The Government’s rallying cry to the nation to help fix the NHS via a public consultation has not disappointed. In what is fast becoming the National Health Service’s very own Boaty McBoatface moment, Nish and Coco dissect the wild and weird policy suggestions flooding the website.

 

Then Jeremy Corbyn, former Labour Party leader and Independent MP for Islington North, joins to tell us how the left can make their voices heard in Parliament and whether a new leftwing political party could be on the horizon.

 

Later, with the US elections looming, co-host of our sister show Pod Save the World Tommy Vietor calls in to discuss why the Labour party is under fire for sending hundreds of staffers to canvas for the Democrats and what the result next month might mean for US-UK relations.

 

Finally, Nish and Coco discuss a protest from an Australian Senator who shouted directly into the ears of King Charles, which comes as the Government resists paying reparations – or even apologising for – slavery and the actions of the British Empire.

 

Guests:

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Tommy Vietor

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

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

 

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar. And today we’re speaking to the independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn, to understand what’s next for the left.

 

Coco Khan And later, with us elections looming, we’re joined by co-host of our sister podcast Pod Save The World Tommy Vietor, to discuss what it means for US UK relations.

 

Nish Kumar So the NHS is the government’s topic of the week and it’s nice to see us focusing on reform and policy as opposed to just talking about how everything’s getting worse. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has declared a once in a generation opportunity for the NHS to be reformed and that’s great. But the way that they’ve gone about it has struck us as being a little strange.

 

Coco Khan Yeah. So on Monday, the Health secretary, Wes Streeting, announced an open public consultation on the future of the NHS. And in the grand tradition, it makes you so patriotic. Things got very weird.

 

Nish Kumar Yes. I mean, in something that any of us could have seen happening. The proposals that were coming in thick and fast were different flavors of nonsense. One of them included putting beer on tap in hospitals as free cinema tickets from the NHS. Waffles for every meal. Just some of the highlights from day one of the consultation. Development of an alchemical panacea is an incredible piece of policy. I’m not sure anybody would get behind the proposal for mandatory euthanasia to fill up hospital beds, but the suggestion to legalize recreational cannabis might make cocoa happy.

 

Coco Khan Ridiculous. You do this every opportunity you can just make some little dig about some some false accusation about me and potential recreational drug use. This is utterly absurd. Never take recreational cannabis, not least because it makes me sick. Obviously there’s.

 

Nish Kumar That’s right. In fact, I’ve never seen you take your cannabis. And that’s the end of that sentence. That’s the end of that side.

 

Coco Khan That’s the end of it isn’t making stuff up fun. So obviously, obviously there’s plenty of actual productive suggestions to, you know, some of the the comments have come in include clean the hospitals now and then back to health care, which is certainly one we could agree with, as well as maybe actually providing some health care to trans people.

 

Nish Kumar An actual good suggestion and this is obviously the NHS is Boaty Mcboatface moment. Now, again, I suspect most of you will be familiar with this. If there are any international listeners or viewers that don’t remember this. There was a public vote on naming a new boat and the winner was Boaty Mcboatface because the British public cannot be trusted to not play the fool. So, look, I think there’s a definite argument to be made that it is a good thing that the forms of the NHS start by a consultation with the public who use it. There will be people listening to this and watching this that will have very specific experiences of the NHS that they think would be useful for the government to hear in terms of improving the situation and outcomes for patients. The only thing that strikes me as strange about this is I don’t really understand why we’re not talking about the roll out of the Labour Party’s plan for the NHS that it been building up. In its period in opposition. I’m slightly concerned as to why there was no specific plan for day one of a Labour government and what it would do to start to deal with some of the problems in the national as well.

 

Coco Khan Exactly. It is important that patients have an opportunity to speak about their experience and more information is good. But I would be surprised if there wasn’t already a wealth of patient data out there and there was already stuff that they could be working on to, you know, stop this acute problem that’s going to happen in winter because that’s what people want.

 

Nish Kumar So the first solution I would have thought is an immediate cash injection into National Health Service. And the idea that we’re starting from a position of, okay, we need to make a list of everything that’s wrong.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, it’s like a fact finding mission.

 

Nish Kumar It’s deeply concerning because when does that actually translate to policy and when does that actually translate to money going into the service? We all know the key problem. I can’t imagine how many of those public consultations are. We need more money. Our hospital doesn’t work. We can’t get an appointment with our GP. You have to do something in the short term to fix a crisis.

 

Coco Khan Well, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for us as citizens, as voters to expect that there was already a robust plan in place, which actually leads me very nicely to our next guest, who famously produced two very thorough plans that he put to the public before two general elections. Now, Labour might have won a landslide victory in the general election, but one of the more surprising outcomes was the unlikely gains made by the Greens and a surge in the number of independent candidates. With greater colLabouration, could they become a real power in politics?

