In This Episode
This week – we’re talking about the internet, Coco’s proclivities toward the disembodied voice of Pedro Pascal and Nish’s struggles to find any time to work on himself. Strap in – it’s a juicy one.
Nish and Coco are joined by technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker to make sense of the UK’s new online safety laws – which restrict access to harmful and inappropriate content for young people – while simultaneously clamping down on free speech and digital privacy. The conversation is becoming a culture war topic – but are the political class actually having a sensible discussion about this seismic, world’s-first legislation?
And – guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission could see trans people excluded from public life. And now it might become law – with no debate, no scrutiny and no vote. We’ll be speaking to journalist Freddy McConnell about the risk to all of our rights and how we can fight back.
And later – we’re getting Jezzy with it – we dive into the mailbag to hear your thoughts on the party definitely not called “your party”.
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Trans Solidarity Alliance
https://www.transsolidarityalliance.com/ehrc-code
Freddy’s latest article
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/31/transgender-rights-ehrc-guidance-single-sex-spaces
Guardian article about Lord Dannet
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/aug/05/lord-dannatt-urged-ministers-to-crack-down-on-palestine-action-at-request-of-us-firm
GUESTS
Chris Stokel-Walker
Freddy McConnell
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TRANSCRIPT
[AD]
Nish Kumar Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Nish Kumar.
Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan. Nish, you’re up in Edinburgh for the Fringe, how is it?
Nish Kumar We are about a week in, it’s been really fun. There were some gale force wins that resulted in some shows being canceled because to be fair, a lot of Edinburgh venues are simply shipping containers.
Coco Khan I’ve just got this image in my head of like the skies above the Royal Mile and just lots of people in costumes.
Nish Kumar Just airborne street performers.
Coco Khan Street performers. Yeah, exactly. There’s a mile. Come see my show.
Nish Kumar The whole university acapella group flying through the air. It’s the remake of Twister we all wanna see.
Coco Khan Exactly. But let’s talk about politics. This week, we’re talking about the Internet. We’ll be joined by technology journalist Chris Stokel-Walker to make sense of the UK’s new online safety laws.
Nish Kumar And guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission on how the Supreme Court judgment should be enforced could see transgender people excluded from public life. Now it might become law with no debate, no scrutiny and no vote. We’ll be speaking to journalist Freddy McConnell about the risks to all of our rights and how we can fight back.
Coco Khan And later, we’ll be hearing your thoughts on the party definitely not called your party.
Nish Kumar Okay, so first up, let’s talk about your access to pornography, Kaka.
Coco Khan This is a dig, isn’t it? This is the dig, because I’m the only millennial on Earth that doesn’t watch porn. Basically. Yes, you, yes. You want to shame me?
Nish Kumar Yes, I’m not shaming you in any way, Coco. I think if anything, it’s the opposite.
Coco Khan It’s not out of some like, you know, puritanical thing. It’s just, it’s just not for me, like, you know the ethical stuff, even the books, the audio. It’s, it just not, it not really my thing. The closest thing- The audio? Yeah, there’s all the porn, dude.
Nish Kumar Sorry!
Coco Khan Come on man, come on, you get with it, there’s audio porn, there is literary porn, and I’m not talking about like old school stuff.
Nish Kumar You can use your Audible credits for porn.
Coco Khan Yeah, I don’t know about Audible. I don’t know about audible.
Nish Kumar Other audio book websites are available.
Coco Khan I didn’t feel compelled. I have to tell you what I feel is the closest I’ve come to pornography recently. I don’t know why I feel compelled to tell this, but when I watched the first season of the Mandalorian before we realized it was Pedro Pascal, I was like, I think the Mandalorean is the sexiest man on TV.
Nish Kumar But you didn’t know it was Pedro Pascal. That’s not sort of a twist. He’s in the credits.
Coco Khan Well okay, I didn’t figure it out alright, I don’t know if it was Pedro Pascal, but there was something about the way he moved and he was strong and he loved a baby. I just think that is the sort of pornography I could sign on for. Anyway!
Nish Kumar I don’t think anybody anticipated this online safety legislation conversation starting with Coco expressing a horn for the Mandalorian, but only before he takes his mask off.
Coco Khan Exactly, exactly!
Nish Kumar I think you might just fancy Pedro Pascal. I think that’s like one of the most normal things possible.
Coco Khan No, but it’s crucial that I did not know it was Pedro Pascal, but there was just something about the Mando and I’m not alone. I spoke to all my mates and they were like Mando would get it. We don’t know why, but Mando wouldn’t get it anyway. There’s a new law that’s restricting porn to adults. Unless you have a Disney. Anyway, the internet is is really up in arms about it. Let’s try and be serious. Come on.
Nish Kumar No, we should be serious about it because this is incredibly serious. The online safety actor, which has recently been enforced by Ofcom, is a hell of a can of worms.
Coco Khan Right. So you’ve probably already bumped into this somewhere across the internet and surely heard a lot about it over the last week. And you would be forgiven for thinking that this is a labor policy, given the way the government has defended it, but let’s jump back a little.
Nish Kumar The Act was introduced by the Tories in 2022 under Boris Johnson and then passed in 2023 under Rishi Sunak. So just to be clear, this was not originally a Labor policy, but since coming to power the Government has absolutely embraced it.
Coco Khan So what does it actually do? Well, the Act is a new set of laws that are enforced by Ofcom, which for international listeners is the regulator for communication services here in the UK. So the new laws aim to protect both children and adults online and puts the onus on service providers to reduce the risks that their services are used for illegal activity and to remove illegal content when it appears.
Nish Kumar And the big focus is on children. The act requires platforms to get harmful and age inappropriate content from kids. So yes, Coco’s pornography will be restricted apart from the Mandalorian.
