Is Burnham-ism High Street Socialism?

0:00Welcome to Navarra Live. Coming up tonight, Andy Burnham and Vail's are raft of measures to save the high-strength while Brissons forests are on fire. Our imprisonment for public protection jail terms to blame for the chronic overcrowding in our country is prisons and is shrinkflation. The ultimate signifier that capitalism has run out of gas. I'm Aramistani and today I'm joined by Michael Walker. How are you? Very well, very honored to be on today's show with one of the most powerful men in Britain. And we've been banging the drums about vape shops for years now. It's Brisson, he's Britain, and we're just living in it. I've been turned by some Brissons most influential conservative. I must say as well, Michael, as I was speaking to you there just a moment ago, and my voice was going up and I was getting more aggressive. I was reminded of a comment on last week's show who said that I sound increasingly like Muttley from wacky racers and dick dastardly. For older people, perhaps you'll know that reference.

1:00I try my best to sound like a normal person, but I get so animated with these stories. I mean, it's going to emote. You know, the best presenters do that. Yeah, but I don't want to sound like a cartoon dog. Like I did just there, you see? Before we get started on tonight's show with some great stories, tickets are on sale for our next downstream IRL event. That's an Earth Theatre in Hackney. It's going to be a really great event this one. Ash Sarkar and I will be joined by cultural theorist Catherine Liu and writer Darren Maggarby. That's on the 21st of September. You can get tickets in the link. It's got a fab. Hackney is always wonderful. When we do these events in December and January, I'll be honest. It's a bit too cold. But September 21 is probably the perfect ambience for this kind of event. I'd love to see you there. I have to say that when we publicise this event on Instagram, it's somewhat polarised people. Because, of course, trauma is something that people already care about.

2:00It's a good thing we didn't call the event trauma-maxing that might have looked almost flippant. We didn't do that. Fortunately, it's a very serious event and we'll be covering it with, I think, a great deal of interest and curiosity. And, of course, giving it its due importance. And presumably, there'll also be questions from the floor. So if anyone does object, they can, of course, come and raise a difficult question. There will. But Darren Maggarby and Catherine Liu, two really distinctive, important voices in that debate, if you just screw them, both of them. Like Michael says, come along. Gonna take it. Say what you think. There are many things I've been called during my career, some of which are far too colourful to be repeated on air, even on YouTube. But I never thought I'd see the day where I could be credibly described as Britain's most influential winger. Didn't you know? My hosting style is based on Peter Griffin and grind my gears. But it's high streets that I've been complaining about particularly loudly for years now. I've grumbled about the over-flying charity shop bins that often act as prompts for people to fly tip.

3:01And then there's the litany of empty phone boxes that are more likely to be used as a public urinal than as a way of actually calling anyone. And how about the explosion of vape shops, barbershops, and mini-marts we've seen in recent years? All three of those, but that last one in particular, have become emblematic of the decline of the high street and the public realm more generally. In some places, trading standards have climbed up to half of these shops are connected to organised crime, with the sale of prescription drugs and cocaine being documented in some of the, although it's important to say, more often they're involved in money laundering and sales of illegal tobacco and alcohol, not murder and bank robbery. No, but a mundane low level of law breaking that is basically everywhere. It's certainly become a joke in small town Britain when a restaurant or bookshop closes people wonder, will it become a vape shop or a William Hill, a mini-marts or perhaps an HMO under permitted development? At which perhaps explains why today, Andy Burnham announced action on the likes of such businesses with the Prime Minister posting this on X.

4:04Vape shops, betting shops, dodgy businesses. If you look at your high street these days and think, who asked for this? You're not alone. I'm doing something about it. We're giving local people and councils more control over what opens and tougher powers to crack down on businesses that aren't good for our communities. For too long, Westminster is stood by while our high street's declined. That ends now. And here's Burnham speaking to Sky News about the issue earlier this afternoon. There's a real concern across the country. I felt it in the Maker Field by election about high streets that have been hollowed out, particularly in former industrial areas. It's just been in decline for a long time. And I want to give local communities the power to turn things around. And that means clamping down on some of the businesses that cause harm in communities and then supporting those that bring life back to our high street. So we are announcing big changes today to give communities more control over planning

5:06when it comes to vape shops, adult gaming centres and also the proliferation of betting shops by removing the aim to permit. This is a really useful graphic published by the Financial Times today. And it visually underscores the growth of vape shops and minimarts in this country. As you can see, the number of barbershops increases by about 600% in the decade following 2015. Although I think barbershops are a bit different to vape shops, I'll talk about that more in a minute. The number of takeaways increases by 500%, although to be fair, delivery apps, such as Uber Eats and Deliveroo, change the economics of those businesses quite a bit. Meanwhile, vape shops, they've increased here by 14 times. They've got up 1400% in one decade. Now, I know vaping really took off after the mid 2010s. I get it, even though I don't vape myself, but 1400% in a decade seems like a lot. Which is why lots of people think that some of these businesses do more than just sell vape,

6:07so provide haircuts, although, of course, many indeed the majority are legitimate businesses. Here's a clip from a BBC report months after an initial exposé there around about crime on the high street in the West Midlands. So, Graham, a cocaine thought on the high street. Cocaine, cannabis, prescription drugs, and illegal cigarettes, all for sale on this high street. I go eat 30 pounds. Millions of you watched our undercover footage. Let me see. I'm belief. So, three months on, we've come back to credely heath to see the impact of the BBC's reporting. Black yellow. A&E market. We bought a legal tobacco in here. It's now been forced to close by a court order. That's the cheapest one. Here's another one. G&G market. Land that cheap one, but yes. Forced to close. Look, there's one. Top G's. Close down after our reports. Apex press. Last time we were here, we bought illegal cigarettes.

7:09Everyone in the U.N. cheap bar on the leaf. Yeah, cheap bar on the leaf. Today, it is still open. Look, every single window at credely market has been shuttered. Everyone, this poster is telling people here that the shops have been closed down after a court order due to the criminality inside these places. I was just saying the Apex press. You said they come and see you some week. On the spot. It's very quiz, right? I'm a carlerist, but an grocery shop. This is a message not only to the people who live here, but also to people who are selling illegal cigarettes, illegal drugs all day, closed international vape. This is the sixth and final shop that has closed down on this high street. And people here tell us they feel safer now these shops have closed. We were just talking about how Andy Burnham could try and really make the most with these kinds of shutting down closures

8:11by trading standards, by local authorities. And it should have Andy Burnham's face on the front, say, this is Burnham's Britain no more crime on this high street. Yeah. It's a bit like the Trump gold card, right? The residency card that was available for high net worth individuals and had Trump's face on it. And he's very smart politics. I mean, he's announcing it in a high profile way. People already associate Andy Burnham with caring about those issues, which might not agitate people in London quite as much as they do in smaller towns around the UK. And now he's coming out with a policy that I think people do care about. So I mean, it's smart. I mean, I was in Make a Field for the bi-election and loads of people were talking about this stuff. And I do feel like people in larger cities, but particularly London, it's not so visible because you actually do have really, but not really. You have quite successful high streets. We have very successful high streets. No, no, but you've got to zone three or something and people say, my high street isn't that great. But look, it's a lot better than lots of bits of the West Mids

