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Stay out of wombs Nigel! Reform UK leader Nigel Farage wants us to have more babies – which for new mum Coco feels like being bamboozled into being rightwing. Not only this, Farage is even coming for abortion – saying it’s “utterly ludicrous” to allow abortion up to 24-weeks. Keep your wits about you!

From leaked memos and inner-circle beef to U-turns and rumored U-turns – Keir Starmer is feeling the pressure. Nish and Coco dive into the Westminster bubble to find out why the Government has become a leaky ship with Politico reporter Bethany Dawson.

Half a decade on from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that shook the world, only one-third of the recommendations of major reports to tackle endemic racism in the UK has actually been implemented and equality initiatives are facing a rightwing backlash on both sides of the Atlantic. So, is the UK backsliding on racial justice?

Guardian community affairs journalist and author Aamna Mohdin reflects on the personal and political legacy of what were the largest anti-racism rallies in the UK since the abolition of slavery.

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Guests:

Bethany Dawson

Aamna Mohdin

Useful Links:

Scattered: The making and unmaking of a refugee by Aamna Mohdin

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/scattered-9781526652591/

Politico’s London Playbook

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/page/109/

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TRANSCRIPT

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Coco Khan Hi, this is Pod Save the U.K. I’m Coco Kahn.

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kamar. Coco, Nigel Farage wants us to have more babies. How do you feel about that?

Coco Khan I feel like I’ve been tricked into being right-wing. That’s not really fair, you know. I have my right-wings moments, I watch Homeland, religiously, and you know, I drive a petrol car. I’m at my limit, I don’t want to be bamboozled into it. Thanks, Nig.

Nish Kumar I will say, if Nigel Farage wants people to have more children, he needs to get himself out of the public eye because there is very little that softens an erection more than Nigel’s face, voice and personality. Anyway, aside from that, we will be returning to Farage’s comments on the family later, but we’ll be bursting the bubble on Rumors of Foot in Westminster. The government’s suddenly become something of a leaky ship, but does it matter? We’ll be joined by Politico’s Bethany Dawson.

Coco Khan And later, five years on from the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, what progress has the UK made on racial justice? We’re joined by journalist and author Aamna Mohdin.

Nish Kumar The pressure has been on for the government and it appears that finally, finally, it’s starting to pay off. Last week we saw Keir Starmer open the door to a U-turn on the controversial cuts to winter fuel payments after months of mounting anger from voters and MPs. And it appears he might also be mulling a rethink on the reforms to the benefit system.

Coco Khan So look, it might not be the change we were promised when they took office, but it’s a change I’ll take. The question is though, why now? There’s something afoot in number 10. So this week we’re diving into the Westminster bubble to figure it out.

Nish Kumar A few things happened in the last week. A memo penned by the Deputy Prime Minister Angela Reynar addressed to Chancellor Rachel Reeves was leaked. It laid out what we would consider to be a fundamentally more progressive proposal for taxation to plug the budgetary black holes and provide more cash for government spending. Cue outrage and claims of Reina mounting a challenge for the leadership.

Coco Khan That’s not it. Possibly even more interesting for those watching the bubble, Bloomberg reports growing tensions between Starmer and his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney over the two-child benefit cap. So to make sense of what this scuffle means for the future of the government, we’re joined now by Bethany Dawson, diary reporter for Politico’s London playbook. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Bethany.

Bethany Dawson Thank you so much for having me.

Nish Kumar So Bethany let’s just jump in here what’s going on here what how is the government suddenly just turned into a colander of information what what’s happened.

Bethany Dawson Well, the government is saying kind of they’re making these changes because the economy has shifted. That is a really quick amount of time for the economy to do a big shift. I think one of the things we need to look to is a lot of pressure from backbench MPs. We sometimes can be quite good at ignoring the influence of these people, but they have an incredible amount of backbench MPS, many of them really unhappy. There was a PLP meeting last week. So all backbench, MPs got together and Keir Starmer addressed them. Which he doesn’t do very often when we’re speaking to MPs and watching them pour out of this room. None of them were kind of grinning. A lot of them said it was really uncomfortable. It was really tense in there. The prime minister came to do understandably, don’t worry guys, everything’s great. And all the MPs kind of seemed to go, you know, are you sure?

Nish Kumar Actually good. When we say leaks, it’s kind of a misnomer, isn’t it? This isn’t Angela Reynar didn’t accidentally text a plan to the wrong number. This isn’t like your mum struggling to use WhatsApp and texting the person that she’s talking about instead of texting the persons she was trying to talk to them about, right? This is a deliberate political tactic.

Bethany Dawson Yeah, and before I got into political journalism, that’s what I thought a leak was. And I am so disappointed that it isn’t. I don’t think Angela Rayner left a note to Rachel Reeves on a park bench and someone found it. Someone within her team or all Reeves’ team have leaked something. They made a deliberate choice to go to the press and share this. And that definitely raises eyebrows around how relationships are going at the top of government.

Nish Kumar We understand the Labour Party has always been a broad church and that perhaps Reeves and Rayner come from two separate denominations of said church. Is it perhaps more significant that there seems to be tension between Keir Starmer and his chief advisor Morgan McSweeney? Now, again, we haven’t just found that out because they were having an argument in a Nando’s across the road from parliament. I mean, it felt to me like that’s a deliberate tactic by Starmer’s team.

