Why did Suella Braverman’s speeding ticket take up so much oxygen, and who did it serve? Nish and Coco discuss whether the leaks against the Home Secretary are symptomatic of a party that’s heading into yet another bout of self-destructive psychodrama. As if that’s not enough, Boris Johnson is back in trouble too! 

 

As another set of record migration figures are published, Nish and Coco reflect on the immigrant experience and how it forged their own friendship. And there’s a big serving of hope too…in the form of economist and philosopher Daniel Chandler and his ideas to improve our politics – democracy vouchers anyone?

 

Plus Coco delivers a lesson in Greek Mythology, and find out what Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and Succession’s Logan Roy have in common.

 

Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.
 

Contact us via email: PSUK@reducedlistening.co.uk 

WhatsApp: 07514 644572 (UK) or + 44 7514 644572

Twitter: @podsavetheuk

 

Guest:

Daniel Chandler, economist, philosopher and author of Free and Equal: What would a fair society look like?

 

Audio credits:

Parliament.tv

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Nish Kumar Hi, this is Pod Save the UK.

 

Coco Khan I’m Coco Khan.

 

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar.

 

Coco Khan And this week please, please save me from another Suella Braverman mess.

 

Nish Kumar Yes, that’s right. The Roger Federer of British political fuck ups is hogging the headlines again.

 

Coco Khan She is already taking up way too much of my time. I’d much rather be focusing on the real stuff, the big issues.

 

Nish Kumar Like inventing a fair migration system and overhauling our moribund democracy.

 

Coco Khan But don’t worry, we’re on it. Don’t fret. With the help of our special guest, philosopher and economist Daniel Chandler. So this week the UK needs saving from yet another psychodrama of the Conservative Party. Amid more rumors of plots and cabinet splits. And seemingly at the heart of it all is Suella Deville also known as Speedy Sue.

 

Nish Kumar She is already rapidly merging into a real star of this podcast and not for good reason. It’s like episode four of We’re back again talking about her. A quick summary is that she’s been mired in a row over whether she broke the ministerial code over a speeding ticket, which she received. And then she asked first if she could use MPs expenses to pay the speeding fine. And then there was an allegation that she asked civil servants to get her out of her speed awareness course because she was simply too famous, which I think SUELLA You’ve really overestimated how much the British public gives a fuck about politics. Like, okay, you’re not stormzy okay. But yes, so she was. She was worried about that. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, was accused of dithering over it. But as of this morning, as we recalled on Wednesday, he has decided to not order an investigation into whether her asking the civil servants to get her out with speed awareness course broke the ministerial code after she was caught speeding in 2002.

 

Coco Khan Just on the subject that everyone would recognize. Did you see James Blunt’s tweet?

 

Nish Kumar No. What was James Blunt’s tweet?

 

Coco Khan So Eddie Marsan, the actor, sent a tweet saying, I did a speed speed awareness course, and actually no one recognized me. It was very humbling, something like that. And then James Blunt replied and said, I didn’t speak to when cause and I thought no one would recognize me except at the end when we were all had to talk with the tutor and say what we would do if we were feeling sort of heads up in the car, because that can make you speed. And someone said, Have you considered James Blunt, Saint Anthony? And that’s I just feel like Suella Braverman would. It would really bruise her ego that no one recognized that and would spend the whole time being like, Are you that one from Bend it like Beckham? Time. But anyway, since the speeding story broke, there have been further revelations. The Independent has reported more allegations of ministerial code breaches over the Government’s failure to formally disclose years of previous work with the Rwandan government. And then last night, the Guardian reported government sources claiming that Home Office civil servants were forced to fact check the Home Secretary statements to Cabinet up to six occasions. This happened after she was making basic errors and simply getting the facts wrong.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I mean, she’s she’s not a stickler for detail. It’s not particularly surprising. But do you think that she is out of the woods, Coco?

 

Coco Khan Well, I mean, we saw today that Rishi Sunak is not going to push any further with this speeding ticket debacle. And you know, it’s funny because since we spoke about this last, which was yesterday, listeners, this is what we do. We talk about politics every day. I’ve changed I slightly changed my position on the whole whole thing.

 

Nish Kumar Your position initially was I couldn’t care less about this.

 

Coco Khan So that seems a bit harsh. That seems to be at.

 

Nish Kumar The very least, you thought it was. And I do think this is something that chimes with a lot of people, that the speeding story is a bit of a storm in a teacup.

 

Coco Khan So got a problem in saying, oh, I’m worried about my insurance premiums because of points on my license is the most relatable he has ever been to anyone. Right. It’s not a big deal. I have to tell you about this. Maybe I should. I’m going to do anyway. I got done recently. Last year? Yeah. For running a red light.

 

Nish Kumar Oh, wow.

 

Coco Khan In my defense. In my defense, it was like in the middle of the night, all the rides were empty. We came up to a traffic light, and the lane going left had a green. It was. And then the lane going forward was red.

 

Nish Kumar Right. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Coco Khan In the quick misjudged.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Coco Khan And I went on the red line and they said you that little picture is so incriminating isn’t it. Yeah. So I said I got sent this, this letter and they showed you all the evidence and then there’s a bit where you sort of say, Yes, that was me, that was me driving. And then there’s a little box that says, if you have any thing you want to say to the person judging this violation, it’s this crime that you did of the roads, as you say. And so I wrote, I know that I did it and I’m terribly sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it again. It was the perfect mistake. It was an honest mistake. And no, I’ll never do it again. I’ve learned my lesson of let.

 

Nish Kumar You go so I could learn a lot from you.

 

Coco Khan Grow hard because I didn’t want the points on my license because it raises your premiums. That’s a fact. That’s the thing that happens. So I did the groveling in an attempt to kind of avoid the points, just get fined and do whatever course was required. And then, yeah, they just sent me a letter back with no response to the groveling letter that I’d sent. It just said, please find attached the form that shows your points on your license, that shows you your £340 fine. And of course, you have to go on.

 

Nish Kumar Well, so yeah, the allegation was that you broke the ministerial code by asking civil servants to help her out on private matters of which she technically is a Brit. But anyway, whatever has happened, Rishi Sunak’s decided he’s comfortable with what she’s done, so there’s not going to be an investigation. The fresh ministerial code breaches are around her failure to disclose work that she’d done with the Rwandan government. She actually co-founded a charity called the Africa Justice Foundation with Cherie Blair, which trained Rwandan government lawyers between 2010 and 2015. But this was all before she was an MP. So it seems like that’s going to disappear, though. The fact the optics of it are not great, given the one of her kind of flagship policies is Home Secretary involves a program of sending people for asylum seekers from small boats off to Rwanda, and it’s a contract that’s been worth quite a bit of money towards the Rwandan government, £140 million, in fact.

