The News Agents: Why have Labour changed their position on trans rights?

This is a Global Player original podcast.

A Woman Can Have a Penis.

Nick, I'm not...

I don't think we can conduct this debate with, you know...

Sorry, I've got the thing to do in some way.

No, no, no, it's just...

No, no, no, I just...

A Woman Can Have a Penis.

I don't think that discussing this issue in this way

helps anyone in the long run.

That was Keir Starmer with Nick Ferrari last year on LBC,

painfully trying to tread a path through the question

that no progressive politician has wanted to answer

for the last few years can a woman have a penis.

Well, today, Labour seems cautiously

to have tried to set out their answer to that.

Their shadow woman equality spokesperson, Annalise Dodds,

has written in an article

that they are looking to find a consensus position

for two marginalised groups.

So today, just to warn you,

we're not going to be debating trans rights or trans issues

or even the answer to that question.

We're looking at Labour's approach to that issue

that has dogged them, that has made microphone life

so uncomfortable for so many members of the party.

And we're looking at what this means

in the wider context of Labour positioning itself

for a general election,

whether it's a backtrack on some of the scarier voter issues

like eulairs or like big spending plans,

whether it's Labour trying to set out its stall

in a way that, if you like,

it thinks won't scare the horses.

We often talk about the Mingva's strategy on this podcast.

Can you carry it across the floor without dropping it?

And to be frank, at the moment,

Labour have got their Mingva's locked up in a museum

with electronic security tags around it.

They don't want to take it anywhere.

So what you'll hear from Labour is a very delicate,

very cautious attempt at answering that question.

And if they upset everyone a little bit,

then maybe they'll think they're in the right place.

Welcome to the Newsagents.

The Newsagents.

It's Emily.

And it's Lewis in the Donyana National Park in Spain,

which is essentially one of the front lines

of Europe's climate crisis,

working on a story which we'll be bringing to you

later in the week.

And we're going to start by talking about Labour

and the Gender Recognition Act,

or rather Labour's newfound position

on the Gender Recognition Act,

because, as you heard in the first clip,

the whole does-a-woman-have-a-penis question

has been really hard for Keir Starmer

and many others in his party

to have to answer without going into something

that sounds tortologous and rather convoluted

and vaguely apologetic.

And that is because we all understand

they've been walking a tightrope between two,

as they would say, marginalised groups,

the trans community and women who feel

that they have been ignored when safe spaces

are overridden by people who want to self-id.

So what has happened now is that Labour

has tried to find a new path,

and it hasn't come in the form

of a big splashy policy statement,

and it hasn't come interesting enough

from Keir Starmer himself,

but from Annalise Dodds,

who has written a op-ed,

they're calling it, Peace in the Guardian.

And I think it's probably not really fair to say

this is just her having an opinion about something,

but this is her trying to set out where Labour sit now.

And they've talked about committing to modernise

the Gender Recognition Act,

and what they say they'll do

is remove invasive bureaucracy and simplify the process.

And what this means in practice

is that they will still require

a doctor medical certification

to allow you to change your gender.

You will not be able to self-id

without medical recognition,

but instead of having what they call

an intrusive panel of anonymous doctors,

it will now just be a diagnosis of one doctor

and one registrar.

And what they're sort of finding is that,

or maybe they're hoping,

is that they've pissed off enough people on each side

for them to call it a kind of compromise,

that you can't self-id,

but you won't have a big intrusive panel,

and they're hoping some way through this

is something that will appeal to,

I guess, the middle ground

that Keir Starmer has so desperately looked for.

Yeah, I think there's two things you've got to bear in mind

when we're thinking about this policy.

The first one is the extent to which this splits

the labour coalition.

This is an issue which, Emily, as you say,

it's bedevilled Starmer

and other progressive politicians as well

over the last couple of years,

precisely because it splits right down the middle

different constituencies of the party.

