Pod Save the UK
Trump’s plan for “Peace” in Ukraine only pleases Putin + The Politics of Modern Love
Thu, 20 Feb 2025
As Europe looks on in disbelief, Donald Trump has been throwing his geopolitical weight around. A monumental meeting with Russia to discuss ending the war in Ukraine was held without Ukraine or Europe.Trump then branded Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” and accused Ukraine of starting the conflict. Keir Starmer has said he is “ready and willing” to put UK troops on the ground in Ukraine. But is this the answer? And as shares in major arms manufacturers soar, who’s profiting? Nish and Coco chew it over. And from war to love - loneliness is on the rise but according to journalist and author Shon Faye, the problem isn’t us, it’s capitalism. Phew! She joins Nish and Coco to discuss the highly politicised terrain of modern romance - and why it eludes us.Later, Tortoise tech reporter Patricia Clarke calls in to discuss what the government can do about our unhealthy social media habits and if the Online Safety Bill holds up.And Starmer has been ambushed by tractor-driving farmers blasting out… “Sandstorm” by Darude. Yes, Darude.CHECK OUT THIS DEAL FROM OUR SPONSOR Shopify: https://www.shopify.co.uk/podsavetheukUseful LinksLove in Exile by Shon Faye https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/453476/love-in-exile-by-faye-shon/9780241605981GuestsShon FayePatricia ClarkeAudio CreditsThe Guardian The White HouseUK Government Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.Contact us via email: [email protected]: https://instagram.com/podsavetheukBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/podsavetheuk.crooked.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/podsavetheukTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@podsavetheukFacebook: https://facebook.com/podsavetheukYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@PodSavetheUK
Chapter 1: What is Trump's plan for peace in Ukraine?
Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
And I'm Coco Kahn. Today, Trump's foreign policy shift has left Europe reeling. But is Starmer's vision of sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine the answer?
I don't know about you, Coco, but I would say troops on the ground in Ukraine doesn't sound particularly peaceful to me.
No, I know. I'm hearing a lot of the word frontline on the radio today, which doesn't make me feel great. And also, immediately after you hear these words, frontline, you hear this tidbit from a former military chief. It basically says we don't have enough money. We don't have enough resources in the army to actually run a front line.
All of it's adding up to me holding a gun, which no one wants.
That does not make me feel secure on a national level, Nish.
Also, I don't look great in green.
Oh, but elsewhere, a petition to ban children under the age of 16 from social media is doing the rounds. Tortoise tech reporter Patricia Clark is here to tell us whether this will really save the children.
And we'll be joined by author and journalist Sean Fay to understand why so many of us feel unlucky in love and to ask who's profiting.
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Chapter 2: Why is Keir Starmer considering sending UK troops to Ukraine?
And earlier in the week, Donald Trump suggested European security can no longer be the primary focus of the American military. and in doing so, plunged the future of the transatlantic relationship into question and undermined an 80-year-long military alliance. European leaders hastily convened a meeting to discuss their response. Here's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking after the meeting.
I'm prepared to consider committing British forces on the ground alongside others if there is a lasting peace agreement. But there must be a US backstop because a US security guarantee... is the only way to effectively deter Russia from attacking Ukraine again.
So Starmer's suggestion of a US backstop to deter Russia wasn't quite explained there. But we might find out next week when Starmer meets with Trump in Washington.
However, some European leaders weren't quite ready to make the same commitments for boots on the ground, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz saying it's inappropriate to discuss sending troops in at this stage and that he was a little irritated by the suggestion.
Following the meeting between Russia and Ukraine, Trump's given a press conference where he seems to have blamed Ukraine for the war, saying you never should have started it. And if anybody needs a reminder, just to be clear, Ukraine did not choose to invade itself. He also said that they'd had three years to end the war.
And this, just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their sides. And he's also demanded an election in Ukraine before any peace deal can be reached. which would naturally be a sort of prime target for Russian interference.
