate access to care. And Catherine Liu is looking at
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it much more in terms of the way in which,
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I suppose, therapy speak and a sort of, you know,
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misapplied culture of self-diagnosis and this sort of like relentless
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interest in the self-care um is a part of neoliberalism
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it's part of a way in which people navigate neoliberalism
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so I'm really excited me and Aaron Bastani will be
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interviewing Catherine and Darren and I had the the pleasure
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of speaking with Darren when I was on my first
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book tour and he's just he's a really rigorous thinker
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and Catherine's book is phenomenal so get your tickets I
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think you can get tickets at Dice.
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I mean, there's presumably going to be a link in
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the description, is there not?
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There will be a link in the description.
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There will be a link in the description.
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And the event is at Earth Hackney, I believe, on
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the 21st of September.
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So get your tickets. I think it'll be good.
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Fantastic. It sounds brilliant.
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Britain is facing its fifth heatwave of the year, with
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temperatures expected to peak at 35 degrees Celsius on Thursday. Now,
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this year is already the first time ever... that a
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temperature of 35 degrees has been recorded somewhere in the
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UK in three consecutive months. So obviously, May, June, and July,
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all of them had a day that was 35.
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Degrees or more, first time ever.
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But of course, if we hit that threshold again this week,
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three in a row will become four in a row.
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Unheard of.
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Of course, just as significant as the record temperatures is
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the drought across huge parts of England and Wales. This afternoon,
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the government's drought group have updated their analysis and declared
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that more than two-thirds of England is now suffering from
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drought conditions, about 70%, I think. We can all see,
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just by looking out the window, basically, the consequences. This weekend,
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drone footage showed parched parkland in Bristol, and as well
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as the yellow grass. You can see the River Avon
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under the Clifton Suspension Bridge looking extraordinarily low. This is
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something I hadn't even heard of before, let alone seen.
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So it's called a dust devil, which is a small
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whirlwind visible because of the dust it picks up. Now,
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they're typically found in deserts and semi-arid areas, but this
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was in Greenwich Park. It's kind of got Crash Bandicoot vibes. Meanwhile,
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over 120 firefighters have been deployed to tackle a fire
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in the New Forest in southern England. The fire was
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started when a van set alight. It has burned a
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section of heathland the size of 140 football pitches. Police
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say 23 cars were abandoned on the A31 after the
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fire broke out on Sunday evening. What might have even
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longer lasting consequences, though, are the effects of this drought
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on food production. The National Farmers Union has warned food
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shortages are likely. Their president has said yields of wheat
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and oats were, quote, very, very poor this year. They
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warned that livestock farmers have had to use their winter
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feed rations because they have been unable to grow grass.
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And because of difficulty planting in dry land this year,
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this is a key bit, the drought this year could
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affect food supplies next year, so in 2027. For today's show,
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I wanted to focus on the drought and food production,
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because I think it's under-discussed, and also because food prices
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have the potential to be so politically explosive. And so
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I caught up with someone who has thought a lot
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about the impact of climate change on our food supply.
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Paul Behrens is the British Academy Global Professor at the
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University of Oxford's Martin School, where he studies food system transformations.
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I spoke to him earlier today and started by asking
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him to lay out the challenge this summer's drought poses
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to the UK's food supply. It's really a challenge for
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so many different farmers in different areas. So you've got
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the cereal farmers who are really struggling with the drought.
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making that harvest, bringing it in. It's lower than we expected.
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The yields per hectare is much lower than we usually get.
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It's a struggle for the people growing fresh fruit and veg.
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We need lots of water for that. And obviously, that
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water is not there. And that's one of the main
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reasons why we're seeing prices increase now for things like potatoes,
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for veg, and will continue to do so into the summer.
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And it's also a struggle for the livestock farmers because
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There's been such little grass that's been growing. We're way
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down on what we normally have. And now the farmers
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are having to open up their stores that So they're
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storing up a huge problem for themselves in the future
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as well. So across the board, the lights are turning red.
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I'm also very worried about what this means for next year,
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because actually a lot of arable and crop farmers should
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be bringing in and putting in their seed for next
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year's harvest for some crops. And it's going to be so,
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so dry. It's going to be difficult to get that
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seed in. And is the problem the heat or the
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lack of rain? Because both of those have been exceptional
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this summer. It's actually both. It's the combination of both
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that really hurts the yields. So the heat can cause
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damage to the plants themselves. Things like the grass, they
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stop growing over about 29, 30 degrees. And then that drought,
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we really rely on water availability to get us through
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bad weather.
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Temperatures.
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So that's one of the main ways in which we
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can help the crops out, is giving them a lifeline.
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But if you don't have that water in the soils,
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if you don't have that water on the land even,
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because in the UK we don't do a lot of irrigation,
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we've not needed to do an awful lot of irrigation,
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then you're really in a sort of danger zone. And
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what are we talking about here in terms of the risk?
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Are we imagining supermarkets with empty shelves at some point
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down the line, or are we talking.
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An.
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Increase in food prices, but basically the supply holds up.
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It's just sort of eats into everyone's income. Predominantly eating
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into people's income. So prices will continue to go up.
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And we know this is the case. This will continue
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with climate change. So the academic studies on this show
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that we will have acute sort of and chronic inflation
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over time as climate impacts hit around the world. I
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think some areas of the shelves might get a little
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bit patchy, but we're not going to see empty shelves.
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And what we will see is we'll see smaller versions
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of the fresh fruit and veg, especially as that comes
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through to the stores, because those plants won't have grown
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as much. And I'm not going to be able to
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offer a citation here, but I have a vague memory
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in the past of reading or hearing about people saying
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that actually climate change in Britain, sort of a temperate climate,
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might increase crop yields, sort of increase temperatures, increase carbon
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dioxide in the air. Am I imagining that or is
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there something to that, that people had imagined that climate
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change wouldn't be such a problem for UK agriculture?
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Yeah, there were those.
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Studies looking further into sort of the higher latitudes in
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areas like the UK and northern Europe. The issue with
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those studies, there's a number of them. First of all,
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it turns out that we've been underestimating the damage from
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climate on food systems over time. So the crop models
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which were used to explore that have typically underestimated what's
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actually happened. And the community is very clear about that.
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That's something that the scientific community has underestimated. There's things
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like the idea that CO2 is plant food. So as
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CO2 levels go up, surely the plants are able to
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grow faster. Turns out that's not so true in practice either.
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There's other limitations for that. Also, the nutrients go down
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in the crops as the CO2 levels go up. So
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you're sort of double whammy, really. You're not getting the
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extra growth that you thought to the same amount, but
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you're also reducing the nutrients in the foods as well.
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So for all those reasons, really, there's been this underestimation
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of how much climate change can impact. And broadly, it's
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because we typically estimated on annual averages sort of over
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countries in sort of big scale sort of models, and
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then not realise quite how much seasonal impacts, quite so
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much the climate impacts can act together to bring down yields.
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And in what sense is this a transitional problem? I
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know you said sort of to a previous question, and
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you said we don't do much irrigation because we haven't
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needed to. because we've generally had quite rainy summers. Now
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presumably there are lots of adaptations we could make now
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we have this different climate. I suppose more speculatively there
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are countries which are much hotter than our own that
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do successfully grow crops. I presume they just grow slightly
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different crops. When you go to Spain it's full of
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olive trees and almonds Is it the case that farmers
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just need to get used to the fact that we
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now live in a different climate, change the types of
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crops they plant and invest a bit more in, well,
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as a society, we'll have to invest more in reservoirs,
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but then also invest a bit more in irrigation?
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I mean, that's part of it. We're going to have to.
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Get used to an ever-changing climate. This idea of a
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new normal is one of the most upsetting to climate
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scientists that we hear because there is no new normal.
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It's a new abnormal because every year it gets stranger
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and stranger and harsher and harsher. And it's a question
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of whether we're going to keep up with that. So
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to some extent, farmers are already running to stand still,
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if you like. So they're putting in more effort and
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more investments to try and deal with some of these effects.
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But then the climate impacts will get worse and worse.
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So definitely we need some of this. It's going to
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be very expensive. That's one of the issues. And ultimately,
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one of the biggest issues that I see is that
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as things get more expensive, you're going to have to
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bring cooling for livestock, for example. You're going to have
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to bring in those on-farm reservoirs for the water. And
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the on-farm reservoirs, that's an important intervention, but it's going
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to get very expensive. Now, one of the ways we
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can deal with this is actually thinking about food and
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farming in a bigger picture. And there we like to
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talk about the great food transformation, which is not just
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about changing what happens on the farm. It's about changing
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what we eat, what we waste, and how we think
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about food as a whole. What is the food system
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revolution that you're talking about? Give us sort of the basics. Yeah,
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so there's four main pillars, really. There's a shift to
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eating far more plants in our diets. We're actually eating
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too many animal products for our own health and definitely
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for planetary health. It's reducing the waste that we have
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in the system, the food system. It's improving the production.
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So we talked about.
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On the farm. You might also want to have precision agriculture.
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You might want to also have lots of different interventions
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on the farm itself and more nature, bringing in multi-cropping, intercropping,
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where you bring in different crops to grow together and
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they all benefit from the diversity. And we really need
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to address this community resilience. So the food environment, a
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very local level, so that people have good nutritious food
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available for them, even when climate change hits and make
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these costs higher. And I've watched a talk today as
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part of your national emergency briefing, which we'll actually talk
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about sort of a bit later in terms of what
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that is. But one of the things that stuck out
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to me there is you really do think that us
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moving to a more plant-based diet, not necessarily all becoming
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vegetarians or vegans, but eating much less meat is essential.
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I suppose because meat uses up so much land, so
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much water compared to vegetables and grains and whatever.
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Yeah, that is.
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There doesn't need to be any politician in the world
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actually that wants to stand up and say, you guys
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need to eat less meat. It seems to be so
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politically toxic that no one will go there. I wonder
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what your analysis of why that is. Why do you
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believe that this is something that no one wants to touch? Well,
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I think first of all, it's important to sort of
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mention that it's not just myself. It's not just all
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sort of the consensus of the science out there about
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where we need to go. It's also people like MI5,
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MI6 and the Joint Intelligence Committee report earlier this year
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that actually found that we could no longer feed ourselves
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with the amount of livestock in the country and that
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a wholesale change in consumer diets would be required. And
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when we do our modeling, just to sort of put
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that in perspective, what kind of diet that looks like,
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that's a beef burger once every two weeks. It's a
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chicken fillet once a week. It's a bit of dairy
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a day. So, you know, we're not modeling any sort
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of vegan diet here. You know, we're modeling something that
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is a reduction, a big reduction in red meat for sure.
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But it's something that I think people can get their
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heads around. And if we were to do that, we
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would reduce our dietary emissions about 61% in the U.K.,
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We would save an area almost the size of Scotland
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and we could bring that back to nature and then
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be able to absorb some of the climate impacts that
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we're seeing.
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In terms of flooding, heat and drought.
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And really, it's a little bit of a no brainer, except,
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as you say, the fact of the politics on this. Now,
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one thing that I should also mention is that these
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reductions in livestock are actually part of our carbon budget system.
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So we actually need these reductions as part of our
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climate targets as well. And so if you think about
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sort of the areas of the government talking about it,
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they're all talking about it, except for the politicians.
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And I think there's a couple of reasons.
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One is that we seem to have this idea that
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the food system is providing food that we have some
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sort of free choice over. that is down to personal choice.
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But I don't have the personal choice to go in
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and choose any one of the 150 types of potatoes
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for my chips in the evening. Like I've got the
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choice of maybe two types if I'm lucky at the supermarket.
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None of us have free choice. That's never been true
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and it never will be true. And actually it's heavily
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shaped by all of the vested interests, the different groups
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that are involved in producing this food system. And so
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when you think about that, then the politicians are also
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having to grasp not only with what the political pushback
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might be, but they're also having to grasp with all
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these different interests in the system as well.
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So that's a real challenge.
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But what we do know, report after report after report shows,
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is that we are able to grasp onto this, to
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do some joined up assessment and a joined-up policy across
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food and health and farming, that we'd actually all be
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a lot healthier for it and actually the country could
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be more productive. I mean, it would save us a
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huge amount of money if we were able to do this.
