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Rachel Reeves has delivered her very first spending review, promising to ‘renew Britain’ with big cash boosts for the NHS, housing and defence. It’s a marked change of tone but the Tories are calling her approach “spend now, tax later”.

Nish and Coco dig into the details and are left with some questions. Are tax rises in the Autumn inevitable? Are high-stakes promises, like vowing to end spending on controversial asylum hotels, ill-thought-out? Will all this be enough to change the public mood?

And as we’ve seen across the pond in LA this week, face masks have been critical to protect the identity of protestors demonstrating against immigration raids and deportations. But the UK government plans to ban them. Nish and Coco speak to Akiko Hart, director of human rights organisation, Liberty, about how we can uphold the right to protest and the latest on challenging the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman.

And finally – it gives us great joy to announce – Reform UK is in meltdown with (now former) party chairman Zia Yusuf performing the political equivalent of the hokey-cokey… is he in or out?

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar. Coco, I hear you’ve been ruffling the feathers of some of our favorite Tories. Here is a clip of you talking to Jeremy Hunt on BBC’s Laura Kunzberg on Sunday.

Clip Well, I think I’ll probably disagree with Coco.

Nish Kumar Respectfully disagreeing. Well, well, well. Did you have fun?

Coco Khan I wish that I could tell you some story about how, like, in the green room, I really told him how it was, but in the Green Room, they had free pastries, and I am a, you know, a new mum, so I just sat in the corner, just eating pastries looking at the various powerful men coming in and out thinking, God, you’re all so tall. Is that a prerequisite for government? You have to all be six foot and wear a navy suit.

Nish Kumar Well, let’s just take a second to observe the true narrative arc of Koko Kahn’s life to find yourself in a situation where on a Sunday morning you woke up, presumably had some interactions with your newborn child and then went to do a political discussion show on a Sunday morning, whereas previous iterations of Coco Khan would either have simply not been awake or would not have been to bed from the night before. So let’s observe the grand narrative arc.

Coco Khan Before, those conversations with Jeremy Hunt were in my head. And now, they’re real! Wow! Live your dreams, kids. Stay in school. Drugs are for mugs, etc.

Nish Kumar Well, we’ll return to that and possibly the topic of drugs are for mugs later on in the show. But today we’ll also be discussing the government’s proposed policies on protest with Akiko Hart, the Director of Human Rights Charity Liberty.

Coco Khan But now, as we record on Wednesday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is delivering her very first spending review, laying the groundwork for how much money will be allocated to the various plans the government has on its agenda. Let’s hear the Chancellor now.

Clip The plan to match the scale of the housing crisis must include social housing, neglected for too many decades but not by this Labour government. And so, led by my right honorable friend the Deputy Prime Minister, we are taking action. I am proud to announce the biggest cash injection into social and affordable housing in 50 years. A new affordable homes program in which I am investing £39 billion over the next decade.

Nish Kumar So look, from a progressive perspective, this is the key announcement in the spending review. £39 billion of funding for affordable homes, which is a really big deal. It’s almost doubling of government spending commitments. And as Rachel Reeves says there, the biggest injection of spending in 50 years on social and affordable homes. So that is something that’s worth celebrating and also worth celebrating the kind of pressure that’s been put on the announced this kind of a spending position. Just from a side note here, the politics of this is also very interesting because there’s been a lot of rumblings about lack of unity in the front bench and specifically around whether Angela Rayner is trying to position herself as a challenger to Keir Starmer. It was obviously hugely significant that Rachel Reeves very clearly mentioned Rayner And it felt like a real show of unity, I think maybe to paper over some of- the cracks that might have been emerging over the last few weeks.

Coco Khan Yeah, absolutely. You might say this is the Labour Party acting more like the Labour Party. I don’t want to get too carried away, but you know, a unified party and actually spending money on places that we really needed housing. I mean, it’s the foundation of everything that we need to have a good life in this country. I do think, though, we should take it all with a pinch of salt, according to the new Economics Foundation even 39 billion is going to fall short of providing the 90,000 social homes that are needed each year if the government’s going to meet its own 1.5 million housing target. But there were quite a few good things in this, so it was already announced, but new founding for train networks around the UK, I think we can all agree trains being improved is good. And in some ways you could say easy because they’re so bad.