Coco Khan I was going to say, are you sure?
Nish Kumar Just to be clear, we’re not just talking about pornography. The harmful and age-inappropriate content could also include conversations about self-harm or drugs. Or, and we’ll talk more about this with our guests in a bit, potentially protests or conversations about war and potentially even politically controversial topics.
Coco Khan As we say, the onus is on the provider, so the interpretation of Ofcom’s rulings will be in the eye of the platform holders with an incentive to make sure they’re on the right side of the line to avoid fines. And since the Act has come into force, the implementation has raised difficult questions about what freedoms people should give up in the pursuit of safety.
Nish Kumar To access content that is deemed to be for adults, users now need to log in and provide some form of identification or verify their age using their face. And the tools to check you are actually an adult are delivered often by big American technology companies. Of course, these organizations, both the platform you’re trying to access and the verifying party say that they are blackboxing your credentials for privacy. But the Act is undoubtedly laying down infrastructure for further avenues for surveillance that could easily be exploited by bad actors or authoritarian governments. Not that the UK’s been doing any of that lately.
Coco Khan So on the pod a couple of months ago, I spoke about wearing a mask when going to protests and I guess online anonymity is kind of like that. Imagine needing to hand over your ID to organize a protest.
Nish Kumar Or indeed to enjoy yourself in the company of yourself. I think that’s as useful a euphemism I can provide. Yes. To have some private time of quiet self-reflection.
Coco Khan Quiet self-reflection! Come on! You can’t have that one!
Nish Kumar To engage in a conversation with the self about the self.
Coco Khan Are you talking about therapy?
Nish Kumar I’m not talking about therapy, I’m talking about masturbating kind of thing.
Coco Khan Thank you, Nish. I got what you were talking about, but I’m saying the language you use, it’s like you’re going to therapy, which is this going to transform all the conversations I have about my highly-therapized friends, because they’re always talking about journeys of self-reflection and doing the work on themselves anyway.
Nish Kumar I’ve got absolutely no time to do any work on myself at the moment, it’s a nightmare.
Coco Khan Just let’s move on.
Nish Kumar Rushed off my feet at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Coco Khan Okay. Okay. So this kind of age verification is also easy to beat. Let’s look at Reddit’s age verification rather than providing ID. You can actually opt to provide a selfie. There’s a bit of a meme going around that certain video games have high enough fidelity characters that a user can simply point their webcam at the screen to verify. So our producer, James, put this to the test using the game Death Stranding, which stars Hollywood actor Norman Reedus.
Nish Kumar Okay, so for listeners of the podcast who can’t see what we’re looking at, we’re looking at James’s computer screen where he’s holding his phone up to a video game character that is on the computer monitor. Because of the nature of these video games now, and they’re so high res, he can actually do a kind of semi 3D scan of the face. So the age verification software is now scanning the face of this computer game character and it has just verified as a real person.
Coco Khan Yeah, so we’ve seen it with our own eyes.
Nish Kumar Oh my god.
Coco Khan Wow, okay, well, I mean, I’m pretty sure if we know a teenager that they will find a way around these obstacles.
Nish Kumar Yeah, they might borrow their parents ID or like this example that we just shown you use a video game character to get around the age verification. So just in terms of a practical implementation, this legislation is sort of doomed to fail.
Coco Khan But as we say, this is not all about porn. In just the past week, we’ve seen some posts about Gaza and Ukraine restricted. We’ve seen a post on X of Francisco de Goya’s painting, Saturn devouring his son blocked. And I mean, it’s such powerful painting, but that is why it’s one of the most famous works of art on earth. There’s even talk from Wikipedia, the world’s largest and most read reference work and a free source of information for all, introducing a cap on the number of UK users due to fears that it may be forced to meet the standards designed for regulation of the big social media companies.
Nish Kumar Always one to leverage a wedge issue, Nigel Farage has entered the fray, announcing that reform would repeal the Online Safety Act, leading to this absolutely bizarre comment from the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, on Sky News.
Speaker 4 If people like Jimmy Savile were alive today, he’d be perpetrating his crimes online. And Nigel Farage is saying that he’s on their side. I’m sorry. Not the side of children who are… I’m going to ask you…
Speaker 5 Do you honestly think to say Nigel Farage is on Jimmy’s side?
Speaker 4 When it comes to online activity, we have seen unfettered access of adults to children via social media. When we put in the age verification, it stops strange adults getting in touch with children.
Speaker 5 This is a major leap. You’re going to stick to the fact that you said that Nigel Farage is on Jimmy Savile’s…
Speaker 4 Nigel Farage is on the side of turning the clock back to the time when strange adults, strangers, can get in touch via messaging apps with children.
Coco Khan Oh my goodness me.
Nish Kumar Yeah, I mean, listen, we never want to defend Nigel Farage on any grounds on this podcast, but it’s an enormous leap to go from a conversation about online safety to now invoking Jimmy Savile.
Coco Khan And once again, the government seems to have doubled down on this thing that is clearly not quite right with Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips once again invoking Jimmy Savile’s name when commenting on the Online Safety Act on Monday, stating that Nigel Farage would enable modern-day Jimmy Saviles.
Nish Kumar Okay, let’s just step away from whatever’s going on with the government and Jimmy Savile this week. But let’s talk more about this act because obviously we’re in a position in our kind of cultural and political conversation where we agree that something needs to be done to protect children from the various harms that they’re exposed to on the internet. So here to discuss the nuance around the implementation of the Online Safety Act is Chris Stokel-Walker, technology journalist, author and former guest on the pod. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK, Chris. Last time we had you on we were chatting about AI and you told us how some of the requests on ChatGPT are the equivalent of pouring a bottle of water on the ground. It turned out to be quite the divisive conversation and I believe it’s one of our best performing social videos ever. Do you think this topic is going to be as polar? Is this going to blow up on the Gram to the same extent, Chris?
