With just two weeks to go until the Autumn budget, the Labour government is preparing to make some huge reforms. But just how ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be in reshaping the UK? Coco and Nish dig into it with Anushka Asthana, ITV’s political editor and author of “Taken as Red: How Labour won big and the Tories crashed the party”.

Later, in the wake of the Tories latest round of madness, Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde calls in from parliament to discuss how the Government can be held to account in the absence of a sane opposition.

And speaking of political ruthlessness, we find out why Labour are demanding a police investigation into the Monster Raving Loony Party’s role in unseating Labour MP Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South.

Useful links:

Taken as Red: How Labour won big and the Tories crashed the party.

Guests:

Anushka Asthana

Josh Babarinde MP

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

Contact us via email: PSUK@reducedlistening.co.uk

WhatsApp: 07494 933 444 (UK) or + 44 7494 933 444 (internationally)

Insta: https://instagram.com/podsavetheuk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/podsavetheuk

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@podsavetheuk

Facebook: https://facebook.com/podsavetheuk

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/podsavetheworld

TRANSCRIPT

[AD]

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

Coco Khan I’m Coco Khan. With just two weeks to go until the autumn budget. Labour is preparing to make some huge reforms, but how ruthless is Keir Starmer willing to be in reshaping the UK? We’re speaking to ITV’s political editor Anushka Asthana to find out.

Nish Kumar And later, in the wake of the Tories latest round of madness, we’re joined by Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde and to discuss how the Government can be held to account in the absence of a sane opposition.

Coco Khan One week on from the great big reset inside Number ten. Suddenly it seems like there’s a flurry of activity from the government. It’s a nice change from the month of statist, but with a life, this opposition and a stonking majority. Are we about to see some radical reforms?

Nish Kumar To find out, we’re joined by deputy political editor of ITV News and author of “Taken as Red: How Labour won big and the Tories crashed the party”. Anushka Asthana, welcome to Pod Save the UK Anushka, it’s great to have you.

Anushka Asthana Thank you very much for having me.

Nish Kumar The speed of which news is moving. I did think about that when I was reading the book. Just the point where you’re talking about so crazy voices. Chief of Staff. Do you like how much of that you conscious of what you’re writing a book about politics, particularly about British politics? I guess post 2014 or 2015 onwards?

Anushka Asthana Yeah, it’s really tricky. And what I had to do basically was make the book about everything up to that point. So really it’s a book about how they got to the election, how they won the election. I did that attempt to book a chapter on governing and I read it back. It’s not that bad. I mean, I did argue that in theory. Sue Gray is chief of staff and Morgan McSweeney as chief adviser as it was. That could be Keir Starmer’s super power because they had different skills, but also made clear that there were already tensions at the time. To be honest, there was already people moaning to me at the time about, for example, contracts across government, which was one of the things that really did this right. Great. But it was all played down. It wasn’t their fault. So I didn’t go wildly into it. But, you know, I’ve got a paperback. You get a last year in detail next year.

Nish Kumar So Gray’s resignation and the appointment of Morgan McSweeney, who was the Svengali, largely credited with the election strategy, a pretty brutal action from Starmer. Pretty brutal in its kind of speed, but not as his first sort of brutal action as PM because he obviously withdrew the Labour whip from seven MEPs for voting across party lines and an amendment to the King speech. And in your book, one of the first things you talk about, Keir Starmer’s, you talk about the capacity for compassion that he has that people who’ve worked with him are very keen to stress. But then you move very quickly on to a different word, which is ruthlessness, an obsession with winning a streak of resources and a willingness to take on significant levels of political risk. Are you feeling pretty good about that now? Now, the way that his prime ministership is playing out.

Anushka Asthana I mean, yes, although in a way, things went right for him previously when he was ruthless and things have gone very wrong for him since he became prime minister. But that threat of ruthlessness has been there throughout. When things have gone wrong for him in the past. He is quite brutal in a way so politically brutal. And I do want to make that distinction because, you know, I spent time talking to one of his really good friends, Parvez Jabar, and he was like, Kheer is the opposite of ruthless on a personal level. I mean, one person who used to work for him actually broke down crying when she was speaking to me because he’d been so kind to her when she’d lost a loved one. He was the first guy on Neil Kinnock’s doorstep when he lost his wife. So there’s a personal compassion, as I said. But politically, I mean, just look at what he did step by step. So he made a decision to support Jeremy Corbyn when it’s very clear that he didn’t support that project. In hindsight, in order to win over the leadership. And the minute he got the leadership, he sacked the general secretary of the Labour Party, Jennie Formby. I note in the book had been going through chemotherapy. She had cancer. She was struggling to work. I mean, to him she was associated with all the things that went wrong for Jeremy Corbyn. Now, Jeremy Corbyn also wanted to be general Secretary when he became Labour leader. It took him three years. Keir Starmer 20 minutes and he was on the phone to her. And then when things went really badly wrong in opposition, when they lost the Hartlepool by election, I mean again. And there’s actually a scene there where Morgan McSweeney is sort of speaking at 100 miles an hour, according to the people around him, and coming up with different ideas and writing on a board. Change, labor, change, labor. That’s what we need to do. But Keir Starmer again acted really swiftly. I mean, he did do a reshuffle that went quite badly wrong at the time, and some people think they want to highlight that a little bit more than maybe I did. That reshuffle was very much botched. But he just did it again. And so in a way, and maybe I should have said this in the in the. Opening chapter. When I knew already that people were getting frustrated with sea gray, right? Yeah. Perhaps we could have predicted that she wouldn’t last 100 days, But most people would give you a chief of staff longer than that, wouldn’t they?

