After weeks of speculation, Liz Kendall has confirmed what benefits are to be axed in order to save £5 billion from the welfare bill – but at what cost for sick and disabled people?

Keir Starmer says the rising benefit bill is “devastating for public finances” and has “wreaked a terrible human cost”. But many of his own Labour MPs have accused him of selling cuts as compassion and in the words of Clive Lewis “causing pain for millions”. Zoë Grünewald steps in for Nish to survey the fallout with Coco.

And the cuts don’t stop there – NHS England’s abolition and unprecedented cost-cutting could see up to 30,000 jobs lost. Zoë and Coco discuss the “high-stakes” move, which the Institute of Fiscal Studies has said is “not fully thought through”.

Next up, the Tories and Reform are trying to seize the news-agenda with a pair of not-so special special announcements. And Coco has one of her own…

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Guests

Mikey Erhardt

Zoë Grünewald

Credits

Sky News

BBC

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TRANSCRIPT

Zoë Grünewald Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Zoe Grunewald.

Coco Khan I’m Coco Khan. Great to have you back, Zoë, in the seat finish. What have you been up to?

Zoë Grünewald Well, I’ve been wedding planning, actually.

Coco Khan Oh, very nice. You’ve got a venue sorted?

Zoë Grünewald No, and actually the venue thing has been a bit strange. When we went in to look around, the guy clearly felt very embarrassed, didn’t really want us to be there, was a bit rude. And every room he took us into, there were people in there setting up for that evening’s event. They were setting up bed frames and mattresses, putting candles on the stairs. they had gothic decorations and we were like… this is awkward, because they’re setting up for a sex party.

Coco Khan Have you ever been to one of those?

Zoë Grünewald No, I haven’t. And I’m not just saying that, I genuinely haven’t.

Coco Khan Yeah, no, I haven’t attended as a real attendee, but I have been as a sort of favor to a friend who wanted to go and I just sort of tagged along because they needed company It doesn’t matter. The point is what I found fascinating about sex parties. They’re really boring. Yeah, the one that I went to I’m not even joking. There was a queue for the spanking corner a queue.

Zoë Grünewald A queue for the spanking corner?

Coco Khan Yeah, they’d like erected an area for spanking. You had like a fixed amount of time that you had to be in be out and obviously being Britain and very politely people just queue. How awkward is that?

Zoë Grünewald That is awkward. See, I just don’t want to spank a corner at my wedding. No.

Coco Khan So you didn’t book it then?

Zoë Grünewald I didn’t book it, no. But I’ll send you the address. You might like it.

Coco Khan Stop it! Anyway, on the show today, sadly no spanking corners, but just politics, which I feel we can all agree is kicking our ass in different ways. Are the government copying the Tories’ homework? We’re discussing their plan for a reform of the welfare system and we’re streeting plans to cut the fat from NHS middle management.

Zoë Grünewald And later we’ll be talking about reform and the Tories’ pair of not-so-special announcements.

Liz Kendall Clip The status quo is unacceptable, but it is not inevitable. We were elected on a mandate for change to end the sticking plaster approach and tackle the root causes of problems in this country that have been ignored for too long. because we believe in the value and potential of every single person, that we all have something positive to contribute and can make a difference, whether that’s in paid work, in our families or communities, alongside our neighbors and friends. We will unleash this potential in every corner of the land because we are as ambitious for the British people as they are for themselves. Today we take decisive action and I commend this statement to the House.

Coco Khan So that’s Liz Kendall. I think we could describe that as passionate.

Zoë Grünewald It was a bit, wasn’t it?

Coco Khan Yeah, a bit on the touch-scary side actually, I might say. So that’s Kendall passionately announcing the government’s long-awaited reforms of benefits, which she says will save £5 billion by the end of the next decade. So Zoe, what is in store?

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, so Liz Kendall pointed out that one in every 10 working age Britain is claiming at least one type of health or disability benefit now, and that is one in every eight young people aged 16 to 24 who currently isn’t in work, education or training, and that’s according to the ONS. So the measures that they’ve set out today includes a permanent above inflation rise to universal credit, but for new claims, the rate of universal credit health element, which is this extra incapacity benefit you could apply for. going to be reduced by 47 pounds a week. So that is a 2,500 pound cut per year for disabled people on Universal Credit, which is pretty significant. The work capability assessment for Universal Credit will also be scrapped in 2028 with the PIP assessment process to be used instead. This was a bit of a, rabbit out of the hat feels like the wrong. term, because it wasn’t a particularly nice surprise. But those aged under 22 will be no longer able to claim the incapacity benefit, top up to Universal Credit. And Chris Mason on the BBC said that the under 22 policy appears to disrupt the flow of young people from school straight onto health benefits.