 

Nish Kumar To find out, we’re joined by former leader of the Labour Party and the independent MP for Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK. Great to have you with us.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Nice to be with you.

 

Nish Kumar So, Jeremy, what is life like for you outside of the party that you were a member of for over 40 years?

 

Jeremy Corbyn Over 50 years.

 

Nish Kumar Over 50?

 

Jeremy Corbyn Over 50 years. I joined when I was 16.

 

Nish Kumar Wow.

 

Coco Khan Wow. I remember us talking about this. And I thought to myself, You should have had youth. Jeremy Corbyn, You know, 16 years old. Could have been rock and roll.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Come on. You obviously didn’t have the great advantage of living in Shropshire in the 1960s, where it was at. It was all happening there. The wrekin young socialists we met every Sunday night. We had high times. We also went to the Shepton Mallet Folk Festival in 1970.

 

Nish Kumar I’m not going to press you for further clarification on the phrase high times.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Michael Eavis was there as well.

 

Nish Kumar Okay. Well, I.

 

Jeremy Corbyn He thought this as a great idea. So he set up Glastonbury.

 

Nish Kumar They said if Eavis was there, we know what kind of high times those times were. But sort of after, you know, the last decade and a half, how did it feel to see the party that you have been part of for so much of your life and UNled come to power in the election?

 

Jeremy Corbyn Well, I was I had very mixed feelings about the whole thing. Obviously, one is that I was delighted to see the end of the Tory government and I was pleased, delighted to be elected as an independent member first thing to North, which was to me an enormous honor to be reelected by the people that have been elected me ten times before. So that was amazing. And I was just sadly disappointed at the paucity of promise in the Labour manifesto. No real change in any international strategy and fundamentally accepting very orthodox economic theories for the future.

 

Nish Kumar The Government will announce spending plans next week and Rachel Rees has promised that there will be no return to austerity. But at the same time there’s a string of mixed messages about whether there is going to be spending increases or whether the purse strings are going to be tightened. How are you feeling about the direction of travel in the budget and what would you be hoping to see? Rachel Reeves announced next week.

 

Jeremy Corbyn I fear it’s going to be an attack on benefits. And we’ve seen a bit of a whiff of this with the promotion of the obesity vaccination to those people who are not in work because of their levels of health problems or obesity. This is sort of headline grabbing, not very well thought out policy. So I look forward to listening very carefully to the budget next week. But I hope and I’ve signed the letter in support of it, there’s going to be a wealth tax included in that. And we’ve got a surprising number of people of most parties now supporting the principle of a wealth tax on those with disposable wealth of over 10 million pounds. So it’s not going to. Like you or me or I suspect anybody watching this particular program, but would bring in quite a lot of money that could be spent on the things that we actually need to spend on health, education, housing and environment.

 

Coco Khan So you use the phrase, you know, it’s not very well thought out. And I’m glad you said that, because I think it’s fair to say that’s a concern. And I have had you know, we were talking about West Street things, public consultation for the NHS. Of course, you know, getting the public involved is wonderful. You know, increasing democracy in our political participation is wonderful. But also, I thought you had a plan, mate. Keir Starmer stood in front of the public, you know, went on television and said, It’s much worse than we thought. Now we can argue about whether that is the case. It certainly seemed that the press knew it was much worse than they were saying. But I guess one of the things I wanted to ask you is how reasonable is it to expect the government to have had a plan before they, you know, on the run up to election that they should have already had these things in place? You went to an election twice. How much of a plan did you have for the first 12 months?

 

Jeremy Corbyn Well, I was accused of having an over detail plan because we have two very long manifestos. And when we were writing them, I remember saying to my team, I was I was becoming slightly concerned that they were very long. And I said, look, look, let’s be careful. If we put out something that’s over long, it will simply not be understood or would be ignored. But they said, No, no, we’ve got to go into the campaign and go into an election saying exactly what we will do. So we did produce these very substantial, very detailed manifestos. And, you know, it’s the largest number of accesses online of any manifesto ever was made in the 2017 manifesto. And we had to reprint it after the election because there was still demand for it, because it set out in quite a lot of detail a vision of how you deal with industrial, social, environmental and international issues that this country faces. And I think the Labour manifesto and last election was a bit thin on detail. And so to suddenly announce it was 22 billion pounds nobody knew about. Well, I find that slightly odd because, yes, I’m sure that the outgoing Conservative government wanted to hide things. And they did appear to make in the six months before the election a number of unfunded spending announcements. But the idea that it was so large that now affects everyone in the government does, I think is an odd way of doing things. It’s allowing all your politics to be decided by the outgoing government. Surely we need a bit of vision.