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And I want to go really big picture. I know
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you're at the Oxford Martin School and that's all about,
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you know, big picture global challenges, sometimes from a historical perspective.
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I suppose food is one of the issues where, if
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you look at the 20th century... It's a real success story.
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You know, there were lots of people saying, with this
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kind of population growth, we're not going to be able
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to feed anyone. Then what comes along, the revolution of
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sort of the industrial production of nitrogen.
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That was in the first half of the 20th century.
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In the second half, you get the green revolution, where
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more sort of productive plant types are being cultivated. And
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so there was often people sort of saying, God, the
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future is going to be terrible. And then some kind
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of ingenuity comes along and makes it all okay. I
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suppose I want to know from you, It's a big question.
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Is that a reasonable assessment of what happened in the
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20th century? And should we not sort of relax and
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hope that something comes along in the 21st as well?
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That's a great question. There's a lot to get into there.
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First of all, this is called the green revolution, this
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idea that we were able to produce all of this
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food for a growing population. What we did there was, yes, remarkable.
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And in fact, roughly two out of every five of
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us are on the planet now because of this extra
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fertilizer often that was produced in terms of artificial fertilizer.
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What it has stored up for us is a number
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of different environmental problems later down the track, though. So
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one is, for example, too much fertilizer on the soils,
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which can run off and kill water life and land life.
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Another one is the monocultures that we see in different
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cereals around the world, treating the soil and the land
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like factories in terms of what we're interested in is
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massive outputs of yield as maximum as possible, and then
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running down the soil quality, running down the foundations on
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which the food supply is based on. So actually what
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we've done is we've sort of cut away at the
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foundations of these systems for us to sort of continue
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on as climate change, as ecosystem collapse hit. So while
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I'm actually sort of pretty pro-technology, I think things like
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precision fermentation, basically where we used sort of genetic modification
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to produce foods in a sort of brewing-type container, a
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little bit like what we do with insulin today, I
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think there's huge opportunity for that. I think there's opportunities
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for technology in the fields But fundamentally, we've driven this
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system whereby we are producing too much of the wrong
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stuff that's bad for us in very monocultural ways. And
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we're going to have to get around that. I mean,
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just to give you an example, all of that extra
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yield that's gone in and all of those extra crops
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that we've gone in. I mean, in this country, we
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feed about 50 to 60 percent of our cereals through
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to animals. And so we're sort of losing the vast
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majority of those calories and nutrients by going through animals
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in the first place. So I don't think that there's
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any way that we can really continue without rethinking what
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we're eating and the health of what we're eating as well.
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And finally, you're part of the National Emergency Briefing on
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Climate Change.
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Explain to the audience what that is. Yeah, so this
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is a.
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An event that we had in November last year, we
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had 1,200 people in Westminster Central Hall, leaders from across businesses.
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We had a couple of hundred MPs and peers there.
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And the idea was to have nine experts explain what
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it is that the UK is facing in terms of
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climate change. and ecosystem emergencies and we had people talking
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about extreme weather economics we had a general there talking
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about national security we had an emergency room doctor and
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they all made points i spoke on food we all
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talked about what it is that we're facing this has
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now been turned into a film that people can look
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up online and go and see in their local community
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the interesting thing about this is you can't sit at
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home and be worried and concerned and just sit there
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and get really depressed the idea is that you get
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to your local community centre your local church wherever it
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be and then you watch it together and then you
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talk about what's happening in your community and how to
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address it and the ultimate call is to have a
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nationally televised briefing about exactly what we're facing because I
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think right now people are really worried people are really
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concerned and this idea that there's no hope it's just
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doom and gloom is really deactivating. And what we really
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need to do is make sure that politicians come clean
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and talk about what it is we're facing, talk about
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what some of the Joint Intelligence Committee, the military establishment
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are talking about, talk about what the people who are
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running the major supermarkets in the country are talking about,
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and then give people a plan by which they can
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be involved and they can be invested in addressing this problem,
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because it will get so, so much worse. And we
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need to get ahead of this now so people know
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what we're facing, know what we need to do, and
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we can start acting towards it. And that's how you
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get hope. If you want to have Parliament talk about this,
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then there's a petition online that you can sign to say,
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let's have a national emergency briefing.
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Let's have experts. It doesn't have to be the one
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we were part of. It can be anything.
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And let's have Parliament talk about this seriously and take
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people seriously, because I think there's a lack of trust here.
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There's a sense that the public don't trust the politicians,
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but I think that goes both ways, that the politicians
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don't trust the public with this information. And every single
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time we look at the surveys on this, we know
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that we underestimate one another and we underestimate the public.
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The public are often far, far beyond where the politicians
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are at. And so what we need to be doing
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now is trusting the public and trust it then builds
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both ways. That was food systems expert Paul Barron speaking
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to me earlier today. We'll link the petition he mentioned
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there in the description. Ash, I want to come to
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you on the politics of this. I mean, in Navarra,
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in our internal meetings, on the show, we've all been
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talking about climate change a lot more than usual, I think,
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because of the hot weather.
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In Westminster, still not really happening.
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So this was what I wrote about in last Friday's Cortado,
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which is Andy Burnham has said that he intends his
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government to be a cost of living government. And we
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know that this heat wave upon heat wave that we've
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been experiencing has pretty big possible implications for the cost
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of living, particularly with food. If you couple that with
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the interrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, what that
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means for fertilizer as well as the cost of energy overall,
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any medieval peasant can tell you price of food going up, baby.
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And yet the government has been remarkably quiet about this
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heat wave. So I did some looking into it first.
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I couldn't find direct comments from Andy Burnham himself. Angela
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Eagle went and met with the National Farmers Union, but
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there weren't any public policy announcements. In fact, you could
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see about it on the National Farmers Union website, but
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there wasn't really much public comms that was coming from
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DEFRA about the matter. And as of last week, when
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I went to have a look at what Miata van
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Bullen had been saying, who's the Minister of State for
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Net Zero, it was sort of look on the bright
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side of the heat wave, because record levels of sunshine
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means record levels of solar power.
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So.
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I think we can talk about.
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You know, the sort of dereliction of duty, right, that
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that implies, right, what you want is a government that's
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on the front foot, that's treating this with the seriousness
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it deserves. But for me, that tells you that in
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so many ways.
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Andy.
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Burnham, despite all of his sort of studied casualness, you know,
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very buttoned down, you know, happy to chat just like
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a normal bloke, it's a tightly controlled comms operation. It's
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a government which really doesn't want to stray very far
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from the grid. So his, you know, first however many
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days in office, you can tell that day by day
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plotted out is, you with optimistic little announcements being peppered
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all the way through. So you had bus fares, you
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had the VAT on electricity bills being scrapped. And today
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you've got this thing about the subscription trap, which is,
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I think, also nicked from some American progressive policies.
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Now, I'm not saying these are bad things.
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And I think that they contribute to a change to
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mood music around this Labour government. But I think it's
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quite telling that we haven't seen Andy Burnham really tackle
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any big problems so far and in fact when it
477
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comes to the biggest problems facing the uk today whether
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it's the sort of big geopolitical headwinds or whether it's
479
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this drought and the climate crisis we've really got no
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idea of what he thinks i mean he's sort of
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left the door open to expanded uh you know north
482
00:24:36.750 --> 00:24:39.369
sea drilling his spokesperson today to the guardian was saying
483
00:24:39.410 --> 00:24:42.289
well you know we do want to encourage um more
484
00:24:42.329 --> 00:24:45.890
reservoirs i think he said back new reservoirs What.
485
00:24:45.809 --> 00:24:46.289
Does that mean?
486
00:24:46.450 --> 00:24:48.450
What does that mean practically about what you're going to do?
487
00:24:48.829 --> 00:24:52.990
So in many ways, this question about who is Andy Burnham,
488
00:24:53.049 --> 00:24:54.990
who's the Andy Burnham that we've got as Prime Minister,
489
00:24:55.910 --> 00:24:56.690
we still don't know.
490
00:24:56.710 --> 00:25:00.519
It's a good point about the subscriptions, because the subscriptions policy,
491
00:25:00.539 --> 00:25:02.970
if you haven't sort of read about it yet, I mean,
492
00:25:02.990 --> 00:25:04.599
we're not really covering it on today's show because it
493
00:25:04.619 --> 00:25:06.460
doesn't seem that significant in the middle of a sort
494
00:25:06.480 --> 00:25:07.880
of record-breaking drought.
495
00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:09.680
Don't cancel your subscription to us, though.
496
00:25:10.410 --> 00:25:12.079
Well, I think we already make it easy enough to count.
497
00:25:12.380 --> 00:25:14.059
So the issue, as far as I understand it, is
498
00:25:14.079 --> 00:25:16.329
that there are some subscriptions, and this has really frustrated me,
499
00:25:16.369 --> 00:25:19.200
where you can sign up with one click... But to
500
00:25:19.259 --> 00:25:21.720
cancel your subscription, you have to call up the provider
501
00:25:21.759 --> 00:25:24.220
like on a real phone and have a real human conversation.
502
00:25:24.269 --> 00:25:25.680
And then they say, well, what if we gave you
503
00:25:25.720 --> 00:25:26.369
half price?
504
00:25:26.400 --> 00:25:28.690
I think Mamdani did this first, actually. I think this
505
00:25:28.769 --> 00:25:31.109
is a Mamdani policy that they've taken on. And again,
506
00:25:31.250 --> 00:25:34.309
not saying it's bad. And I think that that feeling of, yeah,
507
00:25:34.369 --> 00:25:36.069
that is really annoying.
508
00:25:36.109 --> 00:25:37.299
You're doing something about it.
509
00:25:37.349 --> 00:25:40.950
That's exactly what Burnham's government wants. I just don't think
510
00:25:41.009 --> 00:25:44.410
it's the biggest issue facing us. So it's clever in
511
00:25:44.450 --> 00:25:49.470
terms of strategic comms, but strategic comms alone won't Yeah.
512
00:25:49.990 --> 00:25:51.309
Shouldn't be mutually exclusive.
513
00:25:51.329 --> 00:25:54.049
I mean, we could maybe deal with the oncoming food
514
00:25:54.089 --> 00:25:56.609
crisis as well as making it easier to cancel your
515
00:25:56.650 --> 00:25:57.490
time subscription.
516
00:25:57.950 --> 00:25:58.430
Luxury.
517
00:25:58.750 --> 00:25:59.809
Yeah.
518
00:25:59.849 --> 00:26:01.390
Maybe we can have it all. Maybe we can have
519
00:26:01.430 --> 00:26:04.150
our cake and eat it. Thursday is A-level results day,
520
00:26:04.170 --> 00:26:06.299
meaning university will be on the minds of hundreds of
521
00:26:06.359 --> 00:26:08.740
thousands of young people across the country as they find
522
00:26:08.779 --> 00:26:11.640
out how they've done. But unless you're resident in Scotland
523
00:26:11.859 --> 00:26:14.140
and planning to go to a Scottish university, lucky you,
524
00:26:14.829 --> 00:26:17.390
the cost of your education will likely be weighing pretty
525
00:26:17.509 --> 00:26:21.650
heavily too. And that's with good reason. Analysis for Think Tank,
526
00:26:21.710 --> 00:26:25.950
the intergenerational foundation, has suggested students face a ticking time
527
00:26:25.990 --> 00:26:30.180
bomb of debt and higher taxes, with successive governments increasing
528
00:26:30.220 --> 00:26:32.480
the share of the cost of education that young people
529
00:26:32.519 --> 00:26:33.680
are expected to shoulder.
530
00:26:34.339 --> 00:26:36.460
All that's happening through student loans, of course.
531
00:26:37.240 --> 00:26:42.089
There are two different post-2012 student loan plans in England,
532
00:26:43.680 --> 00:26:45.759
with important differences between them. So if you started your
533
00:26:45.779 --> 00:26:49.680
degree between 2012 and 2023, you're on plan two. Students
534
00:26:49.700 --> 00:26:53.859
starting degrees after 2023 are on what's called plan five.