Bethany Dawson The memo makes it look like Morgan McSweeney is the sort of roadblock to a lot of what Labour supporters want to see. And as you say, that is deliberate, like it wasn’t on a park bench, they weren’t screaming at each other in a Nandos. Someone has made the strategic decision to frame Morgan Mcsweeney as difficult in reaching what Labour voters want to say. This puts pressure on Morgan Mc Sweeney. It’s not just kind of putting a memo in the brains of journalists to try and figure out if he’s being difficult. It puts pressure on McSweeney to let these more left-wing changes happen.

Coco Khan So this characterization of Starmer being like held back by Morgan McSweeney. Is it true? I mean, part of me hearing this as a, you know, someone outside of the party thinks, oh, it’s a bit lame of Starmer to be suggesting that he’s being held back by this man he could fire. Is it all a…

Bethany Dawson Performance, or is it actually true? The thing we have to remember is, Keir Starmer is the Prime Minister. He is the man with the most political power. The people in number 10 are incredibly powerful, but there is only one person that can stand up as the Prime Minster in the House and make a statement. There is a team, but he isn’t a little puppet. He does have an incredible amount of political power, and there is a balance there.

Nish Kumar There’s two ways of looking at this current situation, isn’t it, Bethany, because on the one hand, we’ve got the mutiny in the parliamentary Labour Party, pressure coming from the back benches and high-profile Labour MPs who are more on the progressive wing of the party that’s forcing Stalin to capitulate to this. Now that’s one version of events. The other version of the events is that Labour is running scared of reform and on domestic agenda at least. Farage seems to be trying to out-Labour Labour, so on Tuesday this week, he had a huge press conference where he announced that ending the two-child benefit cap would become one of reform’s signature policies. He’s spoken out against the winter fuel payment. How much of this is pressure from the PLP and how much of it is pressure on the Labour Party?

Bethany Dawson I think Farage has been really clever here. So last week, Wednesday, Keir Starmer said that they were going to consider changing that winter fuel payment and the eligibility criteria. I don’t think many people in the electorate will have heard that, right? It was a 30-second statement at the beginning of PMQs. And what people will hear though is a big Farage statement where all the press is going to one of his 7,000 press conferences that he seems to do.

Nish Kumar How does he have time to be an MP? Being an MP is quite a hard job.

Coco Khan Well, I think that the answer is he doesn’t, and he doesn t be an MP. That’s his thing.

Bethany Dawson Yeah, last week he was in France, I think, and then this week, making massive statements. I don’t know when he had time to go to Claxton, but he does these press conferences and the media go to it and we all get very excited about it and it splashes front pages and people see those messages from Farage. And I think what he did was look at the trajectory the Labour Party are going in and figure he could get just a tiny bit ahead of the messaging to make it look as though he’s the one putting pressure on. Likelihood is those decisions have already been made within the Labour Party. Whether it’s balancing the books so they can make these cuts, whether it’s figuring out who’s getting what amount of money in the spending review, whilst those conversations are ongoing, the themes behind it and the trajectory is probably fairly set. And Farage will know that, but he will know that he can look like the mastermind behind Labour if he runs home from his French holiday and makes a quick statement. The vibes were really interesting at the press conference, because it was all done within the guise of supporting British families and helping people to have children, which is quite an interesting form of politics that seems kind of imported from the states. America is very like, you know, pro the family unit and pro tax breaks for parents and married couples. But the policies that he’s announced within that fairly right-wing set of ideals is fairly left-wing. And I wonder if that is gonna be difficult for him because whilst none of us are expecting his next statement to be like a universal basic income, it does seem almost a bit too left wing for his supporters to follow. It feels like the path is winding too much and he risks becoming this kind of politician that really just grabs what is hip at the certain time, which is the exact politics he’s been railing against. Right.

Nish Kumar Also, you know, it is tricky because there is quite a significant historical precedent for somebody combining socialist economics with nationalist rhetoric. In terms of the sort of Tory party, they’ve now sort of slipped to fourth place in some polls behind reform and the Liberal Democrats. Farage was barely focusing on Kemi Badenoch talking more about Robert Jenrick. I mean, I feel like we ask this every week, or certainly we ask this whenever we get a Westminster reporter in. Done right?

Bethany Dawson You just don’t really see her that much, which is the thing that is, is really weird. Um, I quite respects this. She’s kind of known for hating mornings. So she doesn’t, she doesn’ do morning rounds really. She should lead with.

Nish Kumar She should lead with that. That’s actually relatable politics.

