Starmer’s latest U-turn shame

0:02The Telegraph

0:10In his latest U-turn, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer has issued a U-turn saying he's not responsible for previous U-turns. This follows a U-turn on digital ID. Has this government completely lost the plot? And the Home Secretary, Shibana Mahmood, has lost confidence in the Chief of West Midlands Police over their unjustifiable ban on Jewish fans. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:45At PMQs today, Keir Starmer did a U-turn about whether or not he does U-turns. Because he said, I don't do U-turns. What I am doing is turning this country around. Oh, no. That's the definition of a U-turn. I know, it's weird, isn't it? because one imagines that Starmer, in adherence with the rules, he passed his theory test first time, would drive like Miss Daisy. In fact, he's currently resembling me on the school run, screeching turns everywhere. And Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, was on the broadcast round this morning denying that the government was responsible for a string of U-turns, said it was kind of mischievous to suggest that 13 U-turns did show a lack of direction.

1:31Mm, they should be stripped of their licence. They should be. Not that I know, don't write in now and say, oh, he wouldn't have done the theory test. I've only got the theory test in my mind because I've told you about taking Annabelle out as a learner and she passed her theory test last night. Well done, that's great. No, but we now have to book an actual test. Right. And then you may need to defibrillate me at some future date. Shall we count the U-turns in the spirit of pick of the pops? I'll do one, you do one, and then we can yin and yang it. Right. Ahem. Grooming gang inquiry. They weren't going to hold one, and then they decided to.

2:06Pit benefit payments. They were going to restrict eligibility, then they U-turned. Winter fuel payments for pensioners. Sorry, Ulsters, you're not going to get them. Oh, yes, you will. Family farm inheritance tax. You can sell your farm because of our bad policy. Oh, actually, don't. We've changed our mind. Waspy women, calm down, dear. It's only a U-turn on state pension inequality. Workers, you know your rights. Actually, no, we're going to water them down a bit. National insurance increase wasn't in the manifesto, but it's going up, up, up. Sorry to interrupt your cheerios. We might have to put up your income tax.

2:41Actually, no, I probably won't. And time, gentlemen, please, for the pub rates increase. Tim, you can take your Magna Carta and shove it up your backside. We may scrap jury trials, but that's a U-turn still to come. But cream of the crop and top of the pops, it's digital ID U-turn. You're going to have to show your papers, but not anymore. I mean, it's just astonishing. I know we're giggling through that, but my goodness me, it does speak to a government that appears to be making it up as it goes along. Yeah, we're at least in double figures on U-turns. And the problem with each one is even if we wanted them to U-turn, they shouldn't have done it in the first place.

3:19And then to change your mind replaces mendacity with weakness. Well, hang on a minute. Apparently changing your mind is a sign of strength. Oh, yes. So the prime minister, when he was in opposition, would call out any U-turn, not even U-turns, just a slight turn to the right or indeed the left, as some kind of calamity of Toryism. But if he does it, it's OK, because, Tim, he's in a government of service of the people. He's listened. He's learned. He's changed course. Right. OK. Again, the problem with that, though, is that Keir Starmer frames everything as a moral absolute. So whenever he's decided he's going to do something, it is the right thing to do.

3:59And anyone who opposes it is on the side of child pornographers or people smugglers. That's it. So let's listen to the Prime Minister talk about digital ID back in September. You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It's as simple as that. Trouble is with it, Tim, is it went down like a turd in a souffle, didn't it? Nobody liked it. We went from a situation, actually, where people kind of rejected Orwellian big brother claims, were quite happy to be filmed on various cameras on any street corner and were regularly and still continue to invade their privacy on social media.

