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To find out more, search Barclays communities. Hi I'm Anush, I'm Alva and I'm Stephen. And on today's New Statesman

podcast we discuss Universal Credit and you ask us, is the leadership

learning enough from the lessons of Ed Miliband's reign? So the round about whether or not the 20 pound a week uplift to universal credit that was

introduced at the beginning of the pandemic is going to be extended is sort of reaching its boiling point.

So we're recording on a day when this afternoon there's going to be an opposition day debate on whether or not it should be made permanent and that's

kind of labour bringing that vote to try and

smoke out Tory MPs who don't think it's a good idea to scrap the extra payment.

But this is this goes beyond beyond the vote, whatever the outcome of it is. It's only a symbolic vote and Tory MPs are most likely to abstain as they've been told to do by Boris Johnson.

But behind the scenes, this is a big divider in the party isn't it Stephen?

Yeah I think it's one of those things where I think it's really worth

supporting to like think back and imagine right it's 2014 and you're talking to someone fairly

senior in both parties obviously probably not together but you know you're

talking to imagine you're doing a weird simulcast where they you can see both of them but they can't see each other and he went the Labour Party has decided to use its opposition debate to call for a 20 quid increase in universal credit. I mean only the fact well I guess the

conservative reaction would be twofold. If they were from the Treasury they'd be like what is this happening in 2050

when this benefit's finally been rolled out,

loll. But the other thing they would do is they would immediately, well I would say

...