Nish Kumar
Appearances
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Okay, well, oh boy.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
So listen, talking of the beauty of being in opposition and how easy that is, Kemi Badenoch, new leader of the opposition, I am going to ask you a question that you yourself have posed in a column for The Guardian this week, which is, do you think Kemi Badenoch is going to lead the Conservatives into the next general election?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
We, as a kind of UK based political podcast that operates under the crooked arm, are also pivoting to what this means for us and obviously what this means globally. I guess the short term concerns will be what this election means for Netanyahu, who has been sort of openly cheerleading for the Republican Party in recent weeks and what that means for the situations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
I think I'll live a long and happy life if I never hear the phrase, a letter has gone into the 1922 committee.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah. Making friends has not been her strong suit, shall we say. She's, you know, she conducts herself in a way where she's sort of, she has upset quite a lot of people. And some of those people are sort of within the Conservative Party. But do you think that the early indications of who she's assembled in the shadow cabinet show that she's actually trying to kind of
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
reach out to different bits of the Conservative Party. I'm thinking of someone like Mel Stride, who's more towards the centre of the Tory party, being made Shadow Chancellor, whilst also bringing back good old, she did commit some light treason, but we don't talk about it too much, Priti Patel, who traditionally is from the right of the party.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Is there a sense that she's actually trying to sort of build a coalition across the different bits of the Conservative Party?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
What this means for the Ukrainian army is obviously of huge interest to all European countries. And also, I mean, what this means on the climate crisis because of Trump's total hostility to climate science. What does this mean in the kind of medium term? You know, we're already seeing footage of large parts of Spain that have been underwater. So I guess we're all worried about...
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Let's go straight in on Farage then, because, you know, there were so many instances where the Tories were pushed into third place in the general election by reform. Does Badenoch, because of her sort of sabre-rattling on culture war issues, does she head off Nigel Farage?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Do you think it's also a bit of a problem for her that she's black, to be frank? Because we saw activists for reform be filmed by Channel 4 in the run up to the general election saying that they had been lifelong conservatives but couldn't support Rishi Sunak. Is that also an issue for her?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Katie Walls, thank you very much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Now, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the UK's refusal to discuss the issue of reparations at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. While travelling to the conference, Keir Starmer told reporters that he wants to look forward rather than have very long, endless discussions about reparations on the past.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
King Charles also sidestepped the issue, saying, none of us can change the past, but we can commit to learning its lessons. And this week, David Lammy doubled down during his first visit to Africa as Foreign Secretary, ruling out cash-based reparations from the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Hi. Belle, you've just given us a brief tour of Portcullis House as you move from one office to another. You're now in Diane Abbott's office.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Should we just, before we get into the substantive body of what we want to talk to you about, I guess we should reflect on how you're feeling this morning in light of the news from the U.S.,
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
And I'm Nish Kumar. And oh shit, it happened.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Does this create a very complicated diplomatic situation now for a Labour government?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Let's talk reparations. So David Lammy repeatedly backed calls for reparations as a backbench MP. What was it like for you to hear him now say that conversations about reparations will not be about the transfer of cash? So just to clarify, these comments were made during David Lammy's trip to Nigeria to boost economic ties.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Is this a comment that could put important relationships like this at risk?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
One of my favourite ever pieces of writing is by the American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, and it's an essay that he wrote called The Case for Reparations. And it's all about him almost convincing himself, him starting from a position that he didn't think reparations were important to African-Americans and then through his research coming to the conclusion that they were important.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
What is the British case for reparations? You referenced a moral case. What is that case and how would you make that to somebody who, that isn't necessarily familiar with the arguments around this? Because the reality is a lot of us were taught British history very poorly in the British education system and so have come to this knowledge ourselves by our own reading.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
What would you say to somebody who looks at this and says, oh, why on earth would we be paying reparations?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
So look, now the polls are closed. Your friends at Crooked Media have got you covered. to dig through whatever comes next in this clusterfuck. So here's what you can expect. What a day is fresh in your feeds every morning with Jane Coaston easing you into the biggest stories and making sense of what you need to know in just 20 minutes.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Pod Save America has a new episode daily diving deep into the results and where we go from here because no one should have to be alone with their thoughts after this disaster. Check out Hysteria, Love It or Leave It, Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams and more on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah, the Church of England, the Bank of England, both those institutions have apologised for their links to the slave trade. Shouldn't the UK government, shouldn't we be starting from that position?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Before we let you go, Belle, we should talk about Kemi Badenoch, the newly crowned leader of the Conservative Party. We're in another of these interesting and thorny moments for racial representation.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
You know, Coco and I are sort of... British-born South Asians have talked a lot about our, shall we say, charitably mixed feelings about Rishi Sunak, Suella Braverman and Priti Patel and our slight... The way that we sort of have been trying to push back at people telling us we should be thankful for the representation that these politicians have held up.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
How are you feeling about the sort of the symbolism of Kemi Badenoch being the leader of the Conservative Party?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
It's an interesting way of looking at it, of splitting those ideas of diversity and representation. In some ways, both the conversation around reparations and the conversation around Kemi Badenoch as Tory leader, we really need to be more sophisticated in the way that we talk about race in this country.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah, although I will say, when it came to embracing madness or meanness, given the choices between her and Robert Jenrick, we were getting madness or meanness one way or the other. We just get different flavours of madness or meanness.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah, I mean, I'm feeling, I feel like I've been punched in the face.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Wait, so hold on a second. You're trying to dodge criticism from the right wing press by changing your gender.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Bella Berardi, thank you so much for joining us.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Now, a rise in student fees isn't something that's bringing us joy. However, the university sector is pleased by the move. as the runaway inflation over the past few years has turned into a financial crisis for the university sector. Earlier this year, the Office for Students, the higher education regulator in England, predicted 40% of universities were expected to run budget deficits this year.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
But the decision is a tricky one for the Labour government, as in 2020 it was Labour policy to scrap tuition fees altogether. But with the pressures on the public finances and Rachel Reeves' message of financial doom, it's not exactly a surprising move.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
It is perhaps a little bizarre that they chose to omit this announcement from the budget last week, and the opposition were very quick to jump on this apparent U-turn. New Shadow Education Secretary Laura Trott didn't have any alternative policy to offer beyond just calling it another broken promise.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Are the increased fees or maintenance loans affecting you? Are you working in the university sector? Are you sick of paying your student loan repayments? Email us at psuk at reducelistening.co.uk. And don't forget to subscribe so you can see us turning this over with some special guests next week. So what are you going to be doing to distract yourself from the disastrous news?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Oh, I would definitely say that. I think Badenock is like a true ideologue. Yeah. Whether it's, you know, gender critical views or an ultra conservative approach to immigration, even on women's rights. I mean, you know, it's stunning to me how many people espouse gender critical views as an expression of their belief in women's rights.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah, I think the one thing you must not do is go on Twitter. I think it's a case of stay off Twitter.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
grimace at me in a slightly conspiratorial way as you did there. He had a very big role in it. He was paying money to registered voters. I mean, yeah, I think, I don't know in terms of words of comfort, like I don't think anybody, I don't think I'm ever going to be the person who is qualified to give you any words of comfort. I'm not even sure people, uh, want comfort at the moment.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
I think people sort of want to just bask in their rage, which they're entitled to do, especially if you're in America. You know, it does have such disastrous consequences for all of us. And whenever stuff like this happens, what do I always do? Because I'm a 70-year-old man, I listen to Bob Dylan.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah. And so I was like, let me put some Dylan on. Let me clear my head. I was even playing an election catastrophe playlist this morning on my way into work.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Well, I was just making one on The Hoof.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
All Right by Kendrick. Okay. What's Going On by Marvin Gaye.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Rainforest by No Name. These are all like just, you know, good... Good tunes. Apocalyptic political songs. Yeah. But like there is a line in the Bob Dylan song Hard Rain's Gonna Fall where he says, and I'll know my song well before I start singing. And I think...
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Just to bring it back full circle to something you said, there is a danger here of progressive movements splintering into infighting to account for who's to blame for this. The next half decade, there are a string of interlocking issues, one of which is the existential threat to the entire species and our way of life on this planet.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
The options are either just give up or the progressive movements in America and around the world need to know what our song is before we start singing it. What is the case that we are making to the public? And how are we going to counter the rhetoric that is about to come out and the policies that are about to come out of this administration?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
it is imperative that we don't do what comes so naturally to us, which is lapse into infighting. It's the easiest move for us. Whenever people talk about the cosy consensus on the left, I'm like, which bit of the left? You can't get three left-wing people to agree on where to go to dinner because of different interlocking boycotts that we're all engaged in. And that's it.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. We want to hear your thoughts as always. Email us at psuk at reducelistening.co.uk.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Pod Save the UK is a reduced listening production for Crooked Media.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
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Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
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Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
But then when it comes to women's rights, have absolutely nothing useful to say whatsoever. Bear in mind, just a couple of weeks ago, Blade Knock was saying that we should be rethinking maternity leave. So, you know, I'm always baffled by that. It makes no sense to me. I mean, it's almost as if gender critical views are done in bad faith and have nothing to do with women's rights whatsoever.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
And I've not been punched in the face for quite a while, which is a surprise because I'm quite annoying. But anyway, today we'll be discussing what the cataclysmic US elections mean for the UK with The Spectator's political editor, Katie Balls, and talking about the new Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Kemi also has a pretty controversial track record of being quite personally mean. And one of her first acts as leader of the opposition was appearing on the BBC's Laura Koonsberg show. And listen to this clip.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
You're so mean, man. It's sort of also, you know, there were a lot of... Labour politicians who were either saying things to the press or posting things publicly on social networking websites, saying things like, regardless of her politics, we must congratulate Kevin Vandenhoek on being the first black woman to lead.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
You know, and there was all of this kind of... And as I was reading, I was like, she's not going to congratulate you back. Like, there's so much of this... sort of civility politics that sometimes centre-left or left-wing parties indulge in. That is not reciprocated at all. I mean, that's not just a problem in this country.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
The Harris campaign spent quite a lot of time talking about how it was going to work with the Republican Party. Do you think Donald Trump is going to be reaching across the aisle to the Democrats? There's a lot of, like, people engaging in good faith with people who have no interest in good faith engagement.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
And, like, it is quite an astonishing thing the number of people that came forward and said, we must, regardless of our politics, congratulate Kevin Biden. Immediately she goes on Laura Koonsberg and it's like, Rachel Reeves is an absolute joke. That's an embarrassment. It is so... I'm sort of incredulous by the level of, like, magic beans buying that progressives indulge in.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
We must, in the spirit of bipartisanship... Oh, God, they just kicked me in the shins again.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
So you do believe people can transition?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
She went on to clarify these comments by saying that she had to catch buses whilst working at McDonald's, which is, I mean, it's not a hardship. One of the shocking things that we haven't mentioned yet, and we probably should mention more often, is that in 2008, she hacked Harriet Harman's website.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Now, to be clear, we don't have to say allegedly or anything about this because she confessed to this crime, which is a crime and carries a jail sentence of up to five, or carried a jail sentence of up to five years at the time. And the reason we know this is because she confessed to it when she was asked a question about what the naughtiest thing that she'd done was.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
We were jonesing for Theresa May's Fields of Wheat. What was the naughtiest thing you've ever done? Oh, I committed a crime by hacking someone I didn't like's website.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Joining us now to find out what kind of opposition leader Kemi Badenoch intends to be is Katie Balls, the political editor of The Spectator. Hi, Katie. Welcome to Pod Save the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
You were at a watch party yesterday evening for the election for Sky News. How was the mood there?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
The analytical minds are not as sharp as one would hope.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
You cannot put a group of British people in a room and give them, I assume, an open bar.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
And expect them to have coherent thoughts about Delaware at two in the morning.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Right. Okay, fine. How are you feeling about the election results?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yeah. I am feeling a bit like the Joker sequel in that it's something terrible that happened and I have no idea why it's happening again. And there are people walking around going, oh, this is really bad. And you're like, yeah, it was terrible the first time.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Pure Trump is the fragrance no one wants to smell. How prepared is the UK government for this moment? We've talked a lot about... The attempts that Keir Starmer has made, and he was very quick to congratulate Donald Trump today. David Lammy, whose past remarks about Trump and his affiliations towards the KKK have been recirculating on social media.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
He's been recently trying to cozy up to incoming Vice President J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance has basically taken every opportunity to talk about how much he thinks London is no longer a British city and how much he hates everything about the U.K., So that doesn't seem to be great.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
How do you think, as someone who spends a lot of time being aware of what's going on in the machinery of British government, how do you think the British government is about to respond to a Trump presidency? And are they ready?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's Wednesday and we're still sort of processing what that means. We don't know the full results other than we know that Trump is... going to be elected president and the Republican Party will control the Senate. We're still waiting on House races. We understand that for our American listeners, this is an extremely difficult day and you are in our thoughts.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Could be quite a lot more than another four years.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
Emily Thornberry's comments as the chair of the British Foreign Affairs Committee were trade focused. She said that it could have huge impacts on trade because there's threats of import tariffs of 20% on goods from Europe and 200% on goods from China. Are we likely to get caught up in that as well?
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
I was on that protest. I remember it. I remember it very well. I was one of the speakers at it.
Pod Save the UK
Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
No, I was further down the bill. It's like when I do Glastonbury, I'm not seeing Beyonce, personally. I'm in the crowd, but I'm not actually side stage.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So the standard way for the DWP to deal with the non-taxable income is to deduct it from universal credit payments, leading to no additional support for this person, despite them suddenly now needing to support two children. If they're in a job with equivalent pay, they would have received the payment.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
They raised the issue with local government and their job centre and they were awarded a small payment from an assessor. 18 months later, they were told by the DWP that they owed thousands of pounds. This listener later withdrew from their PhD and is still paying off the debt to the DWP years later. It is an absolutely heartbreaking story.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And the introduction of universal credit had rules that means the DWP could pursue funds despite the error not being the claimant's fault. Now, Caroline, how common are stories like this? And the listener has partly written in to give us information of real-world lived experience of these things. But also, I think, is there anything people can do?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Is there anything this system can do in this kind of situation, which seems like a complete and total failure of the system?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And later, to celebrate the Tory party conference, we're bringing back the section lovingly known as WTFUG.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
That's the only logical conclusion that I can come to. But in any case, the Tory party conference has thrown out a huge clusterfuck of bad headlines, which must be a relief for the Labour government after back-to-back weeks of the Garm drama. and the various scandals around gifts accepted by Labour MPs.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Let's talk about one of the other major types of benefits, the personal independence payments or PIPs. We've had a huge listener response from people talking about the PIP assessment process who have called it degrading and said that the questions, and this is a quote, tempted to catch them out.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Another listener talked of the difficulty of actually being approved for a PIP, saying that despite having lost three quarters of their leg, it was still hard to get a payment. John, it sounds like PIPs are pretty difficult to get. Can you talk us through some of the issues that that causes?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
However, of course, everything has been overshadowed by the growing tensions in the Middle East. As we record on Wednesday morning, Israel is committed to launching what it calls a significant attack on Iran's oil fields in retaliation to a missile attack on Tuesday night. As always, we can't recommend our sister podcast, Pod Save the World, enough.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
We should also just say, according to figures published by the DWP themselves, black and minority ethnic claimants are disproportionately likely to be hit with universal credit sanctions. Black claimants are 58% more likely than white claimants and mixed ethnic groups are 72% more likely. So the...
