Pod Save the UK
How ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be? w/ Anushka Asthana and Josh Babarinde MP
Thu, 17 Oct 2024
With just two weeks to go until the Autumn budget, the Labour government is preparing to make some huge reforms. But just how ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be in reshaping the UK? Coco and Nish dig into it with Anushka Asthana, ITV’s political editor and author of “Taken as Red: How Labour won big and the Tories crashed the party”.Later, in the wake of the Tories latest round of madness, Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde calls in from parliament to discuss how the Government can be held to account in the absence of a sane opposition.And speaking of political ruthlessness, we find out why Labour are demanding a police investigation into the Monster Raving Loony Party’s role in unseating Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South. Useful links:Taken as Red: How Labour won big and the Tories crashed the party. Guests: Anushka Asthana Josh Babarinde MP Pod 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
Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
And I'm Coco Kahn. With just two weeks to go until the autumn budget, Labour is preparing to make some huge reforms. But how ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be in reshaping the UK? We're speaking to ITV's political editor, Anushka Astana, to find out.
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.
One week on from the great big reset inside Number 10, suddenly it seems like there's a flurry of activity from the government. It's a nice change from the month of stasis, but with a lifeless opposition and a stonking majority, are we about to see some radical reforms?
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.
Thank you very much for having me.
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?
Yeah, it's really tricky. And what I had to do basically was make the book about everything up to that point. So really, it's a book about how they got to the election, how they won the election. I did then attempt to book a chapter on governing and I read it back. It's not that bad.
I mean, I did argue that in theory, Sue Gray as chief of staff and Morgan McSweeney as chief advisor, as he was then. could be Keir Starmer's superpower because they had different skills, but also made clear that there were already tensions at the time.
To be honest, there was already people moaning to me at the time about, for example, contracts across government, which was one of the things that really did for Sue Gray in a way. Yeah. But it was all played down. It wasn't her fault. So I didn't go wildly into it. But you know what? I've got a paper back. You're going to get the full first year in detail next year.
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.
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.
Are you feeling pretty good about that now, now the way that his prime ministership is playing out?
I mean, yes, although in a way, things went right for him previously when he was ruthless and things have gone very wrong for him since he became prime minister. But that thread of ruthlessness has been there throughout. And when things have gone wrong for him in the past, he is... quite brutal in a way. So politically brutal.
And I do want to make that distinction because, you know, I spent time talking to one of his really good friends, Parvez Chabar, and he was like, Keir is the opposite of ruthless on a personal level. I mean, one person who used to work for him actually broke down crying when she was speaking to me because he'd been so kind to her when she'd lost a loved one.
He was the first guy on Neil Kinnock's doorstep when he lost his wife. So there's a personal compassion, as I said. But politically, I mean, just look at what he did step by step. So he made a decision to support Jeremy Corbyn when it's very clear that he didn't support that project. in hindsight, in order to win over the leadership.
And the minute he got the leadership, he sacked the General Secretary of the Labour Party, Jenny Formby, who I note in the book had been going through chemotherapy. She had cancer. She was struggling to work. I mean, to him, she was associated with all the things that went wrong for Jeremy Corbyn. Now, Jeremy Corbyn also wanted to sack the General Secretary when he became Labour leader.
It took him three years. Keir Starmer, 20 minutes. And he was on the phone to her. And then when things went really badly wrong in opposition, when they lost the Hartlepool by-election... I mean, again, and there's actually a scene there where Morgan McSweeney is sort of speaking at 100 miles an hour, according to the people around him and coming up with different ideas and writing on a board.
Change labour, change labour. That's what we need to do. But Keir Starmer, again, acted really swiftly. I mean, he did do a reshuffle that went quite badly wrong at the time. And some people think, They want to highlight that a little bit more than maybe I did. The reshuffle was very much botched. But he just did it again.
And so, in a way, and maybe I should have said this in the governing chapter, when I knew already that people were getting frustrated with Sue Gray, perhaps we could have predicted that she wouldn't last 100 days. But most people would give your chief of staff longer than that, wouldn't they?
Ruthless is quite a... I would describe it as a negative word. But do you think... in the political space that actually people might admire it. Maybe even the electorate might admire it. I mean, I remember back, obviously, Jeremy Corbyn was a very different leader, but I remember there was a constant criticism of him that he would be too soft. And that was what people said in the press.
