It’s week one in government and Labour have hit the ground running. We’ve got a new cabinet and big moves on planning reform and international relations are underway. But what about the opposition? Nish and Coco check in with Substack superstar Sam Freedman to uncover some of the challenges the new government faces over the course of the parliament and hear who might lead a new-look Conservative Party.

 

Later, Kwajo Tweneboa and Toby Lloyd drop in to chew over one of the prickliest issues the UK needs to deal with – housing. From social housing, to affordability, to no-fault evictions, we cover off the biggest challenges the government faces.

 

Finally, things get weird when Coco declares a “Red Ed Summer” as TikTokers thirst over the new energy secretary.

 

 

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Guests:

Sam Freedman, political analyst

Kwajo Tweneboa, housing campaigner

Toby Lloyd, housing consultant

 

Useful links:

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/pod-save-the-uk-live

 

Audio clips:

parliamentlive.tv

The Telegraph

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan We’re one week into a labor government and suddenly things are happening.

 

Nish Kumar After a campaign fall on the basis of anything is better than this. Let’s find out what that anything is. I’m Nish Kumar.

 

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan. And this is Pod Save the UK.

 

Nish Kumar There’s no rest for the wicked here. There’s been a frenzy of activity as labor kicks into gear to chat through the big moves. We’re joined by the coauthor of the UK’s most popular Substack, Sam Friedman.

 

Coco Khan And later we’re joined by special guests Kwajo Tweneboa and Toby Lloyd to discuss the biggest issue on the government’s plate housing. But first.

 

Clip Whatever our political differences. It’s now time to turn the page. Uniting a common endeavor of national renewal and make this new parliament. A Parliament of service. Thank you.

 

Coco Khan That’s Keir Starmer in his opening addresses as the new parliament began on Tuesday. So we thought we’d take a quick moment to have a look at the new cabinet. So that’s the most senior of government officials and the government faces that we’re going to be seeing a lot of over the coming years.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s right. A lot of the appointments were, as expected, Rachel Reeves becomes the first female chancellor of the Exchequer. Angela Rayner is the deputy prime minister and the secretary of state for whatever the new department for leveling up housing and communities is going to be, because labor very quickly announced that they would drop the term leveling up. To be fair to them, it’s completely meaningless. It’s sort of, you know, may as well have been the ministry of magic like it really is. It was a completely meaningless term. If that Cooper’s going to be the Home Secretary, Ed Miliband is going to be Secretary of State for energy and net zero. David Lammy is the foreign secretary. It was pretty much, as, expected. We know most of these people from doing these jobs in the shadow cabinet. They moved straight over to the actual government departments. The major exception was Lisa Nandy becoming the culture secretary after Thangam Debbonaire lost her seat to the Greens in Bristol and Emily Thornberry being passed over for the more experienced Richard, her mark as attorney general, Lisa Nandy, very quickly, announced the an end to the culture war and tried to promote a more, unified version of Britain, which I think the end of the culture war would be, along with the end of leveling up, a great boon to the people of this country.

 

Coco Khan So let’s talk a little bit about representation. I think any of our regular listeners will know that over the years I have had some complicated feelings towards representation. We obviously had a period of a lot of people of color in senior positions, but it didn’t always work out the best in terms of policy. And also there was always an undercurrent of them being thrown to the wolves and given hospital passes.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, we’ve come to a period where the cabinet was incredibly ethnically diverse, but at the same time enacted, policies that were quite brutal to communities of color. I think that people of color are allowed to have complicated feelings about this. On the one hand, I look at the ethnic diversity of the labor cabinet, and I think I wish this looked more like the country at large. On the other hand, they’ve got rid of the Rwanda policy, and a lot of the ethnic diversity was almost used as a cover for some of these brutal policies, because when they’re accused of racism, we were constantly turned around and told, how can these people possibly be racist when there’s this many black and brown people in the cabinet? And it was almost a sense that it provided cover for racist policies. And so we’re allowed to have complicated feelings. I think about this, but let’s talk about gender. Let’s talk about education as well, because there is more positive examples.

 

Coco Khan Right. So in terms of representation of women, 46% is the most balanced in history. The oldest person is the Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, at 70, while the transport secretary, Louise Hay, is only 37. The average age is 53. Again, those are like good numbers in terms of, you know, representing the country more broadly.

 

Nish Kumar Also, I suspect our American listeners would desperately crave that level of average age of political leadership. I imagine there’s Americans going in our government that is basically the equivalent of it being run by 13 year olds, an average age of 53. The average age of the two presidential candidates is 5 million. Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Oh, gosh.

 

Nish Kumar Both of them remember the the the first Independence Day. So I like I think we should definitely set this in context that there are positive things to be said.

 

Coco Khan Oh for sure, for sure. In terms of education, you know, we’re seeing less from the the private school boys club. So 92% of the cabinet were educated at comprehensive schools. Again, that’s much closer to the actual population. I think it’s 7% of pupils in the country are probably educated at the moment. For just some context, 19% of Rishi Sunak analysts, Truss’s cabinet were from comprehensive schools. So I mean a complete reversal there.

 

Nish Kumar Outside the cabinet, there is a lot of gen representation. There are ten MPs who technically qualify as part of that generation, including former PSUK guest Nadia Whittome. Who at this point, I guess, is kind of a veteran.

 

Coco Khan She would not qualify for a young person’s railcard. Actually, I actually don’t know how well you have to do for him, but I.

 

Nish Kumar Think they still full.

 

Coco Khan Okay, okay. That’s fine.