Coco Khan I always get. a knee-jerk reaction when I hear about governments reforming benefits, because it’s nearly always cut. You very rarely hear about them saying, actually, these have been unbearable conditions for this community for a long time, and we are going to redo the benefit system with their dignity in mind. That never happens. So I always have an instinctual distrust and dislike when I hear these kind of stories. We did an entire show on young people and how One and eight are neat, so not in education, employment or training. And one of the things that really stood out to me was the idea of this scarring effect, that if young people aren’t in work pretty soon, that that can have a knock-on effect to their incomes all the way into their middle of the life, if not later. That of course means that they will be earning less, they’ll be paying less into the coffers. It’s a real massive problem for Britain as a whole. So I understand why they are taking the action, but I just cannot understand the logic of saying, well, okay, we’ll take the safety net away from you. I don’t get that. That’s the bit I don’t get. And there’s lots about these announcements that I just genuinely going into it, trying to be open-minded, I simply don’t get.

Zoë Grünewald I think that’s a really good point, which is that, yes, clearly there is some issue happening with young people where they are unable for whatever reason to access employment and therefore are depending on the welfare system. But removing their ability to claim the incapacity benefit, which is this health benefit, what are you doing underneath all that to deal with issues of poor mental health, disability, other physical health issues that those young people might be experiencing? You’re right, it’s seemingly taking away the safety net. but maybe not actually addressing the underlying causes of why so many young people are falling out of employment educational training.

Coco Khan Yeah, well, I think some of the analysis have seen, and I should say from the right-wing press, there’s a sense that the idea that you get more on incapacity than universal credit, and it’s quite a bit more, although it’s worth mentioning that all these sums are paltry and you can’t live a good quality of life on any of it, but that shouldn’t be fair. In a way, that’s a kind of privilege. Now, everything we know about being unwell and long-term disability is that it simply costs more, so it makes sense to provide small. So I wonder if even the fact that they’re saying this about younger people as part of a wider conversation of bringing incapacity benefit down, that this is speaking to that idea that those people are getting an easy.

Zoë Grünewald Right. Yeah, I think so. And I think young people are always an easy political football to go after on these things. One good thing that the government has introduced is this right to try. So this means that people claiming sickness benefits can try out for a new job without immediately having their benefits cut. And obviously this is a good thing because previously it was almost a disincentive to look for work because there was a fear that you wouldn’t be without your safety net if you tried to get a job. So this was something that was actually flagged by disability campaigners. because they would come across people who actually wanted to try and find work, but felt unable to because the system wasn’t secure enough.

Coco Khan I would agree that sounds positive and I’m really loathe to get into this implied sense that work is a moral virtue and we all must be doing it and if you’re not participating you’re somehow immoral or something like that. But there are plenty of data that suggest that many people who have disabilities they want to work, but the workplaces are not making fair adjustments to them. So the idea that they can try it out, see if that workplace is fair, is going to make the relevant adjustments and is a place that they can be healthy and thrive without that fear. is of course wonderful because otherwise you would take this risk. And aside from the fact that you would have this gamble in your safety net, you’d also have the problem that when you came to reapply again, God knows how long it would take. There’s an enormous backlog and there’s kind of systemic problems that persist across all the benefits. So yeah, I mean, that is one positive thing, although it does feel like it is just the one.

Zoë Grünewald Okay. Well, let’s turn to what has been probably the kind of biggest shock and something that’s definitely going to continue to be spoken about for quite a long time and I think is upsetting a lot of Labour Mps, which is the disability benefits. So the government said they would not mean to test or freeze personal independent payments. And obviously there’s been a lot of briefing about the potential of that over the past week or so, but possibly the most politically controversial announcement was that eligibility rules for PIP. are to be tightened and the assessment process will be reviewed. So this now means that disabled people will have to score four points in at least one category to qualify for the daily living element. This will not affect the mobility component of PIP, but there are now fears that lots of people who previously would have been eligible for PIP who feel if they need that payment, now will not be able to receive it. And therefore… lots of vulnerable people, disabled people, people already on the brink of poverty will now have money essentially removed from them or will no longer be able to claim this benefit.