Coco Khan Ruthless is quite I would describe it as a negative word. But I think in. Do you think the in the political space, actually, people might admire it, maybe even the electorate might admire? I mean, I remember back, obviously Jeremy Corbyn was a very different leader, but I remember there was a constant criticism of him that he would be too soft and that was what people said in the press. He was too soft. Do you know what I mean?

Anushka Asthana It’s a funny thing, isn’t it? Because I looked at the definition of ruthless. I mean, it means being very cruel, basically. And in the kind of pursuit of what you think needs to happen, I think Keir Starmer wouldn’t complain about being called ruthless. In fact, I asked him once, I said to him after he’d done this big speech to party conference and it was clear that the LabourParty had changed and was more in his vision. And he came out.

Nish Kumar Glamorous anecdote because it’s used to buy.

Anushka Asthana Bins. Yeah, yeah. Basically I was making a documentary on him and they were like, If you wait here, he’ll come out and you can speak to him with his wife back. And I was standing next to a picket fence and the glamor of TV out. He came and talked to me and I said to me, You’ve been really ruthless, you know. And he said, yes, without a moment’s hesitation because he felt that he needed to be ruthless. Now, do you have to be ruthless to be a political leader? One person very close to Rishi Sunak, argued that one of the things they thought went wrong for him and they use the C-word, which I would never use and I strongly disapprove of, so I won’t use it here. But he said basically.

Coco Khan Fine.

Anushka Asthana Sometimes.

Coco Khan Sorry. That’s just a tangent about your ongoing arguments about swearing on this.

Nish Kumar That’s a that’s a big word to use.

Anushka Asthana We’re not using that. We’re not using that word. I don’t approve of that word on so many levels. But that’s another podcast for this person said basically to be prime minister, you need to be a bit of a C-word. I thought Rishi Sunak was not. I mean, do you think that you could be kind and generous and, you know, collaborative and still be prime minister?

Nish Kumar I had a video taken down by Instagram for calling Rishi, so not to say so. People need to pick a lead on this, is he not? Is he too much of a or not enough of what.

Coco Khan With the electorate? Do you think that’s different, though? Do they value ruthlessness? Do they perceive it as a show of strength or actually they want their leaders to be compassionate?

Anushka Asthana I don’t think he would say he was going to be ruthless in terms of trying to support people. I think he believes that if you wanted to win power for the LabourParty and look, there are people on the left who strongly disagree with this and I spoke to them for the book as well. But he believed that the only way to put the LabourParty in the service of working people, which is obviously what he always says, and this is the thing that I think Morgan McSweeney is obsessed with, is to be quite ruthless in terms of the party operation. And so I think he’s got to a point where if Downing Street felt dysfunctional. He is ready to act immediately because he thinks that’s what it takes to then serve people. Now, on the side of that, they’ve got themselves into a load of trouble, which I think leads to the depiction or the perception that they’re not always thinking about working people. I don’t think that necessarily is to do with his ruthlessness. Right.

Coco Khan Okay.

Nish Kumar There is a chapter in the book dedicated to Morgan McSweeney because he’s the architect of the Labour election win. And there’s a lot of speculation about how much influence he has. But clearly now that he’s been moved into a new grace job, he’s clearly central to Keir Starmer’s operation. There’s a lot of talk about him as a kind of election winner, and he has a huge amount of success in Lambeth Council and essentially scales up that operation to a national campaign, which is all based around very targeted campaigning. And it’s sort of led to this shallow but enormous political majority for Starmer in the House of Commons. So there’s a lot of sense about what Morgan looks when his campaign strategy is how he wants to run a campaigning operation. But he’s not campaigning anymore. I mean, there’s an argument that people like him are always campaigning and they’re always got an eye on the next election cycle. But in the interim, we’re talking about five years till the next election. Keir Starmer is already talking about a decade of national renewal. He’s already talking about in two terms. So it’s probably pretty important that as a electorate we have a sense of what Morgan mix with his political philosophy is. Do you have a sense of what that is?