 

Nish Kumar I’m still reeling from watching spike play football last night and realizing that, like the two of the Spanish forwards, the wingers Nico Williams and Yami Lemos combined, ages are less than my age, so I’m still reeling from that piece of information. So I don’t I don’t particularly want to dig too far into the, ages of some of these Gen-Z MPs, but in any case, we’ve got sidetracked. Yeah. I’m old as fuck. Let let’s move on.

 

Coco Khan So Starmer has been hitting the phones with world leaders. He’s jetted off to Washington for NATO’s 75th anniversary meeting to find out more about the UK. Standing on the world stage. We actually have a special YouTube episode coming up this weekend with Ben Rhodes from our sister podcast, Pod Save the World. So search Pod Save the UK on YouTube to find us there. There’s also been a swathe of new policy announcements within this first week, so let’s hear more about that from someone who really knows their onions.

 

Nish Kumar So joining us now on Pod Save the UK to chat through a whirlwind first week in office is Substack Superstar Success.

 

Sam Freedman Is that something you can be? I don’t know?

 

Nish Kumar I don’t know, but if you’re looking for a wrestling dive, I think we might have found it. It’s policy expert and political commentator Sam Freedman. Welcome, Sam.

 

Sam Freedman Thank you very much for having me.

 

Nish Kumar The Substack Superstar.

 

Sam Freedman Substack superstar, yeah.

 

Coco Khan So, Sam, over the last year, we’ve been spending a lot of our energy laughing at the Tories. Obviously, you’re taking a much more serious approach in your Substack and the news.

 

Sam Freedman I mean, there’s a bit of laughing at them as well.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Coco Khan It’d be rude not to. Yeah. But generally, you know, you’ll, you’ll providing a more serious taking your book failed state. I mean as names go, it’s pretty serious. Title. The country is indeed in a difficult place. The government have their work cut out for them. I wanted to ask you. You’ve probably heard Rachel Reeves comment saying that, you know, the finances are as bad as after World War two. Do you agree with that?

 

Sam Freedman It depends what you mean, as ever. But I think they’re in a pretty bad way. You know, debt, as a country is as big as it’s been for, for 40, 50 years. We’re still borrowing a very large amount of money every year, and there’s a huge amount of need across so many public services. I think this is the bit that labor really going to struggle with is that you can go department by department, across all of government, and every single one of them has a really good case for needing a lot more money spent on its core priorities. And there’s no way to square that circle without without putting up taxes considerably, or risking putting up borrowing to the point where the markets don’t appreciate it. So. So yeah, it’s a very tricky financial position to be in.

 

Nish Kumar There was talk during the campaign from Keir Starmer about a sort of decade of renewal, which, you know, suggests there’s a plan that goes across two parliaments. What would you say in terms of just looking at the life cycle of this next parliament and the most fundamental challenges?

 

Sam Freedman Yeah, I mean, I think you’ve got a few areas where quite a few areas where you’ve got an immediate crisis. Essentially, prisons is a great example. There is no space in prisons. So you’ve got to take a decision straightaway on that. Doctor strike is a good example. There is still a junior doctor straight where Streeting is said straight away. He wants to try and resolve that if they can, that’s going to help, but it will cost money to resolve workforce issues. Pretty much everywhere you look, you know, prisons, NHS, but also schools, local government, nurseries, social care. So you’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s absolutely immediate, and there are a bunch of sort of quick things that you can do to start to alleviate those. Like resolving the doctor strike and some that you’re going to have to do, like of early release for prisoners, which no one really wants. But this is what my book is about, sort of saying, okay, but but for the really like the long term, how do you actually sustainably create a stronger, system where this stuff doesn’t keep happening and you don’t keep getting into crisis? I think you need to look at the way the state actually functions. Yeah, things like the way Parliament works, the way the civil service works, the way that we’re just an incredibly centralized country and we have very weak local and regional government, all of those kind of deep structural issues. And that does take a decade to change if you’re serious about changing it.

 

Nish Kumar Forgive me for being naive, but how can you resolve that without more money? I mean, in terms of decentralizing government, you know, for example, like I grew up in Croydon and Croydon Council is essentially bankrupt. There’s a campaign that started at the moment to try and keep the library that essentially grew up getting books from reading books. Spending time in when I was a kid is sort of is essentially about to shut down the campaign, going to try and keep it open. How do you decentralize power into local councils that are all seemingly on the verge of bankruptcy?

 

Sam Freedman So it’s a one question why are they all on the verge of bankruptcy? And the reason is that depend completely dependent on national government to provide their funding, and the national government hasn’t provided enough for quite a while, so they’re now in real trouble. So there’s two ways you could try and resolve that. One is to say we just need to bail them out and give them more money. The other way is to say over time, you want regions to be able to tax themselves, to raise their own money for their own services. Why is it that whether it’s Croydon or London or, you know, Manchester has to go to the government, cap in hand, to be able to keep a library open, why can’t they say we actually want to put council tax back more, or we want to have a local tourist tax? You know, we are very unusual in not having the ability local government, not having the ability to raise any money. Every other developed country you go to, America states can raise it. You have to have their own taxes, go to Germany, States have their own taxes. And that gives them some scope to to deal with this stuff. Ours is just completely dependent on the center.

 

Coco Khan So let’s talk a little bit about the battle for Tory leader. So likely contenders are Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, Tom Tugendhat, Victoria Atkins, Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly all of them tainted by the stench of the previous government and probably not some of our favorites. I think it’s fair to say on this side, what do you make of the contenders and what does it tell us? About where the Conservative Party might go.

