Israel Claims It Hit Iran ‘Nuclear Site’

0:00Welcome to Navarra Life, coming up tonight, the Israeli Air Force has claimed to have hit what they say is an Iranian nuclear facility. Geostarma takes the blame for appointing Peter Mandelson, Channel 4 airs homogeneally shocking take on the war in Iran and David Lamy seems to think he's safe from the Green Party. I'm Helena aka Nojators MTG and a couple of weeks away, but ladies night has returned. I'm joined by Daliya Gabriol, Daliya, how are you doing? I'm doing well and I'm glad to be back in the studio again with yours truly. Absolutely, he's been a well-sensified both of us in the studio for ladies night and also I believe you've got some stuff to tell us about the upcoming dark money event that you're going to be hosting next week. Yes, so, I mean, we all know, we talk about it all the time on this show, that life in Britain is getting worse and politicians in the media want you to think that it's because of immigration or people jumping turnstiles at tube stations. But we all know that our

1:03future is not being stolen by fair dodges, it's being stolen by tax dodges. So billions of pounds are lauded through the city of London every day and that is money and wealth that you and I generate as working people. And it's money that could go on our schools on education, on the things that make our lives better. But it's not. And so on the 19th of March, we will be discussing how to make billionaires pay. I'm going to be joined by an incredible lineup of speakers, Code Joe Karam, writer and author, former private wealth lawyer Stephanie Brobbie, investigative journalist Peter Gagan. And I am so thrilled to announce that we have a surprise additional guest, which is the newly elected green MP for Gordon and Denton Hannah Spencer. So it's going to be an unmissable event. And the event is actually to celebrate the release of death in Westminster, which is a four-part investigative

2:08podcast by Navarra Media and Planet B productions. And the podcast is really about uncovering that shadowy world of hidden billionaire wealth. So whether it's empty homes in Westminster, tax havens, we go through it all. And we basically look at what is this secret network of finance that governs our global economic system. And so you can listen to death in Westminster, just search Navarra Media wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to get a ticket for the death in Westminster launch event on the 19th of March at Earth Hackney. Absolutely, unmissable event. That one, there are still some tickets available for the event. Those are available from DICE or via the link in the description. Dark Money will be at Earth Theatre in Hackney on the 19th, as ever. Don't forget to let us know what you think about the show in the comments today. And as always, you can always tweet us on the hashtag of our life. Our first story tonight. The Israeli Air Force has claimed that it's

3:11missiles are hitting in Iran nuclear sites. The Taliban nuclear sites in Iran's patch in military complex appears to have been the target with the Israeli military saying that Iran had been using the site to make progress on its alleged nuclear weapons program that they were developing. This site was last hit in October 2024. Satellite imagery released by the military does appear to show three new holes at one location on the site, but it's impossible to say what the impact of the strikes has been. Elsewhere in Iran, the impact of the U.S. strikes is clearer. Iran has claimed that the U.S. and Israeli air strikes have hit a residential building in Tehran, with officials accusing the two countries of deliberately targeting civilians. We don't hear much from ordinary Iranians about how they're coping with the repeated onslaught, due to media blackouts as well as fear. But the United Nations has today reported that over three million Iranians have now been displaced by the conflict. Al Jazeera has published this video that gives a glimpse of how ordinary Iranians may be experiencing the war.

4:31If you're listening to the podcast, the video will be in the description of the video. If you're listening to the podcast, the video will be in the description of the video. If you're listening to the podcast, the video shows a mother holding and comforting her young son. She tells him not to be scared, saying, I am with you and you are with me. Then another missile is heard approaching and the pair brace for the impact. Children have, of course, already been the victims of this illegal war in large numbers. Meanwhile, a preliminary report from the Pentagon has found that the United States was likely to blame for a double tap strike on a girl's school in southern Iran, which killed over 165 people, mostly very young girls, in the initial days of the illegal war on Iran. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted

5:32that Iran was likely to blame for the disaster. Press on the report today, the Commander-in-Chief played them. A report from US Channel CBS last night also suggests that the White House is concealing some of the costs of the war from the American people. We know that six US service people were killed in a drone strike on the US-based incubate in the first hours of the US illegal war on Iran with Israel. But sources have now told CBS that dozens of US troops at the base were seriously injured, taking injuries including burns, brain trauma, and strappnel. This is from that report. Sources described a grim and chaotic scene in the aftermath of the strike tactical operation center at the Shraba port outside Kuwait City and march the first.

6:34Smoked quickly filled the building, making it difficult to rescue those inside. More than 13 military members remained in hospitals Tuesday night with battle injuries from the Kuwait attack. One at Brocarly Medical Center in San Antonio, 12 at Water Reed Medical Center in suburban Washington, DC, and about 25 at Lanschturve Regional Medical Center in Germany, sources said. More than 100 medical personnel were sent to Lanschturve to assist, one of the sources also said. Now there's a massive revelation. Defense officials had previously described five service people as seriously injured. On Tuesday, a Pentagon spokesperson said about 140 American service members have now been injured in the war. Daria, we have seen plenty of significant impact on people on both sides of this conflict. I'm sure there are probably plenty more sympathies we have with those who did not choose to enter this war. And it does show everybody the grim reality of what is being engaged here by the US and the US, really governments.

7:34Yeah, absolutely. What really struck me about that clip that was shown there is the parallels between that and the footage that we have been seeing coming out of Gaza now for three years. And so much of what we are seeing happening now is part of a textbook that was written in Gaza. It's a page out of a textbook that was written in Gaza. You know, there's even down to the absurd claims that Iran was the one who attacked the school of girls. And in order to deflect from the fact that it was very clearly an American slash Israeli attack, we saw that to me it just drew these parallels with what we saw with the elderly hospital in 2023 where a hospital is bombed. And Israel comes out and says this is the result of a misfired Hamas rocket, despite the fact that I have never seen a Hamas rocket able to cause that level of damage purely because of how sort of

8:36underdeveloped these rockets tend to be. And then we end up spending wasting days and days discussing whether or not this could be true. It's almost the exact same process that we are seeing. And I think that the claim that the US has managed to hit an Iranian nuclear facility is a deliberate, deliberate, discursive response to the fact that many Americans, including within Trump's own base, do not really understand why America has entered this war. Why has America attacked Iran when the president said, ran on a platform of no new foreign wars? And there's a set, there's a theory similarity with the widely unpopular and Iraq war, which is, you know, across the political spectrum considered to be a mistake when we're talking about ordinary people. But when you say, oh, we've hit a nuclear facility, it creates, it generates, it manufactures consent as it were to say, okay, well, there's a point to this, there's a broader reason why. And much of this is centered

9:40around the idea that Iran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon that would put the whole world at risk. And we know that there has been no independently verified or concrete evidence that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon or even trying to develop a nuclear weapon. We saw, and it has not happened despite the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to pull the entire world into a disastrous war with Iran on the basis that Iran is on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon. It's just a few months from developing a nuclear weapon. But not only do we not have any independently verified evidence of this, but Iran signed a treaty with Obama to deplete their nuclear resources so that it would be actually impossible to develop a nuclear weapon and to welcome independent verifiers into Iran to check that this deal was being upheld. And that deal was not broken by Iran. That deal was broken

10:43by the US. Iran has actually never dropped a nuclear bomb the US has. So you want me to believe that the Iran is such a rogue state and is such a threat to a nuclear threat to world peace when it is the only side of a new treaty that upheld its bargain and it has never dropped a nuclear weapon and we have never seen evidence that it has developed the capacity to drop a nuclear weapon. I mean, it's so clear here that this is nothing to do with the idea of securitizing the region and it's nothing to do as well with implementing democracy in Iran. The truth is is that the only rogue states here are the US and Israel. Exactly. I mean, like, Oman were the ones mediating the discussions that were interrupted by the invasion that were happening at the time. And as we are now seeing, there are so many significant levels of blowback that people are going to be seeing in the region too. Now Iran's defences are all directly military.

