Pod Save the UK
Starmer’s Garm Drama + the Government looks right on immigration w/ Zoe Gardner
Thu, 19 Sep 2024
Exclusive INCOGNI Deal ➼ go to https://incogni.com/podsavetheuk to get 60% off your annual plan!Keir Starmer promised a Labour government would “turn the page” on scandal - but he’s already under fire after a late declaration of thousands of pounds of gifts. As the Tories clamour for an investigation, Nish and Coco take to the PSUK couch to weigh in on the row.Later, they’re joined by independent researcher on migration policy Zoe Gardner to discuss why Starmer is seeking immigration lessons from Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Zoe tells us about Italy’s controversial migration deals with North African countries and Albania, as well as what a migration system with a degree of humanity might look like.Next we open the mailbag to hear your unpopular policy suggestions - ranging from taxes on second homes to a maximum wage cap.Useful Links: Tickets for Nish Kumar: “Nish, don’t kill my vibe” https://www.nishkumar.co.uk/Guests: Zoe Gardner https://www.tiktok.com/@zoejardiniereAudio credits:The TelegraphTimes RadioX / Ed MilibandPod 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 Podsafe the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
And I'm Coco Karn. Nish, I can't believe it's happened so soon. We have a new scandal. A new gate.
It's been a while since we've had a new gate. And by a while, I mean probably three months or something. This gate, I think, might be the lowest status gate of them all. What are we calling it? Freebie gate? Dress gate?
Yeah, there's been a few, isn't it? Glasses gate. I've actually come up with my own version, if you want to hear. Threads dread. What? Because it's about clothes, isn't it?
Yeah.
So it's threads.
Threads dreads.
Okay, that's not working. I can see that's not working. Okay, what about this?
You just introduced it as you've come up with a new prefix for date.
I just thought like a new way that we could talk about it. Like, oh, have you heard about the threads dread?
Right, yes. From Starmer.
Okay, what about this? Garms. That's what the kids on the street call clothes.
Yeah.
Starmer's garm drama. Yeah.
I don't mind that.
Don't you think it's got more, you know, theatre than Frockgate or Glassesgate or Freebiegate? Starmer's Garm Drama.
Okay, so for the sake of the listeners that might not be familiar with Starmer's Garm Drama, the basics of it are Keir Starmer has been taking flack in the press this week for making a late declaration of gifts received from Labour's mega-donor, Lord Waheed Ali, who's given over £700,000 to the party...
I imagine American listeners will be losing their minds laughing at the trifling amounts of money, at the absolutely zero amounts of money involved in British politics. But yeah, £700,000 makes him a kind of mega donor. Yes.
And apart from donations to Labour, Lord Ali has also gifted the Stalmers tailored clothes, glasses for the Prime Minister and a personal shopper for Victoria Stalmer, who's the Prime Minister's wife.
So this isn't the kind of money you or I would be spending on clothes. It is quite a lot of money. According to Starmer's register of interest, he's received £18,625 worth of work clothes and multiple pairs of glasses. Here's Starmer addressing the controversy in this clip from The Telegraph. See if you can catch his message.
So the declarations have gone in in accordance with the rules so that it's transparent and you can all see, according to the rules, exactly what declarations were made.
But it was because I insist on the rules that my team reached out to make sure that we were declaring in the right way under the rules and then reached out again to the appropriate authorities, basically asking for advice about what's the appropriate way to deal with this in accordance with the rules. Thank you.
The rules, the rules, the rules, the rules, the rules, the rules, the rules.
Yeah, so the thing that is off about this is that despite this being within the confines of the rules, the rules are a little bit, well, fucked, aren't they?
Yes, and also a story that's broken overnight is that Keir Starmer has actually received more in tickets and gifts than any other recent party leader, a total now topping £100,000. And Starmer told reporters that he is a massive Arsenal fan, but can't go into the stands because of security reasons. Therefore, if I don't accept a gift of hospitality, I can't go to a game.
And you could say, well, bad luck. But he's also arguing that never going to an Arsenal game again because I can't accept hospitality is pushing it a bit far. So we've got this sort of, what are you calling it? Garment drama or whatever it is.
Even if it is within the rules, you know, when Johnson was in power, the opposition were spending a lot of time talking about how it was within the rules for them to fundraise for their decorating their flats or whatever. But it wasn't the spirit of the rules.
The spirit of the rules is to try and ensure that people, that politicians don't live excessive lives that are far away from the people and that they are also not being unduly influenced, so to speak. So there's a sense that the spirit of the rules isn't being followed here.
Yeah, I think that if your whole brand is integrity and you're not really offering anything else to the country, I think that that is probably a problem if there are questions being asked about integrity. your integrity, even if it totally falls within the rules. And all they really have talked about is how things are actually going to get worse for a lot of people living in Britain.
And, you know, people are going to lose their winter fuel credit this winter. And they've told us that that's necessary because we need to tighten our belts and the country's finances are in a difficult condition and we need to be responsible and we need to be, we might have to suffer through this winter. A man telling you,
to tighten your purse strings whilst wearing expensive glasses at a private box at the Arsenal game. At least surely the Labour Party has to acknowledge that the optics of that are suboptimal. And I'm not sure what the conceivable defence is. And I'll tell you who else is not sure what the conceivable defence is. Every Labour MP that has been sent out
like lambs to a slaughter to do the media rounds. Here's just one of them. This is Dame Andrew Eagle on Tuesday being interviewed by Times Radio's Stig Abel.
