Now. I have to wait 40 minutes, it is reason, it is 3 so not good. With 26 days to go, the publics response could well become a frosty as the strikes continue. This is still all about the role of guards which was not to be delivered next year. Those trains are designed for the doors to be operated by the driver. The rm t insisted that the doors must be closed by the guard or the guide must inform the driver when it is safe to close the door. The company says it has to modernise outdated working practices. We are sorry that it has come to this and that the rmt have decided to take what we think is unnecessary industrial action. We are committed to retaining the guards on a train with safety skills. When a better deal on the table and pulled it at the last minute, this is what happens. The safety Critical Role of the guard, id make sure no one is stuck in the doors of the train and management want to take that role away and put it on a driver who doesnt want it, the driver is busy enough. Today, longer trains have been run where ever possible but earlier on we went to chandlers ford. Like other smaller stations, it will see no trains until next year. Volunteers were helping the few passengers that turned up anyway. Ive been at the station since 6 30am giving information to passengers and a lot of people did know about it but were hoping something would run and have turned up something would run and have turned up and clearly there isnt. The booking office is closed that there are no staff here. We are now more than two years into this dispute and nothing at all has changed. I dont think there is any passenger sympathy think there is any passenger sym pathy left think there is any passenger sympathy left for either side. They dont support a month long strike across the Christmas Period and they are not impressed with the company that has failed to convince its own staff of the need to change working practices that are widely used in other parts of the railway. Now on the bbc news channel, its time for electioncast. We are in the selection because of brexit. If anyone comes up to you and says they know whats going to happen, smile politely and turn your back. Evening. Welcome to tonights episode of electioncast. In a minute, we are going to be delving into the opinion polls with professorjohn curtis. If you know it, you get it. But first, lets discuss the political followed from the terror attack on London Bridge. Earlier, i spoke to vicki young and deputy political editorjohn pienaar. Serious voices because, obviously, weve got to talk about the continuing fallout of the attack on London Bridge on friday afternoon. We now know the name of the two people that died. Its jack merritt and saskia jones. And obviously, politics over the last few days has been dominated by what happened. Yesterday on the andrew marr programme, there was a very bad tempered interview with borisjohnson. Lets have a listen to this bit of it. Was out because he was on automatic Early Release. When the judges reviewed his sentence in 2012, they had no option but to comply with the law that labour brought in in 2008, which meant that, effectively. You say labour. Youve been in power. Effectively that he was out, they had to comply with the law as it stood, and he was out in eight years. And this was a guy, dont forget, thatjudge wilkie said was a very serious jihadi. And thats why. Ive been in office for 120 days. Your partys been in power for ten years. So obviously, that was talking about why usman khan was on the streets at all and not in prison. I listened to that interview. I was none the wiser about what happened when or why. John, just talk us through, what was your takeaway from it . Well, if we take that fairly short clip, it was rich in political content. We had Boris Johnson, first of all, zeroing in on the fact that the terrorist, this London Bridge terrorist, had been released halfway through his sentence, therefore was able to commit this crime. That was clearly the strongest piece of point making that he had because, by definition, if usman khan had been injail and had not been released, he could not have killed these people. But it opened up a much, much wider debate about the treatment of terrorists, about rehabilitation of offenders, about the fact that Boris Johnson was pointing the finger at the treatment of this man under past legislation, saying that, i have been there for 120 days, whatever it was. In that way, clear of responsibility, not answering for anything thats happened before. Despite the fact that, as andrew marr pointed out, weve had a tory government for very nearly a decade. So, look. Its become intensely politicized. I think that was absolutely inevitable. You can argue it was a necessary part of the process. But, of course, borisjohnson displayed his strongest card there and opened up an exposed plank as well to do with his government, his partys record in office. Its a really difficult judgement, isnt it, for Political Parties when this kind of thing happens . And unfortunately, this isnt the first time its happened. The last election, the Manchester Arena bomb happened during a general election. And rememberjo cox, of course, was murdered during the referendum campaign. So, unfortunately, these kind of incidences have happened before and a Political Party has to make a judgement. And i think the reason borisjohnson is going really out so hard on this is partly because of what happened last time, is that theresa may ended up in this row, really, with the labour party about police numbers. And, actually, people thought she came off worse during all of that. So how hard you go out to defend your position and borisjohnson is making the point that, actually, in the conservative manifesto we have looked this up, it is in there that they want to end the automatic halfway release from prison for serious crimes. So