Pod Save the UK
Time to nationalise Ticketmaster? “Cigarettes & Alcohol”, the Grenfell Inquiry concludes
Thu, 5 Sep 2024
Parliament is back in session and so is Pod Save the UK! Coco is joined by Zoë Grünewald, filling in for Nish, to discuss Keir Starmer’s gloomy new lines trailing what’s shaping up to be a miserable Autumn budget. Free political point scoring around the Oasis/Ticketmaster fiasco probably isn’t going to be enough to offset the grim energy emanating from the Government’s plan to means test the Winter Fuel Allowance for pensioners, despite some glints of hope in other policy areas. Coco and Zoë also discuss Jeremy Corbyn’s new political alliance, restrictions on arms sales licences to Israel and Labour’s mooted outdoor smoking ban. Later, they’re joined by James Riding, Chief Reporter at Inside Housing, to discuss the final report from the Grenfell Inquiry, exploring the “Decades of failure” and “systematic dishonesty” behind the disaster. Finally, they check in on the Tory leadership race, where the five remaining candidates are struggling for recognition within the public eye. 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/podsavetheworldGuests: Zoë Grünewald, Political JournalistJames Riding, chief reporter at Inside HousingAudio credits:Sky NewsNumber 10 Downing Street
Today on Pod Save the UK, we're back and so is Parliament. The Grenfell Inquiry reaches its conclusion and the Tory leadership hopefuls struggle for recognition. Plus, we're joined by Zoe Grunewald. Was that good? A little bit of European embellishment.
She's filling in for Nish this week. Hi, Zoe. Hi, Coco. Thank you so much for having me. And, you know, I've got big shoes to fill. Big shoes. Looking forward to filling them.
But first, a tweet that really captures the nation's mood this week. Are you ready for it, Zoe? It's just two words. Nationalised Ticketmaster.
Wow, that is two powerful words right there. Oh yes, the chills. That is the tongue-in-cheek tweet, obviously, from Zahra Sultana, MP for Coventry South.
currently suspended from the Labour Party for voting against the government over the two-child benefit cap, standing up for the thousands of people who took to their computers across the country and missed out on tickets to Oasis over the weekend. Yes. Did you get tickets? No. I'm not really an Oasis person. Is that because you're a Blair person? No. I'm not really a blur person.
I'm not really a Britpop person. I'm not really a person. I am a sort of Taylor Swift fan, to be quite honest.
Okay, that's fine, that's fine. I also didn't get tickets, not because I wouldn't enjoy it. Who doesn't love singing their heart out? And, you know, I'm of the age where I do appreciate the Britpop. But I just had this moment where I was like, I'm going to leave this for the real fans. And there are plenty of them.
I didn't realise there were quite so many fans, actually. I know a lot of people who applied for Oasis tickets, tried to get Oasis tickets, and I sort of thought, you've never mentioned them before. Like, where's this come from?
Where's this come from?
But no, I mean, it was quite extraordinary. So, you know, for anyone that didn't get swept up in it, it was a bit of a nightmare. There were long digital queue times of up to 10 hours. People telling me they literally couldn't leave their computer all day.
And when people got to the front of the queue, some fans were faced with prices of up to sort of 350, 400 pounds, 200 more than the 150 they were originally listed at. Wow.
Tickets sold through Ticketmaster were subject to what's known as dynamic pricing, where as demand for tickets goes up, the price rises. Ticketmasters say dynamic prices keeps the price in line with what scalpers might be selling them for, with an aim to keep the money with the artist and also with Ticketmaster, and is allowed under consumer protection law.
Nonetheless, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has ordered a probe into ticket surge pricing, saying we will include issues around the transparency and use of dynamic pricing, including the technology around queuing systems, which incentivize it in our forthcoming consultation on consumer protections for ticket resales, which I guess is her way of saying I will look back in anger and I will not roll with it.
Yeah. Did you get that?
I get the first. OK, cool. I do know that much. OK, great. Yeah. She certainly doesn't want any bad blood on this, there you are. Okay, yes, I see what's happening. Lisa Nandy is Culture Secretary, right? So this is very much her domain, you know, and every new Secretary of State wants to stamp their political stamp on these things. Do you think it's going to change anything?
Well, they've sort of made a big point about this. So I imagine that they will look into this policy. And, you know, Lisa Nandy, I think she definitely wanted Oasis tickets. I'm not sure if she got them. Lucy Powell also, you know, quite a few of them have made statements about this. So I would imagine it's, you know, it's a free political point for the government, isn't it?
If they manage to do this, it's something that they can talk about. And yeah, if they can say they made ticket prices more accessible for people, then... then everything's fixed.
Okay, well, let's talk about Keir Starmer's theme song of the summer. He's not an Oasis fan. He's not living his brat girl summer. I can't imagine Keir Starmer listening to music. No. I think he just sits in silence. Our producers have written a joke here that I don't understand, but I'm going to read it. He's much more of a paramour, misery business kind of guy. Yeah, do you get that?