9:11or the North West. Wiggin' actually isn't too bad, which bit of Wiggin' is in Make a Field, but it was still really conspicuous how many there were. I mean, Keir's Dharma was MP, well, still is, I suppose, for Hobernand St. Pancras. Like, I don't think many people in Hobernand St. Pancras have as their main complaint that their high street is abandoned and there are too many babe shops and too many barbers that don't seem to be cutting people's hair. Right? So it does seem like this is an issue where it does make a concrete difference that you have a politician who's sort of representing people from outside of London. I mean, you know, how did you become the id of small town Britain, Aaron? You got married, you had a kid, you moved to Port Smith, right? And Port Smith back, Port Smith, and I said see my friend from that. It makes a difference. That's not a small town, is it? But you know what I mean? There is a difference between London and everywhere else. I mean, maybe, I don't know if Central Manchester also has the same issue with this. Well, you know, Oxford Street has these stupid candy stores. So they do, they exist everywhere, but obviously if you've got one babe shop, one candy store and it's next to a nice calf

10:11and next to a plant shop, it's not quite so offensive. In Hobernand St. Pancras, you know, you'll be at the Oyster Bar at the St. Pancras Station or maybe you'll go to the Googleplex. You know, you might not notice that many marks on the vape shops, but when you're in this part of the West Midlands, it's a bit more conspicuous. And you're right, I'm really on this stuff because I see it every day, conditions to term a consciousness. I walk down a road called Albert Road in Port Smith, and there's about 10 of these places. I get my hair cut by lovely guys, Elliott and Barry. And opposite them is two other barbers that just opened up in the space of six months and they sort of make jokes about how they buy drugs from them. I don't know if they do, right? They're joking. But I think they make vague illusions that people being able to buy cannabis in these places and so on. I don't know if that's true or if that's their primary business or whatever. But these are the kinds of conversations that are in circulation, basically everywhere outside of London. And it's kind of the folk politics, which burn them as channeling and getting into them, by the way, if you want to win democratic elections, that's something you kind of have to do.

11:13There are two separate issues on this. The issue of is there crime going on in this premise? So is it a legitimate business or is it a front for something else? But then there's also just the issue of, is this a pro-social use of the high street? So betting shops, I don't think anyone suggesting that betting shops are a front for crime, right? But no one thinks, oh great, there's a new betting shop on my high street. So it does make sense to favor, cuffs, butchers, bakers, cherry shops over betting shops. And I'd say similar about vape shops. I mean, barbers definitely are somewhere in the middle because I think of a barber as a classic pro-social space. I love going to, I don't, I've shaved my own head now because I need to cut it so often that it's too expensive to go to the barber. But I used to love going to the barber, the barbers around me, you often look in and there are people sitting around getting a haircut, loving to have a conversation. I think they're a good barber that's actually a barber is brilliant. I think we should be favoring them on high streets, but if it is the case that a bunch of the new ones

12:13on legitimate barber shops, I don't know. I don't know enough to say that's not the case. We have an issue with our auto queue, so I'm going to free wheel a bit. But I think the FTE said 16,000, right? That it's gone up to in the last decade. Doesn't seem like there are that many new heads to share. No, but even if two thirds of those aren't real, that's still a significant increase. I think you're right. A big part of the reason my barbershops are rising and number is because locals of entry, you don't pay business rates because they're very small, you don't need much kit. It's very labor intensive. People are going to constantly need them. There are big structural reasons why we have lots of barbershops. Well, also men are way more image conscious than they were 10 years ago, mainly because of Instagram. So I think men spend a lot more money on personal grooming than they did 10 years ago. So there's a legitimate explanation for the rise of barbers, but presumably also some of it is illegitimate. But it is important to say, we don't want everyone walking down the highest street thinking like, oh, that guy in the vape shop,

13:13he's probably pretty dodgy or new barbers there, but he's a drug dealer. Like that, we could go overboard with this. Yeah, I mean, Andy Barnum's, he's on the right track. Yeah. I mean, it's important to say that if you live in somewhere like Pompey, there'll be dozens of businesses like this and there will be some that are almost, you know, statistically it's very likely that some will be criminal. I mean, where I live in Port Smith in the last couple of weeks, actually, we've had places shut down for precisely these reasons. We've lost our auto key. What a terrible, what a terrible place to be. And for somebody as talentless as me, I feel like Obama that time. Or was it Hillary Clinton, Michael, when she lost her auto key and she just went, had a meltdown. She had a meltdown. Like, maybe Obama is free. Free will. You're going to go on the weave. I mean, there is also a strong social democratic argument to be made here, which is, you know, I suppose, again, the crime argument is somewhat separate, but in terms of what businesses does one want to promote on a high street and what does one not. You know, obviously there is the free market argument, which is to say, well, wherever people want a shop, you know, whichever business can make the most money,

14:14whichever business can pay the most rent, that is the business that should occupy that plot on the high street. But there is an argument to say, actually some businesses have huge positive externalities and some have negative externalities. I think people are really understating. And we'll talk about this more in a moment. I think people are understating how radical that argument actually is, right? If you're saying, look, certain kinds of business about other kinds of business, certain kinds of activity are actually not really wanted. You might even say that's the case for certain rentier behaviors, whether that's with the housing market or with businesses. That's a big political statement. And I think there are a few and far between now, people on the right who will say, no, just completely leave it to the market. And by the way, that was the common sense of the political class until 10 minutes ago. Now we've got a prime minister doing something very different. And it's really, really popular. I'm also kind of in favor of the something should be sacred, right? And this is the French way of doing it, which is to say, and people love going on holiday in France, right? Because you go down the high street, there is a bank, there's a cheese shop, whatever, right?

15:15And that's not just completely organic, right? It probably is because culturally they do care a bit more about fresh food than we do, whatever. But it is also because they have very restrictive trading laws for supermarkets, which have boosted small independent shops. But also the supermarkets are banging. The French supermarkets are better than ours. They're great. They're the best supermarkets in the world, ironic clear and Sweden and France, two centre left societies makes you think, doesn't it? That isn't to say everyone is enthusiastic about the proposals, however. Here's one take on X. This is Oliver at OWS1892. Thick old CUNTs think vape shops and Turkish barbers will be replaced by the Jolly butchers and canals that make us from their youth. Michael Walker, that's what you're saying. You're saying that we might get the old butchers and the bakers and the canals that make us. And then there was this one from Glumberd at Glumberd. By the way, we've got this here. I'm not trying to gotcha anyone. This is a genuine criticism and these are important points to engage with.

16:16To all intents and purposes, Britain is in a national emergency. Drought agricultural collapse, spiraling prices, large construction and contractions since 2008. I mean, not all of this is true, right? I mean, agricultural collapse, the big word. We do have spiraling prices. We do have drought. There is a contraction and construction. Sewage so thick, swimming in the sea, routine and makes people sick. Again, true. What do we get? I will boldly take on vape shops, Michael. What do you think of that second comment? Because I sort of disagree. You know, I think these are major issues. And I think a prime minister should be taking on quiddity and law breaking. And just the environment looking like crap on the high street. I think the PM should address those sorts of questions. But given he's not said things on drought, it feels like a process of evasion as much as actually trying to solve the problem at hand. I mean, I do agree that this summer, we really could have had a bit more political leadership when it comes to climate change. We are living in sort of extraordinary times.

