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Our movement is fighting, our movement is winning, our movement, brothers and sisters.

Is back.

So said my guest on this the first episode of a new series of political thinking, a conversation

with rather than a news interrogation of someone who shapes our political thinking about

what has shaped theirs.

Paul Novak is the new general secretary of the TUC.

For this week, the trade union congress meets in his home city of Liverpool, and it meets

at a time when there are more strikes than there have been for many years.

And at a time, when Paul Novak says working people are fighting back after the longest

sustained squeeze on their incomes in two centuries, Paul Novak, welcome to political thinking.

Oh, thanks, Nick.

Now, another thing you once said, I fit every stereotype of a Daily Mail trade union

ist.

I'm slightly overweight, balding scourcer, who gets a little bit too aerated.

Well, I think it's an accurate description, don't you?

What will seem, shall we?

What gets you aerated?

A lot of things get me aerated, but I mean, I tell you what really gets me aerated

is, it's going out talking to our members, talking to working people, seeing people who

are working hard day in, day out, and who can't make ends meet, and that really does

that fires me up because I just think people are going to work every day, people who try

...