Anushka Asthana Yeah. And I tried really hard to understand that. And the first thing I wanted to understand was why did they hate the hard left, as they would call it so much? And trying to understand that I think there was a sense and again, this would be disagreed with by those on the left that kind of anti-Semitism was baked into the hard left viewpoint of the world and also that there was a kind of quite. I think he would argue basic or kind of like not nuanced enough. VA with foreign policy. So, for example, the things I think he really didn’t like about Jeremy Corbyn were obviously the antisemitism crisis, but also some of the views on Russia, for example, or some of the views on certain countries in the Middle East. So there was that on the one hand. And then the other thing is, well, why is Morgan McSweeney a Labour person? Why has he been in the Labour Party his whole life? I mean, I’m sure he admires Tony Blair, but I don’t actually think he’s a Blairite and I don’t think the kind of slightly more I guess the word I don’t mean this in a derogatory way at all, but the slightly more globalist side of Tony Blair, the slightly more internationalism. I don’t get a sense of any like driving passionate of that. Morgan McSweeney I think the best clue to his politics comes from when he goes to Barking and Dagenham in 2010 and with a lot of other people, quite a lot of whom are quite now senior in the Labour Party, they fight the MP, the British National Party, the far right party. And I was actually a reporter at the time at The Observer. I spent quite a lot of time there. The BNP had done really, really well in previous elections. They’ve got 12 councilors. I think Nick Griffin wanted to win Phakeng and against Margaret Hodge, who was also huge in this fight at the time. And I feel like there’s a sort of almost what used to be blue labor, an almost like communitarian left wing ness about Morgan McSweeney, which is. This is why I say he’s obsessed with the idea about working people. He thinks that everything should be about trying to service working people. And when he went to East London, in what some people described to me, I think actually John Cruddas, who was the MP in Dagenham at the time, as the canary in the coal mine, it was like the first red wall. It was the first place in the country where white working class voters were turning away from Labour because they were angry about immigration and they were upset about the impact that people moving out of East London, particularly Africans, were having in their communities. And I remember walking around and I remember hearing a lot of people talk about it, and his view was, we need to take that on. We need to go into those communities and we need to try and address their concerns, take their concerns seriously, you know, not dismiss them as racist concerns. And actually, there was something interesting they did that was they just massively focused on local issues. So, for example, one of the issues was that people had loads of crap in their front gardens. I saw gardens, as they called them. So they launched a massive campaign by the council to say to people, either we’re going to fine you for the mess in your front garden or we can come and help you clear it up. It was a massively successful campaign. They also recruited like hairdressers and bouquets to try and like be community communicators, as they called them, to try and take on the myths. So I see him as much more grounded in I don’t know if you remember the kind of blue Labour movement, which is like it’s slightly more right on the right of the LabourParty, but less to do with things like EU membership or links abroad and a little bit more to do with how do we serve these communities who perhaps have become a bit more socially conservative but are also still to the left on issues like economics. And look, if that is a model that they actually try to use to take on Reform UK now, then I think, you know, clearly that could be quite interesting. But how did they do that? They have to serve local people and the things that have gone wrong. So they have to fix our hospitals, they have to do something about the absolute funding crisis in councils so that the things that you see around you, like the grass gets cut, the local park, the swimming pool doesn’t close down. You know, all the things that we’ve seen crumble around us visually. They have to tackle that. And I still think that is a massive and very difficult project. Well, that.

Nish Kumar Definitely speaks to something that was in Keir Starmer’s conference speech about wanting to acknowledge people’s concerns on immigration. But I mean, I guess I would say I found those comments and I’m again, only speaking for myself. I find those comments quite personally hurtful because I felt that it didn’t acknowledge the reality of what happened in the summer and what’s really been happening over the last decade and a half in this country, which is immigrants and immigrant communities being blamed for the slow collapse of the British state, which immigrants immigrant communities are not responsible for.

Anushka Asthana And it’s interesting you say that because I read the speech in quite a different way, and which was that I think Labourcould have been less bold in terms of talking about the riots, the fact that they were basically, you know, violent, far right thugs who were breaking the law and defending the fact that, you know, we’re not going to listen to your concerns about immigration when you’re marching on a refugee hotel, for example. And actually, one thing I had heard Morgan McSweeney has said behind the scenes is that whatever they say about any of this, they have this idea that they’re never going to punch down on asylum seekers, they’re never going to punch down on. Immigrants and benefit recipients. And so, for example, they always talk about smashing the gangs when it comes to the boats. They don’t talk about the asylum seekers. That said, there are people in the asylum sector who do feel to me that there’s a bit of triangulation going on. And even they find the language around just calling people illegal migrants, for example, rather than asylum seekers a problem. You know, that said, I was with someone pretty senior in that sector yesterday who, you know, liked the fact that in the same speech you’re talking about, Keir Starmer called people refugees rather than illegal migrants, which we didn’t hear the language of refugees and asylum seekers as much previously.

Nish Kumar But if you break that connection between the kind of demonization in large sections of the conservative press in this country and what happened, and you might portray the right as to be this kind of, you know, what they are, which is a group of far right thugs, but a group of far right thugs that has been encouraged and legitimized by the political language and the talk about immigrants and immigrant numbers and the need to drive down immigrant numbers. If you break that connection. It’s a false analysis, isn’t it, of what happened in the summer. If you don’t acknowledge that there has been some mainstreaming of that political opinion, that kind of fringe, far right theory.

Anushka Asthana I mean, I think they understand that some of the things that people were talking about on the street are things that have been legitimized and talked about more broadly. The question is, how do you deal with it? Because there is this kind of really knotty situation. And I feel like I’ve been covering this for like 20 years of both really legitimate concerns and racism. And how do you untangle that and get to, you know, the answer like it is legitimate that people are worried about the fact that net migration hit 745,000 and that that has put pressure on public services. I mean, I went to six parts of the country before the Brexit vote and talked to people about immigration, and there were places where there were hardly any immigrants and people were worried about immigration. But there were also places like in Peterborough where the community did look and feel really different. And it happened at speed. And some of the people were saying, well, this is just kind of blown our minds and we’re kind of not ready for this speed of change. And the local GP was saying, Look, I can’t deny that this has put pressure on us. So I suppose it’s like, how do you disentangle all these big.

Coco Khan Money arguments to spend money and spend money on the public services, spend money on integration, you know, assistance programs like Great commute and spend money on it. I just thought about we just always have this. So tricky. So tricky. Is it? You spend money on it?

