Nadia Whittome
Appearances
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I love it when it comes full circle.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And then finding them in the place that you were looking.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, I mean, it feels weird to be described as a veteran Gen Z MP when I've just turned 28.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
But yeah, how does it feel? Obviously, it feels very different. For a start, most of the MPs are new MPs. So it's like having to get to know loads of new people, loads of new faces, not knowing whether it's a new Tory MP or a new Labour MP. Obviously, the chances are it will be a new Labour MP. But I hosted a reception in Parliament yesterday and
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
with school children about decarbonizing education and climate education and we were bringing around with us like this this little book and looking through to see like who the MPs were it's like there are 650 like we need to hurry up
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I don't know whether it's just like the power of gaslighting, but I think there might be an MP who's like that.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Oh, that's a good one. What I used to do when I first started before was I'd say if I was talking to like a male MP, like, a white male MP, which most of them are.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I'd go, it's John, isn't it? And they'd say, oh no, it's not John. It's Robert. And I'd say, oh, Robert, of course. But sometimes it would be John and they'd just say yes.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Oh God, I feel like this could be dangerous.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I don't know who Robbie Moore is. Anyway, I think we revealed something there.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Some of my best friends are white, actually. And if you go far, far back enough, some of my ancestors are white.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, this is absolutely a positive sign. We can't be so strictly wedded to a set of fiscal rules that the government can't make decisions to improve people's lives. It's something that governments have to do, borrow to invest. That makes economic sense.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I think the Conservatives sold us this myth over the last 10, 15 years that government spending was like a household budget and you don't spend what you don't have. But actually, governments have to borrow to invest in our public services. And that not just improves people's lives, most importantly, but it also, if you're talking about economic growth, it grows the economy too.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Absolutely. I mean, we all understand that the new Labour government has inherited a huge economic mess from the Tories and that's resulted in big spending pressures on the new government. But we have to be clear that further cuts will not help fix our broken society. We need more public spending, not less. And actually austerity is not an inevitability. The government does have other choices.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So we have a lot of wealth in this country, but the problem is it's concentrated in the hands of the few. So we've got super rich individuals hoarding extreme amounts of money and assets. I was really shocked when I looked up the statistic that we have 165 billionaires in the UK. And I find it difficult to even comprehend that level of wealth. I think most of us do.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
But if you spend a thousand pounds every day, guess how long it would take you to spend a billion pounds?
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Oh, long dead. And your grandchildren will be dead and their grandchildren.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Okay, wow. And there's 2,740 years it would take you to spend a billion pounds if you spent a thousand pounds every day. So that's just an illustration of what obscene wealth we're talking about. And if the government introduced even very moderate wealth taxes, like, for example, a tax of 2% at a threshold of £10 million a year.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So that would mean you can keep everything that you have up to £10 million. I say you, I obviously don't literally mean you or me or any of us.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So if that was a 2% tax on wealth above £10 million, that would only impact about 20,000 of the richest people in the UK. But it would raise an estimated £22 billion a year. Think of what that money could be spent on. It could fund public services, fund building a mass programme of council house building, fund the just transition to net zero, anti-poverty measures.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Also, if you equalise capital gains tax and income tax, which I know is something that you've spoken about before on the podcast. It's not a radical demand. Nigel Lawson, when he was Tory Chancellor, supported this measure. that could raise up to £15 million a year. It's a no-brainer.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I've got to say that the mood is pretty subdued. I think we were all riding on a high after the election, but that honeymoon period hasn't lasted very long. The polling's looking bad. What I'm concerned about is that we were elected on this promise of change, and I'm very worried about what will happen if we don't deliver on that.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
We've got the far right, and we saw them mobilising and organising across the country.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
over the summer they're waiting in the winds so we have to get this right there is too much at stake if if we fail to deliver we've got to show people how a Labour government can improve people's lives and we've got to say very clearly that the problem for your fallen living standards is not migrants it's not people of colour it's not Muslims it's not refugees It's not trans people.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
It's a Tory government, exploitative bosses and landlords. And we are going to take measures to tackle those things and improve people's lives.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, I think that's a really big question and there are lots of things at play here. I think we need more democracy in the media so that people aren't just hearing from a media that is controlled and owned by a couple of billionaires. That's the diversity that you get in a lot of the right-wing media is that they're owned by different billionaires. Not even that many different billionaires.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Some of them are called Rupert.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Roger, Robert and Rupert. And they say all our names sound the same.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I absolutely agree with what you said about Farage's interventions. And I think that the popularity of the far right on TikTok, including among young people and especially young men and boys, is extremely worrying, especially when you've got a kind of fertile ground for radicalisation, with people being more isolated, with people's living standards being inadequate.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And that's not because people are more likely to be racist or misogynistic as is the case because that's also some of the far right radicalisation like with Andrew Tate it's not because working class people are more likely to be racist because of their living standards like racism has always come from the top of British society
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
But far-right groups are exploiting the very real problems of poverty and state and corporate neglect. And they're convincing people that the perpetrator is someone else. And then, as you say, they're bolstered by right-wing politicians and parts of the media who also scapegoat people.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And they do that to deflect responsibility, to distract from their own failings, and crucially to divide people so that they can carry on doing that. so they can carry on making the same political choices that have screwed people over in the first place.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Definitely. And I think that when people are sharing memes saying, oh, these people have no teeth and no GCSEs, I think it's really harmful. And I don't say that from a kind of liberal perspective of not wanting to hurt people's feelings. But it misdiagnoses the problem as being coming from working class communities. That's not to say that racism doesn't exist in working class communities.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Of course it does. But it's always come from the top of British society. And it's always been in the interest of the ruling class to cement it. So yeah, it misdiagnoses the problem. And then if we're not diagnosing the problem properly, how do we solve it?
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And how do we build a coalition of people who have the same interests, the same worries of putting food on the table, making their rent, paying their mortgage, paying the bills, if we're dividing people further? Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I'm really bad at lying. It's really obvious in my voice. I wasn't prepared for the question, so I didn't even have time to come up with a, oh yeah, no, I'm having a laugh. No, I'm not particularly enjoying myself. But I do think that there's hope in the new government and there is space for us to collectively put pressure on the government to to make changes that would improve all of our lives.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So alongside some of the good things that the government is doing, like the Renters' Rights Bill, which would massively redress the imbalance in power between landlords and tenants, the New Deal for Working People, which would be the biggest shift in power from bosses towards workers. The rest of the hope is in our collective power and action.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Thank you so much for having me.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
It's so boring.