4:39But digital ID cards just pushed them over the edge. We all have to hand over our data, but the point is it's voluntary. You're doing it for a service. This was involuntary. You would have to do it, and it was the state making you do it. It was nanny forcing you to eat the cod liver oil. It was very unpopular. It had a net approval rating of minus 14, although it would still be a more popular prime minister than Keir Starmer. Yes. And Telegraph readers didn't like it either. In one poll, 132 ,178 people gave the following judgment on digital ID cards. 38 % were in favour, 62 % were against. I tell you who the Prime Minister should be listening to, and I know he's one of your favourite people, Wes Streeting.

5:25Now, do you know Streeting, the Health Secretary's new acronym for what Keir Starmer should be doing? Do you know what it is? No. It's GIRF. And I say GIRF with an F. Do you know what GIRF stands for? What does it stand for? Get it right first time. Ah. Ah, which is also weirdly an anagram of grift. But I make no further comment on that. So he was then questioned, wasn't he, by Kemi Badenock today, although she struggled, to be fair, to fulfil the meaning of the phrase. But yesterday, the Health Secretary said the Prime Minister's New Year's resolution should be, and I quote, to try to get it right first...

6:08LAUGHTER ..to try to get it right first time. So, Kemi, I was there. So, Kemi is saying, you said this, you said this, and Wes is saying, no, I didn't, no, I didn't, in that cold, snake, dead-eyed way of his. Yes, he did say that. He did say that. So, it was very funny. But he made some remarks, whatever they might have been, at a conference for the Institute for Government, at which he seemed to demolish Keir Starmer's entire style of leadership. Oh, dear. I mean, one line that really stood out, He was talking about levers. He was saying, you don't just go around saying, we don't have the levers to make government work.

6:47You build the levers. And that's the whole point of a left-wing approach towards government. You're meant to be about building a state and using the state to improve people's lives, not saying the state doesn't work. Well, who was it who said, we pull levers and nothing happens? It was Keir Starmer. It's very hard not to interpret it that way. Although, weirdly, Liz Truss has also spouted that rhetoric since being in power. Well, it's anyone who's been prime minister will tell you that either there are no levers or when you pull them, a balloon explodes. Yeah, or like a little cloud appears. Yeah, exactly.

7:16He goes, oh, you can't do that. Yeah, exactly. So I take the point. But reporting in the New Statesman. Oh, what are you thinking reading that? What? It's very good. It's a good magazine. No, your enemy. Actually, those people used to be your friends as well, let's be honest. But they know our enemy. Is it a case of once a socialist? Because they actually know our enemy. Always a socialist. All right, fair enough. We're just speculating a lot of the time. OK, my little pink co-friend. They're actually in bed with these reds. You're in bed with the New Statesman, which is disturbing. Well, the New Statesman reports something very, very funny.

7:45OK, go on. You remember that last year, Keir Starmer accidentally triggered a West Streeting leadership contest by saying West Streeting is plotting against me. Yeah. And we did know at the time that there was some conversation, an angry conversation, between West Streeting and Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's right-hand man. We now know the details of that. We know that after this all went to the media, Wes called McSweeney. Voices were raised and Wes said to him, I am not plotting against the prime minister. I am not plotting a leadership challenge. I am planning one. What's the difference between plotting and planning?

8:25Well, the difference being that when you are plotting, you are plotting to take down the prime minister very soon. When you're planning, you are assuming the prime minister will be gone. very soon and you're getting ready to replace him. Wow. I mean, that is brazen by streeting. But also how brazen that he could pretend to be deeply upset by the rumours because they have misinterpreted a plan for a plot. Although, was he upset? Because he kind of like made a joke and made a reference to traitors which kind of endeared him to the public because it was like, oh, he's so down with the kids. I watched his telly like the rest of us.

9:03Indeed. Yeah, right. Someone else watches TV for him and does a praise see. Possibly. Him and Angela Rayner on Gogglebox, though. Worth watching. Possibly. Anyway, carry on. The kicker is that apparently Streeting followed this up with, and I'm not the only one, planning. And he claimed that lots of other people in the Cabinet were planning as well. Shock horror. Is there anyone in the Cabinet or indeed the Labour Parliamentary Party or indeed the membership that actually wants Keir Starmer to remain in place? apart from Keir Starmer, possibly his wife, possibly Morgan McSweeney, but maybe not actually.

