Pod Save the UK
Can Starmer’s upbeat note drown out the donation scandal? w/ Zoë Grünewald and Simon Kuper
Thu, 26 Sep 2024
Exclusive INCOGNI Deal ➼ go to https://incogni.com/podsavetheuk to get 60% off your annual plan!Keir Starmer gave his first Labour Conference speech as Prime Minister this week - but his message of “national renewal” was slightly spoiled by a backdrop of poor polling, infighting and their never ending “garm drama”. Journalist Zoë Grünewald joins Nish and Coco on the couch to search for the “light at the end of the tunnel” promised by the new government.Later, Simon Kuper, Financial Times journalist and author of Good Chaps: How corrupt politicians broke our law and institutions - and what we can do about it, joins the show to delve into the government’s first scandal-not-scandal. They discuss how donations have infected our politics and why there’s no such thing as a free box at the Arsenal game.Guests: Simon Kuper https://x.com/KuperSimonZoë GrünewaldAudio Credits: ITV NewsPod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.Contact us via email: [email protected]: 07494 933 444 (UK) or + 44 7494 933 444 (internationally)Insta: https://instagram.com/podsavetheukTwitter: https://twitter.com/podsavetheukTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@podsavetheukFacebook: https://facebook.com/podsavetheukYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/podsavetheworld
As Labour conference comes to a close, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have declared war on tax dodgers and COVID corruption.
But don't worry, there's promises of sunshine and rainbows ahead. I'm Nish Kumar.
And I'm Coco Kahn. And this is Podsafe for UK.
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.
Hello.
Fresh from conference?
Not so fresh from conference.
Unfresh from conference. A bit tired from conference. How was it?
How was it? It was corporate. I think there is a perception that Labour Party conference is one of the more fun conferences. And this year felt so actually overrun with business people, in my opinion. I mean, it was very crowded. All the fringe events were standing room only. There were lots of, you know, men in suits patrolling, which, you know, isn't unusual for a political conference.
But it felt particularly busy this year, I'd say. And perhaps not as kind of grassrootsy, lively, young as Labour Party conference might have once have been.
Well, let's get into it. Here's a clip of the Prime Minister addressing that very Labour Party conference.
More money in their pocket to do the things they love. More faith in their public services because once again Labour rebuilt them. An NHS facing the future. More security and dignity at work. Town centres thriving. Streets safe. Borders controlled at last. Clean energy harnessed for national renewal. New homes, new towns, new hospitals, roads and schools. A new future for our children.
That is what people will get. And mark my words, we will deliver it.
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?
I would say they were definitely making a concerted effort to be more hopeful, a bit more jolly, a bit less gloomy. You know, I wasn't quite sure about the slogan, change begins, because as you say, that speech in the Rose Garden where it was like, things are going to get pretty bad.
Yeah, change is not always positive.
Yeah, and it's like, that's beginning right now. It's like, oh no, more terrible things. But I mean, you could really tell they were trying to make an effort to inject a little bit of that sort of 1997 vibe hopeful, you know, vibe to conference.
And that was really shown, I think, in Rachel Reeves' speech where she had this big kind of smile plastered on her face, which I actually found in moments a little bit creepy. But I think with Starmer's speech, it started off A little bit slow, a little bit disparate. You know, he struggles to tell a story, I think. It sometimes feels like he's kind of moving all over the place.
But as he went on, he warmed up. And there were moments where I think he spoke with quite a lot of passion.
So do you think that, because obviously Starmer's... His opinion rating is quite low. I think there is still a problem where people don't understand what he stands for. I was hearing a conversation about him the other day and people talking about how even with Blair, his line was, he's a modern man for a modern Britain. And almost his youth in adopting technology, that was part of the brand.
And people still don't fully know what the brand Starmer is. Do you think this corrected it a bit?
Not really. I think he is... practical, pragmatic, and sort of like a boring public service. It's pretty dull, but that's kind of part of his appeal. The problem is when you are trying to keep the country with you for a decade, that's what they want, a decade of national renewal, you do have to tell a bit of a story and you do have to inspire them and excite them.
And I think Labour's depending a lot on delivery. They just want to be able to say in five years' time when the public go back to vote, look at all these things we've achieved.
Yeah.
That's great. But is it enough? You know, you look at the US, you look at Biden, Biden actually delivered quite a lot, but he's still, you know, still in trouble. So it's not just delivery. It's also a time where, you know, the country doesn't trust politicians and is quite divided on certain issues.
I think you need to offer a little bit more than just, look, there are, you know, cranes in the sky and planning reform and, you know, You know, it has to be a little bit more, I think, for the average person to feel that their changes are materially different.