17:18And I think it would be helpful to have politicians stand up and say, this is what we're going to do about it. I think there would have been a bit more space to do that with this new government. Didn't even need to be Andy Berner. Maybe it could be someone else in the cabinet who sort of stands up and says, this is a really big deal. And we're going to do this. I think that would have been legitimate. I suppose this whole way of speaking that just reminds me of the whole rainy, frasher style and everything is terrible, everything's up to you. You can't even swim in the sea anymore because it makes you sick. Like, what's the further that's true, Michael? You know, you don't need to say that it's, I mean, I love a good winch, but that's true. People are getting sick by swimming in the sea. Or rivers actually more accurate. I mean, it is the case that actually most of this is because we just monitor it more than we used to. Like I remember in the 90s, when I was a kid in Wales, like there was a beach, we used to go to like for my first eight summers to North Wales. There was a beach that we called poo beach. Right. So this idea that everything's getting worse and it's the worst it's ever been. You were so again, cancelled for this. No, I mean, it's true. Like, our water's probably a little bit cleaner

18:20than they were 20 years ago. Not really. We just, no, but we didn't use to measure the ship going into the sea. No, but we should still be angry about it and want to clean them up. But there has been a massive increase in interest in wild swimming, which is brilliant. You know, surfers against sewage have started up, which is brilliant. We should deal with this. I love wild swimming. I want all of the rivers and lakes and seas in Britain to be brilliant to swim in. But the idea that sort of this is so much worse than it used to be, I don't think really stands up. I think it does. Some of the river hay, for instance, because there's such a concentration now of egg and chicken farming around there. And that's basically byproducts of food production and the food waste is going into the river. Why not, hey, sorry. I'm showing my literary proclivities. The river, why? And that's been destroyed really by animal agriculture. But do we have evidence it was better 20 years ago? Well, I think animal agriculture for a very long time. Yeah, no, but it's been a real concentration of egg and chicken production, just in that particular part

19:20of the way it came first. Michael Walker, we're going to talk more about the climate stuff. Don't worry. Of course, it's a reasonable criticism of Burnham, whatever you think of his moves elsewhere, to highlight the fact he isn't really talking about the fact that three quarters of England is in drought. It's particularly glaring, given it's now official, that this is indeed the warmest summer on record. We're talking about it being a hot summer. The Met Office has just announced that the UK is on course to record its warmest summer on record for mean temperature. The only, we're only going to need average conditions for the rest of all this to surpass the record. And that record was only set last year. So, Provisional Met Office statistics show that the UK's mean temperature for the summer so far, which is the first of June to the 10th of August, currently stands at 16.48 degrees Celsius, which is almost two degrees above the 1991 to 2020 average. And to equal the UK's summer mean temperature record

20:22of 16.12, Celsius which is set in 2025, the remainder of August would only need to average point 21, Celsius below the 1991 to 2020 long-term average for the meteorological summer. So, any warmer than this would establish a new UK record and the records started back in 1884. So, very, very likely that the UK is on course to record its warmest summer on record for mean temperatures according to the Met Office. So, we're on course for the warmest summer on record, although I must say it sounds less impressive when you realise that the record being broken wasn't fact set last year in 2025. Maybe there's a pattern here who knows some people should look into it. Of course, it's the issue of drought that has been particularly conspicuous this summer with parks. Heath's commons and verges as yellow as sand in many places take the village of Whizzley and sorry. It hasn't rained there for 55 days

21:23and given present forecasts, it seems very likely it'll hit the two month mark without any rain. This is sorry, not Sicily. It's no surprise then that wildfires have been breaking out across the country. And yesterday, it's a major one in the new forest in the south of England. It was started by a vehicle that crashed, appears to have been a white van, with this setting fire and that fire rapidly spreading across Heathland adjoining. The road, Hampshire Fire Services are still tackling the blaze today. It's the third day they're doing so and apparently last night was when it got really intense, there were 125 fighters tackling that blaze. And the conditions they are facing are growling, not least because of the relentless heat, the lack of shade while they work, of course, there's not much coverage. And the fact that containing the fire given the forest's Heathland is basically dry like tinder is close to impossible. Here's a video of one firefighter showing just how hot it's getting.

22:24I mean, that's crazy, isn't it? That's not California, that's not Death Valley. That's the new forest in Hampshire, right? They have ponies there. It's quite a relaxed, chilled place. I mean, I live nearby, I love the new forest. I have to say actually, the screensaver in my phone is the new forest. You've got ponies there from the Bronze Age. Extraordinary place. And the guys literally lifting up his feet and their smoke coming off. And that's one of the most extraordinary bits of video I've seen in 2026. The blaze was so large, this is what it looked like from Portsmouth in the evening of Portsmouth is to the east. That's what I'm saying. Portsmouth is to the east. That is incredible. You can see the spinnaker tower there in the front and then Brittany Ferries coming into Portsmouth Port.

23:26And here is the fire from the other side to the west in Bourmouth. Again, that is really striking, terrifying, one might say. Here's New Forest Ranger, Gilly Moland, speaking to Sky News earlier today. How devastating is this for the flora and fauna of the New Forest? Absolutely devastating. We're globally important here for the plant and animal species that we've got. Heathland is actually rather than the rainforest. So to lose some of that is absolutely devastating. We have some really key species. We've got all of the UK's native reptile species. We've got birds such as the night jar and dog verbobler and all of which rely on this area to breed. So it really is quite devastating and losing things

24:27such as some ancient beach trees that we know are in part of this area. You know, they're kind of three, four hundred years old. And there's no way that we can kind of get those back. Do you think much of the wildlife has managed to escape? Yeah, I know there's been a lot of concern. Obviously we have free roaming ponies and livestock down here in the forest. So they have been able to, you know, very mobile and have been able to get a way to say for ground. Some of those species that are slower moving, we will have lost some of those and see some of the critical habitats will also internationally important for wetland. So that will have been lost in that area. As well and take quite considerable time to regenerate and heathland mature heathland can take decades to develop and establish. So it will take time to recover. Just before we went on a news broke of another fire in the South,

25:28this one in Devon, further west. Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service have sent some 20 crews, 20 crews to a large grasslands fire that's broken out and mincing like Valley Park, part of the Devon Wildlife Trust. That's an exeter. The fire service have asked people to avoid the area while they get the blaze under control. Finally, sticking with the extreme weather we're seeing, check out this image posted by Matthew Todd on X. He says it's from Essex. Here's the tweet before you see the image. My friend Jonathan Fuller took this picture of ducks in a dried up pond on Wallersea Island Essex. It's heartbreaking. I will never ever forgive the media, politicians, the oil industry and the moronic falls on social media, who've been complicit in this climate crisis. And this is the photo and question. I mean, this is striking to say the least. It's arresting. It's visually arresting. You've got for people who can't see this. You're listening on the podcast. You've got a mother duck and she's got maybe what, six, seven chicks behind her.