Bethany Dawson Got my vote. Like, I, you know, hugely respect it. Someone was talking to me the other day about how during her leadership campaign to switch off, she’d play the Sims. And I was like, she’s got her com strategy all wrong. Lead with not wanting to do mornings and the Sims and-.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Bethany Dawson First place in the polls. But she doesn’t do the sort of things you would expect from a major Westminster party leader, who does though, is Robert Jenrick. Robert Jenick does the morning rounds, then he goes to the sort of grassroots campaign events. And he doesn’t say vote for me for leader, but he definitely does say, am I not just fantastic? And you can’t move for seeing him. He just is everywhere. He’s very, very good at being present. And I think for party that feel directionless. They have very few policies and I don’t think any MPs know what their line is. They don’t feel supported. Having a present politician who at least knows the events that are going on and who’s where and who is caring about what is actually quite attractive. Of course, we’re seeing so many reports about the conservative scheming to try and get Kemi out before November, which is when theoretically she is safe until you can’t have a leadership election. More than once a year, but there are loopholes and it’s according to, again, leaked memos, it seems as though they’re trying to figure out a way to just oust her, which means another conservative leadership election.

Nish Kumar Before we let you go Bethany, I just want to ask you one very quick question. If we’re talking about things like the two child benefit limit and we’re talking about things like a winter fuel payment, if the Labour Party does U-turn on this, is there a danger for the Labour party that it looks like it’s politically weak?

Bethany Dawson I think people have quite short memories. So by the time we get to a general election, I doubt there will be a huge swathe of people that wouldn’t vote for them based on these policies. But it does look like they’re bowing to pressure. Rather than having had a few years to fix the economy and then standing up and saying, here’s our growth statistics, here’s everything that’s changed, we’re now in a more comfortable position to do at X. There’s just not really been enough time for those fiscal changes. So it does just to look like they’re bowing to pressure. The way you spin that is saying we listen to the electorate and we listen to our MPs, but I think a lot of people will take that as spin. And a lot people will think they are easily changeable, especially with this rising threat of reform.

Coco Khan Bethany Dawson, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Bethany Dawson Thank you so much for having me.

Coco Khan Well, if you want to hear more about the bubble and everything that’s going on, then you have to see Bethany’s work. Check her out on Politico’s daily London playbook newsletter.

Nish Kumar And we have a very exciting announcement. Pod Save the UK is heading to Sheffield this July for the Crossed Wires Festival.

Coco Khan We’re playing a live show at the Crucible Theater on Sunday the 6th of July alongside special guest Gary Stevenson of Gary’s Economics to unpick the shitstorm of British politics. We’ll be dreaming up radical solutions alongside Gary and you.

Nish Kumar Tickets are on sale this Friday from crossed wires dot live. We can’t wait to see you there. I was actually in Sheffield last week doing a gig at a great venue called the Lead Mill, which is sadly soon to be no more. But the local brewery brewed a beer with my face on it. So now that is now my bare minimum for Shefffield. The floor is yours. Breweries of Sheffiel. That is my minimum expectation of doing a live show there. So challenge extended.

Coco Khan I am just curious about this, so if I want to order one, do I ask for a pint of nip?

Nish Kumar I don’t think it’s now widely available, I think it was a one night only offer.

Coco Khan You can’t down a pint of Nish.

Nish Kumar No, you can’t, but we will be expecting a pint of Nish or a Coco Khan cup of hot cocoa.

Coco Khan Yeah.

Nish Kumar After the break, we’ll be speaking to journalist Aamna Mohdin about the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and what progress the UK has made on racial justice.

Coco Khan [AD]

Coco Khan Sunday, 25th of May, marked five years since George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis. His last words, I can’t breathe, echoed those of Eric Garner and a number of black Americans who have died at the hands of police. Floyd’s murder sparked a fresh wave of protests for racial justice that spread across

Nish Kumar In the UK we had protests in 260 towns and cities, the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was toppled into a river in Bristol, after that we had statements from the Bank of England apologizing for their historical involvement in slavery as well as pledges from the Church of England to pay reparations.

Coco Khan The Black Lives Matter protests were the largest anti-racist rallies in the UK since the abolition of slavery. However, today we’re seeing swings in the wrong direction. Anti-migrant riots gripped the UK last summer, a surging reform UK has vowed to target equality, diversity and inclusion policies, and we have a Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, accused of echoing the racist rhetoric of Enoch Powell.

Nish Kumar Half a decade on, how far has the UK come in tackling racial injustice? Joining us now is Aamna Mohdin, the author of Scattered, which traces her journey from being a child refugee in Somalia to becoming a British citizen. And now she’s the Guardian’s Community Affairs correspondent. Aamna, welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Aamna Mohdin Thank you so much for having me.

Nish Kumar This is an interesting role reversal for us, because we have previously only spoken when you were interviewing me, and now the shoe is on the other foot!

Aamna Mohdin That was actually one of my earlier stories for The Guardian. Um, and yeah, so I remember being really scared because I was going to interview a celebrity.

Nish Kumar Yeah yeah and then you found out it was me and you were like oh that’s absolutely fine i’ve got there’s no reason to be phased by the f list

Coco Khan You’ve reported on Black Lives Matter since the death of George Floyd. Just, just honestly, what was it like covering it at the time? Did you feel that you knew that you were living for a moment of history?