535
00:26:55.509 --> 00:26:58.190
I think three and four were variants on plan two
536
00:26:58.210 --> 00:26:59.589
that you paid at the same time, but if you
537
00:26:59.730 --> 00:27:03.930
sort of had different characteristics. Both plans take 9% of
538
00:27:04.069 --> 00:27:07.970
your earnings, so after a certain amount. But if you're
539
00:27:08.039 --> 00:27:10.579
on plan five, you start paying it off when you're
540
00:27:10.640 --> 00:27:14.500
earning £ 25, 000 a year Those who took out Plan 2
541
00:27:14.500 --> 00:27:17.460
loans in 2022 only started paying their loans off when
542
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:21.509
they were earning a little over £ 27, 000 a year. So
543
00:27:21.529 --> 00:27:25.549
the threshold has gone down. The interest on Plan 5
544
00:27:25.549 --> 00:27:27.170
is lower. So that's where Plan 5 is a little
545
00:27:27.190 --> 00:27:29.730
bit better. It's pegged to the retail price index. And
546
00:27:29.750 --> 00:27:31.930
that's a measure of inflation currently at 3%. So it's
547
00:27:32.109 --> 00:27:35.269
the higher measure of inflation, which is always very frustrating
548
00:27:35.289 --> 00:27:39.849
for students. For Plan 2, that's the interest rate if
549
00:27:39.869 --> 00:27:42.099
you're below the threshold. But as soon as you start
550
00:27:42.140 --> 00:27:45.319
repaying the loan, the interest rate starts going up, rising
551
00:27:45.359 --> 00:27:50.589
to as much as 6% for those earning over £ 53, 000. Crucially, though,
552
00:27:50.609 --> 00:27:52.589
and this is a big difference between the two, Plan
553
00:27:52.589 --> 00:27:55.089
2 is written off after 30 years, whereas Plan 5
554
00:27:55.089 --> 00:27:58.990
isn't written off until after 40 years. So potentially on
555
00:27:59.029 --> 00:28:01.170
Plan 2, you have a higher interest rate, but on
556
00:28:01.210 --> 00:28:05.470
Plan 5, you will be paying it for longer. Now,
557
00:28:05.529 --> 00:28:07.849
the older Plan 2s were the ones that caused lots
558
00:28:07.890 --> 00:28:10.609
of controversy earlier this year. That was because lots of
559
00:28:10.869 --> 00:28:14.210
young professionals, so potentially people on higher incomes, realised they
560
00:28:14.259 --> 00:28:16.779
were paying off lots of their student loans, all while
561
00:28:17.230 --> 00:28:19.299
the interest rate meant the total amount owed was going up.
562
00:28:20.220 --> 00:28:22.000
Because if you've got RPI inflation, which for a while
563
00:28:22.019 --> 00:28:24.240
was about 20%, 12%, wasn't it? Then you add 3%
564
00:28:24.240 --> 00:28:26.660
on it, just your amount, your principal, as it's called,
565
00:28:26.980 --> 00:28:31.500
is just going up by extraordinary degrees. There was one
566
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:34.819
positive aspect of that older system, though, It meant that
567
00:28:34.960 --> 00:28:39.289
richer graduates paid much more than poorer ones. So you
568
00:28:39.309 --> 00:28:42.170
can see here that between 2012 and 2023, so that's
569
00:28:42.190 --> 00:28:44.950
people on the Plan 2, the cost of university education
570
00:28:45.109 --> 00:28:48.690
over one's lifetime was much higher for high earners, so
571
00:28:48.710 --> 00:28:50.740
in dark blue there, and that was due to the
572
00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:53.500
higher interest rate on high income.
573
00:28:53.519 --> 00:28:54.759
So an upper earner could.
574
00:28:54.700 --> 00:28:57.599
Expect to pay £ 80, 000 over the course of their lifetime
575
00:28:57.940 --> 00:28:58.799
to pay down their loan.
576
00:28:59.339 --> 00:29:01.609
For those on lower incomes, they'd only.
577
00:29:01.529 --> 00:29:06.250
Pay £ 20, 000. So very progressive, even if it was very expensive.
578
00:29:06.630 --> 00:29:10.269
The introduction of Plan 5 in 2023 radically changed things.
579
00:29:10.589 --> 00:29:13.210
So the cost of a higher earner's degree suddenly dropped
580
00:29:13.579 --> 00:29:16.799
by around £ 20, 000 to just under £ 60, 000, whereas the cost
581
00:29:16.839 --> 00:29:20.299
to low earners, the brown line, rose by the same
582
00:29:20.319 --> 00:29:24.819
to just over £ 40, 000. Median earners in light blue saw
583
00:29:24.839 --> 00:29:28.380
the cost of their degree go up by around £ 15, 000,
584
00:29:27.380 --> 00:29:29.660
making it actually slightly more expensive than a high earner's.
585
00:29:30.890 --> 00:29:32.589
That's because the high earners will pay it off quicker.
586
00:29:33.660 --> 00:29:35.529
And the key difference here is, as I said, because
587
00:29:35.549 --> 00:29:37.930
the interest rate is no longer progressive, meaning high earners
588
00:29:38.690 --> 00:29:39.890
can pay less in total.
589
00:29:40.059 --> 00:29:41.140
If they pay it off quickly.
590
00:29:41.839 --> 00:29:44.519
And because the write-off date has been extended, many more
591
00:29:44.559 --> 00:29:46.640
low earners than before will pay off their loans in full.
592
00:29:47.279 --> 00:29:50.160
So when it was a 30-year cutoff, a hell of
593
00:29:50.180 --> 00:29:51.500
a lot of people don't pay them off in full.
594
00:29:51.720 --> 00:29:52.839
I'm not even sure I'm going to pay mine off
595
00:29:52.880 --> 00:29:53.599
in full, actually.
596
00:29:54.619 --> 00:29:57.140
But there are lots of people now, if you're paying
597
00:29:57.160 --> 00:30:00.380
for 40 years, you probably will. Now, when the current
598
00:30:00.430 --> 00:30:04.619
university fees were introduced by the coalition government in 2012,
599
00:30:04.619 --> 00:30:08.339
one argument for them was that graduates earned a significant
600
00:30:08.380 --> 00:30:09.900
premium as a result of their degree.
601
00:30:10.269 --> 00:30:12.150
And so they should bear the cost of that education.
602
00:30:12.509 --> 00:30:15.269
You've got something which means you get a higher sort
603
00:30:15.289 --> 00:30:19.130
of income later in life. So you shouldn't force non-graduates
604
00:30:19.170 --> 00:30:22.599
to pay for it. That premium, so the graduate premium,
605
00:30:22.640 --> 00:30:25.740
does still exist, but it isn't nearly what it once was.
606
00:30:25.779 --> 00:30:28.619
So this is a graphic which, on first look, looks
607
00:30:28.640 --> 00:30:30.799
very confusing from the FT, but it's actually quite simple
608
00:30:30.839 --> 00:30:33.839
once you get a hang of it. So in 1997,
609
00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:39.059
graduate salaries in the UK had an 80% premium over non-graduates.
610
00:30:40.059 --> 00:30:41.119
Back then, though, only around.
611
00:30:40.920 --> 00:30:43.430
20% of the workforce had degrees, but as participation in
612
00:30:43.470 --> 00:30:48.319
higher education increased, that premium dropped to about 45% in 2022.
613
00:30:48.299 --> 00:30:52.789
So lots of people thought that's just because there's more graduates,
614
00:30:52.829 --> 00:30:55.210
that means there's a lower premium. However, and that's why
615
00:30:55.230 --> 00:30:58.289
the other countries on this graph are sort of relevant,
616
00:30:58.849 --> 00:31:02.309
is because the same pattern hasn't held in countries like France, Spain,
617
00:31:02.329 --> 00:31:06.579
and the US. There, the graduate premium has increased, even though,
618
00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:08.640
just like in the UK, lots more people are going
619
00:31:08.660 --> 00:31:11.420
to university. So this is a John Burr Murdoch graph,
620
00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:13.660
and he's sort of saying something else is going on,
621
00:31:14.380 --> 00:31:17.599
which is that there aren't the jobs there for graduates
622
00:31:17.660 --> 00:31:20.460
to do. The government is also paying a smaller portion
623
00:31:20.480 --> 00:31:23.440
of the cost of higher education than ever before. In 2015,
624
00:31:23.440 --> 00:31:26.460
the government's combined contribution was almost half of the total
625
00:31:26.500 --> 00:31:29.549
cost of a graduate's education, but now just 8% of
626
00:31:29.589 --> 00:31:33.210
that cost will be met by the government. So basically,
627
00:31:33.890 --> 00:31:35.509
all of it is paid for by the students before
628
00:31:35.549 --> 00:31:37.130
a lot of it was paid for by the taxpayer.
629
00:31:37.970 --> 00:31:41.670
Student loans operate on terms as well that might make
630
00:31:41.710 --> 00:31:43.859
a payday lender blush. So according to the Telegraph, from
631
00:31:43.859 --> 00:31:47.819
2017 onwards, interest began being added to loans faster than
632
00:31:47.839 --> 00:31:49.619
people were able to pay them off. And over the
633
00:31:49.660 --> 00:31:52.220
last two years, almost £ 30 billion of interest has been
634
00:31:52.289 --> 00:31:55.390
added to the country's collective student debt, with those holding
635
00:31:55.609 --> 00:31:59.750
managing to pay off only around £ 10 billion in the
636
00:31:59.789 --> 00:32:03.380
same period. So The total amount owed is constantly going up,
637
00:32:03.539 --> 00:32:05.289
even though people are paying it off.
638
00:32:05.660 --> 00:32:07.490
Of course, the interest compounds over time.
639
00:32:07.809 --> 00:32:09.609
So it's no wonder students are starting to conclude it's
640
00:32:09.650 --> 00:32:11.829
just not worth it. In June, a survey conducted by
641
00:32:11.849 --> 00:32:14.609
the National Centre for Social Research found that a third
642
00:32:14.630 --> 00:32:17.059
of people thought a university degree wasn't worth the time
643
00:32:17.099 --> 00:32:19.980
and money. That's a proportion that's just about doubled in
644
00:32:20.039 --> 00:32:24.420
the last seven years alone. It's all pretty depressing so
645
00:32:24.460 --> 00:32:29.990
far for hope. we're going to look to a former
646
00:32:30.029 --> 00:32:31.410
education minister under Theresa May.
647
00:32:31.450 --> 00:32:32.130
Who would believe it?
648
00:32:33.019 --> 00:32:35.440
He was also a cabinet minister under Boris Johnson, a
649
00:32:35.460 --> 00:32:38.660
man called Lord Agnew. So referring to the student debt disaster,
650
00:32:38.700 --> 00:32:41.539
he's proposed banning the triple lock to abolish interest on
651
00:32:41.599 --> 00:32:45.609
student loans. At present, pensions rise annually at the rate
652
00:32:45.650 --> 00:32:50.369
of inflation, average wage growth, or 2.5%, whichever is higher. Now,
653
00:32:50.529 --> 00:32:53.619
Agnew wants to get rid of the last option, Makes
654
00:32:53.660 --> 00:32:55.269
sense to me. Why should pensions go up by more
655
00:32:55.289 --> 00:32:58.210
than wages or prices in a given year? He uses
656
00:32:58.269 --> 00:33:02.230
OVR projections to say this could save £ 15 billion a
657
00:33:02.269 --> 00:33:06.730
year over the cost of sort of a simple link.
658
00:33:07.130 --> 00:33:09.369
So if you move to just a link to wage rises,
659
00:33:09.390 --> 00:33:13.210
you save £ 15 billion compared to the triple lock. Agnew
660
00:33:13.369 --> 00:33:17.890
writes this. Ending real interest would cancel nobody's loan, of course.
661
00:33:18.299 --> 00:33:19.900
It would freeze the balance in place so that a
662
00:33:19.940 --> 00:33:22.460
graduate repays what they borrowed and no more. And no
663
00:33:22.500 --> 00:33:24.980
pensioner would be a penny worse off than today. Their
664
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:27.000
pension would still rise every year at a slightly more
665
00:33:27.019 --> 00:33:28.990
sensible rate. I am on the winning side of the
666
00:33:29.029 --> 00:33:31.630
present settlement. It is my generation that pushed up house
667
00:33:31.690 --> 00:33:34.410
prices until our own children cannot buy. We then ran
668
00:33:34.450 --> 00:33:37.210
up the national debt and posted the bill to our grandchildren.