Nish Kumar You’re clearing a low bar.

Coco Khan Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Nish Kumar There’s also funding to extend free school meals, which will help lift many children out of poverty. Again though, it is worth flagging there’s still no announcements about a plan to end the two child benefit cap. That’s something that I imagine between now and the full budget in the autumn, there’ll be a huge amount of pressure from a lot of different groups associated with that. And I imagine a huge number of pressure from within. The Labour Party and given some of the comments that someone like Gordon Brown has been making from within the wider Labour movement, there’s going to be a huge pressure on the government to do that. No announcement on that as we stand. The biggest winner, perhaps unsurprisingly of the spending review, is the NHS, which Rachel Reift saved for last in her speech. So overall, an extra £29 billion a year will be spent on the NHS, which is an annual rise of 3% on current levels. There’ll be increased budget for NHS technology. So that’s going to increase by about 50% with specifically 10 billion pounds earmarked to bring the NHS into the digital age. Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who has really, since the last general election campaign, been pushing social care has said that the NHS is in crisis and we support extra investment to help turn it around. But without fixing social care, no amount of funding will solve the problem and it is worth flagging. That the social care increases don’t meet that 3% level. So there is still an issue with social care here, but obviously more money going into the NHS is something that is badly needed by the service.

Coco Khan There were, however, some questionable announcements. So one that stands out was the end of asylum hotels. Of course, asylum hotels has been a massive expenditure for the exchequer, but we know that asylum hotels have been right at the center of culture war issues. It’s a very sensitive topic. Where are the asylum seekers going to go?

Nish Kumar Yes. So the announcement is that by the end of this parliament, there will be no more spending on hotel accommodation for asylum seekers. There’s some elements of this spending review that are designed to continue to play the game that the Labour party has tried to play for the last nearly a year in government, which is attempting to keep progressives on with announcements around social housing and health care. But also trying to balance that by offering some red meat to the right of British politics. Kate Duffy Saeedi, the co-artistic director of Phosphorus Theater, who works with refugees, welcomed the plan as, and this is the quote, a long overdue recognition of the need for dignity and stability. But that said, without safe routes, timely and fair decision making, and the right to work, those seeking asylum will continue to face harm, uncertainty and exclusion. And that is the key point here. Unless we reform the asylum system and provide safe and legal routes and also give people seeking asylum in this country the ability to work, which we cannot stay often enough. They do not have the ability. Nothing is going to change and we’re still going to be stuck in a kind of limbo position.

Coco Khan But anyway, moving on, so Reeves also talked about a new investment in nuclear power. So they spoke about new funding for small modular nuclear reactors, which are to be built by a Rolls Royce is essentially small versions of old school nuclear plants.

Nish Kumar She also announced more money for carbon capture technology. That is a technology that various environmental scientists and experts have raised serious questions about in terms of its actual efficiency. There was a lot of tough on crime rhetoric. So there’ll be an increase of police spending power by 2.3% per year. I guess the idea is to put more police onto the streets. They’ll also be seven billion pounds invested into creating new prison places now. We’ve talked about this on the show, we have an enormous problem with prison capacity, whether creating more prison space is the solution for that. Again, it feels like the stress is on something that’s going to look good in the Daily Mail and pass the kind of Daily Mail test, rather than looking at the justice system from a holistic perspective and asking, is it necessary that we have this many people in prison? Is this actually productive for British society, but anyway. Throughout these announcements Reeves was attempting to send a very clear message to the public.

Clip I am determined to do everything in my power to put more money in people’s pockets, to give people security and control in their lives, to make working people better off, and to show them that this government, this Labour government, is on their side.

Nish Kumar This is the fundamental political question. Can this start to turn the tide of public opinion? Because polling right now is absolutely dire, especially for Rachel Reeves. According to YouGov at the moment, just 11% of people polled think she’s doing a good job as Chancellor, which is even worse than the low point of Jeremy Hunt’s tenure as which was 13 percent.