Anushka Asthana Yeah, but where do you get the money from? So in one of those places I was talking about in 2016, I was in LA in Greater Manchester and there were like three people screaming at me about immigration whilst we were making this film. And I just think it was stressful. And interestingly, one of them was black, one of them was Polish. I mean, it was quite an eye opening moment for me. But there was this, you know, young black mum who was basically shouting about immigrants. But when I talked to her about it, what I realized was her daughter didn’t have a school place and that was the problem. And if you fixed the problem, then maybe she wouldn’t be so worried about immigration, which I have to say, I do think the 2010 example in Barking and Dagenham was about that. Yeah. They were like, if you fix the eyesore gardens, then people will stop blaming the Africans. And so you can deal with the maths. Now whether or not they carry that now into a national government. Yeah, it’s hard to know and hard to say. And the problems are vast. And like I say, where do you get the money from? I mean, it’s a difficult.

Coco Khan Time because of course, I think the word use myth there was really good. It’s a really good word because I think as well, you know what I’m saying, spend money on it. But that almost in a way, when I say that, it sort of reinforces idea that like, you know, because there’s whatever pressures on it all because of immigrants. And that’s not quite true, is it?

Anushka Asthana No, of course not. I mean, there’s huge arguments in all directions when it comes to immigration. You know, the reality is that lots of immigrants are working people who pay tax as well as, you know, using things from the state. But but it also is the case that people are worried about levels of immigration and they can be worried about it without being racist. And I think it’s just disentangling that and then working out what the policy response to it is in.

Nish Kumar Terms of policy response. Everybody agrees that we need to put more money into the economy, into public spending needs. So it just breaking this record on Wednesday morning, the government sources are indicating that Rachel Reeves is aiming to make 40 billion pounds worth of tax rises and spending cuts in the next budget. Do you think Labouris going to be able to keep to its promises about avoiding tax rises? Do you think that they left themselves with some linguistic wiggle room to get have tax rises in different areas like cap gains or a wealth tax maybe?

Anushka Asthana I mean, they’ve definitely left themselves with wriggle room around capital gains, inheritance tax and so on. In terms of the ones that they said they weren’t going to raise, which is income tax, VAT, national insurance and corporation tax, the big row is going to be over the fact that they now want to raise employer national insurance contributions. Was that what the manifesto said or not? They argue that half the sentence mentioned working people, so therefore it’s okay to whack the tax on employers. I mean, I’m going to be on the Peston program later today and we’re going to be looking through the statistics about really if you. Crease National Insurance unemploy ers. There’s still a chance that it feeds through to employees in terms of lower wage increase over time. So I think the Tories are going to absolutely hammer them that they’re breaking a manifesto promise on the other taxes. What they said and we said this was dishonest during the election campaign repeatedly. And in fact, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said there was a conspiracy of silence.

Nish Kumar Paul Johnson that recycled. You’ll see riots, right?

Anushka Asthana Yeah. So so, so basically what they said was and we don’t need any other tax rises apart from the ones we’re ruling out in order to pay for our manifesto promises. As if going into government, you think that all you’re going to have to spend is what’s in your manifesto. Everybody knew, for example, that we were going to have Covid inquiry. Responses are going to require money. A grand full inquiry. A post office inquiry that we haven’t got yet. Everybody knew that the NHS was in more trouble than we thought. Everyone knew that we were going to have to spend more on public sector pay in order to solve strikes. So the dishonesty was that they were saying we don’t need those taxes even though we’re keeping them in our back pocket. Now, my question and I say this a lot is did they need to lean that far in? Like, did they really need to go that far to win the election? Because the problem they’ve stored up for themselves is that every tax increase will now be seen as a trust issue. Yes. And I personally think the biggest policy problem in politics right now is trust. People don’t trust politicians. And what Keir Starmer needed to do was to come in and be someone who the public could trust. And now he would argue that it’s completely unfair. But the freebie rule, followed by this particular issue around tax, is storing up a problem for him.

Nish Kumar Just to bring this back full circle before we let you go to ruthlessness, do you think his ruthlessness extends to breaking manifesto pledges? And how do you think that fits into us trying to restore trust in politics whilst at the same time also acknowledging that we need investment badly in public services?

Anushka Asthana Again, I don’t think it’s the same as the type of ruthlessness I was talking about. I think it’s a sort of political argument that they’re trying to make now about the black hole. And look, some of it was stuff they didn’t know about. Some of it I should have known about. And the reality is it’s a political argument that they’re trying to make in order to now break manifesto promises. Really, if they were being responsible, all of them, those national insurance cuts that the conservatives put in place should never have happened. The public finances could not handle national insurance cuts when they were made. And that has left anyone in a very sticky position now. And I suspect that a full break of the manifesto is impossible. As then I’ll try and argue the semantics on national Insurance for employers. A full break is impossible. It’s worth saying in 1997, Blair came in and basically did the same thing, said we’re going to stick by conservative spending plans over the first period, even 1 in 2001. And then they raised income tax by a penny in order to pay for things. And I suspect they’re following the same kind of path here. The only thing is, I just wonder if, as I said before, they overshot in terms of what they were saying before. I think the ruthlessness, it’s always that giving ruthless about it. I’d almost do the opposite. If you’re going to be ruthless about it, you’d break no manifesto promises. And you’d have less money to spend because you would feel like politically there was no room for maneuver. But they are giving themselves room on one thing, which I think is quite a big deal, which is they are going to change their fiscal rules again. It can look like a trust issue. It can look like a manifesto break. I think most economists think it’s really, really necessary and will allow her to spend a lot of money on capital projects, including the things that we all need to say improve schools and hospitals.

Coco Khan I suppose in a way you’re sort of hoping or they’re sort of hoping that like as long as people see their world improve, it all will be forgiven. Although when you’re talking about, that’s what blared in 1997, I just kept thinking, Yes, babe, but they didn’t have Twitter then. Like there was a rolling feed of everyone up to date on what you said. And and we remember.