Coco Khan Yes, exactly. So I think it’s worth just going into some of the details for that because if you haven’t claimed it yourself or if you haven’t got a relative that claimed it yourself, you might not understand what this big unwieldy document is. And it essentially goes through different parts of your life to find out how well you’re coping and what you can do independently and what you need assistance on. And essentially the more assistance you need, the more kind of money you get. and vice versa. So some of the changes that are being proposed and look like they’re going to go through is that, you know, help cooking a meal. So that’s a category that’s been on for a long time. So it will exclude people who can use a microwave, but will include people who can’t prepare a meal for themselves. So essentially, if you can’t chop things, you are not able to use a hob or an oven because it’s unsafe, whatever your condition might be, you would still qualify. But if you can use a microwave. You won’t. And there’s a part of me that I kept thinking about that for a while after we’re thinking how dastardly it was, because microwave meals in general, very expensive, microwave meals in general, quite unhealthy. And so if you are condemning the people who can use the microwave meals, you sort of force them into an unhealthy way of living and you punish them for it accordingly. And it’s these little details that I find very unnerving. There’s another one here about people who need help bathing. So if you need help with your upper body, you’ll still qualify. But if you can’t wash your own hair or your legs, your lower legs, you won’t qualify. And you just think, well, if you need help washing your own hair, then, and you’re saying, okay, well, that’s not, that’s not enough for assistance, I think about what it is like to be that person. and how upset you must be all the time. There’s a lack of humanity that I feel really underpins all these little exclusions that they’ve made.

Zoë Grünewald I think that’s the feeling that already Pip assessments were being criticized as very kind of reductive, quite dehumanizing, quite undignified in the way that they were conducted. Now tightening that is only going to make that worse. It’s only going to mean that people have to plead their case even more. I think it just feeds into those narratives that disability campaigners are really keen to overcome and make the government aware of, which is that You can’t just categorize everything away. You have to take a whole person view of all of this and you have to make sure that people’s vulnerabilities are understood in the round and not just as kind of scores on a piece of paper.

Coco Khan Yeah. And I think as well, you know, there will always be this additional question, which is like, okay, fine, if that person needs assistance and they’re not getting assistance from the state, who are they getting it from? So either you’re going to condemn them to a life of indignation and struggle, which, you know, I would say is morally reprehensible, or they’re going to lean on their family, right? And we have a social care crisis and we have a caring crisis. And who are the people that pay in terms of caring? It’s women as well. So that, you know, it all sort of starts adding up and it’s a gendered issue, it’s a class issue. it’s a workplace issue, and yet they just seem to constantly be lasering in on these disability claimants. It’s cheap and easy.

Zoë Grünewald I think that’s a really important point. You know, this is about saving money. But you’re totally right. When you think about the care system, which is something in this country which has been ignored for so long because it was such a huge political issue. You know, this government have come in and again, they’ve kicked it into the long grass. They’ve announced a review. It’s going to be a number of years, even though care campaigners are saying, no, we need, we need a care strategy now. And you’re right. It feels ill thought out. What is the, what are the long-term impacts of this? What are the impacts going to be on the rest of the economy? You know, if you’ve got people having to leave work to take care of relatives, that will have a perverse effect on their get back to work plan.

Coco Khan Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So now last week, Nish and I had a great chat with Mikey Erhardt from Disability Rights UK about the government’s plan. Please do go back and check it out if you haven’t already. It was a really fantastic interview. But here’s what he made of Liz Kendall’s finalized thoughts.

Mikey Erhardt To be clear about today’s announcement, there’s nothing ambitious about them. They’re about cutting support for disabled people at a really difficult time. Rising claims for personal independence payment reflect a problem with Wiger society and how we’re barred from accessing it. It’s got nothing to do with disabled people and instead reflects excessive government’s failures to do even the bare minimum to create a more equitable society. There’s one thing we wanted to tackle as well from this announcement is the minister’s assertion that thousands more face to face. assessments and reassessments for people going through the system will be more accurate or better. We know that face-to-face assessments are incredibly stressful for disabled people and often actually lead to inaccurate assertions and responses from assessors. No wonder we have such a high reassessment and reconsideration and tribunal success rate when the government is still focused on trying to make sure as many people don’t get support.

Coco Khan I really agree with his point about how like, you know, if there are rising numbers, which there are, that that’s telling us something about the nation and we should be having that conversation rather than honing in on disability claimants. I wasn’t actually not aware of that about how the face-to-face ones can be much more stressful. And again, you know, that’s another example about how the devil’s in these little details and I can’t imagine that any disability campaign is feeling like they’ve been heard and consulted well given these proposals and some of details on it.