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah, you’re welcome, by the way. Possibly this could be as contentious in part because I think the stakes are as significant, maybe not in terms of kind of like earth shattering and destroying, but in terms a kind of really significant shift in how we interact online and over such a divisive issue as I’m sure we’ll get onto that is also kind of seeping into all of the identity politics and culture wars that we’ve got going on. Potentially I am very much looking forward to my phone’s battery being drained by people telling stuff on the internet.
Coco Khan Well, look, you know, we we’ve just explained some of the flaws in the implementation of the online safety act, but really we’ve been talking about content restrictions and this act does a lot more, right?
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah, it does, Coco. This is one of the things that I think we overlook in this conversation. Frankly, I think the government often also is forgetting about when they’re talking about the Online Safety Act. This has been a long time in the making, since 2017, successive governments have been thrashing this out and it does have an awful lot of protections for things like preventing the trade in child sexual abuse material. It has things like stopping… People sharing intimate image abuse and so on and so forth. Basically what it does is it says that these platforms have to really tamp down on that very strongly in order to try and stop that trade. I guess that is the iceberg style bit that is under the water of actually there is this really contentious 10% of the law that is affecting all of us in a very obvious way and we don’t really like, but… There is sort of 80% under the water that is going on without us realizing that is actually a little bit of a good law here.
Nish Kumar Chris, just a question in your mouth, I think we might have a missing 10% in there. I think just a loose 10% of floating eyes. Where do we put that? Where shall we put it? Gosh.
Chris Stokel-Walker The use of AI to pollute our planet and cause all of this water damage means that the icebergs no longer have that 10%. They are only at 90% now.
Nish Kumar But this is what Jess Phillips and Peter Carr should have been leading on this week, rather than making strange comparisons about Jimmy Savile. This is something that surely everybody in the country and certainly across the political spectrum should be able to agree on.
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah. And look, I mean, I’m not a political advisor, though I do sometimes speak to some of them as part of my reporting. Don’t think any political advisor would be saying they should go out and say a mass majority of the public who are opposed to this are basically the pedophiles or pedophile sympathizers. I think that is bad political messaging. It’s kind of the point at which you’ve lost the argument. Before Peter Cowell decided to pick a fight with Nigel Farage, the messaging from the government was that the online safety act is a anti-porn law, basically. They said that this is an attempt to try and stop your kids from accessing pornography when they shouldn’t do. YouGov put out a poll that said 80% of people are in favor of the Online Safety Act. Now, the reason why 80% people are in favor the Online safety act is that the government was saying specifically, this is designed to stop your kids from accessing porn and YouGove repeated that language in their polling. So of course people are going to say, well, I don’t want underage children accessing adult content, they shouldn’t. That is a no brainer. I think that where they kind of messed up is that actually that is not the totality of the act and there is an awful lot of collateral damage. And it’s that side of things. If you ask the public, do you think that you should have to hand over your ID or take a selfie of yourself in order to learn about Craft Beer or cider, or to access some of your Spotify streams? Probably they’re going to say no, by the way, if you say you have to use your ID in order to prove that your child can actually access Wikipedia to do their homework, because Wikipedia is vastly opposed to this and says that they want to get rid of this or they will have to leave the country, suddenly I think the polling will change.
Nish Kumar Can I just ask like a question from somebody who does not understand tech and believes it to be the work of the devil? How have they managed to throw out all of this bathwater? I don’t understand. What is the technological mechanism that means that they can’t distinguish between hardcore pornography and Wikipedia page entries about hardcore pornography?
Chris Stokel-Walker Well, I think they can and I think that’s part of the issue. The problem is that we have a government and a political system that is fundamentally tech-illiterate, first of all, Nish, and that is a big issue where they don’t really understand the problem and therefore, they can’t really draw the boundaries around the problem. Because of that, they have invoked industry support and there is a strong backing of the industry to say, well, actually, Age Assurance Verification as it’s often called, which is kind of… These third party providers that will scan your face or whatever, or your ID, and they will say, well, you look pretty haggard. You’re gonna be over the age of 18 or you look fresh-faced. You might be on the kind of borderline or something like that. They see an opportunity to make money there. And so there has been lobbying going on to say, well, actually we think that we can provide this solution to your problem. And the politicians don’t necessarily understand what’s going on. So they go, oh, perfect. This person is coming with this magic solution others connect.
Nish Kumar Fix this issue for me can also just ask you about these third party providers because I have to say in any conversation I know enough I know very little but I know about tech to be concerned when the phrase third party providers starts being bandied around who are these people where is that information and our data go
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah, so they’re all held in the cloud and then securely deleted the company saying, truthfully, I have no reason to dispute that, although they are not as accurate as you might want them to be. So it’s kind of within around about two years, plus or minus, depending on your ethnicity. So as a white man, I’m okay, because there’s a whole load of white men on the internet and a lot of training data that sort of says, this is a white woman who was 36 versus this is a white brown who was 18. If you’re a black teenage girl and you’re aged. 17, 18, 19 or so, the blurry lines get even blurrier on how well they can estimate your age. They have managed to position themselves as being a reputable provider of technology, which works pretty well, but it doesn’t work well 100% of the time. The problem is, you probably need it to work 100% the time because otherwise you have these edge cases where actually you get either locked out or allowed in when you shouldn’t be doing so.
Coco Khan But wouldn’t the counter-argument be, well, okay, yes, we should aim for 100%, but currently we’re at 0%, isn’t any improvement better? How we know that there’s harms caused to children being exposed to violent pornography, for example, but also the ease in which abuse material is sent. How much harm are we willing to tolerate in pursuit of perfection? I don’t know, is that not… A concern. I mean, has anyone done it? Well, as I understand it, this act and what we’re seeing is globally groundbreaking. The UK is the first of its kind really to kind of try and grab the nettle. I’m not saying therefore we must support it. Of course, everything needs scrutiny, but I’m just saying, you know, this idea of like, well, let’s wait until it’s good enough. When will we get there?