Anushka Asthana It is so interesting, 1997, because I was looking through the data because Blair had two really big crises in his first year. There was a Bernie Ecclestone. It was the F1 boss. It turned out he donated loads of money to the LabourParty and then they exempted F1 from a smoking advert ban. It was a huge, huge scandal, like in many ways bigger than the scandals we’ve got now. And they took benefits off lone parents and it was so bad that they did that. The 100 LabourMPs abstained in the vote and 46 voted against. Right. So a huge rebellion, but it didn’t hit Tony Blair’s ratings. Anything like this is hitting Keir Starmer’s ratings. And I think that is because we are so unforgiving as an electorate now, like politicians are totally untrusted. I think something like 9% of people trust politicians to tell the truth, which I think is just such a sad state of affairs. And also the economy is in a bad state. While in 1997 it was in a good state. But on top of that, you know, I mentioned that shallow victory that you’ve talked about, the kind of shape of the Labourvictory. 34% of the vote. Two thirds of seats. And actually, before any of the scandals had happened, the final thought in the book was Labourcould easily not win in 2029. And I just think the reality is that with this volatile electorate, anything could happen. I do think they understand that, though.

Coco Khan I just wanna thank you so much for joining us on public safety.

Anushka Asthana Thank you for having me.

Nish Kumar And coming up after the break, we’re speaking to Liberal Democrat MP Josh Babarinde about the Liberal Democrats plans for holding the Government to account.

[AD]

Nish Kumar So the government is pursuing ruthless reforms whilst the official opposition is about to shift further rightward under whichever one of its two obviously batshit leaders it selected. So with the Conservatives in shambles, who is actually going to hold the government to account? Joining us now is Josh Babarinde and the Liberal Democrats, Josh, the spokesperson and the MP for Eastbourne. Welcome, Josh. Hello.

Josh Babarinde Hi Nish and Coco. Thanks for having me.

Nish Kumar No, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for joining us. Josh, you’re not actually a career politician. You come from a background of community engagement. You set up this social enterprise crack tip to smartphone repair company that employed at risk youth and young offenders. And we should also know, and this is physically this is, I imagine, can be physically sickening, particularly for Coco. You are 31 years old. You are putting the geriatric millennials that host this podcast to say.

Josh Babarinde Sorry about that, guys. Well, yeah, that’s right. I did. I did some stuff before I got elected to this place.

Nish Kumar Well, that’s the wrong way round. Josh, everybody knows, is supposed to have no life experience and just be speculating wildly what you think, kids.

Josh Babarinde I mean, it’s it’s a it’s a crazy place. It’s great to come here having done some stuff before, you know, as you said, spent my career supporting kids out of crime gangs and into employment and in a slightly novel way through, Yeah, building a phone repair company. And it basically came from, you know, doing some work in the east end of London. I’m from Eastbourne, originally born and bred, so quite different to the East End. But I found myself there working with young people who had had, you know, upbringings in some ways that were not dissimilar to mine. You know, I had some quite tricky patches in my childhood, but I had an amazing town, amazing family, amazing school community, etc. that lifted me. And I ended up working with a lot of folks who’d had difficult home lives as well in the East End who didn’t have all that stuff around them in the same kind of way, so they didn’t experience it in the same way. And so I wanted to to do what I could to support them. And so I ended up training and employing them to repair broken smartphone screens, to make money, to feel valued, to belong. And, you know, I was taking guys who had convictions for things like wielding axes into the US embassy under Trump to repair his diplomats phones. It was it was an awesome time. And yeah, great to bring that insight from the front line to the House of Commons.

Coco Khan Yeah, no, absolutely fantastic to bring that inside. Look, I’m just going to ask you directly, Josh, and I hope you’ll take this question in the spirit of millennial to Millennial. So why why the Lib Dems then? Why the Lib Dems?

Josh Babarinde Well, I tell you, I tell you the silly story and then I’ll say the serious story. The silly story is that I was at a uni open day when I was about 16 and it happened to be freshers week. They had all the freshers stalls out there and I knew I was interested in politics, but I wasn’t massively into it. But I saw a Lib Dem stall and they had this really cool beer mat. And I said, Could I have a beer mat? And they were like, No, not unless you join. So I may. Abbey paid for me to join and I still haven’t paid it back. I ended up member of the party and then this was back in 2009. So I was getting lots of emails through saying, you know, come to this event, come to that event. I ended up at an event where Nick Clegg was speaking. There was a guy behind me asking loads of xenophobia questions and I thought, I’m not having that. So I had it out with him at the end and our debate was broken up by the then Lib Dem candidate who said, Don’t get mad, get even, come and help me win. And the rest is history. But the reason I stayed is because I guess jumping back to childhood in a bunch of ways, you know, for me it really angers me to be honest, boss. It makes me sad that so many people’s respective qualities are life defined by not much more than brute luck and bad luck in a bunch of people’s cases. I had some bad luck in my life, but the young people I’ve spent my career working with had even more. And so I wanted to find a way to reduce or if I’m being really utopian about it, eliminate the role that luck plays in shaping people’s courses and qualities of life so they’re not, you know, punished by the market. They’re not forced into particular places by the state, but they and their communities get to decide where they go, what fulfills them and what the future looks like. And that’s the essence of liberalism, really. And that’s the essence of the Liberal Democrats. So I joined for the bear and I stayed for the freedom.