26:30They've been born in the last couple of weeks. They're walking on what was previously a pond. It's dried. You can see it's cracking on the surface. There is obviously no water there. They can't drink, let alone swim from it. And they certainly can't eat anything from it. And I would imagine without the help of local people, which I'm sure will be the case. I'm sure locals in Essex will provide water for these creatures. Without those people, of course, these animals would die. By the way, as is the case in the New Forest, huge numbers of animals, ground nesting birds, night jails and so on will have been killed in those wildfires. And yet you have people on social media who say this is normal. The climate is always changing. Didn't you know that the BBC Radio time said that actually it was going to get colder in 1974? Peter Hitchens says that. And by the way, I agree with Peter Hitchens on many things. But this is crazy, Peter. This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous.

27:31We've got firefights in the New Forest looking like people fighting wildfires in Southern California on Nevada. We've got ducks in Essex just walking through what was upon that's now... It's now dry as... I don't know. What's dry? What's particularly dry? It's dried out mud. It's not a pond anymore. We've got hackney marshes. Look at the football pitches there. It's like something from the Dust Bowl in 1930s America. But we still have significant parts of the political and media establishment in this country saying nothing's out of the normal here. Nothing's unusual. OK, it's a warm summer. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. I'm sure they'll enjoy playing on the football pitch in hackney marshes. By the way, I don't think you can. You can't play on a pitch like clay. It's like hard clay. Imagine playing football on hard clay. It makes Astro turf like a November grass. It's impossible. You can't do it. And yet, from the PM so far, nothing. Michael, what do you make of the fact that Andy Burnham hasn't said anything about this so far?

28:36And what kind of opportunities does this present to Zach Polanski and the Greens? This is a sign of what's to come. And I mean, we need to make this a really big political issue. Like everyone always says, oh, climate change is so abstract. You can't get people to engage in it. This is exactly the time when everyone is very willing to engage in it. And I really love your downstream on Sunday with a guest saying this is also, this isn't the new normal. It's going to get worse and worse from here when it comes to extreme weather. So absolutely. I mean, I would like him to be out and doing some national emergency briefings. They don't have to be too do me, right? If he wants to be a positive guy, but just to say, look, everyone can see that this is happening and this is going to continue to happen. I mean, obviously, if you wanted, if you wanted the sort of Andy Burnham, I'm a new guy. And I'm actually going to help with the little things.

29:36I mean, he could make a big offer to farmers or something. I don't know. They hated Kirstaama. People quite like farmers. If you come out and say, I'm really going to do something to help with agriculture, build a few new reservoirs, something like that. I mean, there are a bunch of things that you could say about this drought that would be very popular and would also help move the dial when it comes to adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Yeah, like a national reservoir strategy seems quite sensible, even though, of course, private water companies are to blame. We've not built a single reservoir since they were put into private ownership in the early 1990s. What do you think it means for Zach Plancky? Because, you know, Burnham's come in. He's done really well on the polls. He's a very popular individual when you look at personal people ratings. Actually, we've not really seen a PM like this. I think probably since, like, Blair Priorarch, actually, in terms of them coming in and being this popular, that's not happened. Maybe you could say Boris Johnson, but then, of course, he was still very polarising in a way that Burnham isn't. He's done well, labor for the first time in a year, over to reform and national polling.

30:37The Greens have taken a hit, but there's still a 10% and surely somebody like Zach Plancky is looking at this and saying, well, OK, you know what? We're just going to hold our fire, keep our power to dry on cost of living, public services, etc. But we're really going to go on foreign policy and particularly with this climate. Because, let me say, at Navarro Meteor's question, we always pose ourselves, how can we get a big audience around these kinds of questions? It's very, very hard. People say they want to see more coverage of it. Actually, the number speaks for themselves. It's just not the sort of thing that gets many eyeballs. This week, that's changed because the whole country is talking about this. And Zach Plancky equally doesn't feel like he's necessarily at the forefront of the conversation in a way that he might have been, say, six months ago. So, Zach, and what can he do to change the political weather on this? So, I've always pressed conference last week was the right thing to do, right? And then also, you can make a political story about it because Sky covered it, but the BBC didn't cover it. I think you could put a lot of pressure on the BBC to say this clearly is a national emergency.

31:39Why are you covering forage, but not me? I mean, I would just do more of that, right? Because, is that Plancky said a few, is that a few social media pickups and the like this summer that have been a bit distracting? I would just say, just like you're the green party, this is one moment in time when everyone is thinking about the climate crisis. I would just be hammering with a press conference every week, like reform did last year with crime or whatever. And, yeah, you know, the coverage of it might be variable. You know, sometimes the cameras will come, sometimes they can't, but if they don't come, then that's the story in and of itself. Now, obviously, you know, Zach is good at this stuff. It's not like, I think he's been a complete failure this summer. I think last week he did the right thing with that press conference, I would just like to see more of that, essentially. Because then also, I think people, people want to associate him with something a bit more substantial, right? Because there is the suspicion with him that he's sort of like good communication. He was an actor, you know, he likes to perform. But what are his sort of concrete policy chops?

32:40I think sort of going out, meeting firefighters, meeting farmers, being very active on social media, not just in terms of, you know, labor hasn't gone far enough or this or that or that. But sort of saying, I am specifically going to meet everyone in Britain who is affected by this drought and make a social media video about it. And then maybe invite them to some kind of press conference. I would say, you know, for someone who often seems almost sort of hyperactive when it comes to politics, it has been a little bit, you know, underwhelming, I suppose, the greens approach to this particular drought. But again, you know, comparatively compared to everyone else, they've done more than labor, right? So we can't, you know, be too harsh on them. For sure. For sure, but they are the greens, right? Yeah, there should be that bread and butter. This should be that bread. This is like, you know, if there was 3,000 people come over the English Channel in one day, reform, you're going to hear from reform. Yeah, the press conference is right then. Nice and farage is going to be giving a press conference down at Dover. I feel like maybe there is a lack of, I don't like to use this word because it almost sounds childish to say this theatre when, you know, night jaws and, you know, wildlife,

33:48a dying, people are losing their businesses, right? There are businesses in Lindhurst in just a joining where we showed you from the New Forest that they will not be open today and yesterday and tomorrow, for a week. And there's an economic impact for all of this, of course, as well. But there is also the theatrical element, which we have to be honest about it. We have to be real about it, you know, reform do really, really well. I would like to see Zach Polansky and Rachel Millwood and Motinelli in front of Keith or Woodland pasture, which has just been burnt. And I would like them to be blaming Rupert Murdoch and the billionaire press and the political elite because nobody is going to disagree with that, literally nobody. And I think some of that is actually the green party and green generally don't lean on conservation enough, right? Like even Nigel Farage, when he announced that he was going to stand for office in the last general election, he's in the Kent countryside with his dogs wearing a gila. He's trying to present himself as a country squire. And I feel like, actually, I think of Zach Polansky as a city politician, which is great.