 

Nish Kumar Can I just ask just before we move on, I’m thinking particularly of the 2017 manifesto. That was a very closely run election. Do you now maybe reflect that this part of you, the things maybe my instincts were correct, that an over detail document was to appeal to people that are disposed to vote for the Labour Party, might have maybe put off some undecided voters.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Well, I was proud of the work that was put into the detail, put into it and the sense of vision that was there. It did mean that if there were undecided voters, if you had the resources to do it, you could explain to them exactly what you were proposing to do, which is what we attempt to do. But remember, in that campaign, we started the campaign from a very low point. Theresa may called the election because she thought it would be a walkover for her. We saw it on 24% and finished on 41%, all built up during the campaign with that manifesto. So I’m proud of what we did.

 

Coco Khan According to The Guardian last month. You spoke at the launch of a new left wing political party reportedly named Collective. It was attended by left wing grandees such as yourself, former Unite Head Len McCluskey, filmmaker Ken Loach. Can you tell us anything about this party?

 

Speaker 4 What is it?

 

Jeremy Corbyn Never been called a left wing grandee before? I’m not sure about this. I’m not sure about your choice of language grandee.

 

Nish Kumar It does seem to be a contradiction in terms. Being a grandee doesn’t seem very left.

 

Coco Khan Okay, fine, fine, fine.

 

Jeremy Corbyn It doesn’t sound terribly democratic. This sort of Aristocratic entitlement.

 

Coco Khan Okay. All right. We’ll work on it. We’ll work and everything. Surprise us, Jeremy. His first attempts.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Okay, so you’ll work on your messaging. Okay.

 

Nish Kumar Well, this is linguistic communism.

 

Jeremy Corbyn You’ve got a word there mate.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Let’s check the collected works on that and see what it’s what it comes out. What its about is alternative political voices around the country. I stood as an independent and I stood on the issues that we’ve talked about and put them in a post, an election address, and I produced a manifesto for my own constituency online version of it. Others stood as independent. My good friend Andrew Feinstein, for example, stood in the neighboring constituency and we didn’t really liaise very much before the election on what we’re going to say, but we ended up saying roughly the same thing about housing, social justice, wages, full employment and environmental sustainability. And then in many other parts, the country’s independents were saying roughly that, such as Pfizer Shaheen and Chingford and the campaigns that run by those that were successful there and Mohammed also in Ilford. And so after the election, I thought it was important that we come together and there was a discussion which was reported in rather exaggerated form in The Guardian after it happened. But it is about voices coming together. But I don’t want to see some sort of top down political party formed. I think what’s more important is grassroots democracy. And grassroots democracy means that you form local forums where people come along and express their views, some of which will agree with each others, some might not. But those forums are going to deal with local issues. We’ve held the first in my constituency last month. Now that sort of thing is happening all over. I’m very confident that over the next few months, a lot of groups are going to come together from all over the country and an alternative voice will increasingly be heard. I hope in a very unified kind of way. So the politics of the future have got to be on demand for social justice, but it’s got to be based in community, the grassroots. I think we’ve had enough of manipulative politics, of centralized parties.

 

Nish Kumar So wait. So what we’re talking about the moment you’ve got the new group with four independent MEPs known as the Independent Alliance, which is, you know, not an insignificant number. You’re the fifth largest bloc in the House of Commons and are tied with Reform UK and the DUP. So you’ve got that independent alliance and now you’re also making these consultations around the country, which you you know, you said you want to be democratic accountable and be about grassroots action. That then translates itself into specific policy ideas on areas like housing and mental health. But then is there then a logical conclusion of this voting bloc with these grassroots groups that are generating ideas? Does that then translate itself into a new political party under the name collective.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Or political force? There’s a lot of areas that could go in to that I would hope is where we end up with a sort of a voice around the country offering a political alternative. Because if you look at the economics of what’s happening now in Britain, in most European countries and to some extent in the USA, all levels of austerity, though nobody uses the word austerity anymore. But in reality it is about cutting public spending. It is about not increasing taxation on the very richest. It’s about not tackling the grotesque levels of economic inequality within our society, some of which were products of profiteering during Covid. And I think there needs to be a voice that comes together. So I’m also working with various left groupings across Europe.

 

Coco Khan I can tell you you’re not going to give me an answer on whether it’s going to be a party or not. But in the spirit of democracy, I’m going to give you my thoughts. My thoughts.

 

Jeremy Corbyn Well, I’d like to hear you.

 

Coco Khan Well, I’m a millennial and an aging, aging millennial. And, you know, I would say there’s a bit of a deficit of democracy for my generation. Like we don’t actually have a lot of choices. And part of that is because of the first past the post system, but also it’s because no one’s having these conversations. So I’m not going to say whether you should or should not start a political party. But it is interesting. So hypothetically speaking, if we did have a new left wing party, do you think it should be a separate political project or just really to influence the Labour Party a bit like reform did with the Tories?