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
even before we have a conversation about AI, in addition to all of the other various problems with the DWP, by the acknowledgement of the figures itself as published, there is a racial problem here.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
John, in the last couple of years, we've seen these large-scale public inquiries about ordinary people who've been mistreated by different elements of the government department, or there's been a failure of state in some way. I'm thinking of the COVID inquiry, the Grenfell inquiry, the infected blood scandal, the post office scandal.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Do you believe the DWP and the events that specifically have happened as a consequence of that department's actions in the last 15 years is a scandal on par with that? And is it something that we should be actively pushing for a full public inquiry in the way that those have been conducted?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
There is an episode in their feed right now that discusses this rapid escalation of the conflict.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Clearly, there's a backlog here of decisions that need to be challenged in regards to the DUP and sanctions that have been put down. Carolyn, how can people be better supported to do this? Is there any information that you can direct people towards if they want to take up their cases with the DWP?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Thank you so much, Caroline and John, for joining us today. And thanks to everybody who wrote in.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So that was a very intense, powerful conversation. Thanks again to all the listeners that wrote in. I'm sorry we couldn't include all of your stories. But yeah, quite an astonishing thing. And I mean... It feels like, at the very least, there needs to be a public inquiry about the DWP's conduct and the way that it's handled the business that it was charged with handling.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
It feels like there is this... recurrent thread that something has gone very badly rotten at the centre of our government in the last decade, decade and a half in the way that we've handled some of the most vulnerable people in our societies.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
You know, we're talking constantly about marginalised groups that have been treated unfairly, you know, regardless of which scandal you look at, whether it's, you know, infected blood post office. These are often, you know, either minority groups or working class people that lack a kind of voice in the national conversation.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Well, check the show notes. We've got links to resources that people can use, especially if you've found yourself the victim of some of these kind of draconian and, you know, to borrow John's language, violent conduct by this department. And also, again, just to restate, right to MPs will again provide links in the show notes about that. I think there needs to be a concerted campaign of pressure
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
to get an inquiry into this. And we're all part of that. You know, we exist. We are part of the media space and it's incumbent on all of us to actually push for an actual public inquiry to find out what happened.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
What time is it?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I don't know. I think we have to call it WTFuck. Otherwise, it looks like we're paying tribute to Marc Maron every time we do this session, which I'm very happy to do. I'm a huge fan.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
WTFuck. Just swear.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I'm not trying to get you to smoke.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
You might like it. Just one fuck, Coco.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
This is Pod Save the UK and I'm Nish Kumar.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, that's right. And they've been coming in thick and fast this week because it's Tory party conference. What great reminder to this country of why we voted them out of office.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Like, if the Tory party was trying to have any sense of regret set in at the election result, and Lord knows there's been plenty of legitimate things to criticise Keir Starmer's Labour Party for, any regrets would have been wiped away from five minutes of watching some of the stuff that's happening.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Kemi Badenoch appears to have been the sort of headline act in this Glastonbury festival of weird shit by claiming that maternity pay has gone too far and describing statutory maternity pay as excessive in an interview with Times Radio's Kate McCann. We need to have more personal responsibility. There was a time when there wasn't any maternity pay and people were having more babies.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
We need to make sure.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
On Sunday morning, she kind of unloaded this fusillade of absolute batshittery. The thing with maternity pay was part of it, which I mean, anyone who knows people who have recently had children will tell you that maternity pay is insane in this country. And it's something that we desperately need to examine and overhaul. It's a phenomenally strange thing to have said.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Like, it makes no sense to me. Badenock also said that immigrants who come to the UK should love this country and uphold its traditions. And this is my highlight of the whole week. This, to me, was the absolute weirdness. This is a quote from an article she wrote in the Sunday Telegraph.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I'm trying to present this as fulsome a way as possible so that it doesn't seem like we've edited it to make it sound fucking madder than it does. So I speak as someone from an immigrant background. Being born in the UK was like Charlie Bucket finding a golden ticket in his chocolate bar. I really did win the lottery.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
In 2012, David Cameron's coalition government introduced radical reforms to the way benefits were administered, rolling six previous benefits into one single means-tested payment, universal credit. Universal credit recipients include people on low incomes, people needing help with living costs, people who are out of work or people with health conditions.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I love Britain with the knowledge of how special this country is and how many opportunities it gave me. I also have a hard-nosed view on immigration. Now, I've not cut those things together. That is how the paragraph is presented. So Kemi Badenoch is presenting herself as... an equivalent to Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, getting the golden ticket.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Again, not really acknowledging the fact that her parents may have done things and committed sacrifices in order to get her the golden ticket, which is kind of the point of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well. Like, Charlie's parents, like, sacrificed things to get that golden ticket for him. So again, not really acknowledging any of that, like, generational sacrifice.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
But then saying, I've got the golden ticket. Charlie, of course, spoiler alert, wins the Chocolate Factory at the end. And this is the equivalent of Charlie saying, we will no longer be allowing children in the chocolate factory. I've got in the chocolate factory.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
All the chocolates for me. All the rest of you are people that hate the chocolate factory. As analogies go, she couldn't have picked a worse one. She also said that there were too many immigrants who hate Israel coming to the United Kingdom. Not clear what her basis for that is. And she also, and this is a direct quote, said, we cannot assume all cultures are equally valid. They are not.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So, listen, I think the political calculation behind this is this idea that, you know, you have to appeal to the real hard right of the Tory party because the Tory membership in the last kind of decade or so has moved to the right of even Conservative voters who are non-members, seemingly on a lot of different issues, and has also moved probably to the right of the majority of the country on a lot of issues.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So in order to curry their favour... A food analogy I think they would probably not appreciate. In order to roast chicken their favour, you have to assume that this is a political calculation to say, well, I'm going to say the most hard right things possible. I mean, saying that not all cultures being equally valid is almost a Neenock Powell style comment.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, well, that was put to her directly and she sort of denied that she was Islamophobic.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
No one's gunning for mums. Yeah. Mums are the only group of people people are not actively gunning for.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I totally agree with you, but I also think... I think the danger sometimes is reading too much into what these comments mean and actually just take them at face value. She's basically opened up ChatGPT and put right wing whack job shit and just generate it.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
The amount paid out depends on how much money you're earning. So if you get paid more from work, you'll get paid less from Universal Credit. As of January 2024, there was 6.3 million people in receipt of Universal Credit and nearly 40% of those claimants were in work.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I have to say, as someone who took two buses to a state school that was technically a state school, and that's how we phrase it, a selective grammar school in Kent, it didn't feel super working class, like as a decision. Also, I've seen Julian Barrett from The Mighty Boosh on the bus.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
It's just called living in a city. It's not called working class. It's called just living in a city.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Also, some people do have chauffeurs and they still need to take the bus at points. True, true. It's...
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
You know what this reminds me of? I think this is a good thing to remind everyone that, like, Labour can't even do sleaze well. Because ultimately, like a lot of this stuff, like Starbuck's been getting like four grand for glasses. Pathetic. Robert Jenrick got £75,000. He's not even the prime minister. Imagine how much corruption he could be engaged in.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Well, I think the background to it is that one of the things that has stuck in the American presidential debate is Tim Walz calling Trump weird. And I think that this idea that they're quite strange and like talking about abortions is actually quite a strange thing to do. Those are strange obsessions has kind of stuck a little bit in the States. Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And so I think probably James Cleverley is trying to avoid that tag being labelled on the British Conservative Party. Because also, let's face it, like Suella Braverman, Kemi, Jenrick, they're pretty weird. Jenrick is a weird guy. He talked about the fact that he gave his daughter the middle name Thatcher. That's weird.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I was doing one of my tour shows, to which tickets are still available, nishkamar.co.uk, in Birmingham on Saturday night. So it was like the day before the Tory party conference started. And I guess it was what... People in the theatrical or show business world generally know it as counter-programming, which is where there's a big event happening or something's being released.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
It's not even a first name. Why not Margaret? That's so weird. But we should say that James Cleverley, who's trying to get the Tory party... Exactly, I mean, he's hardly... He's lagging way behind. The guy trying to get the Tory party to be less weird is way behind in the polls.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Son, you're not charismatic. That is not, like, that was hard to watch. That was really hard to watch. I don't want to give too much away about the specifics of my week, but I dislocated my toe and a medical professional had to, admittedly, under anaesthetic, pull the broken toe out and reset it in its correct place. And I would rather have that happen again than see that clip.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Quit. Leave. Leave public life. Leave public life. Please. In order for me to watch that clip again, I would need the amount of lidocaine that was injected into my foot to be injected into my brain for me to find it acceptable to watch that again. It was horrible.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
If they weren't paid, they have absolutely been ripped off.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I don't even know where to start with this. Also, Tom Tugenthat is supposed to be, he's supposed to, notionally, be presenting himself as the more moderate, again, to borrow Cleverley's phrase, more normal candidate. And he's selling Tom Tugenthat.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
A quick reminder for anyone who's managed to avoid Rosie Duffield. She's a proud member of the gender-critical movement and frequently indulges in Twitter love-ins with JK Rowling. We can note, though, that she has spoken up against the removal of the winter fuel allowance and is an advocate for removing the two-child benefit cap.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
She changed her ex-profile and header photo to a bird flying free of its cage, badly photoshopped with the colours of the suffragette movement. which have since been adopted by some anti-trans or gender critical people.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
However, she's not actually leaving the party due to their stance on gender and trans rights, given that Keir Starmer has actually moved the party closer to her position over the last few years. She told the BBC's Laura Koonsberg that I and others put it on the agenda by basically being very loud about women's rights. And I'm glad it is now mainstream discussion.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
but that's not why I'm leaving the Labour Party. The Labour Party has left me. Were you surprised about this, Coco?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
You thought she left a long time ago.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, that doesn't seem necessarily like the natural fit for her.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I will say, again, not to give too much away about the background to how we make these podcasts, but we do have our production meeting, and one of our team is 100% convinced she's going to reform.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I've no idea. I've no idea, but what I will say is that, you know, and this is something I've observed from watching some colleagues go down a kind of rabbit hole path of transgender rights and the kind of transphobic movement can sometimes bleed into conservatism in other areas.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Like I have seen some disquiet expressed online by constituents who are maybe a little bit annoyed that she ran under a Labour Party platform, didn't run as an independent, and then just a couple of months after the election has now resigned the whip. after having run under a Labour Party banner and secured herself, you know, potentially a five-year salary as an MP, as a Labour MP.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Like, I have seen some of that disquiet expressed and I can completely understand that frustration. So next week, Parliament's back in session.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Not like... I'm excited from the perspective of like, we actually need some stuff to be done.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
You know, I mean, these just been... It's been so many years of stasis. And now we actually need some stuff to get done. And we need to get a look at what Rachel Reeves is putting in the autumn statement. Because we need to actually get a look at what Starmer's plan is for the country. Because it does feel a bit like he won the election. And now what?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
They haven't spent loads of time in Parliament. No, that's right. But I think... he came to power with a lot of energy and said, you know, we're going to be recalling Parliament, we're going to get legislation done. And we haven't really seen a huge amount of evidence of that. So now that Parliament is back in session, no excuses for the Labour Party.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
They're also going to be facing, in Rishi Sunak, I imagine somebody who's pretty toothless because, you know, I'm sure he will start bringing up all the clothes and stuff.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
At the same time as these reforms were happening to the welfare system, the coalition government introduced new policies that it said would get more people into work with punitive measures introduced for those deemed to not meet the conditions of their universal credit payments.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Don't forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Thanks to senior producer James Tyndale and assistant producer Mae Robson.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Thanks to our engineer, Ryan McBeath.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
For example, in the searching for work category, claimants are required to spend 35 hours a week searching for jobs, which, as anyone that's ever been out of work before knows, is a pretty awful task.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
When introducing the policy in 2013, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Ian Duncan Smith, who some listeners from a couple of months ago may remember as someone we described as the principal cause of politically induced vaginal dryness.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
But he said that the introductions of sanctions would end the UK's something for nothing culture, a phrase which I hope to contextualise why we deemed him a cause of politically induced vaginal dryness.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Last week, we made a call out for experiences of the benefits system and we've had so many responses. What's probably not surprising to anyone listening, however, is that none of them were positive stories. So first, we'd just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who wrote in, and we're very sorry about the difficulties you've been going through.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
While we can't address everyone's experiences directly, we've tried to work as many of your contributions into the episode as we can while keeping you anonymous. We'd also like to remind you, if you feel your voices aren't being heard by the system, you can contact your MP directly to make your case. We've put links in the show notes for how to do that.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So joining us now to discuss how the government can start to fix the benefits system is Caroline Selman, Senior Research Fellow at the Public Law Project, and John Pring, the founder and editor of Disability News Service and the author of The Department, How Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence. Thank you so much, Caroline and John, for joining us today.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So you put something else on that's aimed at the exact opposite of the target demographic.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Yeah, it's a thing. There was a long history of when a big action movie was released, distributors would release a rom-com as well because they were traditionally seen as being split audiences. This was visceral counter-programming. This was... pretty woman coming out on the same weekend as Con Air.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
The Department for Work and Pensions, which is the government department that's kind of behind all of the benefits and the way the benefits are handed out, it Given what you've just said, is that evidence that the Department for Work and Pensions is not fit for purpose and that it's actually, is it fundamentally broken?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
John, can you just define what you mean when you say violence? Is that specifically the sanctions that people are facing?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
This was not a Barbenheimer. I cannot stress this enough. This was not Kumarvative. This was definitely not Kumarvative as a weekend.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
We've actually had a note in from a former work coach at the DWP who said that there was an insistence from management that sanctions would come naturally, which this person notes was true, but didn't consider the reality and complexity of people's situations.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So when sanctions were inevitably placed on claimants, this person notes that it broke all trust in the relationships that they'd been trying to build.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
Caroline, from the sort of legal side and the people that you've been dealing with in terms of pushing back on this kind of stuff, is that something that rings true with your experience, this idea that the system was designed not to actually make an assessment, but designed to essentially facilitate sanctions to be placed on people?
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
I genuinely, I genuinely don't know. I don't know whether it's possible to wear like red tweed trousers and Andre 3000 t-shirt. I don't know if that's the way in which you would dress for both of those things, but I suspect there is not a huge crossover in the people attending. my show and the Tory party conference unless they're doing a prank.