669
00:33:37.549 --> 00:33:39.829
And although I never went to university, I saw friends
670
00:33:39.890 --> 00:33:42.599
enjoy free education and free living grants provided by the
671
00:33:42.630 --> 00:33:46.509
local authority. He goes on, this isn't about pitting young
672
00:33:46.549 --> 00:33:48.710
against old, but about asking both to pay a fair
673
00:33:48.769 --> 00:33:51.410
price for a system neither of them designed. A double
674
00:33:51.450 --> 00:33:54.130
lock and a debt freeze would cost pensioners nothing and
675
00:33:54.150 --> 00:33:57.480
save a generation of graduates interest they can't escape.
676
00:33:58.819 --> 00:34:01.940
Ash, all seems very sensible to me. Are we in
677
00:34:01.980 --> 00:34:04.779
favour of Theresa May's education minister's plan?
678
00:34:05.240 --> 00:34:07.779
Well, look, it's a really interesting idea because the UK
679
00:34:07.839 --> 00:34:10.360
is pretty unique when it comes to the triple lock.
680
00:34:10.800 --> 00:34:11.010
So.
681
00:34:11.559 --> 00:34:14.760
Most countries for the state pension will have some kind
682
00:34:14.800 --> 00:34:20.380
of indexing. So tying state pension increases to inflation, sometimes
683
00:34:20.440 --> 00:34:23.849
to wages. But from what I can see, nobody has
684
00:34:23.969 --> 00:34:28.869
this sort of discretionary 2.5% no matter what increase, right?
685
00:34:28.909 --> 00:34:30.449
No matter what else is going on with the economy,
686
00:34:30.510 --> 00:34:32.050
no matter what else is going on with wages, no
687
00:34:32.070 --> 00:34:34.309
matter what else is going on with inflation, your pension
688
00:34:34.329 --> 00:34:36.480
will go up by this much. So the UK is
689
00:34:36.559 --> 00:34:40.599
pretty unique in that regard. I don't mind bringing in
690
00:34:40.699 --> 00:34:44.300
some sort of age-based redistribution because I do think that
691
00:34:44.360 --> 00:34:47.110
while it's a mistake to look at the economic settlement
692
00:34:47.139 --> 00:34:49.449
purely in terms of age, because we do have really
693
00:34:49.469 --> 00:34:52.429
high rates of pensioner poverty in this country, you do
694
00:34:52.530 --> 00:34:58.769
have to admit that free education, house prices, all of
695
00:34:58.829 --> 00:35:02.349
these things benefited certain age groups.
696
00:35:02.170 --> 00:35:04.190
More than others. It doesn't mean that you don't have.
697
00:35:06.619 --> 00:35:10.760
pretty extreme forms of class inequality within those generations, but
698
00:35:10.800 --> 00:35:15.329
it exists. So I'm always in favour of thinking about,
699
00:35:15.349 --> 00:35:18.670
you know, what is the sweetener going the other way?
700
00:35:19.210 --> 00:35:21.349
So if you go, okay, you're going to get rid
701
00:35:21.369 --> 00:35:22.630
of a triple lock and you're going to go to
702
00:35:22.650 --> 00:35:24.360
a double lock, but what you're going to then do
703
00:35:24.420 --> 00:35:28.340
is maybe have a social care system, which is a
704
00:35:28.380 --> 00:35:32.519
lot better and less expensive. You have eradicated the role
705
00:35:32.619 --> 00:35:35.719
of private equity in In the social care system, we
706
00:35:35.739 --> 00:35:37.820
bring costs down that way. Maybe you have more of
707
00:35:37.840 --> 00:35:42.599
a prevention-based model of elderly social care, which is often
708
00:35:42.619 --> 00:35:44.190
what you find in East Asia.
709
00:35:44.210 --> 00:35:45.030
So you try and bring.
710
00:35:44.909 --> 00:35:47.210
Down costs by saying, okay, older people are going to
711
00:35:47.230 --> 00:35:49.789
have healthier lifestyles overall and we intervene early. And so
712
00:35:49.809 --> 00:35:52.210
that's going to bring down the cost. You go, well,
713
00:35:52.230 --> 00:35:55.150
that's the sweetener. You're going to have to spend less
714
00:35:55.190 --> 00:35:56.860
of your savings. You're not going to have to sell
715
00:35:56.880 --> 00:35:58.820
your house in order to be looked after when you're
716
00:35:58.860 --> 00:36:00.880
an older person. So I don't mind a bit of
717
00:36:00.889 --> 00:36:05.340
age-based redistribution because I think it is just a fact
718
00:36:05.639 --> 00:36:08.920
that if you are part of a post-financial crisis generation,
719
00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:12.889
and in particular, if you're post-2012, so I'm pre-2012 because
720
00:36:12.989 --> 00:36:16.230
I started uni in 2010. But if you're post-2012 and
721
00:36:16.269 --> 00:36:20.349
you entered higher education, you got royally fucked. And the
722
00:36:20.389 --> 00:36:22.710
higher education system, this is sort of separate from the
723
00:36:22.750 --> 00:36:25.760
points about being laden with debt and the state of
724
00:36:25.780 --> 00:36:29.179
the job market. Higher education system is... in a state
725
00:36:29.300 --> 00:36:32.539
of collapse at the moment, when it comes to the
726
00:36:32.920 --> 00:36:38.030
closure of departments, when it comes to overcrowding of classes,
727
00:36:38.110 --> 00:36:42.530
when it comes to this quite transactional relationship between the
728
00:36:42.869 --> 00:36:44.590
students and their lecturers.
729
00:36:46.030 --> 00:36:46.449
You're being.
730
00:36:46.909 --> 00:36:49.429
bled dry throughout your life for this experience of having
731
00:36:49.449 --> 00:36:53.099
gone to university, which is neither giving you the sort
732
00:36:53.159 --> 00:36:57.039
of passport to an echelon of higher-paying jobs once you
733
00:36:57.059 --> 00:36:59.119
get into the labour market, but it's also not an
734
00:36:59.179 --> 00:37:03.960
inherently beneficial intellectual experience anymore.
735
00:37:04.599 --> 00:37:05.840
It's shit on both sides.
736
00:37:06.760 --> 00:37:10.610
I mean, I think we have a weird sort of...
737
00:37:11.179 --> 00:37:13.789
We kind of punish you for being young in this country.
738
00:37:14.170 --> 00:37:19.019
And it's strange because, you know, my... My student debt
739
00:37:19.059 --> 00:37:21.119
will run out after 30 years, I think since I
740
00:37:21.500 --> 00:37:23.739
finished my degree, which is like 2012.
741
00:37:23.739 --> 00:37:26.730
So when will that be? 20... When will that be?
742
00:37:27.030 --> 00:37:27.530
Help me out. 2042? Yeah.
743
00:37:27.570 --> 00:37:30.929
Something like that. So at that point in time, I'll
744
00:37:30.969 --> 00:37:34.409
get this big boost to my income. But, like, I
745
00:37:34.429 --> 00:37:36.449
kind of need that... You know, if I want to
746
00:37:36.469 --> 00:37:37.889
start a family, I want that money now.
747
00:37:38.050 --> 00:37:39.989
I don't want that. You know, I don't need to
748
00:37:40.030 --> 00:37:43.260
be a rich 50-year-old. I want to be a kind of.
749
00:37:44.150 --> 00:37:47.090
guy in my mid-30s who's able to pay my rent
750
00:37:47.110 --> 00:37:49.199
without worrying about it, or maybe even buy a house.
751
00:37:49.800 --> 00:37:50.940
And also, this is the thing, is.
752
00:37:50.929 --> 00:37:53.840
That you need young workers in the labour market to
753
00:37:53.900 --> 00:37:56.139
pay for pensions. And what we have is a system
754
00:37:56.179 --> 00:38:00.500
which is extracting from young people at every single turn.
755
00:38:00.900 --> 00:38:02.960
So not just thinking about the interest on student loans,
756
00:38:02.980 --> 00:38:05.920
but you're thinking about rent, the cost of housing, cost
757
00:38:05.960 --> 00:38:10.579
of transport. When you think about the sort of evisceration
758
00:38:10.880 --> 00:38:14.500
of entry-level positions, when you think about Say you take
759
00:38:14.519 --> 00:38:18.059
the NHS, the reduction in paid training places, so it
760
00:38:18.079 --> 00:38:20.639
means that you've got your degree, you've got your qualifications,
761
00:38:20.699 --> 00:38:23.860
but you cannot progress through the NHS if you're a doc.
762
00:38:24.019 --> 00:38:25.820
You just sort of think, do you want people to
763
00:38:25.840 --> 00:38:29.179
have kids or not? Because I think that people have
764
00:38:29.739 --> 00:38:32.809
families for reasons which are both rational and irrational, right?
765
00:38:32.849 --> 00:38:34.829
So there are things which are sort of not to
766
00:38:34.869 --> 00:38:38.309
do with, oh, I've reasoned this out, it's like fulfillment, love, etc.
767
00:38:38.349 --> 00:38:38.420
etc.
768
00:38:39.269 --> 00:38:41.769
It's not just the raw economics. But you can't pretend
769
00:38:41.789 --> 00:38:44.610
that the raw economics aren't important. When you have children,
770
00:38:44.750 --> 00:38:48.320
if you have children, how many children you have. And
771
00:38:48.360 --> 00:38:50.880
it's no good having a generation of people who are
772
00:38:50.940 --> 00:38:56.949
squatting on, you know, million pound properties. and having their
773
00:38:56.989 --> 00:38:59.510
pensions protected in a way that wages never have been,
774
00:38:59.530 --> 00:39:04.739
if you end up just absolutely, and not to sound
775
00:39:04.780 --> 00:39:07.739
quite grim about it, killing off the flow of new
776
00:39:07.820 --> 00:39:11.099
blood into your welfare system, because that's what workers are.
777
00:39:11.219 --> 00:39:14.730
Because also with inheritance, obviously the big problem with inheritance
778
00:39:14.750 --> 00:39:17.679
is how... unfair it is because some people get this
779
00:39:17.760 --> 00:39:19.920
windfall from their parents because they owned a home in
780
00:39:19.940 --> 00:39:22.409
a major city and some people don't. So sort of
781
00:39:22.429 --> 00:39:25.329
especially with house deposits and stuff, that's huge. um but
782
00:39:25.349 --> 00:39:27.880
then also even for people who will inherit at some
783
00:39:27.909 --> 00:39:29.599
point because there's all these people who are going to
784
00:39:29.619 --> 00:39:31.559
get this windfall in their 50s and they're like oh
785
00:39:31.579 --> 00:39:33.280
i would have really used that in my 30s when
786
00:39:33.340 --> 00:39:35.760
i was you know again thinking of starting a family
787
00:39:35.800 --> 00:39:36.420
or something like that.
788
00:39:36.340 --> 00:39:37.260
I was like what am i gonna just go on
789
00:39:37.280 --> 00:39:38.079
more holidays.
790
00:39:37.800 --> 00:39:39.460
That's why when i go to my mom's house and
791
00:39:39.480 --> 00:39:40.840
i go are you doing all right are you well
792
00:39:40.860 --> 00:39:42.019
and she goes yeah fizzle fiddle i'm.