On the one hand, you have LGBT groups

which view this, who view this issue,

as it's almost an extension of the historic reforms

that have happened to gay people

and that it's an extension of that fight for civil rights,

that it's the latest frontier of civil rights.

And then on the other hand, you've got some people

who might not entirely disagree with that,

but obviously who have raised the issue of women's rights,

of safe spaces, who say this is a clash of rights,

and that is just core parts of the Labour Party.

So that's one reason it's been fiendish.

The other reason it's been fiendish,

we've already heard it in the show today,

which is those pained interviews that take place

in questions that are increasingly put,

particularly to progressive politicians.

And in a way, this is an extension

of what we were talking about yesterday,

which is that everything that happened

in the National Policy Forum at the weekend

where Labour were hammering out the kind of bare bones

of their proposals and their ideas

for their manifesto going towards the general election,

it is all about that Linton Crosby thing again.

It is all about what they see as the barnacles on the boat.

They are living in perpetual fear

that their lead is shallow

and that a general election campaign pushed by the conservatives

and by some of their right-wing media allies

who want to have this conversation about trans,

that it becomes dominated that general election campaign

by interviews like that,

in a way that our political media culture works now,

that the party gets completely thrown off course.

This new policy, which as you say Emily,

probably will not please anyone in particular,

but they'll hope will displease people not too much,

is simply about avoiding those sorts of interviews

going into the general election.

Yeah, I mean, I was talking to somebody

very close to Keir Starmer

and trying to understand a little bit

of the thinking behind it.

And they said to me, we've been looking for

what they called a consensus position

that recognizes the challenges

and doesn't make the mistake of Scotland.

And you will find also in this article,

a jab at the SNP's move just before Christmas

to try and force through the self ID, age 16,

no medical certificate required, recognition act,

those changes that the SNP wanted.

And what this person said is,

it's the chance to get buy-in for a new kind of reform.

Yes to reform, no to self ID.

And being clear in saying,

there's a difference between sex and gender.

Maybe that isn't the thing that we've heard before,

that the Labour Party now saying,

we've got to recognize the difference

between sex and gender.

And just to clarify for those still muddled or confused,

sex is what you are born with

and gender is how you identify.

And it also means this person went on to say,

you can answer the,

does a woman have a penis type question?

And so of course I responded by saying,

so what is the answer to that now?

It's of course what you'd want to know.

And there was a kind of long pause.

And I thought the long pause was interesting

because I got the sense that they were sort of

working this whole thing out

as they were communicating and speaking.

And they ended up saying,

if you're talking about sex, obviously not.

But we do have to recognize and respect those

who struggle with their gender identity

and identify as a different gender to that

which they were born into.

So that's the language that's being used.

Obviously not to whether a woman who was born a woman

has a penis, but we need to respect

and identify those who are changing.

And the person says,

that's why it's right that we recognize that difference

and say we'll continue to support single sex spaces.

And in a way, I mean, once it's out there,

it sort of feels very obvious

and it does actually take all the heat out

because everyone understands the complexity

and everyone also understands how easily

not having an answer to that turns into a political football.

It's something that is just thrown at you time and time again

by the government who have been very staunch

and very direct on this.

And I think Labour has said,

and actually to be fair, we asked Kirsten about this

in Davos back in January.

And he kind of said, you know, we're trying to work it out.

And it feels to me like they have said, right, deep breath,

we can't go into this election.

Just as you say, Lewis,

we can't go into this election and not have an answer,

but we don't want to have an answer that's so trite

that it actually doesn't do anyone any favours.

And my sense is that there was a sort of, you know,

if you like a group puddle

and maybe the sort of the voices of elder statesmen

in the party who kind of said, right, Kier,

you've got to sort this one out

because if you're asked on the doorstep, you know,

or if you don't want to on your campaign leafleting

or on Tory campaign leafleting,

then you've got to find the answer to this.

And I guess this is their attempt to do that.

But I also think it's quite significant

that when we rang around today,

there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm

to come and talk about this today on the news agents.