He was too soft, too, you know, wet.
I mean, it is a funny thing, isn't it? Because I looked at the definition of ruthless. I mean, it means being very cruel, basically. Right. And in the kind of pursuit of what you think needs to happen. I think Keir Starmer... wouldn't complain about being called ruthless. In fact, I asked him once.
I said to him after he'd done this big speech to party conference and it was clear that the Labour Party had changed and was more in his vision.
It's a very glamorous anecdote because it's used by bins.
Yeah, yeah. Basically, I was making a documentary on him and they were like, if you wait here, he'll come out and you can speak to him with his wife, Vic. And I was standing next to a big set of bins in the glamour of TV. Out he came and talked to me and I said to him, you've been really ruthless. And he said yes, without a moment's hesitation, because he felt that he needed to be ruthless.
Now, do you have to be ruthless to be a political leader? One person very close to Rishi Sunak argued that one of the things they thought went wrong for him... And they use the C word, which I would never use and I strongly disapprove of. So I won't use it here.
But he said, basically, sometimes... Sorry, that was just a tangent about our ongoing arguments about swearing on this show.
That's a big word to use.
We're not using that word. No, no, no. Not using that word. I don't approve of that word on so many levels, but that's another podcast. But this person said, basically, to be prime minister, you need to be a bit of a C word. And they thought Rishi Sunak. Was not. I mean, do you? I like to think that you could be kind and generous and, you know, collaborative and still be prime minister.
LAUGHTER
So people need to pick a lane on this. Is he too much of one or not enough of one?
With the electorate, do you think that's different though? Do they value ruthlessness? Do they perceive it as a show of strength or actually they want their leaders to be compassionate?
I don't think he would say he was going to be ruthless in terms of trying to support people.
I think he believes that if you wanted to win power for the Labour Party, and look, there are people on the left who strongly disagree with this, and I spoke to them for the book as well, but he believed that the only way to put the Labour Party in the service of working people, which is obviously what he always says, and this is the thing that I think Morgan McSweeney is obsessed with, is to be quite ruthless in terms of the party operation.
And so I think he's got to a point where If Downing Street felt dysfunctional, he is ready to act immediately because he thinks that's what it takes to then serve people. Now, on the side of that, they've got themselves into a load of trouble, which I think leads to the depiction or the perception that they're not always thinking about working people.
But I don't think that necessarily is to do with his ruthlessness.
Right. OK.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Yeah, and I tried really hard to understand it. And the first thing I wanted to understand was why did they hate the hard left as they would call it so much? And trying to understand that, I think there was a sense, and again, this would be disagreed with by those on the left, that kind of anti-Semitism was baked into the hard left viewpoint of the world. And also that there was a kind of quite
I think he would argue basic or kind of like not nuanced enough view of foreign policy. So, for example, the things I think he really didn't like about Jeremy Corbyn were obviously the anti-Semitism crisis, but also some of the views on Russia, for example, or some of the views on certain countries in the Middle East. So there was that on the one hand.
And then the other thing is, well, why is Morgan McSweeney a Labour person? Why has he been in the Labour Party his whole life?
I mean, I'm sure he admires Tony Blair, but I don't actually think he's a Blairite in that I don't think the kind of slightly more, I guess the word, I don't mean this in a derogatory way at all, but the slightly more globalist side of Tony Blair, the slightly more internationalism. I don't get a sense of any like driving passion of that from Morgan McSweeney. I think the best clue is,
to his politics comes from when he goes to Barking and Dagenham in 2010. And with a lot of other people, quite a lot of whom are quite now senior in the Labour Party, they fight the BNP, the British National Party, the far right party. And I was actually a reporter at the time at the Observer. I spent quite a lot of time there. The BNP had done really, really well in previous elections.
They've got 12 councillors, I think. Nick Griffin wanted to win, barking against Margaret Hodge, who was also huge in this fight at the time. And I feel like there's a sort of, almost what used to be blue labour, but an almost like communitarian left-wingness about Morgan McSweeney, which is, this is why I say he's obsessed with the idea about working people.
He thinks that everything should be about trying to service working people. And When he went to East London, in what some people described to me, I think actually John Cruddas, who was the MP in Dagenham at the time, as the canary in the coal mine, it was like the first red wall.