12:11That was an oil-laden cargo ship in the Persian Gulf exploding after it was hit by a weapon overnight. It was one of two ships targeted in late-night armed boat attacks in the Gulf near Iraq, with Iranian media reporting that it was struck, quote, off the head failed to comply with warnings and requests from the Revolutionary Guard Navy. Though the ships were registered to the Marshall Islands in Malta, Iran has claimed they were US-owned. At least one Indian national has been reported as killed in the attack. The closure of the Iran-controlled 21 mile wide bottleneck between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea has thrown global oil markets into crisis as Iran put economic pressure on the world to halt US attacks on the country. Last week, US President Donald Trump promised that the United States military would begin guiding ships through the strait to keep roughly one fifth of the world's oil supply flowing. His energy secretary Chris Wright has now applied that undertaking might be on the never-never.

13:39All of our military assets right now are focused on destroying Iran's offensive capabilities. Donald Trump took a different view last night. We're just riding free range over that country, and now we're going to look very strongly at the straits. The straits are in great shape. We've knocked out all of their boats. They have some missiles, but not very many. I think we're in very good shape. So far, 16 ships in the Gulf have come under attack. An oil price is today rose over $100 per barrel once more, that is likely to have a massive knock-on effect on the liars for ordinary people around the world, as the rising price of transport production and heating creates an inflationary shock. According to the international energy authority, this completely illegal war is creating the biggest oil supply disruption in history. Donald Trump, however, is unbothered. The United States is the largest oil producer in the world by far, so in all prices go up,

14:39we make a lot of money, but a far greater interest in importance to me as President is stopping the evil empire Iran from having nuclear weapons and destroying the Middle East, and indeed the world. I won't ever let that happen. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald, J. Trump. Iran's new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mashahtaba Hamini, is alleged to have been injured in the attack that killed his father Ali Hamini last week. He is yet to be seen in public, but Iran's state broadcaster read out what is said to be his first message to the Iranian people since he assumed the leadership. In it, he pledged to keep the streets of farmers closed, and he clarified the goal of Iranian attacks on the Gulf states, where strikes on the UAE Bahrain and Oman have continued. Last night, a base used by Western forces was also struck in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. Mashahtaba Hamini said this about Iran's Gulf campaign. Iran, without seeking to establish dominance in the region, is fully prepared for unity and warm relations with its neighbors. The countries of the region must close down the U.S.

15:44military bases, otherwise we will be forced to attack them again. So what we're seeing here, Daliya, is the reality of people in those areas who thought that engagement with the broader American security envelope, quote, unquote, would have meant that they would have remained invulnerable by being linked to, obviously, the biggest military in the world. And the reality is that that's not being the case, by being linked to the belligerent nature of the American empire, that has led them to become a target that they wouldn't otherwise have been. How do you think we got into this misstep position in the Gulf? Yes, I mean, that is Iran's strategy. Iran knows that it can't go toe-to-toe in terms of bodies or violence with the biggest military in the world several times over. What it can do is it can make allyship or cooperation with the U.S. a liability, a financial liability, a political liability, and that is the strategy that it is using.

16:45And as we discussed this last week on the show, Steven and I, you know, that opens up the Gulf to vulnerability. But it is also emerges from the fact that this is existential for the Iranian regime and the way that it isn't for the U.S. But what I think this shows and the spike in oil prices and the fact that Iran is able to actually cause quite a lot of disruption, quite with relatively little resources compared to the U.S. Because you would think in such an imbalance of power, you can understand why Donald Trump might have thought, oh, this is an easy in-out situation. But it really speaks to me about why the Middle East is the way it is. You know, there's a lot of the Middle East is framed as this place that is naturally prone to conflict or violence. And that's often pathologized as a sort of psychological or cultural trait

17:46of the people that live there. You know, these are hot-headed people. They're always fighting, you know, they've been fighting for thousands of years. And it's sort of racialized as an inevitable part of the way people there are. When obviously the reason that this region has been trapped in this cycle of violence and authoritarianism is nothing to do with the inherent features of the people that live there. It's to do with the fact that this is a region that through essentially the luck or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, of geography, have the power to bring the world economy to its knees. Not only does it house essential resources that are essential to capitalism, i.e. oil, but it also exists as this interface between three major continents, between Europe, Africa and Asia. And when you have 80% of global trade passing by boat going through shipping, something as small as, you know, the trade routes that exist within this region

18:50are incredibly important and can be leveraged as a form of power that can't necessarily be defeated militaristically, because it's very cheap to block the strait of horrors, but it's not cheap to unblock it once it's been blocked. You know, you can block it with a drone, with a fairly makeshift rocket, but in order to intercept those things, you have to spend a lot of money. You know, we talked about it being something like four million dollars to intercept a rocket or a drone that costs a few tens of thousands of dollars to fire. And exercising that power to block those trade routes to cause spikes in oil prices, it's relatively easy, it's relatively cheap, and this is why if you want to be a global hedgeman, like the US, like parts of Europe or Europe as a whole, you have to make sure that this region is under your control. And in order to establish control,

19:55you have to use violence. And this is why we end up seeing this constant stream of like not just civil war, not just unrest, but also of foreign-backed dictatorship. You know, the reason that we have dictatorships in the Middle East is not because of this idea that Middle Easterners need hierarchy or they need a strongman, which is literally something that you will hear within, you know, amongst like international relations scholars or like politicians, that these are people that need a strongman, they like a strongman. No, it's because they, the existing global order requires this area to be governed by a strongman to ensure that the geopolitical significance of the region never translates into actual power. It's why the nationalizing of the Suez Canal, the British Empire, to its knees. So that is why this region is characterized by authoritarian governments, by civil war, by violence.

20:59It's because of the misfortune of being a geopolitically essential part of the global economy. And that's the thing, is it does seem to be that the people in charge and the Trump administration forgot like the basics of the Kissinger doctrine, which was the economic inter-reliant is what is supposed to maintain peace. And we're now seeing the results of this, we're now seeing the results of destabilization as it causes huge problems economically. And of course, the desire, as far as I can see, for people in the Trump administration to be able to follow, in this case what we've seen from Marco Rubio said about following the lead from Israel, they were going to invade, so we knew we'd get retaliated out by a run, so we have to invade preemptively, or we have to start engaging in preemptive strikes to start with, they would realize that there is going to be a knock on effect, there's going to affect everybody because this is the basics of something like the price of oil, which is the underpinning of all production, all production requires energy, especially since the industrial revolution, fossil fuels have been the mainstay energy production. This is a cover knock on effect on the entirety of global growth,

21:59the entirety of the global economy. And their interest in somehow being following the line from the Netanyahu regime in Israel is going to have huge effects for everybody else, and we're all going to suffer the consequences. Now, speaking of partners in international war crimes, that Israel and the United States show no sign of slowing down their assault in the entire middle east. And for Israel, a Lebanon is once again a prime target for Tel Aviv. Explosions rocketed Lebanon's capital, Beirut, again last night, as Israel carried out what it called extensive attacks on the city's southern suburbs. But the assault appears to have now widened to other parts of the city as well. Beirut's Corniche Seafront, and a parent double tap strike killed eight people, according to the Lebanese authorities. One strike appears to have been targeted in a car, with a second strike reported a moments later after people had gathered to help. There were no specific warnings of a strike at the seafront, and an area where some of the 800,000 people so far displaced by Israeli attacks have been sheltering in makeshift tents.