Maybe there will be, maybe it's all filtering through,

maybe people are kind of working out their own positions,

but they weren't sort of beating down a path to our door

to be the first on to chat about it.

No, and the Labour leadership will be entirely

content with that in the sense that this is not what they want

Labour MPs to be talking about.

I think though, they are probably a bit optimistic

if they think that the government is not going to be

with any position with even a hint of complexity,

which the Labour position now has on this issue,

which is complex and any incoming government

should have a complex position about.

Nonetheless, I think we can see with the way

in which the political winds are blowing on this issue,

particularly on the right of politics,

they're not going to leave it alone.

And there will be, I suspect,

a pretty ugly conversation about this,

whatever the Labour Party position,

and however simple it is going into that election.

And we should just take a step back a bit, Emily,

and just think about what a transformation has been

on this, the sort of tenor of this debate

in quite a short space of time.

You know, you go back to the 2017 general election.

The Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn,

Theresa Mays, Conservatives, all the main parties,

the SNP, there was a sort of consensus about this issue,

that this, in terms of gender ID,

that we were moving to a system that would be simpler,

that would be quicker, that would be more rapid.

And as I say, it was Theresa May who was going to introduce

a similar sort of proposal to that which Nicola Sturgeon

tried to introduce in Scotland.

It was Boris Johnson's government in 2020

that retreated from that.

And now here we are in 2023,

with the issue substantially more politicised,

substantially more heat in it than there was then.

Now, I'm not saying whether that's right or wrong in particular,

but what I am saying is, it is extraordinary the extent

to which this has become so much more contested

in such a short space of time.

You know, if we'd been having this conversation

five years ago, 10 years ago,

I think there was a general feeling that this debate

was only going in one direction,

it was only flowing in one way.

My word, there has been a big backlash since that time.

Yeah, I think you're spot on there.

I mean, I've been following this debate in the UK

and in the US, and it feels like

they're going in different directions, actually.

And in the UK, it is actually sort of seen as more progressive

to be allowing of gender critical thought.

And in the US, it is seen as less progressive

to be listening to gender critical thought.

I remember in Joe Biden's inauguration speech, actually,

he was talking about rights for trans athletes

and sports people.

And that struck me as an incredibly sort of

confident place to be in that argument

for something he thought, as you say,

was only going in one direction.

I think here, the pushback from women's groups

has been much more intense.

And I don't think that Labour will be unhappy

that Stonewall, the LGBTQ charity,

has been very critical of Labour in this change

because they say that keeping the medical diagnosis

that's needed under Labour's change is inhumane,

still inhumane.

And I do think if you read the actual line

in Annalise Dodds' piece, she goes very carefully here

because she says a diagnosis provided by one doctor

with a registrar instead of a panel

should be enough.

Now, that's doing a lot of work

because we don't know whether one doctor

and a registrar is actually two people

and we don't know whether should be enough

means that is all or whether they might be open

to change that if they think that needs

to be somehow strengthened.

So they've got Stonewall criticising them straight away.

They've got the Conservative Party saying,

oh my God, this is a copy and paste idea of our own policy.

And so I think Labour at this point

are just feeling their way and saying,

if the Tories are accusing us of copying them

and if Stonewall is pissed off,

then we're kind of more or less

in an electorally safe space.

It's damaged limitation for Labour, right?

They know there's no votes in it for this.

This is an issue which is to still in the grand scheme

of things that fringes of British political debate.

And their essential diagnosis,

which I think is basically right,

which is that actually most British people,

and again, this is perhaps a bit unlike America

in terms of the polarisation,

most British people, this is not an issue

which keeps them up at night.

There's not an issue which is a great animating issue,

particularly in the midst of a cost of living crisis

and inflationary crisis, economic crisis and so on.

So it's all about damaged limitation.

And I suppose in terms of just going back

to what we were saying just now

in terms of the movement from 2017,

in one sense, I understand in terms of why

this has become more political.