 

Jeremy Corbyn The end goal is a society where you don’t have homelessness, you don’t have impoverished, hungry children, you don’t have these grotesque levels of inequality, and you don’t see the privatization of National Health Service. The end goal is an international strategy which is designed towards peace and environmental sustainability, rather than more and more money being spent on weapons and war. And so I think we have to look at what the political objectives are that we’re trying to achieve, how that comes about, what the structure is. It’s got to evolve. I could sit here and say, okay, I’m forming a party now, all joy, and I’m not going to do that because that’s not the way I believe politics should be, the successful political movements that. Have had a massive influence on changes within their own society. Of all been strongly rooted in communities and grown from that. Politics to me is about the inclusion of people in a popular way. And so it’s not just about you and me having an economic chat with people. Yeah, it’s also about culture. It’s also about music. It’s about poetry, It’s about art, It’s about imagination, people’s experiences and an education system that is, in my view, more inclusive and less competitive. I think we need to rethink our approach and our society in so many ways.

 

Coco Khan I sniggered a little bit when you said it’s not just me and you having a conversation about economics. I was like, no, that’s not a conversation I’m having. I can assure you that’s not my message.

 

Jeremy Corbyn I’m really, really. Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, that that is the conversation I’m having. And I’m being invited to an increasingly few parties as consequence.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Jeremy Corbyn You’re the one left in the kitchen with some cold, soft drink while the rest of them are having fun is that it?

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s it.

 

Coco Khan You’re in my kitchen. That’s where you are, Nish.

 

Nish Kumar Before you go. We’ve been asking all the MPs that we’ve added TV since the election. You’re obviously an interesting position because you’re, you know, you’re an experienced MP, but you’re also coming into this Parliament for the first time as an independent. It’s a different experience. So I guess the question that we’re going to ask you is, of course we’ll ask everyone. Are you having any fun? Are you enjoying yourself?

 

Jeremy Corbyn I always do enjoy what I do, and I enjoy life as well because I do what I want to do, which is to represent my area and work with people and take up and support the causes that I do. But I’m depressed and angry when I turn on the television and I just see thousands of lives being lost in wars in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Lebanon, and so on. Come on, guys. We can do the world better than this.

 

Coco Khan Jeremy Corbyn, thank you so much for joining us Pod Save the UK?

 

Jeremy Corbyn Thank you. Thank you very much.

 

Nish Kumar Now after the break, we’ll be speaking to Tommy Vietor, co-host of our sister podcast Pod Save The World, about the upcoming US elections, what they mean for the international stage, and frankly, asking just how fucked we might be.

 

Coco Khan In a year of way too many elections around the world. This one’s been looming large over the lot. That is the American election. So November’s US election will reverberate around the globe really for years to come. So joining us now to discuss just how I believe the official word is Fox, we are if Donald Trump somehow manages to find his way into the White House for the second time is the co-host of our sister podcast, Pod Save The World Tommy Vietor. Hi, Tommy.

 

Tommy Vietor Hi. It’s great to see you guys.

 

Nish Kumar How are you.

 

Tommy Vietor Guys? I’m you provide me some emotional lift and relief when I listen to you because you’re past the terrible big election. And I know it’s I know it’s not great, but it could be a lot worse.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Coco Khan How’s your energy levels in regards to that? Because it’s a bit of a marathon, the U.S. election.

 

Tommy Vietor I feel like I’ve said literally everything I have to say about this election a hundred times over, and there’s nothing new. You know, this is the part of election where, like, there’s no debates left. There’s no big kind of you know, there’s no October surprise yet. There’s just a relentless series of campaign events and interviews and speeches. And it’s like, which ones move the needle? We’ll never know.

 

Nish Kumar How are you feeling? Just in of yourself for the moment.

 

Tommy Vietor I feel horrible because the fact that it’s a tied race is just hard to stomach and understand, given all that we’ve seen from Donald Trump over the last nine years or whatever it’s been. I think with respect to sort of where the campaign is, I mean, look, I talked to smart people on the on the Harris campaign all the time. They I think all sincerely and honestly believe that this thing is tied. There are seven key battleground states in all the public polls. And all the private data we’re seeing has it within the margin of error. And so what’s really scary is sometimes elections in the U.S. kind of break one way or the other in the last two weeks based on something that’s in the news. You know, it could be a letter from Jim Comey scolding Hillary Clinton like 2016. It could be Bibi Netanyahu bombing a new country. Maybe we’ll bomb Jordan. Yeah. What are they been up to? You know, King Abdullah, Europe. So I don’t know. But that’s that’s the stuff that makes me worried.

 

Nish Kumar Well, why? I mean, this is a sort of this is a sideline issue. But just on the specific issue of Netanyahu, why is the Democrat Democratic Party so concerned to offer support to someone who is so openly has no respect for it as a political organization?