Nish Kumar I think a lot of the people that listened to this podcast would find themselves really completely agreeing with the spirit of what you’re saying and then maybe asking the question why the Lib Dems and not the LabourParty in that case?

Josh Babarinde Yeah, well, I think there are a bunch of differences. Labourhave kind of centralizing instincts, instincts that, you know, say, look, the state offer knows best. And my view is, well, the state should definitely be there as a safety net to make sure that no one is screwed. But I think that individuals and their communities know best, and I think that is a really fundamental distinction. Also, Lib-Dems have a really proud tradition in fighting for people’s civil liberties. It’s important that people have their fundamental rights that allow them to be free. But it’s important that the government doesn’t overstep that and actually compromise people’s freedom.

Coco Khan So do you think that this will shape the Lib-Dems essentially being in opposition to Labor? Obviously, the official opposition are in total disarray and are all bananas. Let’s be honest, the Lib Dems have got a sizable number of MPs. I imagine, you know, you’re taking it upon yourself to be the opposition in some way. Is this these are the sort of battle lines we might see, do you think, around things like civil liberties around the state overstepping, you know, personal liberties? Is that is this an indicator of what we can expect?

Josh Babarinde Well, I think there’s all sorts. So, you know, Lib Dems were the biggest Lib Dem party in parliament in 100 years or something like that. 72 MPs. You’ve got the Tories having their internal fight they’ve been having for quite a few years now in a complete mess. And say Liberal Democrats have stepped up and said, Well, we’ll be the real opposition then. I’m fighting for the things that matter to people. So one of the key things that we are opposing Labouron is support when it comes to pensioners. There are some of the most vulnerable pensioners in our society who are set to lose the winter fuel allowance that they need to heat their homes. Sure, there are folks who are well-off who don’t need that winter fuel allowance I think as a case for means testing that, but for taking it away from those who really need it, that’s a real problem and something that Labourneed to be held to account on. Another thing you’ve got is the two child benefit cap. All of the evidence tells us that one of the key ways that we could help alleviate child poverty in our country is by removing that back cap so that those children, those families get the cash that they need to grow and to thrive. The Tories haven’t listened to us on that. And Labor, I really need to start listening as well. So you can see some key dividing lines between the government and between Lib Dems as the real opposition and where we’re fighting for the kind of progressive change that people don’t just want, but they really need in the country as well.

Nish Kumar Let us briefly talk about the official opposition. Now, listen, there’s been a lot of talk in the week, and I think a lot of it is very, very true. That kind of wild rightward drift, whilst we might all be finding this very funny, the Wild Right would Drift is Conservative Party isn’t good for the health of British politics in general, but just in the very, very short term, let’s focus on how funny it is. Just what was your reaction to the announcement of the final two candidates for Tory leader?

Josh Babarinde It’s like when you’re hiring Sykes or you look at The Apprentice, some of the last two in The Apprentice are not the two who you want to end up with. And if you’re in that position as Lord Sugar, you probably want to reopen applications all over again. That’s what’s happened here. You know, you look at Robert Jenrick, you look at Kemi Badenoch, and they’re both folks whose I think ideas belong way in the past, not in the future.

Nish Kumar So, look, I mean, let’s say the conservatives are taking a drift to the weird. This is a real opportunity for the Liberal Democrats. Right. And Ed Davey has been unambiguous through the election campaign and certainly after the election result for the Lib-Dems, the ambition of the Liberal Democrats within this cycle of this Parliament is to become the official opposition. Is that is that fair to say? Yes.

Josh Babarinde I think it’s fair to say that we’re a mightily ambitious party and we’re ambitious for the country. We’re ambitious to really play that role as the real opposition. There’s a massive gap there and the Tories just are not competent to fill it. So this guy really is the limit. We’re campaigning, you know, not just in parliament, but also at local government level as well. Counselors across the country, really important, looking after services that people care about day to day. Not always the most glamorous thing, whether it’s the bends or the potholes or whatever. But we get stuck in in terms of government, etc.. That’s above my pay grade. You can ask that question.

Coco Khan We’re trying. Can you ask Ed to come on our show, please? It’d be great. Let’s just talk about getting things done then. Let’s talk about your own portfolio, which is just this. You know, look, the prisons are in crisis. We’ve talked about it on our show. And last month at the Lib Dem conference, you spoke about the presumptions against short sentencing. There’s been whispers that the government ministers are considering scrapping short sentences. You know, what are the other reforms that need to be looked at? What’s the most urgent thing you change?

Josh Babarinde Yeah, well, there’s there’s loads of stuff, so, you know, on the short sentences stuff. 57% of people who serve a short sentence go on to re-offend. That is not justice. With such a high reoffending rate, something’s clearly going wrong. So something needs to change. One of the key things that we need to do is follow the evidence and look at what’s the stuff that’s going to reduce reoffending. Now, I know from literally getting people out of crime and gangs myself that there’s loads of stuff that can be done in the community to drive re-offending down. So supporting people into employment, making sure that people are getting the support, whether it’s around mental health or, you know, drug and alcohol support or housing support, all that kind of stuff is really important as well. And then there’s also the preventative stuff. How do we prevent crime from happening in the first place? And I think something that’s been really troubling that’s happened over the last few years is you’re just seeing loads and loads of cuts, say, to use centers. And for me, youth centers are about more than just, you know, PlayStation, ping pong and pizza, all of which are amazing, by the way. But it’s about creating what I would describe as safe spaces where young people can develop, you know, pro-social values, things like sense of communication, collaboration, conflict management, which helps people stay at the core of society rather than at the margins. And for a lot of young people, you know, they develop those values at home or at school. But for some of them, school isn’t working out for them, and home maybe isn’t a supportive environment. So they need to have another space. All that’s telling me that I’m right or something. Something. Sorry about that.