I totally understand why there is the diagnosis

about the sort of clash of rights and so on.

I think what we can all agree though

is that the tone of this debate,

the way this has become hyper political,

admittedly at the fringes of our political debate,

where so much of politics actually is these days,

is pretty depressing and it's something

as a cause of regret.

Because ultimately, whatever side

of the divide you are on this one,

we must all recognise that we're often dealing

with pretty vulnerable people here.

And the way that this was spoken about,

say, 10 years ago, even five years ago,

was I think in general, a better place

and a better place to be in than where we are right now.

Yeah, I mean, I think you're absolutely right to say

that broadly people don't care about the cultural issues.

They make a lot of noise, a lot of heat.

They're great if you're standing on a soapbox

and most people in this country really care

about cost of living issues, as we know.

But I would say that Labour was facing a question

over whether women felt able to vote for Keir Starmer.

And if the answer to that was no,

there are women in this country who feel

that actually he hasn't been clear enough

and they are being let down,

then maybe this is his attempt to kind of say,

I can't actually risk losing 50%

or whatever proportion of that 50% it would be

because I haven't made myself clear.

And actually, if he's now able to say,

this is about acknowledging the importance of safe spaces

and acknowledging the difficulty of people

who've had gender dysphoria or want to transition,

then that is a place that he will feel happier.

But just on the tone of politics and where it's going to go,

and as I say, I'm sure this issue is going to be weaponised

to some extent for the next general election.

This is what all the Labour response now is partly about.

I noticed that a tweet from Rishi Sunak earlier today,

again, feeds into this idea of what I think,

I think the next general election, funnily enough,

is going to be one of the nastiest we've seen in some time,

despite the fact that both main parties

are being led by two pretty mild-mannered guys.

He tweeted earlier, this is what we're up against.

The Labour Party, a subset of lawyers, criminal gangs,

they're all on the same side,

propping up a system of exploitation

that profits from people getting to the UK illegally,

i.e. talking about the channel crisis,

that Labour Party and criminal gangs,

the people traffickers, they're all on the same side.

That is a hell of a tweet from a UK Prime Minister,

particularly someone like Sunak, who, as I say,

on the mild-mannered side of politics, generally.

In a way, I mean, it follows what the Labour Party did

in terms of some of their election posters,

local election posters, a few months ago,

talking about Rishi Sunak allowing Ray Pistow,

Walk Three and all this sort of stuff.

I think pulling all these pieces together,

and as I say, particularly when actually,

there isn't going to be a huge difference in policy

in lots of ways at the next general election

between the two parties,

that all adds up to a general election campaign,

which is going to have animus at the centre of it,

put together with a general sort of internet political culture,

which is now pretty rampant in Britain,

and where the rules are all sort of basically out of the window,

a bit of a wild west.

I'd say all adds up to what I think is going to be

a pretty nasty vitriolic campaign

when the general election comes.

We'll be back in just a moment,

and we'll be looking at the tens of thousands

who've taken to the streets in Israel

after a new law was passed that has upset many in the country.

This is The Newsagents.

Welcome back,

and we're going to look at the political upheaval in Israel now,

because if you thought that the protests

over the last six months there had been big news,

then last night,

well, they took off with a whole new force,

because yesterday afternoon,

a new law was passed in the Knesset

in the past six months,

and the new law was passed in the Knesset

yesterday afternoon.

A new law was passed in the Knesset in the parliament,

and that will limit the powers of the Supreme Court

to hold the Netanyahu government to account.

And what this led to was tens of thousands of people

taking to the street.

They faced water cannon.

They were sprayed with something we understand

even more unpleasant than water.

There were reported incidents of violence towards the protesters, too.

And just to paint a picture for a moment,

these are not just hard-left radical protesters,

although it does include many on the left in Israel,

but these were crowds that included members of the military,

of the intelligence agencies,

that included bankers and businesses,

and people who see this change as massively harmful

to Israel standing in the world,

to its economy, to its claim on democracy,

to its whole infrastructure, if you like,

of being a key player on the global stage.

