Nish Kumar
Appearances
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Well, because it's very personal. It's within your home. Your wife is Ukrainian. Exactly.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
it is a really compelling and interesting story of somebody who almost programmed their brain in a certain way and then was able to deprogram their brain in a certain way. There's just always this idea that you essentially move towards the political right as you get older.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
And so I think all of that stuff, like you aging into left-wing politics, is interesting and compelling because it's an unusual story, I think. But also, I'm just interested in what was appealing to you
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
So the government is already putting its rhetoric on that last point into action. So last week, Rachel Reeves forced out the chairman of the UK's competition watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
But it's like... Apart from the conspiracy theorists that are flat earthers. Yeah, yeah. Galileo's their worst nightmare. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, fuck, Galileo. That's that level of defilement, yeah.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
So interesting about that is you've really identified something that's incredibly important here. A lot of these things are not new ideas. They're just repackaging. I mean, this idea of preservation of Western culture, it's sort of, it contains within it the sort of old seeds of white supremacy and Western supremacy.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
You know, and those ideas that drove the British colonialism project, because there was an idea that these were inferior cultures that needed essentially saving from their own savagery. That's very true. And we're seeing it all the time at the moment in terms of the way that Elon Musk talks about the grooming gangs in this country, which he has no idea about.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
You know, he has no specific knowledge about the cases that he's talking about. But you can still see the seeds of all of it. But it's just been repackaged. You know, someone like Tommy Robinson has realized that he can't do what the National Front did in the 70s and 80s when our parents came here and said, we want to get rid of the package. He can't do that anymore.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
In the video, you talk about reading Chab's Owen Jones book about the kind of cultural demonization of the British working class and that being a real eye-opening moment for you, right?
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
infantile isn't it yeah yeah you know it's like a children's story there are good people and there are bad people and the good people always do good and the bad people always do bad whereas actually it's a much more sophisticated thing to say that's what makes a good film like if you watch a good film it's when like the bad guy has a reason why he's bad yeah yeah yeah
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Yeah, that sort of leads you into kind of reading backwards and going in and doing research around the post-war consensus and the collapse of the post-war consensus as engineered by kind of Thatcher and Reagan in the UK and the US. And then we're now in this sort of crisis point that again is kind of engineered by a moment of economic collapse, you know,
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
In her speech, Reeves paid particular attention to our economic links with the US following a reportedly positive conversation between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
In 2008, the financial system essentially collapses and plunges us into a kind of black hole that we still are yet to emerge from. You know, this is why I'm interested in this idea of what line of thought is countercultural or anti-establishment. Because for people our age, you defined yourself as being
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Within my lifetime, we certainly moved in a more progressive direction.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
But when it comes to slightly less mad trading partners, when asked on Sunday whether the UK would consider joining the Pan-Euro Mediterranean Convention, which is a tariff-free zone with Europe, Reeves didn't rule it out, saying that she would consider anything that might attract growth so long as it didn't cross any of her Brexit red lines.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
I'm fascinated by this idea that all of the dating experts, especially targeting straight cis men, are all men. And I'm like, I would definitely take some advice from a woman. Just even if you look at it objectively, strip everything away for a second. If your goal is to impress a woman, surely your first port of call is to go to a woman and say, how do we impress? Yeah, yeah.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Yeah, that's right.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
So then how can progressive people or the left or whatever nebulous term we want to put on it, how do...
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
as a group we speak to young men because like oh i'll be honest with you there's just this lazy idea of people my age that like we all thought that a lot of the sort of movements around 2016 were a kind of death rattle of conservatism really as the millennial generation ages into positions of leadership the population would move left on social issues and economic issues
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
But obviously there's a severe wrinkle in this if the generation that comes behind us is starting to turn towards social conservatism and economic conservatism.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Oh yeah, just think about the NHS. You know, like in 1945, in like a country that was just, had been bombed to shit. Yeah.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
an action of a government basically I mean it's obviously a lot more complicated than that but effectively in one stroke just turned around to an entire country and said you all have free healthcare that's the single most significant transformational step for the average British person that's incredible and I think that should be inspiring to people and like the left has wins under its belt like if you look at history like the biggest continuous growth period of economics was under Keynesianism
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
We're just talking about cocaine.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
We're just talking about everything went bad when loads of people started taking cocaine.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
But the means now is the next point, right? And it is the most important point. Because for years, when we were growing up, we existed under these kind of press barons like Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, basically everybody that is an inspiration for Logan Roy and Succession.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
And then when the internet, the sort of advent of the internet, there's a part of you that thinks, well, this is incredible. This is like, this is going to democratize information and democratize media.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
And then movements start to spring up that are oxygenated by the internet and by social media, like, you know, Occupy Wall Street, the kind of anti-capitalist demonstrations, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Me Too movement. You start to see lots of these progressive movements that are oxygenated by social media. But now we're in a space where it feels like social media is
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
and that all the sort of unregulated forms of the new media have been harnessed by the same forces that controlled the old media. And so my question for you is, how do we harness the information dissemination systems to spread a progressive message when a guy like Elon Musk can look at Twitter and say, that's an interesting way of spreading information, I buy it?
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
If you fix income inequality and you make a better... But there's so many thinkers that have pushed both of those things at the same time. Martin Luther King was a sort of avowed critique of capitalism. Fred Hampton was building a rainbow coalition that existed under the umbrella of economic socialism. The union of those two things has always been incredibly important.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Well, look, we thought it was prime time to get inside the heads of these people. We're joined by a very special guest who found himself sucked into the alt-right wormhole that came out the other side. We'll be speaking with YouTuber Jimmy the Giant.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
become more liberated but it doesn't change the fact that you have unique problems to you now and you need sort of solidarity to kind of help that the more you pull at that thread the more it starts to say you're like so what you're saying is a rising tide lifts all boats like it starts that kind of thinking I absolutely agree with you that like
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
economic clusters at the core of all of these problems. But I think it's important to also make space because it is about establishing solidarity and it's about understanding that like marginalized people are all on the same side.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
A lot of us had hopes that, you know, as you moved away from And essentially, like these kind of media moguls owning the ways in which information was disseminated. You know, if you look at the newspapers when I was growing up, like it was, you know, it's basically like the Guardian and the Independent and the mirror at points.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
versus the Sun, the Mail, the Express, the Telegraph, the Times, you know, in terms of like, that were owned by newspaper moguls who had financial and vested interests in not disrupting the economic status quo. So then you get the internet and you go, this is great, this is amazing. It's just going to be the value of your ideas.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
And the reality is that we all have to fess up to this idea that conservatives were much smarter and savvier in how they used the internet and how they used YouTube and how they used social media. So do you still believe in the power and value of being on YouTube, being on Twitter? And is it really important that progressives get into those spaces?
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
One of the people who pulled me out of it was Destiny because he was literally... This is a YouTuber who went on and argued with conservative YouTubers.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Listen, you're right. And I imagine people who listen to this podcast would be concerned about things like whether we can breathe air or whether buildings are safe to live in. You know, cuck shit. And I can sort of appreciate that people of our sort of political persuasion might be a bit antsy about this.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
If we're trying to arrest this slide in faith and democracy amongst young people, you've got to be practical, be assertive, and also be hopeful.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
I like it. Jimmy the Giant, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Listeners, do check out his channel on YouTube. What's your latest video on?
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
So obviously, there's a progressive concern around defanging regulators in the name of growth and sacrificing everything in terms of growth. But there is real concern from economists that the plans don't fully add up. And it seems to have attracted criticism from everyone.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
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. And while you're there, don't forget to check out Jimmy the Giant.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Thanks to senior producer James Tyndale and assistant producer John Rogers.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Thanks to our engineer, Jeet Vasani.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Yeah, so DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company whose kind of emergence into the AI space caused a massive, massive drop in the share price of various American tech companies because... DeepSeek appears to be able to offer a service similar to things like OpenAI or ChatGPT, but at a fraction of the cost. And so it's done some real damage to the American stock market.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Again, it sort of exposes the fragility of basing your entire economic strategy around AI and growth. But again, I just think it's really, really important to stress this point. Continuing to talk about economic growth,
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
is fine as long as you find a way of joining up wider economic growth with policies that are actually going to improve the lives of people living in the country on a day-to-day basis. And I'm much more interested to hear from the Labour Party and hear from Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer how this economic growth actually joins up with benefiting people in the long term.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
I think the loose idea is that economic growth provides jobs for people and also benefits puts money into the via taxes into the government that can then be redistributed and spent. But, you know, I think how does that money get funneled into the economy and how does that money get funneled into the pockets of ordinary people living in Britain?