9:39I think Keir Starmer's wife is like that as well. I think she's wobbly. So the current thinking is Wes Streeting will be the one to challenge Angela Rayner will oppose him, although sources say that she has yet to make a personal decision and also still has to sort out some HMRC stuff, some forms to return. So Ange will likely oppose him. And the person who would be above all of this, like Pontius Pilate, would be Ed Miliband. Oh, my goodness. He'd be the person bringing the party back together in exchange for the chancellorship. Sorry? Yeah. Make it stop. I mean, it's an appropriate comparison, isn't it?

10:21Pontius Pilate in the sense that he seems to be taking a great many flights around the world to spread the message of how climate change must end immediately. And second of all, economically, Ed Miliband in charge of our economy, which would presumably go even more greenwards and therefore even more southwards. Well, and if our objection to Angela Rayner is she's too left wing, and obviously a Rayner Miliband leadership would be really left wing. Yeah, that would be like asking the public whether they'd rather be shot or stabbed. But the whole point, the appeal of the West Streeting alternative, because the media's got it in its head that he's right-wing or Blairite or something, is that his leadership would be a little more right-wing.

11:07But if he makes Ed Miliband his chancellor, what's the point? Wow. Either way, whoever wins this contest, we're going to get more Starmeromics, more Reevesonomics with some green stuff thrown in. Streeting and Miliband would present themselves as some kind of left-wing dream team. I know everyone inhabits their own fantasy world. I think I'm James Bond. Do you? And Ed Miliband thinks he's John F. Kennedy. Yes. He believes he's an elder statesman of the progressive left. And I guess if you spend your whole life in Brasilia with left-wing vegans discussing climate change, you probably can convince yourself that you are the metanick of the eco movement.

11:52Yes, that's right. Wow. Well, so much more to look forward to in the UK over the next few years. But you are right, of course. If there is a righty against any lefty that is put before the Labour membership, then the lefty wins, regardless of their lack of qualifications for the post, which is always interesting. So aren't we really saying that unless streeting goes up against, say, Mahmud, that Streeting can't really win this race. He knows, he has said publicly in the past, you run from the left for the Labour leadership. So either he runs from the left and repudiates everything that we project onto him because we think he's Blair, right?

12:31Or he runs and loses. That's another U-turn, by the way. I'm just thinking, I mean, it wasn't a policy U-turn, but we could add trans women are women. Yeah, that's a good one, actually. A woman can have a penis. They haven't decided about trans people. Hang on, David Lammy. turning. David Lammy saying that it is possible for a man to grow a cervix. Yes. And then they did come out with, oh, actually, trans women probably aren't women. I think they're probably men because the Supreme Court decreed it and Keir Starmer cannot disagree with other eminent lawyers. But the doctors have said we should have tests of puberty blockers and West Streeting, another essentially bureaucrat, cannot disagree with doctors and make a political decision.

13:11So Labour isn't U-turning on trans. It's more like when you drive on ice and you get into an uncontrollable skid. They're just going round and round in a dangerous circle. Yes, it's unwitting doughnutting. But one person who was enjoying all these U-turns at Prime Minister's questions was Kemi Badenock. And here is her listing the U-turns with the House of Commons joining in like a chorus on top of the pops. He says no one's going to listen to us. Who's going to listen to him? The Winterfield Allowance, U-turn Waspy Women, U-turn The Two Child Benefit Cap, U-turn Grooming Gangs Inquiry, U-turn The Family Farms Tax, U-turn Digital ID, U-turn Jury Trials, U-turn We hope so, we hope so I think that's going to be the next one, Mr Speaker Week after week, these poor people sitting behind him have to defend the indefensible Only for him to U-turn a few days later Mr Speaker, one of his cabinet ministers told a journalist that what's happening at the moment is extraordinarily bad.