It was the first place in the country where white working class voters were turning away from Labour because they were angry about immigration. And they were upset about the impact that people moving out of East London, particularly Africans, were having in their communities. And I remember walking around and I remember hearing a lot of people talk about it.
And his view was, we need to take that on. We need to go into those communities and we need to try and address their concerns, take their concerns seriously, you know, not dismiss them as racist concerns. And actually, there was something interesting they did there was they just massively focused on local issues.
So, for example, one of the issues was that people had loads of crap in their front gardens. I saw gardens, as they called them. So they launched a massive campaign by the council to say to people, either we're going to fine you for the mess in your front garden or we can come and help you clear it up. It was a massively successful campaign.
They also recruited like hairdressers and bookies to try and like be community communicators, as they called them, to try and take on the myths.
So I see him as much more grounded in, I don't know if you remember the kind of Blue Labour movement, which is like, it's slightly more right on the right of the Labour Party, but less to do with things like EU membership or links abroad and a little bit more to do with how do we serve
these communities who perhaps have become a bit more socially conservative, but are also still to the left on issues like economics. And look, if that is a model that they actually try to use to take on reform, UK now, then I think, you know, clearly that could be quite interesting. But how do they do that? They have to serve local people and the things that have gone wrong.
So they have to fix our hospitals. They have to do something about the absolute funding crisis in councils. So the things that you see around you, like the grass gets cut at the local park, the swimming pool doesn't close down, you know, all the things that we've seen crumble around us visually, they have to tackle that. And I still think that is a massive and very difficult project.
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
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
immigrants and immigrant communities being blamed for the slow collapse of the British state, which immigrants and immigrant communities are not responsible for.
And it's interesting you say that because I read the speech in quite a different way, which was that I think Labour could have been less bold in terms of talking about the riots, the fact that they were basically, you know, violent, far-right thugs who were breaking the law and defending the fact that
you know, we're not going to listen to your concerns about immigration when you're marching on a refugee hotel, for example. And actually, one thing I had heard Morgan McSweeney has said behind the scenes is that whatever they say about any of this, they have this idea that they're never going to punch down on asylum seekers. They're never going to punch down on immigrants and benefit recipients.
And so, for example, they always talk about smashing the gangs when it comes to the boats. They don't talk about the asylum seekers. That said, there are people in the asylum sector who do feel to me that there's a bit of triangulation going on. And even they find the language around just calling people illegal migrants, for example, rather than asylum seekers, a problem.
You know, that said, I was with someone pretty senior in that sector yesterday who, you know, liked the fact that in the same speech you were talking about, Keir Starmer called people refugees rather than illegal migrants, which we didn't hear the language of refugees and asylum seekers as much previously.
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...
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,
political opinion that kind of fringe far right theory I mean I think they understand that some of the things that people were talking about on the street are things that have been legitimised and talked about more broadly the question is how do you deal with it because there is this kind of really knotty situation and I feel like I've been covering this for like 20 years of both really legitimate concerns and racism and how do you untangle that and get to you know the answer like it is legitimate that people are worried about the fact that net migration hit
745,000 and that that has put, you know, pressure on public services. I mean, I went to six parts of the country before the Brexit vote and talked to people about immigration. And there were places where there were hardly any immigrants and people were worried about immigration.
But there were also places like in Peterborough where the community did look and feel really different and it had happened at speed. And some of the people were saying, well, This has just kind of blown our minds and we're kind of not ready for this speed of change. And the local GP was saying, look, I can't deny that this has put pressure on us.
So I suppose it's like, how do you disentangle all these different arguments?
Just spend money on it. Spend money on the public services. Spend money on integration, you know, assistance programs, like create community. Spend money on it. I just feel like we just always have this, oh, it's so tricky, so tricky. Is it? Just spend money on it.
Yeah, but where do you get the money from? So in one of those places I was talking about in 2016, I was in Lee in Greater Manchester and there were like three people screaming at me about immigration whilst we were making this film. That sounds stressful. Interestingly. It was stressful. And interestingly, one of them was black. One of them was Polish.
I mean, it was quite an eye-opening moment for me. But there was this, you know, young black mum who was basically shouting about immigrants. But when I talked to her about it, what I realised was her daughter didn't have a school place. And that was the problem. And if you fixed the problem, then...