 

Sam Freedman Was his 8% of the Tory party left running for the leadership? Which is a good, good start. I mean, I think that you can already start to see the contours of the contest. You’re going to have somebody representing the right of the party. I would say probably the favorite for that slot at the moment is Robert Jenrick. But that could change. And then you’re going to have somebody else and who that somebody else is, is going to be really critical in deciding the country representative.

 

Coco Khan Didn’t Suella Braverman say he was left?

 

Sam Freedman Yes. They have been having quite an entertaining fight this week. It’s always it’s always good when the worst people argue with each other. And, but, he, she was of indicating he’s a sort of an. Yeah, a left wing Remainer, which if, if Robert Jenrick is a left wing Remainer, then God knows, where she now is. But I think actually what she has done this week is essentially knock herself out of the race by being so extreme. So I think you’ve got Jenrick and Priti Patel fighting for a slot on the right wing slot, if you like. Of the people who see reform as the main threat and then there’ll be somebody else. Now, is that going to be someone who would consider themselves more moderate, like Tom Tugendhat, Victoria Atkins, or is it going to be Kemi Badenoch, who I think is often lumped in on the right of the party, but actually I think has positioned herself more across the party with different groups? So I think probably that’s going to be like for the MPs, the thing they have to decide. Do you put Badenoch up against Jenrick and Patel, in which case she might have a chance of winning and stopping the right, or do you put up someone like Tugendhat or Atkins and they probably won’t win with the membership, right. And then you might be left with, with, with Robert Jenrick running the party. So I think that’s the kind of calculation that would be going on for, for the more moderate Tory MPs.

 

Nish Kumar Is all problem, isn’t it, because the moderate Conservative Party can talk all at once about the need to tack to the center, the need to emphasize one nation conservativism? But at the end of the day, unless there is a rule change. The next Tory leader is going to be elected by the membership. And just this morning, as we record on Wednesday, a poll is suggested that almost half of the Tory members want some kind of merger with reform UK. Doesn’t that mean that someone like Tom Tugendhat or Victoria Atkins, their kind of race is run even before?

 

Sam Freedman So yeah, I mean, I think there is a real danger for MPs in putting someone like that through to the last two that they just won’t be able to win just however well they perform, etcetera. It’s much riskier, let’s put it that way. Whereas if they put someone like, they’d knock through who has very clearly said she would, doesn’t want to bring firearms into the party, she doesn’t want to merge with reform. You know, you get someone who does have appeal to the right but isn’t going to kind of go that far. So that’s kind of why I think she might end up as almost being the unity candidate, if you like.

 

Coco Khan Sorry, that was just Kemi Badenoch.

 

Sam Freedman I know, it’s a strange way of thinking about the race, but it’s it’s the way that they will be thinking about it.

 

Nish Kumar I think just before we go, I have a question for you about reform, because I can’t understand the terms of this story. I’ve read I’ve read it, then I’ve read people saying that it’s not true. I don’t quite know what’s happened here. There are allegations that of reform 605 candidates. Some of them may not have been real, like a sort of Deliveroo ghost kitchen, like a restaurant that only exists just in the app. And really. It’s been alleged that reform served up ghost candidates. In order to kind of show that they were competing in the maximum number of races. So they stood 605 candidates out of 650 constituencies. There are now allegations swirling. Some of them don’t exist. Now, I can’t tell whether that this is based on actual intelligence or information gathered, or whether one of the candidates just looks like an AI generated.

 

Sam Freedman So I think what happened? Well, exactly. One of the candidates who is real. Yeah. You doctored his photo?

 

Nish Kumar Yes. That’s right.

 

Sam Freedman He’s made him his voter look like it was AI generated, which then set off this kind of conspiracy theory. As far as I can tell, there was no evidence that any of the reform candidates were not real. What it does, I think, tell us, is that lots of them were really paper candidates. They didn’t do any campaigning. They were. They might have they might be a real person that exists somewhere, but they didn’t know campaigning. And and certainly, you know, perhaps weren’t expecting as well as they did in some cases. And I think that is an issue for reform in that they don’t really have any party infrastructure. And if they want to become a real threat on the right to the conservatives, which I think we should probably all be hoping they don’t. Yeah, they will have to build more of an infrastructure. And Nigel Farage isn’t very good at that. He didn’t do that with Ukip, didn’t do that with the Brexit Party. Now this is a very odd party because he owns it outright. It’s a company that he owns.

 

Nish Kumar I sort of feel like that hasn’t quite been discussed sufficiently.

 

Sam Freedman Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It is quite a strange. It is certainly an outrider in British politics.

 

Sam Freedman Yes. I mean I don’t I’m not aware of any party, certainly not one that’s come anywhere near to winning this many votes. That is set up like that. And it does raise some really big questions about how you then become a proper political party, if that is their goal. You know, for the next few years. And I did see they’ve just appointed Lee Anderson as that chief whip. And he as he left his last two parties, I’m not sure I would have made him my first choice for loyalty, boss, but so we’ll see how they do. But it is it is an odd setup, even if this particular story about made up candidates has not been shown to be accurate.

 

Nish Kumar Sam, thank you so much for joining us on TV. It’s been such a pleasure to see you. I’m not going to hold up a copy of this book. Yes, Sam’s book, Failed State, is out today, and, I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

 

Sam Freedman Thank you very much.

 

Coco Khan Now, after the break, we’re going to be joined by two very special guests to explore Labor’s first big policy challenge housing.