Zoë Grünewald Now, Shadow Work and Pension Secretary Helen Waitley responded by pointing out that most of the government’s plans were originally Tory proposals and said that five billion pounds worth of cuts do not go far enough. As we know, there have been weeks of leaks about the proposed cuts and these have added fuel to the fire. So there’s lots of angry Labour Mps that I’ve been chatting to and that we’ve been hearing from and anonymous briefings in the media. some of them have stood up today and voiced that anger. In particular, Labour Mp Clive Lewis said the reforms would provide pain for millions of people. Obviously, Diane Abbott branded benefit cuts as not a Labour thing to do. Pat Mcfadden has defended the cuts saying you can’t tax and borrow your way out of needing to reform the state and that the cabinet is united behind the move. But as we know, ministers including Deputy Prime Minister Angela Reyna. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and others are said to have voiced concerns in private and there have been briefings all week for backbench Labour Mps to try and bring them onside with Liz Kendall’s plans.

Coco Khan I was actually not aware that one in 10 working age people, you know, would be impacted or has claimed these health related benefits before. So that’s a sizable demographic of people in the UK. I mean, it seemed to me like political suicide to be pushing on ahead with this, but is it? Do you think?

Zoë Grünewald I think Labour MPs feel that there is an amoral case to be made for some reform to the welfare system. Amoral as in amoral? As in a space moral, as in, if you have a rising welfare bill, it’s clearly an indication that there is some problems with the nation’s health. You would always expect the government to provide a safety net, but if people who previously would not have needed it are having to take. up welfare, then that is an indication that there’s something wrong with the care system, there’s something wrong with communities, there’s something wrong with the NHS. I think Labour MPs understand that and also being a party of supporting workers, you can understand why. If people are saying, we want to work but we’re being disincentivised from doing so, the Labour government would feel that it’s their job to make sure that work is suitable for disabled people or people who are ill. Of course, this also goes alongside the fact that Labour have implemented a number policies that Labour MPs are worried will hit vulnerable people. So for example, the winter fuel allowance, means testing that. They are hearing now from their constituents saying, I’ve lost my winter fuel allowance. My neighbor is now, are they not going to be able to claim their disability benefit? And I’ve had Labour MPs saying to me that they’re really frustrated about the comms of this, leaking these briefings to papers and then having constituents ring them and email them upset thinking they’re going to lose. their money already in a cost of living crisis. It’s just gone down very, very badly. So I think not only are they cross about some of the policies that were put out there, but they’re also cross about the way this has been handled. It’s interesting, there’s a piece in The Guardian today by Gabby Hintzeleff, who was basically saying, what we’re saying, which is time for taxes to rise and Labour need to be honest about it. And she said, call it defense levy, a national resilience program or a patriot tax. Maybe that is the kind of language. Who doesn’t want to pay a patriot tax? I mean, I don’t, but if I was a- No offense mate, you can’t. Yeah, and I can’t anyway. But she was saying, call it a patriot tax if you want to win over the sun, but the time is running out to make the case for it. So if you want to do it, you’ve got to do it now. Otherwise people are going to go, no, the moment’s passed.

Coco Khan So listeners, I’ve got a question for you. I’m hoping you’ve got one for us as well, because we have a mailbag special coming up and we want you to email us your questions. So anyway, in the spirit of this, let’s have a go. Here’s one for you, Zoe. Who’s your favorite politician of all time? No rules. Anyone you want. Uh.

Zoë Grünewald Well, I guess in terms of good things they’ve done, Clement Attlee, architect of the welfare state, you’ve got to give him credit where credit’s due. That was a good thing. I like Andy Burnham. I am a fan of Andy Burnham. I think he has basically applied the principles of the welfare state in some ways to Manchester. He’s been a good voice. I think he’s been a good example of what devolution can look like. I think he’s been a good kind of presentation of the Manchester community. I don’t really have ties to Manchester, but I, you know, when you think of Manchester, I think a lot of people do think of Andy Burnham.

Coco Khan Well, that was such a like informative answer, I was just gonna go Leslie Knope from Parks and Rec.

Zoë Grünewald Oh, nice. Yeah, she’s probably way better at it.

Coco Khan We love an earnest person on this show. And she is very, very earnest. Lisa at the UN, Lisa Simpson.

Zoë Grünewald Yes. Lisa Simpson at the UNThat’s a great one, yeah.

Coco Khan Bring earnest back. I want more sincerity in politics again. So if you have questions for us, please do send them in to psuk at reducedlistening.co.uk and stay tuned for the episode in a couple of weeks time.

[AD]

Coco Khan So, Zoe, on the show last week, we spoke about West Streeting’s plans to cut 50% of NHS England, and the very next day, we heard that they’re going even further, abolishing NHS England completely and setting their sights on other health quangos. What is going on here?