Maybe she wouldn't be so worried about immigration, which I have to say, I do think the 2010 example in Barking and Dagenham was about that. They were like, if you fix the eyesore gardens, then people will stop blaming the Africans. And so you can deal with the myths. Now, whether or not they carry that now into a national government, it's hard to know and hard to see. And the problems are vast.
And like I say, where do you get the money from? I mean, it's a difficult time.
Of course, of course. I think the word you used, myths there, was really good. It was a really good word because... I think as well, you know, I'm saying spend money on it, but that almost in a way, when I say that, it sort of enforces the idea that like, you know, because there's whatever pressures on GPs, it's all because of immigrants. And that's not quite true, is it?
No, of course not. I mean, there's huge arguments in all directions when it comes to immigration. You know, the reality is that lots of immigrants are working people who pay tax as well as, you know, using things from the state. But it also is the case that people are worried about levels of immigration. And they can be worried about it without being racist.
And I think it's just disentangling that and then working out what the policy response to it is.
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
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?
I mean, they've definitely left themselves with wiggle room around capital gains, inheritance tax and so on. But in terms of the ones that they said they weren't going to raise, which is... Income tax, VAT, national insurance and corporation tax. The big row is going to be over the fact that they now want to raise employer national insurance contributions. Was that what the manifesto said or not?
They argue that half the sentence mentioned working people. So therefore, it's OK to whack the tax on employers. I mean, I'm going to be on the Peston programme later today and we're going to be looking through the statistics about really, if you increase national insurance on employers, there's still a chance that it feeds through to employees in terms of lower wage increase over time.
So I think the Tories are going to absolutely hammer them that they're breaking a manifesto promise. On the other taxes, what they said, and we said this was dishonest during the election campaign repeatedly. And in fact, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said there was a conspiracy of silence.
Paul Johnson literally sat in your seat and reiterated this.
Yeah, so basically what they said was, and we don't need any other tax rises apart from the ones we're ruling out in order to pay for our manifesto promises. As if going into government, you think that all you're going to have to spend is what's in your manifesto. Everybody knew, for example...
that we were going to have COVID inquiry responses that are going to require money, a Grenfell inquiry, a post office inquiry that we haven't got yet. Everybody knew that the NHS was in more trouble than we thought. Everyone knew that we were going to have to spend more on public sector pay in order to solve strikes.
So the dishonesty was that they were saying we don't need those taxes, even though we're keeping them in our back pocket. Now, my question, and I say this a lot, is did they need to lean that far in? Did they really need to go that far to win the election? Because the problem they've stored up for themselves is that every tax increase will now be seen as a trust issue.
And I personally think the biggest problem in politics right now is trust. People don't trust politicians. And what Keir Starmer needed to do was to come in and be someone who the public could trust. And now he would argue that it's completely unfair, but the freebie row, followed by,
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
Again, I don't think it's the same as the type of ruthlessness I was talking about. I think it's a sort of political argument that they're trying to make now about the black hole. And look, some of it was stuff they didn't know about. Some of it they should have known about. The reality is it's a political argument that they're trying to make in order to now break manifesto promises.
Really, if they were being responsible... all of them, those national insurance cuts that the Conservatives put in place should never have happened. The public finances could not handle national insurance cuts when they were made, and that has left anyone in a very sticky position now.
I suspect that a full break of the manifesto is impossible, as in they'll try and argue the semantics on national insurance for employers. A full break is impossible. It's worth saying in 1997... Blair came in and basically did the same thing, said we're going to stick by conservative spending plans over the first period.
He then won in 2001 and then they raised income tax by a penny in order to pay for things. And I suspect they're following the same kind of path here. The only thing is, I just wonder if... as I said before, they overshot in terms of what they were saying before. I think the ruthlessness, it's almost like if you're being ruthless about it, you'd almost do the opposite.
If you're going to be ruthless about it, you'd break no manifesto promises and you'd have less money to spend because you would feel like politically there was no room for manoeuvre. But they are giving themselves room on one thing, which I think is quite a big deal, which is they are going to change their fiscal rules. Again, it can look like a Trust issue, it can look like a manifesto break.
I think most economists think it's really, really necessary and will allow her to spend a lot of money on capital projects, including the things that we all need to see improved, schools and hospitals.