793
00:39:42.139 --> 00:39:44.849
Like fuck you i love you mom but we should
794
00:39:44.889 --> 00:39:47.989
have a very high progressive property tax because obviously people
795
00:39:48.010 --> 00:39:49.329
will be watching this so why are you pitting the
796
00:39:49.389 --> 00:39:53.110
state pension against university tuition fees which i think is
797
00:39:54.050 --> 00:39:56.519
quite right you know this the it's the people with
798
00:39:56.539 --> 00:39:58.199
really good pensions aren't the people on the state pension
799
00:39:58.219 --> 00:40:00.079
the people on really good pensions are the people with
800
00:40:00.119 --> 00:40:04.239
these um defined benefit schemes you know especially in the
801
00:40:04.260 --> 00:40:05.659
public sector but also if you work for like a
802
00:40:05.960 --> 00:40:09.059
big company um which which are very generous compared to
803
00:40:09.079 --> 00:40:10.860
the pensions that sort of people of our generation will
804
00:40:10.880 --> 00:40:14.239
get um So sort of pitting the state pension against
805
00:40:15.039 --> 00:40:17.420
student loans is not ideal. Like, ideally, what you do
806
00:40:17.940 --> 00:40:21.880
is tax incomes, you know, including pensioner income when it's
807
00:40:22.079 --> 00:40:26.070
sort of from private pensions and massively taxed property. I
808
00:40:26.889 --> 00:40:29.050
would want to just massively tax property and pay for
809
00:40:29.070 --> 00:40:32.929
all of this. But if a choice is between the
810
00:40:32.949 --> 00:40:36.179
triple lock and this proposal when it comes to student loans, 100%,
811
00:40:36.179 --> 00:40:40.260
I would do that. Socialists are proving competitive in a
812
00:40:40.320 --> 00:40:43.699
number of Democratic primaries ahead of the US midterms. However,
813
00:40:44.500 --> 00:40:48.719
some are taking heat because of their past lives, namely
814
00:40:49.340 --> 00:40:52.610
what they tweeted between the years 2020 and 2021. And
815
00:40:53.280 --> 00:40:56.289
Francesca Hong is the prime example here. She's currently running
816
00:40:56.329 --> 00:41:00.530
to be the Democratic candidate for governor of Wisconsin. And
817
00:41:00.590 --> 00:41:03.610
networks like Fox News have been highlighting tweets of hers
818
00:41:03.630 --> 00:41:08.800
from 2020 and 2021, calling for the defunding of the police,
819
00:41:08.840 --> 00:41:11.900
the abolition of the police. And there's also one from 2026,
820
00:41:11.900 --> 00:41:13.639
a very recent calling for the abolition of ICE.
821
00:41:13.679 --> 00:41:15.699
I think that policy she does still stand by.
822
00:41:16.739 --> 00:41:19.090
Hong has also been criticised for calling for Thanksgiving to
823
00:41:19.110 --> 00:41:20.829
be cancelled because she had.
824
00:41:20.750 --> 00:41:22.360
Quite good reasons for doing it.
825
00:41:22.369 --> 00:41:25.170
You know, she's celebrating the colonisation of this continent, but
826
00:41:25.210 --> 00:41:28.909
not necessarily a populist position. We'll look at how Hong
827
00:41:28.989 --> 00:41:33.710
herself has responded to these past tweets in this current campaign. However, first,
828
00:41:34.389 --> 00:41:36.869
It's another socialist politician whose response to this line of
829
00:41:36.929 --> 00:41:39.809
questioning has gone viral this weekend.
830
00:41:40.289 --> 00:41:42.070
What do you make of those controversial statements I'm sure
831
00:41:42.090 --> 00:41:46.389
you've seen? I mean, she's, you know, the Thanksgiving dust up.
832
00:41:46.429 --> 00:41:49.269
She says she doesn't, you know, still believe that. But,
833
00:41:49.630 --> 00:41:53.510
you know, the abolished prisons, abolished police, which is also
834
00:41:53.530 --> 00:41:55.510
positions that have been taken by a lot of the
835
00:41:55.610 --> 00:41:59.880
progressive candidates who have won. How do you get around that? Yeah.
836
00:41:59.949 --> 00:42:02.070
Those are not positions that are supported by.
837
00:42:02.809 --> 00:42:03.110
Right.
838
00:42:03.449 --> 00:42:05.489
I mean, I think that a lot of these races,
839
00:42:06.889 --> 00:42:10.159
even right now, they'll have a tendency to be nationalized.
840
00:42:10.800 --> 00:42:16.159
But these races ultimately are local and all politics are local.
841
00:42:16.219 --> 00:42:22.400
My understanding is that Francesca Hong has made clear her
842
00:42:22.460 --> 00:42:24.559
present stances to her electorate.
843
00:42:24.579 --> 00:42:25.659
Yeah, she's moved away from a lot of that.
844
00:42:25.679 --> 00:42:28.320
Right, she's moved away from it. And I have a
845
00:42:28.789 --> 00:42:31.130
local city councilman that has this.
846
00:42:33.320 --> 00:42:34.340
Woke one was crazy.
847
00:42:37.570 --> 00:42:40.550
So Ash, that clip has absolutely divided the internet. So
848
00:42:40.570 --> 00:42:43.010
there's sort of one group of people saying, great, you.
849
00:42:42.969 --> 00:42:45.619
Know, this is showing that AOC has, you know, become,
850
00:42:45.639 --> 00:42:47.960
you know, she's grown up.
851
00:42:48.039 --> 00:42:51.800
She's abandoning some of the unpopular or, you know, not
852
00:42:51.840 --> 00:42:54.980
persuasive positions she once held. Other people saying this is
853
00:42:55.119 --> 00:42:58.800
AOC selling out the BLM movement or people who, you know,
854
00:42:58.820 --> 00:43:01.739
believed in defunding the police. Other people saying, which to
855
00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:05.429
be honest, actually is the most common, I think, saying, oh, well,
856
00:43:05.469 --> 00:43:09.869
it's easy enough to say this now. In the years
857
00:43:09.869 --> 00:43:11.710
2020 to 2023, there were people losing their jobs for this.
858
00:43:11.750 --> 00:43:14.829
And if you said what AOC is saying now three
859
00:43:14.849 --> 00:43:19.340
years ago, then AOC might say that you're not someone
860
00:43:19.360 --> 00:43:23.179
who should be associated with So I mean, what's your
861
00:43:23.239 --> 00:43:26.570
interpretation of this new position from AOC?
862
00:43:26.809 --> 00:43:31.090
Well, I think that there is truth in the point that, well,
863
00:43:31.110 --> 00:43:33.869
it's easy enough to say it now. But I don't
864
00:43:33.909 --> 00:43:36.730
think that that's a reason to necessarily dismiss someone. I
865
00:43:36.769 --> 00:43:39.889
think that tells you something about how a particular set
866
00:43:39.929 --> 00:43:42.469
of politics operated at that time. Now, I think it's
867
00:43:42.489 --> 00:43:44.719
something that you said, which is that when you look
868
00:43:44.760 --> 00:43:47.659
at positions like defund the police, and I'm sure that
869
00:43:47.699 --> 00:43:50.889
lots of people watching will agree with the sort of
870
00:43:50.969 --> 00:43:54.989
slogan and proposition to defund the police. But even if
871
00:43:55.030 --> 00:43:58.269
you'd look at African American voters at the height of BLM,
872
00:43:58.809 --> 00:44:03.130
it was a minority, a real minority of African Americans
873
00:44:03.190 --> 00:44:06.579
who supported defund the police. And because of the way
874
00:44:06.619 --> 00:44:09.769
in which movements work, I don't think that social movements
875
00:44:09.809 --> 00:44:12.739
do necessarily have to be super representative of the electorate.
876
00:44:12.760 --> 00:44:14.760
That's never been how they've worked. They were often sort
877
00:44:14.780 --> 00:44:18.239
of vanguardist in the fight for social change throughout history.
878
00:44:19.239 --> 00:44:23.239
But there was often this sense of invoking the broader
879
00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:27.800
interests and beliefs of black people in the US in
880
00:44:28.239 --> 00:44:31.070
the slogan defund the police. But actually, there was always
881
00:44:31.179 --> 00:44:36.150
this remove. And what's most interesting about that isn't that
882
00:44:36.469 --> 00:44:38.409
it was a minority of people saying something that was
883
00:44:38.469 --> 00:44:41.469
unrepresentative of the wider electorate, again, that's movements, is that
884
00:44:41.510 --> 00:44:44.989
there was never much interest in building any support for
885
00:44:45.010 --> 00:44:45.659
the proposition.
886
00:44:45.699 --> 00:44:47.179
There was, as you've said before.
887
00:44:47.199 --> 00:44:51.039
A sort of mechanism of raising the social costs of disagreement.
888
00:44:51.559 --> 00:44:54.239
So what you're talking about in terms of, well, you'd have,
889
00:44:54.460 --> 00:44:57.789
you know, some people lost their jobs or, you know,
890
00:44:57.829 --> 00:45:02.269
found themselves very intensely criticised in a way which went beyond,
891
00:45:02.289 --> 00:45:04.769
I really disagree with this, or I think it's problematic
892
00:45:04.809 --> 00:45:06.809
and here's why, and we'll sort of, you're racist for
893
00:45:07.389 --> 00:45:10.239
disagreeing with the premise, is that that was the mechanism
894
00:45:10.280 --> 00:45:12.800
of trying to get people on board. And so I
895
00:45:14.260 --> 00:45:17.989
think that it's a little bit, it's, you're not actually
896
00:45:18.050 --> 00:45:21.599
escaping from the Twitter mind vortex when you say, oh,
897
00:45:21.719 --> 00:45:24.380
I'm leaving Woke 1.0 behind, right? Because that is an
898
00:45:24.460 --> 00:45:27.800
extremely online thing to say and to think about.
899
00:45:29.139 --> 00:45:33.449
Like, you've got brain rot in a new flavour.
900
00:45:34.730 --> 00:45:38.710
But I do think that there is something important for
901
00:45:38.969 --> 00:45:41.570
movements to recognise, which is the way in which things
902
00:45:41.610 --> 00:45:44.150
were done a few years ago. And I think that's
903
00:45:44.190 --> 00:45:46.969
because of that sort of, like, I don't know, that
904
00:45:47.010 --> 00:45:51.809
like hot box sort of, you know, cauldron, you know,
905
00:45:52.269 --> 00:45:56.130
really intense crucible of politics where you have movements and
906
00:45:56.150 --> 00:45:59.110
then because of the sort of porousness of the, you know,
907
00:45:59.329 --> 00:46:01.530
the Democrats in the primary system is that there were
908
00:46:01.570 --> 00:46:06.619
expectations to see that being reflected. in, you know, national
909
00:46:06.860 --> 00:46:11.070
political campaigning is that maybe there is a step in between,
910
00:46:11.199 --> 00:46:13.989
which is if you say, okay, we're a street movement, right?
911
00:46:14.010 --> 00:46:17.730
We're a street movement that are making demands. Maybe before
912
00:46:17.789 --> 00:46:20.030
you go, and we want that, those slogans, we want
913
00:46:20.050 --> 00:46:23.510
those demands to be represented by electoral officials. The thing
914
00:46:23.550 --> 00:46:25.489
in between is to go, maybe we should start persuading
915
00:46:25.530 --> 00:46:28.110
people of it. But there was a jump without any
916
00:46:28.130 --> 00:46:30.150
of that persuasion happening. There was a jump in saying,
917
00:46:30.210 --> 00:46:33.219
we want to see our elected representatives represented you know,
918
00:46:33.519 --> 00:46:35.579
out there fighting for this, which I think was a
919
00:46:35.760 --> 00:46:36.559
tactical error.
920
00:46:37.460 --> 00:46:38.800
I've got a lot to say about this, but let's
921
00:46:38.860 --> 00:46:42.820
actually first go to AOC expanding on how she looks
922
00:46:42.860 --> 00:46:44.510
back at the demands made at the height of the
923
00:46:44.530 --> 00:46:45.159
BLM movement.
924
00:46:45.610 --> 00:46:47.809
Did the movement go too far with some of those positions?
925
00:46:47.869 --> 00:46:51.349
I mean, you briefly supported the idea of defunding the police.