 

Nish Kumar [AD]

 

Nish Kumar Housing is one of the biggest issues in our country today. House affordability is at record lows. The average age of homeownership is climbing. Finding a place to rent can be nearly impossible in some areas, and according to the OECD, the UK has the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world, with 112,000 people living in temporary accommodation in 2023.

 

Coco Khan So joining us now on Pod Save the UK to chat through this massive issue is housing expert, former special adviser under Theresa May and former guest on this show, Toby Lloyd, alongside the legendary housing campaigner and journalist Kwajo Tweneboa, who rose to prominence after naming and shaming his social housing landlord for the terrible conditions his family were living in. Now he’s doing it for everyone else. Welcome to Pod Save the UK. So it’s been less than a week in power, but there’s been a lot of noise from the government on housing already. Here’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking on Monday in this clip from The Telegraph.

 

Clip I am taking immediate action to deliver this labor government’s mission to kickstart economic growth and to take the urgent steps necessary to build the infrastructure that we need, including 1.5 million homes in the next five years. The system needs a new signal. This is that.

 

Coco Khan Now, Reeves was mostly laying out the government’s ideas for planning reform with the aim of kickstarting private sector growth. She said that it aims to target brownfield and gray belt land, so that sites which already have buildings on them or are part of the greenbelt but are ultimately of lower quality. So she also talked about bringing back mandatory housing targets that had been ditched by the conservatives in 2022 and setting up a task force to accelerate stalled development sites. The overall housing target is 1.5 million new homes over the life of the parliament. So what are we thinking of the plan so far, guys?

 

Toby Lloyd I mean, it’s all fine as far as it goes, but it’s none of it is really fleshed out in enough detail to really judge it yet. So they’ve done pretty well on just kind of general vibes. They’ve got a lot of good headlines and the business lobbies really delighted with the oh yeah planning system. All bills in the green. Great. It all sounds good and you know it is quite good. But it’s all to be fought over on on the detail. So you know I totally agree we should be relaxing kind of green belt regulations and building on some more of the green belt because actually people do misunderstand it. It’s not all about beautiful countryside at all. It’s if anything, it’s a kind of branding failure or a Brexit branding success. Yeah, if they’d called it urban containment, zoning or something really boring like most planning policies.

 

Coco Khan That’s all a bit dead.

 

Toby Lloyd Exactly. But that’s, you know, the most planning terms have really boring, dry kind of technical descriptions like that green belt is a really nice brand. It’s not. It just means stopping cities from growing too fast. So yeah, they’re quite right to kind of open that up and challenge that. But how you do it really matters. And if you just abolish green Belt policy now, it probably it wouldn’t help very much. It might even make things worse.

 

Nish Kumar Kwajo, you’ve got a book coming out pretty soon, right? That’s called Our Country in Crisis. We just had, Sam Friedman on to talk about his book, Failed State.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It’s not it’s not in a great condition is it?.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa No, no, far from it.

 

Nish Kumar But can you give us a sort of sense of the scale of the problem that’s happening at the moment in this country? On housing, we should just also make clear that housing is a devolved issue. So Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish governments are responsible for housing in their respective nations. But in England alone, the Financial Times recently calculated that we need to build between 421 and 529,000 homes a year to meet population projections. So at the moment, even with the kind of vague policy announcements that are coming out, the labor government, the only figures that are being thrown around, around are around roughly 300,000 a year.

 

Toby Lloyd And we’re actually building about half that. Yeah. So and it’s about and it’s going down the markets entering a downturn has house buildings going to fall over the next year pretty much whatever the government does.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa And on top of that, we’ve been knocking down and selling off more social homes per year than we’ve actually been building. And look, I only got a C at GCSE maths, but even to me, the maths doesn’t make any sense at all. If I had to tackle the housing crisis. Can’t be talking about tackling the housing crisis that we’re knocking down and selling off more homes per year. I mean, it is the biggest barrier to economic prosperity in this country. I mean, Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer have been talking day in, day out, in the run up to the election about delivering economic prosperity for this country. You can’t do that unless you address the housing crisis. And it stems from the social housing crisis.

 

Nish Kumar Can you just give us a brief, just summary of what right to buy was and why it’s been damaging for this country’s housing problems.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa In the shortest way possible? It was just it was basically a, a policy that was actually discussed by labor first. Different. Correct. But it was introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 80s, 1980s. Which allowed people living in council properties to buy their council, properties. I’m quite a massive discount, a significant discount. And up until now, I think to about around 2 million. Or maybe it’s over 2 million of those homes have been sold off. There was a promise within that policy that those homes that were sold off would be replaced. But what we’ve seen, over many years, decades is actually that never happened. And now we’re in the biggest housing crisis that we’ve seen since the Second World War.

 

Nish Kumar So we need more more social housing. Yeah. We need from a starting point, do we just need to stop knocking down and selling off the stuff that we’ve got already?

 

Kwajo Tweneboa That would make absolute sense, would be first and foremost, stop what we have been doing for generations. And selling off council homes. And then add to add, add to the stock, add to the supply that we have. Because demand continues to grow, yet supply continues to fall of our council homes and availability of the council homes. It’s almost like trying to fill a bucket, right? Yeah. You’ve got holes in the bottom of it. You’re selling off the homes whilst trying to build. You’re never going to build at the rate that we are selling off, which led to people having to live in slum conditions. It’s led to 145,000 homeless kids in England. But it’s not just the conservative government under, Margaret Thatcher who’s at fault for this is consecutive governments. Since then, they have some of the best people, people that have gone to top universities that would have been able to see that this isn’t going to work long term. Yeah. Enough wasn’t done by consecutive governments to tackle this issue.

