Adventures in the Culture War w/ Ash Sarkar

February 13, 2025

Pod Save the UK

Pod Save the UK

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In This Episode

The government has spent the week trying to out-Reform Reform by stirring up yet another moral panic about immigration. The Home Office has been boasting about its crackdown on “foreign criminals and illegal immigrants” and filming immigration raids and deportations. At the same time, it has toughened up rules to make it almost impossible for refugees who arrive in the UK via illegal routes to become British citizens.

Contributing editor of Novara Media Ash Sarkar joins Nish and Coco to discuss her new book ‘Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War’ – highlighting how a minority elite are profiting from the chaos they create and how the “I” in identity politics can distract and divide progressive movements.

TRANSCRIPT

[AD]

Nish Kumar Hi this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Nish Kumar.

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan and today we’re going on an adventure in the culture war. I hate that phrase culture war. What even is what even is that?

Nish Kumar It’s the more boring sequel to the Star Wars film franchise.

Coco Khan I really wish it was an actual, like culture war, you know, like let’s let’s fight about Lucian Freud or Sigmund Freud. Who was the best?

Nish Kumar To talk about the culture war and how screwed it’s left us all, we’ll be joined by political commentator Ash Sarkar.

Coco Khan And later, we’ll be discussing Labour’s latest drama and give you a quick update on the bins that got you all fired up last week.

Nish Kumar But first, there’s been a lot of big stories this week. Trump has threatened steel tariffs, which could disrupt our economy. The ceasefire in Gaza hangs in the balance, and the UK has refused to sign an international declaration to make an open, inclusive and ethical. But today we want to focus on immigration. We don’t want to focus on immigration. We have felt obliged to focus on immigration. Right.

Coco Khan So Parliament this week saw the second reading of the government’s new border security bill. Simultaneously, the Home Office dropped a press release saying that nearly 19,000 foreign criminals and people with no right to be in the UK have now been removed since the government took office. Foreign criminals. Those are the words and people with no right to work. It is clearly incendiary language and in typical British news fashion, the TV headlines regurgitated it.

Clip The government today announced the fruits of its efforts to deport foreign criminals and illegal migrants.

Clip Thousands of illegal migrants and foreign criminals have been deported. We have images of illegal migrants and foreign offenders being deported.

Nish Kumar So those are clips from Sky News, Channel five and GB News. We should note that when assessing coverage from BBC and Channel four, we didn’t find parroting of the foreign criminals line as rightfully they shouldn’t do because this conflation between undocumented immigrants and criminals is incredibly dangerous and disingenuous rhetoric.

Coco Khan Right, exactly. You say illegal and it conjures up questions of morality. Right. But legal status is not about morality. It’s often totally arbitrary, which may explain why the Home Office fails to declare exactly how many foreign criminals make up the nearly 19,000 people that they have deported, opting to only state that the number is up 21% over the previous six months.

Nish Kumar The news coverage was accompanied helpfully by some pretty revolting images supplied by the government. Of workplaces being raided and people being escorted onto planes, which we won’t be sharing on this podcast. Just as we recalled this morning, we’ve also heard the news that anybody who has arrived outside of legal routes, including asylum seekers with valid claims, will be refused citizenship for some reason. I’m really struggling with this week and I’m really struggling with this sort of latest outbreak of anti-immigrant feeling. Yeah, the government releasing images as a kind of propaganda exercise has really sat poorly with me. Yeah, it feels like performance of cruelty.

Coco Khan There’s been a constant drip feed of, let’s be honest, racist anti-migrant rhetoric for I mean, at least ten years. I mean, what Labour is doing, how is it different to the go home vans? How is it different to anything the reform have been doing? In fact, actually when Labour have been publicizing this work, they’ve been using reformed colors, which, you know, shows you how unoriginal this all is. This is a hostile environment all over again, right? But just putting aside my own feelings of like, moral disgust around it, I don’t even get it politically. I don’t understand it. Like, you’re never going to outperform reform. Also, you’ve just taken their argument that this is the single biggest threat to the UK. You’ve just taken that from them like you’ve agreed with their premise. You’ve pushed no counter. How does that even make sense to do that if you’re opposed to that party? I don’t even understand it.