I get that one, yeah.
I think I feel like I'm getting some insights into you here, Zoe. I don't want to admit this, but Paramore was actually the support act when I went to see Taylor Swift's Iris talk. I'm talking about Taylor Swift way too much. I'm not that much of a super fan. But yeah, no, you're right. Starmer's been selling a very kind of cold, sombre gloom to us at the minute.
Here's the Prime Minister speaking just last week.
We have to take action and do things differently. And part of that is being honest with people about the choices that we face, how tough this will be. And frankly, things will get worse before they get better.
So for our podcast listeners, it's probably worth setting the scene a bit here. It's almost like the clip has been desaturated. I mean, it's very funeral-esque. He is stood behind a lectern with a label reading, fixing the foundations in white text. The background is completely black. He's wearing a grey tie and a charcoal suit. And even his hair is very, very grey.
Yeah, he's got... Sad, sombre expression. He genuinely looks like he's at a funeral. Part of me was thinking, who died? Was it Larry the cat? Who died? But he's actually just telling us that everything's going to be a lot worse. So what's the logic of making that announcement?
So we know that there's going to be an autumn statement coming up, which is going to be incredibly bleak. So I think Starmer is trying to seed the ground for people to be aware that there are probably going to be tax rises and there's probably going to be public spending cuts.
I think he's also, he wants to let the public know that he's taking very, very seriously the doom and gloom picture that has been left by 14 years of conservative austerity, 14 years of conservative rule. He's also asking, in that clip, people to stick with him for a decade. He says it's going to take 10 years for a Labour government to turn around the country's fortunes.
Things won't get better over the night. You know, stick with me. The previous government left things really, really badly. And I think, you know, people have clearly bought the narrative. Quite rightly, I would say, that the Conservatives have done a lot of damage to this country. But... Is doom and gloom the best way to sell that? Because people voted for change. That was Labour's motto.
That was their tagline. If you're saying it's going to be 10 years till you feel better... I think people are going to feel pretty fed up with that. And I mean, realistically, he actually has five years until he faces voters again. And at some point in those five years, he's going to have to pinpoint things that Labour have been able to achieve.
But, you know, there is a different story that the Labour government could tell, which is actually there's a lot of things to be hopeful about. There's a lot of things to look forward to. We are, you know, pushing through planning reforms. We're doing X, we're doing Y, we're nationalising the railways. We're going to make those with the broader shoulders finally pay their fair share.
He could say it like that rather than, oh, it's just going to be awful. All this is going to do, I think, is make the media go crazy. For the next couple of months until we get the budget. And there's going to be lots of briefing and preview. And then all these ministers are going to be quizzed on, are you going to raise council tax? Are you going to raise capital gains tax?
Are you going to tax pensions? All these difficult questions that they might not actually even know the answer to yet. So I don't know if it was the most politically savvy way of presenting things. I think people know the economic picture is bleak. But I think people want hope.
And yes, okay, it makes sense to get all your worst policies out, most unpopular policies out of the way at the beginning because you don't have to face the electorate again for five years' time. But, you know, the media isn't going to be kind. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're going to put you in a corner. And there is something to be said about...
thinking about what the electorate wants to hear and thinking about what voters want to hear and trying to make things a bit more hopeful for them.
But speaking of very unpopular policies, one of the groups most likely to feel the pinch that Starmer is trailing here are pensioners. Before parliamentary recess, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced the government's decision to restrict winter fuel payments of up to £300 to only those receiving pension credit. So the government has been on the defensive over their decision.
They're chalking it up to the 22 billion black hole that Labour claims the previous government left them as a post-election gift. Here's leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, defending the policy on BBC Breakfast.
If we hadn't taken that action, we'd have seen a run on the pound. We'd have seen the economy crashing. And the people who pay the heaviest price for that are the poorest and pensioners and those on fixed income. So that stability is really important for the living standards.
Well, the comment certainly attracted a lot of attention. Some economists, including Ben Zaranco from the IFS, told the FT that the comment was silly and that there may be political reason to try and keep Liz Truss in the imagination of the British public, but this is not a helpful contribution. So is it just politics? More politicking.
I think there is a tiny grain of truth to it. Let me explain. I think Lucy Powell is talking in the wider context of the fact that the government have revealed this 22 billion deficit. So if the government was to say there's this huge hole in our budget, it's terrible, it's awful, it's way worse than we thought, and then not announce difficult decisions, you know, like...
spending cuts or tax rises, then you could see that there could be a panicked economic reaction. You know, if you're not filling that budget, we know that the markets tend to panic. So I don't think you can pin it on the winter fuel allowance, but you can see the logic that says, now that all of that's been revealed, we have to act because the markets will be spooked.