One of the potential objectives that various experts in the region have always stated was at the heart of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is to essentially replace Zelensky and install a kind of pro-Putin puppet, in effect, bringing Ukraine under Russian control, a little bit like what Lukashenko has done in Belarus. Obviously, we will be discussing this through the frame of British politics. And
The challenge here is that next week, Keir Starmer is going to have a meeting with Donald Trump and Starmer is trying to position the United Kingdom as essentially a conduit between Trump's America and the European Union. And what I would say is that
It's about time that people wake up and smell the dog shit because there's this idea that the US and Europe are mutually aligned in their values, but that does not hold water under the Trump presidency. There is a reason that they had peace talks and did not invite Ukraine. I have no idea how... we steer a course through this.
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Chapter 3: Who benefits from the geopolitical instability in Europe?
If you couldn't pick out that tune, that was Sandstorm by Darude. And I don't think I ever thought I'd be saying Keir Starmer's name in the same sentence as Darude. To borrow a phrase from the comedian Maria Bamford, I'm actually surprised that Sandstorm is still speaking to people.
Oh, yeah. It's a classic. It's an absolute club classic. I'm genuinely very impressed. I'm just impressed that they did that. Do you think it was a pre-record? No, it couldn't have been.
No, I think they're playing live. Wow. That's just brilliant. This is not a Milli Vanilli situation.
Yeah, you're a farmer that can do both. Yeah.
Now, look, last week we had our say on the government's latest moves on immigration, including denying citizenship to asylum seekers who arrive outside of legal channels and grossly sharing footage of people being deported. We called it performative cruelty. And it turns out loads of people within the Labour Party agree.
A group of over 900 Labour members and trade unions have signed an open letter decrying the government's latest moves, including MPs and former guests on our show, Nadia Whitham, Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Clive Lewis.
The letters said, and we quote, these measures mimic the performative cruelty of the failed Tory governments rejected by voters last July. They also breach Britain's international obligations to respect the right to claim asylum and guarantee safe routes. Far from being a drain on this country, migrants from all over the world enrich our society in every sense.
Anti-migrant politics will not build a single house, staff a single hospital or raise anyone's wages. Instead, by echoing its rhetoric, the government is simply fuelling the rise of Reform UK.
Yeah, it was good.
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Chapter 4: How is capitalism affecting modern love and loneliness?
Yeah, exactly. No, I think that's so true. And almost, yeah, that like women are almost like a patriarchal spoil. Like, oh, you know, they're not getting the partnership they want. I tend to think the differences between men and women in a binary are not. Due to, you know, there are some aspects of biology, but like a lot of the behavioral stuff is about the social experience.
And I think we're not so different. But one of the things I always think about masculinity and being raised male, being raised as a boy is like how much... pressure there is to cut off parts of yourself that are vulnerable. And I think that really inhibits... Because the answer isn't just that men are lonely because they're not having enough girlfriends or sexual opportunities.
It's also that a lot of male... are undernourishing or non-existent. I mean, I have this particular experience, right? Like I went to an all-boys school, which was pretty traumatic, to be honest.
But one of the things that I kind of remember so much about like being like 13 or 14 in this like very crucible of like sort of emergent masculinity is you're only really allowed to like take the piss out of each other. You're only allowed to like, that's how friendship is expressed. There isn't much space there.
for a lot of boys and men to be like vulnerable and to actually talk about their internal worlds with each other. And then when you combine that with this idea that status and power and domination and sex are the ways that you show you're a man, I think you have a real recipe. So like the trouble is, is I think the heart of the problem is
how we raise children to be boys and men, because I think we, societally, can do a lot of damage.
I'll just come back to this point about the business and the capitalism of love. There's something about this particular moment, and I don't know if I'm right about this, where it's not in commercial interest for people to actually find love. Like it's better for them to remain lonely, to feel that it's their fault so that they buy more cosmetics or they do, you know, have more whatever juices.
And for the app's point of view, the more users, the better, right? So despite the famous slogan of knit hinge designed to be deleted, that's not necessarily the case. Does that sound right to you?
Yeah, I mean, it's certainly the business model, right? Like it isn't designed to be deleted. And in fact, you know, there is also a gamification. Like, you know, I'm on dating apps at the moment and it is like I've just written this book and then I'm sat there being like, maybe if I pay for the upgrade, I'll be able to go through and I'll get a better crop of men. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Chapter 5: Why is male loneliness considered a societal issue?