Coco Khan So another point of comparison here, Rishi Sunak’s worst result as chancellor was a 22% approval rate and at the height of his popularity, so during coronavirus, of course, the public loved him. He enjoyed a 53% approval rating. That’s pretty high watermark. I mean Reeves’ best result is only 20%.

Nish Kumar And in terms of voter sentiment, some research done by More in Common said that when asking people who they think the government is prioritizing, most would still say it’s the wealthy. And perhaps the most damning stat from their research is just a tenth of Britons think that Labour’s economic plans are in line with what they promised in the election campaign. But Coco, do you think this is the start of them being able to turn those polling numbers around?

Coco Khan I mean, I really hope so. I mean we’ve talked about it on this podcast a lot. You know, we need to change the material conditions of people’s lives in the UK. Um, and a lot of what Labour have tended to do is kind of tinker around their edges and maybe it sounds good to wonks, but you know, do real people feel these 1% 2% uplifts? I’m not convinced they do. I do have some questions after this spending review though. So they didn’t talk about the two-child benefit cap. But when they have spoken about it in the past, they keep saying this thing, which is that we will do it, we will lift this cap when the essentially when the numbers add up and when the economic conditions allow us to, you know, lots of ambitious things were announced today. Does that mean our economic conditions have improved? But my point is If it’s the case that our economic situation isn’t vastly improved, but they can do certain things, does it mean that previous political choices were in fact just political choices in terms of the young people that were kept in poverty for this amount of time, the 10 months that Labour’s been in, for example? So I have like mixed feelings about it where I’m like, yeah, you’re doing stuff. Why aren’t you doing it now? What happened? Why didn’t you do it before? And also I did notice that the Conservatives piped up in opposition to say, oh, you know, you’re doing all this stuff. There’s no way you’re going to be able to pay for it, you’re gonna lift taxes a little bit later. If that is the case, I really hope it’s a wealth tax we’re looking at. That’s very important to me that certain people pay their way rather than everyone else is obviously feeling the pinch.

Nish Kumar Yes, that was the main focus of the Conservative opposition and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has said the Chancellor may be forced to raise taxes at the next fiscal event. Steven Millard is the interim director there, said the chancellor has yet again said that her fiscal rules are non-negotiable but given the small amount of headroom at time of the spring statement and the increases in spending announced since then. Is now almost inevitable that if she is to keep to her fiscal rules, she will have to raise taxes in the autumn budget. And that’s probably also tips to the most important thing here, which is this is a spring spending statement. It’s where the money’s going to go, but it’s not actually fully telling us where the monies come from. This may just be because I have quite recently seen the last two Mission Impossible films, but there is an element of the spring statement being. Dead reckoning part one and the autumn budget being the final reckoning.

Coco Khan Okay, these need explaining.

Nish Kumar It’s basically splitting one film into two parts, it’s what they’ve done with the last Spider-Verse cartoon. There’s an element to which we get to the end of something like This is Spring’s Statement and you go, okay, but we really still don’t know how Tom Cruise is going to deal with the entity. And in this case, Tom Cruise’s Rachel Reeves, they’re both people with an odd, stilted and very specific charisma. And the entity in this is Rachel Reeve’s fiscal rules. Because this is only a plan on how the government is going to spend its money, but it doesn’t fully give us a story of where the money’s going to come from. So this idea of tax raises being almost inevitable is a can that’s been kicked down the road, essentially. We’re only going to hear about that when we go into the autumn. The other really important thing to note is that Rachel Reeves was very quick to slam the conservative government’s economic record and was almost as quick. To launch an attack on Nigel Farage’s spending plans. Reeves was claiming that Farage would create another economic black hole, much like the one Liz trusted. But what that tells you most importantly is, as we’ve said over the last few weeks, Labour identify that the biggest political threat to it is coming from reform, or at the very, very least, they identify the political threat is coming equally from reform and the Conservative by, which is sort of an extraordinary situation, especially given- as we’ll talk about later in the show, the chaos that reform is engulfed in on a permanent week to week basis.