Should he not buy his own glasses? You're wearing a pair of glasses now. You presumably paid for them yourself. I'm wearing a pair of glasses now. I pay for them myself. Why shouldn't the Prime Minister?
Well, the Prime Minister has had his say on that. And next time you interview him, you could ask him yourself. I don't have an opinion on what the Prime Minister does in these instances. Wow.
This is a huge marketing opportunity for Specsavers. For international listeners, Specsavers is a high street brand that sells glasses. Other brands that sell glasses are available. But their advertising slogan is, you should have gone to Specsavers. And this is... If someone at Specsavers is not immediately...
getting the Canva open and knocking up some graphic design pictures of Keir Starmer under should have gone to Swag Savers.
In a way, Dame Andrea Eagle's answer, because other politicians have been saying things like, well, you know, there's no prime ministerial budget for clothes and other countries have it. I think those comments are really... out of touch with the people. Do you know what I mean? Because that's sort of saying, well, why are you getting angry about it? This is just what we do. Us in politics.
Those comments aren't so helpful. He earns 150 grand a year. You know, like you can afford a pair of glasses. And the other thing that I think is also really interesting here is that Keir Starmer is learning that a lot of the... centre-right or right-wing newspapers that might have lined up behind him, their support for him was incredibly temporary and shallow.
And, you know, maybe trying to curry favour with the Mail and The Sun might have worked in the short term, but I think he's learning very, very quickly that that does not last. And maybe some of those editorial pieces he wrote for The Sun newspaper were a waste of his fucking time.
Well, you know, definitely the way it's being presented in the press, there is... They are trying to present this moral equivalence between stuff that the Conservatives did and this scandal. I'm not saying that it's... not a problem what's going on, but nonetheless, it's not the same. And you know, you really, people want a proper break from the Conservatives.
And this is just not a good look for Labour.
Yeah. So look, we're going to be exploring the topic of how money infects our politics next week with a very special guest. So if you have any questions for us to ponder when it comes to the way our politics and gifts collide, send them in to PSUK at reducelistening.co.uk. And if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe so that you can catch our episode next Thursday.
Now, what the government really wanted to be talking about, and this is a very much overdue change, is the environment. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband spoke to the Energy UK annual conference to set out the government's mission for clean power. Now, there's not much new here, but the tone is a market shift. Much more optimistic, much more enthusiastic.
Miliband's core points were that the cost of living crisis exposed the failures in our energy security and that renewable energy is the way forward. But check out the tone shift in this video from Miliband's Twitter.
It's 2008. Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States. Usain Bolt is breaking records at the Beijing Olympics. And Batman is dominating at the box office. And I'm the energy secretary. Yes, like Batman, I've returned. Now, we've learned a lot. Back then, we used to talk, or I used to talk, about an energy trilemma. What's a trilemma? A dilemma is a choice between two things.
A trilemma is a choice where there are three things and you can't have all three. The choice between affordability, security, and sustainability. And the idea was that fossil fuels might not be sustainable, but they did give you affordability and security. But since then, we've had the terrible cost of living crisis, which was caused by our exposure to fossil fuels.
So that old trilemma has disintegrated.
I mean, he... The guy is active on social media. Listen, I think we have been somewhat critical of the Labour government so far, and somewhat critical of the Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer. It is probably useful to acknowledge that some positive things are happening. And I spoke to some people that work in the renewable energy sector that I've worked with in the past. And
they did say that there's been a marked tone in what their engagement is with the current government. They've gone from a sort of lobbying mode into delivery mode. And so there is a real sense that there has been a sea change in the way that renewables are being dealt with by the government, which is positive.
No, absolutely. And look, you know, a lot of this stuff does remain to be seen. There is still that problem of the Treasury and... These projects need money. Will they get that money? But it's just nice to hear some optimism and some enthusiasm. And I know much is made of Ed Miliband's infectious puppy dog energy, but he is also very, very competent. And I'm surprised they don't make more of him.
That's my thought. If you're listening, Ed, please come on our show. I'd love to just have a chat. We can talk about Batman and the environment. We could do that, couldn't we, Nish?
Yeah, we absolutely could do that.
Anyway, let's discuss someone that has been on our show. Some interesting murmurs about a potential new progressive party broke out over the weekend. The Guardian reports that a number of influential British lefties, including Jeremy Corbyn, filmmaker Ken Loach, Unite director Len McCluskey, held a private meeting to discuss a new party called Collective.
Corbyn gave the opening address, but a source close to him told The Guardian that his attendance was not an official endorsement. and that he had attended the meeting to listen to and share a variety of views about the way forward for the left.
