I'm Ed Faisie and we're going to be unpacking the politics of the day from the

government's latest U-turn to single-sex spaces and whether Gen Z are wasting their money on

salad. We always give Gen Z such a hard time. With me today is of course the former diplomatic editor of the Times,

Michael Binion. Welcome to the show, Michael. Thanks, Ed. Did you have to shovel snow outside

your doorstep today to struggle into the studio? Alas, no. No snow in Wimbledon, I'm afraid. No,

not even on the tennis courts. I don't think. Just a miserable wet weather. How amazing. Joining me as well as the Times columnist Sonia Soda, welcome to the show Sonia. Hello. You can't be with us in the studio. I assume it's because you're snowed in. I'm not snowed in, but very happy to be with you remotely. Brilliant. So it's just over a week into the new year and we have the government's 12 major U-turn since it's entered office. It sounds like a sort of 12 days of U-turn. Anyway, this time it's business rates. Rachel Reeves set to announce a 300 million pound bailout for pubs after the industry said businesses would be put on the brink by her decision to put rates up. She's now going to rethink the policy.

Sonia, it's a welcome U-turn in many respects because pubs and so on are important businesses,

and these are real problems for them.

Hannah Previtt was saying our business editor that her local pub was going to see the rates go up by £500 a week. So that is a good

thing. I think what is bad for the government is it constantly announces policies and then

reverse ferrets on them. Absolutely. I think it's a massive problem for them. The day after the

budget, we had pubs coming out and saying this is going to be really disastrous for us. And the question is,

if pubs were coming out the day after the budget and saying this, why hadn't the Chancellor

done the work ahead of the budget to establish it? Now, the Treasury says it's because, you know,

they didn't have enough data or whatever, but I'm sorry, if there are a few pubs coming out saying

this is going to have disastrous consequences for us and that number mounts up, that really does suggest that it's something

that the Treasury should have been aware of.

There's two issues now going forward for the government with this U-turn.

It is absolutely the right thing to do.

The first is that Labour MPs, some of them are apoplectic, I think is probably an understatement. They've had to go

out and defend. This is only the latest, deeply unpopular policy with bad effects that they've

been told by number 10, they have to go out and defend, even though they think it's indefensible,

...