34:50I love cities. He's probably going to stand in London, of course, he's a member of the London Assembly. I get it. But, you know, like you said, your bread and butter as a green politician. There is also a lot of political space, specifically because, you know, laborer, you know, you can argue about, you can argue about Rose Bank and Jack Dorr and sort of say that, you know, he can come out and he would say that in a press conference as he should. This is North Seal, right? But the big issue, sort of the most outrageous thing this summer is we've got the Tory party in reform, both saying this is the time to abandon Net Zero. Right. So if he comes out and says no one in this country is making the argument for Net Zero, right? It's insane that we have the hottest summer on record. Yeah. We haven't had the reign in parts of the country for 55 days. And the main political conversation is whether to abandon Net Zero. This is insane. Right. I think that would be relatively impactful. And again, it wouldn't be easy. You would have to fight for coverage because there's no point in pretending that, you know, Sky and the BBC are going to be as keen to turn up to the Green Party press conference as they are to Nigel Farage's press conference.

35:53But there is a message and an argument that can be made a bit more aggressively, I think, this summer. Yeah. I will also finish with this because particularly broadcast journalists, you know, they have an agenda, yeah, they, you know, they're in the pockets of elites, but also when there is just strong footage and visuals. Yeah. If it's strong visuals, they will actually just gravitate to the story. And that's the case with things like what we're seeing in the new forest. So, you know, make the most of that. Again, it's not a nice thing to say, right? But that's just the reality you're working with. The Greens, big opportunities. And I, yeah, I don't think they're taking. Taking them, but you're right, keep unplugging away. Britain's prisons are buckling at the seams with a little under 90,000 people currently serving custodial sentences. That is a number that grows year on year. It's constantly growing up, going up with the prison population just about doubling since 1990. That means our prisons are currently at 99% capacity to address the problem of overcrowding. The government has introduced an early release scheme, meaning that from October, some 5,000 prisoners serving sentences of longer than four years will be set free at the halfway point of their terms rather than the usual 2,000 mark.

37:03Child sex offenders, rapists and groomers were excluded from the program, but prisoners convicted of manslaughter, well, not. That's been particularly controversial because as a result, two of the three convicted killers of the 28-year-old police constable Andrew Harper are eligible to be let out early as part of the scheme. Harper was killed in 2019 when three teenagers attempting to steal a quad bike, drove their car at speed from mile, dragging the police officer with it. All three defendants were charged with murder, but were cleared of that charge by a jury at trial. Instead, Henry Long was sentenced to 16 years in prison for manslaughter. His two co-defendants, Jesse Cole and Albert Bauerz, were both 17 at the time of Harper's killing, were sentenced to 13 years each for manslaughter. That sentencing happened in July 2020 in the middle of COVID, meaning Cole and Bauerz will have served half their sentence by early next year.

38:03The public backlash was immense at the time, and it still is. A petition to block their early release has so far gathered over 900,000 signatures. And today, Prime Minister Andy Burnham tried to address the issue, releasing this statement online. I was spent recent days considering in depth all of the issues involved and the range of advice I have received. I have been pushing for further progress. I have not accepted that it is impossible to do more. As a result, I have asked the Justice Secretary to fast track the development of a plan for presentation to Parliament early next month to create a more headroom within the prison system. I am increasingly confident that a more focused approach along these lines will allow us to reduce the number of people released early and, in the case of the most serious offenders, like those convicted of the killing of PC Harper, prevent their early release altogether. So it sounds like there is going to be an active Parliament that basically stops certain people being subject to any release. Now, in his statement, Burnham mentioned three areas where he thought pressure on prisons could be eased, including removing convicted foreign national offenders to their home countries more quickly,

39:08and housing some male prisoners in some parts of the women's prison estate. I am not sure how that will go down or whether it would even be legal. But the third option that will be looked at is not only very credible, it is also a national scandal. That is the matter of what Burnham called the long-running injustice of people who are given indefinite prison sentences under the imprisonment for public protection scheme. This is really extraordinary. From 2005 onwards, Tony Blair's government gave British courts the power to jail people indefinitely for a range of crimes, including relatively minor ones. At most sentences in Britain have a fixed term set by a judge with an arranged set by law and based on a number of intersecting factors. Now, a prisoner may come up for parole before the end of their term, usually at the 2-thirds mark if they get it. They are released on licence until the end of their term. But if they don't, they are still set free when they have served their time. There are some exceptions like whole life orders, but on the whole, that is how the system works.

40:09But imprisonment for public protection jail terms were different. They had no end dates, only a minimum term, meaning there was no date where their time had been served, and the person's subjects too that had been guaranteed freedom. It was a bit like Kafka's trial. At that point, a prisoner came up for parole, but there was no guarantee they'd get it. They could go up for parole time and time again and fail to get it each time, meaning someone who committed a crime normally carrying a sentence for a few months or years could find themselves incarcerated for decades. I shouldn't be talking in the condition, because as you'll see in a moment, this happens to some people. And if they were parole, they could be put on licence for 99 years, meaning the potential to be returned to jail at any time throughout their entire lives. This sounds made up, it's not made up, it's very real, and frankly, it's reprehensible. It also didn't apply to only adults, children, could be sentenced under similar powers. In 2012, coalition prime minister David Cameron scrapped those powers, calling the unclear, inconsistent, and uncertain nature of such law unwise.

41:19And in 2024, David Blanket, the home secretary, who introduced the law as a labour home secretary, called the sentences his biggest regret. Frankly, he should be asking people for forgiveness, in my view. It was much too late, though, if the nearly 9,000 prisoners, given indefinite sentences during the New Labor years, with over 2,000 people still in jail under the scheme. And the cases of gross miscarriages of justice are truly shocking. Take Martin Myers on the right here and pictured with his twin brother. He was handed an indefinite sentence with a 19-month minimum term in 2006, which he tried and failed to steal. As cigarettes, he served 18 years in prison. When she was 22, Ronny Sinclair was jailed under an IPP after she was arrested for robbery, following a drunken row at a friend's barbeque. She served 16 years in prison for a crime that involved breaking a plant pot and tearing up a betting slip.

42:24So Abdul-Ahi Salaman, who was handed a minimum sentence of just under 4 years in 2005, is stealing a laptop. He's still in prison 21 years later. And he has no idea when he's going to get out, but stealing a laptop. I'm not a fan of people who steal laptops, but dare I say that's excessive. You can imagine the strain of never knowing whether you'll get out of prison, years and years after serving the usual sentence for your crime. At least 94 people under IPPs have taken their own lives utterly extraordinary, and many people are still serving sentences under a law that we scrapped nearly 15 years ago. In July, the UN urged the UK to end IPP sentences, warning of serious human rights violations. And today, a lawyer has written both the Justice Secretary Alex Norris and the High Court to start a legal action over the sentences.