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
That's the thing that the Labour Party is struggling to articulate at the moment.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Fuck the best place. I would like to get on a train. I would like to see a doctor.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
I would settle for we want to make Britain an acceptable place to live again.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Just like anything. So amidst all of this sort of bulldozing for growth and cutting of red tape, there's one hugely contentious decision. The government are giving political support to add a third runway to Heathrow Airport.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
And I'm Nish Kumar. Today, it seems our young people have lost faith in democracy. A poll this week found that 52% of them would favour an authoritarian government. It's scary stuff.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Just again, like with a lot of Labour policies at the moment, it just seems to be a lot of people contradicting themselves within the same sentence. Look, we should say that the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and a former guest on the show, Claire Farrell, has had a bee in her bonnet about this, so much so that she's actually dropped us a video message.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
We're always thrilled to hear from Claire. Here she is.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
This is a huge concern. And Claire isn't alone here. Rick Parfit, who's the WWF's climate policy specialist, said to boost growth, Rachel Reeve should put pounds back in people's pockets by insulating homes, decarbonising power and investing in public transport. The UK's net zero economy grew by 9% in 2023 compared to 0.1% for the economy overall.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Spending over £50 billion on airport expansions that will take decades to build is a non-starter. They would send carbon emissions skywards, leave growth stuck on the runway and suck money out of the UK.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Reeves isn't being shy about the fact that she's prioritising economic concerns over environmental ones, telling the World Economic Forum at Davos that growth, not net zero, is the government's number one mission.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
That's the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, laying out her latest plans for cutting down on government spending and kickstarting growth. So how are they going to do it? In an op-ed in The Times on Tuesday, Keir Starmer wrote, we'll cut the weeds of regulation and let growth bloom, which is very poetic. But what does it mean?
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Also, Keir Starmer voted against the expansion of the airport in 2020.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
But look, as we've laid out here, the political messaging from the government clearly leaves a lot to be desired and is leaving a lot of us feeling pretty grumpy. After the break, we're going to find out how this can be taken advantage of with someone who's gone through the alt-right wormhole and come out the other side. We'll be speaking to YouTuber Jimmy the Giant.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Now, as we mentioned at the top of the show, earlier this week came the news that young people are, to put it bluntly, fucked off with the status quo. Channel 4 poll of 3,000 Gen Zers, that's 13 to 27 year olds, found that over half would prefer an authoritarian leader to a democratically elected one, which is absolutely wild.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
The study also found that influencers like Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson are trusted by 42% of young men. 45% of young men also said, we have gone so far in promoting women's equality that we are discriminating against men. Well, a similar proportion agreed, when it comes to giving women equal rights, things have gone far enough.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Where's Generation Alpha then? What happened to Alpha?
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Are they? They're under 13. Oh, so there's another generation...
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Okay, right. Okay, so that makes sense. Right, okay. Well, either way, it's bad. Yeah, that's me.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Reeves has announced subsequently that she plans to streamline environmental obligations, calling the example of the HS2 BAT tunnel, that cost £100 million, an example of regulation going wrong. They're going to limit legal challenges and the number of people who can veto projects and particularly infrastructure projects and streamline consultation that would otherwise drown builders.
Pod Save the UK
Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Yes. Yeah, yeah. You can say whatever you want. It's on the internet. You know the rules of the internet. Unregulated media. Yeah, very unregulated. You know, you're more experienced at broadcasting on the internet than any of us because you started out as like a sort of parkour, extreme sports YouTuber. You've really been involved in the business of doing stuff on YouTube.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
I am 30. Yeah, so I'm sort of, I'm nine years older than you. And for me, YouTube was always like, when people talk about early YouTube, I'm like, oh yeah, the Natalie Portman rap that the Lonely Island did on Saturday Night Live. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, true.
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For the elder millennials, YouTube is like... Charlie bit my finger. Yeah, Charlie bit my finger. Exactly. It's like a much more, like, innocent and probably like apolitical place. But I mean, so the video... Oh, how it changed. Yeah, I know. The video that you referred to, which is, it's just such an interesting, like, long form video essay, right? If I can make it sound...
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
incredibly boring because it's about you talking about you know as somebody who was making stuff making content in the YouTube space it's almost your kind of I don't know if de-radicalization is the right word but certainly it's like your sort of arc of going from somebody who was watching
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Masculinity and Misinformation: How JimmyTheGiant Escaped The Alt-Right Pipeline
sort of videos that exist outside of the left right political binary but exist in a kind of conspiratorial space they're like almost like apolitical conspiracy theory videos that then so then sort of travelling down through kind of Jordan Peterson into a kind of alt-right headspace and then sort of travelling back I think you sort of date it as pretty much post-2016 right?
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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.
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Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
That's what he said.
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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.
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Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And you love blue light.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Yeah, change is not always positive.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
And they're the most vulnerable group.
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Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
COVID runs riot.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
How f***ed are we if Trump wins? + Is Jeremy Corbyn MP forming a new party?
Well, this is linguistic communism.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
That's been the key debate in question, hasn't it? Is how progressive people engage. Because there's been an argument that actually non-engagement is better because if you go into their spaces, they control the terms of things like the edit. And also there's been this argument that if you spend too much time engaging with something like...
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
ex formerly twitter you actually legitimize a platform owned by a guy who's you know i don't know doing one long held wave is that what we're gonna call it now we're blaming on asperger's um Cannot tell you, neurodivergence does not make you do Hitler salutes. I'm so sorry to burst the bubble.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Well, look, the next four years are going to clearly be one hell of a ride. So joining us now to find out what's in store for America, the UK, and indeed the rest of the world, is Jon Favreau, host of Pod Save America and Offline. And I guess my boss. It's never really been fully made clear to me.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Jon Favreau, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Thank you. If you want to get more ongoing coverage and political analysis of Trump's second term, tune in to Pod Save America every Tuesday and Friday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, with the Trump inauguration, the climate emergency has never felt more urgent.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
After the break, Coco and I will be speaking to the Green Party co-leader, Carla Denya. Things are not looking good for planet Earth. And that was probably the wrong tone of voice to say that particular sentence. We kicked off the new year with wildfires in LA, major flooding in Greater Manchester and landslides in Indonesia.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Meanwhile, Trump wasted no time at his inauguration in withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It's a private member's bill introduced by Lib Dem MP Roz Savage, and it's attracted cross-party support and the backing of many campaign groups. Its second reading is later this week, and the Green Party co-leader, Carla Denya, is one of the bill's co-sponsors, and she is our guest in the studio. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK, Carla.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Yes, I did. But I don't know why I did. What possible benefit could that have had?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
The inauguration of Trump, it has a sort of seismic impact on any number of fields, but particularly with the environment and also the sort of signing away of a lot of LGBTQIA rights as part of his first wave of executive orders. How do you feel watching that happen almost in real time?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Let's try and focus on the more hopeful elements of this. The Climate and Nature Bill feels like a first step in fighting back on the global stage. So tell us what the kind of key headlines in the bill are.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Do you have the support of individual Labour MPs?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
In terms of the specifics of it, I mean, the target of 1.5 degrees, that threshold was already surpassed last year. Is that an argument that the bill doesn't go far enough or is that an argument you're trying to make to sow the urgency of passing something like this?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Last week, it was reported that the government set to back expansion at three London airports, Heathrow, Luton and Gatwick, as part of the efforts to spur economic growth. The environmental charity, the WWF, have said this would cancel out the carbon savings of the government's clean power action plan in just five years. And that there is an argument that the growth benefits don't stack up.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
If this bill passes... Would the Climate and Nature Bill be able to prevent decisions like that from being taken on the basis of the environmental impact?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I can't drive. So when I started doing stand-up 15 years ago, I was completely reliant on the train network. And I've sort of slowly watched... the prices just tick up as the quality of service has gone down. Listen, I'm not going to get on my high horse as I announce an extension of my US tour. I'm not going to get on my high horse about people flying, right?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
But in a country the size of ours, we shouldn't need to fly internally. But... I am also aware when I look at train tickets as I book them to go from London to Manchester, that if you were not able to spend that money, of course you would fly. Of course you would save the money.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Absolutely, 100%. The concern that I have at the moment, or one of the many concerns I have at the moment, is how specifically we combat a wave of disinformation. Now, that has consequences across all of politics, but particularly on the climate.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It is so important that we are having a scientific and fact-based conversation. I don't want to be like that guy, but like... I get people just don't give a fuck about black and brown people. I get that now. That has been made very clear to me over and over again. So I don't expect people to be sympathetic to the people in Pacific Islands or people in Asia.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I've given up trying to make the case for our basic humanity because it does seem like there is an immovable and very voluble minority that just doesn't acknowledge us to be human beings. But...