23:02And tents appear to be the target of another Israeli attack last night. The strike caused a large fire to break out amongst the tents, housing multiple displaced Palestinians in the enclave, with first responders and residents battling to bring the flames under control. Gaza officials say Israel continues to violate the ceasefire on a daily basis, and it's also been reported today that the Israeli military is dropping all charges against a group of soldiers accused of sexually assaulting a Palestinian prisoner. The assault is said to have occurred on the 5th of July in 2024. A video of the assault shows soldiers taking a detainee into an area they've cordoned off with shields in an apparent attempt to hide their actions.

24:04The indictment said the soldiers were assaulting the Palestinian prisoner, raping him with a knife and causing multiple injuries. Dalia, obviously, I was speaking just recently there about Israel's desires in the region. They continued belligerence, and we're seeing even more of that in terms of their own goals, not just in terms of what they will say, what they will claim to be as about making sure that they pass fire runs threats to Israel, whilst also expanding their own military objectives within the countries and within the areas they have been up war with very recently, too, in Lebanon and Palestine. We've already seen the extensive actions by settlers in the West Bank, too, since they've been lost or the coverage of Palestine has been lost since the war in Iran. What do you think Israel's goals further from this are going to be? I mean, Israel have stated it quite explicitly. I mean, Smotrich said that he wanted to turn the second largest city in Lebanon into Hanyunis, that is essentially a genocidal threat, and I think it really goes to show that

25:10Gaza was and continues to be a laboratory for Israel's broader regional goals. And in many ways, it goes beyond that. I think that Gaza has actually ushered in a new era of mask of warfare. And I say that with quite strong caveats, because I don't want to give the impression that somehow was by Israel and the US before 2023 were somehow restrained or abided by international law, or that they weren't crime scenes, essentially Iraq, Vietnam, these are all essentially illegal wars that no one was held accountable for. But I think, and also that international law has never been applied unevenly. So it's not like we've entered into an era where, at one point, international law used to be applied evenly,

26:14and people who, including to countries of the global north or countries in the west, that they would be subjected to international law in the same way that countries of the global south would be. International law has always been weaponized, in a sense, to maintain the existing kind of global order. But I think what's interesting about this moment is, we've seen to have shed the need for even a level of plausible deniability. When you look at the war crimes of say Iraq, things like Abu Ghraib, things like the use of double tap, these were things that the US government actually tried to cover up. We know about these things because of leaks. We know about these things because of leaks from people like Chelsea Manning. We know about these things because the Abu Ghraib images of sexualized torture, which we are seeing here, were leaked. It generated a kind of controversy. It maybe didn't generate consequences,

27:16but it generated a kind of controversy. And I wonder what is going, what will have changed now that we have gone from trying to cover up those kinds of war crimes, it seems, to actually boasting about them, to actually, in a sense, almost releasing footage of it as a sort of indication of the fact that Israel, the US, can go as far as the human mind can possibly imagine in terms of torture and violence and ethnic cleansing with impunity. And I would argue that even though what has happened historically in terms of of the wanton ability to break international law by Europe and the US, whilst I would argue that that is precedent rather than a sort of discreetly separate era of American history, I do think that the fact that we've shifted from a culture of covering

28:17those war crimes up or trying to hide behind moralistic explanations to actually expressing and using that as a form of expression of militaristic and colonial power, it does widen the jurisdiction for violence and ethnic cleansing and a reshaping of the region in a very direct way. And I would argue that the reason that we have seen that kind of shift is because we don't live in a unipolar world anymore. It's very easy to hide behind international law and to claim the importance and authority of international law when you're the only sheriff in town. But I think now what we are seeing is an empire that is not necessarily in decline, but it is certainly having its supremacy questioned or rattled by, for example, the economic power of China, by the emergence of new alliances and new kind of poles within global political

29:18and economic power. And when empires feel they are going down, they drag everyone down with them. That's a really important point, I think, about the pretense that we used to have, even in the cases where it was clear that rationale was bad, it was clear that there was levels of depravity happening behind the scenes, and there was at least a pretense of trying to cover them up. For a rack like Colin Powell had a presentation at the UN Security Council, that there was at least the pretense that they were trying to lay out the rationale for an invasion for a war against Iraq, whereas now it's just happening without anybody being consulted at all. And this is why it frustrates me when I think your point you raised about Gaza is really salient, too. When those people will say, well, how can you care about Gaza rather than things that are happening in your immediate vicinity? I'm like, well, the reality of what's going to happen to geopolitics, in the wake of Israel being allowed, been given total impunity to do what it wanted to Gaza and obviously to a lesser extent, the West Bank and South Lebanon, is a rubicon that's been

30:20crossed that gives total credence for everybody else to do the same thing. Because in a just world, international law does matter, there would at least have been a case and repercussions been made and there would have been at least some way in which that they could have been held accountable for the crimes that they've committed and for the things that they said they were going to do. The open calls for genocide that we got from day one after October the 7th. And that is going to impact the lives for generations to come as the global order shifts and as power changes and the reality of warfare changes. And whilst kitchen table issues will always be important to me, the fact that the humanity of Garsens is not enough, but even then even the geopolitical consequences not enough, people to take the issue like Gaza seriously, I found very, very frustrating. No, yesterday we reported on the release of the first tranche of the Mandelson files and they confirmed what the Prime Minister was forced to admit in Parliament, but he was well aware of the links between Peter Mandelson and the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein at the time

31:20of his appointment as U.S. Ambassador. The revelations from the documents are undermining a lot of positions previously held by Keir Starmer and his officials and it makes the appointment look even more ill-judged than was first thought. In our reporting yesterday we discussed how national security advisor Jonathan Powell was revealed to have described the appointment processes weirdly rushed and that his concerns over the appointment of Mandelson were brushed away by Starmer's then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney as having been addressed. As damaging as this already has been, it turns out that the rushed nature of the appointment had previously been denied by number 10. Last month Kitty Donaldson and Richard Holmes for the eye paper published a front page article exposing the government vathing push through security vetting for Mandelson and also that he had been briefed on classified

32:24material even before the rushed vetting had been completed. In fact, the high level of security clearance that was needed for Mandelson had been cleared in six days, a process that according to Holmes should have been as much as three months long. Donaldson revealed last night however that number 10 had claimed the store was false at the time, which we now know to have been true because of the information that has been released in the Mandelson files. The government spent days during the initial Mandelson fallout, repeatedly assuring the House that full due process was followed during the appointment. Given what we know now about the reality of set appointment, that claim is looking increasingly difficult to defend. Something else that number 10 will struggle to defend is the files have brought to light the fact that Mandelson was paid severance pay of £75,000, although he initially asked for a staggering half a million. The Guardian laid out an interesting case as to why this might have happened. The documents suggest Mandelson raised the prospect of suing the foreign office for unfair dismissal until the settlement was reached.