his point is, ive always been against this particular policy. It turns out its much more complicated than that and, actually, when you start coming through with our legal experts, our legal team in the bbc, its incredibly complicated sentencing law which has changed over the years and, actually, both sides have things that they can point to and things that they can go on the attack over. Well, the thing that Jeremy Corbyn pointed to he was doing a speech in york yesterday about foreign policy. Of course, he talked about this and he used it as an opportunity to attack austerity and how the cuts to Public Services could have had an effect on this incident. A failure to recruit has left huge staffing shortfalls, with staff supervising more cases than ever expected, posing again a serious risk to our security. You cant keep people safe on the cheap. I suppose one of the interesting things about this as a policy area is that its not like the nhs, where most people have had an experience with the nhs in the last few years, or a relative, so you can have a sort of personal feeling about how things are going. Actually, most people wont be on probation or know someone whos on probation, or know someone whos at risk of radicalisation, do they . No. Look, the Probation Service is not a huge emotional touchstone for the British Public in the way that the National Health service is. Its obviously labours strongest card for that reason. When they talk about running down the nhs in terms of resources, a lot of people are naturally going to say, absolutely, youre right on that. Not many people feel the same way about the Probation Service. But its also right and fair to say that the privatisation of the Probation Service and the shortage of funds in the Probation Service has been a live, very publicly debated issue in its own sphere for a good long time, ever since the then minister in charge, chris grayling, got stuck into all of this. It dented chris grayling. We know it rather dented the Probation Service. And whenJeremy Corbyn attacked it in the way that he has, look, its not opportunitism. This is his deepest, most heartfelt point about austerity, about running down the british Public Services, and thats where he goes as a kind of default position almost. When you see a problem well, not of this kind, you dont get too many of these but when you see a shortcoming of a Public Service coming into the spotlight, of course he is playing on all of that. And just as the whole argument over London Bridge has gone on fairly predictable, predetermined lines. When it comes to labour and liberal democrats, its resources. For borisjohnson and the tories, its about tougher penalties. They each have their point. They are each reaching out to an electorate, i suppose, which is more likely to see their point of view than otherwise. And i think if people are talking about this at home, i think they will be. Of course, peoples initial reaction is the horror of whats happened, the sympathy for the families and friends of those who have died. But, actually, a lot of people watching the tv on friday and over the weekend will be saying, how come so many was let out who was a convicted terrorist . How did this happen . Who was watching him . Why werent they watching him . How did he manage to convince the parole board that he was eligible for Early Release . Because they didnt have to necessarily go along with that. I think if people at home are talking about it, politicians do have to respond. And, of course, actually, for lots of people, it is distasteful but i think inevitable. And maybe its the right thing, too. Ive learned more about the sentencing system than i knew before, thats for sure. Yeah. And why shouldnt we be debating it . Why shouldnt our politicians at an election be debating these things . The Grenfell Tower disaster. Look, it took longer for the political argument to engage in the case of Grenfell Tower than it did in this case. In this case, it took, i dont know, a matter of minutes on a friday evening before Boris Johnson switched from being, i dont know, more statesman like and taking it a detached overview to making point about sentencing and all the rest of it. In grenfells case, more people died and there was arguably a need, a requirement, for more sensitivity and a little more space in the politics and the incident itself. But it got pretty political, if you recall. It got very political. Well, lets just have a quick listen to thejustice secretary, robert buckland, who was on the today programme this morning. I do think we just need to pause and get the tone of this debate right. But Public Protection has to be at the heart of the duty of any government, and i have to put that first and foremost when considering, first of all, existing offenders and secondly the future sentencing regime for terrorism. I make no apology for that. Weve got to get it right. So, yeah, thats him doing exactly what you just said. Pay respects, say lets not politicize it, lets be grown up, and then make your political point. I mean, hes got more experience in the system than we all have. He has been a barrister and, obviously, now he isjustice secretary. One of the interesting things that someone has talked about is that, actually, the turnover, the number of secretaries of state, justice secretaries that there have been, its one of those ministries, actually, where people have been in and out very, very quickly and theres a lot of criticism about the way that policy has been introduced. Of course, what complicates this in a way when it comes to the sensitivities is those two young people who were murdered were there for a reason, because they believe in rehabilitation. That was the whole point of that meeting, why they were there, why there were ex criminals there, why there were ex police there, all sitting around discussing it, because of their