 

Coco Khan I think it’s also worth mentioning because, you know, when you talk about buying a council house. Well, I grew up in a council house. My mum’s always banging on about like one day I’ll buy this council house and obviously I get it, you know, it’s it’s security, it’s an asset. It’s a pension. In a time when there’s no sort of welfare state or certainly it’s in decline. So I get it. But when you look at this policy, a lot of those homes didn’t stay in those families. No, it’s landlords now. Now. So a number of those homes are essentially now being rented out. It’s actually you could say that this policy has. Encouraged a, vulnerability in this group.

 

Toby Lloyd Yeah, you’re right, baby. You also write that that’s why it’s been so popular. Because I see loads of council tenants do want to own their own home, and they love their offices. And that’s why governments have been really nervous about scrapping it. Even though you’re right, I can see the problem. Yeah, but, you know, it’s really popular. It’s the most popular policy ever.

 

Coco Khan I just wanted to dig into this affordable housing versus social housing.

 

Toby Lloyd All right. So the difference between council and social and affordable housing, because these times get messed up really badly and it’s it’s been slow. It’s sort of accidental, but it’s also been partly deliberate. Governments have deliberately kind of blurred it because it is easy. Right. Originally you just had social housing that was all owned by councils basically. So council housing, social housing was the same thing. Then you started to get the growth of housing associations, which are also providing social housing, but they’re not councils. Then you get, in the kind of 80s and 90s onwards, you get a growth of new types of non-market housing provided by, mainly by housing associations like shared ownership, stuff like that, which is kind of not quite social, but it’s submarket is cheaper than the open market. And so the new labor government called all of that affordable housing is an umbrella term for everything. That was not a mark at home. The problem with that, and it kind of made sense, is like you needed to catch all term. So when they said affordable housing, they meant social rented housing, shared ownership, council housing, the lot. The problem of that is that then the conservative government came in and created a whole bunch of new ten years, which were almost as expensive as the market, which they called things like affordable rent. And at that point, everyone just kind of totally confused everyone’s heads up and that just we just you can’t even use the word affordable housing.

 

Coco Khan I go down, my local high street, there’s a massive development, and it’s like affordable homes from half 1 million pounds a lot. Yeah. Sorry.

 

Toby Lloyd Is that exactly? So what we need most of is the most affordable type of affordable housing, which is social rent times. Right? Personally, I don’t particularly care whether that’s owned by councils or housing associations. It’s providing the same very low cost, secure housing for people who need it.

 

Coco Khan So when they say affordable homes, yeah, they haven’t specified these exact social housing.

 

Toby Lloyd And so this.

 

Coco Khan Is a concern, right?

 

Toby Lloyd And this is this is the dangers because because now the definition affordable housing includes anything that can be these really unaffordable things are up to 80% of market, which is basically nothing. I mean it’s the same, almost the same as a market home or council housing, a social rent and everything in between. So, yeah, we need told their feet to the fire when they say they want the biggest increase. And they have said this right, the biggest increase in affordable and social housing in a generation. Yeah, there is some, there’s some, there’s some meat in that. But it’s quite pointed out at the moment. We’ve got negative amounts of social housing being provided because we’re losing more than we’re building.

 

Coco Khan And the quality of it is terrible.

 

Toby Lloyd So the you’re getting the biggest increase in a generation means kind of we could get to zero. And that would definitely be the biggest increase in a generation.

 

Nish Kumar Kwajo, it probably is worth raising that. Angela Rayner lived in social housing. And are you hopeful that that means her own lived experience will actually be useful in delivering for what people on social housing actually need?

 

Kwajo Tweneboa I really do hope that that gives her and not just her, her department, her team, that sort of focus to want to actually deliver what’s needed for social housing. Because if anyone’s going to understand the benefits of social housing, why it’s important to have that connection, it’s going to be higher. We need more representation in Westminster. I’ve talked about this a lot in the book. There needs to be more class diversity. I want to be able to look in, if I’m watching Prime Minister’s Questions and see people that look like me, that sound like me, sound like my friends, look like my friends, the kids that go to school near me, state schools so they can look at politics and think, actually, maybe one day I could end up there.

 

Nish Kumar Because you you lived experience tells you the fact that we’ve established a huge number of problems here. We’ve almost got three different phases here. We’ve got a lack of supply, we’ve got a lack of the supply that we have actually being truly affordable. And then we’ve got the third problem, which is the supply that we have is often unfit for human habitation.

 

Coco Khan And I was wondering, you know, talking about my own lived experience, like living in a council house wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t always full of, you know, like. When did this happen that, that it suddenly deteriorated?