So let's have a think about some of those issues then. Starmer had lots to say on migration. He said that net immigration is too high and claimed that taking back control, the old Brexiteer slogan, is actually a Labour argument. So what is he trying to achieve here, Zoe?
it was almost as if he was trying to reframe the immigration debate as a kind of left-wing argument against free markets. So, you know, he made this argument that net migration is too high and that, you know, he was saying it's a legitimate thing for people to think. And it was funny, he kind of pointed to
sort of Boris Johnson years and the sort of last five years of Tory governance, where net migration figures really went up because they relaxed rules on visas. And he was basically suggesting that the Tories let the market define policy and politics. And actually, it's more sort of left wing, it's more statist to have a government that wants to kind of control its borders.
I think what was good was that he made the case for asylum. You know, he said, if you want tighter laws on immigration, you have to accept that there are going to be people here who have legitimate claims to asylum and should have those accepted.
And I think that almost made me wonder if, you know, we could see something like safe and legal routes coming eventually, because it was actually a fairly assertive case for asylum where, you know, actually the party had been quite scared to even talk about that before.
But I think what would have been nice if he'd made a stronger case for the benefits of immigration that we've seen, you know, how it has enriched the country culturally, how it's enriched the country economically.
I was pretty disgusted by what he said, particularly about what he said in conjunction with the riots.
I will never accept the argument made not just by the usual suspects, but by people who should have known better, who said that millions of people concerned about immigration are one and the same thing. As the people who smashed up businesses, who targeted mosques, attempted to burn refugees, scrawled racist graffiti over walls, Nazi salutes at the senator.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's almost like he was trying to placate various sections.
It's very fine people on both sides. It's on the continuum of very fine people on both sides.
And it undermines that sort of moment of actually making the case for asylum. That is hidden in all these other statements. And when you focus a lot of your speech on immigration on how it needs to come down... arguably you are giving credence to the argument that there is something wrong with immigration and therefore immigrants.
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.
I had this little moment the other day where I was thinking, wow, over the summer, loads of us were scared to leave our houses. And now we're just expected to just forget about it. And it's weird. I think gaslighting is a really hoist word you use there. Yeah, I hear it.
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.
From one thing that disgusts you to another. This was my personal... I'm going to be quiet for a little bit. So one of the things that Starmer was keen to emphasise was a... Back down on benefits for all. That was his language, prompting critics within the party to say it was almost like George Osborne speaking again. I have to say this was my area of feeling like absolute disgust.
I couldn't believe it. I just can't believe that we're having any conversation around benefits that isn't about the fact that the sums are so paltry that the people who claim them, who many of them are in work and also unwell, are forced to choose between heating and eating, which I think should be what we talk about when we talk about benefits.
tiny problem compared to loads of other issues with the benefit sector. So anyway, so what's Starmer's play here, Zoe?
So I think some of this, again, is signalling to the right. So, you know, this argument that part of the thing with Keir Starmer is I feel like You can almost kind of understand why Labour might have felt that it needed to shift rightward slightly to get elected.
And I think a lot of people kind of gave the party maybe a little bit of lenience because they understand that there was a group of voters they wanted to grab who were disenchanted Tory voters. But the problem is they're now in government and they have five years. And, you know, you can look at approval ratings and all of that, but actually they have five years left.
this is time for some brave decisions. And it feels like Labour is still, for some reason, signalling to the right, even though it doesn't really need the support of the right anymore.
It can be braver. They won an election by a landslide.
They can be braver here. And, you know, what is Labour for if it's not for standing up for the rights of not only working people, but people who need the support of the state? Labour is supposed to be the party of the state. So when you're talking, even in a passing comment about going after benefit fraud,
when there are so many other issues of corruption and wasted money, especially when you are running a government that has DWP, the Department for Work and Pensions, in there that we know is simply not fit for purpose. We know that the incompetencies of DWP and its inefficiencies have actually led to worsening people's sickness, to some deaths.
definitely to make life a lot harder for vulnerable people.
I really feel like we need to have a better conversation about benefits in this country. It's getting a little bit, on a personal level, I'm getting angry and I don't like me when I'm angry. So benefits is, of course, an enormously important topic and it does require more time than we have today.
So next week, we're going to be looking at how these crackdowns can disproportionately affect minority groups and also just the fairness of the benefit system in general. If you've been affected by benefit sanctions in the past or have some thoughts you want to share, please do email in. I promise you this is a safe space.