Aamna Mohdin Yes, it really did feel historic at the time. So if I get you guys to cast your mind back to 2020, I mean, these past five years feels like 15, um, well, it was still the height of lockdown and it started to become really clear the disproportional impact that COVID were having on BAME communities. Um, there was this really striking Guardian front page where we put a picture of the first four doctors to die, um from COVID and they were all. Black or Asian. And I think that really began to show who are our key workers, who we’re putting in danger to protect us. Many young BAME people across the country were living in these tiny flats, didn’t have access to any gardens. So of course, like the death of George Floyd was a spark because it’s once again, another video, which was horrific of a Black person being killed by the police. But actually I felt at the time, what was happening with COVID was probably the biggest spark here. And it’s just all exploded. The end of May, people broke lockdown laws and rules to be able to go out to protest. They felt really that strongly about it. At the time, we were a bit unsure of how to cover it, like, you know, should we go out? Like, are we allowed to? But I felt really strongly that we really needed to be there. I felt like this was going to be a moment as powerful as 1981 in the UK, which was when we had the Brixton riots. But not only did the entire protest remain entirely Peaceful. But it was so multiracial in a way that I don’t think we’ve really seen before in the UK. So I definitely felt like I was part of history when I was in the middle of that protest. Also felt very old. I should add I was like 28 and everyone there was like, oh my god, have you revised for this A-level exam or something?

Nish Kumar Well, as the oldest person on this call, that makes me feel absolutely desiccated.

Aamna Mohdin I’m 33 now,Nish. So, it’s fine.

Nish Kumar Why do you think the domino effect conversation happened? Because it started with a call for kind of racial justice, but then I think back on it at such an extraordinary period of time, because my whole life in this country, there’s no discussion about colonialism, there is no discussion of slavery. I remember doing history A level in England. And the only time we talked about colonialism was because you get to choose one subject on your A-levels, or you did in the kind of early 2000s. And I chose to do the Partition of India because for all of us, it lives in the memories of our families. I have Indian resistance fighters in my family, one of whom was shot in the back by British troops. So the legacy of it lives on our families, why do you think it had that kind of domino effect, where… It actually was the kind of holistic, all-encompassing conversation about racism and its history that a lot of us had been trying to have previously before.

Aamna Mohdin I’m still startled by the fact that these quite old, very British and English institutions like the Bank of England were releasing statements about slavery. We had commitments to reparations. These are things that we’ve never seen before and felt that everything was suddenly moving so quickly and I couldn’t pinpoint exactly as to why it was happening just that it was. I think though one of the reasons is the significant amount of confidence that a lot of young people brought to that conversation. So I interviewed 50 young black Britons between the ages of 16 to 21, um, all the way from, you know, like South Hampton to the Shetland Islands, astonished black people with up there. I think I was the first thing I said to that 17 year old, what are you doing? I asked him why now, like what has driven you? And I think social media has played a really big role, but then also you do have really powerful books like Renee’s book, why I’m not talking to white people about race. That have just crossed into the lexicon and it’s just became part of everyday language. This was also the same generation that were part of school strikes for the climate. So they had been politicized on other issues and they were connecting the dots in a way that I wasn’t doing until my mid-20s, I think. So I think that kind of really came to the fore and people felt we have to respond to this moment. But there’d been a lot of work that had happened previously. So there was a entire campaign to get rid of the Cecil Rhodes. A statue probably five years before BLM in 2020. And that had just been completely ignored, even though most of the students were in favor of it, the faculty were in favor of it. The local council were in favorite of it and same with the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol and the authorities just were not listening. So people did just take direct action as a result of just being ignored for decades upon decades.

Coco Khan I mean, you paint quite a vivid picture of a kind of snowball effect, you know, gathers momentum to create this utter huge magnanimous force. So then how do you square the circle with the fact that a lot of this is being undone, you know, you talked about the Bank of England, they have rolled back some of their DEI commitments. They claimed it was because it, you know, it didn’t work with the growth agenda or whatever it might be. And we see it left, right and center from council scrapping their DEA agenda and obviously Nigel Farage’s party reform UK, they’re making a push on making this a formal thing to abolish DEI. Is this reversal of DEI something that progressives should care about?

Aamna Mohdin Wrote an analysis piece asking, particularly those of us who are quite critical of identity politics or are critical of the way DEI has been utilized by these big corporations, should we be celebrating its downfall? And every expert that I’ve spoken to, an intellectual, has said no quite strongly because actually what DEI represents in this country is … Inclusion. Even though it’s come about as a result of black and Asian people in this country fighting for their rights, it means inclusion for disabled workers, it mean inclusion for women. I mean, I’ve just recently come back from maternity leave, it was ensuring that I have like flexible working arrangements for my child. It means inclusion if you’re LGBTQ. It’s an all-encompassing word that’s just about having a level playing field in the workplace so we have access to. The economy, the huge backlash against it, and they go for the acceptable group that people hate, Muslims, black people, Asian people, is part of a much bigger ideological battle to roll back our workers’ rights. I really read this quite strongly. There are attempts by certain parties and other figures within more mainstream parties to go for, I think, the Equality Act. We’re seeing that. So Wala Bravaman’s been quite Stronger now. Jacob Rees-Mogg has been calling for the abolishment of the Equality Act, but we’re also seeing Robert Jenrick talk about these anti-white policies just because, you know, a job advert. My eyes rolled so far back into my head. Oh my god, it hurt. And we don’t even have these targets in the UK in the way that the US does. We don’t say, you’ve got to hire an Asian person, you got to higher black. It’s never been that in the U.K. It has been much slower. It always been a voluntary thing. And people have been slowly won over to this. So we’re actually in a really strange situation where certain politicians are saying, no, we’re going to roll back on this. And businesses are saying well, no. This has been working for us and we don’t want anything to do with that because it’s making us lots of money. We’re much more accessible to like different markets. So just like the obvious thing is I’ve got curly hair, boots and other, you know, big high street brands having black hair products. Makes sense for them. It’s because they just like expand their customer base. So we are in a really strange position where leaders are meant to be leading. Our politicians are meant to be leaving, but they’re really not on this issue.