Zoë Grünewald Well first, dear listener… What’s a quango, I hear you ask? Well, they are quasi-autonomous, non-governmental organizations, of course. I don’t know why we don’t just call it by its full name. It’s so easy. They’re officially referred to as non-departmental bodies, which basically means that they operate independently but are still funded and accountable to the government. So NHS England is a quango. It’s the world’s biggest one. HMRC is a quango. Network Rail is a quango and Great British Energy will be a quango. Okay, and so what isn’t a Quango? Well, NHS England, or not anymore, at least. So some quick facts about NHS England. It was set up in the Tory Lib Dem coalition government by the then health minister, Andrew Lansley, through the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. It was hugely controversial. So one of our favorite quotes from the time was from an Nhs leader who said the overhaul was so big, It was visible from space. Previously, like we will see again, the Department of Health and Social Care was in charge of the NHS in England, while in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland they had their own services, which incidentally are run by their respective governments.

Coco Khan Okay, so the Tories claimed that NHS England would improve services and efficiency, but critics feared that it would lead to creeping privatization, a drop in service and a lack of accountability. Writing a few years after its establishment, the King’s Fund, an independent think tank focused on the NHS, found that the reforms resulted in top-down reorganization of the Nhs, which was distracting and damaging. that new systems of governance and accountability are complex and confusing, and that the absence of system leadership is problematic. Fast forward now to a report into the NHS that was Streeting commissioned when he took office in 2024. Lord Darcy, an independent peer, wrote that the Health and Social Care Act of 2012 was a calamity without international precedent. It proved disastrous. The result of the disruption was a permanent loss of capability from the NHS.

Zoë Grünewald With announcing the plans to ax Nhs England last week, Streeting called it the final nail in the coffin of the disastrous 2012 reorganization, which led to the longest waiting times, lowest patient satisfaction and most expensive NHS in history. Here he is speaking to the BBC.

Mikey Erhardt Frontline NHS leaders are complaining to me that they could deliver better care for patients and they could deliver better value for taxpayers, but they are often receiving a barrage of commands, sometimes contradictory and competing demands, from the Department for Health, from NHS England and from the wide range of regulators in this space. If we can simplify this, it’s always a complicated system, it’s a complex system, but if we can simplify as much as we can. and do away with this idea that everything in a system this fast, this big, can be commanded and controlled with levers being pulled in Westminster and Whitehall, we’ll be setting up the NHS succeeded.

Coco Khan So that’s what we’re streeting is saying, but here’s the opinion of a manager working inside NHS England.

Mikey Erhardt There are definitely areas of duplication between it and the Department of Health, but I think that it’s really limited in scope, the amount of duplication that there actually is between the two institutions. And there are obviously better ways about mitigating that problem than just abolishing the organization in totality. I also think having NHS England’s being moved to Department of Health, I don’t think is good for the NHS because it’s going to decrease the amount of stability. that you get an NHS strategy needs to be looking at kind of 10 year forward views and being able to sensibly implement those strategies over multiple different years. If you just look at the previous conservative government, where there were what four or five different governments in four or five years or so, that kind of tonal shift in policymaking is not going to lead to better spend for the NHS. You want the kind of what 200 billion odd spend that it’s got each year to actually have one cogent strategy. which is implemented over successive years rather than constant politicization of the NHS approach.

Coco Khan Hmm, very interesting point you make there because you could argue that Labour are making this decision with the idea that it’s always going to be them in charge and of course they can be trusted, but it might not be.

Zoë Grünewald Yes. And I think what’s really interesting is the argument for NHS England originally was to take it out of that political short-termism that the NHS England manager we just heard from was speaking about. But you could also argue that that was a political decision as well because the Lansley reforms in many ways were a way of the Tory government doing some of the slightly more unsavory things to the Nhs, but also being able to be like, oh, this doesn’t have our fingerprints all over it. So in a way it was choice to actually create NHS England and the rest of the lands reforms were political as well. I think this idea of there could be a sort of political short-termism to decisions around the NHS now because it will be back in the hands of an elected leader who will be thinking about how they get another five years in government. While that is a good point, you could also make the argument that it was actually very difficult to achieve some things because of the bureaucracy that was created by NHS England. So to actually get things done quicker, and this is not necessarily an argument I agree with but an argument that could be made, actually streamlining it, getting rid of NHS England might actually help politicians to get the job done quicker than if they are kind of waiting for NHS England to sign things off or to do their own reviews.

Coco Khan The question I always have whenever I hear about like organizational changes is that, is this a way to divert our attentions or certainly to appease people without tackling the real thorny issue, which is we are an increasingly unwell population and we need money into the NHS.