Nish Kumar The logic here is that you can head off the far right by essentially a program of rhetorical and policy based appeasement. But there are ways to numerous amount of studies that are warning people that that doesn’t work. And all it does is legitimizes a program of anti-immigrant policy and cruel rhetoric that just results in far right parties making electoral gains. Because actually, at the end of the day, you can do all of this crap. But when it comes to an election, the far right parties will still say, we can go further, we can go further, and all you’re doing is legitimizing this idea that immigrants pose a threat to your way of life or immigrants are a drain on resources that are preventing you from being able to pay your heating bills or buy groceries. And this is really the crux of everything that I’m frustrated about here, right? There is so many moral arguments to make about how we treat the most vulnerable people on this planet. There are so many moral arguments we can make about the rhetoric that we should be using and the policies that we should be enacting. But let me also just ask, who is this benefiting? Who is this benefiting? Does this policy help you pay your heating bill? No. Does this policy help you pay for your groceries as bills skyrocket? No, it does not. It does absolutely nothing to improve the lives of people in this country. Most people in this country, I’m told, just want to get a train to see a doctor. This program from the Labour Party does not help that at all. Who is benefiting from this? And when they talk about delivery, why is this the only thing they seem to. Be able to deliver on constantly. Keir Starmer has been going on about delivery, delivery, delivery. What have they actually delivered? What concrete policies have they actually delivered? Apart from deporting vulnerable people, we want them to deliver. But what we want them to deliver on is better services on the NHS, is better public services. Public transport for all they seem to be delivering on is something that is designed to appease Nigel Farage and it will never work. The Labour Party is determined to sign its own electoral death warrant.

Coco Khan The one glimmer of hope that I tried to take from this horrible, this grim mess was that the Government said it was also targeting the employers who exploit these people. It’s a subject that really irks me that you go for the workers and not the the people who exploit them. And so they’re trying to contort themselves and say, no, no, no, we’re doing this to sort of be good or be be kind. But fundamentally, when they release the footage, they don’t release any footage of the employers being crackdown on the sorts of business they have been cracking down on are things like nail salons and car washes. These are famously environments where it’s modern slavery. Right. And so, I mean, you’re going after the slaves rather than the actual the slave masters, which I find a little bit grim, despite what they say. There was a bust recently in Bristol where a number of undocumented migrant workers were removed, arrested. Some were taken to detention centers. There was a quote from one of the women affected in The Guardian. I just want to read it out. She says they arrived around 4 a.m.. So these are the immigration officers knocking very hard and shouting to open the caravan doors. Many of us woke up scared. I’m outraged. Fathers and mothers being searched as if they were animals. We are workers, not criminals.

Nish Kumar Yeah. I don’t know what consolation it is to someone drinking tap water that’s filled with shit that they’ve deported some people out of this country. Next time you’re flogging down a pint of human feces to think. Well, on the plus side, at least some incredibly vulnerable people have been treated poorly. And we had photographic evidence.

Coco Khan My God. So the government suggests it’s going to be doing more to make the asylum system fairer and clamp down on people smuggling. I love the way they always say claim asylum and they don’t use the word refugees. You say the word refugees and emotes a feeling of humanity and they refuse to do it. But anyway, these vague promises certainly don’t mean much, and asylum campaign groups aren’t happy either. So here’s Nathan Phillips from Asylum Matters.

Clip This is an asylum bill with no asylum policies. It’s just a rehash of the same old failed deterrence policies that criminalize people seeking asylum but lock up refugees and have no impact on crossings other than driving up deaths. There is nothing on safe routes, which is the only way to actually disrupt smuggling gangs. There’s nothing on the right to work. Despite 81% of the British public backing lifting the ban on it, generating 1.5 billion of that ever elusive economic growth there off the. There is nothing on overhauling substandard asylum accommodation, ensuring people are housed in communities, not camps, barracks, barges. The private contractors are making a killing off. There’s nothing on asylum support rates, which are currently a poverty packet of just 1.25 pound a day for those in hotels driving people into the hands of exploiters. Instead, it’s more of the same old failed policies, more criminalization of people seeking asylum, more border violence, more performative cruelty. And it’s playing with fire off the racist riots we saw in our streets last summer. This bill is a disgrace and I need to go back to the drawing board, guys.

Nish Kumar It’s very sobering to hear people who have actually studied these issues talk about the legislation that’s being pushed through. And listen, if this is pissing you off and you want to get involved, you can sign up to the fight. The anti-refugee laws pledge, which is linked to in our shownotes. There you can also find a template letter and briefings that you can send to your MP. There’s even a template motion that you can ask your local councilors to pass.

Coco Khan And in case you didn’t know, by the way, we have our own YouTube channel where you can find all our episodes, clips, exclusive YouTube content like full interviews, and you can see our facial expressions. They’re normally quite sad and angry.

Nish Kumar Well I’ll wait to be bragging about being able to see my face.

Coco Khan Well, you know, they want to see the face. What? Maybe they do. If you do, please do come and join us on Put Save the UK on YouTube. Make sure you subscribe as well so you don’t miss anything. We have a range of sad faces. It’s very impressive.

Nish Kumar If you want to see a man who looks like Liverpool footballer Mo Salah was found in a hedge this morning. Fulham and I look like he’s on the verge of an anger stroke. That by all means, join us for a dig after break in which I will use the time to severely improve my vibe and mood. We’ll be joined by our soccer to talk about, amongst other things, how identity politics has been co-opted to divide the left and what we can do about it. I’m going to go have a satsuma and a walk around the block.

Coco Khan [AD]

Nish Kumar So the government is trying out reform reform by stirring up yet another moral panic about immigration, But is stoking the culture war a winning strategy? Will it just alienate them from the majority of their voters? In her new book, Minority Rule Adventures in the Culture War. Ash Sarkar explores the forces that disempower and divide us today, highlighting how a minority elite are profiting from the chaos they create. And you probably know her as a contributing editor at Novara Media and one of the UK’s best progressive voices. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Ash.