I suppose in a way you're sort of hoping, or they're sort of hoping, that as long as people see their world improve, it all will be forgiven. Although when you were talking about, oh, that's what Blair did in 1997, I just kept thinking, yes, babe, but they didn't have Twitter then. Like there wasn't this rolling feed of everyone up to date on what you said then and we remember, you know.
It's so interesting, 1997, because I was looking through the data because Blair had two really big crises in his first year. There was the Bernie Eccleston, who was the F1 boss. It turned out he donated loads of money to the Labour Party and then they exempted F1 from a smoking advert ban. It was a huge, huge scandal, like in many ways bigger than the scandals we've got now.
And they took benefits off lone parents. And it was so bad that they did that, that 100 Labour MPs abstained in the vote and 46 voted against, right? So a huge rebellion. But it didn't hit Tony Blair's ratings. anything like this is hitting Keir Starmer's ratings. And I think that is because we are so unforgiving as an electorate now. Like politicians are totally untrusted.
I think something like 9% of people trust politicians to tell the truth, which I think is just such a sad state of affairs. And also the economy is in a bad state while in 1997, it was in a good state. But on top of that, you know, I mentioned that shallow victory that you've talked about, the kind of shape of the Labour victory, 34% of the vote, two thirds of seats.
And actually before any of the scandals had happened, The final thought in the book was Labour could easily not win in 2029. And I just think the reality is that with this volatile electorate, anything could happen. I do think they understand that, though.
Anushka Asthana, thank you so much for joining us on Podsafe UK. Thank you for having me.
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.
Hello, I'm Nanni-Janse Revedlo, the founder of Systemic Justice. I want to tell you about a brand new podcast we've created called Who's Planet? The Climate Justice Podcast. The world is facing a climate crisis, the impact of which is already clear to see. And marginalized communities are bearing the brunt of this crisis.
We hear from communities that are fighting for justice as the world comes to terms with the rapidly changing climate. You can listen now. Search for Who's Planet wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the feed to make sure you don't miss an episode.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry about that, guys. But yeah, that's right. I did some stuff before I got elected to this place.
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?
I mean, it's a crazy place. It's great to come here, having done some stuff before, you know, as you said, spent my career supporting kids out of crime, out of gangs and into employment. and in a slightly novel way through building a phone repair company. And it basically came from doing some work in the East End of London.
I'm from Eastbourne originally, born and bred, so quite different to the East End. But I found myself there working with young people who had had upbringings in some ways that were not dissimilar to mine. I had some quite tricky patches in my childhood, but I had an amazing town, amazing family, amazing school, community, et cetera, that lifted me. And I ended up working with a lot of folks
who'd had difficult home lives as well in the East End, who didn't have all that stuff around them in the same kind of way, or they didn't experience it in the same way. And so I wanted to do what I could to support them. And so I ended up training and employing them to repair broken smartphone screens, to make money, to feel valued, to belong.
And, you know, I was taking guys who had convictions for things like wielding axes into the US embassy under Trump to repair his diplomat's phones.
Wow.
It was an awesome time. And yeah, great to bring that insight from the front line to the House of Commons.
Yeah, no, absolutely. Fantastic to bring that insight. Look, I'm just going to ask you directly, Josh, and I hope you'll take this question in the spirit of millennial to millennial. So why the Lib Dems then? Why the Lib Dems?
Well, I'll tell you the silly story and then I'll tell you the serious story. The silly story is that I was at a uni open day when I was about 16 and it happened to be freshers week. They had all the freshers stalls out there and I knew I was interested in politics, but I wasn't massively into it. But I saw a Lib Dem stall and they had these really cool beer mats and they said...
can I have a beer, Matt? And they were like, no, not unless you join. So my mate Abby paid for me to join. I still haven't paid her back. And I ended up member of the party. And then this was back in 2009. So I was getting lots of emails through saying, you know, come to this event, come to that event. I ended up at an event where Nick Clegg was speaking.
There was a guy behind me asking loads of xenophobic questions. And I thought, I'm not having that. So I had it out with him at the end. And our debate was broken up by the then Lib Dem candidate who said, don't get mad, get even, come and help me win. And the rest is history.
But the reason I stayed is because, I guess, jumping back to childhood in a bunch of ways, you know, for me, it really angers me, to be honest, but also makes me sad that so many people's respective qualities of life are defined by not much more than brute luck and bad luck in a had some bad luck in my life, but the young people I've spent my career working with had even more.