Coco Khan I think it’s also just worth mentioning some criticism from Paul Johnson. He is the outgoing director of the IFS and a former guest on this show and he said, not sure I’ve ever listened to a Chancellor Laureate speech so hard to work out what is happening, rattling off huge numbers of figures making it look like big increases in spending on everything. Bear in mind, current spending on average on all other than NHS not rising over spending review period.

Nish Kumar Obviously, there are things that this speech didn’t mention. One was most of the government departments that aren’t health net zero and social care. There’s no extra funding for them. And given everything that we’ve talked about in the last few months, we know how squeezed those budgets are, and there isn’t any allocation. So it’s clear that there is going to have to be major spending cuts across governmental departments. It does seem to be a bit difficult. To tie what the government is doing with the story that it’s trying to tell the country, which is we are a Labour government, we’re going to reverse a decade and a half of austerity and economic decline through policies that people would recognize as that of a Labour government. Now it’s hard to marry that up when there are still so many areas within this announcement. Feel unmentioned. And a lot of those areas, like disability benefits and welfare, are areas that would be, you would think, of concern to traditional Labour voters. And I think the autumn budget would be the thing that really tells us where this thing is landing. Because the autumn budget is going to tell us a lot about where the money is coming from. And if the money is coming, from the tax burden falling on lower and middle income earners… Then that is going to be very hard to square with this being a Labour government for Labour voters run by Labour politicians.

Coco Khan So look, we’ve gone over a lot of stuff here in not much detail, but stay tuned over the coming weeks where we’ll be following up on many of these announcements and we want to know what you dear listeners thought. So yeah, drop us an email at psuk at reducedlistening.co.uk.

Nish Kumar Now, coming up after the break, we’ll be finding out how to protect the right to protest with Akiko Hart, the director of the human rights organization Liberty.

Coco Khan [AD]

Nish Kumar Protest is one of the most important ways that we as citizens can make our voices heard. Intrined within the European Convention on Human Rights, protest is protected, but proposed interventions from across the political spectrum are setting off alarm bells.

Coco Khan The government’s upcoming crime and policing bill seeks to introduce new measures that would restrict the ability for protesters to mask their faces, which, if that sounds familiar, is almost exactly what Rishi Sunak’s government proposed to do.

Nish Kumar As we’ve seen in LA over the last week, masks have been a critical protection for the identity of people protesting the US government’s mass deportations, as President Trump sends in the National Guard and deploys Marines to shut down demonstrations. So what’s at stake here, and how can we fight to protect our rights?

Coco Khan Joining us now is Akiko Hart, the Director of Liberty, the organization campaigning to protect human rights in the UK. Nice to see you, Akiko.

Akiko Hart Lovely to see you both and thank you so much for having me.

Nish Kumar Akiko, just to kick things off, what was your reaction, your sort of initial reaction to the clashes between the government and protesters that we’ve seen happening on the streets of Los Angeles in the last week?

Akiko Hart I think like many people, I watched that footage with huge dismay and concern. And for me, it’s a story about protest for sure, but it’s also a story about how protest is weaponized by authoritarian governments. So, you know, what we’ve seen around the world, including the UK, is a crackdown on protests, anti-process legislation coming in and that space around protest becoming much more narrow. What we’re seeing in America and what we’ve seen in other countries is how an authoritarian government can essentially weaponize that by escalating things, by creating a very kind of like anti-protester narrative, by bringing in the military and essentially creating the conditions for a breakdown in kind of democratic kind of institutions and that separation of powers. And we’re saying that happening in real time. And even though that’s not where we are in the UK. We absolutely have one of those preconditions for that, which is this crackdown on protest.

Coco Khan So Trump issued an order to arrest people in face masks. What is the story of mass and protests in the UK?