Ash Sarkar One of the UK’s few progressive voices, so obviously amongst the best. There’s not there’s not that many. Okay, well, you’re definitely top five. There’s four of you.

Nish Kumar Why are you undermining me trying to pay you a compliment. We’re barely a minute into this.

Coco Khan She likes to be precise. That’s one of the reasons she is the best.

Ash Sarkar I’ve got. I’ve got an incredibly active, self-loathing gland. Like, that’s what it is.

Nish Kumar Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I recognize that. I think thats familiar to me.

Coco Khan It’s standard for all progressives, isn’t it?

Ash Sarkar Hi. I’m here. It’s nice to be here. I hate myself. Hello. Hello.

Nish Kumar So imagine not hating yourself. What do those people think about on a day to day basis?

Ash Sarkar My partner, he doesn’t hate himself. He’s just. And he’s just, like, walks along the street and he’s like. I’m like. What is that like, to be a well-rounded person? What is that?

Nish Kumar Boring, boring.

Ash Sarkar So boring.

Nish Kumar Congratulations on the book.

Ash Sarkar Thank you.

Nish Kumar It’s great. We’ve read it.

Ash Sarkar Oh my God. Thank you.

Nish Kumar It’s very exciting. Let’s define terms. Book discusses how the cultural divides us, and it’s again, one of those terms that we hear every day. But very few people seem willing or interested in defining what they mean by. What do you understand the phrase culture wars to me.

Ash Sarkar So for me, culture war is about a way of understanding politics as these competing identity groups. So no matter what you’re talking about, you could be talking about things to do with identity groups like, you know, anti-racism or the fight against transphobia or something, which has got nothing to do with identity like the climate. And you present that conflict as being driven by these individuals who want to change how you think, how you speak, how you live. And the thing about culture war is that it’s like there’s a thousand doors and they all open onto the same place, which is here is this minority, and there might be a self appointed minority like just stop oil. Or they might be an identity minority like trans people and they’re trying to impose their will on you. So that’s why the phrase minority rule first came from for me was realizing that every time you watch Good Morning Britain or an LBC discussion or, I don’t know, something on GB News, it’s the same story, but you strip it of the content. It’s the same story every time.

Nish Kumar The book explores how these kind of culture wars are used to frame a conversation around how they, as a small group of people that are doing things that run your life and essentially that serves as a distraction from the small group of people that actually do run our lives, the landlords and the CEOs. It’s almost it’s almost a distraction tactic. Calling the book minority rule. What sort of store were you trying to set out?

Ash Sarkar Well, I suppose it was a nice elastic framework which could bring in one this culture war and to what’s actually happening, because I do think that there is an overall move in a less democratic direction. And that’s not just to do with these insurgent far right populist forces. It’s to do with the fact that markets, corporations, oligarchs determine so much of what society’s going to be like and call it a massive class of landlords because it’s a kind of of capitalist who doesn’t make anything. They just own stuff and skim profits off the top. So that landlord model is everybody from your landlord in your like shitty rented flat that used to be a council house and now isn’t and costs like five times as much. You know, that’s a landlord, but so is Jeff Bezos. And one of the things that I wish I wrote about was I because that was just turbo boost is underneath it. As soon as I put in the manuscript and you can maybe see the direction of travel with air as being this huge shift, which just takes workers out of the Labour market. There is no longer a market for their Labour and instead you’ve just got this massive ownership class who, you know, own the means by which productive intellectual activity happens and they’re charging you for access to it. You know.

Coco Khan We were talking about, you know, you open every door. If you look at Good Morning Britain, everything story and it’s all the same. They’re all doors leads the same place. But this minority rule was, say you’ve been in that world trying to counter it, you know. Famously went viral in 2018 with a clip which I am going to play. So back in 2018, Ash blew up the Internet after a fiery clash with Piers Morgan while he was still host of ITV’s Good Morning Britain over Trump’s UK visit. Here it is.

What I try and do is be fair about Trump. What You. And to no one else? If you’re relentlessly anti-Trump and relentlessly pro somebody like Obama.

Clip I’m not pro-Obama. I’ve been a critic of Obama. I’m a critic of the Democratic Party because I’m literally a communist. Literally a communist on that bombshell. We have to leave it.

Nish Kumar I’ve seen that clip so many times that there’s I don’t think I actually realized that Piers Morgan said onthat bombshell.

Ash Sarkar On that newk.

Nish Kumar It’s a great idea for Piers Morgan to so specifically invoke Alan Partridge when he seems to be a hair’s breath away from Partridge at any given moment of. You write about this this specific moment in the book and, you know, bringing together the threads of the conversation, the way that the book draws it all together. It’s these these kind of culture war arguments are essentially used as a tactic to keep us divided, to stop this kind of power and capital grab. What do you believe Piers Morgan’s understanding is of his participation in these kind of things?