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah. I mean, couldn’t be any more clear that Bibi Netanyahu wants Donald Trump to win. Most Israeli voters want Donald Trump to win. It’s profoundly frustrating. I think that Joe Biden’s Gaza policy has been terrible. It’s you know, since the very first day when he flew over and hugged Bibi Netanyahu, I thought that was a mistake, just sort of knowing the character of that man. And if you look at what’s played out over the last year, I mean, I don’t know about you guys, but I think my my Twitter algorithm has decided that I want to constantly be fed the most horrific images from northern Gaza imaginable. And it just like shakes you to your core every single day, seeing what’s happening and knowing the U.S. complicity in that. I think the problem for Kamala Harris is that Joe Biden is the president and she just doesn’t have a ton of space to break from him, especially on foreign policy, I think. Having talked to people kind of in her orbit, I think she shares a lot of the frustration that you and I might have about Netanyahu and what he’s doing. I just think it’s very hard for her to, like break from her current boss, for lack of a better word.

 

Coco Khan Well, I mean, you know, Keir Starmer keeps talking about continuity, and I suppose she’s seen as the continuity candidate. I do just want to come back to this quite horrifying picture you painted of Donald Trump becoming president and just really pick your brains about what that means for us in the UK. I mean, lots of Starmer’s cabinet have criticized him. David Lammy, who you know well as well, you know, he’s described him as a woman hating, neo Nazi, sympathizing sociopath. Ed Miliband, current energy secretary, said The idea that we have shared values with a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper beggars belief. I mean, do you think this stuff is something that Trump will not forgive us for? You know, that it will prove a problem and out from the the fire and brimstone that occurs? Nigel Farage will rise from the ashes.

 

Tommy Vietor Boy, that’s a good question. I mean, I hadn’t heard all those quotes, but I like them. I nailed it.

 

Nish Kumar He’s going to struggle to refute a lot of these allegations.

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah, he did say he would like to, you know, grab women by the private parts. I think what I think you’re likely to see from Trump is just more kind of overt meddling in British politics. You know, I mean, elevating people like Farage, inviting him to the White House, kind of getting reform on the map even more. There’s this weird connective tissue in the right wing in America where we’re like, they have these conferences where they invite Liz Truss to speak. The only people inviting Liz Truss anywhere, you know, it’s like. Bolsonaro down in Brazil. It’s Viktor Orban in Hungary. They all come together and kind of exchange authoritarian best practices. So I imagine, you know, Trump has a long memory. He does not forget slights. I think he wants to be liked by the UK. He views you guys as one of the kind of places that I think he cares about his opinion over there. He wants the royal family to like him. But yeah, it will make me a little nervous.

 

Nish Kumar Then, despite all of this official neutrality, the news reports just this week that Labour sent 100 staffers over to the U.S. to help the Democrats canvass in swing states. Now, these are these are like political groups affiliated to the Labour Party. The Labour Party itself is not directly, I believe, sent over staffers. Republicans have expressed their outrage at the plans and Elon Musk took to his own website, Twitter, to accuse Labour of illegal election interference. If there’s one thing Elon Musk does know, it’s election interference. Usually based on his plan to, I think, bribe individual Republican voters.

 

Tommy Vietor Correct. Correct.

 

Nish Kumar So I mean, is is this is this election interference?

 

Tommy Vietor I don’t think so. I saw these reports. I mean, 100 people knocking on doors. It’s it’s nice. Thank you. Appreciate it. But it’s a it’s a drop in the bucket. But you’re right. I mean, Elon Musk is currently holding a contest where he’s giving away $1 million every day to voters in certain key swing states who are registered to vote and who sign his dumb little petition, which pretty clearly seems to be in violation of election law, which says you cannot incentivize or pay people to register to vote, which is clearly what his plan is there.

 

Coco Khan But the you know, the ties between Labour and the Democrats is quite well established. It does go beyond door knocking. I understand that. Harris his team have for a long time swapped campaign tips with Labour, which I also find mildly amusing because Labour’s whole campaign was just we’re not the Tories. Yeah, right. I mean, that was the whole thing. I don’t know what tips were were exchanged, but and if Harris does win, what what could a progressive alliance between the US and the UK look like? Like what can we expect? Sunny uplands, rainbows bunnies. What? What is this? A future that we might finally get?

 

Tommy Vietor Good idea. Do you think the Labour Party tips were like, Here’s what you do. You let the other guys be in charge for 14 years. They ruin everything. They put a literal buffoon in charge of the entire body.

 

Nish Kumar So if you’re a sports fan, you’ll be familiar with Rope a Dope. The Labour has just been gone full Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle.

 

Coco Khan You need to explain that for us. For us people.

 

Nish Kumar It was a fighting tactic Mohammed Ali employed when he for George Foreman in the Rumble in the jungle. He was older than Foreman. And so he leant back on the ropes and let Foreman essentially punch himself out. So I’m suggesting the Labour Party essentially let the Conservative Party tire themselves out by being in government for 14 years.

 

Coco Khan Got you.

 

Tommy Vietor It was a brilliant long game.