We've spoken about this in various iterations on this show, about what the left of British politics does now that it seems to be in large part frozen out by the Labour leadership. And is the way forward actually for left-wing Labour MPs and MPs
the sort of independent left-wing MPs and perhaps the Green Party to form a kind of progressive alliance and essentially create a political counterbalance to reform, which is, you know, the sort of latest iteration that previously has been called the UK Independence Party. It was at one point called the Brexit Party. But the Brexit Party reform and the UK Independence Party, whatever, you know,
fucking latest round of branding that thing is called. I can't believe it's not racist or whatever it's called. They have successfully exerted an influence on the Conservative Party and pushed the Conservative Party in a particular direction of travel. That is absolutely what Nigel Farage seems to be doing at the moment as well.
And so would it be productive, therefore, for there to be a counterbalance to that with a group of left-wing MPs? I mean, it's a really interesting thing, right? Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, I do wonder, though, you know, if there's an issue about splitting the left.
This is always the fear. What you're saying is exactly the thing that we're all most scared of.
Yeah. Also, I feel sorry for the Greens a little bit. Imagine them reading this being like, excuse me, a new party? You haven't even given us a real go.
But, you know... If this party, which, you know, could be comprised of the independent MPs, then forms a voting bloc with the Green MPs and Labour MPs that have lost the whip, it could have an actual tangible voting influence.
Yeah, in this parliament, sure. But when we go to a general election, if you have all these multiple parties, what will that mean then?
Yeah, I think that's always been the fear because ultimately, for all we talk about the pressure exerted by Nigel Farage, at general elections, he's only taken votes of the Conservative Party when he's chosen to. And a huge factor in Boris Johnson's 2019 election win is the fact that Brexit Party candidates were stood down to make way for Conservative Party votes.
And this sort of progressive wing of British politics has often tied its underpants in various different nautical knots over whether we should think more technically. Whereas the right of British politics has often embraced tactical voting very, very enthusiastically.
Well, we'll definitely be keeping an eye on it, that is for sure. Now, after the break, we're joined by a very special guest to find out what Keir Starmer's been up to in Italy this week.
Now, there's some tricky topics coming up in this next segment, so please consider this a warning. We'll be discussing cruelty to our fellow man and brief mentions of self-harm and suicide.
So Keir Starmer, all dressed up in a green tie and one of his fancy pairs of glasses, has been on a state visit to Italy this week to meet Giorgio Maloney, the Italian Prime Minister. The main reason for the visit was to learn from Italy's immigration plans, which has cut small boat crossings in the Mediterranean by almost two thirds in the past year, from 118,000 to 44,500.
Starmer is under pressure to tackle irregular migration across the channel from France, where eight people died last Sunday after a boat capsized. But the visit has caused a stir among some Labour backbenchers and also people with brains. The Labour MP for Liverpool, Merseyside, Kim Johnson, told The Guardian...
that it was disturbing to see Starmer, and this is a direct quote, seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government. There's also been broader criticism. For example, Amnesty International have called their plans to build migrant detention centres in Albania unworkable, harmful and unlawful.
So joining us now on Pod Save the UK to chat through what Starmer is hoping to learn from Maloney's ruthless immigration policies. is somebody we have wanted to get on the show since the show started, an independent researcher in migration policy, Zoe Gardner. Welcome to PSUK, Zoe.
I said this to you off mic, I'll say it to you on mic, describe you as having one of the most difficult jobs in this country, which is trying to have conversations about immigration that are rooted in facts and compassion.
Yeah, I think it does depend on the context. Probably what most people see of my work is me having horrible arguments in mainstream media about migration. And the framing and the way that debate takes place is horrific. But, you know, a lot of my job is also... talking to ordinary people and coming on lovely podcasts as well.
But like, yeah, I think the mainstream media framing and political framing of this issue is just so horrific and it doesn't actually reflect the conversations you tend to have with normal people.
So can you break down what exactly Italy has been doing to deter irregular immigration that means Starmer seeks the advice of Georgia Maloney?
So Georgia Maloney was elected two years ago and she is of the extremely hard right anti-migrant flavour of politician, like much more extreme than anything we have in the UK. Her party is the successor to the fascist movement in Italy. And even if people reject the sort of the label of fascist around her, they would certainly, anybody would call her an extremely authoritarian, hard right figure.
And that is driven primarily through migration politics and She has completely failed, as all politicians do, to deliver on her hardline promises to cut immigration and make refugees disappear from Italy over the last two years. However, there has been a drop, as you said in the intro, in the last year and more specifically, actually, in the last six months.
And that reflects a deal that Italy is at the lead of, but is actually an EU-wide deal that has been made with Tunisia, a greater enhanced cooperation between Italy and Libya, and a new deal that's also been signed with Egypt. And these are called migration management deals, which is euphemistic, to put it mildly. Basically, we pay millions and millions of pounds.
And I say we because the UK has in the past been involved with these deals and in the present continues to be involved in various ways, including financially involved. We pay huge amounts of money to governments, and I use that term even quite generously because Libya doesn't essentially, it's a failed state and doesn't have just one government, but we've picked one of them.
And we're giving them a lot of money to contain migrants, to prevent them from leaving. And essentially what happens and what has been happening specifically in Tunisia since this deal was signed is that the government there has been
rounding up people, chucking them into vans and driving them out into the Saharan desert and dumping them, men, women and children, in the border region between sort of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, with no water, no mobile phones, no nothing. And Tens of thousands of people have credibly been reported to be subjected to this treatment. And hundreds and hundreds of people have obviously died.