I can say as a child of a single parent mum who worked all hours of the day, we still needed some help from the benefit system. So this is very much a safe space and I understand how it can be. If you do want to email, the address is psuk at reducelistening.co.uk and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. You can catch us in your feeds next Thursday.
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.
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.
Right, exactly. I mean, it wouldn't cost anything to just say I understand the depth of feeling on this issue is a great moral question of our time. I'm committed to it. Why do you have to take a swipe at people who are not even in the room anymore? God, what is this?
Also, who are, you know, young party members. I mean, not that age makes a difference, but those... you know, it's actually, it's difficult to engage young people in politics.
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.
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.
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?
This is a democracy on this show, with our listeners as well. It was a suggestion.
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.
There's another thing she couldn't refuse. Was that good?
You sounded like Ray Winston.
You were doing the New York thing, so I thought, there's another thing. I can't do it. It's too hard now.
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.
Let me try again here. It was an offer she could not refuse.
Now you sound like Tom Waits.
I sound like I smoke a lot, don't I? Anyway, sorry, go on.
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,
Is it a wise position to then go, but Taylor Swift, pretty good.
Yes. Yeah. I mean, it is the case that, That for a long time, politicians have been doing things like this. And it is above board in the sense that if you declare it in your register of interests, then that's within the rules. Now, should we be having a conversation about whether that should happen? Yes, we probably should. And arguably, Labour are the right party to do that.
They made restoring public service a whole chapter in their manifesto. They... saw how actually sleaze scandals can bring entire governments down under Boris Johnson. Keir Starmer, you know, he is the law and order guy. He is former director of public prosecutions. He absolutely could have made this his whole thing. I am going to restore your trust. We're going to be squeaky clean.
We're going to do everything with just public service in mind. What they should have done, I think, is they should have seen this, seen how the public were responding and say, you're right. And I think we're going to have a look at the rules and we're going to change them. They shouldn't be saying, it's fine. Everyone does it. We've been doing it for ages. The opposition have done it.
It's just how politics works. You know, a friend wanted to give me a dress. So I, you know, it was very nice because people don't trust politicians. They don't trust their motivations. And when there's those personal donations, I don't know how they can't see how that undermines their message.
Again, it feels like it's playing into that narrative of there's one rule for politicians and another rule for everyone else. And Labour should be particularly hot on that.
Do you think there's an issue that because they've already accepted some of them, there might be some political blowback? I wonder if maybe that's why there's a reluctance there.
I mean, potentially. I mean, take Lord Ali. I mean, he is not only a big donor for the Labour Party, but he also works, you know, he's a peer. He does campaigning for Labour. I mean, he says he loves Labour and that's why he wanted to make these donations. If that's true, then the party's saying to him, we don't really want to take any more of your money in a personal capacity. Yeah.
He should be like, yeah, great. Whatever helps you guys stay in power, right? If there are donors who are like, well, that's going to make our relationship very difficult, then... That proves exactly why they shouldn't have a relationship with him.
Then it was a quid pro quo. It wasn't just that he loves the Labour Party.
Precisely. Also, sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but when you said it all, he just loves the Labour Party.
That's what he said.
So quick. Babe, come on.
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.
Somebody made a comment. It was a Labour advisor. I can't remember who. Somebody was saying these were very particular glasses with a special blue light filter that helps him read the autocue. And I thought, oh, come on. Like, come on. My glasses provider add the blue light thing for like 80 quid. And obviously I say no because I don't want to spend that money.
And you love blue light.
Yeah, I love blue light.
Zoe's one of the few people that's pro blue light.
But despite the negative public sentiment, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has stayed perky. He told a Labour Climate and Environment Forum drinks, it's a bit like Mario Kart government. Things fly at you. You've just got to keep going. And if you think you're going to have an easy day in government, you're not. So nice for him to compare this all to being blue shelled. Yeah.
You know, very, very on brand for Ed Miliband.
This is how you engage a millennial audience. Mario Kart references. This is something we can all understand.
Zoe, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you.
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.
Now, there's no denying that Keir Starmer loves a freebie, whether it's Taylor Swift tickets or a corporate box at the Arsenal game. He's accepted more gifts than any other Labour leader since 1997 combined. But there's no such thing as a free lunch. So they say, so what are big business and millionaires hoping to gain from gifts and donations?
Someone who's been looking into this is Simon Cooper, Financial Times journalist and author of Good Chaps. How How corrupt politicians broke our law and institutions and what we can do about it. Thanks for joining us, Simon.
Pleasure. Is it odd to be someone who's summoned to discuss corruption?
It's something I'm getting used to, yes. I just dived into corruption when I began researching this book. I was astounded how much there was that everybody just seems to live with. And now I talk about it.