But then, of course, mainly there is a political benefit. To evoking trust, because it's a reminder of this narrative they keep telling, which is the Tories have absolutely trashed the economy. It's very similar to what we heard in 2010, you know, when the Conservative government came in and they were saying that Labour had destroyed the economy. It works, actually.
It kept Labour out of power for quite a few years. People believe it. The main problem is I think people do feel like, why do we have to keep paying for the mistakes of incompetent politicians? And that's, again, going back to the original point, that's why Labour have to offer something more, something more hopeful as well. But also, I mean, pensioners, for real.
That's one of the earliest policies is you're going to go for pensioners, already one of the most vulnerable groups. Like I get that there's obviously generational wealth inequality, but there are working class pensioners, there are pensioners in poverty.
And it's not like, you know, at the moment, the threshold is if they get £11,300 a year incoming from their pensions, they will not be eligible for winter fuel. That's not that much money. You know, like with the cost of everything being as it is. So I don't think they can say they're not putting some pensioners into poverty. And that all feels very Tory, doesn't it?
Absolutely. And I think it's worth saying that I believe the Tories almost certainly would have done this if they'd gotten back into power. But they love pensioners. Pensioners vote and pensioners vote Tory. Really? So Kemi Badenoch in her 2022 leadership bid said that she actually thought it was a good idea to means test the winter fuel allowance.
And I've spoken to a couple of Conservatives who've actually said it's quite a smart move. We needed to do it. So I think a lot of this outrage is manufactured from the Tories, I mean, and it's opportunistic because actually I think they were already considering the idea of means testing the winter fuel allowance. As you say, it feels like a Tory policy. I think it probably would have been.
But you're completely right. So while... pensioners have gotten much wealthier, there is also a proportion of pensions who have gotten much poorer. That inequality has increased. The first issue is that there'll be a proportion of pensioners who are not eligible to receive the winter fuel allowance, but they'll really struggle without it.
And then the other issue is that only two thirds of eligible people who are enrolled for pension credit actually claim it. So there's a whole other group who should be getting pension credit, but they don't for whatever reason. So you're completely right. There is a group of pensioners who are going to be at risk
I know you're saying it's a group of people and perhaps it might be a minority. It's unclear to me how many people are going to be affected. I know they're talking about reforming the way pension credit is administered and perhaps people that might fall in the net might not in the end.
But I do think there's also something about like, you know, we've been talking a lot about the feeling of hope and the feeling of security and those things that you want from a government, particularly from a Labour government. I was having a chat with a neighbour of mine He's in his 90s now, and he's obviously been retired and been on a pension for ages, over 20 years, right?
And so he was saying that when you first go onto your pension, you get told how much you're going to get. But what you can never anticipate is how much prices will increase for everything. At the time, you might think, well, hey, that's fantastic. And then 15 years later, you've got no means of earning more. And that feeling of... Being scared, being afraid, worrying about stuff.
That is a feeling that, you know, many families, younger people have experienced. I've experienced it in my own life. I don't really wish it upon anyone. So I don't really see how more people experiencing that is an improvement.
And you're right, people don't vote for a Labour government anymore. with the thought that they're going to start taking people's benefits away. You know, it's one of those things that you tend to think, especially vulnerable groups, as you say, pensioners would be safe. Labour is keeping the triple lock as far as I'm aware.
So there is a suggestion that pensions may go up £400 next year, which I think Labour will probably be hoping to sell as it offsetting this slightly. Now, as you say, prices go up, other benefit, you know, we might see other spending cuts, we actually in practice, it's still going to be a struggle for lots of people, especially if energy prices keep going up, which seems to be the way it's going.
I paid £9 for my smoothie today.
It is half sold. They saw you coming, I think. Yeah, exactly. So here's a topic that's going to split opinion, but is probably good for the health of the nation. The government has announced that it is considering a smoking ban in outdoor venues and pub gardens. Here's Starmer arguing for the consideration on Sky News.
over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking. That's a preventable death. It's a huge burden on the NHS and, of course, it's a burden on the taxpayer. So, yes, we are going to take decisions in this space.
More details will be revealed, but this is a preventable series of deaths and we've got to take the action to reduce the burden on the NHS and reduce the burden on the taxpayer.
So the proposal has been met with praise from healthcare organisations while lobby groups for pubs and nightlife are concerned about the effect on hospitality. Unsurprisingly, conservative media has gone into overdrive, calling the proposal absurd and accusing the government of creating a nanny state. Zoe, what are you thinking? You're into this, aren't you?
Oh, I don't know. I mean, look, it's really bad timing. I think I can say that, you know, and I don't think this was... Labour, I think, were very annoyed that this was briefed out because, you know, Keir Starmer just stood up and said everything's going to be terrible for a long time. And of course, with all the fallout from the riots, there's a big sort of...
caucus of right-wingers already calling him authoritarian. So when people get word that you're going to introduce a very authoritarian and very gloomy policy, it's just not helpful. Everything's rubbish and you cannot have a cheeky ciggy either. No more cigarettes. Yeah, exactly. Do I think it's a bad policy? I'm in two minds.