33:28The department's HR boss Mark Power said Mandelson had consulted an employment KC who said they were doubts about the reasonableness of the PM's decision to sack him as ambassador. In an email, he wrote, there is some carefully placed language around the public implications of not reaching a settlement and the nature of an employment tribunal case. There is a potential that absent a positive indication Peter goes public on some of his claims, so there is some urgency. Yet the idea that such an employment tribunal would be successful is also in doubt, as the new statesman's Alvaray pointed out on these night last night. It does say in Peter Mandelson's contract which we cannot or read online that he wouldn't be due any severance payment if he was dismissed, so actually the amount he was due was zero. I think that on obvious case to be made here that £75,000 was not a bargain, and for a lot of people watching, that is an awful lot of money. You can see from reading the

34:29documents that foreign office officials were worried that this could escalate into an employment tribunal, and they can't remember the wording that they used, but they basically say that Peter Mandelson is making some sort of veiled threat that this could generate negative publicity. But to be honest, I think people might not find it that much of a bargain, but also just quickly, I'm not actually sure if this is the most important element of the issue, as in the way that the severance payment referenced by you earlier, it's actually maybe detracting from actually just the underlying point about what Kierstauer knew and why. This raises a lot of questions about what claims power thinks Mandelson would go public with and why, given the nature of the contract number 10 felt it necessities apart with £75,000 to keep Mandelson happy. Who isn't happy as the public, who clearly don't want their money being spent paying off disgraced politicians? Lots of calls have come from Mandelson to donate his severance to charity,

35:30or to return it to the government. In truth, I'm a fashioner, however, the response from number 10 is pretty incoherent. There's an initial tweet from the Daily Mail's editor saying that number 10 says ministers were right to give Peter Mandelson a 75k pay off after he was sacked in disgrace. But also, he should give it back, and as a friend of the show, Matt Sybcoson points out there, that is Starrmrism in an individual tweet, capsulated perfectly, which is that yes, it was absolutely the right thing that we did that thing, but also it's also right that that should be reversed by the person that we gave the money to. Dalia, this does seem to be like the government's got itself in quite the pickle given the forced release of the files. I honestly just do not understand how Starrmrist, still leader of the Labour Party, when he is constantly forcing his MPs to humiliate themselves in his defence. I mean, that they've even lost their enthusiasm in doing it. I guess, you know, what's interesting about the sort of the rehaunting of British politics by Peter Mandelson is I always, I naively sort of thought-port Peter Mandelson as a kind

36:33of relic of the past, but it's clear that he still remains so, or at least until very recently, so incredibly powerful within the Labour Party. I mean, his two of his protégés have completely inexplicable levels of influence in the party, and I say inexplicable because they can't be explained by anything visible to the human eye. I mean, when you're talking about, if you're going to talk about organic popularity or meritocracy, they're clear neither of these bars, and I'm talking here about Morgan McSweeney, who at one point was considered to be one of the most powerful people in the history of the Labour Party, a position that he rose to in a relatively short space of time in a way that is quite inexplicable to most people. And of course, West Streeting, who is largely considered to be a star mass successor, a Labour leader in waiting, neither of these people are organically popular or successful. And so it kind of puts my mind at ease in a sense to know that, oh, yes, there is a reason that they have managed to have this rise in the Labour Party,

37:37despite being so deeply unpopular and unimpressive, and it's because someone who was able to wield the level of power it seems, like Peter Mandelson, has the ability to essentially cherry pick key figures within the Labour Party to this day. And when it comes to the position, you know, when it comes to the security clearance and what might have been happening behind the scenes when Peter Mandelson was given clearance, what we have to understand is that that Peter Mandelson's ongoing power, the power that enables him to operate within the US, his power that enables him to continue to cherry pick key figures within the Labour Party, is not something that exists in parallel with his relationship to people like Epstein, but it is something that exists through his relationship to people like Epstein. Epstein was a power broker, and the way that Peter Mandelson has been able to maintain, to cultivate and maintain

38:40an iron grip within British Labour Party politics is because he was able to enter this network of power that was cultivated by people like Epstein, and in order to enter that network of power, he had to be willing to witness certain things allegedly, keep certain secrets allegedly, in the same way that most people within that kind of network of power had to. So his power and his relationship to people like Epstein allegedly exist in tandem with one another. They are not sort of separate parts of Peter Mandelson's life in Korea. Now a key thing that's been put into sharp focus has been the many, many, many times over the last 20 months has also been the case, is Keir Starmer's consistently poor political judgment. Jess Phillips and Labour MP Fie Birmingham Yardley was asked about his errors over a subject like this that she is well-loan for caring about this morning or good morning Britain. Oh, the government that's made a really big mistake,

39:41yeah, and the one issue you care about most. Yeah, but I have to say, my years of experience mean that for many, many years, long before I was elected to Parliament, I was in rooms trying to make systematic change that was better for victims. And one of the people who was in those rooms with me was Keir Starmer. Now, I have to go on my own personal experience because I haven't seen all the documents. There is nobody, no Prime Minister, certainly that I've ever worked under either on the front line or now, who I have ever found as much of an ally on violence against women and goes on. When and when I have kicked off, as you might imagine, I kick off quite a lot about things not being done, things not being cultural, things not being systematic, it is always him who backs me up. My experience of being in government is completely counter to this mistake, I have to say, this terrible mistake on people. What's interesting is that there are many criticisms that I

40:44personally will have of Jess Phillips, but I don't think you can ever criticise her for not taking violence against women and girls seriously. It is clearly something that she has taken seriously and has done huge amounts of work on trying to rectify. It's why it looks so jarring here, if I had to be going, well, look, he made this awful decision and just took totally glossing over the realities of Peter Mendelssohn's relationship with Jeff Reppstein in this huge large-scale appointment that he was warned about during the vetting process as well, which is why it's very difficult to be able to make these defenses like, well, you're such a big ally for us on something like violence against women and girls and has been for all of this time. If something like this wasn't a huge, huge, huge red flag during the appointment process that he's signed off and it's an appointment process that he is admitting to be the one that is a fault for signing off, because that can't be called into question whether or not. Here is himself taking the blame for the ill-fated appointment in a media event he did in Belfast today.

41:47Let me start where I must start, which is to accept, as I do, that I made a mistake in appointing Peter Mendelssohn and let me follow that up as I've done before, but I need to do it again with an apology to the victims of Epstein for appointing Peter Mendelssohn. It was my mistake and I take responsibility in relation to it. The release of the information shows what was known, that led to further questions being asked, unfortunately, because of the Metropolitan Police Investigation, we can't release that information yet, but that doesn't take away from the fact that it was me that made the mistake and it's me that makes the apology to the victims of Epstein, and I do that. Now, what I find interesting about all of this, it's my take from the Mendelssohn files, given what we know about how the appointment was done, who pushed for what and how things were rushed through from what we've seen from the documentation, that the person who was as far as

42:48I can see in my opinion that was keenest to get Mendelssohn appointed in this case was Morgan McSweeney, which is Keir Starmer's former chief of staff. And in most cases, when it comes to political leaders, they will find a full guy and they will try and palm off the blame onto them. They'll save them other shape, which is the political leader at the time. We saw this with Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings when it came to Banner's Castle, for example. We saw it with Boris Johnson when it was the failures of the government, you find it a junior minister or a ministerial colleague, get them gone rather than take on the blame yourself at the top of the hierarchy in government. And that hasn't happened in this case. You'd think if there was that kind of a level of political mouse here, they'd be going, well, we've got this information that shows at least somewhat that Morgan McSweeney was very interested in getting Mendelssohn appointed into this position. Keir Starmer, I think, we're all of the understanding, it's our opinion that he is not the person who's in charge in government a lot of the time.