 

Coco Khan Right. And that’s why, you know, like I was saying to you yesterday, it’s not that I don’t want Suella to go down. I do want it to go down. I want it to go down for the genuinely, morally repugnant things she’s done repeatedly that we’ve spoken about on this, a speeding ticket sales. But like, it just don’t really it didn’t really give me the now I know I understand the argument like you have to bring a beast down on a technicality. Al Capone went down on tax evasion. Yeah. The thing about Al Capone being brought down on tax evasion is that it actually did herald the demise of the Mafia. Yeah. Braverman is just. She’s just one of many. She’s a symptom of this culture in the Conservative Party. We got rid of Tony Soprano last time, Priti Patel, and then we got poorly Suella Braverman, who we’re going to get next Dean over to me. So I want the punishments to be actually about the the poisonous things that she does. So I found it hard to be that invested in this Speedy Sue story.

 

Nish Kumar I’ll tell you why I’m invested in it. I’m invested in it from the position of Rishi Sunak. Rishi Sunak has tried to portray himself as somebody who is moving away from a kind of political culture of, you know, corruption and things that set corruption. A Jason Which is becoming my cultural time for getting out. Okay, so on this podcast, just say the word to Jason after it. He said to be fired, but he’s trying to restore the party’s reputation for competence. But at the same time, he’s so in hock to the right wing of the party that he constantly has to allow them essentially to do whatever they want without any he allows them to trash it without getting back to this is a problem that’s afflicted various conservative prime ministers. I mean, Priti Patel is a good example of somebody who actually was lost her first ministerial job under Theresa may because she held a meeting with a delegation from the Israeli government without informing the British government, which is whilst it might not technically be treason, it’s not as far away from treason as you would like. Just trees of the trees, it looks like you said. And so. But then. She was she she. A couple of days later, it was home Secretary under Boris Johnson. And similarly with Suella Braverman. She actually just before she became prime minister, she was forced to resign because she’d sent official documents on her personal email. Six days later, she was back in the same job because she is a significant figure on the right of the Conservative Party and Rishi Sunak is unable to keep them under control. So all I’m saying is the important element of this story for me is that Rishi Sunak is exactly the same as all of his predecessors in every political decision he makes is calculated not for the benefit of the British people, but in order to keep order within the Conservative Party and specifically on the right wing of the Conservative Party.

 

Coco Khan But there was an interesting story that came out recently from the Mirror, where they were saying that their journalist phoned Sewell’s team to ask about this speeding ticket and they repeatedly denied it. I think it was about four times in the end. Well, yeah, Just as an aside, by the way, if you ever get a chance, the Mirror have actually run the transcripts of the journalists asking this, well, a brockman’s representative about this speeding ticket. And it is like one of the most funny British conversations you’ll ever see. It’s just like, So is it thing then? Yeah. And the other one’s like, What do you mean? What you asking? What are you asking? I’m asking, is it a thing? I don’t know what you want about my. I don’t know what you’re worried about. It’s not what you expect for them, but at the same time, relatable people very much been. Yeah, but I mean, look, Nish, I agree exactly what you’re saying and that’s why I saying since we’ve spoken of sort of come around to it also because of those additional stories that came out, not just the ticket, but also the situation with the her relationship to the Rwandan government and also this mirror story. In a way, all these little stories are kind of joining up to create a picture of her as a. Incompetent, certainly, but also opportunistic and shady politicians. So actually, maybe all these little stories do have a value. So anyway, you’ve won, you won the IOU, the next lunch or whatever.

 

Nish Kumar And just before we move off this subject, because I do think there is there are there was an interesting point to be made here that we should. And the point that I think is really getting your goat this week is that there are way more important stories you should be focusing on. Well, I do think there is something important here in that Rishi Sunak is facing a country in crisis, and yet he’s he’s constantly being distracted by ministers acting out because as we go into record, this is a story that’s slowly unfolding. But Boris Johnson is has been referred to police by the Cabinet Office over new claims that he broke lockdown rules and his allies. According to The Times newspaper this morning, his allies are threatening to obstruct Rishi Sunak’s premiership unless he takes action to stop what they’re calling a witch hunt against Boris Johnson. So the best thing about this story is that Boris Johnson has government appointed lawyers defending him in allegations that he lied about lockdown breaches in ten Downing Street during the pandemic. They consulted various official records that Johnson has had and found that there were several visits to the Prime Minister’s grace and Favor residence, which is a very fancy term for holiday home. I hate the fact that we have to call checkers, which is the name of the house, a grace and favor residence like it is a holiday home. It’s a fancy caravan. Okay. But there are allegedly several claims that they found in the official records of people to visit the prime minister in official prime ministerial residences that there. And so there are now allegations that those records show that there were more lockdown breaches at checkers. So his own lawyers had to refer that information to the Cabinet Office. And now that information has been referred to the police. And literally just before we started recording, Johnson has announced that he’s let go his lawyers simply because they turned him in like it’s basically Al Capone getting caught on tax evasion because his accountants handed over the returns like. Yes. So in any case, Johnson’s supporters are now threatening, according to the Times, to obstruct Rishi Sunak’s premiership. So, again, at a time of political crisis, we’ve got a prime Minister trying to work out whether the minister in charge of making laws has been herself guilty of rule breaking. And also he’s got his noisier predecessor, he’s got two predecessors. But let’s be honest, we don’t count one of them because like I’ve held in a fart for longer than she was Prime minister. But Boris Johnson, his noisier predecessor, is again saber rattling about threatening to undermine his agenda. So all I’m saying is, once again, we are back in the same position we have been in since 2010, which is the country is facing a series of problems and yet the prime minister is preoccupied by threats coming to him from within his own political party.