You know, there is a sort of libertarian part of me that thinks, you know, who cares? But I think when it comes to smoking, and particularly my thing is the NHS, right? The NHS is in such dire straits. And there's only so much that, you know, plugging it with money and trying to like reform bits of it can do. What we really need is a preventative approach to healthcare.
And smoking, you know, it costs the NHS money. so much money. It takes a lot of people's lives. I can completely understand the public health drive to save the NHS by pushing people away from smoking. And with cigarettes, you know, they're highly addictive. A lot of people start smoking socially. I started smoking socially when I was at university.
So if you make it a bit more socially unacceptable, you can see that people would stop
doing it yeah pub gardens i mean i i don't i didn't hear that there was a lot of secondhand smoke problems in pub gardens i thought that that was mediated by the being outdoors so and i'm not really sure how they're going to enforce this you're just going to send a load of smokers to what like a couple of roads over and they'll they'll congregate and i don't really understand how it's going to work yes i am biased i do like to be in a pub garden and have a have a cigarette so
Me too. I'm like, you know, and this is what I kind of struggle with. A few weeks ago, we spoke to the chair of the NHS Confederation, Victor Adelboale, and he told us that, like, a really good way of... thinking about how we organise society is to think about health in every single policy. I mean, in some respects, this is a perfect example about that. So I kind of get it.
But I also have this thing where, you know, Rishi Sunak has brought in legislation where generationally the ability to buy cigarettes is going to be phased out, right? So is this a problem that really needed to be solved right now? Or is this a show of, oh, well, Sunak did it, so I'm going to do it more. I'm going to do it double. I'm going to do it quicker.
I just don't really, I don't fully get it. So I'm a bit, yeah, I'm on the fence.
Yeah, I mean, one thing that is very, very interesting is when you look at the sheer amount of money to be made from cannabis and medicinal cannabis, and actually how, you know, I think the market is a billion or two billion or something like that. You can imagine a situation where actually there might be quite a lot of economic sense to legalise cannabis.
And I just think it would be a brilliant right wing head spinner.
That would be such a plot twist if Keir Starmer was like, no to the cigarettes, yes to weed. Exactly. So on the geopolitical front, Foreign Secretary David Lammy has suspended some arms sales to Israel, stating there is a clear risk that the equipment could be used to commit serious breaches of international law. The UK has suspended around 30 of 350 arms sales export licences.
To supporters of the Palestinian cause, it's simply not far enough, while those on the right are furious. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has called the decision shameful and the White House is said to be let down by the decision, while defence experts say that the UK's tricky tightrope walk may end up pleasing nobody at all.
If you're interested in more analysis on this from a geopolitical front, we cannot recommend... Enough, our sister podcast, Pod Save the World. But here, domestically, a newly formed alliance of independent pro-Palestine MPs have called the UK's longstanding position on the policy beyond shameful. So this is interesting, right, this new alliance of MPs?
Yeah, it is. So obviously led by Jeremy Corbyn. And it's composed of five independent MPs, which happens to be about the same size as Reform. But it's not, as we're saying, it's not a political party. So... Basically, it needs formal agreement. It's a slight procedural thing. It needs formal agreement from the common speaker to be formalised.
He has received a letter, but has not yet confirmed whether or not they're going to allow that. And the alliance won't receive any short money, which is the funding that opposition parties receive for parliamentary work. But it will... have a sort of official presence in the House. And Jeremy Corbyn has extended an invitation from the Alliance to other MPs.
And obviously there are MPs who also lost the whip from the Labour Party for voting against restoring the two-child benefit cap, including Zahra Sultana and John McDonnell. So there's a question of, you know, maybe this will pick up momentum. They'll get a few more and they could sort of become a official left-wing opposition to Keir Starmer. I wonder how the Greens feel about that.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I mean, you could potentially imagine a situation where the Greens might kind of join in, or at least maybe not officially or formally, but over particular points of legislation, they could come together. But it's worth saying Labour still have a massive majority, right?
So in that sense, it's going to be very, very difficult, unless this really picks up speed on a particular policy issue, for them to actually sort of successfully oppose Labour. Yeah.
So the alliance has promised to campaign against the two-child benefit cap, the winter fuel payment and arms sales to Israel. Obviously, they're not a party, so they don't have a manifesto, but those are some things that they have promised.
I think a lot of people are supportive of abolishing the two-child benefit cap. I think a lot of people are supportive of... stopping arms being given to Israel. I think a lot of people are supportive of a ceasefire. And I definitely think a lot of people are supportive of pensioners retaining their winter fuel allowance.
So you can see that actually there would be a lot of public support for an alliance like this on particular issues. At the same time, I think one thing the public does want is for governments to be able to create and implement policy.