Nish Kumar The moral leadership of boots. Well, one of the major demands from the protesters in 2020 was a police reform, but Baroness Casey’s 2023 review of the Met following the death of Sarah Everard concluded that it is institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. Black led organizations are calling on the government to complete a followup. Has there been any progress made on police reform? Especially when it comes to, you know, dealing with women or dealing with black and minority ethnic people?

Aamna Mohdin So I was actually just listening to an interview on Radio 4 today where a police officer was saying some of Casey’s recommendations are being slowly implemented. One being that if you have a background check and you fail it, you shouldn’t be given a job. Seems obvious.

Coco Khan I didn’t realize that the inverse was true, that you fail your background check and you can be a copper.

Aamna Mohdin You can’t just have a forward-facing role, I think was what it was previously. So I was going to answer that question as no, but I just heard that this morning. So it seems to be some efforts, but the police haven’t responded yet properly to the Casey review. Often when there’s a racial reckoning in the UK, but if there’s an uprising protest riots, or there’s really horrific tragedy, like the killing of Stephen Lawrence and there’s loads of public anger, the state responds with their commission or review or report. Often what’s in those reviews or the reports are quite powerful points about racial discrimination. From 1981, there was a bit of a hesitation to use the word institutional or systemic. But by the time we get to the McPherson report in 1997, it’s quite clear that the UK has an issue of institutional racism. But what we wanted to see was, okay, how many recommendations were there? We found about 600 in the 12 reports that we decided to analyze. We know how to have fun at the Guardian, just us in this spreadsheet. And we wanted to see and analyze how many of those reports we’ve actually been implementing. And we were quite generous in what we were considering fully implemented. And even with that, only a third of those 600 recommendations since 1981 are fully implemented recommendations. And unsurprisingly, it’s ones that are like, we’re going to have diversity training, you know, it so we’re gonna improve the guidance. So we’re gonna. Make sure people are aware that the UK is a really diverse country, but much more systemic changes that many of these reviews were calling for, like certain accountability, that a police officer should be fired if they’d been found guilty of racism. That’s not the case. That is shocking to me, that we’re just in what Ted Counter, one of the commissioners described as a doom loop, and then something else that really stood out to me. Was the impact of austerity. Obviously we rightly reported on and discussed just how much austerity really impacted families who live in poverty, but it also did so much to roll back the few progress that we were making on racial equality. So many of, for example, Countall’s recommendation in 2001, so Ted Countall was the commissioner who was asked to come on after the 2001 riots to look into questions of segregation, inequality and on opportunities. And many of these recommendations were undone through austerity and just stuff that didn’t have anything to do with money, like making sure that schools have a public duty to promote integration in different areas. Those were just removed through some of Gove’s reforms for schools.

Nish Kumar We’re talking on the morning of Wednesday, the 28th of May, and this morning you’ve written a piece in The Guardian about the terrible incident that happened over the weekend in Liverpool. The car was driven into a crowd of people who were celebrating Liverpool Football Club winning the Premier League. The police described the suspect publicly as a 53-year-old white British man. Now, that feels quite unprecedented in terms of speed of disclosing the ethnicity. And that is obviously very connected to what you’ve already talked about, which is the race riots that happened last summer after the horrible murder of girls in Southport, then misinformation spreads about the ethnicity or the identity of the attacker and that instigates race riots. And now the police are releasing this person’s ethnicity to get ahead of online misinformation to prevent race riots, so all of this coming against backdrop of a Labour Prime Minister using language that echoes Enoch Powell’s. The combination of all of these things has left me with a real depressed sense about where we are with race relations in the UK at the moment. What would you say, just for hypothetical sake, what would you to a 39-year-old British-Asian man with a as yet undiagnosed case of IBS and a fondness for the music of Bob Dylan and Outkast, if he were, for example again and I’m plucking this completely out of thin air. Profoundly depressed about the state of race relations.

Aamna Mohdin Two things, just first on Liverpool, it was a really staggering decision by Merseyside police. One that a lot of people could understand, so it’s also worth pointing out, that was the police force that was also responding to Southport at the time, so this is how they feel like they were learning from that lesson, and they wanted to put a stop to the racist and Islamophobic posts that were already out there within minutes. Um, and there was apparently, I haven’t seen this, but someone took a picture of someone else saying it’s this man. So I think they really wanted to get ahead of it, but it really shows we are living in really terrifying times where a website like that can exist. That’s just a cesspool for misinformation, disinformation.