 

Coco Khan Just on that, you know, I think we’re agreed on this idea that these stories about, you know, breaking ministerial codes can be a distraction. Sometimes they’re used by parties actively, sometimes they’re not. What’s the other story? But actually, here’s a story that’s nothing to do with Westminster, because here’s a story that we should probably should have been talking about. Suella Braverman famously said that she is the great champion of groomed and abused women and girls. Yeah, she claims it’s something that she cares a lot about and is willing to speak the hard truths on it. Obviously, we know that they are mysteries, and yet an inquiry came out. It was a seven year long inquiry which outlined recommendations around child sexual abuse. They said that the level of child sexual abuse in this country is tantamount to an epidemic and so well abroad women did not implement them. She did a few. Okay, a few. Alexis Jay, who chaired the inquiry, says the measures fall short and children, quote, won’t get the protection they deserve. And that is something I would like to see her dragged over the coals for not a bloody speeding ticket. One of the figures quoted by a victims group was that one in four children in the UK will experience sexual abuse. One in four, that is. I don’t even have the words for it. Yes. It’s a horrifying, terrifying number that demands urgent care and interest and public outcry, frankly. And it hasn’t happened. And now you and I find ourselves sitting here once again talking about. So whenever it’s like it’s just like, yeah, I feel like this is some sort of you have a do you ever read any classic myths or.

 

Nish Kumar Classic myths you talking about Spiderman because if so, yes.

 

Coco Khan Are you familiar with the myth of Sisyphus?

 

Nish Kumar I am familiar with the myth of Sisyphus.

 

Coco Khan I don’t know why. Every time I come on, you know, with like old school references, it’s not.

 

Nish Kumar I just think I don’t know why you’re being disparaging about this. Coco. I think one of the things that we’re learning over this podcast is the breadth of your cultural references is quite spectacular.

 

Coco Khan Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar And takes in everything from the Fast and the Furious, the film Showgirls and the Myth of Sisyphus. I just I genuinely I made this really earnestly. I just think the variety of your interest is unparalleled.

 

Coco Khan Anyway, guy called Sisyphus, he upsets a god. I can’t remember which one it is. Greek. Ancient Greek. Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar And of course, new feature called Coco’s Guide to Classical Myth.

 

Coco Khan Can’t remember who it was. I don’t know what you did, but anyway, you did something. You upset someone. And so he was told that his punishment is that he has to push this rock uphill every single day. And then the rock falls down and he must do it again. Repetition over and over and over again. And I feel sometimes Suella Braverman is my rock and I am Sisyphus. Every week I have to push the rock and awful politician saying stupid stuff that shouldn’t be said. Yeah, briefly. There is that moment of pleasure where we watch the rock tumble. Yeah, we will push up again next week. We we have to do.

 

Nish Kumar The bad week for the rock Suella is about to get worse because there’s about to be a huge story coming out of the Home Office, which would be the latest net migration figures which are due to drop the day after we record this podcast. So as you listen to this on Thursday you will know these figures for sure. As we sit here on Wednesday, we are dealing with predictions. Most analysts predict the net migration number has already passed 700,000. It was the hot button topic of conversation at Prime Minister’s Question time. Let’s hear a bit of Keir Starmer talking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

 

Clip The Prime Minister stood on three Tory manifestos. Each one promised to reduce immigration, each promise broken. They all stood on those manifestos as well. Why does he think his home secretary although I’ve got away with this question, those who don’t want to hear it, we know the answer is dogma. They all they all stood on those manifestos. So why does he think his home secretary seems to have such a problem coping with points based systems? Mr. Speaker. And the same respect, we’ll be sure. Prime Minister. Mr. Speaker, just this week we announced the biggest ever single measure to tackle illegal migration, removing the right for international students to bring dependants, toughening the rules on Post-study work and reviewing maintenance requirements.

 

Nish Kumar As so often, I find the conversation around about immigration fundamentally depressing, and I find it depressing for two reasons. The first reason I find it depressing is for so long the Conservative Party said We want people to come here by safe and legal means. They said, We’re against illegal immigration. We’re against boats bringing asylum seekers over. We’re against illegal immigration. We want to protect people from people smugglers. We want to stop illegal immigration. Now, it turns out they don’t fucking like legal immigration either. And the second thing that makes me really fundamentally depressed about it is that the Labor Party seems to also have accepted that line. So now there is a political consensus that there is a good number of immigrants that should come to this country, which.

 

Coco Khan But they don’t know what the number is?

 

Nish Kumar They don’t know what the number is. They just know that there’s a number that we should be hitting, that we’re not hitting. Keir Starmer repeatedly quoted the figure of a quarter of a million. Now, in terms of that figure, it’s worth mentioning that of those visas, 53,820 went to band five nurses. Now, if if you’ve tried to use a hospital in this country, you will know that there is a staffing crisis in the National Health Service. We desperately need nurses to come to this country. Why are we framing this conversation that skilled workers coming into this country is now a bad thing? At what point do they just say, none of us fucking want foreigners in this country? Because that’s where it feels like it is heading to me.

 

Coco Khan I don’t think.

 

Nish Kumar You talk about because I’ve become I saw this.

 

Coco Khan Coming for me in some of the numbers. And again, we don’t have them right now, but we we expect that a significant contribution to this number is going to be Ukrainian refugees and also people from Hong Kong who have been resettled here as part of a scheme. They are British citizens at the end of the day. You know, those are two schemes that we would be proud of that we would accept. And yet, despite that, despite that success story, there is still this culture. Any migration is bad. It’s all bad. If any of our listeners are sometimes wondering how do Nisshin Coaker get on so well? It’s because we are real life friends. We are not thrown together.

 

Nish Kumar You know, thrown together by by a pop Svengali. We’re not the Spice Girls of political podcasting.

 

Coco Khan Which one are you?

 

Nish Kumar Oh, I’m definitely somewhere between scary and ginger.

 

Coco Khan Everyone who is a pussy always picks up of the big scary.

 

Nish Kumar I mean.

 

Coco Khan She’s a legend, obviously.

 

Nish Kumar But yeah, if I may return to my a piece of stand up comedy that I did in 2006, the Spice Girls are inherently racist because there was one black member and she was called scary.

 

Coco Khan So outrageous.

 

Nish Kumar They used to make her do raps when with love she cannot rap.

 

Coco Khan She got no rap. She was only scary in the sense that her talent and style and potential was scary to the mediocrity of the pop industry at the time.

 

Nish Kumar Anyway, there is no Simon Fuller slash Cowell figure. No at mastering this process.