So I think what would be really successful is if you had an alliance that represented on these specific issues, but could also work with the government to help move policy in a particular direction or to provide scrutiny. Because as much as we talk about parliament as an amalgamation of opposition parties all fighting with each other and trying to prevent things from happening,
Actually, they can all work together and provide really valuable scrutiny as well. So as we know, relations between Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer are pretty frosty. So I'm not holding out for that. But if the alliance grows, you could imagine a situation where actually they could work together on some things.
Now, after the break, we're going to be getting you up to speed with the conclusion of the Grenfell inquiry. The police tell us they are here to protect us, but what if their original purpose was something else altogether?
From Wondery, Cricket Media and Push Black, Empire City, the untold origin story of the NYPD uncovers the hidden history of one of the largest police forces in the world.
Peabody award-winning host Chenjerai Kuminyika takes listeners on a captivating journey through pivotal moments in New York's past that formed the foundation for today's policing. From its origins rooted in slavery to rival police gangs battling across the city to the everyday people who resisted every step of the way.
As the debate around policing rages on, Empire City uncovers the truths about where it all began.
The trailer is out now, so make sure to follow Empire City wherever you get your podcasts and listen to full episodes everywhere on September 9th. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple podcast to listen ad-free. Decades of failure and systematic dishonesty were the root causes of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
That's according to the second and final report from the public inquiry into the West London Tower block fire on the 14th of June 2017, which killed 72 people. Wrapped in highly combustible cladding and insulation, the building went up in an inferno during the night, while residents were sleeping in a block with no sprinklers, no communal fire alarms and failing fire doors.
Today's report lays bare the decades of folio that led not just to the Grenfell Tower, but thousands more buildings across the UK being clad in material, which experts have compared to solid petrol. And the report comes just a week after a block of flats in Dagenham, East London, was gutted by a fire, while it was reportedly in the process of having its cladding removed.
Thankfully, there were no casualties that night, but over 80 people were evacuated, their homes and all their possessions gone.
Grenfell United, a campaign group for victims and their families, released a statement saying the recommendations published today are basic safety principles that should already exist, highlighting how the government's roles, duties and obligations have been hollowed out by privatisation.
Here's Sir Martin Moore-Bick, Chair of the Grenfell Inquiry, speaking after the release of the final report in this clip from Sky News.
The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable and those who lived in the tower were badly failed over a number of years and in a number of different ways by those who were responsible for ensuring the safety of the building and its occupants.
Now, we've looked at this issue before on Pod Save the UK. Please do go back in our feed to find the episode with Peter Apps where we explored the depths of the failure here. But to discuss today's report, we're joined now by James Riding, Chief Reporter at Inside Housing, which has followed every step of the inquiry. Thanks for joining us, James.
Pleasure to be here, Coco.
So the final report, it's been seven years in the making. All the evidence has been heard in public, but having read it in full, what has shocked you today, if anything?
Well, you're right. It's an absolute beast. It's about 1700 pages and the scope it had to cover was enormous compared to the first report, which only looked at the night of the fire itself. This one has had to trace 30 years worth of decisions, shortcomings, failures from all of the public bodies, institutions and actors involved and what led to the catastrophic 2017 fire. So it's a total beast.
And I think there's nothing in the conclusions that people who have been following the story and the inquiry over the past few years would be surprised by necessarily. Nothing that the families would be particularly shocked by who've traced the process of this inquiry. But I think what the inquiry set out to do is to at least try and weigh the failures of each of the actors involved.
And I think it does do that. So there's very strong language for particular actors like the government, the product manufacturers who built the cladding and insulation used on the Grenfell Tower and Grenfell's social housing provider as well.
And the other thing that the report does is it lists 59 recommendations mainly around the construction industry, which if the government chooses to enact them, could have really sweeping changes in the way that we manage our built environment.
This was a disaster decades in the making. We know that documents emerged from the inquiry from 2002 and 2003 warning the then Labour government that the UK could become a dumping ground for inferior construction products if it didn't adopt new, tougher European fire safety standards. It was reported that the UK then did not adopt them due to pressure from industry lobbyists.
What did the inquiry conclude about this?
Well, I think it's clear that that was a very significant error. And one of the reasons why that's been made so clear is the fact that the new government, which is also a Labour government, has tried to get in ahead of the publication of the report. And they've come out and said, that they are moving to the European fire safety classes for construction products.
Because for the last few years, we've amazingly been having these two regimes running in parallel. And so the fact that the building safety minister, Rushinara Ali, came out and said that before the report was even published, suggests that the government really wants to get ahead of this.
And this is going to be a huge aspect of the way that the government deals with it now to rectify the situation.
You talked earlier about the changes that could be implemented and how much that would affect the construction industry. Obviously, we are in the throes of a new Tory leadership race. And as it so happens, I came across James Cleverley talking about some of the things he would do. And he talked about cutting up red tape, talked about regulation.