 

Nish Kumar It’s a brilliant long game.

 

Tommy Vietor They’re like cicadas. They just thought. Real quick, sports question, then I promise I’ll answer. Okay. Do you guys follow American football at all?

 

Coco Khan No friend.

 

Tommy Vietor Keep having a London game.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, we just. Yeah.

 

Tommy Vietor Are you offended by the fact that, like, this past weekend, my New England Patriots played against the Jacksonville Jaguars, two of the worst teams in the entire NFL played some of the worst football I’ve ever seen it. It felt it felt worse than when Barack Obama gave the Queen an iPod. It felt insulting.

 

Coco Khan So I’m again, again, again, I’ve missed this completely. So. So the US as a present sent us two bad teams, is that what you’re saying?

 

Tommy Vietor The NFL is trying to expand into the European markets. It’s been a London game every weekend.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Tommy Vietor But it’s just been shit.

 

Coco Khan Aww that’s a bit mean.

 

Nish Kumar The thing that. I didn’t know that the queen got an ipod. I thought it was Gordon Brown they got an iPod and some old DVDs.

 

Tommy Vietor Oh. I think he might have gotten some old DVDs too. Anyway.

 

Coco Khan Sorry.

 

Tommy Vietor We suck at giving presents, but what could a Labour and Democratic Party alliance? I mean, imagine if we really coordinated and tried to make this upcoming Cop climate summit work something, you know, and actually did something on climate change that would be amazing. Imagine if there was some sort of effort to work together, not just the US and UK, but nationally on the sort of global refugee crisis and migration and figuring out ways where we can burden share across every country to help people. So you don’t have these like right wing, you know, neo-Nazi parties demagoguing the issue and popping up in places like Austria where you really don’t want to see a right wing neo-Nazi party. Germany’s a couple of things. Germany, the FDA.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, it’s is there room is there also some cooperation on wealth, international tax stuff? Because the reality is that with multinational companies existing in the way that they do, and especially with a lot of tech companies existing as the way that they do essentially sort of registered kind of in countries that are favorable to their tax arrangements but still doing business in our end of. Countries are opting out of the tax system. Is that something we could also cooperate on?

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah, I mean, it was some sort of, you know, global minimum tax. I know that was an idea that was floated early on in the Biden administration. But you’re right. I mean, it’s 21. Every multinational just sort of pops up and is suddenly headquartered in Ireland. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. Not sure how this works.

 

Coco Khan Though, for the weather. Can I ask you just a question about mood? I mean, one of the things that I was really struck by here in the UK was the Tories were out and I think there was a sense of relief for that, but there wasn’t a sense of joy. You know, I didn’t certainly I didn’t detect it amongst my own peer group. But even when I was out and about, you know, on election night, admittedly I drank enough for everyone, so that was fine. But nevertheless, you know, it was very subdued. And I think that was a reflection of the, I would say the Labour Party not giving a a robust offering of hope. What do you think the mood is going to be like for you guys that next day?

 

Tommy Vietor I love the the Coco Hangover stories, like the occasional good one and they’re always funny and they’re always they always paint a picture that just feels very familiar. I think, well, sadly, there will be relief, but that relief will will only really fully set in after Kamala Harris is sworn into office. Given all the shenanigans we saw from Donald Trump the last time. So I think there will be, you know, relief from a lot of quarters about kind of dealing with this unique threat that Trump poses and hopefully just finally being able to move on from this guy because he is starting to look really old. He’s kind of losing the thread. I don’t know if you guys saw he did a townhall Q&A the other day where he just ended up doing a DJ set for 38 minutes. Yeah, he’s playing like cats and shit is crazy.

 

Nish Kumar He just played Motion of Hallelujah and I thought, I think this might bring Leonard Cohen back from the Dead.

 

Tommy Vietor Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Last question before I let you go. So, you know, we’ve just had all 100 days of storm and we don’t normally go for the 100 days measure in the UK, but it’s really caught on. If we check with you all for 100 days, do you think you’ll feel differently now?

 

Tommy Vietor Well, here’s the challenge. I think that right now Republicans are on track to take the Senate, which will block sort of any legislative efforts Kamala Harris might have. It’s not clear to me yet how the House of Representatives voting is going to shake out, but there’s a chance that, you know, it could be Kamala Harris versus the fully Republican Congress, which is just going to suck because what Republicans do is they say government is bad. They highlight the ways it has failed or has not helped you. And they use that cynicism to drive people away from the Democratic Party, the people who support institutions and believe in government and fair taxation and yada, yada, yada. And so, you know, it’s we’re going to be in for a rough road, I think, either way. I think, though, you know, the American system, like the president, is just so powerful, especially on foreign policy. That’ll be an enormous relief to get rid of Trump if we can. But knock on wood.

 

Coco Khan So do you think we’ll see more immediate impact on foreign policy than domestic?