 

Coco Khan And we met during a book that we worked on together. That’s right. But immigrant and that came out quote I went was seven years ago, 2016.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. It was convened by Nikki Shukla, who is a novelist and a cultural godfather in this country. I don’t really know how to describe beyond the fact, the simple fact that he is a writer and a novelist, but he is also a kind of most people of color our age who work in the media or in the arts owe him some debt of gratitude.

 

Coco Khan Although he did text me, though, to say that the new Fast and Furious was rubbish. So I think you might be dead to me now. But anyway, moving. And at that time that was seven years ago, you know, we were trying to talk about how we’re not immigrants, we’re British born, we are British, but we felt that the poison of the and the xenophobia of the immigration debate, how it was affecting our everyday lives, how we saw the glum face of our friends and families, and how it had this effect. I’m sorry, it’s disappointing. It’s just yeah, nothing changed.

 

Nish Kumar And I’m sorry to say it is personal to us. Like, as much as I want to have the kind of reasonable discussion about this, I can’t take the personal out about this. When I hear people talking about immigrants, just like you don’t have immigrant families. Just try and empathize with this for one second, which I’m sure our listeners will be able to do. They literally talking about my fucking mum and dad. That’s who they’re talking about. When they talk about immigrant numbers, they are referring to our parents, you know. So it is very difficult for this to not feel personal to some extent. Where we’ve ended up in a situation is we come from a book in 2016 that as a kind of satirical barb. Aimed at people who try and categorize good and bad immigrants. We’re now in a situation where the perception is there is no good immigrant. There is simply a good amount of immigrants.

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan Pod Save the UK isn’t just about what’s going wrong in politics. It’s also about how we can fix it. And we promised you that when we launched this show, we’d get some help from people with big brains and big ideas. So welcome. Today’s Big Brain is Daniel Chandler, philosopher and economist and author of Sorry It’s Big Brain Bad. It’s a waiting to do this.

 

Daniel Chandler I don’t think I’ve it’s it’s not it’s not the standard description but I’m happy it is.

 

Nish Kumar Also it’s like it’s not something that you normally hear said in earnest.

 

Daniel Chandler It depends. If you’re describing the size of my head, then it would be more ambiguous. I assumed it was just the brain.

 

Nish Kumar Here comes a giant headed philosopher.

 

Coco Khan It’s 100%. Just a comment on your brain size.

 

Daniel Chandler I reflect it in my book.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. I was listening to this book and not crucially, his head. So how have we ended up in this sort of like, weird Victorian phrenology conversation?

 

Coco Khan Oh, no, this is going wrong. Let’s go back. Let’s go back.

 

Nish Kumar He has the skull shape of an economist.

 

Coco Khan And he is also the author of Free and Equal: What would a Fair Society look like? Welcome to Daniel Chandler.

 

Daniel Chandler Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar Thanks for joining us Daniel. How are you?

 

Daniel Chandler I’m very well. Yeah. I’m very happy to be here.

 

Nish Kumar Well, that’s good. We’ll soon fix that. I really enjoyed the book, and I will confess it. A lot of it involves lots of updating of ideas of John Rawls. Yeah. I’m going to be honest with you, Daniel. I, on several occasions in my life, have pretended to know who John Rawls is. On several conversations I have nodded through. Hmmm. Rawlsy

 

Coco Khan I feel that’s a great indicator of your life.

 

Nish Kumar Well, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Daniel Chandler It’s funny. I think he is one of those names that. Yeah, some people have a sort of vague awareness of maybe feel they ought to know more about, but almost nobody does. And that’s sort of hoping to change stuff. Anyway, you keep going.

 

Nish Kumar But that’s right. It’s great because it’s a mission statement of you try to you really believe in these ideas and you try to update them and then apply them in a kind of real world political framework. And but before we get onto some of the kind of key ideas that you talked about, I just want to I’ve got very worked up about immigration at the studio, which is why you’ve the Eddie atmosphere that you can sense is just me thinking about Rishi Sunak. So it’s no, I’m not suddenly resenting Coco. It’s just yeah, I was interested in what you had to say in the book specifically about immigration, which is it’s a brief part of the book, but I just I’m just fascinated by the question, what would a fair immigration policy look like? And in terms of the framework that you’re laying out about reforming liberal democracy, what do you does a fair immigration system look like?

 

Daniel Chandler Well, in with the hardest the hardest questions. I mean, I think the starting point is a basic humanitarian duty that we have just the people as people, as other people from other countries. That means we should have safe routes for asylum seekers and refugees. I feel like that’s the that should be the reasonably non-controversial bit of a migration of an immigration policy. Sadly, obviously isn’t non-controversial.

 

Nish Kumar No, I mean, it’s whatever.

 

Daniel Chandler But today is just.

 

Nish Kumar Seems like one of those controversial things you can say. Yeah, I’m not even sure. I’m not sure how this translates to public opinion, but certainly in terms of a large section of the press and seemingly at least the two main political parties, they it does feel like a slightly contentious thing to say.

 

Daniel Chandler Yes, I think it is. And it feels like an area where just I mean, I don’t feel like I have a solution other than that some political and moral leadership is needed, that those that like the focus on that question and the divisive way that it’s thought about isn’t just some natural fact of the world or how people feel towards people from other countries. It’s a product of the way the politicians have chosen to talk about immigration. I also think it’s it’s the product of an absence of other big constructive ideas about how to fix all of the other problems with our society. I think it’s when we lack those ideas and in a sense it is the lack of those ideas. That was the motivation for my book that we move towards these divisive topics that set people against one another because of sort of not having enough of, you know, anything else to say. I think part of the problem with the way that we’ve approached it at the moment is it’s just been seen as a tool for economic growth without much thought to how that economic growth is distributed. And it is the case that since the early nineties, like net migration from the EU, ended up had the sort of overall effect of slightly increasing the incomes of the richest people or the highest earners in society and reducing those of of people at the bottom. And, you know, so I think there’s some there is some justified discontent with the way that immigration has become part of a broader economic strategy that just prioritizes growth without caring about inequality. And if we want people to, you know, if it’s sort of just migration policy would be part of a broader economic agenda. It really focuses on genuinely shared prosperity and trying to raise the life chances, in particular of the least well-off. That’s the kind of principle, I suppose, of of rules that will maybe come to later.

 

Nish Kumar The interesting thing about the way you’ve got about the book is you’ve got some quite tangible, practical things that you want to talk about that you think could actually improve society in the short to medium term. I’m thinking of things of democracy, vouchers, abolishing private schools, universal basic income. Tackling inequality at the source and workplace democracy, which again is feels so far away in terms of its actual practical thing to do with people’s day to day lives than the sort of slightly vague political promises that are certainly coming out of the major political parties at the moment.