43:52There's been lots of documentation, I think Tim Shipman recently did a quite funny article in the spectator talking about the levels to which the Keir Starmer doesn't really make decisions internally and the all of the stuff from behind it, from sort of get in from McGuire and Poghrin talked about McSweeney steering the ship. What does it say about that relationship that they've not tried to save Keir Starmer's skin by blaming McSweeney for the appointment? And Starmer himself is coming out and saying, it's me, it was my fault, I take full responsibility, I'm going to apologize to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for the appointment that I made. What do you think? I think it's a really interesting question. If I was being really generous, I would say, you know, it's a good thing for a leader to take ultimate responsibility for the things that happen under his watch. The reason why I wouldn't say that here is because I have no reason to believe that Keir Starmer is a man of integrity or honour. So it would be odd for this to be the one instance in which he really demonstrates that given that it doesn't feel consistent

44:56with the rest of his character. But it's interesting because I'm Paul Holden who is an investigative journalist who did this deep dive book on the rise of Starmer and Morgan McSweeney and he actually did an interview on Downstream with Ash which I would highly recommend. And he sort of outlines how this is the nature and has been the nature of Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer's relationship from the very beginning. He talks about how when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, the sort of the surprise win for the left, and there was a lot of panic amongst the Labour right that, you know, the left was now in power and how they kind of scrambled, they formed Labour together as a way of scrambling to try and reassert their dominance within the party. And obviously Morgan McSweeney, what was a key part of that. And one thing that Paul Holden says is that he said, normally the potential leader, the leadership candidate,

45:58or the politician normally selects their head strategist or their chief of staff. Whereas what happened in the case of McSweeney and Starmer is actually the strategist was the one who picked the candidate. So when Labour together are like, we need to not only destroy the Corbyn project but construct an alternative to step in when he is destroyed, they were saying, you know, we need to find someone who is ambitious and who is essentially a kind of empty vessel who can be the vehicle for our ambitions to reassert the dominance of the right within the party. And they were the ones that identified and scouted Keir Starmer and sort of started building his campaign behind the scene. So this kind of odd imbalance or inversion has existed in Starmer and McSweeney's relationship from the very beginning. And I think there is probably something here that we don't know about why Starmer feels the need to continue to protect Morgan McSweeney's reputation

47:07because I want to know from Morgan McSweeney why he was so intent on pushing through Peter Mandleton. I want to know what was shared between those two people, what is the relationship between those two people that meant that he, you know, despite it being essentially something that would so clearly come back and bite them in the ass at some point, why he felt like he had to push this through. But we don't get those answers because Keir Starmer is protecting Morgan McSweeney. So I think there's probably something about the story that we don't know about why Morgan McSweeney is seen to be someone that no one can touch or no one can mess with. And I wonder if it's because, you know, the powers that be within the Labour Party who are invested in continuing to cultivate the right within the party and retain the power of the right within the party, see Morgan McSweeney is more indispensable than Keir Starmer. Well, I think that's, he certainly is more indispensable,

48:11I think, given what we know about the reality of Keir Starmer's approach to governance. He could be replaced by, you know, a blue with a face in his, as far as I can see, and you probably get the same result in terms of the level of governance. And of course, we're seeing in terms of the polls, in terms of approval ratings, in terms of electoral losses, both in Gortland, Denton and potential losses that are being projected in the May local elections. Keir Starmer's political future, it's not particularly lengthy one. None of us are really thinking that he's going to last much longer than May's local elections. So if they really are quote, quote, saving the mothership here, it's clear to me that McSweeney is the one that they will need to save. Keir Starmer is expendable. He was always expendable. I mean, we now know that they were expecting to have two terms in opposition. It's why they spend five years trying to purge the left, and then they had plans to spend five years doing policy development, according to Maurice Glossman, on Newsnight, and then they just accidentally found themselves in government after this trust, and all of that happened. And so Keir Starmer was only ever, as far as I can see,

49:12potentially going to be a caretaker leader of the party until somebody like West Streeting would come along. And for little charisma, let's say West Streeting has the need to continue to remind us the apparently that he is. And so any future labor together kind of cultivated leadership that would be there to user, stammering the event that he did step down, they would almost certainly, as far as I can see, have links to someone like McSweeney or people off his ilk, given that he used to be the director of labor together. He was during the the Corbin years. And so he is far more important to the labor right project than Keir Starmer ever was. He was only ever there to be the one as the vector with which they were going to do the purges in those first-term in opposition that they thought they were going to have as part of those two times. And so it does seem to me that it makes perfect political sense if that is going to be the dynamic for Keir Starmer to absorb all of the failures of the Mandelson scandal, make it his problem, a problem of him, then when he goes, they can put it in the past box. You can put it in the box,

50:14you can seal the tomb and put it away. So when anyone brings themselves back to think about the labor government, when they try and get re-elected in 2029, they'll go, oh, that Mandelson stuff, that was all Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer has gotten, he sees in these in the past now, the Winterfield Allowance, you don't have to forget that, you can forget all the disability cuts, it's something different. When in reality, it was always the same, because it's the same labor together people, the same labor together fingerprints, that there would be on the governance of the party if it was replaced by another Apparachic from that political wing. In the shadow of power, one of the richest cities on earth, a man dies, homeless and unseen. Julie Ramesh died in an underpassing Westminster, just meters away from the buildings that govern Britain. Around him were empty homes, dark, locked, untouched. How can someone lose everything in the heart of so much wealth? Follow that question and lead to a hidden world of money,

51:17secrecy and power, a system that decides who gets a home and who doesn't. This is a kind of place for our relationship between dirty money and the city and the kind of dark money that goes into political machine, kind of niche. Where could this lead? Where does it end? What else can we become desensitised to? I'm Kojo Karam, writer and researcher, and since 2018, this story has haunted me. Death and Westminster's are four part series from Navarra Media, produced by Planet B Productions. Death in Westminster arrives on 10th March in the Navarra Media podcast Eid. Omejilili is a British Iranian comedian who's been a vocal opponent of the way the Iranian government and its internal security apparatus treats the country's population, but who isn't. But Jilili has also been a loud supporter of the United States and Israel's

52:19completely illegal military intervention in the country. He is not shy about the fact that he wants the Islamic regime to fall and hopes US and Israeli bombs will bring that about. Last night, he appeared on Channel 4 to explain why. I mean, I should tell you, Christian, when we talk right now, it's not even me giving you my opinions. My opinions don't matter at all because the internet's been shut. All we are doing is try and amplify some of the voices from inside Iran who have been cut off by the internet and just try and say a few things about what some of the narratives they want out there. Messages are coming through which are which are very, very strong. I have to tell you, I mean, I can read you one of the messages here which I actually tweeted yesterday, which is very, very representative of what the people of Iran feel. It's kind of shocking because I'm not pro-war at all. I did a whole documentary called We Are Many about the February 15, 2003 anti-war demonstrations after the British and American invasion of Iraq. And so I'm very anti-war, but I'm quite surprised when you see these

53:25videos that Iranians cheering when things are getting bombed. And you think, well, how do they reconcile that? What do they think? And this is the kind of thing that people are saying, which I think people should be really aware of. Those of us inside the cage know that cutting out a cancer is going to hurt. We are willing to take that pain because it is better to die once than to be tortured every single day. If this war stops, which is very interesting, and the regime survives, we are all dead anyway, and our execution dates just get moved up. Now that's the view of one person inside Iran that Jalili is amplifying there. And maybe he has 500, even 5,000 of those messages, but there are more than 92 million people in Iran than trying to divine what they want from a handful of messages, not an advisable idea in my opinion. And it's especially a bad idea to amplify a single message that asserts Iranians as a whole would rather die than live under the current system at a time when Israel and the United States