That's how she's cut the numbers. Wow.
And where does the sort of Albania side of this fit into this conversation?
Albania has been presented in the media as sort of like how she's achieved this. Actually, the Albania deal hasn't started yet. The drop in numbers has entirely been achieved through these horrific deals with Northern African countries. The Albania deal is yet to come into force.
And what is the Albania deal?
So the Albania deal is different to the Rwanda deal. The Rwanda deal that we had was essentially that we would send people to Rwanda and regardless of who they were or what circumstances then occurred, they would stay in Rwanda, or at least they wouldn't come back to the UK. This is not the same at all. This is about the Italian administration of their asylum system saying,
taking place in detention camps in Albania. So that means that they have built these huge detention facilities in Albania. They have again sent many, many millions of pounds to the Albanian government and Italian civil servants are going to process the asylum claims of a select group of the asylum seekers who are seeking to land in Italy. They're going to do that processing on Albanian soil
People will remain detained there until the decision is made on their case. If they are recognized under Italian law as refugees, they will then be returned to Italy. But the intention is that the people sent there will be people that Italy deems unlikely to be refugees. But the intention is that then they will be removed if they are not found to be refugees, but they'll be removed from Albania.
So they'll be detained in Albania until that removal can be administered by Italy. So it's an enclave. It's a neo-colonial outpost.
In terms of Keir Starmer and what he's hoping to learn or glean, I mean, that all sounds pretty concerning and something that we should actively not be seeking to emulate.
Yeah. Yeah, I tend to pride myself on not being shocked by politicians' behaviour towards migrants. But I was shocked when Rishi Sunak hosied up to the extent he did to Georgia Maloney. So... Keir Starmer starting out his tenure as PM by going over there and having the exact same kind of giggly, cute little photo shoots with her. really turned my stomach to a degree I cannot even describe.
He's going over there ostensibly to learn about, yeah, the offshoring element. So again, the irony is not the part that's actually impacted arrivals because it's not in place yet. So it simply cannot be argued to have done that.
But Starmer's made it pretty clear that he's not ruling out almost anything and certainly not ruling out the possibility of offshore processing of claims, which is, as I explained, is different to the idea of the Rwanda one.
Yeah, I know you're saying it's different, but I mean, it doesn't seem that different. I mean, like the general public was against the Rwanda plan. I mean, surely something like this they would be against as well. It's not different enough.
Yeah, no, I mean, it has a lot of like fundamental elements in common. First and most important being that it is based on the flawed logic that through cruelty we can deter people from seeking safety and opportunity for their lives. And any expert will tell you that there is absolutely no evidence that that can be achieved. So first of all, like the Rwanda plan, this won't work.
Like the Rwanda plan also, it has human rights disaster written all over it. So there are some ways in which it's better. Albania is closer to being a true democracy than Rwanda was. Albania is under the purview of the European Court of Human Rights. So there are mechanisms where migrants will be able to find some level of redress.
There's also things like pregnant women or children will not be included in the people sent there. So once again, men get a kicking. We don't care about brown men. But yes, there are differences. But ultimately, it comes down to the fact that these will be people locked up in offshore camps and For long, long periods, conditions will be atrocious.
Suicide, self-harm will definitely be a feature of these camps. Abuses, just squalor. It's horrific and everybody should be against it. It's different to Rwanda, but it has a lot of the same problems. And ultimately, of course, it won't work.
It so rarely takes place that the conversation about this actually factors in the fact that we are talking about people. And we're talking about people who are fleeing home countries. Nobody leaves their home lightly. Right.
And it is really important to understand that the reason that these people are leaving and undertaking these incredible journeys is because they're coming from places that are themselves incredibly dangerous.
Yeah. So, I mean, over the whole of Europe, the number one nationality of people seeking asylum is Syrian and in the UK it's Afghans. So we're talking about people who are leaving from countries where situations are unlivable. It's also important to note we're talking about countries where your passport has the least value. Yeah.
So UK passport gets you visa-free or visa on arrival entry to almost every country in the world. A Syrian passport, an Afghan passport. There is no way to travel legally out of those countries. Not to the UK, but not to any other European country, not to any safe country where there is real opportunity to rebuild your life. And that is why people do so in such dangerous means.
And you look at that list of the least powerful countries, passports, they are the most dangerous countries and they are the countries where people are taking irregular journeys from. I wonder why.
If we talk about migration more generally, there's a lot of statistics that get thrown about. So last week, the Telegraph was reporting that what they deem mass low-skilled migration is is a financial disaster for Britain, costing the taxpayer £456,000 by the time they reach 81 years of age.
And this is all statistics that they're citing from a report by the fiscal watchdog, the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility. What do you make of that headline and that story?
Okay, so I have three problems with the story. But first of all, I just want to ask, at what number does it become mass? Because mass migration, we've all apparently accepted that we're experiencing mass migration. I don't know when it became mass. And I would really love a definition, just to define the term so that we can talk on an equal playing field. But... Aside from that, yeah.
First of all, the headline there talks about low-paid migrants and it doesn't talk about the most striking OBR finding, which is that the average migrant actually makes an immense fiscal contribution. as soon as they arrive in the UK, they start contributing economically to the UK. So it's just misleading straight off the bat.