 

Tommy Vietor Yes. I mean, she will have far more leeway to do things on foreign policy than than any other place. I hope that means more diplomacy. I hope that means getting back into talks with the Iranians about their nuclear program. I hope we can fix our idiotic Cuba policy in the United States, where we’ve embargoed this island for decades now for no reason. And now they’re you know, I think they’re in the midst of a multiday blackout because there’s no power for people. So there’s just a lot of things we could do, a prioritization of human rights, trying to, you know, continue to build up alliances, whether it’s NATO or the EU or other places, and just, you know, keep our friends. Our friends.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. Tell me thank you so much for joining us and parts of the UK. We are keeping everything crossed.

 

Coco Khan Yes. We will join you on this very long, dreary road ahead. I think I think that I think that we can all agree that that’s what it is, isn’t it? For all of us.

 

Tommy Vietor Thanks for having me. Is very fun.

 

Coco Khan Now, suitably following our chat with Tommy, we thought it might be time to look at some other international affairs. So the script is telling us to use our posh voices. So here goes. King Charles has spent six days in Australia bringing joy to local tattoo makers as they manufacture commemorative spoons and tea mugs doomed to live for eternity on the shelves of Aussie charity shops.

 

Nish Kumar Charles’s first tour took him to Sydney, where he and his wife Camilla, were said to be touched by projections of their images upon Sydney Opera House before heading south to the capital, Canberra, for a state reception at Parliament House. Things were going swimmingly for the Windsors until a surprise interruption. As you can hear in this clip from The Guardian.

 

Clip Clip

 

Coco Khan So the protester you heard that was actually independent Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe, an indigenous Australian woman and former member of the Australian Greens. She’s long been an advocate of Australia becoming a republic and has drawn controversy over her years of service to Parliament.

 

Nish Kumar Her time in the Greens was bye bye scandal that allege that she was in a relationship with a member of a biker gang and she controversially campaigned against Australia’s failed Indigenous voice referendum, which would have established a presence for Indigenous Australians within the Australian parliamentary system. Please go back and check out our Edinburgh Fringe episode button below to hear more on that. If you haven’t heard it already.

 

Coco Khan Thorpe’s objection to the Voice stated that if Indigenous Australians were to accept the terms, it would have amounted to a treaty, something that none of the many groups of Indigenous Australians have ever consented to and arguing that it would be, and I quote, an easy way to fake progress. She has instead supported the Pay the Rent campaign, named after a lyric in an iconic indigenous rights song that encourages Australians to voluntarily pay reparations. So look her protest directly to King Charles. We heard her there saying, you know, give us our land back. You stole our.

 

Nish Kumar Land. She keeps saying, you’re not asking as well, right? Yeah. And it’s, you know. Visit. As a British person. Do I find it strange that our cake is a cake of Australia? Yes. Incredibly strange. I find the idea of the Commonwealth genuinely strange, you know, as both a child of Britain and also, I guess, a child of one of the countries inside Commonwealth. I do find the whole enterprise quite strange. Thoughts protest. It doesn’t come as a great time for Keir Starmer in ten Downing Street because they are actively trying to avoid discussion of reparations for slavery and the actions of the British Empire at the upcoming meeting of the leaders of the Commonwealth in Samoa that King Charles is also due to attend. The UK stated that there’ll be no apology over the UK’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.

 

Coco Khan Caricom, a group of 15 Caribbean governments, are likely to call for reparations that could exceed 200 billion. But Starmer has said reparations were not on his agenda, which is in line with the former Tory government, who repeatedly resisted calls for a payout.

 

Nish Kumar We should say this is in spite of some pressure from backbench Labour MPs. Labour MP Balbir Bharati has said that the UK has a moral and legal duty to address historic injustices. And one of the former guests on the show, Clive Lewis, the MP, pointed out that David Lammy is a son of the Caribbean from Guyana. And Clive said there are high expectations that he will move the dial in their direction. Now, while Labour are resistant to place slavery reparations, the British Government did agree to pay a generous compensation package of 20 million pounds to the slave owners for the loss of their very heavily inverting the commas around this word property, which amounts to about 300 million pounds. In today’s money, this amounted to some 40% of the Treasury’s annual income, one of the largest loans in history. And the British taxpayer only finished paying this off in 2015. That is the largest single governmental bailout until the bailout of the banking sector after the 2008 financial crisis. That fact alone should be enough to boil the blood of any right thinking person.

 

Coco Khan I mean, look, most British people are not aware of the UK’s role in colonizing Australia. Well, I mean, certainly not that aware of the row in I mean, let’s be frank. Mass killing, Indigenous Australians killed. I think it’s fair. It’s a genocide and absolute genocide and we have a collective amnesia about this. You know, so Thorpe mentions in the clip, you know, our children, our babies. So that’s a reference to the stolen Generation, where children of indigenous mothers were taken from their families to live with white Australians. I mean, how grotesque is that? You know, and it’s really hard to deny that her protest, you know, it was just incredibly successful. I mean, it put it on the world stage. We’re sitting here having a conversation about it now. So, you know, I’d have to I have to say, if we were doing here of the week, I might put her in for it.