Ash Sarkar I think that he is somebody who knows what’s good for his career.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Nish Kumar And he understood quite early on that if you want reach and you want an audience and you also want to do well in this environment where. You know, legacy broadcasts need social media in order to bring an audience in. You have to stimulate the emotions of outrage and conflict and hostility. And one of the things that is very clever about him, people think that him interrupting you all the time is, you know, a failure on his part. It’s not. It’s his method. And you could see it in that clip, which is I got genuinely wound up. And it’s the thing which tipped me over to being like, You’re an idiot. I hate this. I’m a communist because you are just jabbed, jabbed and prodded. And so he knows how to get that out of people. And the thing about this form of media is that your role is cast before you go on. So you might enter into it and go, Well, I’m ush and I am anti-Trump, but I’m also anti-Obama and I’m very left wing and I can hold space for nuance. That is not what the producer intends to get from you. That’s not what the host intends to get from me. And it’s very, very difficult and I would say probably impossible to push back against that, enough to carve out space for you to bring the entirety of the nuance that you want to bring. And people are cast on the basis and I talk about this in the Book of Identity. So if you’re a young, brown left wing woman, a load of positions are sort of put into your mouth. It’s like, Well, you believe this, don’t you? And I’m like, no.

Coco Khan So is it worth doing stuff like that? I mean, I also because, you know, we have a lot of soul searching on this show about like, how do you penetrate this impossible fortress of right wing infrastructure? And also, it just seems like such a drag and like not no fun and upsetting and that is it worth it?

Nish Kumar We’ve also had like a range of opinions of people saying it’s not worth going into those spaces. And then other people who say, well, if you go on there and you talk to one person who you wouldn’t have otherwise spoken to. Isn’t that isn’t that incredibly worthwhile? Like, where do you stand on this now? Because, you know, you and I have done a lot of this, I suppose, let’s face it, upset a lot of the same people. Where do you start as the value of the upsetting we’ve done?

Ash Sarkar And there are so many things I look back on and regret I guess. The communist clip. Not one of them. Yeah, like very much not one of them.

Nish Kumar Why don’t you regret that? I didn’t mean that to sound put down.

Ash Sarkar Yeah. You should really feel bad about that.

Nish Kumar No I just wanted to hear, I’m curious as to why.

Ash Sarkar My self-loathing is sort of taken over my head and take on form. Well, this is what.

Coco Khan I thought it was kind of amazing at the time. And we were talking about it before you arrive, and I was like, you don’t people don’t say the word communist out loud anymore.

Ash Sarkar Yeah.

Coco Khan It’s all gonna be McCarthyite. Yeah. And that was the first time I actually heard it. I mean, in a way, I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but, you know, I call myself a feminist, but the word feminist. My God. Very not chic right now because it’s so wrapped up in transphobia. Yeah. And this is this part of me that’s like, no, I’m not going to read this word. Yeah, I am a feminist. I’m not ceding it to you.

Ash Sarkar I remember feeling so upset after I’d done it because I felt like I had just messed up royally and that I had made the left look like a bunch of jokers. And I found my partner and he was like, he hadn’t watched it. And he was like, Don’t worry about it. Well, we’ll watch it when you get home. And you know, everyone has a bad interview but freak out. Then, of course, we got ten minutes late. He’s out. What are you talking about? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. And I went under my duvet, and I hid. Yeah. Because I just couldn’t face myself. And then I came out and, like, went. So it’s just like this, like, random and awesome sound. Like everyone was buying me drinks, and I was like, So it’s going back to your question about like, how do you make the judgment about whether it’s worth doing or not is I don’t have a hard and fast rule. And I think part of it is because I’m a deeply strategic person. I’m a very gut led person at heart. And I think that you have to reckon with with a few contradictory things all at once. One is, like I said, you do not choose how you are framed. You do not choose the framing of the issue. But there are these moments of, I guess, like authentic expression that cut through. I think people liked that clip not because they’re like millions and millions of latent communists in the UK just waiting.

Nish Kumar You and the whole generation.

Ash Sarkar I like da da daaa da daa. And like, you know, I wish that was the case. But I don’t think that’s why. I think it’s because they saw something of real 100%. And I think that that that cut through. And you’ve also got to think about what’s going to bring you into contact with people that aren’t like you. Yeah. The thing about doing something like, you know, whether it’s Good Morning Britain or even TV news is that you have an audience of people who are not like you. They’ve got different life experience, different demographics, different educational status. That’s all good.

Coco Khan One thing that you didn’t give yourself credit for is that loads of progressives are very boring or so boring and so sanctimonious and are not good at TV.

Ash Sarkar I’m boring and sanctimonious at home.

Nish Kumar Yeah. But that’s that’s bad for us.

Ash Sarkar You’r like, I save that for my husband.

Coco Khan Aww.