So, you know, obviously we talked a lot during those last days of the Conservatives about sleaze. What is the distinction between like sleaze and corruption?
Sleaze is a British euphemism because British people don't want to say that there's corruption in Britain because corruption obviously only you have in Brazil or Russia and bad countries. In Britain, we can't have that. So sleaze is a way of making it sound sort of titillating, tabloid headlines. Corruption is, I'm using the World Bank definition, abuse of public office for private gain.
So if you're an MP or a civil servant or you could be a doctor or a police officer, you'd use that office to make money for yourself. And that can be completely legal. So we have ex-prime ministers who go off and work for Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, try and go into business with China, etc. It's legal, but they're still monetizing their office. So to me, that's corrupt.
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?
I think it's incredibly stupid. That would be my sense. It is a form of corruption in that, you know, because you have office, you're leader of the opposition, you get some free clothes. But it's not such a big deal. I mean, he could have bought the clothes. He could have paid Arsenal for the box.
And so instead of drawing a sharp contrast between a conservative government where there were terrible cases of corruption, most of all the COVID VIP lane, then you could come in and say, we don't do that. And somebody wants to give you free clothes. And you say, no, we don't accept free clothes. I'd like them, but can't do it.
It would just have been so easy and it's incredibly stupid to have lost that moral lead and to have set a tone that people are going to remember for years.
I mean, Keir Starmer and his ministers have repeatedly said that they're acting according to the rules. I just wonder, can you explain to me what exactly are the rules? Is it just anything goes as long as you declare it?
Pretty much, yeah. That's the British system. You phrase it very well. Anything goes as long as you declare it. That sounds like The Purge. Yeah. You know, this phrase that transparency is the best disinfectant, which is nonsense because you'd be completely transparent. You took a donation from some crook. You put it on the register. You hope that nobody will check it.
You know, there's fewer and fewer sort of local journalists if you're an MP in the Northeast, say, who will go through that. So mostly anything goes as long as you can declare it is right. And they didn't even declare some of this, which is also odd. Right.
Not everybody thinks this stinks. Here's ex-footballer Gary Neville defending the Prime Minister in this clip from ITV.
What would you say to that, Simon?
I think he has a point that when I was researching corruption under the conservatives, there was so much of it that each scandal would displace the next one. So Sunak got helicopter rides from a donor who later got into legal problems. And, you know, this lives and dies a couple of days in the newspaper. And then there's some other terrible scandal.
Boris Johnson goes and meets the Venezuelan dictator paid by a hedge fund manager. So the main Tory donor, Frank Hester, who I think is the largest donor to any political party in the history of British policies, gave the Conservatives about 15 million, comes out that he said the terribly racist and misogynistic things about Diane Abbott, Labour MP.
And, you know, it's a story for a few days and then it's completely faded. So it's true. I mean, I think Steve Bannon coined the phrase, you flood the zone with shit. I don't think the Tories were deliberately doing that. but it works very well as a distraction tactic. You say they had a sort of conveniently timed bout of diarrhoea?
I think by the end of the Conservative government, they didn't have a shared project anymore. They didn't believe in the same thing. They didn't really try to pass any laws and they knew they were going to lose. So it was each person for themselves. Just grab all you can.
Flood the zone with shit. Is that the phrase?
Yeah, that's Bannon's. Yeah, it applies to media strategy. So if there's a bad scandal about you, you just create another scandal or five others, five other stories. And the problem with Labour is that this story has stuck for a week, 10 days, and people dig further and then there's a new item of clothing
Wow. So it works for media and it also works for our public waterworks. So, you know, get you a policy that can do both. So in your book, you argue that the UK has become more corrupt over the last few decades. I think almost the public are expecting it. So I guess one of the things I'm trying to work out is how corrupt is Britain? You know, marks out of 10.
It's impossible to measure corruption exactly because by definition, most of it is hidden.
Right.
You don't go out and declare, well, I, you know, I stole various things from government this week. So the best approach is a transparency international corruption perceptions index where they ask people who are exposed in particular countries, you know, how much corruption do you think there is in that country? You also get surveys of people, have you paid bribes?
To which in Britain the answer is almost invariably no. I mean, there's almost nobody in Britain who's ever paid a bribe. You don't have to bribe a nurse or a police officer in Britain. And so Britain was with a cohort of Northern European countries.
I think about a decade ago it would have been considered one of the better ones in this Northern European cohort, now considered one of the worst in that particular cohort. So it's not going to be Nigeria, it's not going to be Russia, but it doesn't really compare with, say, Denmark anymore, which is a very clean country.