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
The people being relocated in California, a lot of them are white people. Australia is routinely on fire. These are places where white people live. I would have thought that...
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Yeah, surely the penny is dropping. This idea that catastrophic climate change is something that's coming in the pipeline. You can't look at the scenes of people's houses that they've lived in for decades with all of their entire possessions burning to the ground, belching kind of toxic clouds into the air to the people that are still in the area.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
As that was happening, I would have thought we'd stop we'd be able to move on from this idea that catastrophe is impending when catastrophe is now. Absolutely.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
They somehow managed to blame it on homeless people. Some people have managed to blame it on immigrants. Some people are blaming it on Diddy. Now, listen, there are a lot of things that can be blamed on Diddy. There are a lot of things that can be blamed on Diddy. And that legal case is ongoing. But the amount of conspiracy theories that are just being fired out about the LA Fires.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
And so you have this incredible sort of dissonant image of... California burning to the ground at the same time Trump is inaugurated and immediately pulls the US out of Paris. Where is the reason here?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
That's a constitutional right. The president doesn't have the power to overturn that, right?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Let's close with a more optimistic conversation. A kernel of real optimism in this is this cross-party support and this idea that, you know, everybody breathes air, like ultimately, apart from Rupert Murdoch. But that's maybe a separate issue. But like the rest of us are mammals that breathe air. So like in terms of your dealings on this specific bill,
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Have you had some grounds for optimism in terms of the cross-party cooperation on it?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
So what can listeners do in terms of helping this further along? Obviously, it's quite a short turnaround because the vote, if it happens, is going to be on Friday 8th.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Right, so with Trump's inauguration, inevitably there's been a deluge of WTFuck moments. So we've collected the best of the worst for you. Buckle up.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It's got real... I never thought I'd see a comparison between Vince Vaughn and Suella Braverman, but it has real wedding crashes energy. It has real wedding crashes energy.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Bradford said that her and her husband happened to be on the same flight as Fox, but later Fox live streamed them walking through Washington, D.C. together. So, like, it's a very interesting claim to be like, no, no, we're not here together. We just happened to coincidentally be walking down the same street together while he live streams us.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
And also presumably people willing to invest in their cryptocurrency. Because I think just in terms of from a British perspective, obviously, our media is sort of drowning in a deluge of executive orders. And there are elements in there that have very specific concerns for the day-to-day lives of British people, particularly, obviously, pulling out the Paris Climate Agreement.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
That happens to us literally every week. That is the worst possible anecdote. No, no. for my self-esteem that you could have released. That happened to us this morning.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
On our way in. We ran into each other on the tube on the way in.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Moving on from our awkward conversations with our irritating co-workers.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
For like our American listeners, if you're looking for kernels of hope, Liz Truss being supportive of your political project feels like a curse.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Things that Liz Truss tends to get 100% behind tend to collapse quite quickly in our experience.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Yeah, Nigel Farage, obviously the far right-hand man of many of the cronies involved. And also, you know, Priti Patel, listen, if you're going to have a Tory MP turn up to meet with a foreign government, why not make it one who actually lost their job for doing that?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Also not in the room, Lawrence Fox, but he was forced to watch the inauguration from, and I sort of can't quite believe I'm about to say this, Kid Rock's hotel room. Man. Alongside his buddy, the right-wing priest, Calvin Robinson. I guess the incredibly selective Bible-reading priest, Calvin Robinson, who previously left the UK for the US in protest at what he called the Satanic Keir Starmer.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I don't really even know what to say. Like, it's a failed actor, a failed vicar and a failed rock star in a hotel room, which feels like the set-up line to an awful joke.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
No, I, where possible, try and avoid any mentions of Kid Rock.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I want to go back to that. But I do think a story that has slightly passed us by is this sort of inauguration grift that he's gone into. Do I have this right? He's launched Trump and Melania meme coins, which by some estimates have made the president more money in 24 hours than the entirety of the rest of his career.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It's just nice sometimes to see a person whose politics are as awful as their music. Just a good double whammy for you there. He did make it onto the BBC News. That's Kid Rock, I mean, where whilst puffing on a cigar, he used the airtime to make creepy, sexist remarks to the BBC's chief presenter, Katrina Perry.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
The MAGA movement is spearheaded by a man seemingly contemptuous of women as a gender. So it's maybe not surprising that like one of his sort of, in inverted commas, celebrity supporters just feels that, you know, he can sort of casually... Yeah, it's totally emboldened to do that.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Unbelievably, this isn't the first time this has happened to this specific journalist. She was actually hit on live on air by Donald Trump himself. Here he is singling out Perry at a press event in the Oval Office seven years ago in this clip from the BBC.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
This is who they are. If you have a political movement spearheaded by a guy that does not respect women... This is exactly who they are. I feel incredibly sorry for Perry and all of these female journalists that in the line of doing their job are going to have to sort of be confronted by these men. It's gross.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I think with this political movement, the important thing is to not ignore all of the signs that it's showing you. The political movement is sort of infected with sexism, homophobia, transphobia and racism. Like that is a huge part of who the kind of leaders of this movement are. You know, Musk stood on stage and essentially did a Nazi salute to a crowd. Let's not overthink it.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Let's believe who they're telling us they are and start to articulate an opposition to it because you can't push back against something you're not acknowledging the existence of. And that, that, I'm not being particularly coded in that. I am talking directly to the Labour Party. I appreciate the difficult position that a Labour government has been put into by this election result.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
The market cap on the coin at the time of recording is seven and a half billion dollars. And Trump owns over 80 percent of the holdings. Certainly, that seems to be a key part of Donald Trump's personal agenda, which is constantly trying to think of new ways to enrich himself. I mean, it looks like corruption. It smells like corruption.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I absolutely appreciate that. But at the same time, there has to be a better balance struck between maintaining the relationships between the US and the UK government and a supposedly progressive party not co-signing... you know, white nationalist, misogynist, homophobic, Christian nationalism. Like, there has to be a way. There has to be a way for us to navigate all of this stuff.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It's not the most fun note to end the podcast on.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It was funnier when you were making pass-ags digs at me. We've got to go and get the tube home together now. How is that going to make me feel on that walk back?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
And that's it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. As always, we want to hear your thoughts. Email us at psuk at reducelistening.co.uk.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Pod Save the UK is a reduced listening production for Crooked Media.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
The executive producers are Anishka Sharma and Madeleine Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
It's very important to understand that like, this is what Trump is all about really, isn't it? Like forget all of the agendas and all of the promises about, you know, improving America. Forget all of the incredibly, a speech so boring, even he looked bored reading it that he gave at the inauguration. This is really what it's about. And this is what he's always been about fundamentally.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Too early in the show for nipples. It's too early in the show for nipple chat. But anyway, to find out what it all means, we'll be joined by Pod Save America's Jon Favreau.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Yeah, the Harris campaign was criticized a lot for not speaking to the concerns of ordinary Americans. Who knew that those concerns were renaming the Gulf of Mexico? That's what they wanted, yeah. In terms of the international front, so mercifully, we have seen a ceasefire in Gaza. We've heard over the weekend, obviously, the Trump team has been very keen to take a huge amount of credit.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
And I'm Nish Kumar. And Trump is back in the White House and the next four years are going to be a nightmare.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Trump essentially took credit for it in several of his various inauguration speeches. Trump has said he's not confident the ceasefire will hold, echoing Netanyahu's language that this is a temporary ceasefire. He's also declared a rollback on sanctions on settlers in the West Bank. And since the ceasefire was announced, Israel has embarked on an extensive military operation in the West Bank.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
There's also power pressure on the UK government to overturn suspensions of arms licences. Just looking specifically at the situation in Gaza. It's not coincidence that Benjamin Netanyahu has been a fairly over supporter of Donald Trump and an agitator for him. The ceasefire is something that is going to be relief to people, but there could be something worse coming.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
In Ukraine, Trump has, almost just before we recorded, put out an ultimatum on Truth Social demanding an end to the war in Ukraine. And he's issued an ultimatum to Putin saying, we can do this the easy way or the hard way, and the easy way is always better. Just proving once again that he speaks in dialogue that would be removed from a 1980s action film for being... Too poorly written.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Like you sort of forget and you're like, yeah, it's like stuff that they would excise from a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie for being clumsy and on the nose. But in terms of the European focus has been so heavily on Ukraine and what comes next. Do you have any sense of... Trump's short-term agenda.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
I want to ask you from a UK-specific perspective on this. So Keir Starmer, our Prime Minister, and our Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, have sent their congratulations to Trump. David Lammy previously called him evil and a neo-Nazi sympathiser, but has said that we need to embrace progressive realism. I have two questions for you.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
The first one is, in spite of this friendly language, do you think that Trump is going to buy it?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
You're an advisor to a progressive political leader in office. What advice would you be giving Keir Starmer at the moment? Labour is a progressive political party. Prominent members of that party have said incredibly critical things about Trump in the past. What advice are you giving Keir Starmer now?