 

Nish Kumar You know, again, I think that. A lot of our country’s historic crimes were not committed on our own soil. And as a consequence, I think we have escaped the kind of accountability that the individual countries of America and Australia maybe haven’t in quite the same way. But, you know, these are all British people that doing this. We we have a tendency to say, well, the Australians did X, Y and Z. I mean, I’m sorry, who were the Australian still? You know, you’re talking about you’re talking about a lot of British people that are involved in that. The Stolen Generation is one of the most brutal and evil policies it’s possible to conceive of. It’s astonishing.

 

Coco Khan Yeah. And it was also not that long ago, which also gives me lots of chills.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. The film Rabbit Proof Fence is one that’s worth watching. It’s specifically about the Stolen Generation. You know, I’m always loathe to bring this up, but I do think it’s worth discussing just because of the lack of historical education in this country around Britain’s role in the slave trade. But the former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg is very sweet to say, former Conservative MP. It’s very sweet to say that the former Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg was tweeting last week about the slave trade and he said this They ought to pay us for ending slavery. It is not something any other country had done and we were motivated by Christian charity. Now, the only reason I’m highlighting that I really don’t want to bring any more attention to this and the reason I’m highlighting it is actually because it shows the lack of historical education around the slave trade. There is a total gap in our knowledge. The British complicity in the slave trade and Britain’s participation in it is not something we talk about enough. And just the very fact that he said they should pay us suggests that he has absolutely no working. I mean, this is a generous interpretation. He has no working knowledge that the British government did bail out slave owners in this country. It really is something that is massively under-discussed. And to be charitable in interpreting Rees-mogg’s comments, I’m going to say that that’s evidence of a profound lack of historical education in this country around the slave trade. I should also say that somebody it was a television company, the television streaming platform that is making a documentary about the rees-mogg’s. I like it called Action Star. And the reason I know about that is they requested to come and see my show at the Edinburgh Fringe. They wanted Rees-Mogg is absolutely true. They wanted Rees-Mogg to sit in my show. They wanted to interview me about how I felt about him in that moment. I mean, I would love to tell you the content of the email I sent my agent when she asked me. I mean, she sent me that not in the spirit of a genuine professional request. She sent me that in the spirit of can you believe the share of the volley of expletives I unleashed at that point? I was like, Yeah, they wanted to film him watching my show, and then they wanted to film like an interview with me afterwards with him.

 

Coco Khan Somewhat weird form of couples therapy.

 

Nish Kumar I’ve no idea. I’ve genuinely no idea. A friend of mine said you should have, you know, had he been there and given him. What for book? He’s congenitally shameless.

 

Coco Khan Well, I mean, that quote tells you that.

 

Nish Kumar You can’t embarrass someone that has no sense of shame. And I just, I, I, I just think the immediate project from, you know, parts of the media in this country to rehabilitate him and the consistent pattern of taking figures like Rees-Mogg, who, you know, did say that people in the Grenfell Tower would have survived, that they’ve been smart enough to exit their building. Sally That is something he said in the lead up to the 2019 general election. He did attend a dinner at a society that is trying to encourage voluntary repatriation of black British people. These are not people that we should be indulging in the kind of entertainments like that. That’s just that’s not really related to anything other than I’ve just been incredibly annoyed about it.

 

Coco Khan Ugh. All of that, that whole that all gives me the ick. All of that. This is really horrific.

 

Nish Kumar But also you can’t shame a shameless person. It’s the old Lyndon Johnson quote of there’s no point in wrestling with a pig because you get in the pig likes it and that the Rees-Mogg is the biggest pig that’s ever picked. So I mean, I just think that the sort of rehabilitation of this man is absolutely unbelievable. And also buy a ticket. If that’s if that’s your problem, buy a ticket. If you’re that interested.

 

Coco Khan You don’t offer like a sort of, you know, for a higher price. You get a VIP service where it’s just you and them. Is it? That’s not, you know, like, you know, like Taylor had some of those.

 

Nish Kumar No, I mean, like this would be a reverse VIP service.

 

Coco Khan The niche come off in my experience. Buy a ticket, spend your money and then just get really abused yet really abused.

 

Nish Kumar Abused to all of the confines of. The law.

 

Coco Khan And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the U.K. And we want to hear your thoughts. Email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.uk.

 

Nish Kumar Don’t forget to follow Pod Save the UK on Instagram TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

 

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

 

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer May Robson with additional support from our multi-track fellow Derek Armant.

 

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

 

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer, Ryan MacBeth.

 

Coco Khan The executive producers are Anoushka Sharma, Madeline Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz. Dan Jackson is also our head of production.

 

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