Akiko Hart So there’s currently a bill going through parliament called the Crime and Policing Bill. It’s called a Christmas tree bill because there’s so many different elements to it. And some of the amendments in this bill are around protest, which is extremely disappointing because actually in the last few years, we’ve lived through two big pieces of anti-protest legislation, the Policing Act, and then the Public Order Act. So specifically in this crime and policing bill, there is an amendment around banning masks in protest. So the situation we have at the moment is that the police can ask you to remove your mask during a protest, but that’s already in place. Those powers are already in places. What this would do is stop, for example, disabled people from wearing masks in protests and therefore being able to participate in protests, or force political dissidents who may want to mask up to, you know, protect their identity and the security and the security of their families, to stop them from being able to wear masks at protests. So it’s a really, really consequential amendment and, you know, part of a raft of anti-protest measures that we’ve seen.

Coco Khan I basically wanted to seek clarification from you that it is still at this moment in time okay to wear masks, because I have worn masks to many protests. I think when I first started doing it was for COVID reasons, you know, it’s a mass gathering, you had to be safe. And then after that, shortly after that I started to notice that other like-minded journalists like myself, who have been engaged in political issues, were getting essentially set upon online. Or if not even online, sometimes even in the actual papers, writing papers, if they were famous enough, then the writing paper would run a piece about XYZ journalists spotted at this protest or whatever. And after that, it just became amongst some of my journalist friends, like a convention, you just wear a face mask, that would be the right and appropriate thing to do. And it’s funny because I remember having a conversation with someone at one of the Palestine protests where I’d taken a photo of their brilliant sign that they had. And they wanted to appear next to the photo. And I said, oh, do you want to appear next to a photo, maybe put a face mask on. And we had this conversation, it was quite strange because the person I was speaking to was like, I’m really proud of my opinions, aren’t you proud of your opinions? And I was like I am proud, of course I am, but protesting should be as common in our democracy as like voting. It shouldn’t be such a high stakes thing where your life can be ruined for participating. And so after this like weird philosophical conversation with a woman there saying like, look, I’m here because I want to be counted. I want people to know that this is a mass turnout. I don’t want to risk my entire life. It was a strange conversation where I think sometimes people think, well, if you have conviction, you should allow your life to be ruined for this conviction. I really disagree with that. I think that this should be a standard part our democracy and it shouldn’t be so fraught.

Akiko Hart I completely agree. And I think, you know, from my perspective, protest is a part of democratic voice, right? So you don’t just kind of exercise your democratic voice every five years at the ballot box. You do so in loads of different ways. Protest is one of them. And if you think about any of the rights that we enjoy now, like whether it’s, you know, right for women to vote or the right to a weekend, all of those rights, in fact, partly came through via protest. So protest wasn’t the only mechanism that enabled it to happen. It was one of them. And I think we kind of forget that because essentially what is happening now is that protest has entered the kind of culture warsphere, you know, and that makes it much, much harder and far less safe, as you say, to protest.

Coco Khan So I do also want to talk to you about the actions of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission following on from the Supreme Court’s ruling on the definition of a woman earlier this year. Your organization, so Liberty, has been working to challenge the way that organization consulted on the changes to its code of practice. They initially only ordered a two-week consultation, right? You know, what’s happening there and why was it so important for you to challenge it?

Akiko Hart So the Supreme Court’s judgment was on the definition of man, woman, and sex in relation to the Equality Act. So the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the EHRC, which is essentially the equality’s watchdog in England and Wales, then issued an update to its code of practice and put it out to consultation. You’re right, they initially set it at two weeks and then they extended it to six weeks. And Liberty is taking the EHRC, the Equality Watchdog to court. Because we believe that six weeks is not a lawful period for consultation. It should be 12 weeks. So why are we doing this? We’re doing this because this guidance touches on really, really complex issues and it’s really consequential. So it’s complex because this is actually a really, really difficult area of law. So before the Supreme Court judgments, it was lawful for a single sex service provider. To lawfully exclude trans women if they chose to do so. So the question after the Supreme Court judgment is, do all single sex services or providers have to exclude trans woman? And you’ve got some people like Lord Sumption and Baroness Hill who are former Supreme Court judges who are saying or seem to be suggesting that that’s not their understanding, that service providers don’t have to do that. And then you’ve got the watchdog in their guidance. Who seem to be suggesting that, yes, you do have to do that, you do you have to exclude trans women if you’re a single sex service provider. So there’s huge legal disagreement about the actual practical implications of this judgment. And it’s really, really consequential. It’s really consequitional if you are a business, it’s pretty consequential if you were a service provider, and of course it’s very consequential if you a trans or if you don’t conform to gender norms. Because it will affect how you can access public spaces and employment and services. So it feels vitally important that we allow all of these different stakeholders the opportunity to get the legal advice they need to get, to read these 50 pages of updates on this incredibly complex piece of law and to be able to participate in this consultation properly.