Pod Save the UK
Is Britain’s benefits system broken? w/ Caroline Selman and John Pring
So look, some of the situations here can be incredibly unique and there is a real problem with a one size fits all sort of policy with a lot of these assessments. So we've actually had something come in from a listener who told us about unexpectedly needing to become a carer for two children whilst undertaking a PhD. Now, PhD stipends are a non-taxable income.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
But don't worry, there's promises of sunshine and rainbows ahead. I'm Nish Kumar.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Then it was a quid pro quo. It wasn't just that he loves the Labour Party.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
That's what he said.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
He keeps saying all he wants to do is, you know, deliver a Labour government to power. And that's why he keeps on giving them... I don't fully see how this plays into Keir Starmer having different glasses. That doesn't fully... I mean, he has to be able to read.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And you love blue light.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Zoe's one of the few people that's pro blue light.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So he's promising everything with the kitchen sink there, which is at least a nice change from you will all have to consume each other's flesh as things get steadily worse in this country, which is sort of in the previous line. What did you make of it, Zoe? Was the tone of the conference in general in line with Starmer's speech a little bit more hopeful?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
This is how you engage a millennial audience. Mario Kart references. This is something we can all understand.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Now, one of the consistent lines trotted out by the government throughout the Garm drama is that our politics relies on donations. Well, that might be true right now, but should it? After the break, we're going to find out.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Pleasure. Is it odd to be someone who's summoned to discuss corruption?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Have you been surprised by the nature of the first couple of weeks of office and the scandal around these donations or the clothing and free tickets acceptance?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Not everybody thinks this stinks. Here's ex-footballer Gary Neville defending the Prime Minister in this clip from ITV.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Yeah, change is not always positive.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And also in the book, you point out that that has real-world consequences for the government because the Moody's, the credit ratings agency, that's actually part of why they've downgraded Britain's credit rating or a factor in it, which obviously makes government borrowing harder.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So the book is titled Good Chaps, which comes from this good chaps theory of government, recalling a time where the people around the country were considered to be people who did the right thing instinctively without the need for explicit rules. And
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
We're now sort of... It particularly highlights a kind of 21st century problem, but particularly post-2010, where the lack of an explicit need for rules is being tested to its kind of breaking point. Can you pinpoint a moment where things start to go wrong?
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Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I mean, that didn't always prove to be the case for a couple of pretty high-profile people.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
We've got a stacked show for you today. Later, we're taking a second look at Starmer's Garm drama and finding out how money infected our politics with a very special guest. But first, we're joined by the wonderful Zoe Grunwald to get you up to speed on what happened at this week's Labour Party conference. Hello, Zoe.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So it's not necessarily his donation specifically and what quid pro quo he might be getting.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And they're the most vulnerable group.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
COVID runs riot.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So we talked about Frank Hester already, for people who don't remember the It emerged that he said in 2019 that looking at Diane Abbott, I quote, makes you want to hate all black women and that she should be shot. He gave them over £10 million in the past.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Yeah, that's right. So he's added, he's given them a further £5 million just before the general election. As far as I know, they haven't returned any of that money.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
It also should be noted that Labour has accepted donations from mega donors. Nothing in the region of that.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And then, so there's also this, the largest ever donation of £4 million came from a Cayman Islands registered hedge fund, Quadrature, which holds interest in fossil fuels, private health firms, arms manufacturers and asset managers. And donations like this have to be declared, obviously, but they aren't necessarily declared immediately.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So in this case, it was received on the 28th of May this year, but was only declared by Labour two weeks ago. I mean, is it too cynical to suggest that's a deliberate?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
It's amazing how even in an era of 24-hour news, it's still dropping something at 7pm on a Friday.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So, Simon, something that government ministers have been repeating over the last week is that our politics relies on donations. That phrase keeps recurring. How true is this?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Well, one of the things we've been talking about the last couple of weeks is unpopular policies that you like to get across. And those have ranged from the serious, which is, you know, reforming the capital gains tax system and council tax, to the frivolous, which is Coco forcing people who own dogs to have a license to own the dogs.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I think you've seen Coco's unpopular policy and raised it to a level. Yeah, yeah, hold my drink. Simon is now, you're next. The sequel to Good Chaps are going to be Bad Dogs.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So you'll go after political corruption, but not dog owners.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I mean, in a way, this is sort of part of the concluding chapter of the book. Like this, in some ways, could be the most unpopular policy that we've discussed.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
We've paid sort of roughly around 25 pence per registered voter towards political parties, but taking it up to two pounds from every citizen, creating this 130 million pound pot of money, which on the surface we say is sort of, you know, seems completely unpopular. But if you were to make the case that, this could end political donations. Couldn't it actually be an incredibly popular policy?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I'm just saying, were it framed in the right way?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Is there a country that we can look to as a model for remedying these kind of problems? Is there an example that you can think of around the world where they are getting it right, or maybe they've changed things in a way that's pushed it in the right direction?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Is another potentially unpopular idea... making sure that MPs get paid more. I mean, I can see how difficult that would be to make as a case. But what we also want to do is, and I mean, part of the thing the book highlights as well is, you know, the good chaps principle of government was based on this idea that a lot of the people, a lot of these good chaps were themselves independently wealthy.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And it wasn't necessarily, there wasn't a salary that they were necessarily relying on in ministerial terms. In terms of getting the best calibre of politicians and also ensuring that, you know, we, you know, we encourage as many people from as wide a social base as possible to go into politics. And then once they're in the job, they're not reliant on second jobs and second salaries.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Is there an argument for paying MPs more?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Chicken feed, I think, is the phrase that was reported he used about the salary.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Yeah. And it creates that disconnect, isn't it? Because suddenly, if you live and work in a place where people are earning four times your salary, it can, you know... Or more.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Before you go, we have to ask Simon, I know you can't be bought, but if you could be, would you take Taylor Swift or Arsenal tickets?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
He cannot be bought, folks. The book is fantastic. It's available now. Simon, thank you so much for joining us on Podside for the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Such an interesting conversation.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
What would be your dream backhander? What's your dream event backhander?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I don't know what Bowdoin is, but I enjoyed the rhythm of the joke. I can't be bought. I cannot be bought. Unless someone gives me the numbered white album from the first pressing, I can be bought very easily. We are absolutely sure that you will all have a lot of interesting reactions to what Simon Cooper said.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
So if you have any thoughts about political donations, and especially about this idea of £2 per taxpayer as a way of raising the funds to finance political parties, as a way of cutting off the influence of donations, how do you feel about that? Is it an absurd thing to ask people when we're already going through a cost of living crisis? It's a fascinating question.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Also, we would like to know the things you could be bribed with. Yeah. So if you have any of those, please email us in at psuk at producedlistening.co.uk.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
No, not these guys. These, everyone's got a price. Even these, no offence, do-gooders.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Even this pack of fair trade do-gooders. And that's it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. And we want to hear your thoughts. Email us at psuk at reducedlistening.co.uk.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Pod Save the UK is a reduced listing production for Crooked Media.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Our theme is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
The executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Dan Jackson and Madeleine Herringer, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Fresh from conference?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Unfresh from conference. A bit tired from conference. How was it?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I was pretty disgusted by what he said, particularly about what he said in conjunction with the riots.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
As a person of color who lives in this country, was born in this country, and who has had their relationship with this country very strongly tested by the events of the last decade and especially, to be honest, by the events of the last couple of months, I feel he's missed a moment of national leadership as the Prime Minister and particularly as a Labour Prime Minister.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I think the attempt to smash the link between what happened this summer and the ongoing ratcheting up of rhetoric against migrants, refugees and immigrant communities in this country was a missed opportunity that I think... he has not fully calculated the political fallout of that. And it's a fallout that will affect ordinary people of colour in the street.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Because if you don't make the link between the ratcheting up of hostility and what happened in the summer, it is effectively an act of gaslighting by a white politician. to minority communities in this country. I was personally profoundly disgusted by those remarks.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And, you know, again, we can talk about bits of the speech that I thought certainly pointed towards a more humane and, frankly, pragmatic asylum policy. But that specific section... it made me personally very, very angry and upset.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
It's very fine people on both sides. It's on the continuum of very fine people on both sides.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
You're absolutely at the core of it saying these people had a point. And you're saying that, you know, if you're saying that these people who smashed up businesses and targeted mosques, that there isn't a relationship between them ratcheting up, you're fucking lying to me. You're literally looking me in the face and telling me that two plus two is five.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Yeah, I mean, it's worth giving a listen to last week's episode with Zoe Gardner. We talked a bit about Selma cosying up to George Maloney and seeing what direction this immigration policy is going to take and how it's going to be shaped. And one of the other things Starmer was keen to emphasise was a crackdown on benefit fraud.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
It can be braver. They won an election by a landslide.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
There was a protester during the speech who was referring to the dead children of Gaza and Keir Starmer sort of dismissed him with a slightly glib put down, suggesting that he had had a conference pass for the 2019 Labour conference. Elsewhere in the speech, Starmer did say that he would be going to the UN to reaffirm his calls for a ceasefire in the region.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Again, I think that kind of glib tone, given the seriousness of that subject matter, was absolutely not appropriate. And again... if your whole thing is I'm a boring, pencil-pushing civil servant, you can't... Flashes of that kind of glibness fundamentally undermine your message as a serious, diligent man, especially given the severity of the subject that the protester was trying to engage him on.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
The protest of the interrupted speech was abdicating an end to arms sales to Israel, particularly significant given that last week Israel sent thousands of explosive pages to members of the militant group Hezbollah that injured 3,000 people. This week has launched a series of airstrikes into Lebanon. Keir Starmer has been telling UK citizens that now is the time to leave.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
There's the start, as we record on Wednesday, of a potential evacuation operation for UK citizens in the region. Over on our sister pod, Pod Save the World, hosts Tommy Vito and Ben Rhodes deep dive into the attack and discuss Kamala Harris's leadership style on national security and foreign policy. So listen to this week's episode of Pod Save the World wherever you get your podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Now, despite trying to drown out the noise of Starmer's Garm drama, for anyone who didn't hear last week's episode, is what Coco has decided to call the government's first... It's what Coco suggested, OK?
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
They sort of continued to get caught up in it. Zoe, what do you think of this strategy of essentially going, come on... Bridget Philipson said it was hard to turn down. Hard to turn down is a direct quote. Tickets to Taylor Swift.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
You sounded like Ray Winston.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
I can tell from the content of what you're saying you're doing a Marlon Brando impression, but the tone is pure by Winston.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Now you sound like Tom Waits.
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Rachel Reeves also defended her own donations also for clothes from, and again, a direct quote, a friend who wanted to help. Is this wise, Zoe? As an external observer, it does seem, again, if your whole position is we are serious people delivering on public service and we are not like the other guys, we're in public service because we want to serve the public,
Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Is it a wise position to then go, but Taylor Swift, pretty good.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
That is the conversation I'm having and I'm being invited to increasingly few parties as a consequence.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Before you go, we've been asking all the MPs that we've been interviewing since the election. You're obviously in an interesting position because you're, you know, you're an experienced MP, but you're also coming into this parliament for the first time as an independent. It's a different experience. So I guess the question that we're going to ask you is the question we ask everyone.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Are you having any fun? Are you enjoying yourself?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Now, after the break, we'll be speaking to Tommy Vito, co-host of our sister podcast, Pod Save the World, about the upcoming US elections, what they mean for the international stage, and frankly asking just how fucked we might be.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
This is obviously the NHS's Boaty McBoatface moment. Now, again, I suspect most of you will be familiar with this. If there are any international listeners or viewers that don't remember this, there was a public vote on naming a new boat and the winner was Boaty McBoatface because the British public cannot be trusted to not play the fool. So look, I think there's definitely an argument
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I mean, this is a sort of, this is a sideline issue, but just on the specific issue of Netanyahu, why is the Democratic Party so concerned to offer support to someone who so openly has no respect for it as a political organisation?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Then despite all of this official neutrality, there were news reports just this week that Labour sent 100 staffers over to the US. to help the Democrats canvas in swing states. Now, these are like political groups affiliated to the Labour Party. The Labour Party itself is not directly, I believe, sent over staffers.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Republicans have expressed their outrage at the plans, and Elon Musk took to his own website, Twitter, to accuse Labour of illegal election interference. If there's one thing Elon Musk does know, it's election interference, really, based on his plan to, I think, bribe individual Republican voters. Correct. So, I mean... Is this election interference?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
to be made that it is a good thing that reforms of the NHS start by a consultation with the public who use it. There will be people listening to this and watching this that will have very specific experiences of the NHS that they think would be useful for the government to hear in terms of improving the situation and outcomes for patients.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Tobi, you're a sports fan. You'll be familiar with rope-a-dope. The Labour Party has just been gone full Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
It was a fighting tactic Muhammad Ali employed when he fought George Foreman in the Rubble in the Jungle. He was older than Foreman and so he leant back on the ropes and let Foreman essentially punch himself out. So I'm suggesting the Labour Party essentially let the Conservative Party tire themselves out by being in government for 14 years.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
It was a brilliant log. It was a brilliant log, God.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
No, friend.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
The thing that... The Queen got iPod. I thought it was Gordon Brown that got iPod and some old DVDs.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
The only thing that strikes me as strange about this is I don't really understand why we're not talking about the rollout of the Labour Party's plan for the NHS that it's been building up. in its period in opposition. I'm slightly concerned as to why...