 

Toby Lloyd It was invented virtually when it was when it was first and trees, it often wasn’t even cheaper. The whole point of it was actually that it was better quality. That was what councils got involved in providing housing for in the first place, was so that people could get decent quality modern housing, well looked after and unfortunately the government stopped investing in it. They saw councils being able to invest in it. And then and then recently when there’s been a little bit of money going back in towards council housing, it’s all been about building more. And so and so. There hasn’t been enough investment in the existing stock, which is just getting older and the same time, we’ve then gone and done kind of perfectly sensible things, partly because quite hassled them, to raise the standards. And so that’s all good too. So right now you have to meet high standards. But there’s no money for them to do that.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa And still, there’s loads of problems. I get emails all the time. Things, even with the regulation coming out, I still have people that I’ve been complaining. And for years living in absolute slum conditions. And I have to say, in regards to damp and mold, this is an issue that’s been going on for longer than I’ve been alive, longer than my mum’s been alive. I’ve watched archive footage of people complaining, journalists visiting people where these individuals and families have been complaining about damp mold issues in their homes from like their 60s, and being blamed for their lifestyle, their living conditions, well over three months free, even open the windows. And that’s still happening now. But I want to make it clear in terms of poor conditions, it’s not just damp a mold, it’s it’s got a lot of, high profile over the last couple of years. But when we talk about disrepair, it’s a lot wider than just dump a mold. People are living with cockroaches, mice, ceilings collapsing, leaks constantly, mushrooms growing in their homes, you name it, I’ve seen it. People’s homes being flooded by raw sewage and having to live in that. It’s it’s it’s more than just damp mold. So when we talk about the decent home standard, which isn’t decent at all and actually should have been revised a very long time ago, because half the stuff that I see isn’t even on that list, but would not, under no circumstances, be considered a decent home to be living in. It has to be revised and it has to be revised, urgently. But we can’t just focus on this issue of damp mold. Yes, at its worst, it can absolutely kill. And there has to be policy and legislation put in place. And I know our law has been and the Social Housing Regulation bill, it needs to be enforced. But what we also have to be looking at is the other conditions that people are being forced to live in, the other slum conditions people are having to live in.

 

Nish Kumar So let’s talk about the private sector. So obviously that’s that’s a huge issue here. Toby, when you were last on the show last year, we actually talked about a piece of legislation that you, as an expert on housing policy, seemed enthused by elements of, and that there was a lot of support for this. And one of the big things is that the house, there was a housing bill that promised to end section 21, no fault evictions.

 

Toby Lloyd I was the one who got Theresa May to announce it. Sorry. I’ve got a personal interest in this one.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. And it’s. They never managed to get it through. But it was, you know, this was an actual good piece of legislation that we all agreed, and it sort of got somehow got kicked into the long grass for long enough that then the election was called and it.

 

Toby Lloyd It didn’t make it.

 

Nish Kumar It didn’t make it. Surely. A top priority for how the housing policies got to be ending, though, section 21, if.

 

Toby Lloyd You like, and they’ve committed to that in the manifesto. So I think that will be an early, early win for them to at least finally finish that one. Because, you know, it was announced five years ago. Right. And it’s been two. Yeah. For prime ministers or whatever. So it’s about time it actually happened.

 

Coco Khan One of the things that I also want to talk about is just in terms of home ownership, you know, politics has been dominated by the homeowners. Right. No one wants to be the government that saw house prices go down or didn’t inflate. And so they pander to home owners. The fact well, as I said, actually correct me, it may not be a fact, but if we build more homes, won’t homes be cheaper? Won’t homeowners hate that? Won’t that be? Make it unlikely that the.

 

Toby Lloyd What you’re doing here is is revealing the terrible secret and contradiction hot housing policy, right that no one likes to ever say out loud okay, so everyone is obsessed with building building more homes. Why? Because we’re worried that no one can afford a home. Yes, well, the kind of unspoken bit there is, like so therefore we want them to get cheaper. But no one ever says that now because of all the reasons you said. And it’s worse than that. The only way we have at the moment of getting more homes built is by encouraging the private sector to build them. How do we encourage the private sector to build more homes? By making the price rise? So and what we’re seeing right now is house prices have softened a bit. So therefore all the developers are stopping building. So we have we’ve painted ourselves into a corner where we want to build more homes because they’re too expensive. The only way we can get more homes built is to keep making them more expensive.

 

Nish Kumar I feel like I’m about to get a nosebleed. How do you.

 

Toby Lloyd And you wonder why I’m unemployed?

 

Nish Kumar How do you resolve that contradiction?

 

Toby Lloyd Well, I think it’s two things. Firstly, if you if you really want to build more homes, you need to. I think even his agreeing with you, you need to build more non-market homes. You can’t just rely on the private sector to build it. It’s not it’s not fair on them. They’re private businesses. They’re out to make a profit. They’re not going to meet all of our social needs out of the goodness of their heart. It’s not their job, but we need we need government to be stepping up and and organizing the building of more social and affordable housing. Right?

 

Kwajo Tweneboa I mean, in terms of this home ownership plight, in terms of home ownership conversation, like, I’m so sick and tired of it. I’ve been hearing it. We hear it every single election by every single government want so wanting to win and put forward something for housing. It’s always home ownership. And this is part of the problem. This is what I write about in this book. For generations, especially since Margaret Thatcher, we’ve had this idea of you have to own your home. If you’re going to be successful. You need a home, you need a home. And it’s rammed down our throats constantly. You’re not going to function. You won’t be successful without owning your own home. Housing has been looked at for a very long time as an asset, an accumulation of wealth, a representation of someone’s success rather than being a necessity. A fundamental to the lives of every single one of us. A need just like food and water and fresh air, we all need shelter in order to function. Look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s an absolute basic that that that we all need to. And what’s happened is housing has gone from being a need for all to a luxury. When we talk about young people, I mean, we’re completely we’re a completely different generation. Young people coming out of university and tens of thousands of pounds worth of debt. And if they do get a job, which is difficult at the moment, they’re more likely going to go out there and privately rent. And we know we’re seeing some of the highest private rental costs that we’ve seen on record. They’re struggling to pay their rent at the end of each month, clothe themselves, pay their bills and still try and live their lives. How are they possibly going to think about saving up for a deposit, even if government promises given them a 90% discount, if they cannot physically save up? It doesn’t matter how much of a discount they’re going to give them, they’re not going to be able to save up for it. So what they need to be focusing on is actually how housing policy is going to help the majority of people running this idea of home ownership down our throats right now is completely out of touch with people’s reality. And all you have to do is look at places like Vienna, look at Singapore, look at Germany, where, renting is more successful than it is here. All people want is security, affordability and, stability when it comes to housing.