And just to talk you through what this law,

which is laughably called the vote on reasonableness,

hold that thought, we will return to it,

this is a move by a populist government.

Netanyahu, as we have often discussed here,

has deeply right-wing elements in his government,

which is now held up by that coalition.

And this is Netanyahu's bid to give his own government more power,

to limit, if you like, the checks and balances

that the judiciary can put on his actions.

So anyway, last night the law was passed.

Controversially, that law now has to be signed into law,

as it were, ratified, by the court,

by the very same court that will be seeing its own power diminished

and handed to the government.

There is a kind of Turkey's voting for Christmas thing going on here.

And it's also worth saying that after all the protests

and all the pushback, what was introduced yesterday

was actually just a tiny slither of the initial full bill.

But it feels now that there is so much distrust

of Israel's government from its own people

that this has become symptomatic for many who believe

that Israel is on the slippery slope to autocracy

and worse to dictatorship.

We'll be talking through all the ramifications

with Ayala Panievsky in a moment,

but first, let's get to those protests

and hear what it was really like from the inside.

The senior correspondent for Yediye Israel's largest daily paper

was there, Nadav Ayal. Nadav, how was it?

Well, it was amazing to see the way that people reacted.

I've been covering and writing about these protests

since they began, which is almost six months ago.

But it never looked the same as it did yesterday,

both in the way that people were so fierce about not moving

and continuing on blocking the roads, for instance.

And of course, as to the police response,

which was much more violent than we have seen before.

What happened?

They were using things that they have not used before.

For instance, a vehicle that shoots some sort of liquid

with a very nasty smell to it.

This is something that was first developed to be used in the West Bank

and was now used with Israelis demonstrating within the state of Israel.

So this is just one example.

But it was also natural.

They were trying to free the road

because it was blocked for hours on end.

And people understood that.

They understood that they are going to block the road

as a sort of nonviolent resistance.

And they understood that the police officers

are doing their jobs in trying to get them off the road.

But we did see some violent outbursts of some police officers

that were hitting protesters, including teenagers,

in a way that we have never seen before.

Pulling a protestor with her hair

and throwing her over a road block, just using her hair to do that.

These are things that we have not seen before.

Generally speaking, the Israeli police has treated these protests

generally speaking with some sort of an understanding.

But this has not been the case yesterday.

So these are intimidation tactics.

I guess the big question is, will the protesters be intimidated?

Will they have to stop protesting eventually

because they have jobs, they have lives,

and they'll have to get on with them?

Or do you think they're here to stay?

This is just the beginning of the judicial overhaul

planned by the government.

The Prime Minister himself is saying that he plans

at least one more law to change the way the judges are nominated in this country.

It's a much more substantial law for the Israeli constitutional way of life.

And these protests are simply not going anywhere.

This is the widest social protest or political protest

that the country has seen since its inception 75 years ago.

We have never seen anything like it.

There are hundreds of thousands of people

in a country of 10 million people that are involved

and they are not going to leave the streets.

And right now, to be frank,

the police is not doing exactly what its minister would want it to do,

which is basically to be much more violent against the protesters.

A lot of the police officers have a sort of an understanding

to this civil resistance.

Just describe for me briefly.

If I looked at the crowd, who would I see?

Who's in that protest?

People from all across the Israeli society,

you'd see a lot of young people, really young.

You know, the person I mentioned earlier

that got bullied and hit by police officers on camera,

he was 17 years old.

So you would see people from that age,

but you will also see people over 17.

And they are a large crowd in this protest movement.

Usually people that were part of the Israeli IDF reserve system,

people that might have been serving as fighter jet pilots,

this protest is very much based on people

that have made huge contributions to the Israeli economy

and to the Israeli army.

And these are the people that you're going to see in the streets.