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Germany, the AfD. Yeah. Is there... Is there also some cooperation on wealth, like international tax stuff?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Because the reality is that with multinational companies existing in the way that they do, and especially with a lot of tech companies existing as the way that they do, essentially sort of registered kind of in countries that are favourable to their tax arrangements, but still doing business in our individual countries and opting out of the tax system. Is that something we could also cooperate on?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
He just played a version of Hallelujah and I thought, I think this might bring Leonard Cohen back from the dead. Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
there was no specific plan for day one of a Labour government and what it would do to start to deal with some of the problems in the National Health Service.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Charles's first tour took him to Sydney, where he and his wife Camilla were said to be touched by projections of their images upon Sydney Opera House before heading south to the capital, Canberra, for a state reception at Parliament House. Things were going swimmingly for the Windsors until a surprise interruption, as you can hear in this clip from The Guardian.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Her time in the Greens was mired by a scandal that alleged that she was in a relationship with a member of a biker gang. And she controversially campaigned against Australia's failed Indigenous voice referendum, which would have established a presence for Indigenous Australians within the Australian parliamentary system.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Please go back and check out our Edinburgh Fringe episode with Tom Ballard to hear more on that if you haven't heard it already.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
So the... First solution I would have thought is an immediate cash injection into the National Health Service. And the idea that we're starting from a position of, okay, we need to make a list of everything that's wrong.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
She keeps saying you're not our king as well.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And it's, you know, listen, as a British person, Do I find it strange that our king is a king of Australia? Yes. Incredibly strange. I find the idea of the Commonwealth genuinely strange. You know, as both a child of Britain and also, I guess, a child of one of the countries in said Commonwealth, I do find the whole enterprise quite strange.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Lydia Thorpe's protest doesn't come as a great time for Keir Starmer and Ted Downing Street because they are actively trying to avoid discussion of reparations for slavery and the actions of the British Empire at the upcoming meeting of the leaders of the Commonwealth in Samoa that King Charles is also due to attend.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
The UK has stated that there'll be no apology over the UK's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
We should say this is in spite of some pressure from backbench Labour MPs. Labour MP Bill Ribeiro-Addy has said that the UK has a moral and legal duty to address historic injustices. And one of the former guests on the show, Clive Lewis, the MP, pointed out that David Lammy is a son of the Caribbean from Guyana.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And Clive said there are high expectations that he will move the dial in their direction.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
So the NHS is the government's topic of the week, and it's nice to see us focusing on reform and policy as opposed to just talking about how everything's getting worse. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has declared a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the NHS to be reformed, and that's great. But the way that they've gone about it has struck us as being a little strange.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Now, while Labour are resistant to pay slavery reparations, the British government did agree to pay a generous compensation package of £20 million to the slave owners for the loss of their, and I'm very heavily inverting the commas around this word, property, which amounts to about £300 million in today's money. This amounted to some 40% of the Treasury's annual income.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
one of the largest loans in history, and the British taxpayer only finished paying this off in 2015. That is the largest single governmental bailout until the bailout of the banking sector after the 2008 financial crisis. That fact alone should be enough to boil the blood of any right-thinking person.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
It's deeply concerning. Because when does that actually translate to policy? And when does that actually translate to money going into the service? We all know the key problem. I can't imagine how many of those... Public consultations are, we need more money, our hospital doesn't work, we can't get an appointment with our GP. You have to do something in the short term to fix a crisis.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
You know, again, I think that... A lot of our country's historic crimes were not committed on our own soil. And as a consequence, I think we have escaped the kind of accountability that the individual countries of America and Australia maybe haven't in quite the same way. But, you know, these are all British people that are doing this. We have a
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
We had a tendency to say, well, the Australians did X, Y and Z. I mean, I'm sorry, who were the Australians? You know, you're talking about a lot of British people that are involved in that. The Stolen Generation is one of the most brutal and evil policies it's possible to conceive of. It's astonishing.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Yeah. The film Rabbit Proof Fence is one that's worth watching. It's specifically about the Stolen Generation. You know, I'm almost loathe to bring this up, but I do think it's worth discussing just because of the lack of historical education in this country around Britain's role in the slave trade. But the former Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, it's very sweet to say former Conservative MP.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
It's very sweet to say that. The former Conservative MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, was tweeting last week about the slave trade. And he said this, they ought to pay us for ending slavery. It is not something any other country had done and we were motivated by Christian charity. Now, the only reason I'm highlighting that... I really don't want to bring any more attention to this man.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
The reason I'm highlighting it is actually because... it shows the lack of historical education around the slave trade. There is a total gap in our knowledge. The British complicity in the slave trade and Britain's participation in it is not something we talk about enough.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And just the very fact that he said they should pay us suggests that he has absolutely no working... I mean, this is a generous interpretation. He has no working knowledge that the British government did bail out slave owners in this country. It really is something that is massively under-discussed and...
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
To be charitable in interpreting Rhys Mogg's comments, I'm going to say that that's evidence of a profound lack of historical education in this country around the slave trade. I should also say that somebody, there is a television company and a television streaming platform that is making a documentary about the Rees-Mogg's.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Like a Kardashian star. And the reason I know about that is they requested to come and see my show at the Edinburgh Fringe. They wanted Rees-Mogg. This is absolutely true. They wanted Rees-Mogg to sit in my show. Why? And they wanted to interview me about how I felt about him. in that moment. I mean, I would love to tell you the content of the email I sent my agent when she asked me.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I mean, she sent me that not in the spirit of a genuine professional request. She sent me that in the spirit of can you believe this shit? And the... A volley of expletives I unleashed at that point. Wow. Yeah, they wanted to film him watching my show and then they wanted to film like an interview with me afterwards with him.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I've genuinely no idea. A friend of mine said you should have, you know, had him in there and given him what for, but he is congenitally shameless.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
You can't embarrass someone that has no sense of shame. And I just think the immediate project from, you know, parts of the media in this country to rehabilitate him. And the consistent pattern of taking figures like Rhys Mogg, who, you know... did say that people in the Grenfell Tower would have survived if they'd been smart enough to exit their buildings early.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
That is something he said in the lead up to the 2019 general election. He did attend a dinner at a society that is trying to encourage voluntary repatriation of black British people. These are not people that we should be indulging in the kind of entertainment sector. That's just, that's not really related to anything other than I've just been incredibly annoyed about it.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
But also you can't shame a shameless person. It's the old Lyndon Johnson quote of, there's no point in wrestling with a pig because you get dirty and the pig likes it. And Rhys Mogg is the piggest pig that's ever pigged. So, I mean, I just think that the sort of rehabilitation of this man is absolutely unbelievable. And also, buy a ticket! Yeah. If that's your problem, buy a ticket.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
If you're that interested.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
No, I mean, this would be a reverse VIP service.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Yeah, really abused. Abused to all of the confines of the law.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Don't forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you've subscribed to our YouTube channel.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer May Robson, with additional support from our multi-track fellow Derek Armat.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Thanks to our engineer Ryan McBeath.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
To find out, we're joined by former leader of the Labour Party and the independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK. Great to have you with us. Nice to be with you. So, Jeremy, what is life like for you outside of the party that you were a member of for over 40 years? Over 50 years. Over 50?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I'm not going to press you for further clarification on the phrase high times.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Listen, if Evis was there, we know what kind of high times those times were. After the last decade and a half, how did it feel to see the party that you have been part of for so much of your life and led come to power in the election?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
The government will announce spending plans next week and Rachel Reeves has promised that there will be no return to austerity. But at the same time, there's a string of mixed messages about whether there is going to be spending increases or whether the purse strings are going to be tightened. How are you feeling about the direction of travel in the budget?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And what would you be hoping to see Rachel Reeves announced next week?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And I'm Nish Kumar. And today we're speaking to the independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, to understand what's next for the left.
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Yes, I mean, in something that any of us could have seen happening, the proposals that were coming in thick and fast were different flavours of nonsense. One of them included putting beer on tap in hospitals. Free cinema tickets from the NHS. Waffles for every meal. Just some of the highlights from day one of the consultation. Development of an alchemical panacea is an incredible piece of policy.
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Can I just ask, just before we move on, I'm thinking particularly of the 2017 manifesto. That was a very closely run election. Do you now maybe reflect that there's part of you that thinks maybe my instincts were correct, that an over-detailed document, whilst it appealed to people that are disposed to vote for the Labour Party, might have maybe put off some undecided voters?
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
It does seem to be a contradiction in terms. Being a grandee doesn't seem very left-wing.
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Well, this is linguistic communism.
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
I'm not sure anybody would get behind the proposal for mandatory euthanasia to fill up hospital beds, but the suggestion to legalise recreational cannabis might make Cocoa happy.
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
So wait, so what we're talking about at the moment, you've got the new group with four independent MPs known as the Independent Alliance, which is not an insignificant number. You're the fifth largest block in the House of Commons and are tied with Reform UK and the DUP. So you've got that Independent Alliance.
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How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
And now you're also making these consultations around the country, which you said you want to be democratic, accountable and be about grassroots action that then translates itself into specific policy ideas on areas like housing and mental health. But then is there then a logical conclusion of this voting bloc with these grassroots groups that are generating ideas?
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Does that then translate itself into a new political party under the name collective?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And apart from donations to Labour, Lord Ali has also gifted the Stalmers tailored clothes, glasses for the Prime Minister and a personal shopper for Victoria Stalmer, who's the Prime Minister's wife.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And where does the sort of Albania side of this fit into this conversation?
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
It's been a while since we've had a new gate. And by a while, I mean probably three months or something. This gate, I think, might be the lowest status gate of them all. What are we calling it? Freebie gate? Dress gate?
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
In terms of Keir Starmer and what he's hoping to learn or glean, I mean, that all sounds pretty concerning and something that we should actively not be seeking to emulate.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
It so rarely takes place that the conversation about this actually factors in the fact that we are talking about people. And we're talking about people who are fleeing home countries. Nobody leaves their home lightly. Right.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And it is really important to understand that the reason that these people are leaving and undertaking these incredible journeys is because they're coming from places that are themselves incredibly dangerous.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
If we talk about migration more generally, there's a lot of statistics that get thrown about. So last week, the Telegraph was reporting that what they deem mass low-skilled migration is is a financial disaster for Britain, costing the taxpayer £456,000 by the time they reach 81 years of age.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And this is all statistics that they're citing from a report by the fiscal watchdog, the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility. What do you make of that headline and that story?
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I believe our governments have done some interesting sorting out in Afghanistan and Syria. We've had some interesting attempts at sorting the situation out there.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yes, and also a story that's broken overnight is that Keir Starmer has actually received more in tickets and gifts than any other recent party leader, a total now topping £100,000. And Starmer told reporters that he is a massive Arsenal fan, but can't go into the stands because of security reasons. Therefore, if I don't accept a gift of hospitality, I can't go to a game.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Is that why you go on shows? Because I first became aware of you years and years ago through Twitter. I would watch you really admiringly have conversations on news programmes, political discussion programmes, where it would seemed like you were basically asked questions like, migrants, yes or no? Like it had a real like Chris Morris day-to-day brass eye kind of energy.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
But do you still find value in that? Because is your perspective that you might get through to somebody who otherwise might not have access to actual facts about migrants and migration?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Hi, this is Podsafe the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And you could say, well, bad luck. But he's also arguing that never going to an Arsenal game again because I can't accept hospitality is pushing it a bit far. So we've got this sort of, what are you calling it? Garment drama or whatever it is.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Before we let you go, it would be remiss of me not to ask, of an expert and somebody who spends a lot of time looking at this kind of thing, what, from your perspective, should our policy on migration and refugees look like? If you were hired by Kit Starmer tomorrow, how would you reshape our policy?
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
It's a huge question.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Migrants good or bad?
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
No, no.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
He's a huge fan of this podcast.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thanks, Zoe.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
As in, the producers described it as a deluge. A deluge. A downpour. This has fired your imaginations in ways we could not have anticipated. So firstly, Coco's suggestion, which I thought was an absolute... bananas decision from you to even talk about this, was a license on animals. But it actually went down incredibly well with a lot of the listeners.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
So I guess it's not that unpopular in the end. But we did have one contrary opinion that we thought would be worth sharing. Megan wrote in to say that the UK actually used to have a license for owning dogs. And that at the time, Batsy Dogs and Cats Home sometimes have to cover the fees to stop animals from being separated from their families. So we thought it was worth considering a license
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
The team here has dug a little deeper into it and they found that dog licensing was a policy from the Victorian era that was scrapped in 1987, where at the time it cost a meagre 37 pence. However, when it was first introduced in 1867, it was relatively costly at seven shillings and sixpence, which was roughly equivalent to a day's wages at the time.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Also... I did not know this. Northern Ireland actually still has dog licensing. It costs £12.50 a year to have a dog license in Northern Ireland. So you're not actually alone in this. The RSPCA had previously called for a reintroduction of animal licenses, saying that in 2017, the mandatory microchipping that was introduced in 2016 didn't go far enough.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
to solve the problems that come with a wide ownership of dogs, including dog health and welfare, antisocial behavior involving dogs, dog bite incidents, stray dogs, population issues, and risks to human health. And that a license could help to raise money to deal with this issue. The RSPCA has also noted that there are substantial arguments against the idea.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
For example, the fact that councils already have a lot of things to worry about. But listen, anyway, thank you so much for writing in, Megan. It turns out your idea is not as controversial as I thought.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah, I think that if your whole brand is integrity and you're not really offering anything else to the country, I think that that is probably a problem if there are questions being asked about integrity. your integrity, even if it totally falls within the rules. And all they really have talked about is how things are actually going to get worse for a lot of people living in Britain.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
So there are people who are basically trying to cheat the system by putting their houses on sale for prices they know no one will pay for them to get out of this. Yes. I think this is a really great policy. I remember when this got introduced in Wales and it was to solve this problem of...
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Basically, from what I was told by Welsh people that I know, basically to solve the problem of English people buying second homes in the beautiful Welsh countryside and then leaving them unoccupied for large proportions of the year. And I think it is a really, really interesting thing to look at. It feels like very, very sensible policy.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I think with policy, there's always going to be loopholes that are going to be exploited by unscrupulous people. Yes. try and crack down on those loopholes as much as humanly possible. But I do think that it is, you know, anything that's unpopular with estate agents has got to be a good thing for the rest of us.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Continuing on the topic of council tax, our listener Adam wrote in to say that we should switch out council tax for a property tax that targets owners over residents, knowing that it's a form of wealth tax that is easily enforceable. Now, Adam's suggestion is actually backed up by Fairer Share, which is a campaign to tear up council tax. and moved to a proportional property taxation system.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
So this organisation advocates for applying a simple flat rate of 0.48% to the current value of your property, which would actually bring in more money for councils than the current system. About 75% of households would actually pay less money compared to the current council tax system. Beresha also argues that it would increase the supply of housing, might make it easier for people to buy.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
So I don't know how unpopular this policy actually is when you get into the nuts and bolts of it. When he was a guest on this show, we spoke about this with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson. It's an idea that makes a lot of sense. And it's an idea that I'm certain would obviously be unpopular with landlords. But as Paul noted, these things always have pressure on both sides.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
For instance, landlords argue if they were the ones to be paying the tax, It might disincentivize them from investing in property, leading to a lower supply in the rental market. But if you're generating more revenue, maybe councils could build more council homes, which would again help with a situation that we've got in this country, a crisis in housing and the lack of affordable housing.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I think, again, anything that targets the people with the broadest shoulders and can bring in more money for the government that can be reinvested in...