43:24It shouldn't be hard to win, but the former Supreme Court Justice having already described the regime as quote, the greatest single stain on our criminal justice system. Dame Vera Baird is chair of the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the last port of call for prisoners who've been denied parole. On News Night, she explained what she thought would happen to the remaining IPP cases. Does that mean effectively to those people who are still on IPPs, you'd like to see those go? I think they need resentencing. Make no mistake. There will be some people on IPPs rightly who are violent people who you wouldn't want to release. There will be victims to their crimes too. Exactly, but also because that is about assessing dangerousness. That's been done probably quite wrongly for young men who of course can mature quickly and change. But I think the real point is that there are now ways in which we understand these sentences don't work.

44:24People do need to be let out. It needs to be done more wholesale than just coming to the CCRC where we will work as fast as we possibly can. But there are two and a half thousand to go. And of course, if you did get quite a lot of them out appropriately, you'd have to look at each of them in turn. But resentance rather than look at a whole question, is there a miscarriage of justice? And so on, that would be a lot quicker. Of course, it would contribute to emptying the prisons. So Michael, it's two and a half thousand people. It's more than two thousand people. The prisons are full, 99% full with 90,000 people. So let's say 2,000 people were released. Maybe not all of them, but a good chunk of them, right? You're looking at freeing up, I mean, what, 3% of overall capacity and actually doing the right thing. Why hasn't it happened already? Well, I suppose, I mean, this is in a way why policy around this is difficult because if you just do it on a whim, right? It's very likely that someone will commit a crime that's heinous. And then everyone will say, why the hell did you do that?

45:27And that's why I suppose the way the Andrew Harper, the PC Harper case is being discussed in the media, feels like we're kind of doing the same cycle again, which is you have outrageous case criminal justice policy driven by that. Just to sort of go into some of these IPP cases, so I only really looked up Martin Myers in detail. So he had threatened to knock someone out while he was trying to steal their cigarettes. That's why he got sentenced. But he had previous convictions for dangerous driving assault, theft and burglaries. So the idea of these sort of sentences, but they'd be given to someone who seemed kind of dangerous for whatever reason. His case is extraordinary though. So the parole board and prison service made a bunch of mistakes. In 2011, they said they weren't releasing him because he was a sex offender and he misused drugs in prison. He wasn't effect sex offender. This was like an administrative error, but he couldn't read. So he got his cellmate to read out the letter for him. The cellmate then thinks he's a sex offender in the next few years in prison. He's constantly getting beaten up because sex offender is getting beaten up in prison. So it's outrageous. It's a horrific case. And I'm sure that sort of repeated among loads of these people. In terms of how extreme cases drive this though.

46:33So sort of looking, why did these IPPs get introduced in the first place? Because normally a policy happens for some kind of reason, even terrible policy. And this case was very much related to the high profile horrific case of eight-year-old Sarah Payne who was murdered in 2000. Now the man who murdered her had recently been released from prison. Now police and psychiatrist both fought. He remained dangerous. So they both fought. He was likely to commit serious crimes, essentially against children. But he had reached the maximum term of his sentence. So he was released. Right. So the government look at this and they say, well, this is a high profile horrific case. Everyone is saying something must be done. Right. This innocent eight-year-old child has been killed. And they said, well, at the moment, if someone's done their time, you have to let even if you think they're likely to commit a crime, even if they seem incredibly dangerous, they've done their time, they have to be let out. So that's why the IPPs come in. Then the IPPs end up, you got a bunch of people just indefinitely sitting in jail. A big problem is that the parole service is under resourced. So you're not in a position to be able to actually make an accurate judgment whether someone is safe or not.

47:37But that's why all these things are difficult because you just need one high profile case and then everyone's suddenly like, actually, we need to get much tougher again. I mean, also in terms of the numbers of people in prison, so this would be 2,000 people. Now, I imagine lots of those people should and can be released. The much bigger number of people in prison is the 13,000 people who are on recall. And all the sort of NGO documents I've been reading about this say this is a really big problem, which is that there are lots of people who get released from prison, but on license. So by the way, this is also important to note these, you know, PC Harvest killers. If they get released, they'll be on license for another third of their sentence. So for a significant number of years and lots of people are getting recalled, not because they've done anything particularly dangerous, but because they've missed an appointment. And so you got this this cycle of people getting lit out, they've got chaotic lives. They get brought straight back into prison because they've they've missed an appointment. This seems crazy. Why are they doing this mad? Right. But then again, there's another high profile case. So in 2022, Zara Alina.

48:41Many people will remember this case along young law graduate raped and murdered by Jordan McSweeney. So someone that the much horrific thing happened to someone this bright future. He'd been released on license from prison just nine days earlier. And this is key. His license had been revoked after he failed to meet probation officers, but he was not recalled to prison. So again, there were a bunch of failures here because the person was overworked and he should have been sort of called high risk instead of medium risk. But now you've got this situation where everyone in the parole service is basically like, well, if I've got any doubt at all and they don't sort of come to their meeting, I'm going to send them back to prison because I don't want another high profile catastrophe. And so lots of this is driven by high profile catastrophes. And I think we do need to keep that in mind when we're thinking about PC Harper's killers, which is sort of very easy to take a high profile case and say, this means all the rules have to be changed. Then all the rules are changed and then you end up with a bunch of situations like this where people are in prison for much longer than need to be. So that's really intelligent commentary and context for people watching and listening and it's really valuable. I get all of that, Michael.

49:44But I don't know any other criminal justice system in the world that has IPPs. I mean, I could be wrong where you basically have this rolling sentencing sort of strategy and you don't have a maximum sentence, you're a minimum sentence now if you were to make the argument with regards to all those cases. And that's why we should have much longer sentences. That's why we should have people in custody, you know, twice as long as they're presently, I mean, we can make that argument, we can have that conversation. But IPPs in particular just seem insane. I'm not in favor of IPP. No, no, no, I appreciate that. I think they were they were problematic. I'm never holding on. My point is this. So you're saying that's a result of overreach by government responding, misguidedly to public anger, which was entirely justified. But can't you do something where you say, well, you know what, okay, the home secretary in certain circumstances can do something like this, rather than having this whole sentencing regime, like IPPs, which affects thousands and thousands of people, you know, dozens of people have committed suicide who were in that regime.

50:46It just seems like complete overkill. And I suppose somebody like myself is rather skeptical of the Blair era, which they actually rather than just responding to public anger, there was something more cynical and ideological going on on the part of people like they've a blanket because they wanted to let their tough on crime. And actually, rather than being tough on crime, they contributed to a deeply dysfunctional criminal justice system, which to me is the more interesting, interesting story here because we're more people in prison in Western Europe than any other country. We have higher rates of recidivism than any other country in Western Europe. We're still very safe compared to the US, but you know, compared to most Western European countries, we have higher rates of violent crime and so on. Also, rates of lower, you know, and less important crimes as well. We've basically decriminalized certain things like shoplifting and bike thefts in recent years. So that to me seems like the biggest story actually. Successive governments trying to be quite and quite tough on crime, but actually making the problem much worse. Well, if the argument is that they, you know, so the prison population increased from about 1993. So it started under John Major, who said prison works.