54:27are bombing the country. It's also worrying that Jalili really seems to believe that, which may explain a pretty shocking post he made on social media last week. It concerns the bombing of the Girl School in Iran's Manab, which hundreds of gals between ages 5 and 12 were killed. Jalili wrote this. The regime say it's America or Israel. The Americans say they're nowhere near the area. Here's what Iranians inside Iran say. The IRGC blew it up themselves to fill it up with dead bodies of children they've kept on ice hidden away in cold storage from the january slaughter to put on display in order to blame their aggressors. The fact that we have not seen the evidence yet as a red flag, as we know the regime would have gleefully paraded those images on television and all over the internet. Most probably they were caught on film transferring the bodies hence why there is now a media blackout on the story as well as a full internet blackout. As Iranians we know how this regime operates. We're talking about new levels of evil. That's homage to Jalili essentially doing a sandy cook conspiracy theorist false flag brain

55:27meltdown over a very recent massacre of young girls in Iran. One that the Pentagon now says was very likely conducted by the United States. And many of us knew that this was likely to be the case. But Jalili's impeccable sources are ledgerly from inside Iran that otherwise were using a full-on fiction instead involving the frozen corpses of children. And Jalili fell for it and amplified it. Who's to say the same thing wasn't happening on channel four news? Now channel four did try and push back on Jalili's dangerous claims but not very hard. You know the regime supporters in Iran say the people who you're quoting are a tiny minority. You know yes there are people who are upset and angry and want to get rid of the regime but there is small group of people. And obviously the people on your side say no we are the majority. And it's very very difficult because we're not there and we're not allowed in to really get a sense of where public opinion is now. I mean what makes you sure that you speak for the majority?

56:31I don't speak for anyone I'm just speaking for the people that I've seen but you know if you're listening to the Islamic regime all American Navy has been sunk. The Air Force has been shot out the sky. Tel Aviv and Haifa are a barren wasteland. That is their regime and we've seen them lie about things we'd have history with this. They have lied so much and we're seeing it literally on television. I'm tweeting it go on my Twitter feed and I'm tweeting it as a comedy thing because they say yes we've hit the USS Abraham Lincoln and then the Mueller goes everyone together mad bar on the other people do they go mad bar on man it fizzles before it even starts at AI videos of crowds. Yeah yeah also AI videos of crowds all this stuff that we see is complete and not a very easily you know understood lies so as far as Iranians are concerned we don't believe anything they say and when the people of Iran are saying we are the majority that's what we believe. Yes the Iranian government pumps that misinformation all sides in war trade and misinformation of

57:35course evident including Jalili's. The central thing here I think Dalia is that yes Iranian regime does terrible things we're not going to be contentious in terms of trying to deny that because of course that's true but there needs to be an analytical framework as to how you make life better for the people in Iran and it is clear to me regardless of what the stories that come out of Iran are that bombing campaigns hitting all refineries and showering countries of millions and millions of people in acid rain are not going to achieve that and it doesn't matter how much you personally dislike a regime trying to even imply that somehow the deaths of all civilians as the causes of this illegal regime change war that again this isn't trying to actually materially benefit the life of Iranians this is being done as far as I can see upon the yoke of the interest of the Israeli government which is causing untold damage to the

58:37global economy the internal economy in Iran to the livers of millions that they kill and indeed to the future of the process like artifacts that exist in Iran cultural heritage sites this doesn't seem to me given the history of what we know about how these kind of bombing campaigns have worked in these illegal regime change wars you don't have to look at things like Libya to know what the negative externalities of these campaigns are that no matter how sincere somebody is in disagreeing with these regimes it just doesn't work it hasn't worked what's your take i mean we only entertain the idea that you can fix political issues with invasion and war when it comes to brown people when it comes to countries of the global south i mean if you look at the u.s. right the u.s. had a sustained period of formal racialized legal segregation you know during the Jim Crow era currently in this moment there are more black people in prisons

59:43in America than were enslaved right that is a deeply unjust foul wrong immoral authoritarian fact right and it has been the case for a really long time people are resisting within the u.s. against that do i think that that issue can be solved if like a pan-Africanist leader in in Africa decided to say well you know america is is oppressing black people in the u.s. so we're going to kill schools full of children in the u.s. in order to liberate people from the injustice of the american regime i mean we would patently see that as absurd but when it comes to countries of the global south and the cheapness of life in many of these areas there is a sense that you can only ever resolve political issues through through war that it's somehow okay and i think

1:00:43there's something that i found the thing that i found so disturbing in what omajidili said there was this idea that you know people there would rather die than live another day under the Iranian regime and i can understand that the sentiment behind that but i just think to say that in the context of an illegal invasion is essentially to me at least it essentially involves giving a moral cover to the idea that these people's lives right now don't matter in the pursue of the political project to remove the Iranian regime political project that you know i'm sure many within the country want to see what i might agree with but not through bombing and conflict and and war and i think the thing about you know omajidili being appointed the kind of this but you know he says like i don't at the beginning he says you know i don't represent Iranian people but by the end of the clip he's saying you know we as Iranians all believe that or we as Iranians believe

1:01:47and he kind of starts to invite the we into the into the conversation which i think is quite interesting um but when it comes to the issues that impact you know people who aren't white essentially the media has this tendency to think that there is just like we're just this sort of like essentialized homogenous group of people and if you pluck anyone out from us um will be the transmitter of that essentialist information and sort of the the Iranian position it's kind of like the equivalent of you know Brexit happening in Britain you know this big political crisis that there's you know so many complex reasons why this might be happening and in the US then being like well clearly you know the authoritative voice on this is James Corden just because he happens to be British and it's like this kind of identity politics where it's like suddenly when it comes to these issues there doesn't need to be a question of like because like editors producers make editorial decisions all the time of like who are we going to bring on to speak about this and what qualifies

1:02:49them and i guess it's like just being a well-known person with that background to me it feels like an odd reason not not necessarily to to hear from from someone but that wasn't just like a panel show or a or a show where we were hearing from a multiple voices that was a you know a 25 minute interview of just him where despite him saying i don't represent the Iranian people it was kind of the staging and the production of the show kind of gives that impression and there is no evidence to believe that people who are living in Iran because obviously i'm actually just not living Iran that people within Iran whatever they might think of the the Iranian regime there is no evidence to believe that they think that what american bombs are going to resolve the problem and i can have a lot of simp you know i have a lot of compassion you know i'm actually lost his brother to or some a member of his family i believe was killed by the regime i can i think and i don't necessarily

1:03:49think like that he should it like his voices is completely worthless but when you think about it in the context of the complexity of this issue and the fact that we are in the middle of a war and the fact that um he has kind of circulated absurd conspiracy theories that have absolutely you know if they came out from anyone else would sound unbelievable but it's not again not a surprise to me that at a time when the british state is helping is involved in a war through intelligent sharing the use of providing the use of military bases that they would that the british media would be interested in providing a platform to someone who in my view it feels is offering a kind of moral cover for that by saying well people there say that they would rather die than live another day in this regime you know yeah i totally agree i totally agree and again like the idea that even if this was successful in removing the regime which i don't think that it will

1:04:52i don't think even the Trump administration thinks that it will that somehow something better would come of it they had a reformist president the time what we still do in mrsud bazazki and they had alihaminah who had his own fat war against nuclear weapons why would they not develop nuclear weapons now how can the liberal reformists within Iran at this point justify their position when their own reformist approach to politics has still led to the devastation we're seeing in Iran right now given the illegal invasion who says that anything that would replace what is currently governing the country would be better again we saw this in Libya where we had the forward government of Gaddafi replaced by slave markets essentially we saw the power vacuum in Iraq leads to the rise of ISIS which huge amounts of geopolitical instability that followed in huge amounts of lives that were ruined by that through the removal of sedan asane who is to say that this indiscriminate and illegal bombing campaign because against not boots on the ground this is just being reigning of bombs from the sky in Iran will necessarily lead to something better