I think he even used Cameron's ideology, which was mentioned in Peter Abt's book, which is like, you know, for every rule brought in, we'll get rid of two. Do you think that this ideological pursuit of deregulation, cutting red tape, has a role? And is that also currently still gripping building projects despite having seen the tragedy of Grenfell?
I think James Cleverley should take a look at the report's conclusions because it does point out a link between the government's drive for deregulation and the fire. And I think that in particular, it flatly rejects what Lord Pickles, who was previously housing secretary, said to the inquiry where he claimed that building regulations were exempt from the government's drive for deregulation.
The inquiry says, no, that's not the case at all, and that it was something that civil servants were encouraged to look at and to cut back on. And so I think politicians of all stripes need to understand that while companies and businesses will forever complain about the cumbersome weight of regulations and they might have a point about their combined impact.
I think that they're all in there in place for a reason and you strip them away at your peril. Absolutely. And, um, As for whether they're still in place now, I think things have changed drastically since the original Grenfell report came out in terms of the combustible cladding products have been banned. However, there's still a lot more that could be done.
And this is where the new recommendations come into play. So one of the things that the report recommends is a single construction regulator to take control of the whole industry.
um it wants an urgent review into the definition of what makes a higher risk building currently that's only defined by the height of the building and this uh the inquiry wants it to take into account vulnerable residents as well and it wants fire safety functions carried out by different government departments at the moment to be brought in under one department so
There are still many, many areas which really need root and branch reform. And I think the inquiry makes some sensible recommendations on that front.
The final report concludes that residents were badly failed by a number of different organisations, so governments, Kensington and Chelsea Council, cladding manufacturers, architects, consultants, the fire brigade, certification bodies. Are there things that the Labour government will have to account for? Are there questions that they will have to respond to when it comes to wrapping up from this?
Or is it mostly something that they can learn from and try and move on from?
I think it will be really interesting to see how the government decides to respond to this report. We've already seen they've come out and said that they're going to implement personal emergency evacuation plans for disabled and vulnerable residents in tall buildings, which is a key recommendation from the first report that the previous government decided to reject. So that's one big change.
But another really interesting conclusion and recommendation from the report is that they suggest the government should have a duty to report on its progress for how it implements recommendations from public inquiries. That's something that the families and bereaved from Grenfell have called for.
And if Starmer and his government want to show that they're turning a new leaf and responding in a way that's really robust to this report, they might consider bringing into play some sort of mechanism like this where there's a publicly accessible record showing where the government has taken steps to act on these recommendations and explaining why they're not if they choose not to.
And what about criminal ramifications for some of the actors involved in this?
Yeah, that's the other really big next question. So it's not the job of an inquiry to determine criminal culpability, but I think they set out here with some quite damning language for various failures and to what extent, if these failures were avoided, Could the tragedy have been avoided?
And so it's now up to the Metropolitan Police, who have been conducting an incredibly long and detailed investigation at the same time as this inquiry, to take these findings on board. They've said it's already going to take them about 12 to 18 months to digest this report. and compare it with their own investigation.
After that, they're then going to put their evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service, who will potentially then press charges. And so as a result, it's going to be a full 10 years since the fire. So 2027 before anyone appears in court for this.
My goodness me. I remember when we interviewed Peter Apps, one of the things he pointed out was that the story of Grenfell really lays bare the inequalities in society and whose lives matter more, who has more power, who has more influence.
You know, so Leslie Thomas Casey, representing the survivors and victims' families, made the point that while Kensington and Chelsea is one of the smallest and richest boroughs, Grenfell's residents were overwhelmingly working class. He said the fire was inextricably linked with race. I'm just wondering, what did the report say on this?
I suppose it doesn't go so far as to use the word racist or institutional racism.
It doesn't, but it does devote several paragraphs to addressing these concerns. And they're very interesting. They're worth considering. So what the report does say is that in the aftermath of the fire, that the residents were absolutely subject to a significant degree of discrimination.
For example, some Muslim residents who were observing Ramadan at the time, their needs were not taken into account by the council and the council should have done more to cater for their needs.
However, the report then also says that it didn't find any evidence for the fact that any of these decisions that resulted in the dangerous building or the spread of fire were affected by racial or social prejudice. And that is very interesting. It goes out of its way to say that and kind of the inquiry have put their neck on the line there saying that they haven't found any evidence for violence.
racial or social prejudice that led to the fire itself. So I think it's worth reflecting on that and perhaps that does lend weight to some of the other findings if they are genuinely saying we've seen all the evidence and on the basis of this we don't have evidence for racial or social prejudice.
Obviously, after Grenfell occurred, it emerged that there were thousands more tower blocks across the UK covered in combustible cladding. Latest figures from the Department of Housing shows there are 4,630 buildings identified, but remediation work has only begun on about half of those.