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
Because our kind of economic growth plan could be very directly affected if Trump starts slapping tariffs on left, right and centre.
Pod Save the UK
Trump 2.0: Fear and Loathing in DC
manage that communication when the means of communication are owned by people supportive of demagogues and authoritarians we can talk all we want about what that musk gesture meant on stage but ultimately we're adults we watch the footage you know what you saw i know what i saw but how when you have someone like musk essentially inserting himself in the middle of the means by which you communicate but political leaders communicate with their populace how do you manage that
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
You argued that under capitalism, love is also privatised. There are private companies influencing our sort of love lives and romantic lives, right? Maybe now more so than ever, because of things like dating apps, about 4.4 million people in the UK use them, and about a quarter of the users pay for those services, generating around 150 million quid in annual revenue for the companies behind them.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I understand that these companies exist as private companies, they make a profit, but there is something almost like Mr. Burnsy. Yeah. about turning a profit from people trying to find a partner.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I love the book and I thought it was so beautifully written. But one of the things I thought was really interesting about it specifically was the like,
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
idea that male loneliness is a huge driver in massive societal problems and you know part of that is the way that capitalism has kind of taken a cleaver to lots of organizations like unions and community centers and social clubs that would have normally been places for men to socialize and in that void the kind of manosphere has sort of stepped into it and that has massive
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
political ramifications for all of us, right? Like it's a really interesting thing to talk about because the manosphere now is like a massive political problem for us. It's a driver behind Trump's election in the States. It's not really something people want to talk about, male loneliness and the political consequences of it.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I don't know about you, Coco, but I would say troops on the ground in Ukraine doesn't sound particularly peaceful to me.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
However, some European leaders weren't quite ready to make the same commitments for boots on the ground, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying it's inappropriate to discuss sending troops in at this stage and that he was a little irritated by the suggestion.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Following the meeting between Russia and Ukraine, Trump's given a press conference where he seems to have blamed Ukraine for the war, saying you never should have started it. And if anybody needs a reminder, just to be clear, Ukraine did not choose to invade itself. He also said that they'd had three years to end the war.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
There's been a few things recently that have reviewed the kind of tenor of cultural conversation, whether it was about gender, race or class in the kind of late 90s and early 2000s that have...
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
And this, just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides. And he's also demanded an election in Ukraine before any peace deal can be reached. which would naturally be a sort of prime target for Russian interference.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
One of the potential objectives that various experts in the region have always stated was at the heart of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is to essentially replace Zelensky and install a kind of pro-Putin puppet, in effect, bringing Ukraine under Russian control, a little bit like what Lukashenko has done in Belarus. Obviously, we will be discussing this through the frame of British politics. And
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
In this instance, the threat is specifically in various forms, the three people currently talking on this podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
The challenge here is that next week, Keir Starmer is going to have a meeting with Donald Trump and Starmer is trying to position the United Kingdom as essentially a conduit between Trump's America and the European Union. And what I would say is that
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
It's about time that people wake up and smell the dog shit because there's this idea that the US and Europe are mutually aligned in their values, but that does not hold water under the Trump presidency. There is a reason that they had peace talks and did not invite Ukraine. I have no idea how... we steer a course through this.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Sean, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Love in Exile is a fantastic book and it's out now. And if you're listening to the podcast, I'm holding up the cover next to my face. Now, after the break, we're going to be looking into another area affecting our mental health, social media. Should the government be getting tougher on regulating it?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Now, the scroll is something we're all afflicted by in our modern age, but how much damage is it actually doing to us? Reports vary, but one thing's for sure, it's proving very difficult for governments around the world to legislate against the effects social media is having on all of our lives.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
But the very fact that the peace talks happened with Russia and they happened in Saudi Arabia should be a clue to where Trump sees American alignment. America is no longer aligning itself with Europe. It is aligned with these kind of despotic, ethno-nationalist states. He has much more in common
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Here in the UK, next week, Parliament will debate a petition that has received over 100,000 signatures that requests we follow suit and introduce similar restrictions for our young people. Joining us now to discuss what our government might do to make social media safer for all of us is Patricia Clark, technology reporter at Tortoise Media. Welcome to Pod Save the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
No, there was a moment when Peter Powell... Sorry, it's really made me laugh that he just went, no.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Why did the government backtrack so quickly...
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
From your perspective as a technology reporter, do you consider that to be useful and good piece of legislation? Because to be honest, the rest of us, a lot of the time, don't know what the fuck is going on in this.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
in terms of his outlook on domestic and foreign policy with Mohammed bin Salman, with Vladimir Putin and with Benjamin Netanyahu.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
What does practical action look like in this instance? Because I have two cousins that are themselves Australian children. They're 18 and 20. I think 20 is not a child. Well, they're children from my perspective. Anyone under 30 is a child from my perspective at this point. So they're exiting the period that we're really talking about.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
the vulnerable teenage years, and they are now voting age adults. And I asked them about this, Bill, and I was quite surprised how in favour of it they were. Really? Yeah, they were very much of the opinion that they had observed harms done to them and their friends by being exposed to these things at younger ages.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
But the point that they then raised is so much of their social lives are now driven through these apps.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
That... there's a danger if you just suddenly remove them of actually isolating children further. If we've come to the conclusion, as we all have pretty much, that these things do harm to children, what are the actual practical measures that governments can take?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
To move on to a different area of online safety, last week there was a multinational AI summit in Paris where 60 countries signed a declaration of inclusive and sustainable artificial intelligence for all. Two countries were notably missing, the US and the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
A spokesperson for Downing Street said, we weren't following the US's lead, but that this is about our own national interest, ensuring the balance between opportunity and security. Can you wade through that word, Sue, to discern what the fuck that means? No.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
My concern here is that Elon Musk and Google have all warned that tech companies might choose to not launch products in the UK because due to the funding structure for the Online Safety Act, and there are Ofcom plans to charge tech giants fees equivalent to about 0.02% of their global revenue to enforce the laws, which would generate around 70 million quid a year.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Since the first discussions about the Online Safety Act, Musk has turned a huge amount of attention and hostile attention to the United Kingdom. Now, am I being... What I usually am, which is a profoundly paranoid man here, to say that Musk's threats and saber rattling from those tech companies is something that maybe is colouring our government's actions in this area.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
And is that why potentially they might not be willing to sign up to the AI thing? A separate issue from it being a bit kumbaya, which is a wonderful turn of phrase.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Thank you so much for joining us today on Pod Save the UK, Patricia Clarke. And listeners, do check out her work on Tortoise's Sloan newscast. In the latest episode, you actually talk about how Silicon Valley billionaires are trying to live forever, which aligns with one of my personal obsessions, Brian Johnson.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I think one of the strangest men to ever live.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Son's blood.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Son's blood. We should say for legal clarification, he doesn't do that anymore. It's fucking weird.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
terrifying, full colour.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Angry, disgusted, dishevelled. The Nishkumar story.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer Mae Robson with additional research from Isabella Anderson.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Thanks to our engineer Jeet Vasani.