It's fallen quite sharply in just a few years down the Transparency International Rankings.
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.
Yeah, bad governance. And if you feel... well, I don't want to buy the bonds of a country where the government is giving contracts to people who are donors to the ruling party. I mean, it's very much, you know, the COVID VIP line scandal is very much like how Sierra Leone handed Ebola where all the Ebola contracts went to friends of the president.
So, yeah, I mean, when you're thinking of lending to Britain, and Liz Truss tested the proposition that people were still willing to lend to Britain, which they said, maybe not so much. Yeah. this does become a factor. But generally, I mean, more directly, government money goes missing to the tune of billions in some cases through corruption.
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
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?
I would say it starts... With Margaret Thatcher, who herself was not corrupt, she was sort of restrained from stealing from government by a very strong Christian ethic. She thought it was wrong. And so even when her ministers would meet to discuss Tory party business, they had to pay for their own sandwiches because you're not discussing government work. It's party business.
So everyone pays for their own food. And however, she kind of didn't really believe in public service. It was weird because she was a public servant, but she was always dissing it. People who worked in the public sector were sort of losers and leeches on the state and the real heroes of Britain were business people.
She had this idea that to get rich is glorious and she'd bring in business people to advise government because business is obviously better than government. And I think that's when you start on the right to get this waning of the public service ethos.
Because if you think of conservative politicians of previous generation like Harold Macmillan or Anthony Eden, Churchill, I mean, they spent their whole lives in public service starting with World War I because they had gone out to fight and if necessary, die for Britain in World War I. They believed that the highest thing you could do with your life was to serve the state.
And, you know, business was a bit vulgar and grubby and it was very much not where it was happening. And so this public service ethos starts to disintegrate with Thatcher. And then what you get from the 80s and 90s is you get a lot of money coming into London. For a start, the city grows enormously after Thatcher's big bang of 1986.
So suddenly you have people in banks and hedge funds who are earning millions. And the other thing is you get a lot of people from the former communist countries, especially the former USSR, coming to park their ill-gotten money here. So Roman Abramovich is a very spectacular example. But there's lots and lots of them. I think Moscow, you know, you could be...
hurting a drive-by shooting in your favorite restaurant.
Yeah.
In Kensington, not so much. So you moved to Kensington.
I mean, that didn't always prove to be the case for a couple of pretty high-profile people.
Yeah, later Putin came to get them. But for a while, London seemed a very safe haven, expensive schools, good tailors. And so a lot of money came here. And those people had learned from their home countries, not just the former Soviet Union, but also, say... Egypt, they'd learn in their home countries that you protect your money by being friendly with people in government.
And the people in government, they also want a bit of money. And let's see if that proposition works in the UK. I'll donate to the ruling party. So you get a surge of money. These people very quickly get UK passports because there's a fast track of golden visas for rich people. So suddenly you're a UK citizen.
You have all this money that you've taken out of Russia and you start giving it to a political party. So the ruling party, because you'd be an idiot to give to the opposition. And so a lot of conservative donations in the years between about 2010 and 2022 come from Russians, former Russians.
One of the things I wanted to ask, just because, you know, what you've outlined there is big money players. And obviously, you know, we started the show talking about the donations, the gifts given to members of the Labour Party, the ministers, you know, Taylor Swift tickets. Generally, those sums would be considered smaller. But are they comparable in terms of the results?
So, you know, we spoke about how in the UK, you can do what you like as long as you declare it, but you never have to declare what that donor has asked for in return. So are we right to assume that of all of these gifts, there would have been something in return?
There are some people who just genuinely believe in the party. And sometimes they want something, but mostly they just want that party to do well. And the key examples I cite from the past are the Sainsbury cousins. So you have David Sainsbury who gives Labour, I mean, probably the biggest Labour donor over time. in the several millions, and his cousin John Sainsbury gives to the Tories.
And I don't think either, none of them were involved in the business anymore. They kind of left the family business, the supermarket, decades earlier. Both David and John just wanted their party to win. They're not asking for anything back. So you get that kind of donor.
And I think Lord Ali, who is the figure who was involved in the current Labour scandal, he's actually a mini Sainsbury in that way. He gives much smaller amounts to Labour, But he's been a Labour peer. He's been inside for 30 years. I think he just wants Labour to win and he feels, well, if they have nice clothes on TV, they're more likely to win.
I think what I would look at if I were doing investigative journalism is he is the chief fundraiser for the party. So I'm not so much worried about the money that Lord Ali gives because I think he gives because he's a supporter. I'm worried about the people who come to Lord Ali and say, you know, I'd like to give some money to Labour.