14:16Another said, we've gone through a catastrophic series of missteps. Yet another minister said, we are so unpopular at the moment, I've come to the conclusion it's worth rolling the dice on a new leader. They're right, aren't they? Having done that bit of vaudeville, the Prime Minister tries to join in. He's got himself a new gag writer. It's at the sort of level of Bradley Walsh. Yes. Which is good. It's quite funny, but he doesn't have good delivery. So he told jokes about the Kama Sutra. On consistency, don't get me started on five prime ministers, six chancellors, eight home secretaries, 16 housing ministers.

14:54They had more positions in 14 years than the Kama Sutra. No wonder they're knackered and they left the country screwed. That's wedding speech stuff, isn't it? Bad wedding speeches. I mean, that's like wedding speech 101. So even the cake's in tears. Very good. Very good. He compared the Tories to IKEA furniture full of dead wood. And whilst we were there at IKEA, they showed me their new prototype, the IKEA shadow cabinet. The trouble is, nobody wants to buy it. It's mainly constructed of old dead wood. and every time you lose a nut, it defects to reform. Oh, my goodness, really? He's like the epitome of the plain white IKEA death with absolutely no embellishments.

15:45Lots of jokes about Nadeem Zahawi and also, again, half of PMQs was handed over to Slagging Off Reform. She had Nadeem Zahawi in to ask his advice how to change and how to save her party. Please don't tell me she listened to his accountant. the next day, next day after your vice, he jumped ship to reform the 23rd former Tory MP to do so. I don't know which is more pitiful, the flood of former Tory MPs deserting her sinking ship or the reform party so desperate to launder any old failed Tory politician. Even though almost all the reform MPs except Nigel stood up to try and ask a question, not one of them was called.

16:27It is bordering on the desperately unfair. But I feel even though he tried his best, all of this fell flat because the prime minister is like someone with no rhythm trying to dance when it comes to telling a joke. Why did the chicken cross the road? Well, because it was advised by stakeholders. Yes. Russell's decree. The 1986 regulation on road crossings, that it might be advantageous to get to the other side. Two minutes later, he's come back again. You see, you parodying the Prime Minister is always eminently funnier than the Prime Minister.

17:25Well, there was a lot of action in the House of Commons today. After PMQs, the Home Secretary explained why she has lost confidence in the chief of West Midlands Police. Coming up, we speak to the MP Nick Timothy, who has been fighting the case for the Maccabee fans. Tim, on Friday we discussed the whole controversy around the banning of Maccabee Tel Aviv fans from that match at Aston Villa. We spoke to Johnny Gould, lifelong Aston Villa fan, a Jewish man, a history of sport in his family. and how disgraceful it had all been. And I made the comment today, not that this is a laughing matter, but there is something vaguely comical about the growing incompetence of Craig Guilford, who is the chief constable at West Midlands Police.

18:07I said he's starting to make Inspector Clouseau look positively competent because we keep on having revelation after revelation about just how badly they cocked up this entire handling of this match. Well, the Telegraph speaking to Nick Timothy MP had a headline saying that the West Midlands police had lied and lied and lied again, we now know there was another lie, which was over the nature of the data they presented to MPs when explaining their reasons for stopping Maccabee fans from attending that match. Now, Nick Timothy joins us. Can you explain to us, thank you for being here, can you explain to us, You have been doggedly following this story.

18:52You've really been the voice in Parliament on this. And it's a story which says so much about the way that the state and various state apparatuses behave in relation to Islamic groups. Can you explain to us this latest detail? What is it that the West Midlands police got wrong and how did they get it wrong? Well, first off, you're totally right. Some people think this story is about a football match. And why do you care about these foreign football fans being able to come here? The point is we need to know whether the police do their jobs without fear or favor. And we need to know who holds power in modern multicultural Britain.