While campaigners at End Our Cladding scandal say three million people could be living in unsaleable and uninsurable flats worldwide, What's next for them? Does this inquiry put more pressure on their plight or is there any sense that the government will better advocate for those people? What can we learn from this?
I think the government has talked about taking a much more proactive approach to cladding remediation. And part of this has been in response to the fire in Dagenham late last month, which was on a building that was undergoing cladding remediation when it caught fire.
So Angela Rayner, who's the housing secretary, she has talked about the need to speed up cladding remediation and get more of these buildings fixed. And it remains to be seen, but the government could certainly take a more hands-on approach in resolving some of these disputes that are going on between building owners, between management companies, between leaseholders.
There's definitely more scope for that. But at the moment, people are pressing on. And as you say, the figures keep going up. So the government keeps identifying more buildings which are potentially at risk. But at the moment, about half of the housing blocks with unsafe cladding that are high rises have not yet started remediation. So there's still 2,331 homes
of these high rises where no remediation plan has begun yet. So there's a huge amount of work to be done.
James Riding, thank you so much for joining us on Podsafe the UK.
Thank you very much.
Now, the Tory leadership race is in full swing, with leadership hopefuls launching their bids this week and the first elimination due after we record this afternoon. But according to a new poll from YouGov, most of the new Tory leadership hopefuls aren't very well known, with one significant outlier, Priti Patel.
She's far better known than any of the other candidates, with 82% of those polled knowing her name, but perhaps for the wrong reasons.
Yes, so 65% of people polled viewed her in an unfavourable light, while only 16% saw her favourably. The second best known candidate, obviously James Cleverley, known by just over half of those polled.
And then obviously we've got Kemi Badenock, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, and if anyone remembers this guy, Mel Stride, who used to get trotted out on the morning media round all the time when the rest of the Tories were falling out of love with Rishi Sunak.
So the polling organisation More In Common have done some polling that kind of backs up what you said there. Voters essentially think that the Conservatives are weird.
Yes. And finally, you know, a bit of polling we can all get on board with. I mean, they are weird and there's been a lot of weird stuff going on in the leadership race. I mean, when you consider the fact that, you know, the Tories basically had electoral wipeout
And rather than really doing some proper kind of navel gazing and thinking about what policies they stand for, it's just more of the same. It's just continuity. They're arguing about the ECHR. They're arguing about identity politics.
Kemi Badenoch is having an argument with Doctor Who, which she launched her leadership campaign with a video where she said she's not afraid of standing up to Doctor Who. Okay, I think I need more information. What do you mean?
So you might remember earlier this year that Kemi Badenoch and David Tennant, who played the Doctor, had a bit of beef because he stood up at an awards event and said he wants Kemi Badenoch to shut up. Right. Because of the way she talks about trans people. Q manufactured outrage.
Kemi Baden was very, very angry about this and she has kicked off her leadership campaign saying she's not afraid to stand up to Doctor Who. Yeah, it's all getting a bit... It's all getting a bit strange.
Getting a bit weird, isn't it? So do you think... I mean, surely the logical step is for them to just get a total nobody in. Like, wipe that slate clean. No?
How come they're not doing that? Well, they don't really have anyone. Because the party was so depleted, you know, there's a lot of... There aren't an awful lot of new Conservative faces. There's not an awful lot of talent there. Everyone's kind of tired. And I think the question, you know, that a lot of these Tory leadership candidates will be asking is...
Are they ever likely to be Prime Minister? Really? I mean, it's quite likely that the Conservatives will be out of power for a decade. And knowing how divided the party is, even if you did become leader, you could be booted out again in two years' time. So, no, there isn't a lot of talent. I think you'd have to be slightly deranged to want to be Tory leader.
One of my favourite, actually, parts of the Conservative leadership... race, is the weird briefings on who's on Ozempic and who isn't on Ozempic. Okay. So you might remember when Robert Jenrick resigned from the government, when he was Rishi Sunak's immigration minister over the Rwanda plan. He was looking a little bit trimmer. He had a new haircut. Okay.
And everyone was like, he wants to be Tory leader. And his team denied it. And they were like, you know, this is really cruel and unkind. Like he's just taking care of himself and he's allowed a new haircut. And Tom Tugendhat made a comment at one of his speeches saying, basically, I'm not on Ozempic, unlike some people.
And then Robert Jenrick had to come out and say, OK, yes, I did take Ozempic, but I didn't enjoy it or something like that.
So just for clarity for any of our listeners who are not familiar with what a Zempik is, a Zempik is a weight loss drug. It's traditionally prescribed on the NHS for people who are struggling to lose weight and who also have other comorbidities that would make a significant amount of holding weight dangerous for them. However, you can get it privately. There's been a run on
on a Zempic online and so it's good to see that many of those buyers are conservative MPs that's good to know I think it all started when Boris Johnson wrote his Daily Mail article about taking a Zempic and it not agreeing with him okay and he made it okay for people to come out and say I've had a Zempic as well it's just a very strange twist and turn in the Tory leadership race I think yeah I
Coming back to that thought of, I've done a Zen pick, but I didn't enjoy it. Is it some sort of, I'm actually very hard? Is it? I'm so tough.