Zoë Grünewald This is a reorganization that already people are saying, is this going to divert attention away from some of the really serious systemic issues facing the NHS? The core challenges of underfunding, the aging population, health inequalities. If all this time and money is going to be spent on redundancy payments or reviews or restructures, is that taking money and resources away from the health service at a time when it desperately needs as attention and focus as possible. although there is an argument it might pay off in the long run. Can the NHS afford another review, another restructure, when really there are some really serious existential issues facing it right now? What you can think is maybe promising is that where Streeting is saying the bug stops with him now.

Coco Khan Well, it has certainly attracted a lot of criticism. That’s putting it nicely. The Institute for Government says the government is embarking on a major reorganization of the superstructure of the Nhs that is not fully thought through and which it did not intend to do in the first place. The King’s Fund, so that’s the think tank we heard from on the original reorganization into the Nhs, said that reorganizations take far longer than you think, they end up costing far more than you anticipate. and they leave you with a distracted and demoralized workforce. I’m glad they’ve mentioned workforce here because it’s important to say that, you know, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs in this. So look, questions are going to abound as to how this is all going to play out, but we need to make it clear that as patients, the changes will not impact anyone’s access to the NHS. It will still be free at the point of use and cover all the services it does already. So I guess the question is, what was the point of this politically then?

Zoë Grünewald So there are criticisms and complaints about NHS England that have been going on for quite a while. The fact that there have been duplicated services is something that’s been talking about for a long time. When Keir Starmer was talking about this, he was talking about why are there two comms teams, why are there two strategy teams? Surely it would make sense to have a more streamlined version of this. The reason that’s difficult for a Labour government is because a Labour government gleefully announcing job losses under the savings. just doesn’t sit well with Labour voters often because it does sound a bit doge. And I think that this was also in the context of these reports of Project Chainsaw, this kind of Labour together and the center of the Labour government joining forces thinking about how they can cut through public spending and make things more efficient and this kind of sentiment that maybe Dominic Cummings was right that’s been echoing around Whitehall, which I think is something you wouldn’t associate with the Labour government. So, you know, these planned cuts of 20,000 to 30,000 jobs, plus the statements that Kirsten was making about the civil service needing streamlining and artificial intelligence jumping in and people’s doing people’s job, I think just to me feels very non-Labour. That being said, you know, clearly streamlining, they believe could generate some administrative savings. They say possibly up to a billion a year, that’s worth saying, that’s out of about a 200 billion annual budget for the health service. So it’s, it’s kind of pretty small really, but you know, one billion, maybe not to sniffed at. And they’re hoping it would simplify oversight, reduce bureaucracy. But I guess just because you, you know, streamline NHS England doesn’t mean West Street is going to get the work off his desk quicker. Right. It’s still incredibly complex. The NHS is a huge beast, even without NHS England there. As you just pointed out, Koko, there are criticisms from think tanks that this hasn’t necessarily been thought through. So they haven’t really explained how this will improve health outcomes or address NHS funding gaps. There’s also uncertainty about how this fits in with their devolution goals. So, you know, they’re talking about more centralized power, the NHS, putting it back in Westminster. But what about integrated care boards and care in the community and local leaders? So there’s lots of questions over that. And I think ultimately this looks again, like a cost cutting exercise to deal with NHS overspending rather than a coherent health strategy. and focusing on those real long-term problems that the NHS is dealing with, such as funding, such as health inequalities, the aging population.

Coco Khan And in the context of the Labour government, you know, we’ve talked about on this podcast about how they seem to be taking a kind of managerial approach, they’re sort of tinkering around the edges, they’re here to like streamline and improve things, but not actually change the status quo. Is this a deviation from this? I mean, there’s people saying it’s absolutely massive. Is this the big change that, you know, they’ve been saying they’re going to bring?

Zoë Grünewald If you’re cutting NHS England, that is a huge change. But in the general scheme of the NHS and all the issues it’s facing, no, it is not enough to fix the NHS. The problems that society is facing, a lot of it, it comes down to austerity and underfunding and just trying to cut jobs and thinking that will help reduce public spending and get public services back on their feet. I think most economists would agree that’s pretty naive. So I think this is very in keeping with the tone of the government so far. I don’t think, if people are wondering, you know, what does this mean for me? No, I don’t think it necessarily means they’re going to get an NHS appointment any quicker. People aren’t going to feel this, I don’t think. I think as a government who is running scared of the right wing papers, it’s much easier to talk about efficiency savings because you speak their language than it is to talk about funding.