19:28Because what has happened in this story is West Midlands police suppressed information which showed that the Israeli supporters were actually going to be attacked by armed Islamists. And then fabricated intelligence to say that the Israelis were uniquely violent and that's why they needed to be banned. And along the way, lots of lies have emerged through the different interrogations by the select committee and through the media and parliamentary questions and so on. And one of them is about the use of artificial intelligence. And I think one of the really striking things is the arrogance with which the police denied the use of AI when there are countless press releases online saying that they're entering into these exciting new partnerships with tech companies using AI.

20:17And they've answered freedom of information requests to members of the public saying, no, we don't use AI. And no, we don't have an AI policy. and at the select committee the first time the chief constable was asked about this and he said no no we have we have very thorough investigations and the second time as if this made it any better he said no it wasn't ai we googled it right um and they've since had to write to the committee and say actually we're very sorry we found out we did use ai and this was to they were using ai to find out the bit about about the past behavior of maccabee fans is that correct yes and this i think is one of the suspicious things about it because the whole exercise was about trying to manufacture information to justify a predetermined decision, which was to ban the Israeli fans.

21:08So it seems as though the police were scouring the internet trying to find examples of Israeli supporters behaving inappropriately. And as they did that, there was an hallucination by the AI program they were relying on, which said that Maccabee Televif had played West Ham in London, and that game never took place. But that claim made its way into a proper intelligence paper that was presented to the committee that decided to ban the supporters. Can I just take this opportunity to just say to our audience and others who may be watching or listening, this is why you don't trust AI. You're better off with trusted news sources like the Telegraph, Nick Timothy.

21:51Indeed, buy a newspaper. Hashtag buy a paper. Hashtag listen to a podcast. But in all seriousness, the government does spend a lot of time saying AI will fix everything in the future and will fix the bureaucracy. And the impression is given that AI is totally morally neutral. The AI just gathers the data and produces reasoned analysis, which is above politics. But we now hear something that sounds like it's actually replicating the prejudices or confirming the prejudices of the people looking for certain answers. Yeah, and I think, I mean, in this instance, it didn't scour the internet and find a wrong claim.

22:28It just invented it, which is what AI sometimes does. And I think this is important because if the police are going to use unreliable new technologies that aren't fully understood to inform very sensitive decisions and they don't have any kind of policies or training or a culture where even if you've used AI as a quick brainstorm, you don't then seek out the primary sources to make sure it's real, then that's obviously very worrying. But the big story is all about why they did this. And it was because they feared violence from armed Islamists in the area and probably traveling into Birmingham as well.

23:09And they lied about it. And I think that the AI thing is interesting. It's an important subplot. And actually, we need to explore what police forces are doing with AI. But the big story is all about police integrity and whether institutions of the state are putting themselves in the service of extremists and Islamists, because that certainly seems to be what West Midlands police have done. I totally agree with you on the overriding point that you're making here. And it is a very, very serious one. however what this does is play into a narrative that the police have one job right and that's to investigate stuff and find out the truth and police accordingly to that I think in a situation where you have got the actual police allowing AI to carry out an investigation on their behalf that then reaches the wrong conclusion that they in turn don't interrogate is hugely worrying because at the end of the day, if you're devolving your key responsibility to the internet, reaching the wrong conclusion, and you're to be found so wanting in your kind of curiosity that you then take that as read and actually contribute to a situation where you're creating division and civil unrest effectively because this was all done in the name of community cohesion.

24:28I would humbly suggest that Aston has never felt more divided precisely because of the way West Midlands police mishandled this situation, Nick. There are undoubtedly going to be consequences for public trust in the police, the way in which people of different racial and religious backgrounds view the police and view one another. And it's undoubtedly going to make things worse. I mean, this is why it's so important that that original founding principle of the police, Robert Peel who founded the police said the police are the public and the public are the police you know i.e the police can only do their jobs with public consent but that's the consent of all of us that's not the consent of like one sectarian group or one religious group or one racial group it's meant to be for all of us and as soon as a police force suborns itself before one particular identity group it's over and these are really really important questions Shabana Mahmood has responded in the comments.