Nish Kumar And so what’s the next stage for that? Are you issuing legal challenges to the EHRC? How does that actually manifest itself?

Akiko Hart So we are in the early stages of a legal challenge. So we’re waiting for permission to kind of continue essentially this week, and then it will be kind of herding in court and that should happen in the next two weeks, 10 days or so.

Coco Khan So you mentioned culture wars earlier. So I do want to talk to you a little bit about, let’s just call it bluster from politicians on the, we’ll call them populists, right? I’m trying to choose my words correctly. That they’re calling for an exit from the European Convention on Human Rights. One of the bits of our membership of the EU that we got to keep after Brexit was at this European Convention of Human Rights, conservative leader, Kemmy Badenok has launched a review into a possible exit. Nigel Farage has declared that if he were to ever become PM, aside from me and Nish leaving. Um, one of the first things he would do would be to, to enact leaving this convention, he claims that three quarters of the country would cheer it on. I mean, I don’t know. Uh, so what’s at risk here and why, why are they so obsessed with this particular convention?

Akiko Hart It’s so interesting, isn’t it? Why are they so obsessed? So just to take a couple of steps back, what is this convention? So the European Convention on Human Rights, it’s the 75th anniversary this year. And it’s a treaty on human rights that was set up after World War II. And that’s really important. It was essentially kind of agreed after the Holocaust, after the Nuremberg trials, to agree a series of kind of like principles about all of our rights and freedoms. That’s what that is. And linked to that, you’ve got the European Court on Human Rights, which adjudicates some of these decisions. And that’s in Strasbourg. So that often comes up when people are talking about this. And you’ve also got, confusingly, the Council of Europe, which is the body that kind of oversees all of this. This is confusing because it is not the European Union and there’s not the Europe Council either. So generally, when people are talking about leaving, withdrawing from the European Convention. They’re talking about withdrawing from all three of these things. So what’s really, really interesting about this is that there’s always been an argument to withdraw from the European convention, but it has always been, until about 10 years ago, a really, really fringe argument. But what’s happened in the last 10 years is that the European convention has been conflated with migration. And that’s essentially the pitch here. And so the pitch to voters is… If you want to stop the boats, if you want to control our borders, we’re going to have to leave the European Convention. And I want to be really, really clear about this. This is not factually correct. We could leave, we could withdraw from the European convention, and would absolutely not have that effect on migration. So the kind of effect that it would have is, for example, at the moment, we don’t deport foreign national offenders back the countries where they will be tortured. So we would be able to do that, but we wouldn’t be able to stop the boats or control migration. And so essentially it’s a vehicle that’s being used in this way and that suits the purposes, I think, of a small bunch of people who’ve always believed that we should leave it. And what happens if we leave it? We jeopardize the Good Friday agreements because the European convention is completely embedded in this and therefore peace in Northern Ireland. It forms the basis of our trade and cooperation agreements with the EU. So all of that kind of like suddenly is up for grabs, you know, and we’d be withdrawing from, you now, a post-World War II international consensus on human rights and freedoms. So that’s what would actually happen.

Coco Khan Well, that’s the way that authoritarian governments always go about it, right? They say, oh, we need to clamp down on enter, you know, scary thing here, terrorism, um, I don’t know, whatever it might be. And, and so the, the, the public gives their consent to basically give up some of their rights. And then next thing you know they’re turning on, on the citizens, right. I mean, we’re seeing it right now in LA, right, like, I mean literally the military are being used to control the people that this is what happens.

Akiko Hart Yeah, that’s right. And the one thing I would urge everyone to do is to kind of look at this playbook because it’s not just in America, it’s all around the world. You know, it is in Argentina. It’s in Brazil, in Hungary, you crack down on protests. You go for kind of trans rights, you go for migrants rights, you go through all of these wedges and then more and more and more, we cannot assume that we are going to be safe in the UK.