926
00:46:51.530 --> 00:46:57.170
Well, you know, I think that during this time and during,
927
00:46:57.190 --> 00:47:00.630
especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the
928
00:47:00.730 --> 00:47:03.079
overtime window. We were shut down. there was some of
929
00:47:03.119 --> 00:47:05.380
the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of
930
00:47:05.460 --> 00:47:09.719
those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really
931
00:47:09.920 --> 00:47:14.159
open in trying to entertain any and every policy that
932
00:47:14.460 --> 00:47:16.679
was going to get us to a better place. And
933
00:47:16.719 --> 00:47:20.590
I actually think that the discussions that were had in
934
00:47:20.630 --> 00:47:24.690
that time were quite fruitful. I think that when we
935
00:47:24.750 --> 00:47:28.130
talk about crime today, it's fundamentally different than the way
936
00:47:28.170 --> 00:47:30.989
that we talked about crime in bringing crime down, right?
937
00:47:31.519 --> 00:47:33.300
And I think that we all share in the goals
938
00:47:33.360 --> 00:47:36.679
of having as low a crime rate as possible. I
939
00:47:36.739 --> 00:47:41.690
think that, you know, during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in
940
00:47:41.730 --> 00:47:44.010
that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.
941
00:47:44.090 --> 00:47:46.750
And I'm grateful that these candidates have the opportunity to
942
00:47:46.789 --> 00:47:50.190
present who they are to their electorate and what they're
943
00:47:50.210 --> 00:47:51.989
campaigning on in this moment.
944
00:47:53.369 --> 00:47:58.179
I suppose from what AOC says there, you know, I'm
945
00:47:58.610 --> 00:48:01.760
not going to make this about me. That would be ridiculous.
946
00:48:01.980 --> 00:48:03.260
Enough about you, AOC.
947
00:48:04.340 --> 00:48:06.159
But I remember saying at the time, like on Twitter,
948
00:48:06.199 --> 00:48:09.409
you know, like defund kind of makes sense if you're
949
00:48:09.429 --> 00:48:11.849
just saying there are other ways to deal with crime
950
00:48:11.909 --> 00:48:13.409
and that America should maybe be a bit more like
951
00:48:13.449 --> 00:48:15.969
a social democracy, a bit more European in sort of
952
00:48:15.989 --> 00:48:18.630
like how it deals with crime and punishment. And it's
953
00:48:18.650 --> 00:48:20.349
good that people have moved away from abolish and they're
954
00:48:20.369 --> 00:48:22.090
going to defund because it seems a bit more reasonable.
955
00:48:22.409 --> 00:48:24.190
And the amount of people online that would be like,
956
00:48:24.389 --> 00:48:25.489
what the hell are you talking about?
957
00:48:25.750 --> 00:48:27.170
You're speaking over activists.
958
00:48:27.719 --> 00:48:30.440
It's defund as a route to abolish, yada, yada, yada.
959
00:48:30.769 --> 00:48:32.710
And obviously, you know, I didn't lose my job. My
960
00:48:32.750 --> 00:48:34.449
life is fine. I'm not really a victim.
961
00:48:34.469 --> 00:48:35.670
I tried to get rid of you, but I was overruled.
962
00:48:35.710 --> 00:48:36.630
Well, some people did.
963
00:48:36.730 --> 00:48:38.329
Not anyone in the organization, but there were lots of
964
00:48:38.369 --> 00:48:40.869
people who were sort of like, the number of quote
965
00:48:40.909 --> 00:48:47.530
tweets and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And the main consequence for me, which
966
00:48:47.570 --> 00:48:50.590
wasn't a consequence, was people sort of saying, you know,
967
00:48:50.889 --> 00:48:52.630
why do you need your voice to be heard on
968
00:48:52.650 --> 00:48:54.889
this issue, da-da-da-da-da? And so I just stopped tweeting about it,
969
00:48:55.429 --> 00:48:58.650
which is fine for me. But I feel like both
970
00:48:58.710 --> 00:48:59.670
on that debate and.
971
00:49:01.510 --> 00:49:04.820
I mean, even more controversial one, sort of some of
972
00:49:04.840 --> 00:49:08.760
the trans debates. The main consequence for, I think, lots
973
00:49:08.800 --> 00:49:12.760
of people was to just back out of all the discussion.
974
00:49:12.820 --> 00:49:14.760
And what that means is that the discussion is only
975
00:49:14.869 --> 00:49:19.070
ever dominated by people with quite specific views because everyone
976
00:49:19.090 --> 00:49:20.289
else thinks this is not what it.
977
00:49:20.340 --> 00:49:20.800
Oh, my God.
978
00:49:21.420 --> 00:49:22.440
Shall I risk getting in trouble?
979
00:49:22.599 --> 00:49:22.880
Go on.
980
00:49:23.179 --> 00:49:24.159
All right.
981
00:49:24.179 --> 00:49:25.110
Better than me risking it.
982
00:49:27.090 --> 00:49:30.550
Something which I've changed my mind on is that, you know,
983
00:49:30.610 --> 00:49:33.289
I would talk about abolition and abolition of prisons and
984
00:49:33.329 --> 00:49:36.289
abolition of the police because, like a lot.
985
00:49:36.210 --> 00:49:40.179
Of people, I was coming from that position of having.
986
00:49:41.469 --> 00:49:46.730
seen the impacts of racist policing fairly close up, having
987
00:49:46.750 --> 00:49:49.110
also seen the way in which prisons contribute to the
988
00:49:49.170 --> 00:49:52.130
social ills that they purport to be solving. Because when
989
00:49:52.170 --> 00:49:55.019
you take someone out of their family unit, out of
990
00:49:55.059 --> 00:49:57.519
their community, put them in prison, you're sort of creating
991
00:49:57.559 --> 00:50:00.119
a tear, right? A tear in the social fabric, which
992
00:50:00.260 --> 00:50:04.239
has all of these different consequences. And something which changed
993
00:50:04.599 --> 00:50:07.400
my mind about it was actually an experience of incarceration
994
00:50:07.420 --> 00:50:10.030
within my own family, where I actually thought this person
995
00:50:10.050 --> 00:50:15.090
needs to be imprisoned. There isn't an alternative to this
996
00:50:15.150 --> 00:50:18.000
person being in prison. And in a moral society, in
997
00:50:18.039 --> 00:50:21.780
a just society, that's where they should be. And whenever
998
00:50:21.820 --> 00:50:23.900
I tried to bring this up with friends of mine
999
00:50:23.920 --> 00:50:27.699
who were still abolitionists, they just couldn't wrap their head
1000
00:50:27.719 --> 00:50:31.860
around that part. And when I would say, but hang on,
1001
00:50:32.260 --> 00:50:36.820
aren't we proposing a society where prisons are eliminated? then
1002
00:50:36.900 --> 00:50:41.679
it would get into these very semantic arguments of, well, no,
1003
00:50:42.079 --> 00:50:45.860
because whatever force we have to deprive people of their
1004
00:50:45.909 --> 00:50:48.170
liberty or separate them off from society would be so
1005
00:50:48.250 --> 00:50:50.530
different from the police, it would no longer be called police,
1006
00:50:50.570 --> 00:50:53.210
which I just think is an argument about language.
1007
00:50:53.269 --> 00:50:54.630
It's not an argument about content.
1008
00:50:54.889 --> 00:50:57.949
Obviously, I want how policing operates and prisons work to
1009
00:50:57.989 --> 00:50:58.610
be really different.
1010
00:50:59.250 --> 00:51:00.789
Or it would be a setting of homework.
1011
00:51:01.309 --> 00:51:03.949
Like, well, if you go and read Ruth Wilson Gilmore,
1012
00:51:04.860 --> 00:51:07.900
And so I then started going, okay, but abolition had
1013
00:51:07.920 --> 00:51:10.960
a really specific meaning. The abolition of slavery meant one
1014
00:51:10.980 --> 00:51:14.519
day you didn't have slavery anymore, right? It wasn't, well,
1015
00:51:14.820 --> 00:51:18.760
we're going towards a horizon where there is no more slavery.
1016
00:51:18.800 --> 00:51:21.679
It's like, no, there will be no more slavery. And
1017
00:51:21.719 --> 00:51:25.860
so I have since come to the conclusion that abolition
1018
00:51:26.079 --> 00:51:29.409
is often invoked, and I'm not saying this about, you know,
1019
00:51:29.760 --> 00:51:32.230
Ruth Wilson Gilmore or Angela Davis, who I'm sure have
1020
00:51:32.510 --> 00:51:34.920
thought a lot about this, but it's often used by
1021
00:51:34.960 --> 00:51:38.159
people in the movement to make reform sound spicier than
1022
00:51:38.179 --> 00:51:40.599
it actually is. And I think that it's got something
1023
00:51:40.639 --> 00:51:43.610
to do with subculture. I think it's got something to
1024
00:51:43.650 --> 00:51:45.369
do with the way people turn to politics when what
1025
00:51:45.389 --> 00:51:48.239
they actually want is either subculture, like you're not a
1026
00:51:48.260 --> 00:51:50.510
real punk, I'm a real punk, or religion, which is
1027
00:51:50.550 --> 00:51:52.590
a certain form of certainty, if this is right and
1028
00:51:52.630 --> 00:51:58.289
this is wrong. Whereas politics is actually about negotiation and prioritisation, persuasion,
1029
00:51:58.530 --> 00:52:03.199
coalition building. These things which have various forms of compromise
1030
00:52:03.239 --> 00:52:05.320
kind of built into it, because that's what it means
1031
00:52:05.380 --> 00:52:11.380
to negotiate something politically. And again, I just don't think
1032
00:52:11.440 --> 00:52:11.960
that people.
1033
00:52:12.769 --> 00:52:14.329
And there are good reasons for this.
1034
00:52:14.489 --> 00:52:18.699
I think that when you watch the video of Eric
1035
00:52:18.719 --> 00:52:22.659
Garner being choked to death or George Floyd being suffocated,
1036
00:52:23.500 --> 00:52:28.840
or you hear the 911 call, Trayvon Martin being killed
1037
00:52:28.880 --> 00:52:34.420
by George Zimmerman, all of these things have very visceral effect, right?
1038
00:52:34.880 --> 00:52:38.139
You don't really want to think politically and tactically.
1039
00:52:38.219 --> 00:52:39.110
You do feel.
1040
00:52:40.699 --> 00:52:44.880
You know, so morally outraged and offended, it's very right
1041
00:52:44.920 --> 00:52:48.789
and it's very wrong. But if you're making political demands,
1042
00:52:48.869 --> 00:52:52.130
actually right or wrong is just one component of it.
1043
00:52:53.150 --> 00:52:55.250
Well, I suppose I'd push back because I never thought
1044
00:52:55.269 --> 00:52:57.469
the problem with defund or abolish was that they were
1045
00:52:57.489 --> 00:52:58.550
politically unstrategic.
1046
00:52:58.570 --> 00:53:00.590
I thought they were bad ideas.
1047
00:53:00.630 --> 00:53:02.630
But it's both, right? It's like you have to be
1048
00:53:02.869 --> 00:53:04.269
open to having a discussion about.
1049
00:53:04.739 --> 00:53:06.679
Yeah, you have to be open to having that discussion,
1050
00:53:06.699 --> 00:53:08.739
then you can hash it out in an open-minded way.
1051
00:53:08.900 --> 00:53:12.860
You can't just sort of be, like, Manichaean about it.
1052
00:53:12.920 --> 00:53:14.699
There is good and there is evil, and this idea
1053
00:53:14.760 --> 00:53:16.139
is on the side of the good. But I can
1054
00:53:16.179 --> 00:53:19.179
understand how you feel that way, and how you feel
1055
00:53:19.219 --> 00:53:20.500
that there is a very clear sense of good and
1056
00:53:20.599 --> 00:53:23.340
evil when you watch a video where, quite frankly, evil
1057
00:53:23.400 --> 00:53:24.099
is being done.
1058
00:53:26.400 --> 00:53:29.500
Let's look at how Francesca Hong is responding to the
1059
00:53:29.539 --> 00:53:30.860
questions about her old tweets.
1060
00:53:32.210 --> 00:53:34.510
That's not going to be an easy race. It's going
1061
00:53:34.530 --> 00:53:36.469
to be very easy for people to put up on
1062
00:53:36.489 --> 00:53:40.219
the board and say, you said abolish the Senate, defund
1063
00:53:40.239 --> 00:53:44.280
the police, abolish the police. And why should they not
1064
00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:46.409
believe that you would want to do that, that you
1065
00:53:46.429 --> 00:53:47.989
would try to do that if you became governor?