I think there's a feeling that taking a Zen pick is in some way cheating. Cheating, right. So I think Jenrick's point might have been like, okay, maybe I did try a Zen pick, but this weight loss is all me. I've got it in me. I can lose weight. I could be Tory leader. I can exercise and work out and, you know, eat healthy. Goodness me.
So as we record on Wednesday morning, we don't know who will be the first candidate to be knocked out, but let's take a moment of sympathy for Keir Starmer, whose top team apparently forgot to wish him a happy birthday this week. They could have made him a sombre cake. Apparently his daughters remembered they went to pick up a Siberian kitten from a local cat shelter to join Larry at number 10.
It remains to be seen what colour it is. We would imagine probably grey. I find this story strange. I find it weird that it's in circulation. Did Did Starmer's team brief this out?
Yeah, it's a good question. I think possibly. So I've heard, while we're on the topic of Starmer's pets, his children wanted a puppy and Starmer negotiated them down to a cat, which is a very Starmer thing to do, right? I mean, I love cats. I'm not having a go at cats, but they're not the same as a puppy. Not the same. But can you imagine having a puppy in number 10?
I just think it'd be too much stress.
Right.
Yeah.
So, yeah, no, new cat. I mean, if this story has been briefed out, I think they should have led with they wanted a puppy and he negotiated them down, which I think is a, they start off hopeful, get what you're given, which I think speaks to a wider philosophy. Starmer's also ordered a redecoration of number 10, leading to the removal of a portrait of Margaret Thatcher,
from the Iron Lady's former study, which according to his official biographer, the PM found unsettling. Right-wing media has been whipped up into an outrage about this. I mean, what are you thinking, Zoe?
I think the right-wing media goes absolutely feral every time somebody mentions Margaret Thatcher in a way that's like, just like, get over it now. And it also shows you just how much the Conservative Party has just been like, on a downward spiral for so long because they don't have anything except Margaret Thatcher to talk about anymore.
And they all go back to, you know, there's no vision tying the Conservative Party together. What I really think, though, is that if Keir Starmer wants to send the right-wing press his head spinning, he should name his new cat Margaret Thatcher. What? Or Maggie. Just call her Maggie. Wow. Yeah. I don't know what that would do to... I think they'd hate that. And maybe the left would hate it as well.
But I think it would be quite provocative. Margaret Scratcher. Yeah.
There we go, I just came up with it.
Margaret Scratcher. Margaret Scratcher. That's really good.
Sorry, sorry, I interrupted you. It just came to me in a moment of genius.
But yeah, I mean, I think definitely briefed out deliberately, definitely a bit provocative. You know, fair play. I'd pull it down. I'd throw it in the bin. Throw it in the bin? I'd throw it right in the bin. Okay, cool.
So that is some of your bookings gone. I just hope you know that. And finally, to close the show, I have a retraction to make. So listeners to our episodes recorded at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival may recall that we had a brief conversation about the Baja Men's seminal song, Who Let the Dogs Out? You're familiar with it, right, Zoe? Yeah, I know the song.
What did you do? What did you do, Coco?
It's an iconic song. Basically, we were having a chat about like, oh, you know, when you're a kid, you thought it was about dogs. And then I mentioned, yeah, and then I found out, oh, it's so annoying because I wanted it to be about dogs, that it's actually slightly sexist. It refers to unattractive women being in a place. Who let these unattractive women in here? Who let these dogs out?
Certainly that's what I thought anyway. And then I was promptly corrected. That is not what the song is about.
I thought that's what the song was about as well.
I think the reason we think that is because nasty men have been saying that phrase, who let the dogs out? And so we thought maybe that's what the song was about because of this being a sort of street insult. But in fact, the song is actually the other way around.
It's told from the perspective of women at a party where some rowdy, rude and unpleasant men come in and ruin the party and they are the ones saying, who let the dogs out? So all along, it was actually... you know, maybe even a feminist track that got hijacked. And there I was participating in this misinformation.
So I do want to issue a retraction, not least because, you know, it's the Baha men's biggest song. I'm sure they wouldn't like to be misrepresented. But also any man who sings that song in a derogatory way, you are wrong.
And I want all of us to know. And you're desecrating the memory of the Baha men. I'm really disappointed. I thought you were going to tell me it actually is about dogs. So come on, Zoe. Well, come on.
It felt like that story was going that way. You really think that was a whole song about dogs? I don't know. That's nice. And that's it. Thank you for listening to Pod Save the UK. And thank you, Zoe Grunewald. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. We want to hear your thoughts as well, listeners. So please email us at psuk at reducedlistening.co.uk or drop us a voice note on WhatsApp.
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