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah, exactly. I mean, the argument against that is that you can be the first to jump into a river and drown and that’s always an issue, right? Like there is that issue, but I do think you’re right, Coco, in that we’ve kind of recognized that something is up, that there is a generational problem here. The issue is that we haven’t really got a settled agreement on what to do about it and we’re waiting for the science to happen. And this, by the way, goes further than just kind of kids accessing porn and having a a warped view of what sexes and relations between individuals is. This goes to, for instance, social media bans on children. It goes to phone bans in schools. The science isn’t yet settled on that. We are currently doing the studies on that, the problem is government realizes that there is a vocal and often quite big group of people who are really concerned about this, particularly parents who will see this problem facing their children. They are demanding that something is being done. Now, we’re not quite, I suppose, at the kind of hell and love joy, won’t somebody think of the children phase here, but we are being led by people like Jonathan Haight, who put out a really popular book called The Anxious Generation last year, which is kind of being read by a lot of people in Whitehall and elsewhere. By the way, Australia was kind of competing with the UK to be the most draconian in terms of this stuff. And so we are having these laws being implemented that are based on kind of a not fully formed view yet, which is okay, except that you will always have collateral damage here.
Nish Kumar We’ve been talking about the issues with the act. Let’s consider the sort of counter argument. So we reached out to Adele Walton, who sadly lost her sister after exposure to self-harm content online. Adele is also the author of Logging Off the Human Cost of Our Online World. And we asked her for her thoughts on the online safety act. Before we get into that, it’s just worth starting with a quote from her book. Free speech is not a moral interest for big tech companies and their CEOs. It’s a business interest since extreme content gets more engagement. And more engagement means more profit. If tech leaders were to regulate so-called free speech, the foundations of their business model would be put at risk. Not only this, but today’s digital dictatorship where tech companies are the stewards of whose voice is amplified and whose is silent, free speech becomes a fallacy in itself.
Coco Khan Adele told us that I wrote these words in 2022 as I knew it was only a matter of time before online safety became weaponized into the culture wars. Right-wing politicians and commentators are seizing this as an opportunity to make baseless claims about state censorship and the end of free speech when this legislation aims to hold the very surveillance companies known as social media platforms to account at long last. She continues, if addictive design and predatory algorithms that surveil our every move and second weren’t fueling hatred, division, misogyny, self harm, we wouldn’t need the online safety act. The online safety Act is not perfect, but it is a vital start. Until now, we have not had a single law designed with the purpose of keeping people safe online. And that is why people like me have lost loved ones. Chris, what’d you make of that?
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah, Adele’s book is really interesting, by the way. I got sent a copy and it’s really fascinating. People ought to read it. And the point that she makes is a very valid one, which is something is better than nothing. The challenge is could we have got a better something, I think. And that is the big issue is that very few people dispute that there are pernicious issues around online safety and kind of the inaction of these tech companies. Because frankly, we haven’t regulated them at any point over the last 20 years. The challenge now is I think that we are over-regulating in one point and we’ve kind of discussed some of the reasons behind that in terms of kind of our politicians tech, illiteracy writ large and the idea that we are kind of governing based on these anecdotes that are really quite horrific and really important to tackle. But are often outliers in some way, shape, or form, which isn’t to diminish the fact that they happen. I think that we need to keep those voices in there. And I do think that it is important that we have some sort of regulation. I just think that when we are talking about a kind of population-wide affecting measure, like we are seeing here, it is incumbent on us to think about all of the collateral damage that it can cause and kind of all of issues that can result from this. And so. Having something in place is good. Having something that actually works in place is better. And I think that when we’re talking about something as key as kind of any digital identity proving, because digital lives are effectively just lives now. You have the online and the offline are the same nowadays. You don’t really think of them as any different. It becomes a real civil liberties thing. Now, Nigel Farage can kind of argue about this all he wants. And certainly they’ve made hay of the fact that this has happened and tied this into their kind of anti big state rhetoric. I, yeah, I agree with Nigel farage that the, and I never thought I would ever say that by the way, but like, I agreed with him that the online safety act as currently done is bad. I fundamentally disagree with him in the idea that this is big government trying to control what you do, et cetera, et cetra, like this is. This is just, they don’t understand it and they need to understand it better and we deserve something better. I think all of us.
Nish Kumar Is this where the conversation ends? I mean, there’s nearly 500,000 signatures, uh, on a petition to overturn the online safety act, but it’s happened. Is this now just a settled issue? Are we just saddled with this poorly thought out law?
Chris Stokel-Walker Yeah, the petition is a really interesting one, Nish, because yes, half a million signatures basically on this saying, we think this is wrong and the government has officially responded to that petition as they are required to do and said, well, we hear you, but we’re not going to listen to you. They’re really digging their heels in here. I think that this is now the new norm, that we exist in a kind of hall pass or Soviet era papers please internet for the time being. The challenges and the only way that I can think this would change potentially is if a big tech platform also digs their heels in. So if you get a meta or a TikTok or a Snapchat, or potentially, I suppose, even more likely an X, although whether or not that criticism and that kind of grandstanding would be seen as unsurprising, if they kind of stand up and say, well, actually. We’re not so sure about this and we think that actually this is inconvenient to our users, that might get a little bit of pushback. But I think until you have, for instance, WhatsApp requiring you to show your ID before you can message somebody, the reality is this is going to be a burden that we’re all going to have to deal with.