1066
00:53:48.849 --> 00:53:51.989
I believe that people can evolve. We need Trump voters
1067
00:53:52.070 --> 00:53:55.139
from previous elections who now would like to vote for me,
1068
00:53:55.179 --> 00:53:56.679
who have a sign in their yard.
1069
00:53:56.699 --> 00:53:58.489
So who needs to evolve, the voter or you?
1070
00:53:58.559 --> 00:54:01.800
The governor cannot defund the police, and I won't defund
1071
00:54:01.840 --> 00:54:02.320
the police.
1072
00:54:02.340 --> 00:54:03.809
So you have evolved.
1073
00:54:03.829 --> 00:54:07.250
The things we know prevent crime, like getting guns off
1074
00:54:07.309 --> 00:54:10.070
of our street, making sure there is victims for justice,
1075
00:54:10.130 --> 00:54:13.309
that there are places where our kids can go after
1076
00:54:13.369 --> 00:54:17.190
school and thrive. We can't be tough on causes. We
1077
00:54:17.250 --> 00:54:19.349
have to be tough on causes if we would like
1078
00:54:19.409 --> 00:54:22.269
to be tough on crime. And as governor, I cannot
1079
00:54:22.309 --> 00:54:24.949
defund the police. And I've reminded folks that I won't
1080
00:54:24.969 --> 00:54:25.809
defund the police.
1081
00:54:27.949 --> 00:54:29.269
So her argument is basically.
1082
00:54:29.289 --> 00:54:32.730
It's unclear if I believe in it or not, but
1083
00:54:32.769 --> 00:54:33.929
I don't have the power to do it anyway.
1084
00:54:33.949 --> 00:54:34.510
So don't worry.
1085
00:54:36.929 --> 00:54:37.469
I mean this.
1086
00:54:39.059 --> 00:54:41.519
You know, in a derogatory way, she sounds like a politician.
1087
00:54:42.929 --> 00:54:46.690
Both in terms of her delivery and the sense that
1088
00:54:46.789 --> 00:54:49.170
she's trying to make you feel much better about some
1089
00:54:49.210 --> 00:54:54.150
bad news that she's telling you. And also what feels
1090
00:54:54.190 --> 00:54:57.389
like a lack of authenticity. I think it's perfectly legitimate
1091
00:54:57.409 --> 00:54:59.829
to be like, my views have changed and they've evolved.
1092
00:55:00.329 --> 00:55:03.210
I've become... older i've spoken.
1093
00:55:02.889 --> 00:55:06.789
To more people i understand that there are different solutions
1094
00:55:06.869 --> 00:55:08.909
to social problems and that's what i'm committed to but
1095
00:55:09.570 --> 00:55:13.630
the slogans didn't didn't really tell us anything about them
1096
00:55:13.769 --> 00:55:16.559
so i'm interested in these solutions that's what i'm clear
1097
00:55:16.599 --> 00:55:19.880
about it would also be fine or you know honest
1098
00:55:19.900 --> 00:55:21.539
to be like i still believe in this shit man
1099
00:55:22.199 --> 00:55:26.300
like disco never died i still believe that i both
1100
00:55:26.320 --> 00:55:29.960
of those things pull from a real human place whereas
1101
00:55:30.179 --> 00:55:33.940
i just don't think she was getting there i i
1102
00:55:34.039 --> 00:55:37.019
i don't really mind in a way um i think
1103
00:55:37.059 --> 00:55:40.219
lots of people feel this way is that i've got
1104
00:55:40.239 --> 00:55:41.940
more time for someone who holds a belief that i
1105
00:55:41.980 --> 00:55:44.820
don't hold but they're sincere in their holding of it
1106
00:55:44.940 --> 00:55:48.400
than someone who is constantly triangulating.
1107
00:55:49.570 --> 00:55:54.210
All right uh that uh primary is tomorrow um May I.
1108
00:55:54.150 --> 00:55:55.050
Set something right, though?
1109
00:55:55.070 --> 00:55:55.210
Go on.
1110
00:55:55.230 --> 00:55:57.239
Because I saw something in the comments, which is someone asked,
1111
00:55:58.199 --> 00:55:58.780
am I.
1112
00:55:58.840 --> 00:56:01.139
That girl who said that air conditioning was racist?
1113
00:56:01.260 --> 00:56:01.559
No.
1114
00:56:02.639 --> 00:56:05.260
That was a different South Asian woman who I constantly
1115
00:56:05.300 --> 00:56:08.199
get mixed up for. And I would actually say maybe
1116
00:56:08.429 --> 00:56:11.690
not having air conditioning is racist because I look shinier
1117
00:56:11.710 --> 00:56:14.949
than you. Shine shows up more on dark skin. So
1118
00:56:15.230 --> 00:56:18.449
that's woke 2.0. Fit AC in the office.
1119
00:56:18.469 --> 00:56:22.480
Have you heard I still look pretty shiny? Maybe the
1120
00:56:22.519 --> 00:56:23.559
contrast is lower. I don't know.
1121
00:56:23.780 --> 00:56:25.679
I think the contrast is lower.
1122
00:56:25.780 --> 00:56:27.880
Some comments. I've been really liking some comments today.
1123
00:56:28.079 --> 00:56:31.159
So Michael went to Oxford and can't add 30 to 2012,
1124
00:56:31.159 --> 00:56:32.610
which is fair enough.
1125
00:56:32.639 --> 00:56:33.849
It did take me a few seconds.
1126
00:56:34.829 --> 00:56:36.250
There was also a debate about why I'm not a
1127
00:56:36.269 --> 00:56:38.409
vegan and someone kindly pointed out that I had IBS.
1128
00:56:38.929 --> 00:56:42.159
So I struggle with pulses. So I love.
1129
00:56:42.739 --> 00:56:47.300
I love that our viewers know about my dietary requirements.
1130
00:56:47.880 --> 00:56:50.769
Makes me feel very cared for. I didn't know that
1131
00:56:50.789 --> 00:56:51.530
you had IBS.
1132
00:56:51.690 --> 00:56:55.909
I'm trying to get referred to an allergist because pulses
1133
00:56:57.090 --> 00:56:59.230
make me incredibly bloated. Now, I know they make everyone
1134
00:56:59.739 --> 00:57:02.260
a bit bloated, but me really bloated. And I have
1135
00:57:02.280 --> 00:57:04.869
a kind of nut allergy. So I'm really struggling with
1136
00:57:04.889 --> 00:57:07.630
the whole vegan proteins. I am going to try and
1137
00:57:07.769 --> 00:57:10.030
cut out. Well, not try, that's weak. I'm going to
1138
00:57:10.090 --> 00:57:12.969
stop eating beef and lamb for a start because they
1139
00:57:13.030 --> 00:57:14.739
are the ones that are really bad for the climate.
1140
00:57:14.760 --> 00:57:19.539
Maybe cut down on cheese, chicken, fish, tofu. Any advice
1141
00:57:19.559 --> 00:57:21.820
you've got, let them know in the comments. If you
1142
00:57:21.840 --> 00:57:25.820
know a good allergist in the London area, feel free
1143
00:57:25.860 --> 00:57:27.280
to let me know.
1144
00:57:27.440 --> 00:57:28.360
Or if you are an allergist.
1145
00:57:29.219 --> 00:57:31.219
If you want to join Michael's support group, Hot Boys
1146
00:57:31.239 --> 00:57:33.519
with IBS, link in the description.
1147
00:57:34.539 --> 00:57:35.579
Today I feel.
1148
00:57:37.480 --> 00:57:37.980
Qatari.
1149
00:57:42.679 --> 00:57:43.519
Today I feel Arab.
1150
00:57:43.539 --> 00:57:44.920
Today I feel African.
1151
00:57:48.659 --> 00:58:09.320
Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I
1152
00:58:09.900 --> 00:58:12.679
feel a migrant worker.
1153
00:58:16.269 --> 00:58:20.469
Today I feel out of a job. Am I allowed
1154
00:58:20.489 --> 00:58:20.929
to do that?
1155
00:58:21.260 --> 00:58:24.519
Anyway, that was FIFA head Gianni Infantino speaking at the
1156
00:58:24.559 --> 00:58:27.539
Qatar World Cup in 2022.
1157
00:58:27.539 --> 00:58:30.760
Obviously, a memorable clip. The 2026 World Cup brought many more.
1158
00:58:31.320 --> 00:58:35.460
But despite his masterful way with words, Infantino's days might
1159
00:58:35.519 --> 00:58:39.420
be numbered. That's because several football federations, including those for Europe,
1160
00:58:39.480 --> 00:58:42.699
North America and the Caribbean and Asia, have called for
1161
00:58:42.760 --> 00:58:47.000
Infantino to quit while threatening to create their own competitions
1162
00:58:47.039 --> 00:58:50.440
to rival FIFA's unless he goes. In an open letter,
1163
00:58:50.460 --> 00:58:55.039
the Free Associations said this. Leadership in football is not
1164
00:58:55.159 --> 00:58:58.219
a possession. It is not about holding or demanding power
1165
00:58:58.260 --> 00:59:00.360
to be held. It is a duty of service to
1166
00:59:00.389 --> 00:59:03.409
the football family that entrusts it. When trust is broken
1167
00:59:03.530 --> 00:59:07.070
through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective
1168
00:59:07.150 --> 00:59:09.969
that entrusted him with authority, that duty has been broken.
1169
00:59:10.800 --> 00:59:14.820
Abandoned. Deception, broken trust, the dereliction of duty.
1170
00:59:15.219 --> 00:59:18.360
This all stems from Infantino's plans revealed in July to
1171
00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:20.519
spin off FIFA into a private company with billions of
1172
00:59:20.559 --> 00:59:24.119
dollars in private investments. And the company would have allowed
1173
00:59:24.159 --> 00:59:27.960
Infantino to claim a massive pay rise. And the investment
1174
00:59:28.000 --> 00:59:30.980
was going to be led by Joshua Kushner, brother-in-law, or sorry,
1175
00:59:31.039 --> 00:59:34.690
brother to Trump's son-in-law. So this all looked remarkably corrupt.
1176
00:59:35.250 --> 00:59:37.010
And it would have taken the World Cup even further
1177
00:59:37.610 --> 00:59:40.170
from the wishes of genuine football fans. So Infantino was
1178
00:59:40.210 --> 00:59:43.800
already under pressure. The exorbitant prices challenged at the 2026
1179
00:59:43.800 --> 00:59:44.320
World Cup.
1180
00:59:44.800 --> 00:59:46.460
Investors would presumably want them even higher.
1181
00:59:46.900 --> 00:59:51.000
And Infantino had already proven his unaccountability to member associations
1182
00:59:51.039 --> 00:59:53.679
by reversing a red card decision given to a star
1183
00:59:53.739 --> 00:59:57.239
American player after a call from Donald Trump. Selling off
1184
00:59:57.260 --> 01:00:00.230
the competition to a member of Trump's extended family would
1185
01:00:00.269 --> 01:00:04.190
hardly provide reassurance that FIFA would act more properly in
1186
01:00:04.269 --> 01:00:08.670
future tournaments. And amid this revolt from world football associations,
1187
01:00:08.789 --> 01:00:12.719
Infantino now has another headache to contend with, Last week,
1188
01:00:12.739 --> 01:00:15.920
The Telegraph published an exclusive alleging that UEFA paid off
1189
01:00:15.940 --> 01:00:20.000
Gianni Infantino's lover, who also worked at the organisation while
1190
01:00:20.099 --> 01:00:23.619
Infantino was its boss, giving her a six-figure payout when
1191
01:00:23.659 --> 01:00:26.090
she left the organisation and paying for her to do
1192
01:00:26.489 --> 01:00:30.130
an MBA. UEFA has confirmed the payment to the junior employee,
1193
01:00:30.570 --> 01:00:34.840
though Infantino strongly denies the allegations. Now, this is.
1194
01:00:37.050 --> 01:00:38.829
I think this is a bit shady from UEFA, frankly.
1195
01:00:38.889 --> 01:00:41.159
I mean, Infantino obviously should resign. He should not be
1196
01:00:41.179 --> 01:00:41.800
the head of FIFA.