particular view. And i think that does make it slightly more complicated, especially when you have Jack Merritts father saying, do not use this to put forward your own views when this is what he very clearly believed in. I think that does make it even more sensitive than it would have been anyway. And theres so many layers going on here, obviously. I mean, you read the secret barrister blog thats the lawyer who was then sort of copy and pasted. His tweets were copy and pasted by borisjohnson as a defence of the system and an explanation. But, actually, if you read his blog, theres a bit in there where he says, well, actually, lots of the prisons cant provide the courses that the people on the sentences would go on to prove to the parole board, if they were even in front of the parole board, that they had been rehabilitated. Secret barristers become. We dont know who he is. Its still secret but hes a big player in this whole political argument. For those of you who may not know, the secret barrister is the title, the name, of an author of a blog online who gives his opinions on matters of politics law. And in this case, he piled in. He said the facts were being misrepresented by all sides. He said borisjohnsons talk really added up to very little because the manifesto or the coming programme for government would have done nothing to stop the attack on London Bridge. He also accused the Prime Minister of lying after all of this, so i think these were blows that rather struck home in 10 downing st, and it underlines the fact that, whatever this story is, whatever the background is, it is not simple. And its fair enough to say this is a guy who should not have been on the streets. But when you get into rehabilitation, versus punishment and deterrence and all of that sort of thing, it becomes very, very, very tricky. But it does come back, i think, to resources. That is the point lots of people are making about, theres one prison, isnt there, where they work on all of this . They put in serious offenders, theyre absolutely put through their paces and things. Their re conviction rate is far, farlowerthan. But its a one off prison. Its one prison where this is happening. And this was a case where usman khan gamed the system, from what we understand. He was writing letters saying, ive got over this. Let me out and ill be a model citizen. For years, he presented that face to the authorities. 0ut he came, and then he committed these murders. And the question is, who was monitoring him . But, actually, when it comes to resources, i think the governments response to that is when it comes to security services, if that is their role in this case, they have had extra funding, maybe unlike other areas of the criminaljustice system. Im completely bamboozled by all the numbers, lots of sort of 405, 30s, low teens. Just explain to us what the picture painted by the polls actually is . Well, there are two things you need to know about what the polls have been doing during the course of the Election Campaign. The one is that theyve been showing a consistent conservative lead. The second is that both the conservatives and the labour party have made progress during the course of this campaign, but not at the expense of each other but rather at the expense of the brexit party in the case of the conservatives, and the liberal democrats in the case of the labour party. And the effect of all of this is there has indeed been a bit of a narrowing of the conservative lead in the course of the last couple of weeks or so, but the conservatives still enjoy, on average, at least, the kind of poll lead that ought to generate them an overall majority. Basically, during the course of the Election Campaign, conservatives start this campaign with about 55 of the leave vote, with the brexit pa rt of the leave vote, with the brexit part is Still Holding a fair chunk of it. That figure now stands for the conservatives at 70 . It is even higher, quite considerably higher, the conservative support amongst leave mac voters two years ago and thatis leave mac voters two years ago and that is the reason why the conservatives have been able to remain ahead. 0n the other side of the fence, deliver has made progress, primarily, not entirely, amongst remain voters. When this campaign started, the labour party we re campaign started, the labour party were only Just Campaign started, the labour party were onlyjust a head of the liberal democrats amongst for may voters. Now labour is not far short of 50 and deliver democrats are back to below a quarter the liberal democrats are back to blue a quarter. Do understand what has been going on there, you need to understand the way in which the Election Campaign in the calling of the Campaign Just seems to have squeezed the vote of the smaller parties but in a way thats very clearly to do with the debate about brexit. Basically the conservatives, this is now the party of leave mac voters in the labour party, having lost the mantle earlier this year, has regained a lot of its position as the mental of remain voters. Do you think people are getting too excited about this now . Maybe overestimating the two horse race . Yes and no. I think that exaggerating it in the sense that we are still in a position, at least on the average of the polls, whereby the average of the polls, whereby the conservatives should get around 350 seats or so and borisjohnson should be able to deliver brexit as he is minded to do. And equally also, there is not much sign of a labour party being able to do damage to the conservatives. The labour party are losing just as much of the vote to the conservatives now as they were four weeks ago. To that extent at least, yes, there is a risk of exaggeration and certainly underestimating the way in which the conservatives really have managed to maintain their lead. That said, we do have to bear in mind that gi