Nish Kumar But yeah, I think it’s great to engage with the full complexity of that as a thing because, you know, for a long time I did a lot of those shows and then I was like, I think I’m going to start because I think I’m actually, if anything, making the situation worse because I think I’m I’ve become a sort of character in a culture war now. I’m just something that like a name that people use to sort of rile up their base.

Ash Sarkar Yeah. You became a meme. Yeah. And like, people like I see on Twitter all the time, like, people do this, like, list of people that’s poor and it’s always me and you next to each other, brother.

Coco Khan Aww. It’s quite touching in a way.

Ash Sarkar Really in the same plane to the motherland.

Nish Kumar It really is like being Thelma and Louise’d off a cliff. Yeah, it is. Yes. But at the same time, I also think, you know, how do you how do you persuade people who don’t agree with you if you don’t go No shows? Unlike one of the founders of this podcast network, went on Fox News last week because he he believes it’s important to sort of express some of these ideas in that kind of space. And I’m really just on a personal level, I’m very stressed for you.

Ash Sarkar Teddy doesn’t like seeing me on these programs. He’s my therapist. He’s like we talked about.

[AD]

Coco Khan Obviously we’ve talked a lot about how the right utilizes identity politics. You know, again, this framing of the minority rule isn’t actually the case. But you also talk about the left and how we bought into it. And I wanted to touch a little bit on that. So, I mean, obviously you spend time talking about it, so it’s kind of annoying for me to be like, Can you just summarize in about 100 words? Can you?

Ash Sarkar Okay. Whew.

Nish Kumar It’s like the first chapter book. It’s like when you read the book, you look straight in with the, the spiciest stuff.

Ash Sarkar The more I examined what the right was doing, the more I saw that these were tactics or rhetorical gestures which had their origins on the left. And you have to then take that seriously. You can’t just be like, Well, I choose not to see like like it’s there and it’s screamingly obvious. So that’s why I wanted to start the book there, not because I wanted to cement my status as a newly signed author by betraying the movement that I came from. I’d be like, I’m on my way to a Telegraph column.

Nish Kumar You’re ten tweets away from a Tory safe seat in Hartford.

Ash Sarkar You just the wait. I looked at that Claire Fox career path. And I was like, That’s me.

Coco Khan I genuinely have moments being like when I flip to right wing to make loads of money, what will be my thing? And I think it’s that. I mean, I’ve got a few drive a car.

Ash Sarkar All right. Yeah.

Coco Khan I love driving my car. I eat meat. Love meat. And I think some kinks should be shamed. I think they deserve it.

Ash Sarkar This is this is the most thessy. I like every single thesy I speak to is like yes, some kinks should be shamed. You know, my mum thinks that my friends think that and like all my white friends are like, no, we have to be really accepting. And every thesian is like, no we don’t.

Coco Khan Some of them deserve shame.

Ash Sarkar No, we do not.

Nish Kumar Sometimes our upbringing does come out by, but we don’t necessarily expect.

Ash Sarkar Yes, you’re like, wow, that was really the ancestors speaking through me.

Coco Khan Yeah. I’m sorry. Please. I interrupted you.

Ash Sarkar Yeah, yeah. That was a great tangent. So I opened the chapter by talking about a situation that I was in. I was facilitating this big discussion on the left that was like maybe, you know, a couple of hundred people in the room. And the idea was everyone weighs in on what’s gone wrong for the left in the last few years and what should be done about it. And there were some speakers whose job it was to sort of come in and set out their stool and people could decide, do we agree with them or not? And one of the speakers was Roger Hallam, who is the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. You know, in State Britain, just to spoil, I think he’s currently still in prison. And whatever you think about this man or these organizations, he walks the walk. All right. You cannot accuse this person of, you know, just mouthing off and doing nothing. All right? Like he’s he’s literally put his life and his freedom on the line. So he’s answering the question, what do I think’s gone wrong? And he looks around the room and he goes, It’s because you’re all a bunch of fucking cunts. Which I think is the funniest thing that could have happened. And there’s something about him which is very Gandalf like. Like he’s sort of irritated and urgent and he’s got the, you know, silver hair. And so it’s like, this is like Gandalf five. So he’s like, Get out the fucking shire and go. And I just thought, this is a room full of adults, right? So they might people might say, Look, I think that you’re just trying to shock us into doing what you want. Or, you know, this is sort of emotionally manipulative. That would all be fine. Instead, you had grown adults being like this is brought violence into the space. I’ve been harmed by it. This is bringing in white anger. And I was like, get a grip. Like, this is an old man, climate activist who’s done some swearing. That’s it. That’s it. Like, look. What is the harm? And that was when I realized that that’s not an isolated incident. I’ve seen versions of this happen a million times and literally have heard of an organized this weekend. So these people stepping on the ground doing the work. It all fell apart because they were acting out kitchen utensils for an ice breaker. And then people were saying that the salad spinner was white supremacist and classist, and then the rest of the weekend got derailed. There was a culture of sensitivity being set at this insane bar, people competing over who can present themselves as a victim. Yeah. The threshold for harm being just ridiculously, comically low. And that’s stopping people from being able to do useful collective work. Right? It it poisons and toxic guys our ability to connect with one another to work together. So if we’re doing that to ourselves on the left, no one to the right are going, well, this is a great tactic. This stops people from doing anything. And that’s why that chapter is important. It’s not just about pointing the finger and, you know, famous saying whenever you point a finger, the story pointing back at you. I recognize myself in some of this stuff, and those are the things that I regret. You know, this whole thing of like, every minority gets to define its own oppression. That’s crazy, because that doesn’t mean you’re right. It doesn’t mean that you’re saying it in good faith.