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And, you know, people are going to lose their winter fuel credit this winter. And they've told us that that's necessary because we need to tighten our belts and the country's finances are in a difficult condition and we need to be responsible and we need to be, we might have to suffer through this winter. A man telling you,
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
affordable housing has got to be a good thing it's absolutely fascinating there's a lot of countries around the world that pay a property tax instead of a council tax and it's something that several economists now are starting to argue that we should be factoring in and at the very least we need to be thinking about a reform of our council tax system
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Another topic we had a lot of engagement around was wages. And a few of you had some ideas around a maximum wage. Both Cathy and Daniel wrote in to propose a maximum wage that is a multiplier of the minimum wage. And that would mean that anyone earning over the maximum wage would be subject to a 100% wealth tax. Now, this is, again, very interesting.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And we turn to the history books, looking to, of all places, the United States of America, that bastion of wealth distribution and borderline communist economics. I love this for us. In 1942, the Second World War pushed the American government to introduce some incredibly high taxes.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
The top marginal tax rate was set at 90%, where it remained until the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s brought it down to 70% and later brought down by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to 50%. According to Sam Pizzigati, who's the co-editor of inequality.org, this actually had a profound effect on inequality.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
In the 1970s, the top 1% share of the pie was 10% of US income versus a quarter in 1928. For some context, according to a 2021 study by Credit Suisse, the top 1% in the UK owns more than 50% of the country's total wealth. Now, obviously, this would be unpopular with certain people. My question for you is, do we care about their feelings?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I think that there's a real problem in terms of we're facing a series of different crises and certainly underpinning a lot of it is a lack of money being pumped into the country. via the government and how do you raise that money? How do you get money into the health sector? How do you get money into building affordable housing?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
How do you get money into our infrastructure which is crumbling all around us? Why are we not considering radical solutions? Why when we consider tough choices do we only think about
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
to tighten your purse strings whilst wearing expensive glasses at a private box at the Arsenal game. At least surely the Labour Party has to acknowledge that the optics of that are suboptimal. And I'm not sure what the conceivable defence is. And I'll tell you who else is not sure what the conceivable defence is. Every Labour MP that has been sent out
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
There is another thing that we asked you to write in about. And again, I would describe the response to this as being unprecedented.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Off the back of your fixation with a retelling of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott's visit to the Highgate Cemetery to see the grave of Karl Marx, which, according to Diane, Jeremy took her on as a romantic night out, we asked you to send in your own very painful left-wing dates.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
It was still supposed to be a date.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I think I meant date night as a catch-all term.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Cemetery at night. Breaking into Highgate Cemetery at night to look at Karl Marx's grave.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah. Well, not suggestions. We've had some wonderful, some absolute horror stories. So let's start with Ferdinand, which I'm reliably informed is not his real name, who's written in.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
So to set the context, in the early 2010s, Ferdinand was living and studying in a German city with a couple of flatmates, one of which was one of the local organizers of the Blockupy movement, which is a bit similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Through this flatmate, he met a girl. And now I'm picking up the story from what Ferdinand has sent us.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
For our third date, she thought it was a splendid idea to join the Blockupy protests in Frankfurt, driven entirely by base desires and exactly zero political fervor. I followed her straight into a street brawl with the police, getting surrounded for multiple hours by cops in riot gear while stones and bottles fly overhead. Wasn't exactly my idea of a romantic afternoon.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
To this day, that date has been one of my most memorable ones and thankfully also the only one that has ended in criminal charges.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I also really appreciate the honesty of Ferdinand. Okay, not his real name. To say that it was entirely driven by base desires and zero percent political forever. Imagine having the horn so much that you were willing to brawl with the police.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Well, I'm assuming it wasn't based on the fact that Fernad's written it. Karen has written it as well and said, when I was 16, I found my first boyfriend at an environmental activist training camp. Fantastic. Fantastic.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
right in the middle of the brand of our listeners it was long distance relationship but in spring he took the train for two hours to come see me and go to the cinema I picked a movie I was keen to see as it had great reviews for its acting and it was still in theatres we watched Downfall
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah, 16-year-old me looked at the German movie about the last days of Hitler and thought, first proper date material. We somehow stayed together for six years after that. I don't think I was permitted to pick a movie on my own, though. Downfall as a date movie.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Fine.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Horror movies are quite sort of, also horror adjacent movies are quite common date things, right?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
It has a happy ending. What? The bad guy dies?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Podshag the UK was an ill-advised joke we made about setting up a dating service for our listeners that I say was ill-advised because it led to a deluge of people sending in their dating profiles to us.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
like lambs to a slaughter to do the media rounds. Here's just one of them. This is Dame Andrew Eagle on Tuesday being interviewed by Times Radio's Stig Abel.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Which we had to very quickly clamp down on. But yes, thank you very much for coming to the tour show in Glasgow. It was a lot of fun. I take painfully left-wing date material as a huge badge of honour.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yes, the tour rolls on. I am all over the UK for the next two and a half months. So if you are interested in a painfully left-wing date, By all means, tickets available at listomart.co.uk.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Don't forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thanks to senior producer James Tyndale and assistant producer Mae Robson.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thanks to our engineer, Ryan McBeath.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
This is a huge marketing opportunity for Specsavers. For international listeners, Specsavers is a high street brand that sells glasses. Other brands that sell glasses are available. But their advertising slogan is, you should have gone to Specsavers. And this is... If someone at Specsavers is not immediately...
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
getting the Canva open and knocking up some graphic design pictures of Keir Starmer under should have gone to Swag Savers.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Threads dreads.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Those comments aren't so helpful. He earns 150 grand a year. You know, like you can afford a pair of glasses. And the other thing that I think is also really interesting here is that Keir Starmer is learning that a lot of the... centre-right or right-wing newspapers that might have lined up behind him, their support for him was incredibly temporary and shallow.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And, you know, maybe trying to curry favour with the Mail and The Sun might have worked in the short term, but I think he's learning very, very quickly that that does not last. And maybe some of those editorial pieces he wrote for The Sun newspaper were a waste of his fucking time.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
You just introduced it as you've come up with a new prefix for date.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah. So look, we're going to be exploring the topic of how money infects our politics next week with a very special guest. So if you have any questions for us to ponder when it comes to the way our politics and gifts collide, send them in to PSUK at reducelistening.co.uk. And if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so that you can catch our episode next Thursday.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Right, yes. From Starmer.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I mean, he... The guy is active on social media. Listen, I think we have been somewhat critical of the Labour government so far, and somewhat critical of the Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer. It is probably useful to acknowledge that some positive things are happening. And I spoke to some people that work in the renewable energy sector that I've worked with in the past. And
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
they did say that there's been a marked tone in what their engagement is with the current government. They've gone from a sort of lobbying mode into delivery mode. And so there is a real sense that there has been a sea change in the way that renewables are being dealt with by the government, which is positive.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I don't mind that.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah, we absolutely could do that.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Corbyn gave the opening address, but a source close to him told The Guardian that his attendance was not an official endorsement. and that he had attended the meeting to listen to and share a variety of views about the way forward for the left.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
We've spoken about this in various iterations on this show, about what the left of British politics does now that it seems to be in large part frozen out by the Labour leadership. And is the way forward actually for left-wing Labour MPs and MPs
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Okay, so for the sake of the listeners that might not be familiar with Starmer's Garm Drama, the basics of it are Keir Starmer has been taking flack in the press this week for making a late declaration of gifts received from Labour's mega-donor, Lord Waheed Ali, who's given over £700,000 to the party...
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
the sort of independent left-wing MPs and perhaps the Green Party to form a kind of progressive alliance and essentially create a political counterbalance to reform, which is, you know, the sort of latest iteration that previously has been called the UK Independence Party. It was at one point called the Brexit Party. But the Brexit Party reform and the UK Independence Party, whatever, you know,
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
fucking latest round of branding that thing is called. I can't believe it's not racist or whatever it's called. They have successfully exerted an influence on the Conservative Party and pushed the Conservative Party in a particular direction of travel. That is absolutely what Nigel Farage seems to be doing at the moment as well.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And so would it be productive, therefore, for there to be a counterbalance to that with a group of left-wing MPs? I mean, it's a really interesting thing, right? Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
This is always the fear. What you're saying is exactly the thing that we're all most scared of.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
But, you know... If this party, which, you know, could be comprised of the independent MPs, then forms a voting bloc with the Green MPs and Labour MPs that have lost the whip, it could have an actual tangible voting influence.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Yeah, I think that's always been the fear because ultimately, for all we talk about the pressure exerted by Nigel Farage, at general elections, he's only taken votes of the Conservative Party when he's chosen to. And a huge factor in Boris Johnson's 2019 election win is the fact that Brexit Party candidates were stood down to make way for Conservative Party votes.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
And this sort of progressive wing of British politics has often tied its underpants in various different nautical knots over whether we should think more technically. Whereas the right of British politics has often embraced tactical voting very, very enthusiastically.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Now, there's some tricky topics coming up in this next segment, so please consider this a warning. We'll be discussing cruelty to our fellow man and brief mentions of self-harm and suicide.
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Starmer is under pressure to tackle irregular migration across the channel from France, where eight people died last Sunday after a boat capsized. But the visit has caused a stir among some Labour backbenchers and also people with brains. The Labour MP for Liverpool, Merseyside, Kim Johnson, told The Guardian...
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Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
that it was disturbing to see Starmer, and this is a direct quote, seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government. There's also been broader criticism. For example, Amnesty International have called their plans to build migrant detention centres in Albania unworkable, harmful and unlawful.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I imagine American listeners will be losing their minds laughing at the trifling amounts of money, at the absolutely zero amounts of money involved in British politics. But yeah, £700,000 makes him a kind of mega donor. Yes.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
So joining us now on Pod Save the UK to chat through what Starmer is hoping to learn from Maloney's ruthless immigration policies. is somebody we have wanted to get on the show since the show started, an independent researcher in migration policy, Zoe Gardner. Welcome to PSUK, Zoe.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I said this to you off mic, I'll say it to you on mic, describe you as having one of the most difficult jobs in this country, which is trying to have conversations about immigration that are rooted in facts and compassion.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Leaving the D-Day celebrations early to talk about the sacrifice of not having Sky TV.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
You would have been unable to watch my stand-up comedy special, Your Power, Your Control, available now on Sky TV. Or Hold the Front Page, starring me and Joshua Dickham, available on Sky TV. It truly is the tragedy to end all tragedies.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
What? It's completely inexplicable. He also, he sort of left, leaving Keir Starmer essentially there, greeting all the world leaders, essentially already looking like he was there. Cameron was there. Farage was there, presumably because they have to invite people to represent the side that lost on D-Day. So, like, they presumably, like, they needed everybody in there. Liz...
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Now, for our podcast listeners, the... The studio is, I enjoy using this word, so I will, festooned with holiday tat. And I'm assured by our producers that they actually got all of this from a charity shop. No way. I believe so.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Was this, I know that we're talking about all of this chaos and all of the missteps. Was all of it ultimately irrelevant? Was this like just an unwinnable election?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
gear everyone would have been like he's so tough he doesn't need a fucking umbrella there's a very famous picture of Obama like giving a campaign speech I think in the absolutely pouring rain that's sort of used as an example of his like bravery to I guess brave water but yeah I know exactly what you mean it's like
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And on top of everything, we don't even have time to go into... the scandal of one of his closest aides having to resign because he had placed a bet on the date of the election. But in any case, five short weeks after the election was called, it was all over. And even the commentators couldn't quite believe it. Here is Sky News' reaction to the exit polls.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Coco and my mothers listen to this podcast and it's just dawning on me that in two days I'm going to get a text from my mum saying, so what is a bukkake? What is a bukkake?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
It is fine. I'm giving my mum your number list, okay?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Yeah. And I guess in some ways, the biggest story is that Liz Truss lost her seat. I mean, that's kind of unprecedented in recent political history that the most recent prime minister, apart from the one actually running in the election, would lose their seat. But there was Penny Morden, Grant Shapps losing their seat.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Most delightfully for those of us with a slightly longer term view of British political history, Jacob Rees-Mogg losing his seat whilst stood next to a man dressed as baked beans.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Just to be clear, the man dressed as baked beans did not win. Rhys Mogg lost to his Labour opponent. It wasn't just the Labour Party that had a great night. The Liberal Democrats won their most number of seats ever with 72. The Green Party took four seats and six seats went to independents, including the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
You had 412 Jaeger bombs?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I don't know if the tinsel is charity shop or not, but certainly, certainly the Christmas hats are charity shop.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Presumably Rees-Mogg Trust. Surely they were Jagerbomb, Jagerbomb.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I do actually remember the next day, you were, I would say, a little fragile.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
There was another electoral success story that we absolutely should not overlook because it could be one that continues to shape the narrative of politics in this country for years to come. We obviously have to mention the reform success in the election. But before we do that, let's just revisit Nigel Farage getting milkshaked while campaigning in Clacton.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Yes, so that's right. That was Nigel Farage talking about getting milkshaked for a second time, sort of presenting it like it was his own personal Donald Trump ear bandage moment. Unfortunately, Farage went on to win his seat in Clacton.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
We've also just heard the confirmation overnight that the undisputed villain of the year, Elon Musk, is backing reform with speculation of a donation in sort of millions of pounds after there was a meeting between him, Nigel Farage, and the new party treasurer, Nick Candy, at Donald Trump's Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago. That is fairly concerning, right?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Like, Reform won the third largest share of the popular vote, 14.3%. And it's striking that that's about 2% more than the Liberal Democrats, but because of our screwy electoral system, the Lib Dems won more than 14 times the number of seats as reform.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
At least in the midst of it being obviously profoundly funny that the Conservative Party suffered so badly, it potentially is a concern that reform did so well. And I only say that because reform seems to be inviting further political influence from Elon Musk into this country, which I don't think is necessarily something that is beneficial for our democracy.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
So anyway. So we're sat in a studio with, let's face it, a dead guy's Christmas decorations and an equally dead person's Christmas hat. So we've got a range of them.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Starmer assembled his ministerial A-team on his first full day as Prime Minister, confirmed the Rwanda plan was dead and buried and that the money saved from it would be redirected to the government's proposed Border and Security Command, which sounds slightly like it belongs as the name of ITV's next gritty police drama. Exactly.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
By September, we've been treated to the first sort of scandal of this Labour government. You always remember your first. When it came to light that ministers had accepted thousands of pounds worth of gifts that they'd failed to declare. And it did seem for a point like every government minister had spent some time at the Taylor Swift era's tour. Here's Education Secretary Bridget Philipson.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
For listeners, Coco has what I think we would call a fairly traditional Father Christmas hat. A little glam. It's a little glam. It's a little Mark Bolan. Desiree has a sort of spring on top of her head with little things in it. Liz has an actual effigy. Is that the right word of Father Christmas? Visual representation.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Liz, in comparison to previous scandals from the last decade and a half, it was sort of broadly chump change. But does it matter more because Starmer's made such a play about, you know, the Labour Party... dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's in terms of following regulations?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I will say, for listeners of the podcast, I'm struggling to keep up. I have a massive head. and I also have... He means it literally, not in a metaphorical way. Well, I have that as well.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I've got a large head and large hair and I'm struggling to, which I imagine would be a nightmare scenario cleaning up after it.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
one of those. But yeah, I'm trying to keep the hat as visible as possible. We did go into the first Labour budget in 14 years detailing £40 billion in tax rises. It pissed a lot of people off. But even on the Tory benches, and I can't lie, it does still feel good to say this, the opposition were arguing with each other about how to rebuild their party and reverse the disastrous election results.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And I have got the Grinch hat.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
For the Labour government, there was a huge advantage in that the Conservative Party was all over the place because they were still trying to deal with their leadership contest. And as the race proceeded into its penultimate round, Conservative MPs managed to do the funniest thing imaginable and accidentally tactically vote out
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Their favourite candidate, the former Foreign Secretary, James Cleverley. Here's Cleverley's advisor describing what happened on LBC.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Was that the condescension? Good luck. This might be the dirtiest PSUK of all time. It was an almighty cock-up. Liz, it's pretty funny. funny that they tried to tactically engineer the person who would be up against James Cleverley and ended up voting out James Cleverley yeah so the supporters of James Cleverley were trying to guarantee that he was in a run off with Robert Jenrick, I think.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And instead they managed to accidentally overcompensate the other way and end up with him not having enough votes to get through to the final two. So the final two was Jenrick and Kemi Badenov.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Ooh, what a year. What a year.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Liz, we've not actually seen you since the UK election happened. How has it been covering it on Sky News? It's been an interesting first few months for the Labour Party.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
So, look, in the end, of course, Kemi Bader-Dock did win with just over 56% of members' votes and became the first ever black person to lead the Conservative Party.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Liz, just purely looking at this from a. British perspective, the first wave of economic conversations around the budget was it was all going to be about growth.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
That obviously now feels completely compromised because we don't know what Trump's tariffs are going to be and what impact that will have on global trade, which again has a direct impact on the economic growth that's supposed to raise all this extra money for the Treasury to fund our public services. Do you think the Labour Party has figured out how it approaches Donald Trump now.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I mean, last week we had them sort of deploying the royal family. Does anyone within the government have any sense of how to manage the special relationship?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Does he mean literal change? Like is the plan now for there to be more coins? Guys, you've got to fill them jars. Just reverse pickpocketing every person in Britain and putting like two pound coins in everyone's pocket.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I thought there was a certain elegance to the way that you summarised the year in our perception, especially on this podcast, of the Labour Party, which is assuming that there'll be a plan, then finding out there wasn't really a plan, but assuming there'd be a plan for once they were in government, then once they're in government going...