1:05:57as far as i can see there is no case it's been made as to how that might come about but again it's easy emotionally connected to the need to remove what is bad now without thinking about the consequences moving forward through an analytical framework and i think that's the problem with relying on people i go immediately why do you not think in my personal opinion how that framework to hand ever since the Labour Party were hammered in the by-election in Gorton and Denton the style of Politburo have been scrawling for any justification for the loss that doesn't implicate their existing political strategy that strategy so far has either been so to misrepresent the green party's positions or to derive them as extreme and to market themselves as moderate in comparison justice secretary and deputy prime minister David Lamy was asked about the supposedly extreme green party when speaking with the new statesman this week

1:06:59do you believe the greens to be an extreme party i think the position that we should sort of abandon and NATO in the midst of the war in Ukraine can only be described as you correctly of extreme and i think the vast majority of people in the united kingdom would think that there are green councils that have blocked council housing that is not progressive in my understanding of progressive a kind of nibbism that creeps in that is absolutely not where my voters are in Tottenham and there needs when we got some of the highest overcrowding and people waiting for council houses possible so yes i do see elements of course there are there are parts of the green agenda in relation to the environment that i would want to associate myself with in the Labour party is proud of its record in relation to the environment and our fight against climate but i

1:08:06think there are areas in which they debart and but look you know the electorate will make that assessment it's up to us also to point those things out to the electorate so that they're clear on the distinction okay to start with the green party members who set policy voted to change the green party's stance on NATO in 2023 to support attempting to reform NATO from within rather than explicitly backing NATO withdrawal which was the previous position this question has been put to green party leaders act polanski many times and it continues to respond that the party does not back NATO withdrawal immediately for the reasons lammy states regarding Ukraine but what the green party also supports is seeking alternative defence arrangements should NATO be unable to be reformed which is why polanski has also championed the idea of working closer with Europe rather than with Donald Trump as for the nibbism it is worth pointing out that this is an affliction for all Westminster parties and one of the Labour party do things like block housing projects with 50% affordable housing and one's worth they're in no position to point fingers but when it comes to the wider membership the greens are actually the most yin b of all of those parties you got found

1:09:11that the greens were significantly more in favour of both new housing in general and new housing in their area far higher than the general public these are very similar attacks on the greens so that Labour threw at them in the by-election which didn't work then and the greens since have overtaken Labour with you govern the polls in that interview David Lammy was subsequently asked if he was worried about the fact that these polls show him losing his Tottenham seat in 2029 I can 100% tell you knowing my seat as I do that there is no prospect of the greens taking my constituency absolutely none at all I've represented Tottenham for 26 years I've heard about Tottenham over that period you know voters going off to the far left it's never ever happened and I so you know people can make their predictions but as long as I've got anything to do about it

1:10:16I think the people who Tottenham at the next election will make their assessment of how we've done as a government and the Labour Party and I've got every confidence that I'll fight for every vote and win. Clipton ship Jack clipped and shipped bookmark this for the future because I feel like my personal opinion Lammy is going to be left with a pretty red face in 2029 again if the polls continue as they are then it looks like plenty more seats other than David Lammy's will be lost and it just shows I think how much that I don't think he understands just how much that the opinion against his party and his conduct personally in government is going to hurt the party and his own electoral prospect come the next election and it does seem to me kind of the absolute kind of the peak of hubris to go they're going yeah the next election they'll just come back to us because of all the success we've had in government I'm like well it's clear at the moment they don't look like they seem to have noticed that same kind of success that you say that you're going to be delivering for them over the next few years and the Labour Party more broadly is clearly

1:11:19totally unprepared for what's going to hit them both of course in May are the local elections and potentially at the next election too and they seem to be operating at the height of conceit by considering themselves entitled to people's votes or it's even more baffling is that they don't even seem to understand why the Greens are winning over any of the voters that they've been losing or what their vote base even looks like in the interview we showed you with Rami he could only describe the Greens appeal as quote unquote grievance politics but on time's radio Labour together board member Sally Morgan seems to think that people are somehow voting green by mistake I don't think the Greens are one block so I think I think in a sense what you're saying is is a block of people who this time voted green and a block of people who this time voted reform within those blocks there are people who should be voting Labour and did vote Labour and and I think it's really important that Labour is quite calm and analytical about it and things well okay so what part of that green vote should really be coming back to us and how do we do that and what part of the reform group should vote should be with us and how do we do that and not think we've got to go after all of it and I think particularly if you look at the Greens

1:12:22she made the candidate was great and she made a really good acceptance speech kind of you know if you work hard your life should be decent and actually it's not at the moment an awful lot of Labour politicians could have made that speech and have made that speech at various times so but then when you look at what they campaigned on and particularly what they're saying now in terms of of of the Middle East just to think well hang on a second that does what she said does not represent what they now seem to stand for so and I think there'll be a lot of people nationally within that within potential green voters who suddenly on the international side and unbroad policies will just think hang on no that's not where I am so I think it's more complicated as you literally said there all these people should be voting Labour I'm sorry they'll vote for whoever they want to vote for and you're going to have to offer them a political prospectus for them to want to vote for if they're going to do that they can't just assume you're going to be the natural party of government especially in a world of tactical voting when you're polling by in the green party that support level will shatter very very quickly if all you can offer is well these really should be our voters and the miskind of attribution of people's

1:13:25opinions on policy there was also quite stark when she was like oh well there the policies on the middle east I'm sure there are plenty of green voters who don't back that I might the green party have significantly supported internationalist politics in the way that the Labour Party used to do so for quite a while the idea that natural green party voters wouldn't be sympathetic to the Palestinians doesn't make much sense to me and that is partly one of the reasons why people like Lamy are probably going to lose their seat plenty of domestic issues but also plenty of backlash due to Labour's continued tacit support for Israel's genocide there and so given the reality of what we've seen in terms of the kind of person who's defected from the green from the Labour Party to the green party there was an interesting survey that was done by 38 degrees and it showed that actually the kind of demographic that is being lost by Labour are more kind of younger millennial types or lower middle class or kind of a working class types who work in in the service sector who are on

1:14:29low wages who are renting who are levels of economic precarity and they also have progressive viewpoints on social issues and they were parties who have abandoned these people in lots of cases and unless they can develop a prospectus to win those people back I do not see how they can think that these people should be voting Labour it's clear to me they were taking those votes for granted and are still living in a world in which they think they have nowhere else to go which was the famous Peter Mandelson quote Dali if you remember that one where he was like these people have nowhere else to go we don't have to worry about appealing to these people and they've gone and said all the doors open and you can leave we're going to shake off the fleas and even their strategists are out there going well these people probably should be voting Labour so we'll just continue on the path that we're on and everything will come good in 2029 or indeed in May this year they're in for a shock aren't they? I mean I found that clip from David Lamy so unbelievably distasteful and just like a 101 in in bad political comms like voters don't like to hear that politicians think of them as having nowhere else to go they don't like to hear

1:15:33they're someone that they have elected say well who else they can vote for anyway you know to take their votes for granted in that way you know but David Lamy if he wants to respond to that question of you know do you think you might lose your seats to your seats to the Greens talk about what you've done for Tottenham talk about you know the fact that you respect Tottenham the voters in Tottenham and you know this is what you want to deliver for them and you're going to fight hard to retain their trust don't sit there lie back and smirk and say you know I know the people are Tottenham and they're going to vote for me as if you're just like it's your birthright like you're just entitled because you're a Labour politician to the votes of people's votes just because who else is Tottenham going to vote for other other than Labour and I also I mean that that clip that we saw from the kind of professional political understander you know who's who's grip brilliant insight of like oh well these people should be voting Labour why I don't I don't have to vote