Coco Khan Chris Stokel-Walker, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. I hope your comments are clear and clean and light. We shall see. And a reminder, listeners, we’ve got a live show coming up in London on the 7th of September. Come down and see us.
Nish Kumar Now, when we were talking about our last live show, Coco, you said, don’t bring your mum. How much has that comment haunted you?
Coco Khan Yeah, I feel like I offended a load of mums. I am a mum. I just don’t know what’s happened. I’ve alienated myself from my own people. We love mums, bring your mum, alright?
Nish Kumar I’m doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe and there are people coming along with their mums every single day and the fifth, seventh and eleventh words of the show are in fact the same word and it’s a word so severe I’m not allowed to say it on this podcast. So it’s fine.
Coco Khan The link for tickets, by the way, is in the show notes. We can’t wait to see you there. And I reiterate, bring your mum. It’s going to be a great night out.
Nish Kumar Buy your tickets. And look, if you love messy power players and hate the men who actually have power, this fucking guy is for you.
Coco Khan [AD]
Nish Kumar Now after the break we speak to the journalist Freddy McConnell on how the UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of gender as biological is threatening all of our rights and how we can fight back.
Coco Khan [AD]
Coco Khan Now, in a landmark ruling back in April, the UK Supreme Court found that man, woman and sex, for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010, refer to biological sex. According to the government, the ruling was supposed to bring clarity and confidence amidst the fog of the culture wars, but how it has played out has been anything but.
Nish Kumar Just nine days after the Supreme Court ruling, the Equality and Human Rights Commission published without any consultation an interim update about how this ruling would be applied in single-sex spaces. This code of practice, if implemented as currently drafted, will have a devastating impact on the day-to-day lives of trans people in the UK, excluding them from settings ranging from specialist support services to changing rooms and toilets.
Coco Khan And now, the decision to make this new code law could happen behind closed doors, with no debate, no scrutiny, no vote. Here to talk us through what the hell is going on and what we can do about it is journalist Freddy McConnell. Hi Freddy, and welcome back to Pod Save the UK.
Nish Kumar So Freddy, this has very, very real and serious consequences for trans people in this country. Why is it being rushed through without proper scrutiny?
Freddy McConnell You can look back to a couple of years, 2023, the EHRC was already pushing for this to be the interpretation of the Equality Act when it comes to trans people. The people heading the EHRC then and now were appointed by Liz Truss, Kevin Badenock. They, I think, are taking this opportunity to interpret the Supreme Court ruling in the most extreme way possible. Because it matches what they wanted in the first place, which is this, uh, basically exclusion of trans people from public life in any livable way. So it’s not like they are doing something that’s not allowed. They are just using a standard procedure to sort of push through something, which is totally extraordinary and shocking. They’re basically taking the Equality Act, which is the law that is meant to protect trans people’s rights, everyone’s rights. And they’re sort of mutating it. Into a ban on trans people in public life. A bathroom ban, it’s being called a bathroom ban which it very much is. That’s the easiest bit to explain. Similar to the bathroom bills we heard about in the States around 2016, but worse because not only are our bathrooms going to be now not usable by trans people, but any sort of public services, so it’s hospital wards, also associations, gardening clubs, yoga clubs. We’re going to be essentially banned from using. And yeah, so that’s why it’s sort of happening in this way, which seems bizarre in any other context would be normal, but because of what they are trying to make happen, it cannot be allowed to happen without any debate or scrutiny. What we keep realizing and what I keep hearing is that MPs do not understand what is happening. They do not understand the gravity of this and that’s terrifying.
Coco Khan So just putting aside for one moment the, the morality of this issue, you know, about essentially designing a society to exclude, actively exclude and marginalize a group within it, putting that aside, how is it even possible? How is it, even workable to administer something like a bathroom ban?
Freddy McConnell I mean, I don’t think it will be. I haven’t heard a good explanation of that. I was reading bits of the updated code of practice last night and it’s really tortured, you know, they’re obviously trying to, cause as with the Supreme Court ruling, there’s this, um, there this sop to trans people of, you know, it doesn’t, it, doesn’t take away any of your rights or make your life worse. Similarly, the code of practice is written in such a way as to seem like a sort of normal, um, reasonable piece of code of practice. And it’s sort of saying, you know, usually you won’t have to ask people for proof of their birth sex, but if you do, this is how to do it in a way that is least likely to upset people. And also we recommend that this rule applies to everyone. So you’re not just going to be looking for If you’re going to ask for birth sex evidence, you need to ask everyone so that there’s no risk of indirect discrimination. And if you ask and they cannot provide evidence, but you still have a suspicion, then this is what you should do. And it’s just like, I’m sorry, what? Like the question of like, why and how, you know, they are the questions that we should be asking and not enough people are asking them. Certainly not enough MPs are asking.
Coco Khan I noticed the other day that the new justice advisor for reform, Vanessa Frake, said that there should be no blanket ban on trans women in women’s prisons. As I understand it, Frake has actually hands-on experience working in prisons and simply made the point that it’s just not workable, it couldn’t be done, and there’s been this enormous backlash that unfortunately Elon’s ex served to me.
Nish Kumar The exact quote is absolutely fascinating because Vanessa Frank said people who want to just see a blanket ban clearly have never stepped foot in a prison and see how prisons run and see risk assessments on individuals happen. So it’s just a kind of, when you work a policy through without giving it proper scrutiny, it sort of evaporates on contact with reality.