Nish Kumar We’re talking about Twitter specifically in this instance, but social media in general.

Aamna Mohdin Yes, exactly. And I think we just can’t leave it to the police to decide because you’re going to be in a really weird situation where they’ve made it quite clear this isn’t going to happen every time. So when are you going to name the race of the suspect? And could it not just backfire if the next time you choose not to, and he’s not white, people begin to start saying things like two tier policing, which we know isn’t reflected in the data of disparities in the criminal justice system. They’re in a real weird pickle, I think. And that second question of hope, how do you continue to feel hope? I’m a generally quite a hopeful person. I’m very happy person. And I don’t think you get to like, you know, survive a war and like come from a refugee camp and not think, damn, I’m bit lucky and things can get better. I don’t want to be someone who doesn’t feel like it can get, it can better. And it’s really depressing that from the top. We’re not seeing what we were hoping to see from a left party, right? Like we’re, not seeing the language. We’re not saying the leadership that we want to see on these questions, but change doesn’t ever come from there. You know, again, just go back to these race reports. That was never going to be actually meeting the demands of the movement. Like one person that I spoke to said that, yes, we want the saris and we want, you know, the Somali fish stews and we want to… Celebrate Black History Month, but actually we want something also done about the racist bordering system that you have. We want something done about Black and Asian kids doing so well at school. Why aren’t they getting into the best universities? Why aren t they getting the best job? So the more systemic question gets ignored time and time again. So we probably all need to stop looking upwards for that change to come. It’s going to really come from us. And on that question, I think people are mobilizing, you know, that’s really easy to see. And I think maybe it’s on us to make sure that we’re covering them better and highlighting their work. I’ve really been thinking a lot about what does it mean to be a news reporter in this moment? And is it just highlighting the pain and the suffering, or are we also gonna give people their autonomy and reflect their autonomy? So we do wanna talk about your book.

Coco Khan So in your book, you explore your family’s journey from Somalia to the UK.

Nish Kumar I’m holding the book up in the window.

Coco Khan How do you think things have changed for people seeking asylum today?

Aamna Mohdin We’re living in a completely different world now. It’s really, really frightening. It wasn’t illegal to come to this country through an irregular route. So these aren’t routes that are officially sanctioned through UNHCR. It wasn’t illegal to seek asylum. That was the post-Second World War world that we live in. That has now changed. It’s quite shocking, I think, when we see how refugees and asylum seekers are written about with the horrendous Southport attacks. The riots that followed, it’s really important to remember that the rumor that was going around was that he was a Muslim asylum seeker that came on a boat. That is really scary and really striking. And I think we’re also in this quite frightening juncture where, yeah, our Prime Minister, that’s the Labour Prime Minister is, has been criticized for echoing the language of the far-right. But one thing that I always say when you have these really strong speeches on immigration, how are you gonna get people to tell the difference between who is here as a legal immigrant and who is not? How are you going to tell the difference between who has a right to be, who’s British and who’s not? Often when you are being out attacked in the street, those aren’t distinctions that they’re interested in looking at. Hey, let me see your British passport before I punch you in the face. So it is quite scary, the language that we’re seeing and, um… Just speaking to some of the anti-racist activists and trade unions I spoke to for the piece, they did say like, actually, the left really needs to wake up to this moment and that it’s a harbinger of much more for our right politics to come. So we really need to be on our guard.

Coco Khan Where do you think people who want to, you know, who want to be part of this anti-racist fight, where do you think they can go politically? You know, is the Labour Party still a home for people who care about anti- racism? So we just did some

Aamna Mohdin reporting on this to ask how BAME Labour voters kind of feel. And for a lot of people, that speech from Stamo is just the last point. Like they couldn’t take it anymore and they have counseled their membership. But I’ll be honest, this has really begun much earlier than this moment. I think his initial response to Gaza has been a breaking point for a of BAME communities. And then of course, Spain residents across the country are also impacted by winter fuel cuts, also impacted, by these proposed cuts to pit. People are really, really angry. They don’t know where to go on that question of where to I wish I knew. I really, I really don’t. I’m very interested to see how progressive parties respond to this. I’m just to see what happens from the Green leadership. I’m interested to see if that’s going to be, you know, a new left party seems to be always being I’m a little bit teased, but… What I’m always really interested in is again, just as a community affairs correspondent, won’t be a surprise, just community activism. We’re always covering what are people doing on that very local level. And there’s something really quite powerful about being part of a community when people are being told you’re an island of strangers actually going out and saying, no, we’re not. I think that’s a powerful political statement to make. Now that I’m both a merman and an auntie, I’m happy to say, put down your phone and go out and talk to people. Ha ha!

Coco Khan Aamna Mohdin, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Nish Kumar This book, Scattered, is an extraordinary memoir and story behind the headlines and statistics about refugees and what it actually means to be a person fleeing persecution. It’s an extraordinary book. It’s called Scattered and it’s out now.

Coco Khan After the break, we’ll be returning to Nigel Farage’s latest attack vector on the government, the family.

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Nish Kumar Now Coco, we spoke earlier about Nigel Farage’s press conference on Tuesday, but one thing we thought we’d save for later is this.