Coco Khan Sometimes I wonder, and I don’t know if this is me being too simplistic, whether it’s just the fact that it says European in the European Convention of Human Rights. What if it was rebranded to Great British human rights? Do you think that would help? Is this just an issue of marketing about this living instrument? I mean, it sounds great. Maybe we just need to sell it again.

Akiko Hart It’s really interesting, that one. So what reform and some of the conservatives are proposing is that we withdraw from the European Convention and essentially we get rid of the Human Rights Act and we create a new British Bill of Rights. So they’re already ahead of you. They’re already doing this. And, you know, and the question for people is, do people really think that this new British bill of rights will give us as many or more rights than we already have? That is the question. I would have thought not.

Coco Khan It’s good to see that they also get their ideas from just watching British Bake Off, British Sewing Bee, all BBC franchises, they’re like, yes, let’s do this in politics.

Nish Kumar Akiko, Liberty’s had some success in fighting back against the government for our rights to protest in the last couple of years, haven’t you? I think it’s probably, it’s always worth, you know, whenever we have these conversations where it feels like we just constantly go, oh my God, everything is either fucked or well down the road to being thoroughly fucked. It’s worth celebrating the fact that Liberty in the past couple of year has actually managed to score some really significant wins, right?

Akiko Hart We have, and I’m going to come back to that point about hope, actually. But yes, we did. We had a really, really big win recently, which I’m so happy about. So in all of this kind of wider context around the crackdown on protest, we won a big victory on protest. So under the previous government, the then Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, introduced a law around protest. Which changed the point at which the police could intervene in a protest. So instead of it being serious disruption, it was anything that was more than minor. She changed that definition. She pushed it through parliament despite it being rejected by parliament. And two courts and five judges have agreed that that was unlawful and the governments are no longer appealing. That law has been quashed. It is a significant victory in this kind of fight for our rights. So I’m delighted.

Nish Kumar So let’s talk about hope then Akiko. What’s making you hopeful in this kind of fight for a protest? I mean, it’s going to be inspiring to see the sheer numbers of people turning out in spite of this crackdown, whether it’s in the streets in LA or here in the UK on Gaza protests. I mean that’s certainly something that makes me feel very hopeful.

Akiko Hart Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. We have to hold onto the hope and we have to nurture the hope because part of what is happening here, I think, is that we can all look at what is happening around the world and go, there’s no point in fighting this because it’s just going to happen here, but this is an opportunity to speak up, you know, however we do that, whether that’s through going on protests, whether that’s through your journalism, whether that through your arts, through your work, through conversations with your friends, through your kind of mutual aid or peer support group in your community. Because I think now is the opportunity for us to say, this is the future that we want. So not just a defensive, we’re trying to defend what we already have, but this is world that we wanna see. And we need to articulate it, and this is time to do it. And we to do that in the face of all of these threats. Because the only way that we’re gonna defeat these threats is that we articulate what we want and we bring people with us.

Coco Khan I think that’s the perfect place to leave this. Akiko Hart, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Akiko Hart Thank you so much.

Nish Kumar And now, a quick but significant update on the UK’s position on the Gaza War. On Tuesday, the UK announced new sanctions on two Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smatridge and Itamar Ben-Ghavir, declaring that they have incited violence against the Palestinian people. It’s a significant development as the UK changes its tone on the ongoing genocide.

Coco Khan In response, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has rebuked the UK, saying, We remind our partners not to forget who the real enemy is. The United States urges the reversal of the sanctions and stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel.

Nish Kumar Look, this is another long overdue and positive step in the UK correcting our language, and it’s important to note that this has been in no small part due to the strength of protest across our country, letting our politicians know that we care. Greta Thunberg’s aid flotilla over the last week, which of course was intercepted by the Israeli government before they made landfall in Gaza, is another example of protest really making impact. Of course, for more on the absurd response to the protests in Los Angeles, we really, as ever, encourage you to tune into Pod Save America, where you’ll find a fantastic interview with the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, where he discusses Trump’s wild suggestion that he could be arrested.