So it's not necessarily his donation specifically and what quid pro quo he might be getting.
No, I don't think he's particularly looking for a quid pro quo. And also, you know, if you're a rich person and you like politics and you're kind of a lord, you like hanging around the political scene, you have a pastor down in the street, often you just want to be involved. Yeah. And the people who run the show think, well, Why are we going to bring you in?
You're not a major figure in the Labour Party. And then you say, oh, well, I can give you some money. So a lot of the donations are a little bit idiosyncratic. I'm not saying that what has happened with Labour now is okay at all. I think it's a disgrace. But I don't think it's, as you say, it's not big money. And I don't think the Lord Ali donations themselves are dangerous.
I think his position as gatekeeper is dangerous.
Thinking about the donors that donate whatever sum it might be or gifts through Lord Ali, how do they know what they're going to get in return?
You don't. So a lot of what political parties do is try to screw the donors. So often with the Conservative Party, you have this cohort of libertarian blokes in the city. Think of Crispin Odie or Paul Marshall. And these people, they genuinely want low tax, they hate the EU, they want no regulations, and they don't like any rules because they think rules don't apply to people like me.
So when COVID happens... The Tory donors are saying, just, you know, open it all up. Don't lock us down. Just let it all hang out. And they're very anti-lockdown. And the Tories have to be nice to these people and listen to them because they give you money. But the Tories are thinking, yeah, but our voters are pensioners. They like having an NHS. They often rely on pensions, other state benefits.
And they're the most vulnerable group.
They're a vulnerable group.
COVID runs riot.
Yeah, they want lockdowns. So the Tories have to say to the donors, yeah, yeah, you know, man, I hear you on these lockdowns, but they also have to keep the lockdowns. So it's a lot of the job of the party is disappointing donors, letting down donors.
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.
I think it's now £15 million.
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.
You can't. I mean, if it's so much, you can't return it. Like if somebody gives you 10 grand and then they turn out to have done something bad, you say, oh, I'm going to be very moral, give the 10 grand back. If somebody gives you 15 million pounds, that's your whole party organisation. I don't think anyone in the history of British politics had ever donated 15 million pounds in a single year.
What's someone like Frank Hester hoping to get out of that relationship? I mean, he says he talked a lot to Sunak about AI and how that would revolutionize healthcare. And I think that he feels, you know, I'm at the cutting edge of healthcare. That's the main field he's an entrepreneur in. Obviously, there's going to be, the government's going to want to regulate stuff.
I need a hotline to government. And I think he also thinks, you know, the Tories are much better than Labour. The Tories are a good party for the country. Labour are a bad party for the country. So to some degree, it's genuine belief. But also, I mean, the man is running a serious business that can be regulated by government.
So he has an interest in getting in the way or influencing what that regulation could be.
It also should be noted that Labour has accepted donations from mega donors. Nothing in the region of that.
Well, it's getting close to that. But the Labour donors, the three main ones, so David Sainsbury doesn't really have a business. Gary Lubner was Autoglass and he's kind of, he's stepped out of that. And then there's Dale Vince, who's a green entrepreneur. Those are the three big ones.
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.
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?
It's deliberate. So there's, I think, a three-month window in which you have to declare donations. So you discuss with the donor. you know, donate before the election so we can spend the money, but donate at a time where three months later it's going to be August or something, nobody's going to care, everyone will have won the election anyway.
So you time the donations for the best possible moment. And, you know, you declare it at 7pm on a Friday when the news desks are empty. So, yeah, all this is thought through beforehand.
It's amazing how even in an era of 24-hour news, it's still dropping something at 7pm on a Friday.
It's a classic. So, I mean, this all sounds very terrible. But after the break, we are going to be discussing how we can try to fix this mess.
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?
It is now true. So these parties, Labour and the Tories, used to be mass member organisations. Paul McCartney's first gig when he was about 15 is at, he says, a place called the Conservative Club in some suburb of Liverpool, because there were millions and millions of members of Conservative clubs all over the UK.
And they'd go there on a Saturday night to listen to music, to play billiards, to have cheese parties. And They, you know, they paid membership fees and that funded the party. And Labour had a version of that, which was more through trade union members giving money to Labour. And as that wanes, you know, obviously all those conservative clubs are now shuttered. They don't exist anymore.
You then start to need donations. And so that from the 80s, 90s becomes the big story. Now you could do it differently. So in other countries, like in France, where I live, there are significant government money going to fund parties. And in the UK, there's virtually none. The opposition gets a bit of short money, it's called.