51:49The idea was that because I mean, I often, you know, that there's sort of. Sometimes I think quite wishy-washy liberal argument was prison doesn't work because people come out on their reaffirm. Well, it's still, you know, it's better than no prison, right? In many of these cases, but you then end up with this situation where sentences are constantly getting longer because of public pressure. And I suppose what I'm pointing out is that if you think that prison sentences were too long under new labor, right? David Gork wrote a review. So about I think in 2023, which was basically saying there's been too much political competition to try and say we all think sentences should be longer. So you have this ratcheting effect where if labor, try and reduce sentences, Tories say this is outrageous. If Tories try to reduce sentences, labor say this is outrageous because there's always a political opportunity here. What's happened now, right, is that labor, we're giving people early release mainly because the prisons were full, but they're also implementing the Gork review, which was an argument to say we should have prisoners serve more of their time outside of prison under serving some kind of community sentence.

52:57And what's happened is Andy Burnham wants to be popular. He's looking where the pressure is and he's saying, I don't want to do any of this, right? He's saying he's not just saying PC Harper's killers shouldn't get out immediately. He's saying he doesn't want anyone to get out early. He essentially wants to abandon the Gork review, which was saying all of these problems happened under new labor. And that's because there is no incentive to have a more liberal policy on this because public opinion goes in one direction. So the point I'm making here isn't to justify the IPPs. It isn't to say we should have early release. I don't even really know. But I suppose what I'm saying is the way that the PC Harper case is being talked about is very similar to the kind of situation which led to the introduction of IPPs. So you said that we're sending people to prison for longer and longer. In the case of Andrew Harper, so he was killed by three people. One of them is viewed as the primary agent in that manslaughter.

54:01They got a slightly longer sentence. The other two were slightly shorter sentences. But they got what was it 15 years? For manslaughter, a police officer that doesn't seem particularly long. I think, you know, historically in the 50s and the 60s, you would have been hanged for that. For manslaughter, or I'm not sure. I mean, I don't know about that. I don't know about that particular crime. But what I do know is that on aggregate sentences for serious crimes got much longer. So sentences for murder, for manslaughter for especially sexual offenses. These have all got much longer than they were in the 70s and the 80s. I'm not in a position to be able to tell you how this sort of cash is going to be a specific crime. Sure. That's just a sort of fact. We're talking about the politics of it, right? Because Burnham's having to respond to this particular case. And I think most people would say, well, look, this police officer was killed in 2019, so seven years ago. These guys were sentenced six years ago. They could be out inside a year. The idea of serving seven years when you killed a copper. There's not many countries that happens.

55:02There's not many countries, Michael. So this is attention. This is attention politically, right? So I'm sure statistically what you're saying isn't entirely correct. But it's very hard when you're a politician, you've got people like yourself and receive all the information saying, well, actually the sentence is along with it ever. And they're saying, well, hold on. These guys killed a copper. And, you know, they didn't seem contrite when they went down. You can see the video from it in 2020. Basically laughing. And they're out in seven years. But that's the challenge for Burnham, isn't it? No, it's a challenge. Obviously, it's not easy. I'm not saying Burnham should really do anything differently. I mean, he said, you know, if you want to make this argument about sending people to prison for less time, you've got to expend a lot of political capital because it's a difficult argument to make. Yeah. And Burnham has made a decision. I've got no idea what he actually believes on this issue. But he's made a political decision that he's not going to expend political capital on this issue. Right? He doesn't want to be seen as soft on crime. He's said quite explicitly he wants to spend expend political capital on social care.

56:03I think that's perfectly reasonable. Right? If you want to say, look, I don't think there's this, we've got reform, chop, you know, biting at our heels. The far right is insurgent. I don't actually think now is the time to expend capital on prison reform. I think that's fine. I think that's a legitimate argument. I'm going to do it on social care or something else instead. I suppose my concern is if the left or anyone journalism actually, because I think journalism doesn't have the same pressure as politicians. If journalists are on the one hand saying, God, I can't believe they came up with this overly authoritarian sort of sentencing guideline. The IPPs. Yeah, these IPPs. I can't believe they did this. Or I can't believe that the prisons are so full because New Labor was authoritarian on crime. And at the same time, isn't it bloody outrageous that they're letting out PC Harper's killers? Because the reason we have more people in prison is because of the kind of storm we're seeing when it comes to PC Harper's killers. Right? The two things can't be separated. And that's where we call Michael Walker, the sober judge.

57:04Yes. Thank you. I love that. Super judge. You don't have to like it. You don't have to like me. Often they don't. You know what? A couple of months later, they think my goodness, Michael Walker was right. If you like me, you'll have had the sneaking suspicion while doing your weekly shop that everything is getting smaller but costing more. It didn't always get more tea bags and there's five quid box of tea. And surely there were more crisps in this pack of walkers last time I checked. Now it's just air and empty space. Where's the actual potatoes? Well, you're not wrong. And now one woman has found the ancient Mars bar to prove it. Look at the size of this large bar from 1991. Oh, it was so 90. Every 90, once, so bad I think. That's it. Now I've got small hands. That is massive. This is the size of it compared to my hand. I'm obviously I am petite, my hand are small but I think we can all agree that is my husive.

58:08No, if one was like get one to compare, get one to compare. So I've just bought this. 40 grams and this cost me £1. There's no price on this, which is really unfortunate because it was probably like 25 feels or something. But look at the difference. So once 40 grams, one is 60 grams better than mine or 61. That was Victoria Gordon who discovered the Mars bar while cleaning out a haunted property. That's what she does in her TikTok account. Now when she gets the price of a Mars bar in 1991, she wasn't far off. It turns out it would have been about 30p or just over 70p in today's money once you faxed in inflation. A Mars bar from Tesco. This is 51. So actually this is slightly bigger than one she had. That's £1.20. That's £1.20. So the bar is smaller than before. There's less cocoa than before, but it costs 40% more. Make it make sense.

59:10It was responding to a request for comment from the BBC. And Mars had this. Over the last 35 years, we've made a number of updates to our bar sizes and pack formats, like consumer demand, alongside considering wider external factors such as manufacturing costs and the price of cocoa. Cocoa prices did indeed saw last year raising the price of chocolate universally, but that doesn't explain why the product got much smaller and much more expensive over time. And it turns out Mars bars aren't the only products slowly fading away. Please look at these examples of not only shrink-flation, but simultaneous old-fashioned inflation released by Witch magazine in October last year. You can see here at Quafresh, complete care original toothpaste was £1.30 for £100. Now £2.75. Sainsbury's Scottish Oats, my favourite. £1.25 for £1.00. Now £2.10 for £500. I love it. Quality Street Tub £6 for £600.

1:00:11£7 for £500. So you are paying more, significant inflation, but you're also getting less, right? That's what they call it, shrink-flation. Those changes all happen in the space of a single year, one year. And it's not just that products get smaller and more expensive, they also get worse. A process so common it's now called skim-flation. White Kit Katz can no longer be marketed as white chocolate, because Nestle took out 20% of the cocoa butter that goes into making them. Penguins and club bars also can no longer be lawfully sold as chocolate biscuits, because McVitties took so much of the cocoa butter out of them too. Did they get cheaper? Of course they didn't. This is from the Grossen magazine. Following Kit Katz onkey whites' overhaul pre-promotional shelf prices of 4x40g packs have sold by 50% from £1.50 to £2.25 in Sainsbury's and Morrison's. So it's not even technically chocolate anymore. It's getting smaller and it's getting more expensive.