Freddy McConnell Yeah, this isn’t a reform member coming out and declaring sort of strong allyship. She’s just stating what the law is, what the actually is and was up until the point of the Supreme court ruling and also what anyone with any experience in that sector would say, anyone who actually knows what they’re talking about would say it shouldn’t be surprising that she said that that’s how far we’ve sort of moved away from reality. That’s how I’m sorry to use the cliche at this point, but the Overton window has shifted, right? Um, I think that this is being driven and I, you know, it’s clear, there is clear evidence that this is been driven by a hardcore of ideological people, whether they’re lobbyists or whether they’re MPs themselves. Um, and I think it is being appeased by everyone else with any kind of say or power in the situation who just want it to go away. Like, I don’t think every minister, I don’t even think Kirstama. Is ideologically anti-trans. I just think he wants it to go away. And maybe to give him the benefit of the doubt, he doesn’t realize that actually what he is doing is ensuring that it will not go away and he is creating a huge problem for himself. He will either eventually have to reverse his position and try to undo this mess, or he will face a sort of catastrophic defeat at the European Court of Human Rights. Possibly around the time of the next election, and then he will have to decide whether or not to take the UK out of the Convention on Human Rights, which is not something you’d ever think you’d be saying about a Labor Prime Minister.
Nish Kumar Or a former human rights lawyer.
Coco Khan Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think you can learn anything from anyone, but I think if I had views that even someone from reform found too extreme, I might question myself. But let’s stick with Keir Starmer there. So he promised to end the culture wars. Obviously, we know this ruling is really stoking them instead. It’s no surprise that the UK has dropped to its lowest ever ranking on European LGBTQ rights. All the statements from the government have said the Supreme Court judgment has been incredibly clear and that trans people should use toilets according to biological sex. But is there only option to take this interpretation of the ruling as read? What else could they have done is the question.
Freddy McConnell So this is where it comes back to the fact that the Supreme Court ruling does say what it says, and it is pretty clear. It doesn’t bring clarity, but it is clear in what it sort of attempts to argue, which is that this is what the Equality Act has always said. And this is, you know, this sort of exclusion on the basis of sex under the Eqality Act of trans people, which negates our entire system of legal gender recognition. So what activists and many kind of lawyers are asking is that the interpretation of the ruling that the equality watchdog is currently pushing is stopped and is rejected because I’ve heard it described as the Old Testament version of the Supreme Court ruling. That is what the equality Watchdog is pushing for. People, the most senior judges in the country who are now retired, people like Lord Sumption have said there are other ways to interpret this ruling that do not equate to a bathroom ban. I can’t use the gents because I’m not a man, but I can use the ladies because I look too much like a man. So there has to be a third option provided for trans people, which in reality will be the disabled lose, which as any disabled person will tell you, there aren’t enough of, and that’s not what they’re for. And we don’t really understand at this point what happens where a business or a service provider is small enough to where they can say, we cannot afford to provide that third option. So I guess that just means trans people can’t go to the loo. There could be a code of practice that is very much written in a way that is far more measured and is still, is still going to be devastating. It’s still forcing every trans person I speak to, to think about how and when they’re going to emigrate, but quite as extreme, I guess, and sort of mandatory and blanket in the way that this current code of practice.
Coco Khan Well, I mean, this all sounds quite bleak. I think that’s fair to say, but there is some positivity here. Lots of ordinary people are resisting this. Last month, nearly a thousand people gathered in Westminster for a mass lobby against the ruling, some queued for hours to meet with their MPs. They shared how it affected their lives. A hundred MPs showed up roughly. Do you know if this has led to any positive outcomes?
Freddy McConnell Sense from the day was that there was so many sort of productive conversations held that day. A lot of MPs were for the first time understanding the impact of this. There were trans people there in the lobby saying to them, you know, look me in the eye and tell me you’re willing to destroy my life. And I think it’s fair to say that no one, none of the MPs that went voluntarily or were green carded, their presence was requested by a constituent, expected to hear at when they went. So Yes, I think talking to your individual MP, it’s important that Keir Starmer hears this. If he wants to avoid potentially another very embarrassing rebellion by his MPs, he needs to be very careful and heed what they are saying. Also, that is the only way that this is going to be stopped because of the sort of process that we talked about whereby this becomes law automatically within 40 days of the code of practice being submitted to Parliament. Only way that can be stopped is if enough MPs sort of force a debate and demand scrutiny. Principles matter in these kinds of situations, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, where they are supposed to be able to look at this sort of thing and object to it, and they absolutely will if they see what it says. It’s a cliche at this point, but once you do it for one group, who is next? You know, if you destroy this precedent, what happens next? The Equality Act. What’s going to happen to the Equality It’s been made. A mockery of, you know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t do what it is meant to do anymore. What’s going to happen to the other protected characteristics.
Nish Kumar Also, a big part of Keir Starmer’s pitch to the country has not necessarily been to energize them with a raft of policy announcements, but it’s supposedly about bringing proper order and procedure after years of chaos under the Conservative Party where parliamentary sovereignty was at various points attacked by the party of government. This is supposed to be part of what Keisar was offering. Is to the country, proper process, proper procedure, the, in inverted commas, grown-ups are back in charge. None of this suggests any of that based on what’s happening with this particular piece of legislation.
Freddy McConnell Yeah, very well said. And I think if you can stand behind what you are proposing, then have it debated, have it looked at properly, um, release it, you know, the first time that anyone in public will know what it says is when it’s put before parliament, there has already been this sort of leak of information from the watchdog, which reveals that they are pushing to submit the final draft of the code of practice by the end of this month.
Coco Khan Oh, wow. We’ve just seen the largest ever London trans pride, you know, over a hundred thousand people came, that’s a lot of people, you know, if you could mobilize those people, maybe there’s, you know, everything to play for that piece of work, you know, I know we’ve only got three weeks.
Freddy McConnell 100%. We have to do it. We have no choice. Like we absolutely must do this. It’s incredibly important. Again, not just for trans people, but for our democracy. Absolutely. We have to see this in the context of this government as a whole and everything else it’s doing. Like if it can ignore genocide and mass forced starvation in Gaza, then yeah, absolutely. They can take away like the fundamental rights of trans people in this country. We have to do everything we can to try and stop this. I think we have to prepare for the worst.