Clip So we want to go much, much further to encourage people to have children, to make it easier for them to have children.

Nish Kumar Yeesh. So Nigel Farage wants more women to have more babies and for it to be easier financially to bring up kids, which is why he went on to say that he wants to lift the two child benefit cap and make the tax burden lower for married couples. He of course stressed that the policy is, and I quote, aimed at British families. It’s not aimed at those who come into the country and suddenly decide to have a lot of children here. So don’t worry everybody, he’s still a c***. Don’t worry everyone. In case you’re worried, I’m sure that word has been bleeped and I’m happy for it to do so. Everyone knows what I said though. I think we can all agree we know what the word was.

Coco Khan Oh my God. You know, I read about the story, but hearing that then was the first time I heard his actual voice and it genuinely made me convulse with disgust. It’s so opportunistic. Nigel Farage doesn’t care about women. Nigel farage doesn’ care about like our ability to live to our fullest potential because of the society that allows us to fulfill our child care and child desires as well as a professional and creative and other aspects of our Now, he doesn’t care about any of that. He’s just trying to. Essentially say, look at foreigners, they have loads of kids, we’re going to help our lot, we’re gonna help the indigenous British. It’s just a dog whistle way of saying that they’re overrunning us basically.

Nish Kumar This is a far-right conspiratorial talking point. They always say things like Western birth rates, and Faraz said we want British families. We all know what we’re talking about. The dogs have been whistled. It’s like a Baja Man song up in here. The dogs had been whisted. They’ve very much been let out. We know what they’re talking. We are in on this podcast of improved policies. For working mothers, given that 50% of the hosts are currently working mothers. I mean, how do you feel, Coco? As somebody who’s just given birth to a child is living as a working mother, surely, I mean I would have thought you would be very in favor of more sensible and positive and supportive policies for working mother’s, right?

Coco Khan Oh yeah, of course, absolutely. And like, you know, if somehow the change ends up coming because of the pressure that Nigel Farage replies, okay, it makes me uncomfortable, but whatever, you now, I’ll take it. This is a overdue conversation that needs to be had nationally and change needs to happen so quickly. It’s outrageous how hard it is to just have a child. I would say though, that a really good way of improving the social conditions for childcare and raising a child is of course childcare costs, housing costs. Maternity leave flexible working but also paternity leave my other half he works from home and it has been such a transformative thing to have another full-time well I won’t say full- time in case his employers are listening but you know have another person who is available in the house I seriously doubt Nigel Farage would be up there being like I really want to bring Britain in line with France and make sure that men have guaranteed half a year off I just don’t think that’s going to happen, in addition to his dog whistle racism thing. There’s probably a dog whistle sexism thing, isn’t it? Women fulfill your duty of having lots and lots of babies. I do also just want to make one more point on this, which is that how is he going to decide which of the foreigners coming here to have children and who are the Brits that are worthy? I mean, my mum was an immigrant, but I was born here. My partner is white British. We have a mixed family. How does that work? How is that going to work with the administration? It’s so frustrating how average people are just so much more egalitarian than the politicians that go up there and paint these big visions for Britain. Do you know what I mean? I mean, as someone in a mixed family, the only real conflict we have is not about our immigration status. It’s just my mum constantly asking my husband all the time, are you cold? That’s the main thing. I mean he does wear shorts in December. It is weird, isn’t it? But anyway, it just it just really rankles me hearing this and now he’s going to lead the conversation. And now the conversation we need to have about childcare is all going to be about who should get the support, who shouldn’t. And that’s what it’s going be. He set the tone, he set the notes that we’re going to we’re gonna talk about.

Nish Kumar I imagine if you were disquieted by that you’re going to be even more disquited by what he went on to talk about, because Farage actually waded in on abortion.

Clip I am pro-choice, but I think it’s ludicrous, utterly ludicrous that we can allow abortion up to 24 weeks and yet if a child is born prematurely at 22 weeks, your local hospital will move heaven and earth and probably succeed in that child surviving and going on and living a normal life.

Nish Kumar Look, it’s important to note that Nigel Farage has previously worked with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is an influential group on the US Christian right and part of a global network of evangelical groups behind the repeal of Roe vs Wade in the United States. And it’s one that’s working to make inroads across the Atlantic. I really think it’s important to caveat his remarks with that. So there is some appropriate context here. You know this isn’t something that he’s just decided on the spur of the moment. He has had a connection with this group, and it is worth flagging. There is a kind of shared interest there, clearly. Coco, what do you think listening to that, I mean, it is, it’s alarming.