 

Toby Lloyd Is entirely right that, you know, we need more focus on making the rented options better. One of the week on. That is actually makes homeownership more kind of easy going to because one of the worst things that drives our house prices is everyone so desperate to become a homeowner because like, the rental options are so crap. If you had other options, it’s like, you know, it’s just a choice. Shouldn’t really matter that much. Then guess what? People wouldn’t be desperately bidding up the price of homes. It make homeownership more affordable and frankly, should just be less of a big deal. Whether you happen to be a renter or an owner, they should both be perfectly decent options that are available to most people.

 

Nish Kumar Just finally, before we let you guys go. Are we feeling hopeful currently?

 

Toby Lloyd Yes. Because because there’s enough good stuff in what they’ve already said. I think they do get the size of the problem. We haven’t even talked about, for example, the from my mind, the best thing that I had in the manifesto, which is a new generation of mutants, that was the response after the Second World War. So government actually stepped in and built a whole load of new towns to provide, you know, 2 million homes for people.

 

Coco Khan That but that was the government, not private developers. And ladies only developed like.

 

Toby Lloyd Well, no. The government organized it. Actually, most were built by private developers. Right. So so you yeah, we need the government to step in and do the organizing. They don’t actually have to like okay, we don’t actually need Keir Starmer out there laying the bricks himself. You know, the government’s job is to organize this stuff. And that’s what they did with the new towns. It worked really well.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa Yeah. I mean, I’m hopeful, but what I want the government to, to really focus on now is building safety and the quality of the homes that they’re building. If we think we’ve got a housing crisis now, we’re going to have an even bigger 1 in 15 years time when they have to start ripping down those so-called new builds. So there has to be a focus on the quality of the homes that are being built and built with those that are going to be living in them in mind. I am hopeful, though, with this government, even in the last few days, I felt a sense of stability, even with the shadow cabinet then becoming the cabinet and not a whole kerfuffle with all of that. It showed some stability from this government, and I think that’s their intent and that is what we need. But we they’ve got one shot at this and they have to do it in the right way. If they’re going to tackle the housing crisis, deliver the economic prosperity they say they are, they have to do it with common sense, basically, and tackle it with a bottom up approach. And if they do that, I have no doubt they could potentially be successful with this. But if they don’t. God knows what’s going to happen at the next general election in five years time.

 

Nish Kumar Toby, Kojo, thank you so much for joining us. Just book A Country in Crisis is out next week. Check it out. Thanks, guys.

 

Kwajo Tweneboa Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar [AD]

 

Nish Kumar So this has been Keir Starmer’s first week in office, and there seems to be a flurry of excitement. Activity one columnist as much that energy, but with a different kind of excitement.

 

Coco Khan Yes, there was an article this week in the Times from Caitlin Moran saying Our Prime Minister has, and I quote, turbocharged her arousal levels. She says she feels fruity.

 

Nish Kumar I’ve, I’ve, I’m strongly against. Articles about politics that involve people’s arousal levels in anyway, I just. Can we not keep the two separate?

 

Coco Khan I think we need to sort of do some reflection here, because we make jokes about vaginal dryness from Iain Duncan Smith.

 

Nish Kumar Well, that’s the opposite of arousal levels. That’s the polar opposite. So perfectly happy to talk about politicians drawing vaginas and softening penises around the country. But the opposite of just can we just leave it?

 

Coco Khan So to quote more from Caitlin, she says there is nothing more erotic to a middle aged woman than competency. It is the quality we value above all others. As we age. Our preferred language of love shifts from I would die for you to I will stay alive and do your VAT return for you. The single most sexual phrase we can hear is I’ll take care of that. That I could see your body tensing up, Nish.

 

Nish Kumar Just let’s introduce. A bit more shame to our discussion about politics.

 

Coco Khan Keeping South Asian today.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s just introduce a bit more shame in general to our discussions about politics. Let’s not sexualize politicians. Let’s just have let their public servants, let’s just have them do policy stuff. This is all Dishy Rishi all over again. It’s just he. These are not sexually attractive people. That’s why they’re in politics. If they were sexually attractive, they would be models or film actors.

 

Coco Khan Well, we do need to stick to the, sexualized content just for a little bit longer. Nash. So, you know, alongside the housing moves we spoke about earlier, we’ve also had some new moves from labor on the energy front. Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced that the de facto ban on new onshore wind farms is out, and hinted that they may designate new onshore wind farms as a nationally significant infrastructure project, meaning that local councils can’t vet them. It’s all down to the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, so Ed Miliband might be able to sign off a new development. And, you know, that’s essentially we’ll see projects being held up in the past being free to to happen.

 

Nish Kumar Yes. So apparently and these are all words I think we could agree I understand Tick Tock has gone wild, with memes for Ed Miliband. Yes. So here’s a clip from TikTok echoing the Charli XCX Brat Girl summer memes, all of which I think we could all agree words I absolutely understand. And I’m not reading from the script here. So we don’t get sued by her label. Coca Cola will be providing the backing track. This is Von Dutch, in the style of Charli XCX, as filtered through the medium of Coco Khan.

