the stakes. they have staged a series of protests but there is no impact at all so far on the government. the unions are saying the government is in tragedy and i m not listening and disregarding its overriding will of the people is intransigent. you see lots of effigies of macron as an emperor or a king from the prerevolutionary times. they are saying he is simply not listening to them but arguably, if he does not go through with this and waters down the reform to the point where it is not recognisable any more, which some fear is what is happening already, then he will come out as a non reformer and will have lost the support of everyone here as well. he can come out of this sort of relatively well if he sees it through but people are watching very carefully on this site to see whether he will give in and on the other side to see whether he waters down the reforms so the cost savings it is intended to bring about don t occur at all. it is intended to bring about don t occur at all
but let s just reality-check that for a moment. why is it always a desire for a long weekend that motivates congress to do fast what they should ve done faster. and some of these things that we believe to be in the deal, term limits, border security, having more time to read bills, that s stuff that many independent voters will say a lot of people read that and say that s all held up for that? that s common sense. and what else is out there that s going to lead to real dysfunction going forward? thank you so much for letting me get a word in. [ laughter ] there were 20 holdouts. and there was a lot made of who are these 20 holdouts. and it turns out maybe there are six who are intransigent. and there are, like 14 who actually have substantive policy priorities that it looks like i mean, we have a good sense of what they are. it s about rules committee. it s about substantive bills being brought to the floor.
mccarthy, he would be up to 214, and the magic number would remain at 217, and then he would only need three from this list. now, if they both came back, there would be 434 voting members, and the magic number then would rise to 218, okay, and then actually, we have 215 votes, so he would need three anyway. i just talked myself out of that today. either way, it brings him one step closer to get those members back. if he can get one of them back, at least he only needs three from this list. doing math on live tv is always a risky proposition, even when you re good at it, like you are steve core knack yichl we saw bob good come in while you were speaking. he is for jordan as well. let s go back to garrett haake if we still have him with us. these are still, if these members remain in transigent and they refuse to vote for kevin mccarthy, if they really truly are never kevins, how much
unison chief was on the today programme on radio four this morning, saying ministers had been intransigent, that when it came to the ambulance strikes this wednesday, they will go ahead unless the government comes up with a firm offer on pay. the prospect of that is vanishingly thin so i think there is vanishingly thin so i think there is a pretty high likelihood that the strikes this week do go ahead. so what are ministers doing? at the moment, they are looking at mitigating the impact of these strikes. there is another meeting of cobra, the emergency committee today. we ll ministers want a lot more information from unions about what kind of emergency cover ambulance staff will provide on wednesday when it comes to the most severe and emergency cases, which ambulances will actually be dispatched. but the big, fundamentals to this, we talk about it what feels like every day the men, they are not really shifting.
look again at the issue of pay by referring that case back to the pay board to look into this sort of thing. what i don t think that we have at the moment is any sense that the government is prepared to budge on the pay issue. we do have the health secretary saying to unions, let s get back around the table and talk about things, but the things he wants to talk about are very different to the things they want to talk about. steve barclay wants to talk about conditions and patient safety in england. he is still sticking to his line that the government is not prepared to go back to discussing the issue of pay, and that means this situation remains stuck. it means that the unions are still quite angry. the unison chief was on the today programme on radio 4 this morning, saying ministers had been intransigent, that when it came to the ambulance strikes this wednesday, they will go ahead unless the government comes up with a firm offer on pay. the prospect of that is vanishingly