And so I wanted to find a way to reduce or if I'm being really utopian about it, eliminate the role that luck plays in shaping people's courses and qualities of life. So they're not you know, punished by the market. They're not forced into particular places by the state, but they and their communities get to decide where they go, what fulfills them and what the future looks like.
And that's the essence of liberalism, really. And that's the essence of the Liberal Democrats. So I joined for the beer and I stayed for the freedom.
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.
Yeah, well, I think there are a bunch of differences. Labour have kind of centralising instincts, instincts that, you know, say, look, the state often knows best. And my view is, well, the state should definitely be there as a safety net to make sure that no one is screwed. But I think that individuals and their communities know best. And I think that is a really fundamental distinction.
Also, Lib Dems have a really proud tradition fighting for people's civil liberties. It's important that people have their fundamental rights that allow them to be free. But it's important that government doesn't overstep that and actually compromise people's freedom.
So do you think that this will shape the Lib Dems essentially being in opposition to Labour? Obviously, the official opposition are in total disarray and are all bananas, let's be honest. The Lib Dems have got a sizeable number of MPs. I imagine you're taking it upon yourselves to be the opposition in some way.
These are the sort of battle lines we might see, do you think, around things like civil liberties, around the state overstepping personal liberty. Is this an indicator of what we can expect?
Well, I think there's all sorts. So, you know, Lib Dems, we're the biggest Lib Dem party in Parliament in 100 years or something like that. 72 MPs. You've got the Tories having their internal fight. They've been having for quite a few years now in a complete mess. And so Liberal Democrats have stepped up and said, well, we'll be the real opposition then.
fighting for the things that matter to people. So one of the key things that we are opposing Labour on is support when it comes to pensioners. There are some of the most vulnerable pensioners in our society who are set to lose the winter fuel allowance that they need to heat their homes. Sure, there are folks who are pretty well off who don't need that winter fuel allowance.
I think there's a case for means testing that. But for taking it away from those who really need it, that's a real problem and something that Labour need to be held to account on. Another thing you've got is the two child benefit cap.
All of the evidence tells us that one of the key ways that we could help alleviate child poverty in our country is by removing that cap so that those children, those families get the cash that they need to grow and to thrive. The Tories haven't listened to us on that. And Labour really need to start listening as well.
So you can see some key dividing lines between the government and between Lib Dems as the real opposition, where we're fighting for the kind of progressive change that people don't just want, but they really need in the country as well.
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.
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?
It's like when you're hiring folks or you look at The Apprentice, some of the last two in The Apprentice are not the two who you want to end up with. And if you're in that position as Lord Sugar, you probably want to reopen applications and start all over again. That's what's happened here.
You look at Robert Jenrick, you look at Kemi Badenoch, they're both folks whose, I think, ideas belong way in the past, not in the future.
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.
Is that fair to say, Josh?
I think it's fair to say that we're a mightily ambitious party and we're ambitious for the country. We're ambitious to really play that role as the real opposition. There's a massive gap there and the Tories just are not competent enough to fill it. So the sky really is the limit. We're campaigning, you know, not just in Parliament, but also at local government level as well.
Councillors across the country are really important, looking after services that people care about day to day, not always the most glamorous thing, whether it's the bins or the potholes or whatever. But we get stuck in, in terms of government, etc. That's above my pay grade, I'm afraid. You can ask Ed that question.
Brian, can you ask Ed to come on our show, please? That would be great. Let's just talk about getting things done then. Let's talk about your own portfolio, which is justice. You know, look, the prisons are in crisis. We've talked about it on our show. And last month at the Lib Dem conference, you spoke about the presumptions against short sentencing.
There's been whispers that the government ministers are considering scrapping short sentences. You know, what are the other reforms that need to be looked at? What's the most urgent thing, do you think?
Yeah, well, there's loads of stuff. So on the short sentences stuff, 57% of people who serve a short sentence go on to re-offend. That is not justice. With such a high re-offending rate, something's clearly going wrong. So something needs to change. One of the key things that we need to do is follow the evidence and look at what's the stuff that's going to reduce re-offending. Now,
I know from literally getting people out of crime and gangs myself that there's loads of stuff that can be done in the community to drive reoffending down. So supporting people into employment, making sure that people are getting the support, whether it's around mental health or drug and alcohol support or housing support, all that kind of stuff is really important as well.