I think other parties also get it, but mostly it's what keeps the opposition alive. But it's very small. And obviously, if you said to British people, look, I reckon if we had 130 million quid, a year, so that's £2 per brick more or less, we could get rid of political donations. Then the parties could have organisations, they could have think tanks like German parties do.
But if you were to try and pass a law saying... The taxpayer is going to give 130 million quid to political parties. I think it would not be very popular right now.
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.
Very badly behaved, Simon, I'm just saying. An epidemic.
Dogs are a problem. I'm not sure I would allow them anyway. That might be the most unpopular policy in British history.
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.
I don't think I would dare go there.
So you'll go after political corruption, but not dog owners.
Yeah.
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.
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?
I'm just saying, were it framed in the right way?
It would save an enormous amount of money. So with the COVID inquiry, they're going to come to the COVID VIP lane scandal, which is March 2020. COVID's reached the UK. We need loads of protective kit, masks, gowns in a hurry, just millions and millions of masks. And where are you going to get them? It's just a crisis. It's a nightmare.
And what happens is a lot of conservative donors, like Michelle Moan, kind of WhatsApp ministers who they're mating with. Because if you're a donor, you meet politicians a lot at dinners because you get to be at the dinner. And they say, oh, well, I have a PPE company. I can supply you with kit. And the minister WhatsApps back saying, yeah, brilliant. I'll tell the civil servants too.
I'll tell the civil servants to wave you through. And so they have this, what the civil servants start to call the VIP lane, where if you've been referred by a minister, then the civil servants are terrified of saying no. And the civil servants internally have this conversation, yeah, but this person, minister's mate, has never made or acquired masks. Why are we... Forget about it.
Don't worry about it. Push it through. And then you have people whose job it is to make and supply medical masks. They can't get through on the line. They don't know who to call because they're not conservative donors. They don't have the WhatsApp numbers. And so what happens in these weeks is that billions of pounds are wasted. And we end up with PPE mountain.
I think part of the new forest, there's this thing. Literally, there's this landfill where we have all these unused and often unusable because bad, crappy masks and gowns supplied by donors. And just storing them costs billions. So you have a bad mask. You can't do anything with it. You have to store it. And so by some estimates, we spent more on the masks than... than we paid in the first place.
So it's just a nightmare running into the billions. And if you didn't have political party donors, I think this would never have happened because ministers are afraid to say no to donors. And, you know, one corruption expert I spoke to said this is the biggest case of state capture in British history. Now, versions of this happen all the time in smaller ways.
You know, if you're a company selling to government, you want to find a way to funnel money to the ruling party so they'll pick up the phone to you. You say, you know what, we're making a new helicopter. I think it would be great for the UK Armed Forces. Can I come in and have a chat? And your call is taken because you're a donor. I have developed a new piece of healthcare technology.
I think it would be great for the NHS. I could see every hospital working with it, improve outcomes. Oh, and I gave you guys a million pounds last year. Oh, sure, come on in.
You can sort of see how it happens, you know. So ministers, as you've outlined, have always had a bit of a job to say no to donors, but increasingly are more dependent on them because of the collapse of the membership models. So I wondered, my first thought was like, what about rebuilding membership models? Could that also be a way around it?
Or making ministers be better at saying no to donors through rules? Or do you think those two could have legs?
I mean, sadly, our community organizations have all kind of collapsed in recent decades. So few people go to church or other religious services anymore. They don't belong to trade unions and pubs, which were a form of British community, has also shrunk massively. So we used to have churches turning into pubs, and now the pub is turning into something else.
So I just don't see that you could get millions of people. I mean, it happened briefly under Labour with Corbyn, the kind of three-pound members who brought Corbyn to power. I don't see it as a durable thing. So I think that we just need to go to a system of massive rules... which we have never had in British politics, limiting what you as a politician or civil servant can do.
So, for example, if you work for the Ministry of Defence, you can't three months later be working for an arms company that sells to the Ministry of Defence.
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?
Well, I mean, I live in Paris. I've been there 20 years. A decade ago, I'd have said France is a significantly more politically corrupt country than the UK. And that, you know, French people get very angry about political corruption. And so then in 2017, when Macron is elected, he sees this and does what Starmer hasn't yet done.
And he says, we're going to have massive rules on what he calls the moralization of politics. And so, for example, you never used to have to have receipts. You say, oh, I spent 100 euros on this, and they would refund it to you. There was no limit for what you could spend for lunch. So you'd go for massive, you know, five-course lunches.
And then you'd have elderly male politician bringing along 22-year-old female intern for five-course lunch. And it was all the way it worked. It was done with impunity. And you, I mean, the famous case is François Fillon, who was prime minister in France for several years. He supposedly employed his wife, a Welsh woman actually, Penelope, as an employee. And all the MPs in France were doing this.