Second problem, talks about low-paid migrants, doesn't talk about the structural issues that create low pay in this country. And spoiler, it's not migration. Disproportionately, migrants are represented in public sector roles, including healthcare and social care. These are areas where the government sets the pay scale. And it is the government's decision to set pay low.
I've never actually met a worker in any line of work who was the person saying, don't raise my wages. It's not the workers who hold down the wages. It is structures of oppression, greed, and capitalism, and just underfunding from government that hold down wages. So you want to talk about low paid workers, you know, you need to talk about the service they are providing.
And the service they are providing is, frankly, in the case of carers and doctors, priceless, absolutely priceless and necessary for our country. So their calculation in terms of these crude fiscal measures does not take into account that we desperately need these people. And finally, obviously, it just reduces people to just economic units rather than human beings.
And every single migrant is one. They're just a human. They're just a human.
So Zoe, you put a lot of effort into trying to rebalance all the myths and disinformation really about migrants. And I noticed that you're on TikTok. I follow you on there. You are truly doing the Lord's work. Thanks, I hate it. Pretty negatively. you received some pretty negative reactions. Why do you do this work on social media?
Why is it better to be out there than trying to be on mainstream media? I know you do do a lot of that, but I just find it interesting in terms of like directly reaching the public.
Yeah, I think it's important that I try to go on mainstream media. I would love more opportunities to do that, frankly, but I do find that we're constantly on the back foot there. We're constantly reacting to the framing that is put upon us by, you know, the government's doing something horrific. Is this good? And you get very little space.
And it's always sort of like locking people up in detention centers abroad. Good or bad? Yeah. It's just like, okay. And what it doesn't give us space to do is what I think the majority of the country actually wants. I think the majority of the country doesn't like the fact that if you're born in Sudan, you have such unequal chances in life. And if you want to change that, you risk drowning.
I don't think people like that. I think people want to see that managed better, but we are not given options to manage it better. We are given options to lock people up and push people away. And people want to understand what the alternatives are. And the only way that I am able to do that is spaces like this, or if I am the one creating the content and creating the
And just a narrative about the alternatives, because the real big lie about migration is that the choices between having it or not having it. And the real truth is the choices between managing it well in a way that benefits us all or this horrific cruelty and death that we see at the current time.
It is incredible to me how little people know about other countries. I know it sounds weird. I was having a conversation, one of those like uncomfortable conversations you have to have because it's a holiday and someone's brought their in-laws and whatever, and you sort of begrudgingly have this conversation.
And I remember talking to someone and they said this line being like, I just don't understand why they come here. Why can't they stay in their own countries? And I'm like, well, because their own country's in war, for example. Well, then they should get that sorted then. They should stay there and sort it out.
You know at this moment we're being like, wow, you really know very little about how it is in other countries. And how do you expect them to sort it out?
I believe our governments have done some interesting sorting out in Afghanistan and Syria. We've had some interesting attempts at sorting the situation out there.
And you have this moment being like, well, what do you think will happen? You know, some of these places are not functioning. Democracy is like, you know, dealing with militias with guns.
What do you think is going to happen? One of the most common comments I get is like, you know what? Why are they, you know, spending £6,000 on a smuggler's boat when it costs £35 to fly here from Paris on EasyJet? And I'm like, mate, yeah, you know what? They're real dumb people. LAUGHTER You should have got a star scan of me. Seriously, let's put up some posters. I don't know. Is it yet?
What's your target audience right here? Absolutely insane how little people understand the privilege they have of being British, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is that why you go on shows? Because I first became aware of you years and years ago through Twitter. I would watch you really admiringly have conversations on news programmes, political discussion programmes, where it would seemed like you were basically asked questions like, migrants, yes or no? Like it had a real like Chris Morris day-to-day brass eye kind of energy.
Good migrants, bad migrants, human or not?
But do you still find value in that? Because is your perspective that you might get through to somebody who otherwise might not have access to actual facts about migrants and migration?
Yeah, I think there's something here, right? One is just the responsibility that we have to be doing what we can to change the narrative because the narrative is bad, but it is getting scary here and across Europe. And I think everybody just has the responsibility to use whatever voice they have to have better conversations. So one is that.
The other is, I don't know how much good I'm doing because, you know, you remember Trump and they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of hilarious, right? But like, I've been thinking about that a lot. It's really got under my skin. I'm like, what's the purpose of this? This is so clearly a lie.
And then it brings me back to, you know, politicians who respond to humans,
drowning in the channel by saying that we need to go and talk to a neo-fascist in Italy about the camp she's setting up in Albania, when we all know, and I'm sorry, we all know that there is one way, if you actually, your one first priority was to save people's lives and stop them drowning, you would create a route for them to cross the channel without taking those boats.
That is what you would do. We all know that. So what purpose does the lie serve the lie is not to convince somebody that that's the truth right we all know that that's not the truth the lie is to somehow create an alternative world and a justification and narrative where we can pretend we're acting in in in line with morals or or practical reality and It's to create a fiction.
And so the truth, when the purpose of a lie is not to convince somebody of a lie, then the truth loses its power against that. And I really do worry that even though I'm putting out stuff that is factually accurate, I'm not successfully going to challenge that narrative because the point of it isn't, you know, to convince people of a lie. It is to use a lie to justify situations that aren't going.