 

Daniel Chandler I think definitely the major focus of the book, hopefully the payoff for people reading it is that it’s a book of like of solutions, of big ideas that aren’t just tweaking at the edges that would actually make society better. But I guess the other thing that the book is trying to do in know some of those ideas, like the ones you just listed, which are, you know, they’re not completely original to this book. What’s different is that those ideas are also brought together within a coherent philosophy. So they don’t just feel like a shopping list of disconnected but clever policy ideas. They’re part of of like a broader vision that fits together into one whole of what a better society would look like. And that’s I mean, I think we you know, we maybe not won’t spend much time on rules, but that’s what you get from Rawls as this philosopher, this kind of big picture vision that’s, I think, really missing from our political conversation. And particularly the thing that you get from rules is a set of principles to do with freedom, equality and sustainability. And the policies that I set out in the book all follow from a sort of simple set of principles. The reason I wanted to write about Rawls is not just that he’s by a long way considered to be the most important political philosopher of the last hundred years, but he’s like a constructive philosopher. He’s like, Yeah, he’s a constructive philosopher who has an idea about what society could look like and is sort of trying to persuade people it’s realistic, it’s justified, it’s doable. And I guess what I’m you know, he was still a philosopher, didn’t have that much to say about exactly how he could put it into practice. And the purpose of the book is to kind of try to do that pick up where this philosopher left off.

 

Nish Kumar One of the things I was really interested in is how we pay for politics. And, you know, we’re in conversations in this country about the influence of donors, and there’s been huge question marks around the connections between kind of cronyism in politics with the COVID contracts with Richard Sharpe’s appointment as BBC chairman. There’s a huge question mark hanging over this. We haven’t gone as far as the American system and the superPACs. But there is a question brewing in the UK about where the money for politics is coming from. So just can you explain just briefly, because I’d actually never come across this before and what a democracy voucher is because it’s such a good idea.

 

Nish Kumar Well that was a word I sort of associate with a presence somebody gave you for your birthday when you were a kid and they don’t know you like. So.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, just. Could I just stop you there? I love vouchers. So if you’re looking to get me something, I honestly love a voucher. I think they’re amazing.

 

Daniel Chandler What do you want? The democracy voucher.

 

Coco Khan Democracy, voucher. Nando’s voucher. How would you. How would a democracy voucher work in democracy? Yeah.

 

Daniel Chandler So basically the idea of a democracy voucher is, you know, it’s the solution to the problem of money in politics. So in the UK at the moment, in 2019, it was just over a hundred super donors were responsible for nearly half of all donations to political parties. Each of those people giving around $450,000 each on average. So the idea of democracy vouchers is, well, the study of money is that that is obviously a ridiculous way to organize a democracy. If the the principle that underpins democracy is one of political equality. And the alternative in a way, has two parts. One is to limit private donations to a low level. But obviously we still need we do need money in politics. We just don’t want it to be coming from this small and unrepresentative donor class. Yeah, and the idea of democracy vouchers is that you would give every citizen an equal amount of money per year or per election cycle, say, and at £20, £50 that they could give to the party of their choice, which is a policy that would just completely transform the incentives of our political system. It would mean that rather than having to go cap in hand to this rich and unrepresentative donor class, yeah, parties would have to appeal to everyone on an equal basis.

 

Coco Khan It’s refillable Cokes. Refillable Cokes. Well, I’m sorry. I was thinking about Nando’s Cokes.

 

Daniel Chandler I see. Yes, yes.

 

Nish Kumar You’ve mentioned Nando’s and distracted. Yes, I.

 

Coco Khan Anyway, sorry please continue. That would be a winning policy.

 

Daniel Chandler You know, I think of the appeal of that system would be that, you know, in order to entice people to give them their their democracy, vouchers, parties might go about politics in a much more community oriented way, whether it’s offering unfavorable political advantage.

 

Coco Khan Refillable.

 

Daniel Chandler Did I say unfillable? Refillable.

 

Coco Khan Unfillable coaxes the offer from the Tory party now. That’s what that is.

 

Daniel Chandler But yes, I think that, you know, it would it would encourage a different different incentives in our political system, a more maybe community based way of of of raising.

 

Nish Kumar The money comes from the public purse. Yeah, it would.

 

Daniel Chandler Be state funding. But I suppose the difference to traditional models of public funding is that it really decentralized and democratizes the system. It puts that funding in everyone’s in citizen’s hands equally that, you know, the traditional form of public funding is basically to allocate funding on the basis of the last election result. Right. And the problem with that is that it makes it very hard for new parties to emerge. Yeah, it makes you know, it contributes to this to a sort of stuck political system where it’s difficult for things to change because in order to get the vouchers, you need to have won votes, but you need vouchers in order to win the votes. And, you know, this doesn’t is not a purely philosophical thought experiment. So in Seattle, they’ve implemented this kind of democracy voucher system for local elections. Well, I think they did that in 2017. They’ve run three elections under that scheme. And, you know, the results are what you would expect, like more more people participating in politics, often from less well-represented groups and more competitive elections to more people standing for office, incumbents being more likely to be defeated, that, you know, it’s not perfect, you know. In Seattle, one problem is that it’s a voluntary system, although it turns out that most people have actually signed up to it. And I think it’s voluntary for constitutional reasons in America, it would be not possible to make it mandatory.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, right.

 

Daniel Chandler I think the other problem you take up has been relatively low. I think that be the other problem in all honesty that I would flagged with the system. But I think that’s partly because it’s connected to local elections and because it’s such a new idea. I don’t think those are fundamental problems, though, and I think it’s the system that we should, you know, start to roll out here.

 

Nish Kumar And in terms of involving people more in politics. Yeah. One of the other ideas that you talk about in the book, there is an idea that, as you say, it’s been in the political ether for a while. Is this idea of citizens assemblies are maybe an alternative to the House of Lords that involves essentially people doing it like jury duty. Is that is that a fair characterization?

 

Daniel Chandler Yeah, that is so. You know, there’s this idea that we could yeah, the citizen’s assembly is comprised of randomly selected citizens. It seems like an outlandish idea to us now. I suppose the one, as you said, jury duty is the one place where that continues. That model exists at the moment.

 

Nish Kumar To be fair, what do we do? Everyone’s first. They get to go like this.