Coco Khan Well, on that, uh, cheery note… I was looking forward to a Labor government, but sadly…
Nish Kumar We didn’t get one.
Coco Khan We didn’t get one. Yes. Well said, Mitch. Very well said.
Nish Kumar Freddy McConnell, thank you so much for joining us once again on Pod Save the UK. Listeners, you know what to do, information on how to write to your MP and challenge the guidances available in our show notes.
Freddy McConnell Best place to go in the first instance is to the website for Trans Solidarity Alliance. They have their own two-page briefing which has everything you need to know and a template for writing to MP.
Coco Khan And after the break we hear your hopes, dreams and niggling doubts about Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn’s new left party.
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Nish Kumar Now, we just wanted to mention a couple of stories linked to a certain protest organization. You know the one that has been prescribed as a terrorist organization. As you know… We can’t say much here due to the government’s incredible decision about that and the sound that I can hear in my headphones of our producers’ heart rates rising. But we can tell you the headlines with the usual disclaimer, you do not need to sympathize with Palestine Action’s aims to believe that its prescription as a terrorist organization sets a chilling precedent and minds democracy.
Coco Khan Yes. So over the weekend, there was a massive protest down under organized by the Australian branch of Palestine Action. Estimates vary, but between 200 and 300,000 people marched on the Sydney Harbor Bridge, shutting it down for hours. A huge event that drew eyeballs around the world that obviously couldn’t happen here in the UK due to the prescription of the organization.
Nish Kumar You’re right, but this weekend protesters intend to test the boundaries of the Terrorism Act in a rally against the prescription of Palestine action. Tim Crossland, our guest on the show last week, intends to march. Do go back and listen to that conversation if you haven’t already because it was absolutely fascinating.
Coco Khan The Metropolitan Police are warning of mass arrests of the protesters saying that, and we quote, our officers will continue to apply the law in relation to Palestine action as we have done since its prescription. Anyone showing support for the group can expect to be arrested.
Nish Kumar Meanwhile, in more absolutely normal and in no way completely concerning news, The Guardian is reporting this week that Lord Dannet, a former military general and crossbench peer in the House of Lords, urged ministers to crack down on Palestine Action at the request of a US defense company that employs him as an advisor. Can I just repeat that because it is worth stressing? Once again, we’re hearing a story of a peer in the house of Lords unduly wielding their influence for their personal gain. That is incredibly normal and not in any way wildly concerning.
Coco Khan Yeah, we really recommend you read the article. We’ll link to it in the show notes. But the claim essentially boils down to the fact that the US defense company called Teledyne saw its Wales based warehouses targeted by Palestine action. Dannet claims the allegations are baseless. We should also note that Lord Dannet is currently at the center of two ongoing investigations by the House of Lords authorities over claims of lobbying.
Nish Kumar Anyway, to move on to a subject we can actually talk freely about without fear of getting arrested. As we discussed last week, the launch of a new left party by independent MP Sarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn certainly lit a fire in the belly of UK-based progressives. More than 600,000 people have now registered their interests, and the party promises to shape something truly transformative in British politics.
Coco Khan But it is so far a party without a name. So dear listeners, we wanted to know your thoughts and boy, did you deliver. Some of you were quite taken with the idea of our highly original suggestion from last week, Party McParty face.
Nish Kumar There are some other outstanding suggestions. Tej underscore 11 wants to call it the after party, and Event Horizon Music suggested getting jazzy with it. That is very specifically aimed, a demographic of people that remembers Will Smith’s music career.
Coco Khan I mean, I have mixed feelings about the after party because on the one hand, the after party is for the real heads, do you know what I mean? Like if you’re at the after-party, you’re serious.
Nish Kumar The after party is where historically Coco Khan has shone brightest.
Coco Khan But it’s also where the, you know, the…
Nish Kumar Now it’s the after after party. It’s the After After Party when things get weird.
Coco Khan Oh, is it? That’s exactly what he was saying.
Nish Kumar Things get weird at the third location. Things get at weird at third location
Coco Khan Yeah. It starts to feel a bit depressing, you know what I mean? Like, oh, we really went in here with like our tropical shirts and bottle of rum thinking this was going to be great. And it’s actually a bit sad really, I don’t know about it.
Nish Kumar Coco, this one is specifically for you. Stoner Mouse, again, congratulations on these handles people. Stonermouse wrote, bins first. I think this is aimed so specifically at Coco Kahn. Bins first. And the slogan is putting better, more ecologically sustainable waste management solutions and services first. But with Coco, as the government’s wastes are, not in a Elon Musk Department of Governmental Efficiency, I think literally Minister for rubbish.
Coco Khan Minister for Rubbish is very much my mandate, I think, that’s very much. I’d be passionate about it. Also, you know, how do we interpret the word waste? Yes, there’s the stuff in our bins, but perhaps we can also, you know, add bad vibes to waste, waste men to waste. I feel I could do a good job of taking out all of those.
Nish Kumar We can’t be having a Minister for Waste Man. That feels like a real overreach of the government’s powers. No one likes waste men, but no one wants them to be legislated against.
Coco Khan But they ultimately have a right to be here. Thanks, stoner mouse. So Bill said the left works in Germany and it could work in the UK too. That’s interesting. I wonder if the new party would pick up votes from people who wouldn’t ordinarily describe themselves as left.
Nish Kumar Well, that’s certainly the concern of PastramiCheeseMonster4873, who despite their handle has posted an incredibly serious comment, they disagreed on the idea of calling it the Left Party or the Left, which apparently is Zarah Sultana’s favorite name. They said, I think the Left party is a terrible name because it will discourage people who agree with its policies but don’t consider them left-wing to vote for it.