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Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
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
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Yeah, I mean, Starman needs to look at who Trump is and what he has done. It feels like he's trying to do a deal with somebody that has no interest in doing a deal with him. And as if to underscore this idea that America is no longer aligned with the UK and Europe, J.D.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Vance launched a barrage of criticism towards the continent and our country last week at the Munich Security Conference, suggesting that European values suppress free speech and questioning whether our values are worth defending. Here's a clip from the man who is, let's be clear, the Vice President of America.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
All of it's adding up to me holding a gun, which no one wants.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I think this is an incredibly precarious moment for him because he's really stressing this idea, you know, our whole government's domestic growth agenda is tied up in our trading relationships with the United States. And I think it's an unenviable position to find yourself in, to have snookered yourself effectively to having to deal with Donald Trump.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I will say that domestically, in terms of this phrase about boots on the ground, I if it were to be put to a parliamentary vote, I don't suspect domestically he would face a huge amount of opposition to that. I think there would be political pressure on him to not do that.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Also, I don't look great in green.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
But I think given that the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has already backed Starmer's plans, I'm not sure that there would be a huge amount of opposition internally to it.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
I think you're exactly right to point that out, because at the same time as European leaders gathered in Paris to respond to Trump's actions, shares in major arms manufacturers soared. BAE Systems, the UK's largest defence company, saw its stock climb 9% in London. In Paris, tails jumped 7.8%, while Rheinmetall surged 14% in Frankfurt.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
The StockX and European Aerospace and Defense Index hit its highest level since the early 1990s. So investors are certainly seeking to capitalize on this period of geopolitical instability.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
And we'll be joined by author and journalist Sean Fay to understand why so many of us feel unlucky in love and to ask who's profiting.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
And it therefore follows that from an American perspective, whilst Trump may not have any interest in being part of any peacekeeping in the continent, he's certainly very, very happy, as you point out, to sell us weapons.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Look, if you're following the latest on Starmer's Ukraine boots on the ground comment and the European informal summit, you won't want to miss this week's Pod Save the World. They're breaking down the start of the US-Russia negotiations, which happened without Ukraine at the table, the Trump era shift in US foreign policy and what it all means for Europe.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
For the full global picture, check out Pod Save the World. New episodes every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
If you couldn't pick out that tune, that was Sandstorm by Darude. And I don't think I ever thought I'd be saying Keir Starmer's name in the same sentence as Darude. To borrow a phrase from the comedian Maria Bamford, I'm actually surprised that Sandstorm is still speaking to people.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
No, I think they're playing live. Wow. That's just brilliant. This is not a Milli Vanilli situation.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Now, look, last week we had our say on the government's latest moves on immigration, including denying citizenship to asylum seekers who arrive outside of legal channels and grossly sharing footage of people being deported. We called it performative cruelty. And it turns out loads of people within the Labour Party agree.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
A group of over 900 Labour members and trade unions have signed an open letter decrying the government's latest moves, including MPs and former guests on our show, Nadia Whitham, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Clive Lewis.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Yeah, it was good.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Yeah, and, you know, again, like... I said it last week. I'm sure I've said it about 100 times. There are wealth extractors bleeding our country dry, but they are simply not immigrants and asylum seekers.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
And earlier in the week, Donald Trump suggested European security can no longer be the primary focus of the American military. and in doing so, plunged the future of the transatlantic relationship into question and undermined an 80-year-long military alliance. European leaders hastily convened a meeting to discuss their response. Here's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking after the meeting.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
It's easier to rhetorically whack the powerless. The more complicated thing to do is to go after the people actively responsible, the wealth extractors, who for the last 15, 20 years have sort of bled this country dry.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
That's the sound of another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your own business.
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Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Covering all your sales channels from a shopfront-ready POS system to its all-in-one e-commerce platform, Shopify even gets you selling across social media marketplaces like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
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Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
And thanks to award-winning help and with an extensive business course library, Shopify is ready to support your success every step of the way.
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Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
It's time to get serious about selling and get Shopify today. This is possibility powered by Shopify.
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Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Go to shopify.co.uk slash podsave the UK to take your business to the next level today. shopify.co.uk slash podsave the UK.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
In the age of dating apps and social media, we're more connected than ever. So why are so many of us feeling socially isolated or struggling to find love? And what's more, who is profiting from the disconnect. Here to help us understand is Sian Fay, journalist and author of the bestseller, The Transgender Issue, which is a rigorous and precise intervention into Britain's anti-trans backlash.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Sian has since spent years dishing out life and love advice via her Vogue column, Dear Sian. And building on this, her new book, Love in Exile, explores the highly politicised terrain of modern love and why it eludes us. Sian, welcome to Podsaver UK. Hi, thank you for having me.
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
It's a huge question.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Migrants good or bad?
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
No, no.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
He's a huge fan of this podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thanks, Zoe.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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,
Pod Save the UK
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
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I think I meant date night as a catch-all term.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Fine.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thanks to senior producer James Tyndale and assistant producer Mae Robson.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thanks to our engineer, Ryan McBeath.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Right, yes. From Starmer.
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
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
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
I don't mind that.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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...
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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...
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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...
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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.
Pod Save the UK
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
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Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Lock all men up until they turn 30.
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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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
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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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
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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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
What are your wildest unpopular policies?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Because not being funny... Why are you doing this?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
What, you're going to license people to own a budgie?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Full Brazil.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I believe that it's legally caveated sufficiently. Okay.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
I think let's give the country a Brazilian.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
Some prohibitions are for our own benefit.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
Inside out: How to fix the UK’s prison system + Labour embraces unpopularity
And you're essentially punished for that.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Thanks, Nadia.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
I mean...
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
The Tories lose their minds (again) - can Starmer hold against the far right?
Now that, the journalistic question is, of course, you, Ian.
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
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?
Pod Save the UK
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.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
It feels like Jenrick is dancing for the king. And there were a lot of people in politics, and also, if I'm being completely frank, in comedy, that in the last few years have been dancing for the richest man in the world and dressing it up as either an act of political analysis or cultural subversion. And all they are is court jesters capering for a baron. That's all it is. And...
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Yeah, I mean, there is no depth to my contempt for Robert Jenrick. There is absolutely no depth through it whatsoever.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
But in the five years that Starmer was head of the CPS, he actually made significant changes that led to cases not being dismissed in the future. And the 2009 dismissal of cases was overturned.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Look, I know that this has been a heavy way to get back in after the new year, but if there is one kernel of optimism in all of this...