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
The thing that I keep returning to is when West Street announced that there would be a consultation on how to deal with the NHS, and a part of me did go, hold on, why have you not... Not just a consultation, a consultation with the public.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Am I being naive to assume that there should have been a plan and should there not have been a plan that they were rolling out for the NHS?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
It sounds like What you're saying is Starmer's focus has been dealing on with 2017 to 2024, which is a period post Brexit of administrative chaos, elections, chaotic government, corruption in some cases, mismanagement, but not actually handling structural problems that have been much more deep seated and are also at the roots of some of this political instability.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I honestly thought Richard Sunak would be hanging on for dear life until the last possible second.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
There was a discussion had before the record started. Someone learned a new word today, kids. Can you tell? Someone learned a new word today and has managed to shoehorn it, which also sounds like a sexual act. Someone has managed to shoehorn a word that she learned. I'm not going to give away any names. Someone learned a word in the pre-record chat and has managed to get it into the podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Of every song in the canon of popular music in the West, that song is one of the hardest to deliver without any rhythm just because of the vowel sounds. Like it's very naturally. The fact that he has managed to completely extract the rhythm from that is actually genuinely quite impressive. We also had Labour MP Dawn Butler trying her hand at this belter from the So Solid crew.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
It's actually good. I don't always approve of it, but Dawn Butler definitely has bars. I sometimes think it would be patronising to the electorate, but I will say Dawn Butler definitely has bars.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Prosecco does sound like an Italian dissident.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Beyonce's got bigger problems than mine.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Yeah, for the benefit of podcast listeners, the last shot we saw from that music video was Ed Davey looking at something very intently on his phone. We think it was the song lyrics.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
The track is actually in the top 40 right now. If you're feeling particularly liberal, do go and give it a spin. Desiree Birch, Liz Bates, thank you so much for joining us on this show.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Once again, please, Desiree is a fellow stand-up comedian, one of our country's finest stand-up comedians. And I would say operates on a similar level of juvenilia to me and Coco.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I'm thrilled that we have dragged professional journalist Liz Bates down to that level.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And that's it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. We want to hear your thoughts. Email us at psuk at reducedlistening.co.uk.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And do please consider checking out Choose Love to make a difference with the donation. Find the link in our show notes.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
I didn't like how quickly you went to not together. I think we'd have had a lovely old Christmas. Pod Save the UK is a reduced listening production for Crooked Media.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
The executive producers are Anishka Sharma, Madeleine Herringer, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Hard to say at this point. Anyway, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
No. It's what we do.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Yeah, that's right. Like a lot of the things about this government, the assumption wasn't actually working properly. He was talking a big game, but he didn't really have any policies to back it up, apart from his favourite catchphrase of stopping the boats.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
So the Tories' planned Rwanda deportation scheme dominated a lot of the political conversation for months, as it had done in the previous year. And looking back on it, Sunak's confident posturing aged like milk. Here he is making a bet with a man who I'm reliably informed is a journalist, Piers Morgan.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And we've got some very special guests along for the ride. Let's go.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
The Conservative Party also couldn't escape the stench of former Prime Minister Liz Truss. She actually headed to your country, Desiree, to the US.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
to attend a sort of Republican Party's equivalent of Glastonbury that they call CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference. Here's a clip.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
So she definitely didn't do Rishi Sunak any favours, but that wasn't her only awkward moment of the year. She also stormed off the stage after activists unfurled a banner of letters behind her. And perhaps her best moment was when she popped up on Fox News to sell her book. Great to see you. Your thoughts.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Imagine being the strangest person on Fox News at any one time.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Thanks for coming in. Thanks for coming back, Liz.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Called 10 Years to Save the West. And Liz Truss may be the biggest threat to the West since Al-Qaeda shut up, shall bet. Anyway, Charles Spiegel weirdo was hardly the biggest conservative scandal. In March, The Guardian reported that Frank Hester, the Tory party's biggest donor, had told colleagues in 2019 that Diane Abbott makes you want to hate all black women and that she should be shot.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
The return of Liz Bates to the podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
He did apologise, and this is an incredible quote, for being rude, but denied that any of his rudeness was anything to do with her race or gender. Wow.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Liz, did that make any difference in terms of the Conservative Party or was the Conservative Party already doomed? And is it like the Rwanda plan, a thing that sort of reinforced the idea that this government was a combination of sort of incompetent and just plain racist?
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Very festive. It's the wrong Christmas festival.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And Desiree, first appearance, birthed in the barn.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Now, this is a time of year when a lot of us are feeling a bit warm and fuzzy. We're going to be spending time with loved ones, gathering with family and generally enjoying the festive season. And we should celebrate and be grateful if we feel safe and healthy. And two things can be true at the same time.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
We can enjoy time with those we hold dear whilst knowing that there are a lot of people who have been dealt a different hand. People who won't have a roof over their heads or a hot meal or a cosy pair of slipper socks.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Over the winter months, the need for those services and support increases exponentially. And Choose Love relies on the public to help them meet the needs of displaced communities. So we'd love to invite you to visit the Choose Love shop today. You can browse items like hot food, kids coats and the emergency response bundle. Choose what you'd like to buy.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
And when you pay for it, Choose Love will make sure it gets to someone who truly needs it over the winter months.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Yeah, absolutely. But listen, the shop is amazing. If you're in London, it's a great place to go and visit. If you're not in London because you don't live there and have no interest in visiting London during Christmas, which is... I would say quite a correct and sane perspective to have on things.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
What I would recommend you do is go to the online shop because you can buy everything that's in the shop on the website. So that's www.choose.love and you can find links in our show notes.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
So that was the 22nd of May, Rishi Sunak calling the general election. Without a doubt, the standout political moment of the year. A journalist at the time described it as like watching his soul leave his body and watching the lights go out in his eyes. And that journalist was, of course, Liz Bates on this show. Liz, it couldn't have started... It couldn't have started worse.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Or time moves at a glacial pace as you watch the collapse of your country.
Pod Save the UK
Just Stop Politics - 2024 Wrapped! w/ Desiree Burch and Liz Bates
Yeah, the classic policies that got thrown out to rally the Conservative base included tougher sentences for offences including knife crime, grooming and assaults against retail workers, all of which was completely undermined by the fact that there was no plan to deal with chronic overcrowding in prisons.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
In terms of policy response, everybody agrees that we need to put more money into the economy and into public spending. A news story just breaking as we record on Wednesday morning, the government sources are indicating that Rachel Reeves is aiming to make £40 billion worth of tax rises and spending cuts in the next budget. Do you think Labour is going to be able to keep
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
to its promises about avoiding tax rises. Do you think that they've left themselves with some linguistic wiggle room to have tax rises in different areas, like cap gains or a wealth tax, maybe?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Paul Johnson literally sat in your seat and reiterated this.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Sue Gray's resignation and the appointment of Morgan McSweeney, who was the Svengali largely credited with the election strategy. Pretty brutal action from Starmer. Pretty brutal in its kind of speed. But not as his first sort of brutal action as PM, because he obviously... withdrew the Labour whip from seven MPs for voting across the party lines on an amendment to the King's Speech.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
this particular issue around tax is storing up a problem for him just to bring this back full circle before we let you go to ruthlessness do you think his ruthlessness extends to breaking manifesto pledges and how do you think that fits into us trying to restore trust in politics whilst at the same time also acknowledging that we need investment badly in public services
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And in your book, one of the first things you talk about Keir Starmer is you talk about the capacity for compassion that he has, that people who have worked with him are very keen to stress. But then you move very quickly on to a different word, which is ruthlessness, an obsession with winning a streak of ruthlessness and a willingness to take on significant levels of political risk.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And coming up after the break, we're speaking to Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarindo about the Liberal Democrats' plans for holding the government to account.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
So the government is pursuing ruthless reforms whilst the official opposition is about to shift further rightward under whichever one of its two absolute batshit leaders it selects. So with the Conservatives in shambles, who is actually going to hold the government to account? Joining us now is Josh Babarinde, the Liberal Democrats' justice spokesperson and the MP for Eastbourne. Welcome, Josh.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Hello. Hi, Anish and Coco. Thanks for having me. No, it's a pleasure. Thanks for joining us. Josh, you're not actually a career politician. You come from a background of community engagement. You set up the social enterprise Crack Tip, which is a smartphone repair company that employed at-risk youth and young offenders.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And we should also know, and this is physically, this is, I imagine, going to be physically sickening, particularly for Coco. You are 31 years old. You are putting the geriatric millennials that host this podcast to shame.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Sorry about that, guys. But yeah, that's right. I did some stuff before I got elected to this place.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Well, that's the wrong way around, Josh. Everybody knows you're supposed to have no life experience and just be speculating wildly. What are you thinking?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Are you feeling pretty good about that now, now the way that his prime ministership is playing out?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And later, in the wake of the Tories' latest round of madness, we're joined by Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde to discuss how the government can be held to account in the absence of a sane opposition.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
I think a lot of the people that listen to this podcast would find themselves really completely agreeing with the spirit of what you're saying and then maybe asking the question why the Lib Dems are not the Labour Party in that case.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Let's briefly talk about the official opposition. Now, listen, there's been a lot of talk... in the week and I think a lot of it is very, very true that kind of wild rightward drift, whilst we might all be finding this very funny, the wild rightward drift of the Conservative Party isn't good for the health of British politics in general.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
But just in the very, very short term, let's focus on how funny it is. Josh, what was your reaction to the announcement of the final two candidates for Tory leader?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
So look, I mean, let's say the Conservatives are taking a drift to the weird. This is a real opportunity for the Liberal Democrats, right? And Ed Davey has been unambiguous through the election campaign. And certainly after the election result for the Lib Dems, the ambition of the Liberal Democrats within this cycle of this parliament is to become the official opposition.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Is that fair to say, Josh?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
I think that's the first sound of the division bell on Podside the UK. Yeah.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
We've got to let you go. So I'm just going to ask you this briefly. An area of possible cross-collaboration in terms of talking about you working with other political parties. There's a pretty big one here in terms of the new prisons minister, who's James Timpson, who also is known for hiring ex-offenders in the same way that you did when you set up your social enterprise.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Are you hopeful that this is genuinely an area where, I mean, we've talked a lot about the Liberal Democrats being in opposition and opposing the Labour government. Is this genuinely an area where you would be able to collaborate with the government in terms of reforming justice and getting it into that evidence-led, outcome-driven policy generation process?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
I thought that was going to be a heartbreaking story of James Timpson having left you on read. I was really worried about where that was going for a second. I keep asking this of all of the new intake of MPs that we've talked to, but just in brief, you're a young man, you're in a huge new job, are you enjoying yourself?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
OK, this might be an example of Labour being a bit ruthless. Do you remember Jonathan Ashworth? Now, there's a pretty strong chance you do. He was Labour's shadow paymaster general in the run-up to the election, where he lost his seat in really one of the big surprise results of the night. He was unseated by independent MP Shockett Adam by a margin of nearly 1,000 votes.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Ashworth has landed on his feet. Of course, he's replaced Morgan McSweeney as the director of the Labour Together think tank, hugely influential, centrist think tank. I guess we would call it a centrist think tank. Even though last week's episode, which you should definitely check out, Ian Dunn's positive that that word means absolutely nothing as someone who's written a book about centrism.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
But look, why are we reminding you of all of this? Well, according to the Eye newspaper, Labour is demanding a police investigation into the result. And it's a bit of a wild story. So, Again, and I'm conscious we have international listeners here, stay with me on this. I promise you we are a real country.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
In a phrase that truly could only happen in the United Kingdom, the allegation here is that the candidate for the monster-raving Looney Party, which is a real political party that exists in this country and has candidates that contest elections, Amr Suleiman helped independent Chokhat Adam with his campaign, which may have been in a breach of a campaign finance law.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Mr. Silliman ran for the monster-raving loony party, which again, I cannot stress this enough for international listeners, is a real political party in this country under an alias, which again, we should know, is not a breach of electoral law. Running under a pseudonym is not a breach of electoral law, as the non-loony-affiliated Count Binface has proven time and time again.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
I feel like we need less introduction for Count Binface, only because Count Binface has appeared on John Oliver's show in the States. There's a sort of wider international cognizance of Count Binface. Though, as I've said before, I do think there is something deeply funny about the fact that even our joke candidates are members of the landed gentry. Like, even as a joke, he's still a count.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Anyway, under Suleiman's alias, which is Ezekiel Adler, he produced and distributed nearly £2,000 of leaflets criticising Ashworth. Sullivan, as Ezekiel Adler, signed up to be the monster-raving loony candidate in November 2023. However, he also volunteered for Shaka Adams' campaign in the months leading up to the election.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And according to the Eye newspaper, this is what Labour has taken issue with. Under UK election law, candidates need to share details of the amount of money they've spent with the Electoral Commission.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Now, look, on the surface, this might seem like simply sour grapes from the Labour Party, but there are substantial stakes in this for the major players. What I would say here is, The common wisdom on why Labour lost this seat is over its stance on Gaza. Shaka Adams' entire campaign in Leicester South was prominently about arguing for a ceasefire.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And look, it does seem to me that the Labour Party is willing to ask every question except the one relevant question here, which is, is our stance on Gaza alienating a substantial proportion of natural Labour supporters? And again... We've talked a lot in this episode about Morgan McSweeney's ability to calculate the most tactically astute general election campaign.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
But at the same time, there were key seats that were lost to the Labour Party over the stance on Gaza. And in some ways, the Labour Party was very lucky that there was very little to differentiate itself between its stance on Gaza in the run-up to the election and the Conservative stance on Gaza. This is a humanitarian crisis that is unfolding. And... you know,
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
the position is becoming increasingly incoherent. We've had Ben Rhodes on this sofa whose foreign policy expertise is absolutely undeniable. And we would always, as always, direct listeners to our sister podcast, Pod Save the World, for more discussions on this kind of thing from Tommy and Ben.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And we've had Ben sit here and say, you cannot say that you unequivocally support Benjamin Netanyahu and a two-state solution because he does not support a two-state solution. So again, the Labour Party, it feels like is looking at everything except inward at its own conduct and its own foreign policy as to why it lost this seat.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And again, we cannot stress this enough for international audience members. There is a political party that essentially fields joke candidates.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And joke policies. And it has done for, I mean, absolutely years. The Monster Raving Loony Party is a sort of fixture of the British elections and has been throughout my lifetime.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Let's turn from the monster raving loonies to Taylor Swift. I sort of can't in some ways believe that we're still talking about this. But the Garm drama is back in what feels like its 768th week. So this is the allegations that have dogged Keir Starmer's government about Garm. politicians accepting freebies. And Taylor Swift is kind of at the centre of this storm somehow.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
I will say, my Taylor Swift knowledge is poor. I wish Taylor Swift and all of her fans well.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
I don't want any bad blood with them. Now that is a song that I know because it features a guest first by Kendrick Lamar. That's how you engage the interest of middle-aged hip-hop fans, which I'm pretty sure is not a demographic Taylor was after. But in any case, we all know about Keir Starmer and many of his cabinet's free tickets to Taylor Swift.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
But last week, The Sun reported that Sadiq Khan, a mayor of London, and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who had both received free tickets to the show, had been involved in discussions about providing extra security to Swift during her era's tour. In London, The Sun is reporting that Taylor Swift's mum herself got involved
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
after the police hesitated in providing an escort, threatening to pull out of the London shows. She even managed to discuss arrangements directly with Starmer's former chief of staff, Sue Gray, right into the heart of government. We should say there is genuinely a serious story at the centre of all of this.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Taylor Swift shows in London came shortly after her shows in Vienna, which were cancelled due to a foiled terror plot. So is it that preposterous that there would be a police escort given a security risk potentially, not just to Taylor Swift, but also that... hundreds of thousands of people that were going to see her at a show. It's just, don't take the free tickets. Don't take the free tickets.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Just don't take the free tickets.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
We should be absolutely clear. Just again, in the interest of full disclosure, Starmer has now paid back his free tickets and Number 10 has rejected the characterisation that the tickets were gifted as a thank you for arranging the police escort.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And if anyone, even if they are a member of the government, wants to see me do stand-up, tickets are available at nishkumar.co.uk and I will not be doling out freebies. I will not be doling out freebies. Pay for your tickets. nishkumar.co.uk And that's it.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Don't forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer Mae Robson, with additional support from our multi-track fellow Derek Armagh.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Thanks to our engineer Ryan McBeath.