Coco Khan It’s really alarming. And again, it’s so opportunistic. If the rules or the guidance needs to be updated, then of course that’s fine. This everything’s moving. It’s the science is changing. Of course let’s, let’s do that. And let’s that based on the wellbeing of both children and their mothers. Of course, but I want experts doing that. I want doctors doing that I don’t want Nigel Farage doing that, I mean, just off the top of my head and I am not an expert at all. Get a scan at 20 weeks, sometimes it’s more like 22 weeks with NHS waiting lists and at that scan you can find out that your child has a debilitating illness that means they might pass away in agony after a few months of their life. Some women may choose to terminate that pregnancy. Under his rules, no doubt they wouldn’t be allowed to do that. And do you know what I mean? He’ll pluck an example out of thin air being like, yes, yes it is true that more babies at 22 weeks are being saved, many aren’t. But nonetheless, he’ll pluck that out of thin air to make this politically expedient point, which is that essentially, you know, I’m Nigel Farage, I am the agitator. I basically see what’s been successful in America and I don’t care who hurts and suffers because of that. I’m going to use those tactics here in the UK and I’m gonna be supported by a far-right group. It just makes me so angry and even just starting a sentence like that, I m pro-choice. No, you’re not, No, you’re not. I just give me the It just makes me, ah, I’m going to move on.

Nish Kumar I mean, I will say that we’ve certainly talked about this on the show a few times, this idea that the right to abortion is something that there is a kind of global network that is trying to sort of pursue and has successfully done so and overturned in the American legal system, which is leading to individual American states now being free to outlaw abortion. And it does also give kind of important context to why a Labour MP likes de la Crecy. Has been fighting to codify in law the right to an abortion and fully decriminalize it. She was writing in The Guardian this week under the headline, The right to abortion is under threat in Britain, secure it now or risk losing it. And it is important when you hear things like that coming out of Faraj’s mouth to understand that someone like Stella Creasy is not engaging in needless scaremongering and alarmism. This is a real threat that’s coming, and it is really something that we need to be concerned by and engage with.

Coco Khan And of course, look, it must be very frustrating for progressives to feel like they’re having to answer questions posed by the right that have already been answered. The question of abortion, i.e. Should we have it? Is it a good thing to have in society that this is a legal thing we can do here? Yes, that’s been answered a long time ago. And you have these right-wing people dredging up these almost like old settled debates because they’ve seen that it’s successful in other territories. And now progressives have to waste their time. Answering this, rather than laying the foundations for an even more progressive world. And I understand that that is really, really frustrating. And actually, if we’re having conversations around reproductive rights, you know, Britain needs to improve in many respects, maternity care needs to, that’s the conversation we’d want to be having as progressives. But now we’re here having to talk to Nigel Farah. And, I get that frustration. However, I really hope that Labour and all the progressives parties do do that piece of work because it is crucial. Don’t Ignore him. You know what I mean? We need to prove our progressiveness and show how our policies, our economic policies, our individual policies, and our approach to healthcare can make the world a better place, make Britain a better, place otherwise human is scaremongering. I worry about it. I really do worry about it.

Nish Kumar And, uh, support for reform is clearly rising and it is something that the government needs to be concerning itself with at the moment, it seems to be chasing its tail by just being reactive to what Nigel Farage is doing and saying on a week to week basis. But I think what’s crucial is that the Labour government articulates a clear vision for the country and one that chimes with the majority of its motors, animating its base, you know, and… Producing a policy packet that changes the country for the better. The one thing everybody agrees with is Britain is not in a good condition right now. That is the one thing that everybody agrees. It’s just really important, I think, that Labour actually articulates a positive vision for that change that they keep saying they’re promising is coming. But look, it’s always worth noting in serious times. That there is still some funny stuff going on and it’s all coming out of the absolute clown show that is the Conservative Party. We know that Kemi Baden-Lock is in trouble as Conservative leader, but that hasn’t stopped her from demanding a new car. So there’s a story that’s been circulating this week that Kevin Vadek has been demanding a new car that would be more befitting a future prime minister. And I mean, how far in the future are we talking here, Kevin? Because under the current circumstances, that thing that you being prime minister is about a million years off.

Coco Khan Also, it’s quite a nice car that she has. It’s a Land Rover. I mean, that’s a fancy car.

Nish Kumar First of all, driving a Land Rover in London, you’re an absolute embarrassment. The streets just aren’t big enough. What are you doing? But it is a car that’s provided as the leader of opposition to her by the goddamn taxpayer. So it begs the question, what car is Kimi Bader-Lock after? Is she looking for a red Tesla like Donald Trump? Does she want Rolls Royce? I mean, I don’t know.

Coco Khan She wants to get like a yellow Maserati that she’s going to park outside Harrod’s.

Nish Kumar It’s a huge, huge claim to be doing this shambolically bad job. A job that everybody agrees is a bad job that she’s doing. Like there’s no one who can point to a single element of what Kemi is doing as being successful. That’s across the political spectrum, but it is a huge call in the middle of that to say, I should have better wheels.

Coco Khan I would not like to suggest what she would like, but I can imagine that with her fantasies of what she will do, it would be some sort of anti-woke Batmobile that would have powers to like, I don’t know, just stop a vegan in its tracks or something. I don’t know what her fantasy is.

Nish Kumar Listen, it might be more fitting that she just has a clown car. And also, you know, given the way that the Conservative Party is going, a decently sized clown car might house all its MPs that she’s going to end up with.

Coco Khan And that’s it, thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Don’t forget to follow at Pod Save The UK on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and on bluesky at podsavetheuk.crooked.com. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

Coco Khan Thanks to Senior Producer James Tyndale and Producer May Robson.

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan The executive producers are Anishka Sharma, Louise Cotton, and Katie Long, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

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