And you will see this not only in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

So every Saturday you see these demonstrations across the country,

including the periphery in the south and in the north,

and including in some cases, at least two cases,

in the West Bank, in settlements of people protesting

against this judicial overall.

That is extraordinary to hear. Nadal, thanks so much.

Thank you for giving us your time and your thoughts.

Thank you, Emily.

So that's the reality of the protests on the ground.

Let's talk now to Ayala Paniewski.

She's a Gates Cambridge scholar, an academic and Israeli citizen.

And if you want to try and understand Ayala,

what is at the heart of this bill?

You know, a sort of new listeners start here.

What is this about?

So basically there is a very big package of laws

that this government wanted to pass.

This is the most far-right government in the history of Israel.

And there are three different forces in this government

that for different reasons wanted to weaken the power

of the Supreme Court in Israel.

Now, the Supreme Court in Israel is pretty much

the only checks and balances on the government at the moment,

because we don't have two houses of parliament.

We don't have any lords here. We don't have powerful media.

So the Supreme Court is the one that really makes the calls

about the executive power and is it handled well.

And many of the rights that were granted for Israeli citizens,

for women's rights, LGBTQ rights along the years

were granted by the Supreme Court.

So for many people, overriding the Supreme Court is very scary.

But this has grown so much bigger than that,

because at the moment, if you take down this one last constraint

on government power, for many people this is the beginning

of dictatorship in Israel and dictatorship that is at the moment

led by very extremist, racist, religious, conservative forces.

So what started as the protest you would imagine,

which is women's organizations and LGBTQ community going out

and protesting in the streets, really turned into

a massive, massive protest movement.

This is no doubt the greatest resistance we've seen

to a government in Israel.

It now includes the most powerful sectors and actors

in Israeli society.

So this is far bigger than any protest you've seen

by the liberal or in Israel in the past.

Many of the young people marching have said

they'll simply refuse to sign up for military service.

And for a country that has a kind of conscription

for every young person reaching adulthood,

this is a major blow, right?

Definitely. So this is even worse than that,

because it's not only about people who are about to be recruited

to mandatory military service as everybody does in Israel

or almost everybody, but it's also about people

who are already in the military and who are on this reserve duty.

So people who are very senior figures are saying,

once we are being called to reserve duty, we won't show up.

And these are people who at the moment are in charge

of national security in Israel.

And it got to the extent that yesterday the chief of staff

wanted to talk to Netanyahu personally before the vote

in parliament to explain to him the ramifications,

the implications of this bill passing on the military.

And again, the military is at the heart of Israeli society.

Everybody goes there, everybody cares, everybody feels threatened

if the military is weaker.

And Netanyahu refused to meet the chief of staff.

He didn't want to hear it yesterday before the vote in parliament.

And obviously the government didn't listen to these warnings.

Although last night one bill of the package of laws

that this government advances, one bill has passed,

it doesn't mean that the fight is over,

because for six months this protest managed to stop

all the other efforts of legislation by this government.

And the fight will go on because there are two very different visions of Israel.

So let's just try and bring our listeners the Netanyahu position

because he actually wanted things delayed yesterday

because he thought he would seek compromise.

We know that the president, like Herzog,

had got involved to try and sort of broker a deal.

And Netanyahu has said that he hoped the coalition would reach an agreement

with the opposition and believed that this was necessary

to restore a degree of balance between the branches of government.

He's talked of it not being the end of democracy,

it's the essence of democracy.

What does he mean then about restoring a degree of balance

about the branches of government?

Was he in the view that things had tipped over to give the courts too much power?

Yes, definitely.

So this is the argument.

And as you see with many right-wing populist leaders around the world,

you see it with Trump, you see it with other figures.

The attempt is to say we were elected, this is the democracy,

so we are in charge and there shouldn't be any checks and balances over our power.

And this is more or less what Netanyahu and his allies are trying to do here.

And this is a very appealing, very compelling argument

and that's why it's difficult to fight.