25:30She said it's unacceptable. She said she's going to restore powers to the Home Secretary to sack people like the head of West Midlands Police. Are you satisfied with what she's done? Did she do it quick enough? No, not really. So the evidence first started to come to light that this was all a fabrication back in November. And we've had to drag the Home Office kicking and screaming, really. I called two urgent questions in the House of Commons. There have been many, many news stories now in the newspapers, ultimately picked up by the BBC in the last week or so. And she came to the House today and said she no longer has confidence in him.

26:12That's good. I mean, she's catching up with, I think, what most of the country would have thought back in November, certainly what most people would have thought had they seen the select committee appearances. and she said she doesn't have the power to sack him directly because, and actually she got party political here. She blamed the conservatives. In fact, she blamed me because I worked in the Home Office at one point. This is because of the introduction of police crime commissioners. So in 2011, the coalition government abolished police authorities and replaced them with police and crime commissioners.

26:47And when they did that, they removed, this is a bit technical, but they removed Section 42 of the Police Act 1996, which explicitly said the Home Secretary can sack a chief constable. But it retained Section 40 of the Police Act 1996, which said that when a police force is failing, the Home Secretary retains the power to direct the Police and Crime Commissioner to basically follow her instruction. It seems very clear to me if you read that legislation that she does have the power to tell the police and crime commissioner to sack the chief constable. OK. So what more would you like to see done beyond the sacking of the chief constable?

27:29Well, there are now questions for everyone who are involved with this. So the chief constable's job is on the line, obviously, but actually there's a series of senior police officers at West Midlands who also took part in the select committee sessions and misled parliament. There's a series of senior officers who took part in the so-called intelligence gathering. We need to know which of those people were doing this knowingly, whether they were doing it under orders, that kind of thing. So there's got to be more accountability in the force. The police and crime commissioner has been a disgrace.

28:06He's been completely invisible, hasn't done a thing, seems more offended by the scrutiny than by the actions of the force. Right. And who is that? He's a guy called Simon Foster. He's a Labour politician. Right. And I think there are questions for the governance of policing. So at one point, the police said, actually, our work was peer reviewed by the UK Football Policing Unit, which is part of the National Police Chiefs Council. And they said, we did our job excellently. Well, actually, we've now seen their peer review document, and they didn't say that. But also, they were part of the process of assessing the intelligence and fetching intelligence from overseas.

28:45So that's police officers marking one another's homework in a way that I think is wholly inappropriate. But there are questions for the government because Shabana Mahmood knew at least eight days before the decision was announced that a ban was under active consideration, but she didn't do anything to stop it. She didn't ask any questions about it. One can only conclude that she didn't see the problem with it. And in one of the questions I asked her today, I asked whether the prime minister had been notified at this point because nobody knew the answer to that question. and she said, well, actually she didn't say anything.

29:20She didn't answer it, which I think leads us to the conclusion that actually the Prime Minister also knew about it in advance and also didn't ask the questions he should have. When you talk about the international investigation, it should also be pointed out, Nick, that there was a suggestion that Maccabee Tel Aviv fans had previously behaved badly at a football match in the Netherlands and then the mayor of Amsterdam came forward to say, no, that was complete nonsense. Again, that lends itself to serious questions about the police scrutinising some of the claims that were made adequately, as we would expect officers of the law to do.

29:56Just on the Home Secretary, without making it too personal, is she compromised because she's a British Muslim? In dealing with this, do you think, Nick? I certainly hope not, because I don't want anybody to feel they can and can't make certain decisions based on their own identity. Part of the complication for Shabana Mahmood is that she's actually a local MP. She represents the seat next door, which incidentally, I mean, she therefore has a close relationship with the chief constable for a couple of reasons. So the idea that she wouldn't have had conversations with the police, with some of the local councillors who were on the committee that decided there should be a ban, some of whom were actively campaigning for Israeli teams to be barred from all international competitions because they just have a particular problem with Israel.