 

Daniel Chandler That’s true. Maybe it’s not the comparison you might want, But I mean, what’s interesting is that that as a as a Democratic method, actually has an amazingly long pedigree going back to ancient Athens, that was actually the predominant way that decision making was done. And it sort of went out of favor. As democracies got larger, representative electoral democracy became the norm. And I think I argue in the book that we should combine those systems. I don’t think we could get rid of elections entirely. Yeah, I think some people are drawn to citizens assemblies as a total alternative to a representative democracy.

 

Nish Kumar But that seems that seems, if I may use an academic term, quite spicy like it types of like that does. That seems like because then the composition of the citizen’s assembly suddenly becomes essential to representing the entire country. And without democratic elections, it does fail. Yes.

 

Daniel Chandler Exactly. I think people are drawn to it because there’s so much bad feeling towards our existing political class that it’s like, oh, couldn’t we just do away with politicians altogether? And I think, you know, for that what we need to do is make that political class more representative through things like democracy vouchers. I don’t think we can do away with them altogether. I think parties, despite the flaws that they have now, they do serve a really vital function in a large scale democracy. They are places where a distinctive kind of political expertise gets cultivated and where people put forward different visions of how society could be. I think we can’t lose sight of that altogether. But, you know, up to now there have been a couple of quite prominent experiments or not, I don’t know, experiments, but uses of citizens assemblies. So particularly in Ireland, citizens assemblies were set up to tackle a couple of the thorniest issues. So abortion and gay marriage, you know, in a traditionally conservative Catholic country, citizens assemblies came together. They decide. Those issues ended up putting forward proposals in both cases to legalize abortion and gay marriage that then went to a referendum and were approved. And I think I suppose the question I’m trying to think through in the book is how to integrate that method into the core functioning of our democratic system. And so one way of doing that would be to have a chamber, second chamber could be, you know, replacing the House of Lords where systems of citizens are selected on that basis. You know, you could do it in other ways, too. You could also have a system like in America where if enough citizens sign a petition, you have a referendum. So you could have a different system where citizens could sign a petition and initiate a citizen’s assembly that would, I think, lead to a maybe would end up with a referendum, but it would be much a much better informed referendum because everyone would be able to see, you know, to follow the deliberation of a group that actually sat down and thought through things and we maybe wouldn’t end up with the kind of mess that we had with the Brexit referendum, where I think, you know, it wasn’t the most informed.

 

Coco Khan I mean, I love the idea of a citizen’s assembly, but as I was reading your book, I did have one question about it and that relates to some of the things you were saying about free speech. So in the book you talk about the banning of hate speech is being ultimately ineffective, and perhaps the ideal rawlsian system would actually be the American system. Well, the closest thing to that we have is like English speaking nations. That’s scary for me. You know, I think about all the protests outside of abortion clinics. I think about just some of the really inflammatory disinformation that’s come out. I mean, Alex Jones, all those sort of people, and I find it hard to imagine that you could have a functional citizen’s assembly if you didn’t have Russia and restrictions on hate speech. I wondered if you could explain that relationship.

 

Daniel Chandler What I’m skeptical about is laws that ban the expression of an opinion of particular opinions in any context. So I suppose, like in the book, I argue the. You know, you could prevent. I think of a song that, you know, that like banning direct racist abuse on the streets that obviously we should do. I’m not so sure that we should prevent. Much as I might hate the views of neo-Nazis, I’m not sure we should be making it illegal for them to publish it online. And I think it’s a difficult question. I think these issues about free speech get even more complicated. I think in the age of the Internet and social media, where speech can have all sorts of, you know, the link is much harder to draw the link between speech and violence. That I think is the should be the sort of focal point for free speech law.

 

Coco Khan I guess that that link is becoming more is is. Yeah. The link itself I agree with you is important to establish, but it’s becoming harder to establish. An example that comes to my mind is obviously the incel culture. You know, of course these men are welcome to say that women are should be stuck in the kitchen, but we are beginning to see a correlation between that and lone shooters and we are beginning to see a correlation between that and, you know, a a threatening environment for young women in schools. I don’t think we’re going to solve it right here. But what I would say is I really did strongly agree with your point where you said that the state should have a role of not just sort of saying that’s bad, but saying what’s good.

 

Daniel Chandler My view is that when it comes to banning speech, our primary criteria should be what’s necessary to prevent direct harassment and violence. What’s really important is that that’s not the only thing that, you know, the state doesn’t only have the ability to ban things. And I what I’m trying to do in the book is say that even if we’re not banning stuff, it should doesn’t mean we should be relaxed about these kinds of hateful and anti-democratic views that exist in society. And the politicians in the state can take a much more active role in trying to combat those views. In a sense, it’s sort of combating speech with speech, I suppose. I’m trying to carve out an area that’s, you know, there’s like the coercive force of the state in banning things. Then there’s the persuasive role of the state in trying to combat these kinds of views. And I think that, you know, the the sort of hard core free speech advocates don’t want to go there. And that’s I suppose that’s my attempt to find a way to tackle these views that doesn’t just rest on on banning stuff.

 

Coco Khan I mean, that’s we’ve we have talked about that in the past, haven’t we? We’ve talked about everyone always wants to talk about, oh, what’s the right number for immigrants. So it’s like a sort of a dirty number that less is more, but actually no one’s making the case of. Immigration is good.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. As a positive. Yeah. I mean, I think for me, the issue one of the issues I’ve had with the how do we police a far right and far right speech is my real concern is that it feels at points out I mean, it’s very explicitly clear with the Republican Party in America. But certainly watching the Home secretary last week address the national Conservativism Conference, where elsewhere there were some pretty there was some talking points that could have been found on far right wing comment boards. And certainly seeing a government minister use the phrase cultural Marxism, which again, we come back to same conversation that that is a trope that dates back to Nazi Germany and is a code mike and it’s something that, you know, groups watching anti-Semitism have warned mainstream politicians about. I think one of the big problems almost we’ve got to solve is cut the pipeline between the mainstream conservative parties and the far right. But it just seems to me that too often members of parliament are parroting hard right wing talking points. And that for me, if that’s the thing that you can fight because I agree with you, it is difficult to police speech on the Internet. It’s very, very hard. We also I don’t think we spend enough time acknowledging these kind of difficult gray areas. And I think protesting at abortion clinics is such a difficult, ethical gray area because instinctively, I would say everybody at this table and I would assume all of our listeners are both simultaneously in favor of the right to protest as an absolute essential freedom, but equally in favor of the rights of women to go and get abortions without being harassed by campaigners. And I think like I think it’s probably important that we at least acknowledge that there are these difficult gray areas. Yeah, areas with difficult conversation. I completely.