And it took the Israeli people as well as other citizens of Hungary,

for instance, of Poland, to figure out really what's going on.

And sometimes by the time you realize how much of the democratic sphere has gone,

it is too late because it's much more difficult to protest.

So let us just put this back into a geopolitical context now

because Israel has seen itself as a beacon of democracy

in a very troubled, difficult part of the world

and has been seen, for example, allies like the United States

as being the place that had this democratic infrastructure in place.

Is that now in danger, that whole perception of Israel's position

and indeed its relationships, its allies?

We already see that the economy, for instance, in Israel,

people do not believe in the Israeli economy the way they did in the past.

So the Sheko went down and you see that experts are warning

that national security is not what it was.

So definitely there are some changes that are already felt

and especially the divisions within society.

But now countries like the US, like the UK, European countries

will need to figure out how to respond when the people that are, for instance,

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is someone who has nothing in common

with the values that this alliance is supposed to build on.

So what do you do when you have figures who in the past even explained

bluntly that they look into making Israel less democratic and more Jewish?

Do you, as a US or a UK official, approach these people?

Because we already have very problematic actors around the world.

We have the precedents of Hungary and Poland, which are very similar

and actually there are connections between the people

who ran the overall in Hungary and Poland and in Israel now.

They are working together.

The same strategist, the same election team.

The same people, Netanyahu's people and other figures on the right

have traveled to Hungary to consult with Viktor Orban's people

to see how they did it, to learn from their mistakes.

But what they didn't know was that the protesters in Israel

will also learn from the experience of Hungary and Poland

and they actually have now little booklets with lessons from Hungary and Poland

that are being distributed to protesters around Israel

trying to stop what the protests couldn't stop in these other countries.

Ayala, thanks so much. Thank you again.

Thank you.

I said at the beginning that the vote was called the vote on reasonableness.

The new law is framed as something of reasonableness

and I think it's important to understand that when Netanyahu introduces this

clearly there's been a lot of pushback because this is about his government

taking power away from the courts.

How does he reconcile that in any way that sort of is explicable in a democracy?

And the way he does it is by talking like a true populist.

And to be fair, we've heard it here. We heard it in 2019.

We heard it with the prorogation of parliament.

That the language is always that the prime minister is talking directly to his people, the voters.

And that anything that gets in the way, whether it's the media, whether it's parliament,

whether it's the Supreme Court, the judiciary, is somehow getting in the way of what the people want.

Don't forget, this is even more complicated.

It makes even less sense in a country which works off coalition.

Many people in Israel did not vote for Netanyahu.

Many people did not vote for his idea of government.

And yet he is taking this principle of populism that he can talk directly to the voters

as if that's what the people want.

We'll be back in a moment.

Welcome back.

Well, as I said at the start of the show, I'm in the Doniana National Park,

which is in Western Spain, not too far from the Portuguese border, not too far from Cadiz.

And it is an astonishing place.

It is one of Europe's most important wetlands and nature reserves and extraordinary habitats.

But it is also at the absolute front line of the climate crisis.

And on tomorrow's show, we're going to be taking you through that and looking through the lens of Southern Europe

and what it is like living, working, farming and trying to survive at this point in all sorts of ways on that front line.

And I know there's been loads on Twitter over the last few days and weeks

talking about climate skeptics saying, oh, it's not that hot really.

You know, it's always hot in Southern Europe.

Maybe if the average rises by a little bit, so what?

Just a little foretaste of the report that's coming tomorrow.

We spoke to a climate scientist in Seville earlier today.

Here's what he said about what it's like living in Southern Spain at the moment.

I used to play outside when I was a child and I cannot get out with my kids right now.

And it's been only 30 years.

It's usually hot here, warm during the most part of the year.

But now our exposure to very high temperature is more prevalent and is more frequent.

You are not killed by the average. You are killed by the extreme.

Right, so that will be in your feeds tomorrow.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.