30:46She obviously does have relationships with these people, and I'm sure conversations would have taken place at different points. I don't think she actively wanted the ban. I don't think she was driven by the communalism herself or anything like that. I think she was presented with a likely decision by the police in advance. And she, I think, failed as Home Secretary at this point because she should have really interrogated that because it was a really extreme thing to do. Even if there had been legitimate intelligence behind it, she should have wanted to know what it was and why they were reaching that extreme conclusion.

31:21Yes, it was an unprecedented decision in that area, right? So I would just say, I think she's, you know, in this particular way, I think she failed as her Home Secretary, but not for that reason. What does the word communalism mean? Well, I think it's when you have communities represented by leaders who represent them as an ethnic block or a racial block or a religious block. And when you enter into that kind of world, lots of the things that we take for granted, I think, about the way the criminal justice system should treat us all equally. As individuals? Yes, as individuals, regardless of who we are, what color we are, what God we worship, et cetera.

32:12And the trust that the system is going to be fair and the sense that decisions are going to be made genuinely for, even if you might disagree with them, the person making the decision is doing it in the pursuit of some sense of the common good. That all flies out of the window. If we're talking about parts of the country where the elections are contested and decided on the basis of ethnic identities, that's terrible. But we are starting to see that with the election of these Gaza independents. Might one say that the state and parts of the state are making that become true because of their behavior, as with the case of the West Midlands police?

33:01Yes. So I think of law and order as being you commit a crime, you get punished. they see it in terms of managing the community. Yes, I'm afraid so. They seem to place an idea of what they call community cohesion before the primary purpose of their institution. In the case of the police, that's obviously enforcing the law. And this is what I tried to say in Primaries of Questions today. You've got the police, you've got the Crown Prosecution Service, you've got the prison service. there is evidence across the whole of the criminal justice system that these things are being twisted because the state itself is doing deals with Islamists.

33:44It's compromising with people with whom it should never compromise. And we should have that properly investigated so we can cut it out. And yet for all this obsession with ethnicity, the same attention is not paid to the thoughts and feelings of Jewish Britons, because we're talking here about an AI that invented Jewish football fans behaving badly, the police then presenting that as evidence why Jewish football fans had to be advised not to come. Imagine if AI and the police had done the same about people from the Afro-Caribbean community. Of course. Of course. But there is a double standard.

34:21There is a double standard. In the words of David Biddle's book, it feels that Jews don't count. and, you know, anti-Semitism is ignored or tolerated in far too many aspects of public life. So I actually went to the match, by the way, because I'm an Aston Villa fan myself. And I got there early so I could go to meet some of the protesters and just... Oh, I remember the video footage of this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They were quite aggressive. You had a bit of a testy time. Yeah. And one of the things that I learned, which actually afterwards, I thought, well, maybe I'm still on the uptake. Maybe this was always obvious.

34:55But I was talking to this one guy who was like masked and hooded. And he said, he said that they shouldn't be allowed here. They're all terrorists. They're all like child killers and responsible for a genocide. And I said, well, the footballers are. And he said, yes. I said, how are footballers responsible for those things? And he said, well, in Israel, everyone has to do national service. So they've all been in the IDF. So they're all guilty. And when you, I think he said that everyone has to swear allegiance to the devil, which is obviously insane. But it made me realise that when they chant death to the IDF, they're not cheering on one side in a war, in a blood curdling kind of way.

35:43It is the latest code for all Israelis and almost certainly all Jews. Yeah. The only people that have to pledge allegiance to the devil are the recipients of press cards, aren't they? It's one of the conditions. Lawyers and the HMRC. We're taking the podcast well down to the wire, like in a grudge football match, because this is going out. And as it goes out, just to say, Craig Guildford remains in place. Who knows if that will still be the case tomorrow, when we'll be back 5pm.

36:18Thank you.