Nish Kumar So much of the book is about essentially how social majorities splinter themselves and prevent themselves from ever actually moving forward as a group, because we’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves all of the time.

Ash Sarkar We’re talking during a week where Keir Starmer is like, how I’m going to do something that’s never been done before. Demonize asylum seekers.

Coco Khan Love an original.

Ash Sarkar No one. No one has ever done this before. And I feel like you know that film or anyone I can remember The Beatles, I feel like that about the players. So it was like, wow, a Labour Prime Minister going hard on immigration. I was like, am I the only one? Am I the only one that can remember Tony Blair and David Blunkett?

Coco Khan I do want to ask you, because I share a lot of your concerns about identity politics. However, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it’s actually politics politicized me. And I really sort of saw myself, particularly around, you know, movements of black and brown people, young movements. It really made me a political person, which I wasn’t really before. I opened my eyes to it. There’s got to be some good in it, right? And also, we have to admit, the left has traditionally let down, you know, black and brown people, feminists. I mean, like I’m thinking particularly about trade unions. And trade unions have not done as well as they could have done for women’s work and protecting women workers. And also yet the black brown workers who are working class. I don’t know why we’re constantly told that we’re not working class. We only talk about the white. yeah, this is really weird. I don’t really get it.

Nish Kumar It’s a big part of the book.

Ash Sarkar Big part the book. Because what it does and this is the when you realize how how clever these framings are, people talk about the white working class not because they want to emphasize working class, but because they want to emphasize white. And what it does is that it turns class, which is a majority economic group, into an ethnic minority.

Coco Khan Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Is so, so, so, so identity politics like. Like genuinely, what do you feel about it?

Ash Sarkar So I think that, you know, you obviously don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think it’s a good thing that there is a lower tolerance for slurs in the workplace or on university campuses than they used to be. I think that’s good. I think it’s good that we look at the feminist struggle. It’s not just being about the gender pay gap, but also being about, you know, vulnerability to sexual violence. These are all good things. Where I make a distinction is between liberal identity politics, by which I mean very individualistic, very concerned with representation in elite spaces, and the original identity politics, which was anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and pioneered by working class black women in America. And they saw things completely differently. They were like, this is a vantage point. It’s not a position of authority. It’s not intersectional Olympics. Be the most marginalized person when.

Coco Khan It’s the most depressing Olympics.

Ash Sarkar You know, like I think you know what I mean it saying this vantage point from the bottom of the Labour market tells us something about how America works. And I think that there’s something good there.

Nish Kumar Part of why the book needs to exist is to speak those problems and start the conversation that can move towards solutions. So solutions. Yeah, exactly. What do we do?

Coco Khan How do we be sexier?

Ash Sarkar Okay, push up bra.

Nish Kumar I don’t think that’s going to do anything for me. My tits are where my tits are at the end of the day.

Coco Khan That definitely seems like a patron special. Please subscribe. Because we had to come across that YouTube. Jimmy the John Yeah, yeah. We had him on and he talked about his own journey and about how basically he was initially drawn in to, I guess you call it the All right because he found them thrilling. He found them sexy, exciting. You know there was something about the left that it just, it wasn’t the same. They seemed wet.

Ash Sarkar Censorious.

Coco Khan Censorious.

Ash Sarkar Cry Bullies.

Coco Khan Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All of this.

Ash Sarkar And the thing is, is that there is a lot of truth in those things. And so like the first thing is that we’ve got to recognize what the weaknesses are in terms of the political culture we’ve created. If we’re always pushing our glossies up a nose and we can’t say that like no wonder people.

Nish Kumar A very, very accurate impression of my voice. I don’t know whether that was conscious or subculture, but it was very, very accurate.