 

Coco Khan I’m your number one. I’m your number one. Yeah. Number one. Yeah. I’m your number one. Yeah. I’m just living that life. Von Dutch Coke classic. But I still pop. I get money, you get mad because the bank shots. Yeah, I know you’re like, oh, that’s it it’s done.

 

Nish Kumar So for the podcast listeners who have experienced, I would say, one of the strangest minutes of audio in the history of the medium. What was playing? There was a clip, from at Electoral Dysfunction on TikTok, where we witnessed a barrage of Ed Miliband cut perfectly to Charli XCX is Von Dutch, which I’ve been told is very brat.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, I mean, I’m a big fan of Charli XCX. Yeah, I sing, I sing, boom, clap to my cat. I’m sorry Nish, I’m going to do it now. But I always sing to my cat. Boom, pap the sound of my cat. The cat goes meow, meow meow meow meow meow meow. So that’s the song. So I’m a big you know, I would consider myself a Charli fan. I enjoyed the brat moment. But I’m finding this, this sort of almost revival of the 2015 moment where everyone was sort of thirsting over Ed Miliband, who at the time was labor leader. Yeah. And the kind of. The coalescence of Bratt and that sound. I’m finding it really, really challenging, basically. So just if you haven’t been following this trend, the brat girl summer, it’s the meme trend of the season. It’s named after Charli XCX’s latest album, brat. What do you need to be a brat, you might be asking? Well, Charli told the BBC that they could be luxury, but they could also be trashy. She says a pack of cigarets, a bit lighter and a strappy white top with no bra. That’s all you need. Which I guess is kind of Ed Miliband. But obviously being the geriatric millennial that I am, I can’t help but be like, oh, I get it, guys, I get it. Gen ZY2 K’s back, strappy tots back, baby G’s back thirsting over Ed Miliband back. Get your own ideas. Yeah, we’ve already done it. One time. I’ve had it enough. Let’s just leave.

 

Nish Kumar It. I have understood almost nothing of the last. I would say five minutes of this show. I have literally understood enough. I feel like I feel like Captain America in the movie where he’s, like, unfrozen from the 1940s. Like, I truly have no idea what he’s Charli XCX’s. Is this a new beat combo? Like. I have no idea what’s going on.

 

Coco Khan Well, the TikTok memesters, I can’t believe I’m saying this and declaring this a Red Ed summer.

 

Nish Kumar Right? Okay, so what does that mean?

 

Coco Khan So it’s the summer of Red Ed.

 

Nish Kumar Ed Miliband?

 

Coco Khan Mad Miliband, which complements nicely the summer of the Charli XCX Green, the brat green that you’ve probably seen around.

 

Nish Kumar I’ve seen the brat green. Yes.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, yeah. And together they’re creating some sort of super summer meme of sexualizing Ed Miliband.

 

Nish Kumar Okay, I don’t agree with sexualisation of politicians. I think we’ve I’ve made that sufficiently clear. I’m going to go. I’ll go up my homework this week is I get to listen to the Charli XCX Brat album.

 

Coco Khan It’s very good.

 

Nish Kumar You which which I haven’t heard. Yeah. I, I don’t understand a lot of what’s happened. I feel like a lot of stuff has sort of happened near me. Yeah. I’m going to go and do some real hardcore googling.

 

Coco Khan I’m genuinely concerned that this is going to take off, and there is going to be a moment where Ed Miliband sings Charli XCX.  And it’s going to happen. And at that moment you’ll be like, oh God.

 

Nish Kumar Listen, if I’ve understood what’s going on and I clearly fucking haven’t. But from what I could tell, Ed Miliband is not to blame for anything.

 

Coco Khan No, no, no, no, it’s not his fault.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Coco Khan So if you’re listening to this, Ed, do you want to come on the show talk about energy policy? We won’t at all mention the TikToks.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I, as you can tell, Ed, I definitely won’t mention them, given that I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on. People keep saying brat Summer and me TikTok memes, and I feel about 200.

 

Coco Khan That’s it guys. That’s the show. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. We’re going to be discussing some of the government’s policy challenges over the next few weeks, not just random internet memes, although we can’t promise we won’t be covering those. But if you do have a question on health, energy, or education, please let us hear it. We’d love to know! Email us at PSUK@Reducedlistening.co.uk or drop us a voice note on WhatsApp. Our number is 07494 933444. Internationally, that’s +44 7494 933444.

 

Nish Kumar And I imagine will our inbox will be full of is people talking about which politicians I fancy because every time I say something shouldn’t happen, there’s no way to stop it from happening. If anything, it encourages it from happening. So I look forward to hearing which politicians you people fucking fancy this week.

 

Coco Khan What we’ll do is maybe we could do is like a bonus bit of content. I can just read it all to you as almost like and just watch you squirm. Like the words of so-and-so is sexy as a personal attack.

 

Nish Kumar Don’t forget to follow @ Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and you can find us on our fancy YouTube page. You can catch full episodes and highlights there. And this weekend this is very exciting. You can catch a very special conversation we had with our friend Ben Rhodes from Pod Save the World. Search Pod Save the UK on YouTube to find us. You’ll also be able to hear us on the Pod Save the World feed. Because we have a conversation with Ben about the UK election result.

 

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

 

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and digital producer Alex Bishop.

 

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

 

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer James Reynolds and Happy Birthday!

 

Coco Khan The executive producers are Anoushka Sharma, Dan Jackson, Madeline Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

 

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

 

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