Coco Khan [AD].

Zoë Grünewald Now, Coco, can we please speak about Reform’s special event?

Coco Khan I’m not loving the sound of this. It’s got a bit of a sausage surprise element, doesn’t it?

Zoë Grünewald It does, it does a bit, which is apt considering all of the Reforms MPs are male. Anyway, so Reform love to do these special announcements, and most of them tend to be pretty big nothing burgers. But it is one way to get a Westminster journalist to rock up at your presser. So following on from their drama last week, where they kicked out the hardline culture warrior, Rupert Lowe, your bestie, bringing them back down to four MPs. Their special announcement is they’ve had 29 councilors defect to them, mostly from the Tories and Independents and one Liberal Democrat. Okay. I’m going to confess. Is that a lot? I don’t actually know. Is that a lot? No, it puts them at about 113 councilor seats, so for some context, the Greens have over 800 councilors, the Liberal Democrats have over 3,000, even the Tories have over 5,000. and Labour have over 6,500 and that’s not to mention that there are of course 2,300 independent councilors. Would I hold a presser for that? Would I invite everyone in Westminster? Probably not. No, I’d probably keep it to myself actually.

Coco Khan That’s what I’m saying. This is a sausage surprise. I’m not 100% sure where it’s from, but I think it’s from EastEnders with the icon Jean Slater. Of course. That’s her trademark meal, but the surprise is there’s no sausages in it. So this has very much come from the sausage surprise, there’s not a sausage vibe about it.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, absolutely. It was a sausage surprise and I think there was a reason for this. Faraj obviously wants to distract from the fact that there have been hundreds of people who’ve left the party after Rupert Lowe was ousted. It feels really divided. I am told reliably, because I’m not on X anymore, that people are still going on about it and having to go at each other and it’s really dividing the Reform Party. Also the fact that there was this revelation that was revealed by the papers last week that a Reform UK candidate, whose name is Jack Aron. praised Hitler and Assad. He was put in charge of vetting for the party as well. So apparently he had also claimed that Vladimir Putin’s use of force in Ukraine was legitimate and had made comments as part of this pseudo-scientific theory of personality types that he’s very much into. So obviously the papers were going on about that. There was also the issue between Najib Faraj and Rupert Lowe. It’s also worth saying that a spokesperson for reform said, Mr. Aaron is Jewish and sits on his local synagogue council. His grandfather came to this country as a refugee from Vienna and much of his family on that side were murdered by Hitler’s regime.

Coco Khan Okay, wow. So Reform also claim that they’re building momentum despite their reduced presence in the House of Commons, but they’re still ridiculously small in comparison to other parties. But that said, there is a real risk that they may claim the seat vacated by former Labour Mp Mike Amesbury after he was convicted of assaulting one of his constituents. The race is on basically. What are your thoughts on this one?

Zoë Grünewald So polling recently suggested that reform would take 40% of the votes compared to Labour’s 35%. That’s close. It is close. It will be interesting to see whether the row in reform has damaged their chances. It will also be interesting to see whether a coalition of voters forms as a kind of keep reform out. Because we haven’t really seen that yet. Obviously, reform feel pretty confident about the seat and Labour are quite worried. I think if there is a real nibbling away at Labour’s vote by reform or if reform do take it, then we might see more of that Labour shifting to the right in response because they have been worried about reform and they kind of became alert to the challenge of reform a bit too late.

Coco Khan Another special announcement, Kemi Badenoch has officially ditched the Conservatives’ commitment to net zero by 2050, which was a policy initially brought in by Theresa May and which she herself has advocated for as a government minister. I mean, you know, hold the front page, Kemi said one thing, then she said something else. Who knew?

Zoë Grünewald There’s the fact that Kemi Badenoch served as business and trade minister in a government that adhered to its net zero targets. She said during the press conference that objecting to those targets was above her pay grade. I mean, she was secretary of state, they weren’t above her pay grade. So it kind of all looks a bit flimsy. There’s a, it’s also silly because The public like the net zero targets. They believe in them. I mean, quite overwhelmingly, actually. I know there is a representation of anti net zero rhetoric in the right wing media, but actually if you look at public polling, people tend to like net zero. They think it’s a good idea. This is exactly the sort of thing that I think are going to put off more of those moderate voters that the Tories are so desperately been trying to hold onto. And also, once again, it reads as a copying reform policy, I think. You know, it reads as. we just had to take something reform was saying because we’re trying to get those voters back. Why would you go for the light version if you were that kind of voter? You’d stick with the party that said it first and said it with their chest.