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I think it's important to note for people living in the United Kingdom and also for people, our friends and listeners in the United States, at the core of what seems like an undefeatable alliance between deregulated capitalists and socially conservative hard right wingers.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
There are some incredibly large egos that are prone to volatile outbursts and may well defeat each other in their quest to be the kind of top dog. So like Faraj and Musk, that alliance seemed incredibly strong one week ago, and it has now blown up. Musk is now going into a system where he's going to have to work with Donald Trump. They're both so sensitive.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
It sounded like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Oh, look at you.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
So I wonder if there is an inherent combustibility in a lot of these relationships that are driving these kind of joint forces. to political and social power. And if there is one thing we can hold on to, it's that there are some very, very volatile, combustible, sensitive men at the core of this who might well turn on each other at the first opportunity.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And that seems to have happened with Musk and Farage. And that is the one thing we can sort of hang on to at the moment to keep us hopeful.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Hey, and on the other plus side, Jean-Marie Le Pen died, which is great. Pod Save the UK is brought to you by Shopify.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
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Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Now joining us to look ahead to the big moments of 2025 and make some predictions we will be forcing her to be accountable to is Zoe Grunewald. Welcome back, Zoe.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I would say the turkey's worn off.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
The magic of the season has already worn off.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
So, look, Nigel Farage and Elon Musk have already managed to clog up our news feeds like hair and fecal matter in a drain.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
With this in mind, do you have any further insight into why Musk is attacking Keir Starmer over the grooming scandal now? And what's really going on here?
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Here is Alexis Jay reacting to the Musk route on Radio 4's Today programme with Nick Robinson.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Look at you, da-da-da-da.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Let's talk about the actual problems the country's facing and the practical things the government is trying to do to get us out of them.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
So the reason that Starmer was speaking in public this week was talking about the Labour Party's plan to end the NHS backlog, setting out how it aims to hit the target of treating 65% of patients within 18 weeks by March next year, which is a stepping stone towards the election pledge of hitting 92% by the end of Parliament this How realistic and viable are those two deadlines, Zoe?
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I just want to, before you make another useful and valid and interesting point, I just want to say something stupid and irrelevant.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
As is my want. It is also galling whenever you hear Elon Musk described as like a personality. Like, the man is... uncharismatic he is an absolute void if you actually watch him be interviewed I've never come across such a dull uninspiring and uncharismatic man he's not interesting he's so so thunderingly unfunny. When he attempts to make a joke, a part of me wishes I could eat my own anus.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Let's talk just briefly, before we go back to Labour and the local elections specifically, let's just briefly talk about the Tory party and reform. In terms of Kemi Badenoch, do you think... I mean, my feeling about her was always she was essentially set up as a patsy, if for no other reason other than that tends to be what the Conservatives do with their minority and female leaders.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
But equally, anyone taking over the Conservative Party at this particular moment was... always going to be left with a difficult situation and was probably unlikely to lead the party into the next election. Do you think she's already toast? And is Jenrick, in terms of pushing himself forward, setting himself up to take over from the person who beat him in the last leadership contest?
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
One of the survivors of the grooming gangs in Telford, who has since worked with the council to transform their approach to child exploitation, said this. I feel like our voices, all of our hard work has been twisted and our experiences have have been exploited for who knows what reason. Is it for politics or radical racist reasons?
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Because they're so thin-skinned. Ego-driven, yeah. They're so vulnerable to even the vaguest hint of criticism.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
So going into the local elections, given Keir Starmer's abysmal approval ratings, that would be something that I would have thought would fill the Labour Party with concern at the moment.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
But given the current condition of the Conservative Party, given the fact that reform, despite having a very successful general election run, are now sort of slightly infighting with a person that they thought were going to give them £100 million. Do you think actually the Labour Party must be looking at these local elections and thinking, not as bad as we thought it was going to be?
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I feel really proud of what we've done, but for the first time today, I sat down and cried about not feeling we have done enough.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Well, look, The influence of Trumpism, whether it's in reform or in the Conservative Party, has clearly been washing across the United Kingdom. And it's been four years since the infamous insurrection and just a few months since the United States re-elected the man behind it. Now feels like a perfect moment to examine the scope of American presidential power, its reach and hopefully its limits.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
We hope there are limits.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
After the break, we'll be discussing more billionaire bullshit, which just keeps coming with Zoe. So stay tuned.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Another terrifyingly uncharismatic man. Again, like completely not the point. But just having to listen to him speak is absolutely... He's looking quite cult leader at the minute, isn't he?
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I don't enjoy publicising the work of Ronnie Cheng because I... have nothing but animosity towards him as a man and a comedian. But his new Netflix special is great and has a long routine about how...
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Mark Zuckerberg has built algorithms and then been radicalized by the algorithms that he has built and has essentially become a sort of like low level MMA fighter based on reading things generated by algorithms that he helped design. Again, I cannot endorse Rodney Chang as a man or comedian, but his new Netflix special is great and he has a fantastic routine about this. But yeah, he,
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
It's good to remind ourselves every so often that Facebook originally started as a way for him to compare women to farm animals at university. It's always worth keeping that in mind when you consider Mark Zuckerberg. So he seems to have gone full Elon Musk, deciding to follow X and lay off Meta's third party moderation team.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Instead, users on sites like Facebook and Instagram will now highlight posts that could be misleading instead of leaving it to organizations or experts. Zuckerberg also committed to retooling the Meta algorithms to deliver more political content to counter claims of censorship from the social media giant. And
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Trust and safety workers, people responsible for enforcing policies around hate speech and disinformation, will be relocated from California to Texas to help remove concerns that biased employees are overly censoring content. So Zoe, just give us your expert opinion on this. More political content, less fact checking.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
It sounds absolutely great, doesn't it? More bacon, less exercise.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
He was basically saying that over Christmas as well. He was essentially arguing for more high-skilled immigration, which presumably at some point... will come into conflict with Trump's I-don't-even-want-the-people-who-are-here policy.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Yeah, apparently this is not a joke, which I'm sort of struggling to believe. He's even launched a charter replete with AI generated imagery that lays out his plans for Britain, including restoring masculinity and strength, the foundation of a thriving nation.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
It's going to be interesting to see how he's able to do that whilst under house arrest. Just to polish off this sort of triumph of WTFuck moments this week, Elon Musk's dad, Errol Musk, has suggested that his son is interested in buying Liverpool Football Club. The club is estimated at a value of around 4.3 billion, which is just over 1%.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
of Musk's total net worth, which is believed to be around £343 billion. I'm not sure I could particularly see this happening. Liverpool is owned by the Fenway Group, who also own the Boston Red Sox. They're not exactly short of cash. They also have a very keen interest in the football club and in sports in general.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
So it's not even something that they're just looking to offload as a business interest.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I'm not sure there's many cities in the United Kingdom, based on my quite extensive travelling, that would be less welcoming of Elon Musk.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
We turned Stanley Johnson into a celebrity. So, like, I'm really not, like, none of this, none of it is surprising to me. Zoe, thank you so much, as always, for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Thank you for having me. I don't know why I said as always so aggressively.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
One day we'll get you on to talk about something fun. But today was not that day.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Yeah, and the inaction around this... should be a source of national shame and deep national disgrace. Alexis Jay's report was published in 2022. But so far, there's been no actual implementation of any of its recommendations. Blame for that lies with, I'm afraid to say, the Conservative Party that have been in charge for most of the period between 2022 and now.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And that's it. Thanks for listening to us at Pod Save the UK. As always, we want to hear your thoughts. Email us at psuk at reducelistening.co.uk.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Pod Save the UK is a reduced listing production for Crooked Media.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
The executive producers are Anishka Sharma, Louise Cotton and Madeleine Herringer, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And this intervention seems to have spurred the government into action. So on Monday night, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper spoke in the Commons and said that a victims and survivors panel is being set up. Musk's interest in this seems solely focused on attacking members of the Labour government.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
He actually took aim at Labour MP and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips and called her, and this is a direct quote, and I do apologise for the tone and tenor and content of this, called her a rape genocide apologist and called for her to be jailed. Now, Jess Phillips has already said that his vitriol has put her in danger.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I don't really know what to say about these people anymore. I have no interest in engaging with them. There was just a section of the British press that enjoys soiling itself for attention.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
It's a clip from Sky News. On Monday morning, Musk also, and I can't believe I'm saying this, posted a poll on Twitter that he pinned to the top of his profile that asked if America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government. That's right. One of incoming President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency coordinators casually suggested that the U.S.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
should drop round to share some of their trademark freedom.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
All of this is reminiscent of one of Trump's closest advisors, Steve Bannon, and his infamous 2016 comms tactic to flood the zone with shit. He argued that the media is the arch enemy of conservatives. And so what conservatives should do is overload them with disinformation.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
That way, the regulated media is forced to fact check and dispute, which actually then limits resources for reporting and holding power to account.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
This seems like there's no doubt that Musk's fascination with the UK is going to continue to sort of manifest itself throughout 2025. So I guess the question is, how much do you fight back with this? How much do you engage with it?