Well, it's the old escape goat in the book, right? And, you know, in times of economic downturn and, you know, let's be honest, government mismanagement, government ideologically pursuing an agenda of neoliberalism and giving favours to millionaires and billionaires and so on, who better to blame than the migrants?
Do you think we can actually ever have a good conversation about migration without talking about rebalancing the economic gap in Britain?
No, I mean, they're fundamentally tight. They're fundamentally tight and there's always winners. And I think that... The point I'm trying to make there about what's the purpose of the lie is to justify a status quo. A status quo doesn't work for us. We're pretty sick of it. It's unpleasant. It doesn't work for the people who hate migrants because migrants continue to arrive.
And it doesn't work for migrants pretty bloody obviously. So who is it working for? Because they're still doing it. And what is the lie justifying? And that is exactly what you say. There are people making an absolute killing out of this.
Whether it's the Albanian government, the Tunisian autocratic regime, the Libyan militia, or the Rwandan dictatorship, or whether it's the private firms that sell us drones, that sell us fences, that run the detention centers and the deportation centers. There is an entire ecosystem of massive profit in this country.
horror show that we call deterrence of migrants you know the graham king he he's just the most recent sunday times rich list concept that freaks me out but whatever he's a new entry to the sunday times rich list one of the richest people in the uk what does he do he runs clear springs which is a housing accommodate they run they run the asylum hotels
There's a reason we have left people in asylum hotels is because there are people, and he's a Tory donor, they get very, very rich off this. And those are the real villains here. And they are hoarding wealth that should be distributed among all the vulnerable people in our population. And yeah, so economic inequality is absolutely at the nub of this, but it's tied in.
There's a reason it continues, even though it's failing.
Before we let you go, it would be remiss of me not to ask, of an expert and somebody who spends a lot of time looking at this kind of thing, what, from your perspective, should our policy on migration and refugees look like? If you were hired by Kit Starmer tomorrow, how would you reshape our policy?
So, obviously, that's quite a big question.
It's a huge question.
30 seconds is just like being on Good Morning Britain.
Migrants good or bad?
No, no.
Seriously though, there's the immediate term and then there's the longer term, right? So in the immediate term, if I was advising Keir Starmer and I know that he, you know, hangs on my every word.
He's a huge fan of this podcast.
Oh, yeah. Obviously.
Obviously.
At my Twitter feed. Why wouldn't he be? Okay. Immediately speaking, you need to decrease the salience of a tiny, small, small proportion of immigration, which is refugees and asylum seekers. 5.5% of the people who came to the UK last year came on a small boat. 5.5%, slightly disproportionate coverage in media and attention from government. Fucking hell. Just calm it, the ever-loving fuck down.
Sorry. But just stop making your policy be driven by those people. Stop performatively trying to detain them and lock them up and work on European-wide solutions to share responsibility for safe routes for people to reach protection. But keep it in its place and then move on the fact that our real, the bulk of immigration is people coming for work.
And our immigration system forces people into exploitation and low pay because of the way it's structured. And I'm not going to get into that whole detail there. But please, guys, follow me on everything and I'll tell you all about it. And then finally, we need to talk about a word that's a little bit uncomfortable in these circles, but I don't know a better word for it. It's integration, right?
Now, on the left, people get like, why should people have to integrate? Integration goes both ways. Yes, integration goes both ways, right? And some of the least integrated people into British society are the richest, right? All of that is true, but I think we need to talk about integrated communities and
and how our immigration system stops migrants from being able to put down roots and become full members of our communities because it keeps people in a temporary status for a really long time. It separates people out from the welfare state. It separates people out from... all sorts of ways in which we become entwined in each other's lives.
Things like the most family-unfriendly immigration system that you could possibly imagine. British people who are married to people who were born abroad. And God forbid you fall in love with a foreigner. You have these insane income requirements and incredibly onerous bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through. That's like... families that we are keeping apart through our immigration system.
So when I talk about integration, that's the kind of thing I mean. And then just finally, over the longer term, what you really need to look at is changing the face of our immigration system to one that works with the reality of migration. So people will move because they need solutions because they're fleeing from danger. We desperately need people. We have an aging population, you
Healthcare workers, all of these people, farm workers, we need them. We actually go out and quite aggressively recruit for those people in some countries and at the same time push away other people. We need to recalibrate over time our immigration system to reflect the needs of the people who migrate as well as the needs of the country.
Well, Zoe Gardner, thank you for joining us on Pod Save the UK. And seriously, do check out her work on social media. It is very, very good. We will put a link in our show notes or you can just search the name. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Zoe.
Now, last week, we invited you all to send in your ideas for unpopular policies that might make the UK a better place for all of us. And you've responded in your droves. We're very grateful for it.
As in, the producers described it as a deluge. A deluge. A downpour. This has fired your imaginations in ways we could not have anticipated. So firstly, Coco's suggestion, which I thought was an absolute... bananas decision from you to even talk about this, was a license on animals. But it actually went down incredibly well with a lot of the listeners.