1197
01:00:42.340 --> 01:00:44.860
But UEFA have obviously had this information for a very
1198
01:00:44.900 --> 01:00:45.880
long time because they did it.
1199
01:00:47.019 --> 01:00:49.780
And then now they want to remove Infantino. So they're like, oh,
1200
01:00:50.519 --> 01:00:52.420
should we leak the whole thing about paying off the lady?
1201
01:00:53.260 --> 01:00:56.789
It doesn't seem like a particularly.
1202
01:00:57.869 --> 01:00:59.530
Honest and open way to behave.
1203
01:01:00.349 --> 01:01:03.530
Why are you expecting honesty and ethics from UEFA?
1204
01:01:03.570 --> 01:01:04.289
That's fair enough.
1205
01:01:05.230 --> 01:01:05.989
I'm sorry.
1206
01:01:06.429 --> 01:01:09.300
Do you go to Harold Shipman for a good bedside manner?
1207
01:01:13.139 --> 01:01:16.960
Interestingly, this does reveal something about the internal politicking and
1208
01:01:17.000 --> 01:01:17.840
how things work.
1209
01:01:18.099 --> 01:01:22.199
It's not that people are blind.
1210
01:01:21.780 --> 01:01:24.599
To corruption when it takes place. It's that people store
1211
01:01:24.619 --> 01:01:27.619
information online. in their back pocket, and I think it
1212
01:01:27.659 --> 01:01:30.519
was Tom Womskans who says, you know, information is a
1213
01:01:30.539 --> 01:01:32.280
broken bottle and you just have to shove it in
1214
01:01:32.320 --> 01:01:35.119
their faces at the right time. You hold on to it,
1215
01:01:35.300 --> 01:01:37.510
you tend it, and that's clearly something that's happening now.
1216
01:01:39.010 --> 01:01:42.190
In terms of why is it that not every single,
1217
01:01:42.210 --> 01:01:48.460
you know, sort of regional conglomeration of football associations has
1218
01:01:48.539 --> 01:01:51.739
parted with Infantino? I mean, first thing to say is
1219
01:01:51.780 --> 01:01:54.719
that there are levels of corruption and bribery everywhere.
1220
01:01:55.150 --> 01:01:58.670
In football, the likes of which we can only imagine,
1221
01:01:58.690 --> 01:01:59.269
all right?
1222
01:01:59.590 --> 01:02:01.250
And so whether or not that might have something to
1223
01:02:01.289 --> 01:02:04.869
do with who's still in alignment and who isn't, I
1224
01:02:04.909 --> 01:02:07.489
can't say. I don't have that information. But just if
1225
01:02:07.530 --> 01:02:10.679
you look at the history of FIFA, you'd say likely.
1226
01:02:11.489 --> 01:02:14.280
The second thing is that when it comes to the
1227
01:02:14.320 --> 01:02:18.360
commercialization of football, and you go back to de Havilland,
1228
01:02:18.400 --> 01:02:21.239
who was kind of the first big money guy who
1229
01:02:21.300 --> 01:02:23.929
was the head of FIFA, is that that went hand
1230
01:02:23.989 --> 01:02:27.719
in hand with developing the sort of football infrastructure in
1231
01:02:28.920 --> 01:02:32.519
global South countries. So de Havilland is sort of, you know,
1232
01:02:32.800 --> 01:02:35.099
I think that's kind of the original sin of FIFA.
1233
01:02:35.139 --> 01:02:38.670
But don't forget, in terms of his campaign to lead FIFA,
1234
01:02:38.730 --> 01:02:41.369
he was partnered with Pele. You know, really, this was
1235
01:02:41.429 --> 01:02:45.699
about why should the game be owned by Europe? So
1236
01:02:45.719 --> 01:02:49.159
there's always been this thing that commercialisation has been seen
1237
01:02:49.239 --> 01:02:54.030
to be better for regions outside of Europe when it
1238
01:02:54.070 --> 01:02:54.710
comes to football.
1239
01:02:56.110 --> 01:02:56.670
When it comes to.
1240
01:02:56.670 --> 01:03:04.369
UEFA specifically, the role of Sepp Blatter in, I guess,
1241
01:03:04.550 --> 01:03:09.219
just clawing at Infantino from the sidelines, is that when
1242
01:03:09.260 --> 01:03:12.070
I first got my head around this story, I thought, well,
1243
01:03:12.090 --> 01:03:16.489
this is about Sepp Blatter being a different kind of crook,
1244
01:03:16.730 --> 01:03:18.969
shall we say, which is, yes, he loves money, but
1245
01:03:18.989 --> 01:03:21.920
he also loves football. What I didn't realise is that
1246
01:03:22.000 --> 01:03:24.900
actually Sepp Blatter has beef with Gianni Infantino going all
1247
01:03:24.920 --> 01:03:28.280
the way back to 2015, 2016, when he was ousted
1248
01:03:29.139 --> 01:03:34.309
from his role over payments made to Mikel Platini. And
1249
01:03:34.650 --> 01:03:37.769
he sort of described it as, you know, Infantino told
1250
01:03:37.809 --> 01:03:40.170
me one thing that, you know, I could always call him.
1251
01:03:40.650 --> 01:03:44.349
We ate dried meat and we had some wine together.
1252
01:03:44.369 --> 01:03:47.269
And then he said, no, no, no, only through my lawyers.
1253
01:03:47.329 --> 01:03:47.869
He blocked me.
1254
01:03:47.889 --> 01:03:49.949
He wouldn't even let me collect my belongings from the
1255
01:03:49.969 --> 01:03:53.139
FIFA office. And since then, it has been like a divorce.
1256
01:03:53.599 --> 01:03:54.460
Wow. So.
1257
01:03:55.550 --> 01:03:58.840
I don't think that people are necessarily insincere when they're
1258
01:03:58.860 --> 01:04:03.679
saying that this is a horrendous attempt to bastardise the
1259
01:04:04.119 --> 01:04:08.019
people's game. I also think that everyone's got their own
1260
01:04:08.059 --> 01:04:11.750
agenda and that's what's coming to the fore.
1261
01:04:12.630 --> 01:04:16.449
Yeah, what's so, like, I suppose frustrating about it is, like,
1262
01:04:17.210 --> 01:04:20.289
if you run the World Cup... You've got like the easy,
1263
01:04:20.369 --> 01:04:23.090
it's the easiest job in the world because whatever you do,
1264
01:04:23.349 --> 01:04:25.590
it's going to be a success. Like at this World Cup,
1265
01:04:25.670 --> 01:04:29.530
the tickets were way too expensive, right? Red cards were overturned.
1266
01:04:29.929 --> 01:04:33.780
You know, there were... advert breaks in the middle of
1267
01:04:33.800 --> 01:04:34.139
a half.
1268
01:04:34.960 --> 01:04:36.920
You could do so many fuck-ups that people hated, but
1269
01:04:36.940 --> 01:04:39.239
then the World Cup is going to be brilliant. You
1270
01:04:39.280 --> 01:04:42.380
can't really ruin it because football is amazing and this
1271
01:04:42.400 --> 01:04:44.039
is the world football tournament.
1272
01:04:44.139 --> 01:04:45.179
It's going to be brilliant.
1273
01:04:45.599 --> 01:04:49.809
But still, just coast. I'm a big believer in coasting.
1274
01:04:50.889 --> 01:04:54.489
If your salary is high enough, if the product is fine...
1275
01:04:55.090 --> 01:04:57.269
Just keep doing what you're doing. Why does he need
1276
01:04:57.389 --> 01:04:59.469
to get private investments so he can get an even
1277
01:04:59.530 --> 01:05:03.010
higher salary so that Trump's son-in-law, blah, blah, blah, just
1278
01:05:03.050 --> 01:05:04.650
put on the World Cup every four years and people
1279
01:05:04.670 --> 01:05:07.650
will love it. And people will love you unless you do, like,
1280
01:05:08.170 --> 01:05:09.590
obviously corrupt fuck-ups like this.
1281
01:05:10.510 --> 01:05:12.969
I think it's difficult. I think people that don't have
1282
01:05:12.989 --> 01:05:14.690
this in them find it difficult to imagine.
1283
01:05:14.710 --> 01:05:15.630
Greed.
1284
01:05:15.869 --> 01:05:16.889
Rapacious greed.
1285
01:05:17.179 --> 01:05:18.840
And I think it's because both me and you can
1286
01:05:18.880 --> 01:05:21.699
imagine a level of money where you'd go, God, I'd
1287
01:05:21.739 --> 01:05:22.639
be happy with that.
1288
01:05:22.860 --> 01:05:23.619
And that level of money.
1289
01:05:24.230 --> 01:05:28.230
for Gianni Infantino, would seem embarrassingly low. He'd go, why
1290
01:05:28.309 --> 01:05:28.889
end there?
1291
01:05:28.909 --> 01:05:32.789
You couldn't even pay off an office fling with that amount.
1292
01:05:33.010 --> 01:05:33.449
No, you know?
1293
01:05:33.610 --> 01:05:37.030
Like, you can't even sexually harass one junior staffer on
1294
01:05:37.070 --> 01:05:37.909
that kind of salary.
1295
01:05:37.929 --> 01:05:42.039
I'm sure he's... I'm sure... There isn't even a suggestion
1296
01:05:42.059 --> 01:05:42.880
of sexual harassment.
1297
01:05:42.900 --> 01:05:44.119
I'm sure it's wholly consensual.
1298
01:05:44.199 --> 01:05:46.739
I'm just making a joke about how people in big
1299
01:05:46.760 --> 01:05:49.820
corporate jokes, big corporate jobs, tend to conduct themselves.
1300
01:05:50.539 --> 01:05:50.610
Um.
1301
01:05:52.079 --> 01:05:54.000
Yeah, you know, I think it's difficult to get your
1302
01:05:54.019 --> 01:05:55.869
head around that kind of greed if you don't have it.
1303
01:05:56.280 --> 01:05:57.719
I can imagine a level of money that I'd be
1304
01:05:57.760 --> 01:06:00.139
happy with. But I think what happens is that you
1305
01:06:00.179 --> 01:06:04.409
get that kind of money and then your expectations change.
1306
01:06:04.829 --> 01:06:07.510
The people whose lifestyle you're comparing yours to changes.
1307
01:06:07.889 --> 01:06:10.909
Power changes. You think you're powerful on this kind of money.
1308
01:06:11.210 --> 01:06:11.610
What was it?
1309
01:06:11.670 --> 01:06:15.449
Again, I'm quoting Succession a lot, is that when Tom
1310
01:06:15.630 --> 01:06:19.300
is sort of deriding Greg for his paltry $ 2 million inheritance,
1311
01:06:19.340 --> 01:06:21.300
he says, you're the poorest rich man in America.
1312
01:06:22.079 --> 01:06:22.840
That's a really good line.
1313
01:06:23.500 --> 01:06:24.900
Amazing.
1314
01:06:25.119 --> 01:06:28.320
Okay. I need to raise my ambitions.
1315
01:06:29.619 --> 01:06:30.820
No, that is not.
1316
01:06:30.860 --> 01:06:32.400
That's what I took from that. That is absolutely. That's
1317
01:06:32.420 --> 01:06:36.639
what I took from that. I'm coasting. Ash, pleasure to
1318
01:06:36.679 --> 01:06:37.400
spend the evening with you.
1319
01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:38.500
Pleasure as always.
1320
01:06:38.519 --> 01:06:40.280
Thank you everyone for tuning in.
1321
01:06:40.679 --> 01:06:42.300
Thank you so much for, I feel like there is
1322
01:06:42.320 --> 01:06:46.070
some IBS advice coming through. We'll have to keep this
1323
01:06:46.289 --> 01:06:48.110
stream up long enough that I can read them all, Alex,
1324
01:06:48.210 --> 01:06:48.750
and make notes.
1325
01:06:49.969 --> 01:06:52.659
Thank you guys for watching. We'll be back tomorrow at 6pm.
1326
01:06:52.679 --> 01:06:54.059
For now, you've been watching Navarro Media. Good night.