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Keir Starmer's tactic is clearly to push back aggressively on the points that were made whilst we haven't, we've selected that clip obviously out of longer remarks that have But it's important to note that at no point did he actually address Musk by name. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared don't feed the troll. So he's sort of arguing that we shouldn't engage with it.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And I'm Nish Kumar, and we're back. What the hell was that?
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Obviously, that is a hugely contentious conversation in terms of Musk's influence on German politics, because he's been tweeting approvingly about the far right party, the AFD. There's an election coming up in Germany. That's obviously a very, very significant intervention that is about to be made by Musk.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Mother of the House, Diane Abbott, has suggested that Starmer shouldn't have engaged with the comments at such length as it gives Musk unwanted credibility. But at the same time, to not engage with it at all and to allow these kinds of lies to be propagated also gives them a kind of force and power. It is a really difficult thing.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I have a clear cut answer on what the best way is to fight back on this. As we sort of continue with this show, there is going to need to be some engagement with it. And I think the important thing is to push back on the most important of the rhetoric whilst also moving on to actually talk about practical things.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Am I lying? I'm 39. My erections are not what they once were. Anyway, straight into politics. This week, Elon Musk has turned his BS rate up to 11 and aimed it squarely at Westminster. He spent his Christmas break making an escalating series of misleading claims against Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour government.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
I mean, we're proposing a section called facts versus fuckwits, which is an attempt to kind of push back factually on this kind of thing. But it is a genuinely difficult thing.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
We should also be very clear about Elon Musk's interest in the UK. The reality is he does not give a shit about the UK. He cares about one thing and one thing only, and that is money.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
He stands to gain by disempowering the Labour Party. He hates Labour laws that cost him money. He also hates our proposed online safety bill, which would stand to limit the power that he wields through Twitter. There are also some proposals in that law that would enable the British government to fine companies that actually are involved in the spread of misinformation.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
In the longer term, he absolutely has an interest in getting our centre-left government deposed and replaced by something that resembles the US Republican Party. Because... he needs a political party in charge that will not regulate or tax him in any meaningful way. Elon Musk is a man without fixed political philosophy. His principal philosophy is the advancement of the interests of Elon Musk.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
He certainly does not care about young women and girls being victimized at all. If he did, I strongly suspect he would not be working with Donald Trump or he would not have strongly supported a political party that at one time housed Matt Gaetz. If he was genuinely interested in protecting women and young girls, he would not affiliate himself with those two men.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
His interests are purely based on his own personal financial gain. That is all this is about.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
As always, we want to hear from you. We're interested in your opinions on how much we should be engaging with this stuff. Do you think facts versus fuckwits is a good idea? Or do you think actually we should leave this subject alone and not continue to give these people the oxygen of publicity and attention that they seem to crave?
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Whatever it is we want to hear from you, email us at psuk at reducelistening.co.uk.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
But what else are you going to do over Christmas when none of your children will speak to you? The most incendiary of his claims is that members of grooming gangs who systematically raped girls were not prosecuted by Keir Starmer when he led the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Yeah, so Tommy Robinson, obviously a very contentious figure on the British far right. Within the British far right, I should say. He's not particularly contentious outside of it. Everyone thinks he's a dick. But within the far right, he is quite a contentious figure. And I think as part of...
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Farage's attempts to sort of launder the reputation of reform after an election campaign in which there were various racist comments made by reform candidates, I think, in an attempt to sort of detoxify the brand of reform. Farage, whilst lavishly praising Elon Musk, did stop short of supporting his comments on Tommy Robinson.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And that seems to have led Elon Musk to demand that Farage be removed as the leader of the Reform Party, which... Were he capable of feeling shame? I imagine would be deeply embarrassing for Nigel Farage. But given Musk's turn against Farage, the sharks have sensed blood in the water and are vying for attention.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
Conservative Robert Jenrick, the former Tory leadership hopeful and now shadow secretary of state for justice, jumped on an opportunity to sow racist division. Here he is speaking to Radio Force Today program with Nick Robinson.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
So Jemrik has doubled down on the anti-immigration rhetoric there and goes on to regurgitate Suella Braverman's line from last year that not all cultures are equal. We should also point out that Nick Robinson later in that interview did say, bring to Jenrick the fact that he didn't once raise the issue of grooming gangs as a minister.
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Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
And so all of this feels sort of calculated and an active sort of cynical political calculation.
Pod Save the UK
Billionaire BS: How can Britain Stop Musk’s Disinformation?
What Jenrick has said, I think it's straightforwardly racist. I really do. I think that what he said is pretty uncomplicated racism. I think it's embarrassing in so many ways, not least because at its core, there is a kind of jostling for position amongst sections of the hard right of British politics for the approval of Elon Musk. And that's all this feels like.
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.
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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
Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.
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Trump wins: where the hell do we go from here? w/ Katy Balls + Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP
The executive producers are Anushka Sharma and Madeleine Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz.
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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
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
That's Trump announcing his plans for Gaza in a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Just to summarise some of the other headlines coming out of these announcements, Trump said that the Palestinians would have no alternative but to leave Gaza. The US would own and develop the Gaza Strip.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Most of your career has been spent covering, sort of looking directly into the heart of darkness. Let's be honest here, Lewis. You've come of age as a political journalist in, I guess we say, sort of an interesting period of the history of this planet and I guess this country as well.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Well, let's stick with Donald Trump before coming back to some of the big domestic political news. He's just declared today, as we record, that the US is going to take over the Gaza Strip, hence his former ambassador to Israel's Gaza Lager, whatever it was, remarks to you this morning, and relocate Palestinians to neighboring countries, which would amount to ethnic cleansing.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
It certainly has put Keir Starmer in a tricky position. Here is Starmer's response to all of this at PMQs today.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
He's called Gaza a symbol of death and destruction and that the only reason people would want to live there is because they have nowhere else to go. And he spoke about it in chillingly cold terms. He spoke about it as the real estate developer he always has been and said that he envisions Gaza as a Riviera of the Middle East.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Does that explain the slight lack of initial direction in the Labour Party as a party of government after the election? Because they've talked a lot about the nebulous idea of economic growth. They've had various economists question whether that's possible. They've talked about, in terms of the NHS, opening a mass public consultation. What hasn't happened is an imposition of...
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
a actual cohesive vision for the country, which is only a surprise insofar as they've been in opposition for so long. And I think a lot of us assumed that they were fighting an election campaign in a kind of defensive mode in order to guarantee an election win.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
But then once you've won an election and you arrive in office, is that sort of absence, that kind of intellectual nimbleness, actually a bit of a problem and leads to a slightly directionless party of government?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
So in terms of what this means for the Palestinian people, he suggests that the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza should move to neighbouring countries with humanitarian hearts. So this is ethnic cleansing. This is, you know, the use of violence and force and intimidation to essentially drive a community of people out of their homes.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
If you watch that footage of Trump giving the press conference, Netanyahu is stood next to him on a lectern and it's sort of nodding approvingly throughout. What you're seeing really is the realisation of Netanyahu's ambitions for Gaza, which is effectively to drive the Palestinians out of their homeland and make it a part of Israel.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I keep on feeling the need to caveat when people say stuff like that with we hope. We hope. We hope. We hope.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
That if is getting bigger by the minute. As Elon Musk starts trawling through federal employees' emails, that if starts to get bigger.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
This is why Netanyahu has been so open in his support for Donald Trump, because he knew that Trump would open the door for exactly this happening. But if international law is to mean anything anymore, then the international community has to stand strongly and the United Nations has to stand strongly against this plan because it is ethnic cleansing.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
What a note to end on. Lewis Goodall, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. And of course, you can catch more of Lewis on the News Agents podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
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Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Also, we live in London, so there are still people doing that. You know, like I'm not sure anyone who lives in a major city doesn't at some point in the day go, what on earth is the backstory to you just dumping a full soup on the floor and leaving it? Why did you think that was an acceptable thing to do in a public street?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I think everybody's pretty obsessed with their bins.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Most of us have. Between two and three bins. Basically, most of us now have a bin that's a bin. Then we have a recycling bin. And then we have like a food waste bin.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
This is really boring. This is so boring. I have to take my batteries to Sainsbury's and dispose of them in a special batteries bin in a Sainsbury's.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
And I know that there are people who are going to accuse me of naivety for even asking questions like this, but this is a defining moment in the history of these institutions. And if they are unable to enforce the laws that they themselves have laid down, then there's simply no point in them continuing to exist.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Obviously, my instinct is we should collect the bins as often as possible. That's obviously my initial instinct. But as the number of things you use in your house becomes more recyclable, as plastic waste becomes recyclable, I know that there are question marks about what actually happens with that plastic recycling. But as that sort of stuff starts to happen...