And then there's also the preventative stuff. How do we prevent crime from happening in the first place? And I think something that's been really troubling that's happened over the last few years is you've just seen loads and loads of cuts, say, to youth centres. And for me, youth centres are about more than just, you know, PlayStation, ping pong and pizza, all of which are amazing, by the way.
But it's about creating what I would describe as safe spaces where young people can develop pro-social values, things like sensitive communication, collaboration, conflict management, which helps people stay at the core of society rather than at the margins. And for a lot of young people, you know, they develop those values at home or at school.
But for some of them, school isn't working out for them and home maybe isn't a supportive environment. So they need to have another space. Oh, that's telling me that there's a right happening or something starting. Sorry about that.
I think that's the first sound of the division bell on Podside the UK. Yeah.
Oh, well, there we are. And that's to say that prayers are starting. Oh, right. OK. And the House of Commons is about to begin for the day.
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.
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?
yeah i mean we want to be a constructive opposition um so that means um you know where there are good ideas uh being put forward by the government uh supporting them um and where we think they need to be even more ambitious pushing them to do so um the cool thing about uh james timpson is him and i used to collaborate in our pre-political lives so when i was setting up cracked it um
About 10 years ago, I was connected with James and Timson actually do phone repairs as well. And we spoke over the phone and he gave me loads of tips and he said, why don't you come down to one of our training academies in a prison? and come and see what we do and, you know, nick some of our great ideas and apply them yourself. And so I did.
When I got elected and found out that, you know, the following day he was made a Lord and the prisons minister, I dropped him a WhatsApp and said, oh my God, we're both parliamentarians now. Look forward to collaborating.
And we're catching up in a couple of weeks time, in fact, to speak about what's happened for both of us over the last 10 years, but in particular, what's happened over the last three months. re-offending.
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?
It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun. You know, it is amazing to be able to, you know, take things that are happening on the ground in Eastbourne, in my constituency where I was born and bred one day.
uh and literally the next day take it to the floor of the house of commons to put it to a minister it is really magical to fight you know for my town that made me me in the process so i'm absolutely loving it it's a big responsibility and i really do feel that um but uh yeah i look forward um to carrying on for the next five years and if the people of eastbourne have me again beyond
Well, that is a lovely place to leave this. So thank you so much, Josh. Thank you for joining us on Pod Save the UK.
Thanks, Josh. Thanks for having me, guys.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It is a criminal offence to make inaccurate claims and if the candidate is found to have breached election laws, they can be evicted from the House of Commons and a by-election called. So the iPaper also quotes another independent candidate in Leicester South that claims that there was an appearance that Suleiman and Adam were working in tandem.
There's also allegations that Shoket Adam's team employed heavy-handed tactics whilst campaigning in Leicester. Adam denies that Suleiman was working for him during the election campaign, but confirmed he had done some volunteering earlier in the year. Suleiman also denies any collusion.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
Yeah, I can't help but feel frustrated by it. And that is saying something because normally wherever the loony party is, it's a good time for me. I mean, I love hearing about them and their crazy ideas.
And again, we cannot stress this enough for international audience members. There is a political party that essentially fields joke candidates.
Yeah, and joke policies.
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.
Here you go. Here's some current loony party policies. London Marathon is free to anyone wearing clown shoes. There you go. Great, great policy. terrorists will be made to wear bells and horns so we know where they are. You know what I mean? They normally bring me such joy. But sadly, that has been taken from me this week with this story.
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.
She's the centre of every storm, babe. Come on, keep up, keep up, Nick.
I will say, my Taylor Swift knowledge is poor. I wish Taylor Swift and all of her fans well.
Yeah. He says with a gun to his head.
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.
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
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.
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.
Don't take the tickets. Come on. If you have knowledge that that has happened, it might look bad for you to suddenly have free tickets.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Because it would seem like, as a thank you for sorting this out, I'm now going to award you with free tickets, right? That's how it looks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If the two things are unrelated.
Just don't take the free tickets.
Just don't take them.
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.
I wonder what would happen if you just, as an experiment for the podcast, just sent a load of Labour MPs tickets to your tour. Just to see. Just to see what would happen. Maybe you should do that. What could possibly go wrong?
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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