Coco Khan Politico reported that a Tory official said it’s a politically stupid and economically illiterate move that will only lead to electoral disaster. One thing we can agree on though, so at a press conference after her announcement, she was asked what she does to cut emissions herself. And she replied that she does not buy many clothes for her children and that recycling is cheaper. So, I mean, we agree that hand-me-downs are great, charity shops are wicked, but I don’t know why, but it just really made me laugh. And she’s like, well, I don’t buy clothes for my children. It’s so classic. Like, I get it. You’re not fun. You’re not fun person.

Zoë Grünewald Not her, just her kids. Yeah, they can get the hand-me-downs.

Coco Khan Exactly, exactly. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Conservatives recently, not just, I mean, obviously they live in my mind rent free, but I had this like weird thing that happened to me over the weekend. So just, just two contextual points recently on the show, we’ve been joking about where are the Conservatives? They’re so irrelevant. You don’t even hear from them. They’re meant to be the opposition. It’s kind of funny, but also, you know, not great in terms of our political system. And Nish said last week, if anyone sees a conservative, let us know. So that’s one contextual point. The other contextual point is that I’m having a really big problem with cupboard storage. I cannot seem to open a cupboard without getting brained by something falling out. And so it is that on Sunday, I found myself at Ikea and who should I see? James Cleverly. James Cleverly. James Cleverly. It was, I mean, I really hope it was James Cleverly because I didn’t go up to him and say, excuse me, are you James Cleverly? But I was in my car. and I saw a very James Cleverly looking man walk past, you know, very sort of dapper chinos, look very, you know, almost West London. And I just sort of mused out loud, oh, that guy looks a lot like James Cleverly. And there was a couple of other people in the car and they were all like, no, I think that is James Cleverly. Oh my God, that is James Cleverly.

Zoë Grünewald So was it in the car park or was it.

Coco Khan In the car park, yeah.

Zoë Grünewald Because I would love to have known what he was buying? Was he having some meatballs?

Coco Khan I remember quite vividly last year talking about James Cleverly when he was foreign secretary and he was doing a tour around Latin America and there’d be all these photos of him in a sort of white linen shirt and a little red crevasse and he’s living a very glamorous life. I wouldn’t be surprised if he flew by private jet and I sort of commented being like, oh god, James Cleverly is on a gap year. How the mighty fall. It’s truly humbling.

Zoë Grünewald Not that there’s anything wrong with Ikea. It’s a great day out.

Coco Khan We are all democratized by meatballs.

Zoë Grünewald Okay. So we heard a special announcement from reform and obviously special announcement from the Tories. Do you have a special announcement you’d like to share with us?

Coco Khan I know why you’re doing this, because you saw my grimace. I made a mistake. I previously talked about sausage surprises and how Jean Slater’s sausage surprise was that there’s no sausages. I was completely wrong. I made an error. If you watch this on YouTube, you might even be able to pinpoint the moment that I realized looking at my phone that I’ve got it wrong. Jean’s sausage surprise famously has loads of sausages and she sticks them up like the the O2, do you know what I mean? Oh yeah. I confess that I got it confused with an iconic episode of Come Dine With Me. This is what happens when you’re a high consumer of popular culture, okay? Things get sausage-y in there and in an episode of Come Dine With Me, a woman serves a trifle and the surprise is there’s sausages in it. No one expected a dessert with sausages and so my mind got a little bit garbled and I’m also having the mortifying experience of having to look at my laptop now. Thanks for watching! and I see a note from my producer saying, also just fact check, James Cleverley’s gap year, last year he was Home Secretary, he was only Foreign Secretary until end of 2023. All right.

Zoë Grünewald Coco, you’re becoming a liability. You really are.

Coco Khan I know. This is actually mortifying. This is a really horrible thing that’s happening. Where’s Nish? Nish would never do this to me.

Zoë Grünewald And that’s it.

Coco Khan Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK, also known as my humiliation episode. And a reminder that we want your questions for our upcoming Mailbag special. If you’ve got a burning question for me, for Zoe, for Nish, please do drop us a line at psuk at reducedlistening.co.uk.

Zoë Grünewald And don’t forget to follow at Podsave the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and we’re on Blue Sky now as well so follow us at podsavetheuk.crooked.com and if you want more of us and why wouldn’t you make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

Zoë Grünewald Thanks to senior producer James Tinsdale and producer Mae Robson with additional research by Isabella Anderson.

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos and our engineer was Jeet Vasani.

Zoë Grünewald The executive producers are Tanya Hines, Madeleine Herringer and Katie Long with additional support from Arie Schwartz.

Coco Khan And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.