1:16:35for anyone I shouldn't be voting for anyone other than someone who offers me something that aligns with my interests and and position and it's that kind of hubris that I am really surprised actually that in a post-Gorton and Denton world that that they would have the arrogance to continue with that and I think like we are just in a moment of of British political history that's the current elite class are really unfamiliar with they really don't understand because it hasn't happened in what nearly a hundred years which is that you know our political system which is cleaves towards you know first pass the post cleaves towards a two-party system and right now the the dominance of the two parties that have got been in charge for very for a very long time is being genuinely questioned that has not happened for a really really long time and I don't think that the commentary and the political class have been shaken out of their delusion yet

1:17:38the extent to which people feel failed by the kind of politics that they represent and also what has changed you know because I often wonder you know people like like David Lamy or West Streeting people who as far as I can see are not aligned really with the history of the Labour party with the positions we especially West Streeting who nearly got his ass handed to him in Ilford in the last election you know where I sometimes look at them and I think why are you in the Labour party like why aren't you just like a Tory or a Lib Dem because that seems to a light like you aren't pro the Labour movement you aren't even sent to left like you were pro privatising their NHS you're cavorting with genocide and genocide as like you don't seem to be aligned with the actual principles or positions of even just the Labour party base like why would you want to be in a party where the voter base are deeply unaligned with you ideologically

1:18:39and a big part of that reason is the first pass the post in the two party system because if you live in Tottenham or you live in Ilford and you have political ambitions and you want to have a political career a lot of the time you were living in a one party constituency and so you have no choice but to build that political career within the party that dominates your constituency which in the case of someone like Lamy is the Labour party and so whether or not you are actually aligned with the values of the Labour party is somewhat irrelevant to whether or not you get involved because you're motivated by the fact that you have ambitions to become a politician and this is the only vehicle in town where you live that's breaking now after Gorton and Denton that has broken because not only was Gorton and Denton taken from the Labour party but it was taken relatively easily in the sense that you know Gorton and Denton was right at the bottom I can't remember what Zach Polansky said but it's like 100 and something in terms of the Green Party's order of priority

1:19:42when it comes to their target seats and it gives this sense that every there are no single party seats anymore in this particular moment in British political history now I will caveat that with saying that I don't think it will be as easy now because I think you know with Gorton and Denton I don't think that the Labour party were even paying attention to what the Greens were doing they found it laughable that the Greens could win that seat they were looking much more at what reform was doing now I think at some point they will cotton on and they will start throwing a lot of their might against the Greens and that is going to make it a lot more difficult but I'm surprised that it seems like that penny hasn't dropped yet because for me Gorton and Denton you know was a ground breaking moment that really signaled that not that the two party political system was changing but the who those two parties were is suddenly contested in a way it hasn't been in about 100 years I think I think I agree I was interesting moment I was watching one of the times

1:20:44podcasts which had their under the political correspondence Patrick McGuire on it and he was pretty outweighed saying the resulting Gorton and Denton could signal the heat death of the Labour party like if they don't find a way of recouping what they've lost by offering these votes or something they will lose them forever and you're right I give these hubris I think we have started to see the pot shots in terms of attacking the Greens bringing up like the son story of in 2013 or attacking them on NATO or drugs policy rather than offering a better way in their minds of offering the voters the positive policies that the Greens are offering that it's clear that those voters care about people do like the idea of rent controls people do like the idea of wealth tax they do want to see critical industries and public services in public hands they don't want to see these things privatised they don't want the wards companies to get away scot free and be kind of sort of managed by a toothless regulator who want to in house these are all very popular policies and the fact that David Lamy couldn't acknowledge those policies and say well it sounds good

1:21:46we have this better and more achievable alternative which I would disagree with but at least that would be a way of trying to win people over he is just respecting that exactly the challenge yeah respecting the giant and respecting the voters who have demonstrated through their voting and through their polling that this is the these are the policies that they would love the Labour Party to represent because it's it's a big risk to vote for the Greens in a in places where the Greens have never won you know your vote is very precious and like it is a risk and I'm sure a lot of people you know if they had a Labour Party that they could genuinely believe would offer that change they would want to continue voting Labour because you know you have a sense that Labour has won a lot before I'm not going to accidentally let the Tories in or accidentally let reform in it's you who cocked it up it's not the voter it's you that is the problem exactly they're doing that thing that they always said that they would never do during the Corbyn years which is blame voters they are not trying to engage with the reasons why people voted they're essentially telling the electorate you are stupid to vote for these people they're in their far left grievance politics

1:22:49you're only doing that because you're frustrated but when you see our policies will do really well well by you and you'll come back to us like no no they've seen something else that they like you need to compete with that that's how politics is supposed to work and you'll only push these people away if you derive their political choices as being not worthy of your engagement and it's interesting the the the way in which I think that we are seeing political decline of Labour which will continue as there was a point in the clip from Sally Morgan that where she said or that to speech that someone from Labour Party could have given when she accepted the seat and I'm like maybe a Labour Party 40 years ago certainly wouldn't be something that you'd hear from Labour Party now because it wasn't delivered by a privately educated Oxbridge educated politically connected lobbyist or pollster or consultant who's never worked a real job and has spent their entire life being an Appalachian Labour Party who was inserted into their role as an MP by a fixed selection panel that Mandelson helped help to like oversee and run up the election or you'd never see that

1:23:53kind of speech from a Labour Party or the Labour Party of today because everyone who's like that has been filtered out they've been filtered out not just through policy but through purges and expulsions and indeed the ones that are still there God knows why through being blocked from standing as an MP in the first place yeah and also I mean it's kind of lobby journalist brain to think that the reason that Hannah won it's because she knows how to give a good speech I heard it also when Zoran won and there was a sense like oh it's because he's really good at social media and then you start seeing people with dog shit politics you know doing Zoran style comms thinking that that's why Zoran won the mayoral election in the US in New York or that you know Hannah won because she was just really good at social media and she just was really good at giving it she gives a really good speech it's like no it's because firstly like she put in the organizing work you know the ground work same way Zoran and also because the alternative that

1:24:54was offered which is the Labour Party has been so thoroughly discredited and the trust has broken down so much that I think a lot of the time people were also like until this thing dramatically transforms I'm not even going to consider voting for it I would rather go with someone who has a track record in a different arena of you know standing up for ordinary people who is a working class person herself who you know is is part of an infrastructure that has not betrayed us yet which is the green party like the Labour Party would have to so significantly transform to rebuild the trust of the people that it has called fleas it would have to like if you think that you can replace Kissed Armor with West Streeting and that's going to solve the problem you are you are like you really do have you really are just like singing on the Titanic is the ship that is your party sinks you know it's myopic isn't it's my opic it's idiotic and it's I mean for me I'm like great you know the Labour Party have done

1:26:00enough damage like let's have something else but if you're a Labour Party operator who is concerned with the survive of the Labour Party in these areas I don't know how you're not you know fixing up some of that messaging and realising the depth of transformation that has to happen to rebuild trust I totally agree I totally agree and unfortunately we've come to another show but thank you very much for joining me it was great to be back in the studio myself and to be in the studio with you today too as always thanks for having me as always indeed thank you everyone at home for tuning in as well too come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6pm for now you've been watching Navarimedia good night this broadcast is brought to you by Navarimedia go to Navarimedia.com slash