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How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
It's a very glamorous anecdote because it's used by bins.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
That's a big word to use.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
LAUGHTER
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
So people need to pick a lane on this. Is he too much of one or not enough of one?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
To find out, we're joined by Deputy Political Editor of ITV News and author of Taken as Red, How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party, Anoushka Asthana. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Anoushka. It's great to have you here.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
There is a chapter in the book dedicated to Morgan McSweeney because he's the architect of the Labour election win. And there's a lot of speculation about how much influence he has. But clearly, now that he's been moved into Sue Gray's job, he's clearly central to Keir Starmer's operation. There's a lot of talk about him as a kind of election winner.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
And he has a huge amount of success in Lambeth Council and essentially scales up that operation to a national campaign, which is all based around election. very targeted campaigning. And it sort of led to this shallow but enormous political majority for Starmer in the House of Commons.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
So there's a lot of sense about what Morgan McSweeney's campaign strategy is, how he wants to run a campaigning operation. But he's not campaigning anymore. I mean, there's an argument that People like him are always campaigning and they've always got an eye on the next election cycle. But in the interim, we're talking about five years till the next election.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Kirstein was already talking about a decade of national renew. He's already talking about in two terms. So it's probably pretty important that as an electorate, we have a sense of what Morgan McSweeney's political philosophy is. Do you have a sense of what that is?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
The speed of which news is moving. I did think about that when I was reading the book. And just the point when you're talking about Sue Gravey appointed as Chief of Staff. And you're like, how much of that are you conscious of when you're writing a book about politics, particularly about British politics, I guess, post 2014 or 2015 onwards?
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Well, that definitely speaks to something that was in Keir Starmer's conference speech about wanting to acknowledge people's concerns on immigration. But, I mean, I guess I would say I found those comments interesting
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
and I'm again only speaking for myself I found those comments quite personally hurtful because I felt that it didn't acknowledge the reality of what happened in the summer and what's really been happening over the last decade and a half in this country which is
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
immigrants and immigrant communities being blamed for the slow collapse of the British state, which immigrants and immigrant communities are not responsible for.
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
But if you break that connection between the kind of demonisation in large sections of the conservative press in this country and what happened, and you portray the rioters to be this kind of... You know, what they are, which is a group of far-right thugs, but a group of far-right thugs that has been...
Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
encouraged and legitimised by the political language and the talk about immigrants and immigrant numbers and the need to drive down immigrant numbers. If you break that connection, it's a false analysis, isn't it, of what happened in the summer. If you don't acknowledge that there has been some mainstreaming of that language,
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And on Tuesday afternoon, we saw the government's policy of means testing the up to £300 payment put to the test in a vote in the House of Commons. The government won comfortably with 348 votes to 228 for a majority of 120. Only one Labour MP voted against the government, but a number quietly abstained.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Such an interesting point. And it brings me actually back to something that you said when we last spoke, Pia, that I would say haunts me on a daily basis. And it was a conversation specifically about the prisons. But the question you're posing, David, is why can't we have an evidence-based policy around this? And Pia, last time you were on the show, you said part of the problem is we can't...
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
in your time in government, the question was often asked, what will the Daily Mail think about this? And does this, do these policies pass the Daily Mail test? And I have to tell you that I think about that every day. Oh my God. I'm so sorry. No, no, because I think whenever I look at, when we look across the various different problems that we're facing as a society,
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
It does seem to me to be the key question. How much of a sense of that in responding to what David is saying, which is such a reasonable question, why are we not following more successful programs of education and what works? Is it as simple as it does not pass the Daily Mail test?
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
A fear that sections of the press will become inflamed or upset.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Listen, I think the case that I think the Labour Party is trying to make is that by means testing these payments, you can make a meaningful saving by making sure the money doesn't go to people that don't necessarily need it. But I think it is also... very difficult because there is always a concern that people will fall between the cracks when you make this kind of cut.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
In terms of, I mean, if we look at this current situation that we're in, prisons are, you know, overfilled. There's been a lot of talk about the last government stalled prison building programme and they built an extra 6,000 prison places after promising 20,000.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
There's huge numbers of court backlogs as well, which is obviously not helping the situation because, again, whenever we start to talk about one problem, we realise it's interconnected to five other things. And the...
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
The sort of defunding of the court system and the various funding issues we've got there is creating another separate backlog, which means the number of people awaiting trial in jail has also skyrocketed. It doesn't feel like prison building is the issue here.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
It feels like building more prisons and creating more prison space is not actually dealing with the sort of ceaseless demand we seem to have. Yeah.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I remember this from the new Labour government.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And there are people that exist on the borderline that badly need these kind of fuel payments and may lose out over the winter. And also in terms of the saving, it's expected to save between £1.3 billion in 2024, 2025 and £1.5 billion in subsequent years, which given what the government is trying to address is a £22 billion black hole is a real concern. And my issue with this
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
You're saying that longer sentencing in some ways instead of being a deterrent, is actually something that... It's clogging up. It's clogging up the system.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
This is exactly the place we want to leave this conversation, I think. This is the place that we want to get to, which is making actual recommendations for evidence-based changes that could improve and actually get better outcomes in terms of stopping re-offending.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And my issue with this kind of rhetoric around this is this idea that if you're making benefit cuts and you're saying you have to do this because you have to make tough and unpopular choices, my question is always, who are those choices going to be unpopular with?
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I didn't even realise that that was an involuntary response of agreement from me.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I've been on tour. I was off last week because I was doing a last minute run of previews just before the tour started and the tour is up and running.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Because regardless of what Keir Starmer says about governments dodging decisions, we've had between 10 and 14 years of unpopular decisions. And I think the government could have saved themselves a huge amount of political power
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Lock all men up until they turn 30.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
If they had announced these cuts in concert with, say, changing the structure to capital gains tax or inheritance tax, the Resolution Foundation this week has been urging the government to announce changes to cap gains and inheritance tax and national insurance in next month's budget. that would raise more than £20 billion a year for the Treasury.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Listen, if you're eating a Big Mac, you've got bigger problems. Your digestive system is not going to be affected by who hands you that Big Mac.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Is this an opportunity, given that the prisons are... I mean, I hate the cycle that we seem to be in in so many different facets of our lives where we have to let things get to a crisis point before we actually have a proper conversation about how we need to change things.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
But given we are, regardless of what newspaper you read or who you voted for, everybody looks at this and goes, we've got a crisis here. Is this now genuinely an opportunity for us to have a proper grown-up conversation about prison?
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Thank you both so much for being here. This sort of conversation is exactly why we think this podcast exists. I think it's really interesting because when you propose these kind of liberal prison reforms, you are deemed naive and out of touch.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And actually, what you two are both saying is reversing that and saying, actually, if you're not making evidence-based comments about incarceration, actually, you are the ones that are being naive.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Yeah, we were supposed to do it. I think it means more coming from you.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
You know, which again, given that the Chancellor was trying to plug a £22 billion hole, feels like a much, much, much more significant figure. And when we talk about unpopular decisions, the question is always, who are these decisions unpopular with? And it may well be that when we come around to the budget, Rachel Reeves does announce a change to those policies.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Somehow, Robert Jenrick has pulled ahead of the pack, presumably taking on the majority of Patel's votes, while Kemi Badenoch is close behind with Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverley bringing up the rear.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I'm sorry, I know it's my job, technically, in my capacity as host of this podcast, but fucking hell, I've not been paying any attention to this.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
mental pressure of having thought about the Conservative Party intensely. I think I'm just sort of, I don't know, I think I'd just like to sort of have a holiday from them as an organisation. Also, Robert Jenrick does sort of look like someone typed Tory man into chat GPT. Like, he does look like an AI-generated Conservative.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
What do you mean?
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I know, but I think it's a dangerous game to play personality politics when you have no personality.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Yes, and a more potentially more consequential leadership contest is going on in America. Last night, as we record on the Wednesday, the first presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump took place. And if you're interested, there's some fantastic analysis and reaction to the debate on our sister show.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I would say that if you had telegraphed some of those policies in concert with this idea that you're cutting fuel payments to pensioners, you might have saved yourself a hell of a lot of political difficulties. My grandmother is a pensioner. And I also think that if we're looking at the way the pension systems are rolled out, and I think this is true of a lot of benefits,
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Much more qualified older sister who definitely knows how to wash her hair better than we do. Pod Save America. There's an episode there right now that explores what this debate might mean for the rest of the US election campaign.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And while we're on the subject from Russian prisoner exchanges to US presidential nominee Kamala Harris's foreign policy to international elections, it can be hard to keep up on all the news happening everywhere around the world.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Check out at Real Crooked News on Instagram, Threads or X, formerly Twitter, for 100% correct news and analysis.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I have to say, reading this made me physically sick. I thought it was an absolute disgrace that Cameron deliberately misinterpreted the content of the report as a way of exonerating him and his legacy. I think...
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
It's really important that when we write the history of the last 14 years, David Cameron's failure as Prime Minister is placed on the same pedestal as people like Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, whose failures were... you know, were shrouded in, I would say greater theatricality. So they received more focus in some ways. Cameron is the architect of so many problems in this country.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And he is the author of so much human misery that has been vested on this country in the last 14 years. And in terms of his, um, involvement or his culpability in Grenfell. There's no point in me saying something that Peter Apps has already said, because Peter Apps, former guest on the show and author of Show Me the Bodies, how we let Grenfell happen.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
He went, took to ex formerly Twitter and said, what we just read from David Cameron, and this is a direct quote from Peter, is demonstrably and very clearly total bullshit. The report quite firmly found the opposite.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I mean, that is total horseshit in regards to the conversation around Grenfell. The inquiry and all of the journalism that's been done into this has found that the whole point here is that no lessons were learned. There were so many warnings that were ignored and...
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
there needs to be a simplification of the way that these things are dealt with and the way that these things are administered. There is simply no way without my mum doing everything, my grandmother would be able to claim benefits she's entitled to.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Blair's analysis here is completely at odds with the findings of the inquiry and the journalism that has been done around this subject. Although I suppose if there's one thing Tony Blair is an expert in, it's coming off badly in a fucking public inquiry.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Wow. That is... That is... That is beyond parody.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
There's a lot of left-wing plays, museum exhibits, films that you could go and see. Even within the context of a social activity event, purely dictated by your political allegiance. Visiting Marx's tomb feels even for that a bit.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
It's all online.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
which obviously I understand is ostensibly designed to make things more straightforward. But you also have to consider who the target audience are of your sort of technical changes. And I also think that there needs to be a simplification of the processes that allow people who are eligible, because there still are a number of pensioners that are eligible for this.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
We want to hear about your unpopular policies and we also want to hear about your most painfully left-wing date. Your most truly painfully left-wing date. That's what we're interested in hearing about this week. Very, very interested. Don't forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Thanks to senior producer James Tyndale and digital producer Alex Bishop.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Our thanks to engineer Ryan McBeath.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And there is an argument being made by some Labour MPs that actually this helps them provide more targeted benefits to the people who need it most.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I mean, I think if they want to be incredibly unpopular again with some of the wealthier people in society, I think that they could clamp down on tax avoidance. I think that's another thing that closing those tax loopholes would be hugely, hugely significant. Let's take a moment to dream up some more imaginative unpopular policies. Let's start blue sky thinking.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I want that to be made very clear. For any lawyers listening who aren't going to come to the show, it's definitely 100% not libelous.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
What are your wildest unpopular policies?
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
If you say anything negative about Taylor Swift, I will immediately distance myself from it. I don't need the rage of the Swifties.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Because not being funny... Why are you doing this?
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Can I just say, I don't disagree with you, but you can't tell British people that their dogs are a problem.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
My mother-in-law is Canadian, repeatedly says the strangest thing about coming to this country is finding out that British people prefer dogs to children.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
What, you're going to license people to own a budgie?
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Listen, I think if you want to go full unpopular decision, I actually don't even know how unpopular it is. Let's go full Brazilian and ban Twitter.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Full Brazil.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I believe that it's legally caveated sufficiently. Okay.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I think let's give the country a Brazilian.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And ban Twitter. If you look at the last month and a half in British and American politics, the race rights in this country were driven by misinformation that was spread on Twitter.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And if you look at the last week in American politics, the rumours that immigrants are now eating cats... has actually spread and been given credibility by Twitter. So I'm just saying, maybe, and also like I'm still on Twitter, maybe for my own benefit.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Some prohibitions are for our own benefit.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Here we go.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I don't mind banning reboots.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I don't mind banning reboots. I think this should be an application system. Yeah, but I don't want to ban all reboots because then I wouldn't have got to see James Acaster in Ghostbusters. And that was one of the most hilarious moments of my life.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And I'm Nish Kumar. And this week, we're embracing the government's newfound unpopularity.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Well, I don't want to split. I don't want to get too in the weeds of the terminology here. But technically, Beetlejuice is not a reboot. It's a sequel.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
So you think sequels or reboots, they have to go in front of a board?