 

Daniel Chandler Agree. And I feel that that’s where this philosopher Rawls is so helpful because he has this first principle that he has that sets out a set of really important basic freedoms, both personal freedoms of speech, religion, sexuality, also political freedoms, that freedoms that we need to participate in politics as equals. And the stuff we’ve just been talking about, all of those freedoms matter and none takes an automatic priority over all of the others. And I think part of the problem in the debates that we have about whatever freedoms, whether it’s, you know, protest verses the right to abortion or others, is there is a tendency towards just sort of for those debates to be polarized and for one side to just assert that it’s freedom, freedom of religious expression or of protest or has to take absolute priority over everything else.

 

Nish Kumar Before we let you go, I just want to ask you one more question, because I do think one of the things that so interesting about you is you’re an academic, an economist, but you also worked as a civil servant for a time and you worked in the office of the deputy prime Minister and in the policy unit for David Cameron. So you have actual experience of delivery and how these systems actually work. Do you feel optimistic that. In terms of how our political system is set up, we will be able to deliver on some of these big potentially saving ideas.

 

Coco Khan Is there a desire for big ideas to be brought into the current framework that we have?

 

Nish Kumar Because something the only thing that concerns me is there’s a lot of very clever people I know that did work in politics and policy and have now. Just decided that they’re better off working in either academia or in pressure groups or charities. You back in? Are you in academia because you believe the system is unsafe for people? That’s the that’s the goes to the good sides.

 

Daniel Chandler Yeah. You know, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s unsavable. Yeah, I think there is an appetite for big change. First of all, I think there’s actually quite a lot of polling to support that. I was looking at some of the figures on people’s attitudes to democracy at the moment, and it’s more than half of people in the UK think the political system needs either major reform or to be completely overhauled. So the language is quite is quite strong in terms of what people want. There’s also, I think, a very big desire for serious economic change. I was actually reading some of the Labor Party’s post-election analysis from the last election, and that was, you know, the conclusion they reached is that lots of the policies in and some of the economic policies in Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto, some of the quite radical economic ideas about higher taxes on the rich and nationalization are quite popular. I think there is a real appetite for change. And I suppose the reason I went stepped out of politics and into academia was a feeling that what was missing was. I suppose, something that really brought all these ideas together, right? What progressive parties have been missing is this kind of vision that there’s a tendency to be for them to feel like they’re just following focus groups and polling and they just put forward the policies that they think are the sort of tweaks that are feasible at the next election, and that doesn’t really get people out of bed, that doesn’t get people excited enough. And that what we if we want to bring about this change, we also need a longer term vision of that can excite people and inspire people. And that the purpose of the book is, you know, it’s not I think the ideas are probably too radical for the next election, and I think that’s fine. You know, I think that the aim is to take a slightly longer view and try to shift our politics in in that direction.

 

Coco Khan Thank you so much.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s hope you’re not shifting it like the Rock of Sisyphus, which is a conversation that we had earlier. And I was thrilled to bring it back around.

 

Coco Khan I don’t know if you heard that part.

 

Daniel Chandler I heard a bit of it. It’s the you have to just going again and again.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Daniel Chandler Yeah, yeah. No, let’s hope. Let’s hope not. Is there more rousing later?

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Daniel Chandler No, I don’t think I don’t think so.

 

Nish Kumar I think there’s nothing wrong with ending on hope.

 

Coco Khan Yes.

 

Nish Kumar I think that that’s a good that’s good place for ending. The book is called Free and Equal: What would a Fair Society look like? Daniel Chandler, thank you so much for joining us.

 

Daniel Chandler Thank you.

 

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Coco Khan It’s time for us to name our hero and villain of the week and in an attempt to play against our usual type. This week, Nish is going to try and be nice. Well, I’m going to bring the rage.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I think for the sake of my blood pressure. And so there’s not another video floating around on Instagram of me looking like my head’s about to explode. I’ll. I’ll pick Hero. But Coco. Let’s do it. Tell us who is our best UK villain of the week.

 

Coco Khan Okay, so my villain of the week is James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary. He is currently on an eight day tour of the Caribbean and Latin America. That’s fine. He’s foreign. He has to go.

 

Nish Kumar He’s got to go abroad.

 

Coco Khan No problem. We get that.

 

Nish Kumar You can’t be foreign in Britain. That’s a slogan. Works on a number of different levels.

 

Coco Khan But it’s how he’s doing this tour that makes him the villain. He has hired a luxurious jet. The jet, by the way, that Logan Roy flies around in succession.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Coco Khan So you think what? Why?

 

Nish Kumar Bird blood. That is a program that has professional wealth consultants so that they, like, specifically use products that are the supressed of the super rich.

 

Coco Khan Right?

 

Nish Kumar Like, this is like this is. This is beyond parody.

 

Coco Khan So. Exactly. And I mean, you know, Rachel Reeves got in trouble for just flying business class and he’s James cleverly going round in Logan Roy’s jet, some sort of show of status. I have no idea what it could feasibly be. And it’s reportedly costing more than £10,000 an hour across his tour. It will be roughly £400,000. We’re paying the taxpayers paying. And I mean, when you see the tour, right. So, so far, he’s gone to Kingston, Jamaica, Cartagena and Bogota in Colombia. Schedule stops in Chile and Brazil. I mean, it sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s absolutely lovely. And then you see the pictures of him.

 

Nish Kumar Honestly, I haven’t seen the pictures.

 

Coco Khan I’m not even joking with a picture of him. He’s walking around. He’s in a linen shirt button undone with a salmon pink cravat and some Ray-Bans. The man’s on a gap year. He’s on a.

 

Nish Kumar What is he Benoit Bloke?

 

Coco Khan He’s on a gap. He’s having the best time. On our dime. And look, I accept he’s probably doing some work, which I’m sure justifies this whole thing, but, I mean, private jets are terrible for the environment. You absolutely don’t need to be riding around in Logan Roy’s. And for that reason, I think it’s offensive to the public who are going for a cost of living crisis. I think it’s smart to throw your holiday plans in all of our faces. And so he is my villain of the week.