So I guess it's not that unpopular in the end. But we did have one contrary opinion that we thought would be worth sharing. Megan wrote in to say that the UK actually used to have a license for owning dogs. And that at the time, Batsy Dogs and Cats Home sometimes have to cover the fees to stop animals from being separated from their families. So we thought it was worth considering a license
The team here has dug a little deeper into it and they found that dog licensing was a policy from the Victorian era that was scrapped in 1987, where at the time it cost a meagre 37 pence. However, when it was first introduced in 1867, it was relatively costly at seven shillings and sixpence, which was roughly equivalent to a day's wages at the time.
I'm loving this, like, diversion into history podcast that we're doing.
Also... I did not know this. Northern Ireland actually still has dog licensing. It costs £12.50 a year to have a dog license in Northern Ireland. So you're not actually alone in this. The RSPCA had previously called for a reintroduction of animal licenses, saying that in 2017, the mandatory microchipping that was introduced in 2016 didn't go far enough.
to solve the problems that come with a wide ownership of dogs, including dog health and welfare, antisocial behavior involving dogs, dog bite incidents, stray dogs, population issues, and risks to human health. And that a license could help to raise money to deal with this issue. The RSPCA has also noted that there are substantial arguments against the idea.
For example, the fact that councils already have a lot of things to worry about. But listen, anyway, thank you so much for writing in, Megan. It turns out your idea is not as controversial as I thought.
Anyway, on to some of your unpopular ideas. We've had loads in and again, a really big thank you to everyone that took the time. One of the other topics that many of you were excited about was home ownership. Jez wrote in to say we should implement Wales's second home council TAC rules and take those nationwide, make it an escalator for third homes, fourth homes nationwide. etc.
It's a very interesting suggestion, so let's explain it. In Wales, from April 2017, councils were able to charge up to an extra 100% of the standard rate of council tax on long-term empty dwellings. England and Scotland have since followed suit, but from 2023, the premium in Wales increased to up to 300%. The Welsh Government says the policies are designed to bring long-term empty properties to
Thank you so much for joining us. Well, kind of. There's been an increase in the number of homes on the market, but actual sales do remain low. Local real estate agents claim that the properties coming onto the market are too expensive for first-time buyers and that many homes are being listed, but they're exploiting the loophole of the extra tax not being payable if the house is listed for sale.
So there are people who are basically trying to cheat the system by putting their houses on sale for prices they know no one will pay for them to get out of this. Yes. I think this is a really great policy. I remember when this got introduced in Wales and it was to solve this problem of...
Basically, from what I was told by Welsh people that I know, basically to solve the problem of English people buying second homes in the beautiful Welsh countryside and then leaving them unoccupied for large proportions of the year. And I think it is a really, really interesting thing to look at. It feels like very, very sensible policy.
I think with policy, there's always going to be loopholes that are going to be exploited by unscrupulous people. Yes. try and crack down on those loopholes as much as humanly possible. But I do think that it is, you know, anything that's unpopular with estate agents has got to be a good thing for the rest of us.
Continuing on the topic of council tax, our listener Adam wrote in to say that we should switch out council tax for a property tax that targets owners over residents, knowing that it's a form of wealth tax that is easily enforceable. Now, Adam's suggestion is actually backed up by Fairer Share, which is a campaign to tear up council tax. and moved to a proportional property taxation system.
So this organisation advocates for applying a simple flat rate of 0.48% to the current value of your property, which would actually bring in more money for councils than the current system. About 75% of households would actually pay less money compared to the current council tax system. Beresha also argues that it would increase the supply of housing, might make it easier for people to buy.
So I don't know how unpopular this policy actually is when you get into the nuts and bolts of it. When he was a guest on this show, we spoke about this with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson. It's an idea that makes a lot of sense. And it's an idea that I'm certain would obviously be unpopular with landlords. But as Paul noted, these things always have pressure on both sides.
For instance, landlords argue if they were the ones to be paying the tax, It might disincentivize them from investing in property, leading to a lower supply in the rental market. But if you're generating more revenue, maybe councils could build more council homes, which would again help with a situation that we've got in this country, a crisis in housing and the lack of affordable housing.
I think, again, anything that targets the people with the broadest shoulders and can bring in more money for the government that can be reinvested in...
affordable housing has got to be a good thing it's absolutely fascinating there's a lot of countries around the world that pay a property tax instead of a council tax and it's something that several economists now are starting to argue that we should be factoring in and at the very least we need to be thinking about a reform of our council tax system
Despite that, though, it doesn't seem to be something that the Labour Party are interested in. So in the run up to the election, Labour said it's not looking to change up council tax banding. And since being in government, Housing Minister and Deputy PM Angela Rayner has refused to rule out scrapping the 25% council tax discount for single occupiers.
That might be another of the government's forewarned tough decisions and is sure to be unpopular.
Another topic we had a lot of engagement around was wages. And a few of you had some ideas around a maximum wage. Both Cathy and Daniel wrote in to propose a maximum wage that is a multiplier of the minimum wage. And that would mean that anyone earning over the maximum wage would be subject to a 100% wealth tax. Now, this is, again, very interesting.
And we turn to the history books, looking to, of all places, the United States of America, that bastion of wealth distribution and borderline communist economics. I love this for us. In 1942, the Second World War pushed the American government to introduce some incredibly high taxes.