1:01:14Sounds like a bad deal. Of course we wouldn't be bringing this story to you without including the worst scoundrel of all. And that's Tobirana. In 2016, Tobirana shrank their bars by making them significantly more gappy, turning their iconic mountains into speed bumps or I think a post-track. After a national outcry, they reverted to the original in 2018, but recently they've cut 20 grams off the pack size again. If at first you don't succeed, finally is the story of Arizona iced tea. This is a feel-good story. It's a rather different affair to Mars and Tobirana. They've kept the price of a 23 ounce counter the product at 99 cents. Since 1992, same size, same price. Not in real terms, not factoring for the cost of living. It's literally the same price. It's not risen with inflation. The fact that companies found Don Voltagio still owns the company and hasn't sold it to a major conglomerate is probably why.

1:02:14He said increasing the price is just something we don't do. I think that's really interesting, Michael. So you've got big multinational capitalists taking more in money for less with crappier ingredients. A private company has chosen not to do that. They're both capitalist enterprises, both quite different outcomes. Cory Doctorow talks about inshittification with regards to digital sales. Like Gmail and Google search. Amazon. Maybe it's been happening with chocolates and other consumer goods for decades. I'm not quite sure the analysis carries over. The inshittification argument is quite a specific one, which is that you've got these companies that look for market share. So they have a decent product, which is very cheap. And you get a massive market share for a product with network effects. And then once you've blured everyone in, you start to make the product a bit shitter. You make the product shitter because you want to have higher profit margins everywhere. So Google search is now just full of adverts.

1:03:15They have a really good cheap product, which was the original Google. Everyone joins Google. Let's start habit now. I mean, I use cloud now instead of Google pretty much. But that's inshittification. That works. Now, when it comes to sort of shrinkflation, I mean, that is mainly because the input costs are going up. There's some sort of debate about whether greed flation is happening or whether it is input costs. The competition markets are already 20, 20, 23. It said supermarkets weren't profit hearing. So their margins remained fairly low. I mean, even though their profits are high, but their margins are low. They said some branded manufacturers had if they had more pricing power. So if you, you know, if people really want that Mars bar, then you obviously have more power to shrink than if you're some budget brand or whatever. So there's a bit of it, but yeah, I don't think I think this is more about, you know, the price of cocoa going up. Parties because of climate change, parties because demand in different parts of the world. But yeah, no, I don't think it carries up. But maybe you disagree. I do disagree because we have a really good case study of this.

1:04:18When craft bought campery in 2008. So they buy this iconic British company. I talk about this all the time. I really love it. It was £7 billion they paid for us. It was £7 billion and they got the money, loans them, bother all Bank of Scotland, which was guess bar owned by Guessy Michael. Owned by? RBS who owned RBS 2008? Craft. Us. Oh, the British taxpayer. So we subsidised American or craft actually Swiss, Swiss or thing, right? We subsidised a foreign multinational buying a British company. Okay. We did that as the British taxpayer. They then relocate outside the UK for tax purposes. So the taxpayer has subsidised less tax. They put in less cocoa. They relocated some production. They put in more sugar. And they laid off a ton of people that were making caprice chocolates in the West Midlands. So this to me is a really great example of a multinational getting a product, making it cheaper and trying to basically get better margins.

1:05:19This is what they do. And you see that asset managers as well, right? You see asset managers like Blackstone, they buy Thames Water, what's their revenue model with these closed funds? They buy Thames Water, they buy cheap, they increase the costs, they reduce the investment, they sell high because they've increased the price you have to pay. So it's now a more valuable brand, right? So if you want to sell it on, you say, well, look, we, per unit are outputs, they're actually much higher in, put so much cheaper, it's a much more profitable thing, right? And by the way, you get to lend against all of these metrics. When you're a, when you're a major company. So I, I don't really know, I think in the era of financialization and, you know, shareholder value, I think you necessarily have to screw your customers in a way that isn't really the case for, and I wouldn't defend it, old-fashioned capitalism of private companies, whether arguably more, bit more pride in the product, you don't want to basically be shafting your customers a bit like the iced tea I was telling you about.

1:06:19So I think it's a bit different. And I think it's about a certain genre of capitalism, which is now all pervasive, of course, multinationals, asset managers. And I'm not suggesting, you know, why can we go back to the good old capitalism? But I can see why somebody on the center right would say that when they see those two Mars bars next to each other. No, that does make sense. So Cadbury's, so you'd say Cadbury's had to work hard and make a good product that was good value to build the market share, then private equity buys Cadbury's. Well, it's fast, but it's the same dollar. And we've got to revise Cadbury's. And then they are trying to milk what's the better word? Yeah. The brand for all its worth. They're trying to dairy milk the brand for all its right. Yeah, exactly. So they say Cadbury's have built up this brand through decades of good product, and now we're going to make the product worse, but we're going to rest on the coattails of the fact that people still have faith in this company. But also as a brand within their portfolio, Cadbury, the fact that they can charge more and they're cost lower, so the product is inferior, that actually boosts the value of the brand within the portfolio.

1:07:21So if they want to sell it on, it's a more valuable brand. It's literally a more valuable brand because they're shafting the customers more. There is a more valuable brand because we're putting inferior ingredients in and we're charging for more for less. So if you want to buy it, take it. So it's a license to print money in a way it wasn't before, because it was actually a better product. Yeah. I mean, there is also an argument that this is just capitalism not done properly, right? Because craft, craft buying Cadbury obviously completely undermines competition. Because they're in conflict with each other, right? If you had Cadbury and craft competing with each other, then if Cadbury make a shitter product, then Toblerone can say, we haven't reduced the cocoa in our products, so you should buy that. So the fact that craft has, I don't know actually how much of that shelf in a supermarket is owned by Eva Mars or craft. And that would, yeah, that gives them so much pricing power that they can make that product shitter. So you can also make a kind of, a real capitalist wouldn't have allowed that merger to happen. Liz Warren over here. Exactly. Auntie Monopolis, Michael, we're going to leave it there.

1:08:22You know, I thought we were going to overrun massively on tonight's show, because that first story was a big one. Michael did mention the interview I did over the weekend with Kevin Anderson, climate scientist, on downstream. It's done really well. I mean, normally in August it's hard to get numbers on anything. Quite right, people are relaxing. But people are really watching that interview because Kevin Anderson, I think, is the best communicator right now in Britain when it comes to climate systems breakdown. Haven't said it. If you want to support our work here in Navarra Media, you know what to do? Go to Navarra.media.org slash support in the coming months where moving to a new studio will be covering the return of Westminster politics from September. We'll go to a few of the conferences too. Michael, thanks for joining me tonight. Pleasure. Where are the topics? We got there. They were great topics. Only three stories, but really, really important stories too. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Come back on tomorrow. I was going to say on Monday. Come back on Wednesday. If only it was the weekend, tomorrow. Come back tomorrow from another livestream from 6pm. For now, you've been watching Navarra Media. Good night.