 

Nish Kumar Well, that is an outstanding choice.

 

Coco Khan When he comes back, you will see that he’ll have a little cloth wristband. I guarantee you he’ll be telling you stories in. And it would be doing a speech. You you’ll be like, yeah, we really remind you of this time in. The man is going a gap year and we’re all paying for it. What does that make us Mark’s.

 

Nish Kumar Do you think Do you not take some shred of optimism for this? Because this is real. We’re about to get fired, added to this list.

 

Coco Khan We’re out. We all out. Life is coming in.

 

Nish Kumar This is me by office temp job in 2000, and I’d take a good stack of printer paper an hour before I was able to see my manager for a chat. Yeah, that is absolutely was. Got to go.

 

Coco Khan I can’t wait to see his photos of him swimming with turtles where he really is. Oh, we’re out of here. No, this will never happen again. So who is your hero of the Week?

 

Nish Kumar Well, for the first time in the series, I get to be the good cop. But in keeping with my I guess we have to say, frosty demeanor is a story that involves absolutely appalling racial abuse. But my hero of the week is absolutely Real Madrid footballer Vinicius Junior. Vinicius Junior has been standing up to racist football fans in stadiums in Spain for a number of years now. And this weekend, some racist were directing awful, abusive abuse. So bad. You can both hear and see it in television coverage. Now, we’ve been to football matches. You know how often there are horrendous chants being chanted, but it doesn’t get picked up on the television because the mikes are not close enough. So you have to imagine the volume of noise, if we can hear it on television. Footage relative reported the abuse to the Spanish prosecutor’s office as a hate crime. And Brazilians are protesting outside the Spanish consulate on Tuesday. Once again, the response of the league has been an absolute disgrace. They’ve been. Valencia has been sanctioned with a partial stadium. Closure for five matches have been fined €45,000. But Vinicius himself was also actually sent off in the game. And the fact that he is facing this kind of provocation and facing this kind of appalling abuse and abuse is appalling. There are football fans hanging effigies of him, right? It’s so horrendous. But Vinicius Junior is one of the outstanding footballers in the world. But that doesn’t mean he should have to put up with this stuff. And he’s clearly decided that enough is enough and he has been unwilling to stand for this. And he said that La Liga, which is Spain’s top division of football, he said that it’s not football. It’s laliga in response to the lack of action from the league, which is an adaptation of the league’s own slogan. And he said that the competition that once belonged to Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Messi and Cristiano now belongs to the races. He is refusing to back down and for that reason, he’s my hero of the Week legend.

 

Coco Khan So we just have some time to dip into our mailbag, going back to. Get bangs. Our campaign to stop politicians lying. We heard last week that the phrase Americans use is talk shit get hit. And we were wondering if there were any other variations from around the world. Actually, I’d like to add one more into that. Someone else tweeted me to tell me about a phrase in America, which is Fuck around and find out.

 

Nish Kumar Around and find out is. That’s the phrase I was familiar with.

 

Coco Khan Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s especially quite vague. And so therefore, maybe extra.

 

Nish Kumar Thing, I think it’s much more threatening I think by doubt promises untold.

 

Coco Khan Consequence. No idea where we’re going to go at least banned You sort of know how far you know.

 

Nish Kumar How far it’s going to go. Yeah, it’s a little buying. Yeah, it’s going to get you getting hit. But in the way you’d get hit if you were a villain in the sixties version of Batman.

 

Coco Khan So now we can add another phrase to our collection. It was so brilliant. We’ve had a message from a Brazilian. Eduardo Pimenta says they have a similar phrase. She’s written out for us in Portuguese. I’m going to try and say it. I’m so sorry, Eduardo. I believe it is Folha. Okay, whatever. Okay. No care. Oh, I haven’t said that in the right way, but apparently it means that.

 

Nish Kumar Can I just say that’s come out a lot less offensive than I thought it was going to be. I am somebody who does not speak Portuguese. I thought that sounded like a good effort. Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Thank you. I just wait for the Portuguese. Portuguese? Yeah. Oh, the phrase means if you say whatever you want, you hear what you don’t want to hear, which is a nice way to tell someone to shut it. On the other hand, Eduardo continues, we also have data no coupé criteria.

 

Nish Kumar With all apologies to all of our Portuguese speaking listeners.

 

Coco Khan Just please know I apologize. It literally means a finger up the asshole and lots of screaming is used to describe a chaotic situation. It might be useful to UK political politics. Thank you so much Eduardo. It is very useful and I will begin learning how to say it, see.

 

Nish Kumar If they can go. Probably also lots of scraping. Well, I guess we’ve got an episode title.

 

Coco Khan And we also received a note from Slice of Dog. They were inspired by our interview with Guillermo last week and they said that they had signed the full fact petition and are considering becoming a regular donor. Fact checking politicians and organizations is crucial work and will only become more important as I generated material crowds out Real News. So thank you for the support slice of dog. We are glad to hear that our podcast is helping connect people with the right people.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s good. That’s really positive. If you want to get in touch with us, you can do it by emailing PSA UK at Reduced Listening Echo UK. That’s the UK reduced listening echo Co.uk or you can always tweet us at POD Save the UK. Or if you watch the episode on YouTube you can always leave a comment there. And I’m sure YouTube comment board is as ever a place of enlightened debate. Truly the modern version of the Greek Agora. If you’re new to the show, remember to hit follow on your app and you’ll get a new episode every week. Thanks very much for listening. See you next week. Okay.

 

Coco Khan Bye, guys. Thanks for listening. Also, love how you slipped a classical reference in there in the end. Oh, I see. He’s petty. He’s petty. He’s keeping score. Please join us next week for more scorekeeping. Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar Remember to mute succession on all of your social media unless until you’re able to watch the episode. That’s the most if you take nothing else away from this podcast. Mute succession and words related to succession before you’ve watched the finale. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Pod Save The UK is a reduced listing production for Crooked Media.

 

Coco Khan Thanks to senior producer Musty Aziz and digital producer Alex Bishop.

 

Nish Kumar Video editing was by Will Donkin and the music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

 

Coco Khan Thanks to our engineer David Dagahey.

 

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Louise Cotton, Dan Jackson and Michael Martinez.

 

Coco Khan Watch us on the pod, Save the World YouTube. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Pod Save the UK.

 

Nish Kumar And hit Subscribe for new shows every Thursday on Spotify, Amazon or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

 

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