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I would say I'll introduce the law because purely for my own amusement, I would say I would agree with you, but you get a pass if you put Acaster in it. If you could stick Acaster in a reboot or a sequel, fine. I definitely don't want to see Schindler's List 2 starring James Acaster. That's all I'm saying. That might be the line.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And after the break, we're going to be talking about some other potentially unpopular policies as we discuss the UK's broken prison system with some very special guests.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I'm off to Scotland tomorrow. I'm off to Glasgow tomorrow. Glasgow, Aberdeen, Edinburgh. I am all over the entire United Kingdom. And I'm also doing a date in Dublin, which I'm very excited about.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
So, Keir Starmer says he's going to have to make unpopular decisions, and while the most unpopular this week may be taking winter fuel payments off millions of pensioners, releasing prisoners early is also something unlikely to get him a slap on the back at Arsenal matches.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Last week, the England and Wales prison population hit another record high of 88,521, leaving just 1.2% of available space.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And if this all sounds a bit familiar, it's because the last Tory government had the same problem about a year ago. Faced with prisons almost running out of space, it brought in an emergency policy which saw 10,000 prisoners released up to 70 days early between October and June.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Thanks for coming on. Pia, we've actually spoken to you on the show before. We spoke to you last October, just as the Tories were rolling out their own early release scheme. Do you think this plan from Labour is going to work any better?
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I think the reason for that is, is as you've seen last year... I would really have respected it if you just said no, and that would have been the end of the conversation. Nope, end of conversation. Moving on.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Peter, there's been some reports of victims not being informed of upcoming releases with the exclusion from early release, not applying to all domestic abusers, as well as probation officers not having enough time to prepare for these releases. Is this now going to create a new separate raft of problems?
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And you're essentially punished for that.
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
That's Keir Starmer, who seems to have aged 100 years in the last couple of weeks, speaking to the BBC's Laura Koonsberg last Sunday.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
According to a more in common poll this week, the government holds only a single point lead against the opposition, despite the Tories being, as you can hear from that clip, essentially leaderless or they're led by a man whose head is very much in California based on his performance and PMQs and having nothing to say after 14 years in government.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
In terms of like looking at Keir Starmer through this idea of, you know, cherry picking interesting ideas and whether we consider Starmer a centrist or not, it's like almost a whole separate conversation. But at the minute, you know, just looking at the 97 days or wherever we're at today, his attempts to sort of cherry pick from both the left or right.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
For example, on the one hand, he's met with Georgia Maloney, who, you know, by chance, Anyone's estimate sits very far to the right of the political spectrum and the political tradition. He's met with George Maloney and said that he's trying to pick up immigration tips. On the other hand, he is talking good game about giving pay rises to public sector workers and also improving workers' rights.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Will those kind of compromises eventually get you into trouble? Will you sort of be pulled apart almost by trying to pick from those two political traditions?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Shockingly, according to YouGov, Keir Starmer is now less popular than Nigel Farage.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I was talking about Starmer cherry-picking ideas. Can you reconcile borrowing ideas on immigration from George Maloney whilst also, you know, handing out public sector pay rises and improving workers' rights?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Well, and then the private interventions that did happen in COVID. have seen historic sums of public money essentially disappear into wherever we don't, we still don't even know where it is.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Well, yes, the big news in the last week from the Labour Party is that Sue Gray has resigned as Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff and is going to be replaced with this head of political strategy, Morgan McSweeney. This is sort of about as Westminster bubbly a story as it's possible to get. But here's a quick catch up on how this happened and why we should care.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Or the alternative, I think we should tax the richest people and give that money to public services.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So before joining Star Wars as Chief of Staff last year, you will all no doubt remember Sue Gray as the longtime civil servant who spent the majority of her career working in the Cabinet Office, which means she has a grasp of the lay of the land of government operations. But she became a household name following her inquiry into Boris Johnson's Partygate scandal.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Something you said at the start of the conversation, if Salma's pitch is dignity, one of the ways that he talks about dignity is dignity manifesting itself in public service and public office, that it does sort of, it sort of presents a problem for him insofar as any kind of indiscretion is likely to reflect poorly on somebody that is supposed to conduct themselves like the proverbial grown-up.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I don't feel great about that. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
It is interesting to come away from, I guess, as Ian has done, writing a book about centrism and then not necessarily feel closer to defining what it is. But I guess by definition, if you're talking about cherry picking lots of different ideas with no fixed ideology, that is going to be quite a hard thing to pin down.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, but in terms of where elections are won from, this is a huge election year across the world. And obviously... Looming into view is the American election. But with so much focus on an election and domestic issues around the election, foreign policy can definitely feel overwhelming. Luckily, Pod Save the World is here to help.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
From conflict to climate, they've got you covered, bringing you the latest on global affairs without the homework.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, it's always worth a listen. The most recent episode that's just dropped in the feed is about a year of war in the Middle East and is, as ever, an incredible listen. After the break, we're joined by Labour MP Nadia Whittam to find out more about the mood on the ground and hopefully give us a much needed dose of optimism.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Nadia has also just told us she needed to mute the Zoom to blow her nose and also was scrambling around looking for her AirPods. So it's another day in the life of Britain's most relatable MP. Having to mute a Zoom to blow your nose and frantically searching for AirPods is the kind of thing that the average British person can really connect with, I think.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Nadia, last time we spoke to you, you were in opposition and you were still the baby of the house. And now you're in government and you're essentially at this point as a political veteran. How does it feel to have made that transition to being the party in power?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So Graham McSweeney are our two main players and there's been sort of constant stories of a rift that's existed between them since Labour came into power. There was a story at one point that Sue Gray was insisting that Morgan McSweeney's desk be moved physically further away from Keir Starmer. I have no idea what What am I going to do with that? There was a torrent of briefings against Grey.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, that's a lot of seemingly contradictory terms. It's like you and Billie Eilish are the veteran Gen Zs.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I don't know why I said that. Roger Moore was the first name you could think of.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Listen, I'm very happy to be part of this. I would definitely enjoy you two presenting a sort of life hacks podcast for people who struggle to remember other people's names. Oh God.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
My God. Okay. Well, that's definitely Yorkshire, but I can't help you with who Robbie Moore is.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
You definitely revealed something there. You think all white men are called Roger Moore.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So, listen, it's been a sort of summer of nonsense on any number of levels. But Parliament's back in session. There's a massive Labour majority. In terms of positive things, as we record on Wednesday, Rachel Reeves has signalled that she will change the government's borrowing rules to allow more investment, but whilst not raising taxes. How are you reacting to that news, Nadia?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
One that really cut through over the summer was that she was receiving a higher salary than the Prime Minister himself, which was sort of artfully leaked for maximum damage at the height of the freebies row, the Garm drama.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Presumably it's something to be celebrated, this idea that she's moving away from those stringent rules about borrowing because it actually means there's going to be able to be some money to be invested into the country.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Is your hope now, presumably, that this idea of no new tax rises, the manifesto commitment, some of the language during the campaign was, I think it's fair to say, like deliberately vague around what the phrase no new tax rises would mean. Presumably, given your interest in a wealth tax, that's something you're going to be actively pushing the government towards.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
it's also been reported that Sue Gray was restricting access to the prime minister, holding back on contracts for special advisors, and crucial to her downfall that she was responsible for the grid, which is the plan of government briefings to media and what exactly they've been up to, which, as we know, hasn't exactly gone down well.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
You use TikTok very effectively to communicate around political issues. Do you think that's the future of political campaigning? Or has the summer shown us that it can actually be quite dangerous? You know, I would personally argue that some of Nigel Farage's interventions via social media exacerbated an already pretty horrific situation.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Before we let you go, Nadia, I just sort of on a personal level just want to ask you, you know, coming in in 2019, being in opposition for all this time, in government now, are you enjoying yourself?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I mean, it's less about people caring about these sort of internal staffing at Labour HQ or in the kind of immediate team around Kit Starmer, and more just to do with the fact that what you would want the Labour Party to be in a position to do at this stage is to say, look, you can be focused on this if you want to be, but we're more focused on delivering, and here are three areas in which we've delivered, X, Y and Z. The problem is...
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
We don't dream of work.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Thanks, Nadia.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And now to close off the show on some lighter topics, and it doesn't get much lighter than the Tory leadership race. Tom Tugendhat was knocked out of the race on Tuesday. Hello, this is Future Nish here. Now, not to give too much away about how we record the show, but we have actually recorded three different versions of who made the final two in the Conservative leadership contest.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
With the result having been announced, I just had to record this briefly because it's simply too funny. So James Cleverley, who was positioned as the moderate candidate and was the clear favourite to make the final two, based on Tuesday night's media analysis, was knocked out of the Conservative leadership contest in an absolutely sensational result.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
To borrow a phrase from Twitter about 10 years ago, Conservative MPs woke up this morning and chose violence. So the final two is now going to be Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. Two different bits of the batshittest wing of the Conservative Party. So on Tuesday night after the elimination of Tom Tugendhat, Cleverley was on 39 votes.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Now, it was widely assumed that he would get the bulk of Tugendhat's votes and so would sail through to the final two, leaving us in what we thought was going to be a direct contest between Badenoch and Jenrig. but he went backwards. So Cleverley ended up with 37 votes behind Badenoch and Jenrick, who had 42 and 41 votes, respectively. This has caused an absolute shitshow of a shockwave.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Bloomberg's Alex Wiccan has suggested that Cleverley's team may have lent Robert Jenrick votes in an attempt to keep Kemi Badenoch off the ballot, but may have lent them too many. It's... And I was not the only person who was shocked. The Guardian's Pippa Greer said that there were audible gasps in the room at the result and suggested that James Cleverley was 18 points ahead yesterday.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And she said that she had spoken to Tory MPs who were voting for their preferred second candidate of the final two, assuming that Cleverley was safe. All of this adds up to the idea that those of us who already had a very low opinion of this iteration of the Conservative Party are finding ourselves completely validated. These people are even stupider than we had assumed.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So it's possible that James Cleverley, in an attempt to keep Kevin Bacon off the final ballot, lent Robert Jenrick so many votes that he has kept himself off the final ballot. it's absolutely unfathomable. And especially at the end of a difficult couple of weeks for the Labour Party, Keir Starmer can't drop a break.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
It's been a bit of a struggle to identify what X, Y and Z are.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
It's unbelievable how fortunate he is as a prime minister and as a leader of the Labour Party that every time he looks like he's fucked up, the Conservative Party sees it as a challenge and says, well, if you think you've made a mess, we're going to absolutely make somehow even bigger a mess.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Earlier in the show, we actually spoke to journalist Ian Dunn about what a more centrist candidate like Cleverley might mean for Starmer. We're going to play it here instead, because I still think it's an interesting conversation and one that's worth hearing. What do you think a James Cleverley-led Conservative Party does to the way that Starmer's government presents itself?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Does it present a problem for Starmer? in a way that potentially Jenrick or Badenoch wouldn't because they would, it's easy for Starmer to go, look at these two. They're absolutely batshit. They're a continuation of sort of trust, Johnsonism, hard right politics. It does cleverly present more of a political problem for Starmer.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So, look, it looks like there's going to be a huge party at 10 Downing Street tonight. Speaking of former residents of that address, Boris Johnson has been out and about embarrassing himself whilst promoting his new, and we must simply assume, absolute bag of shit book. Here he is speaking to LBC's Nick Ferrari.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And then we'll go straight back to the studio and hop back into the rest of the recording.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So the bubble has burst in Westminster this week and the fallout has left the centre-right faction of the Labour Party stronger than ever before. But what does centrism even mean? Joining us now on Pod Save the UK is political journalist Ian Dunn and co-author of Centrism, The Story of an Idea. Ian, thanks for joining us. Not at all.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I just... I'm not... I'm not completely convinced Boris Johnson knows what a crack den looks like. I'm not sure that... Boris Johnson, I just think once again, what we've seen is him showing the grasp of detail that he showed all throughout the coronavirus pandemic. It's that sharper mind that was managing the country.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
It will never stop being a source of profound national shame that we allowed that man to be our prime minister.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I mean...
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I think he's one of the dumbest fucks we've ever allowed to be anywhere near public office. We should rightly be shamed. We should rightly be shamed in the court of, you know, international opinion of us as a nation. It is... Anyway. And now he's written a stupid fucking book, which I imagine is a pile of shit, but I won't be buying it.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I will be doing what I often do with those books, which is if I see them in a bookshop, putting them under a shelf so people can't find it.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Oh, God.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Did you get them secondhand from Theresa May? Yes.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Don't forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you've subscribed to our YouTube channel.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Thanks to senior producer James Tindell and assistant producer Mae Robson.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Thanks to our engineer, Ryan McBeath.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
we were just discussing before we went on air about the ethics of swearing. And the joys. And the joys of swearing. And Coco continued her position of, it's neither big nor clever.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, well, Ian and I were offering a vigorous counter-answer. Listen, let's talk about the book. Let's talk about centrism. But let's start with... a sort of weird old summer for the government. If I may quote a journalist's tweet about Sue Gray's resignation, and again, getting straight into obscene language, for fuck's sake, why in God's name did they make this decision?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Now that, the journalistic question is, of course, you, Ian.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I was like, that sounds like a really sensible analysis. I haven't heard any. All right. Have you come to any conclusions on why, in whatever deity's name you believe in, they come to this decision?
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Can you just give us a quick summary on Morgan McSweeney? He's, He's sort of widely credited with being the sort of mastermind behind the Starmer election campaign. But his background is in politics and not in government.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
And I'm Nish Kumar. On today's show, we're nearly at 100 days of the new government. What exactly have we got to show for it? It feels somewhat unclear. We'll be getting into that with political journalist Ian Dunne.
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
So, but what's your concern here? The gap between winning an election and actually governing a country.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Part of the election tactic was, you know, essentially to campaign off the back of conservative malfunction, which made a lot of sense. And obviously it worked very well. But now it's sort of a point now where we've got to define terms a little bit and define what this Labour government is going to be about.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
He shanked it. You sort of forget how thunderingly uncharismatic he is. Like that was an open goal that he somehow managed to hit the bar with and the ball rebounded and hit him directly in the genitals. Like I've got, honestly, I am amazed.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Like, you've got no values. If you're a centrist, then you're defining yourself by wherever the extremes are. And if the extremes... land in a particular place, it feels like it could be, you know, at its worst, a sort of apologia for fascism. Like, you know, that's the concern around it. But over the course of writing this book, have you moved away from that idea of the thinking?
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The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Yeah, he is just, he is, yes, he's very bad. At the time of recording, we're 97 days into the new government and things haven't exactly been going down too well with the public.