Like if you think if you, you know, people who are like 10 years younger than me, like Gen Z or whatever, like all they've known is austerity and nothing getting better ever and no input into the kind of social safety net. I was a child of a single mother in the 90s, which basically, like, It's so funny now because there's a panic around the falling birth rate.
But like, you know, single mothers in the 90s, it was basically like it was their fault and that we should be penalising them. These irresponsible women on feckless fathers.
There's been a few things recently that have reviewed the kind of tenor of cultural conversation, whether it was about gender, race or class in the kind of late 90s and early 2000s that have...
given me like it's like an acid reflux like it's this horrible memory sort of lurching up in my body single mums was almost like culturally it was almost like a slur that people would throw around yeah totally the other thing to say as well is that we haven't like remotely addressed with all whatever feminist progress there has been things like domestic violence which is actually so endemic and I think like all of us
often forget because it's so normalised about how prevalent it is. There has been very little redress of that. And in fact, it's, you know, again, refuge places, support services around domestic violence and family trauma and social services. I'm from a family of social workers. And I can tell you like child protection, like when the family unit goes wrong, there is nothing.
There's so little, like they're just firefighting all the time. So for me, we would need to improve people's basic income, have like a properly furnished social network, not create socially stigmatizing narratives about alternative family units, whether that's LGBT people, single mothers, whatever. trans people.
And then alongside that also like provide like actual support for when, you know, love isn't there in people's families and when the society we live in, I say in the book, it's a profoundly sick and loveless society. It's kind of an obvious point, but like hatred is actually... is increasingly just very, very validated and like hatred and anger gets you ahead.
We're increasingly losing a space for the idea of compassion. You're made a laughingstock off for even talking about that as a serious political principle.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you, in the book, you devote a chapter to motherhood and you write, you know, as a society, we profess our love to mothers, but it's clear that we often despise them. Just thinking about what you're saying about, like, how much hatred there is. I mean, I also grew up single. Mum, if anyone's seen my father, please direct him to a child support agency.
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Chapter 6: How do dating apps profit from modern relationship struggles?
Literally. I was about to say, when I said in every generation, I was like, but it's usually the same way. It doesn't vary that much. It doesn't feel that abstract. As we sit at this table, it does not feel that abstract to me. Yeah, I mean, fair observation. But it's clever, right? Because anyone who's a parent, you know, the protection of young people is a sort of noble aim.
And a lot of parents will have a very real fear. The fear of like children being harmed is a very natural fear, but it's also one that's easily manipulated. Yeah, and with far-right movements, you know, it has a long history of, like, it's good for, you know, recruiting women, and it's also good for recruiting other men.
But, like, the idealization of a certain kind of puritanical motherhood, I mean, I'm really loathe to invoke Nazi Germany. Like, fascistic regimes have always known that a particular idea of the mother is quite a potent idea in that imaginary. And... You know, that's not me saying that motherhood or motherly love is always this right wing reactionary idea. It's not.
But yeah, I think it can be weaponized in that regard.
So am I right in thinking that maybe we need to move away from romantic love then?
At the end of the book, I write this postscript because it was about to go to the printers and actually whilst I was writing it, I had like a whole unrequited situation and got heartbroken again. I was like, oh yeah, this is really shit. I haven't got any better at dealing with this. And I kind of wanted to be like the postscript to the final words of the book are like, I haven't given up.
Also, I knew I was going into promoting this book and I didn't want to become like the face of single people. Because that's really bad too. I don't want to box myself in there. Like, you know, no, I think the point being, I have this very full life where I'm quite happy single.
And I have like amazing friends and I genuinely like have, you know, had to accept like romantic love for me hasn't worked out that well.
that well thus far and being trans it's a little bit trickier to find it and I have this great life but what I do say in the book right I'm not I'm because there was the single positivity movement a few years ago and if you notice who was leading that it was quite a lot of like middle-class women of means because it's like it's easy to have a nice life single when you've got enough money I live alone and work alone so like living alone and not house sharing into your 40s
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