You employ a spouse, the spouse doesn't really have to turn up to work, but you ascribe some massive salary to her. So Penelope Fillon got, I think, into the millions of euros over many, many years for work she never did. Wow. And so all this is reformed. There's stricter rules. The politicians whine about it. I spoke to a restaurateur who works near the Assemblée Nationale.
And he says, yeah, politicians don't have any money anymore. So I now have this set price lunch for 49 euros because he said they could only charge 50 euros on expenses. So it kind of wiped out a lot of the luxury industry that had accrued around it. And I mean, French people still whine and complain about their politicians all the time, but it has actually cleaned things up a bit.
Nobody's willing to admit it, but French politics is a bit cleaner.
You know, you were talking about the £2 per citizen would have £130 million, so that would wipe out donors. Would £130 million really be enough? I feel like there's probably, if you added it all up between the two parties, there's probably more money than that, no?
It's true that in the last couple of years, I mean, of course, ahead of an election, amounts have spiralled to levels that we've never seen before. But if you say £130 million a year, that is similar to what the parties combined probably bring in in a good year when there's not an election. So I don't think they would have much cause to whine too much about that.
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.
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.
Is there an argument for paying MPs more?
Well, I think the MP salary is now £91,000. Yeah. So that's about two and a half times the average wage. So if you say that to the average Briton and someone like Walsall or Nunez and where I was before the election covering what was supposed to be the election campaign, they'll say 91 grand. You're kidding me. Most people in Britain think MPs are just minting it. It's incredible amounts of money.
The problem is we have two economies. We have the London economy, especially the high-end London economy for educated people, where 91 grand isn't that much money. And especially if you're a conservative, they tend to have richer friends, private school friends who are making millions as lawyers or hedge funders. They think, 91 grand, I can't possibly live on that.
Sir Johnson, in Downing Street, is complaining without irony that on the Prime Minister's salary of about 150 grand, he can't afford to live.
Chicken feed, I think, is the phrase that was reported he used about the salary.
And he doesn't seem to understand, although, of course, he's a very good communicator, he doesn't seem to understand that to average British people, this is an unfathomable amount. And the thing is, he's comparing himself not to average British people. You compare yourself to Notting Hill. So... The 91 grand means completely different things inside the Beltway, as it were, and outside.
One of my unpopular theories, maybe it wouldn't be unpopular, but definitely too many rich people, it's corrosive for society.
That's what happened to London. London became the city in Europe with the most rich people, while our political and public realm decayed and became poorer.
Yeah. It distorts the thinking of people around them. Do you know what I mean?
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.
But wait, British MPs do get paid less than... Are the counterparts in other countries true?
It's now relatively low compared to MPs in rich countries. We have a lot of MPs, but I do think it's relatively low. I think the worst thing for the MPs is the public abuse. So it's become a very low-status job. And, of course, now they can easily be reached and they're also afraid of being attacked. And so a lot of it is just misery. And we still have lots of people who want to be MPs.
It's still somehow a sexy job, but the reality of it is brutal and miserable. I mean, I would like to create a climate where people are quite positive about politicians. And unfortunately, with these labor donations, that immediately wipes out the idea that, you know, they might be good people who want the best for the country.
I think on both sides, most people go into politics thinking that they're good people who want the best for the country.
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?
So I was offered Taylor Swift tickets by a public relations firm in Paris.
Oh, here we go.
And the Financial Times rules on taking, I write for the FT, on taking gifts have become very strict.
Yeah, as they should, yeah.
And I thought, I can't even really be bothered. I have to go all the way across Paris, see this concert. And I asked my daughter, who's something of an expert, and she said, you would not enjoy it. As for football, I've, as a journalist, covered hundreds and hundreds of football matches, so it would be a bit of a busman's holiday. So, you know, I'd say no thank you to both.
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.
Thanks, both of you. Thank you.
Such an interesting conversation.
I know, I know. I keep thinking about that. Just that very simple policy of assigning £2 per citizen to stop donations. I think it's great. I mean, I'd do it. I'd personally give £2.
What would be your dream backhander? What's your dream event backhander?
Well, the main thing for me is I just want to make sure that if I am bought, it's expensive. Like for my own sense of pride, you're not buying me for a Bowdoin dress. Sorry, no.
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.
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.
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.
I bet everyone's going to have like lovely things like world peace.
No, not these guys. These, everyone's got a price. Even these, no offence, do-gooders.
Why are we trying to ruin our relationship?
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.
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