Nish Kumar That’s I think that’s the first sound of the division bell on the UK.

Josh Babarinde Well, there we are. And that’s to say the press are starting.

Nish Kumar All right. Okay.

Josh Babarinde The first. And that the House of Commons is about to begin for the day.

Nish Kumar We’ve got to let you go. So I’m just going to ask you this briefly. An area of possible cross collaboration in terms of talking about you working with other political parties. There’s a pretty big one here in terms of the new prisons minister, who’s James Timpson, who also is known for hiring ex-offenders in the same way that you did when he set up your social enterprise. Are you hopeful that this is genuinely an area where I mean, we’ve talked about liberal Democrats being in opposition and opposing the Labourgovernment. Is this genuinely an area where you would be able to collaborate with the Government in terms of reforming justice and getting it into that evidence led, outcome driven policy generation process?

Josh Babarinde Yeah, I mean, we want to be a constructive opposition. So that means, you know, where there are good ideas being put forward by the government supporting them and where we think they need to be even more ambitious pushing them to do so. The cool thing about James Timpson is him and I used to collaborate in our trade political lives, so when I was setting up cracked it about ten years ago, I was connected with James and Tim to actually do phone repairs as well. And we spoke over the phone and he gave me laser tips and he said, Why don’t you come down to one of the training academies and and president come and see what we do. And, you know, Nick, some of our great ideas and apply them yourself. And so I did when I got elected and found out that, you know, the following day he was made a lord and the president’s minister, I dropped him a WhatsApp and said, my God, we’re both parliamentarians now. Look forward to collaborating and we’re catching up in a couple of weeks time. In fact, I have to speak about what’s happened for both of us over the last ten years, but in particular what’s happened over the last three months. And yeah, where there are opportunities to hold the government to account, but where there are also opportunities to collaborate with a view to achieving justice for victims and survivors and driving down reoffending.

Nish Kumar I, I thought that was going to be a heartbreaking story of James Stephenson having left you. All right. Well, that’s really great.

Josh Babarinde About going for it.

Nish Kumar I keep asking this of all of the new intake of employees that we talked to, but just it brief, you’re a young man. You’re a you know, you in a huge new job. Are you enjoying yourself?

Josh Babarinde It’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun. And, you know, it is amazing to be able to say, you know, take things that are happening on the bench. It’s amazing to be able to take things that are happening on the ground in Eastbourne, in my constituency where I was born and bred one day and literally the next day take it to the floor of the House of Commons to put it to a minister. It is really magical to fight, you know, for my town that made me me in the process. So I’m absolutely loving it. It’s a big responsibility and I really do feel that. But yeah, I look forward to carrying on for the next five years. And if the people of Eastbourne have me again beyond.

Coco Khan Well, that is a lovely place to leave there. So thank you so much. Josh, thank you for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Nish Kumar Thanks, Josh.

Josh Babarinde Thanks for having me, guys.

[AD]

Nish Kumar Okay. This might be an example of Labourbeing a bit ruthless. Do you remember Jonathan Ashworth? Now there’s a pretty strong chance you do. He was Labor’s shadow paymaster general in the run up to the election where he lost his seat. Really? One of the big surprise results of the night. He was unseated by independent MP Shaukat Adam by a margin of nearly 1000 votes. Ashworth has landed on his feet. Of course, he’s replaced Morgan McSweeney as the director of the LabourTogether think tank, a hugely influential centrist think tank, I guess we’ve called a centrist think tank, even though last week’s episode, which you should definitely check out, had posited that that word means absolutely nothing. As someone who’s written a book about centrism. But look, why are we reminding you of all this? Well, according to the only newspaper, Labouris demanding a police investigation into the result. And it’s a bit of a wild story. So, again, I’m conscious we have international listeners here. Stay with me on this. I promise you, we are a real country in a phrase that truly could only happen in the United Kingdom. The allegation here is that the candidate for the Monster Raving Loony Party, which is a real political party that exists in this country and has candidates that contest elections almost. Silliman helped independent chocolate Adam with his campaign, which may have been in a breach of a campaign finance law. Mr. Silliman ran for the Monster Raving Loony Party, which gave. I cannot stress this enough for international listeners is a real political party in this country under an alias which, again, we should know is not a breach of electoral law run. Running under a pseudonym is not a breach of electoral law. As the non loosely, loosely affiliated count binface has proven time and time again. I feel like we need less introduction for Count Binface because Count Binface has appeared on John all of his show in the States. There is a sort of wider international cognizance of Count Binface though as I’ve said before, I do think there is something deeply funny about the fact that even our joke candidates are members of the London gentry. Even as a joke, he still accounts of anyway under Salomon’s alias, which is Ezekiel Adler. He produced and distributed nearly 2,000 pounds of leaflets criticizing Ashworth Sullivan as his equal, Adler signed up to be the monster Raving Loony candidate in November 2023. However, he also volunteered for Chuka Adams campaign in the months leading up to the election. And according to the newspaper, this is what Labourhas taken issue with. Under UK election law, candidates need to share details of the amount of money they’ve spent with the Electoral Commission.