The top marginal tax rate was set at 90%, where it remained until the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s brought it down to 70% and later brought down by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to 50%. According to Sam Pizzigati, who's the co-editor of inequality.org, this actually had a profound effect on inequality.
In the 1970s, the top 1% share of the pie was 10% of US income versus a quarter in 1928. For some context, according to a 2021 study by Credit Suisse, the top 1% in the UK owns more than 50% of the country's total wealth. Now, obviously, this would be unpopular with certain people. My question for you is, do we care about their feelings?
I don't know them. So I don't know who they are. As Zoe very succinctly pointed out, some of the least integrated in the UK are the ultra wealthy. I don't know one. I do not have one. I don't have their number on my phone. There's no one they can... Zoe? Doesn't bother me.
I think that there's a real problem in terms of we're facing a series of different crises and certainly underpinning a lot of it is a lack of money being pumped into the country. via the government and how do you raise that money? How do you get money into the health sector? How do you get money into building affordable housing?
How do you get money into our infrastructure which is crumbling all around us? Why are we not considering radical solutions? Why when we consider tough choices do we only think about
Well, they always say the same thing, isn't it? Because they always say, oh, if we do that, then the 1% will leave. We're just all really sad about that, I guess. I don't know where they're going to go. Monaco, lame. I don't want to go there anyway.
There is another thing that we asked you to write in about. And again, I would describe the response to this as being unprecedented.
Off the back of your fixation with a retelling of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott's visit to the Highgate Cemetery to see the grave of Karl Marx, which, according to Diane, Jeremy took her on as a romantic night out, we asked you to send in your own very painful left-wing dates.
I don't think it was at night. I don't think that happened at night.
It was still supposed to be a date.
No, I know, I know.
I think I meant date night as a catch-all term.
No, but I was just thinking, well, that would be extra weird, wouldn't it?
Cemetery at night. Breaking into Highgate Cemetery at night to look at Karl Marx's grave.
So we've had, yeah, we've had some wonderful suggestions.
Yeah. Well, not suggestions. We've had some wonderful, some absolute horror stories. So let's start with Ferdinand, which I'm reliably informed is not his real name, who's written in.
So to set the context, in the early 2010s, Ferdinand was living and studying in a German city with a couple of flatmates, one of which was one of the local organizers of the Blockupy movement, which is a bit similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Through this flatmate, he met a girl. And now I'm picking up the story from what Ferdinand has sent us.
For our third date, she thought it was a splendid idea to join the Blockupy protests in Frankfurt, driven entirely by base desires and exactly zero political fervor. I followed her straight into a street brawl with the police, getting surrounded for multiple hours by cops in riot gear while stones and bottles fly overhead. Wasn't exactly my idea of a romantic afternoon.
To this day, that date has been one of my most memorable ones and thankfully also the only one that has ended in criminal charges.
Oh, wow. Wow. Should we go for a romantic kettling? Wow.
I also really appreciate the honesty of Ferdinand. Okay, not his real name. To say that it was entirely driven by base desires and zero percent political forever. Imagine having the horn so much that you were willing to brawl with the police.
For criminal charges as well. Gosh, I kind of hope that they got together because that would be such a wonderful wedding speech.
Well, I'm assuming it wasn't based on the fact that Fernad's written it. Karen has written it as well and said, when I was 16, I found my first boyfriend at an environmental activist training camp. Fantastic. Fantastic.
right in the middle of the brand of our listeners it was long distance relationship but in spring he took the train for two hours to come see me and go to the cinema I picked a movie I was keen to see as it had great reviews for its acting and it was still in theatres we watched Downfall
Yeah, 16-year-old me looked at the German movie about the last days of Hitler and thought, first proper date material. We somehow stayed together for six years after that. I don't think I was permitted to pick a movie on my own, though. Downfall as a date movie.
Wow. I once had a date to go and see Alien.
Fine.
Is that fine?
Horror movies are quite sort of, also horror adjacent movies are quite common date things, right?
Well, I mean, Downfall's horrific in its own way as well.
It has a happy ending. What? The bad guy dies?
Yeah, no, it is a happy ending. It is a happy ending. No, no, it is. And finally, we had one in from Yayin. My most painfully left-wing date was seeing Nish's show in Glasgow this week. 100% would do it again. Aw, Nish, you really are... Doing your bit for Podshag the UK. You're keeping it going. You're providing entertainment for left-wing dates.
Podshag the UK was an ill-advised joke we made about setting up a dating service for our listeners that I say was ill-advised because it led to a deluge of people sending in their dating profiles to us.
Podshag the UK never dies.
Which we had to very quickly clamp down on. But yes, thank you very much for coming to the tour show in Glasgow. It was a lot of fun. I take painfully left-wing date material as a huge badge of honour.
You should get that on the poster, my friend.
Yes, the tour rolls on. I am all over the UK for the next two and a half months. So if you are interested in a painfully left-wing date, By all means, tickets available at listomart.co.uk.
And that's it. Thank you for listening to Pod Save the UK. And we want to hear your thoughts. We want to know what you think about Starmer's donations and how money infects British politics. Email us at psuk at reducelistening.co.uk.
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