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
you would think, oh yeah, the amount of stuff you put in your bin bin should decrease. So in theory, it shouldn't be a problem, right?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Here's my question, right? Nappies. So what happens with nappies? Because if those start to build up over the course of a month, that's not great. Listen, I know that children's feces is not as disgusting as adult feces. And I only know this because my nephew took a dump on my hand earlier this year. But like, so as a non-parent, you could sometimes not be aware of this.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Like, what can you do? He's 14 months old. Respect to the general. But like four weeks of nappies building up would be gross, right?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I'm sort of slightly lost for words to articulate how significant this feels at the moment.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
So where do you stand on four-week versus two-week collections?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
It was a job application that I have never received before. I don't get I don't employ people, so it's quite surprising to get a job application. But it was also delivered in a way that I had not really anticipated. I have a varied career and an interesting life, Coco. I'm very blessed in the way that my career has worked out. One of the things I could not have foreseen.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
is that I'm occasionally a DJ slash hype man for James Acaster when he is DJing.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Yes, so on Saturday I was in East London in my sort of capacity as stand-up comedian James Acaster.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Yeah, sort of Bez, Flava Flav energy. I should mention for any DJs listening, we don't really DJ. I mean, James is getting better. He's actually learning how to beat match and stuff. I'm just playing songs off an iPad. But sometimes people send messages to us via the Notes app on their phones. They will hold up their phones with a message in the Notes app that they've made enormous.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
And generally those are either like positive messages of support for us or specific song requests. And apart from this weekend on Saturday night, when a person... was holding up a sign saying, is PSUK looking for a researcher at the moment?
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
If we are hiring, we will let you know via the podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
If the person who held their phone up saying, is PSUK looking for a researcher? I was trying to communicate, we aren't currently, but I really appreciate job applications coming in this form. And also, if we are, we will let you know on the podcast. But I just wanted to say thank you to that listener.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
And I really appreciated it, and I'm sorry that we can't do anything for you professionally at this particular time.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
James and I DJed at Glastonbury at the music festival last summer and someone from the crowd held up a sign that said, play Hey Ya. Then the phone disappears and then it just comes back and it just says, please. Just the word, please.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Next week, we have the amazing Ash Sarkar in the studio with us to discuss her new book, Minority Rule Adventures in the Culture War. So if you have any questions for her, drop us a line. Ash is probably one of the only people who has boiled the piss of more Daily Mail readers than me. So that's something to look forward to.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I'm on there as well. Are you on there? Yeah, it's just my profile picture is a picture of me with my head in my hands on the Channel 4 election night coverage.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I'm not following anyone, currently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I actually need to engage with Blue Skies.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Pod Save the UK is a reduced listening production for Crooked Media.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
The executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Tanya Hines and Madeleine Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz and Katie Long.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
The Turkish foreign minister has described Trump's Gaza plan as unacceptable. And Hamas has said that the Trump plan will pour oil on the fire. From a British perspective, our foreign secretary, David Lamy, was at a press conference this morning with his Ukrainian counterpart. And he said that we have always been clear in our belief that we must see two states.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
We must see Palestinians live and prosper in their homelands, in Gaza and the West Bank. I'm pleased to hear the unambiguous language from Lamy in that moment. If they stand aside and allow this to happen, then where is their moral authority to criticize Vladimir Putin? Really, I'm asking genuinely.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I don't see how we can continue to maintain this kind of strong line on Putin whilst also allowing Trump and Netanyahu essentially to run right in the Middle East.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
You know, ever since he, while Barack Obama was still president of America and Netanyahu didn't meet with him and instead met with Trump when Trump was a candidate for the 2016 election.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
No, there's no pause. There's not even time for us to make fun of Drake. That's how serious the situation is. To discuss these waves of chaos and, back in the UK, the salacious allegations that his inner circle describe Keir Starmer as an HR manager, we'll be joined by a very special guest, the newsagent Lewis Goodall.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
The global fallout of the US elections keeps happening because this week Trump also announced and then deferred tariffs to Canada and Mexico, as well as applying a 10% tariff on some Chinese goods. But what about the United Kingdom? Sorry, here is another, unfortunately, Donald Trump clip in regards to our government.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I mean, that made almost no sense. If you can try and sort of extract some coherence from Trump's word soup to the BBC from that clip, he's described the UK as way out of line, but maybe OK. We don't seem to be directly in the firing line, but the EU, which seems to be very much firmly in his crosshairs...
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
And I'm Nish Kumar. Once again, we can't escape Trump. The president has unleashed a tidal wave of incredulity around the world from backflips on tariffs to Elon Musk's interventions in the apparatus of American government. And just this morning, as we record, announcing a completely insane plan to take over the Gaza Strip.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
That's a hostility that also aligns with a lot of the tech companies that have been outright supporters of him because of some legislation that he's trying to look at in terms of online safety. But anyway, that's a separate conversation. But in terms of the way out of line comment, our government didn't agree.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
A spokesperson for Keir Starmer said, we've got a fair and balanced trading relationship and that our trade is worth about 300 billion pounds. The spokesperson also noted that we are each other's single largest investors with 1.2 trillion pounds invested in each other's economies. Thank you.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
But look, that's the obligatory US update done. But if you want the US perspective on Trump's delayed trade war or Elon Musk's growing grip on the government, Pod Save America unpacks it all. How Musk's handpicked crew is dismantling key agencies, why Trump's trade deal changes little and whether Democrats can stop the chaos.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Plus, former Obama adviser Brian Deese breaks down just how bad things could get.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Listen, there's not much to celebrate at the moment, but it is really, really worth highlighting when this kind of stuff happens, when positive things happen through specific actions by activists and experts like Tessa. It's really, really good news, but the fight might not be over.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
There's speculation that the government might attempt to reissue licenses and the oil companies can continue work on the developments and gather further data about just how much CO2 it might emit. But for drilling to happen, they would need to be issued a new licence from the government.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
For now, let's be positive and take the wins where they happen. And this is a huge shout out to Tessa and all of the people that scrapped together to fight this. You can still write to your MP and let them know that you oppose Rosebank. And if you want to do anything to help kick this oil field to the curb for good. then head to the Stop Rosebank website. That's stoprosebank.org.uk.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Pod Save the UK is brought to you by Aura Frames.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
It was named the number one digital picture frame by Wirecutter and for a good reason. It's easy to set up and they have different frame options.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Yeah, it's the number one digital picture frame in Wirecutter, The Strategist, and Wired. It's recommended by The Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and high-end home design publications. It's also crucially easy to set up. It takes about two minutes to set up a frame using the Aura app, even for technophobes like me.
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
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Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
Now, is Keir from HR what the UK needs to reset our relationship with the EU? Is it enough to ward off strongman tactics from Trump? Or is he deluding himself? To set the record straight, we jumped on a call with Lewis Goodall, journalist, author and co-host of the News Agents podcast.
Pod Save the UK
Trump’s Gaza madness ft Lewis Goodall
I could tell you from personal experience, Lewis, that doesn't matter to them. Yeah, well, quite.
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
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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
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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.