Coco Khan It is a criminal offense to make inaccurate claims and if the candidate is found to have breached election laws, they can be evicted from the House of Commons in a by election called. So the AI paper also quotes another independent candidate in less the South that claims that there was an appearance that Suleyman and Adam were working in tandem. There’s also allegations that Adam’s team employed heavy handed tactics whilst campaigning in Leicester. Adam denies that Cinnamon was working for him during the election campaign, but confirmed he had done some volunteering earlier in the year. Suleyman also denies any collusion.

Nish Kumar Now, look. On the surface this might seem like simply sour grapes from the Labour Party, but there were substantial stakes in this for the major players. What I would say here is the common wisdom on why Labour lost the seat is over its stance on Gaza. Shock. At Adam’s entire campaign, Leicester South was prominently about arguing for a ceasefire. And look, it does seem to me that the Labour Party is willing to ask every question except the one relevant question here, which is, is our stance on Gaza alienating a substantial proportion of natural Labour supporters? And again, we’ve talked a lot in this episode about Morgan McSweeney’s ability to calculate the most tactically astute general election campaign. But at the same time, there were questions that were lost to the Labour Party over the stance on Gaza. And in some ways the Labour Party was very lucky that there was very little to differentiate itself between its stance on Gaza in the run up to the election and the conservative stance on Gaza. Is a humanitarian crisis that is unfolding. And, you know, the position is becoming increasingly incoherent. We’ve had Ben Rhodes on the sofa, who is his foreign policy expertise, is absolutely undeniable. And we will always, as always, direct listeners to us to podcast Pod Save The World for more discussions on this kind of thing from Tomi and Ben. And we’ve we’ve had Ben sit here and say, you cannot say that you unequivocally support Benjamin Netanyahu and the two state solution because he does not support a two state solution. So again, the Labour Party, it feels like, is looking at everything except inward at its own conduct and its own foreign policy as to why it lost this seat.

Coco Khan Yeah, I can’t I can’t help but feel frustrated by it. And that is saying something because normally wherever the loony party is, it’s a good time for me. I mean, I love hearing about them crazy ideas.

Nish Kumar And the like. We cannot stress this enough for its national audience members. There is a political party that essentially fields joke candidates.

Coco Khan And joke policies.

Nish Kumar And joke policies. And it has done for, I mean, absolutely years. The World’s Driving Loony Party is a sort of fixture of the British elections and has been throughout my lifetime.

Coco Khan Here’s my here’s some current loony party policies. London Marathon is free to anyone wearing clown shoes. Great, great policy. Terrorists will be made to wear bells and horns so we know where they are. You know what I mean? They normally bring me such joy. But sadly, that has been taken from me this week with this story.

Nish Kumar Let’s head for the monster raving loads to Taylor Swift. I so called in subways believe that we’re still talking about this. The gum drama is back in what feels like its 768th week. So this is the allegations that have dogged k staffers government about politicians accepting freebies. And Taylor Swift is kind of at the center of this storm. Yes.

Coco Khan Somehow she’s the center of every storm, babe. Come on, Keep up. Keep up, Nish.

Nish Kumar I will say I. My Taylor Swift knowledge is poor. I wish Taylor Swift and all of her fans well.

Coco Khan Yeah. He says if we come for his head.

Nish Kumar I don’t want any bad blood with them. Now, that is so going, because it features a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar.. Because that’s how that’s how you engage the interest of middle age and hip hop fans, which is a I’m pretty sure was not a demographic Taylor was after. But in any case, we all know about Keir Starmer. But if his cabinet is free tickets to say to Swift. But last week The Sun reported that Sadiq Khan Empire of London and Home Secretary of that Cooper, who’d both received free tickets to the show, had been involved in discussions about providing extra security to Swift during her air. His tour in London. The Sun is reporting that Taylor Swift’s mum herself got involved after the police hesitated in providing an escort threatening to pull out of the London shows. She even managed to discuss arrangements directly with Starmer’s former chief of staff Sue Gray, right into the heart of government. We should say there is a there is genuinely a serious story at the center of all of this. Taylor Swift’s shows in London came shortly after her shows in Vienna, which were canceled due to a foiled terror plot. So is it that preposterous that there would be a police escort, given the security risk potentially, not just to Taylor Swift, but also that hundreds of thousands of people that would go to see her show? It’s just don’t take the free tickets. Don’t take the free ticket. Come on.

Coco Khan If you have knowledge that that has happened, it might look bad for you to suddenly have free tickets.

Nish Kumar Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Coco Khan Because it would seem like as a thank you for sorting this out, I’m now going to award you a free ticket, right?

Nish Kumar That’s right. Yeah.

Coco Khan The two things are unrelated.

Nish Kumar Don’t take the free ticket.

Coco Khan Don’t take them.

Nish Kumar We should be absolutely clear. Just again, in the interest of full disclosure, Starmer has now paid back his free tickets. A number ten has rejected the characterization that the tickets were gifted as a thank you for arranging the police escort.

Coco Khan I wonder what would happen if you just as I like experiment for the podcast, just sent a load of LabourMP tickets to your tour just to see just to see what would happen. Maybe if you do that possibly go.

Nish Kumar Wrong, if Edward, even if they are better, the government wants to say we do stand up tickets are available, that they come out to show that you and I will not be doling out freebies. I will not be doling out freebies. Pay for your tickets nish Kim archive.uk.

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

Nish Kumar Don’t forget to follow at 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 multitrack fellow, Derek Harma.

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopolous.

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer Ryan Macbeth.

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

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

[AD]