Ash Sarkar Shots fired. But like, like if we’re constantly doing some version of that, no one’s you’re going to push people away. Nobody likes that person. Yeah. I think the second thing, which is really important to remember and this is what reform do so well, I was on politics live and I encountered Rupert Lowe, who is one of reforms MPs, and it was kind of laughable. But then you put it all together and I completely see why we’re doing this. From the moment we met in the green room, he like, put my hand in like a bone crushing handshake, which is kind of like a Donald Trump thing. Like this is what it means to be dominant. And I was just like my fingers. Ahh my little hand. And like like he starts off with that and then like, we we go on to set and he’s interrupted. He’s bombastic, he’s assertive. He’s constantly saying some version of I did care about that and what he’s doing and this is why it’s so clever, is that he is being an embodiment of people’s disdain for the status quo. It’s not just he’s saying it, he’s embodying it. And I think that’s something which parts of the left have often found very difficult. And it’s the parts of the left which are closest to liberals are instinct. A lot of the time is to be technocratic policy focused and to perhaps even defend institutions which people have completely lost faith in. So I think there’s something there which is important about being able to feel anger with somebody. I think that’s something which the left has has missed out on, which is, I need you to fill this with me, because that is the heart of populism. And I think that’s something else, which is, again, the left’s proximity to liberalism means that we’ve become very censorious, but we don’t tell people, Well, how do you live a good life? Whereas everybody from like slime balls like Andrew Tate to, you know, Jordan Peterson or Joe Rogan or whoever else you want to name that saying this is how you live, right? Some of those answers are terrible, but they’re saying this is how you live. If you want to be a strong person, a successful person, this is how you do it. The left is sort of backed off from that because we’ve got to allow everyone can do what they want. Yeah, like the thing about everyone can do what they want is that like, I don’t know about you, but like, I respond really well to boundaries and instructions. Like I know someone cares about me. And so I think that we’ve. We’ve vacated that tyrade.

Coco Khan I would just like to end this interview on giving you a personal anecdote of a time that I found myself unwittingly defending the establishment, And that is when a relative of mine basically told me that all the candles in my house, I love a candle.

Ash Sarkar Oh yeah, scented candle or plain candle?

Scented candle. Oh yes.

I love a scented candle.

Coco Khan They’ve gotta be scented. Were bad because they’re full of chemicals and I should stop burning them. And they got this information from a alt-right podcaster and my disdain at that podcaster provoked this knee jerk thing inside me where I wanted to debunk this, this claim. And so I found myself basically defending Big Candle.

Ash Sarkar Big Cat Candle.

Coco Khan I’m out here just like, Yeah, well, actually you kind of have a bit of petroleum in your house, that’s fine. Just out of this sort of tribal desire to fight that person. So and it happened.

Ash Sarkar But like RFK Jr is, is is is exactly this. He’s obviously mad as a Wasp sandwich. All right. Like, this.

Nish Kumar Which is actually something he prescribes.

Ash Sarkar Like the guy’s nuts. Yeah. And, you know, the anti-vax stuff is obviously, you know, hugely harmful. However, if you are in America, you have very good reasons to mistrust the FDA, to mistrust the health care establishment. You’ve got very good reasons to mistrust these people. And I think that unless you understand that people are right to be angry, they are completely right to be angry. And they are right to to loathe these institutions. I don’t think you can get anywhere.

Nish Kumar There’s a lot about that in Doppelganger that Naomi Klein book.

Coco Khan Oh, she’s a big candle advocate as well.

Ash Sarkar Is this how you see how you categorize? All right. So so Naomi Klein, big candles. Gnome Chomsky. No candles. Gary Young loves incense.

Nish Kumar She was saying the same thing about vaccinations. But I like the fact that we’ve now just it feels like an appropriate point allowed. But in the end, it’s all about big candle.

Ash Sarkar Big Candle.

Nish Kumar Will you be having a signature scent made as a marketing tool?

Ash Sarkar I would love that. For some reason, I feel like that’s going to be a waste of money.

Coco Khan Well, Minority Rule Candle.

Ash Sarkar I would love that so so much.

Ash Sarkar You know, how everyone had a nervous breakdown during lockdown?

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Ash Sarkar Mine was expressed by making my own scented candles at home.

Nish Kumar Are you joking? I was joking about you releasing a scented candle.

Ash Sarkar No, no. No, I’m not. I’m not joking at all. My favorite was Pink Peppercorn Bay and raspberry.

Coco Khan Delicious. You want to eat it. Ash Sakar, thank you so much for coming on Pod Save the UK.

Ash Sarkar Thank you so much for having me.

Nish Kumar Ash’s book, Minority Rule: Adventures of the Culture War is out soon and will be accompanied by a tie in series of Pink Peppercorn Scented Candles.

Coco Khan More bad news for the government this week. Health Minister Andrew Gwynne was sacked after it was alleged that he’d been sending racist, sexist and anti-Semitic messages to a WhatsApp group lovingly entitled Groan out Trigger Me Timbers. Members of the group included Burnley MP Oliver Ryan and 11 councilors who have since been suspended from the Labour Party pending an investigation.

Nish Kumar I know that there’s obviously very serious issues at stake here, but just as a sideline issue, I think only naked photos are a thing that could be more embarrassing than the name of WhatsApp Groups who are a member of being released to the public.

Coco Khan Trigger me timbers. I think if I got the thing like you are invited to this, I would just decline. I don’t want to go in that group.