Coco Khan I mean, I guess a lot of right-wing people don’t consider themselves right-wings.
Nish Kumar I think it’s an interesting idea. I think part of the trick progressives have to pull off over the next half decade is actually making people realize how many of their beliefs are actually core progressive votes. Whether you do that by calling yourself the left party or calling yourself something else is something I don’t have the answer to.
Coco Khan So Joseph said, my favorite name for the party is Unity, because I think it’s three syllables, so it sounds great to chant. Unity, Unity. It’s a good explanation for what it stands for compared to reform. It’s bringing people together rather than dividing them against minorities.
Nish Kumar Name aside, there’s not much to talk about when it comes to a policy platform, but some of you are very hopeful about what’s to come. Safi Parry 8926 wrote, so excited about this new party I’ve joined because I want to see a more united left. Grace had a really interesting point, I thought. It seems to me that this new left party is the party Labor should be. I’ve always heard that having green councilors on a council, even if they aren’t the majority, help pull councilor slightly more to the left. So I hope the same will be true of the left-wing parties in Westminster. There has been this constant churn of conversation about whether a new left party could function from a progressive perspective, the way that the UK Dependents Party and reform function, which is essentially dragging the agenda of the center right party in a particular direction? You know, is that a function that may be a united voting bloc of this new party and the Greens constituting Westminster?
Coco Khan But others were more cautious, so Don’t Wanna Name wrote, the fact that the party doesn’t even have a name, despite weeks of teasing says to me they’re going to be incredibly slow and ponderous in terms of policy.
Nish Kumar Alexander also had two major and I think interesting concerns that are worth considering. Firstly, that the policies to be made by members, and he said this, I’m worried that the socially liberal left could be outnumbered by the more socially conservative left, typified by George Galloway’s Workers’ Party. This could result in the party adopting reactionary policies on transgender rights and sex worker rights. Authoritarian policies on drug use policing and criminal justice reform and a disregard for inalienable rights like free speech, artistic expression, and online privacy. That is part of the consistent battle on the left, which is
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Nish Kumar mix of economically liberal, but socially conservative and economically liberal and socially liberal voters. It’s always been a tricky conundrum.
Coco Khan Yes, absolutely. Alexander’s second concern, which comes into play further down the line and was echoed by some other listeners, was about their economic policy. So Alexander said, how would the financial markets respond to a budget from Jeremy Corbyn? Because if loaded with their own biases and ideological assumptions, they forecast wrongly, that will harm the economy or unsustainably increase debt. They can throw a tantrum which destabilizes the whole economy, leading to hikes in interest rates and the cost of government borrowing. The new party must be ready for this.
Nish Kumar I think that that’s a really interesting point, and I think that they can learn a lot from the experience of the 2017 manifesto launch, where there were all sorts of, you know, warnings about what Corbin policy platform was going to do and the damage it was going cause. And then when the manifesto was leaked and had been fully costed, it actually actually helped the election campaign. We can’t continue with this economic system, with this economic model, and we can’t continuously be held hostage by the financial markets. But this is the problem with progressive people is that you have to produce a policy platform that is both bold and completely costed to the penny. That’s the challenge that we face as progressives, but it’s not a reason to not be bold.
Coco Khan So Me Myself I Am Weird, that’s a username, that is not me having a moment, Me Mysself I Am weird said, I am watching your party with caution. Personally I am LGBTQ so I am watching for any statement on trans rights or the rollback of it in the UK. I think it would be a good way to get the queer vote but my guess is they will never address anything trans related or even turn out transphobic like everybody else.
Nish Kumar I mean, given the last few years, you can forgive members of the LGBTQIA community for being suspicious of absolutely everybody in mainstream UK politics. I think they have good reason to be cautious.
Coco Khan I think I will have a very heavy heart if that turns out to be the case. Just someone like Zarah Sultana, I don’t know, as a politician I’ve followed her for some time. I would be very disappointed, I think, I’ll just say that.
Nish Kumar Yeah, and from a Labor Party perspective, all I would say is, there should be a period of reflection here, because we keep talking about these concerns about splintering the vote. And listen, I’ll be completely frank, it’s a concern that I massively share, you know, the fragmentation of the progressive vote as a way that allows a kind of reformed conservative coalition to come into power. That is something that is rolling through my head at the moment and, you know, occupying my anxiety disorder as we record. But what I would say is… If Keir Starmer keeps telling people to go fuck themselves, there is a possibility they will take him up on that offer. So like, this is a moment for the Labor Party to seriously reflect on the impact it’s had on its core vote in its first year in office. I believe the fault of the fragmentation of the left and the progressive vote at this moment. Is the responsibility of Keir Starmer and the Labor Party. I don’t blame anyone else for that. Thank you so much for all your correspondence and do keep it coming in. We really are interested to hear what you think. Thanks also for your stupid names. It’s good to know that people are still committed in this country to the grand British tradition of stupid names for things. That is essential. That’s the only thing that makes me feel patriotic, apart from when I see a W.A. Smiths at an international airport.
Coco Khan Thanks everyone for listening to Pod Save the UK and can we remind you that you can come and see us live at our special show at the London Podcast Festival on the 7th of September. Tickets are on sale now and you’ll find a link in our show notes. Bring your mum, bring your dad, bring your Wasteman X. I’ll deal with him, that’s my new job.
Nish Kumar Don’t forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and you can find us on Blue Sky as well. We want to hear your thoughts. Email us at psuk@reducedlistening.co.uk.
Coco Khan Pods Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.
Nish Kumar Thanks to Senior Producer James Tyndale and Producer May Robson.
Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.
Nish Kumar The executive producers are Anishka Sharma and Katie Long with additional support from Ari Schwartz.
Coco Khan And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