Nish Kumar That they named after offensive things. The names are just so embarrassing that no one needs to have those available. If you’re a member of a WhatsApp group will trigger me timbers. You should leave that out of sheer shame. But anyway, look, the Labour Party, thankfully has moved pretty quickly on this one, but obviously it is disappointing and unfortunately unsurprising to see exactly the same kind of behavior that we were furious with, with the Tories coming out from Labour MPs. And we have to focus on one alleged trigger be Timbers message in particular. Gwyn had a message from a 72 year old woman who contacted her about have been saying As you have been reelected, I thought it would be an appropriate time to contact you with regard to the bin collections. When the letter from the resident was shared in the WhatsApp group, Gwyn wrote a suggested response. Dear resident, fuck your bins, I’m reelected and without your vote, screw you. P.S. Hopefully you’ll all have croaked it by the all.

Coco Khan Fuck your bins. No, absolutely not. Bins are important. They should put fuck your bins on his epitaph. They kind of thing to say.

Nish Kumar But we talk about it all the time. You talk about where politics actually interacts with your life on a day to day basis, and bin collection is one of those things that is an important way in which the government actually impacts on the day to day lives of people in this country. I know it sounds like it’s a frippery, but like it’s not.

Coco Khan Also like, you’re an MP. Of course you’re going to receive communications about them. It’s not like she was asking like, who do you prefer Drake or Kendrick? Do you know what I mean? It’s not irrelevant. Anyway, speaking of bins, we had an incredible response to our Bristol Bins conversation from last week’s show. As a quick reminder, the council there is mooting moving to a four week bin cycle, partly for environmental reasons, but mostly to save a bit of money. Lots of you, unsurprisingly, wrote in to say you didn’t want a four week bin cycle. If anything, you want more frequent collections. We also had a couple of listeners direct us to the ongoing bin strike in Sheffield, where workers have been on strike since August. In Sheffield, they don’t have regular recycling collection. Instead, they’re just supposed to take it to convenient recycling centers. I’ll put that in quotation marks. These are meant to be around the city, but Lord knows if they are convenient. Well, and.

Nish Kumar Also, since the strike, the recycling centers have been closed. Meaning people have to throw everything into their regular bins. Or take them off to their local tips.

Coco Khan So listener Sally wrote in to say, I now take my other recycling to friends who live in areas outside of Sheffield when I visit them. I think they think I’m a bit weird. You’re not weird, Sally. Your results? Yeah. We also had a strong reaction to Nicias question about the grim thought of nappies clogging up the bins for a month. But a listener points out that Bristol actually has a year long trial of a nappy recycling service which began in July 2024, in partnership with pure nappies.

Nish Kumar And I can’t believe this is actually in the script and I’m reading it out loud. But speaking of nappies, we also had a voice note in from children’s nurse and potty learning expert Rebecca Mottram, which we must say is not particularly political, but we felt we should include it in the show because it’s perhaps a useful public service announcement for any prospective parents out there.

Clip One thing we need to remember is that poo actually goes down the loo and it’s very, very common for people to just wrap up poo in a nappy and put that in the bin. And actually what we need to be doing is getting that poo and tipping it out of the nappy and flushing it down the toilet. And that in itself will create a significant reduction in the amount of poo going into our rubbish system.

Nish Kumar I don’t have children. I assumed that the process was you just wrap the shit up in a nappy and chucked it all in the bin. That’s that’s new information to me. All my hands up.

Coco Khan Poo down the loo. That would be a great jingle.

Nish Kumar I have to say. Now that you say out loud, put poo poo down the loo does seem like the sort of advice we should have been able to integrate. I feel as a voting age adult, I should have been able to figure out the poo goes in the toilet.

Coco Khan It’s in the moral of the story is do not mess with the bins when you’re in Britain.

Nish Kumar Based on our online mail box, since we started talking about the bins, people really give a shit about the bins.

Coco Khan Yes.

Nish Kumar But I’ll tell you where you shouldn’t be putting your shit, in the bins.

Coco Khan So thank you for writing it, everyone. We love hearing these small p political stories. So if you’ve got anything else you think we should draw attention to, please do email us at PSUK@Reduced Listening.co.uk.

Nish Kumar And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Poo Save the UK. Don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the UK on Instagram TikTok and Twitter. We’re also now on Blue Sky. Follow us. Pod Save the UK dot Crooked dot com. And if you want more of us, please make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel to look and see what level of disheveled my hair and beard combination is out on a week to week basis.

Coco Khan How long are we keeping up with Poo Save the UK?

Nish Kumar I think we leave it. We flush it.

Coco Khan I think we should do the credits with poo. Poo Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer Mae Robson.

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer Jeet Vasani.

Coco Khan Executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Louise Cotton, and Madeleine Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz and Katie Long.

Nish Kumar Remember to hit Subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

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And Health Minister Andrew Gwynne and Burnley MP Oliver Ryan – along with 11 Labour councillors – have been suspended from the Labour Party after it was alleged that they’d sent offensive messages to a Whatsapp group chat lovingly entitled, “Trigger Me Timbers”.

Correction: A previous version of this episode included a statement that Sheffield’s recycling bins were not collected from the roadside whilst discussing an ongoing workers strike. Recycling bins continue to be collected amidst the strike. We regret the error.

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