Coco Khan Now after the break, Reform UK is in meltdown and their chairman, Zia Youssef, performs the political equivalent of the Hokey Pokey. Is he in or is he out?

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Coco Khan So I just need to take a moment because this is a delightful thing to read. It gives me great pleasure to say that Reform UK seems to be in meltdown.

Nish Kumar Yes, what a week. The party chairman Zia Youssef resigned last Thursday after saying it was dumb, that’s a direct quote, of the party’s newest MP, Sarah Pochin, to ask the Prime Minister if he would ban the burka at PMQs. Upon resigning, YousSEF said, I no longer believe working to get a reform government elected is a good use of my time. Any time spent on Reform UK is not a good time of your time. You absolute magic bean buying moron. But in less than 48 hours, he was back in the reform fold. Don’t call it a comeback. He returned to the party and in the process of doing that, delivered an absolute word salad about his change of heart to the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

Clip The question was asked in the House of Commons by Sarah, who’s a brilliant MP, and then it was also made clear that that would not be party policy. So that’s all I was stating. I was reflecting the party’s position. So it was done to say it rather than to call for it, is that what you’re saying? Correct, so I learnt about this and to some degree I made this a bit of a storm in a teacup because again I was exhausted but I learnt all of that a. The question and b. The fact that it wasn’t policy on my ex feed and look that’s perfectly reasonable because I’m not an MP so you know ultimately as I said I regret that tweet.

Coco Khan My goodness.

Nish Kumar That guy must have had some bad word food because he’s got a serious case of verbal diarrhea.

Coco Khan I mean, people have been describing it as a kind of whiplash, but I confess as a spectator, I kind of got a little bit of whiplash myself. When I first heard the story, I had a, and I would only describe it as, a small amount of sympathy, but it, I definitely had a flash of it, you know, like all the reportage was saying that he got racially abused and it was actually him who tried to crack down on the like real cranks, the real Nazis being in the party. Obviously. My opinion is that was a task that was never going to be fully achieved, but nonetheless. And so there was a part of me that was like, look, I don’t agree with this man, but I don’t want anyone to be hate-crimed. And you know, I kind of felt a little bit of sympathy for him and it appeared to me that he took a stand over this Burka ban question. And then it turns out that actually no he does agree he’s actually been quoted in saying if there was a vote on a burka ban he’d probably vote for it but he was annoyed that it was asked i was oh no why did i waste my sympathy my precious sympathy i could have given to someone literally anyone else

Nish Kumar You know, we’ve lived in the UK through this kind of period of very high profile, people of color, particularly a lot of South Asians achieving political prominence in the Conservative Party or Reform or UKIP. And look, we talked about it a lot on this show and the sort of legacy of Rishi Sunak as the first person of color to be Prime Minister of this country. There is often a moment when… Conservative person of color finds themselves completely abandoned by their political party. And there is often a genuinely lonely moment for those people. I remember watching the 2019 Conservative leadership plastics, because I hate myself. But I remember that. And I remember watching all of the assembled people on that panel. Refuse to, in any way, speak supportively as Sajid Javid, who was also on that panel, given that he had been excluded from an invitation at the official state dinner conducted when Donald Trump was visiting the United Kingdom. You know, Sajjid Javed was a member of cabinet. It was unorthodox that he wasn’t invited. And I watched him in real time essentially be abandoned by the people that he thinks of as his colleagues and potentially even friends. I watched Rishi Sunak be interviewed where he had to digest this idea that a person who was working for the reform party in a channel four documentary said that they were a conservative voter, that they could no longer vote for Rishi Sunak and then called him a racial slur. And there is often a moment where these conservatives of color realize the contempt by which they are held by people within their own political movements. And that is something that I think it’s you can have empathy for, but there isn’t a sufficient reaction against it from these powerful people of color. You know, Zia Youssef was in a position where he could have walked away from reform and said that this saber rattling against the burqa, which I mean, beyond just being an act of wanton racism and Islamophobia, also on top of that does nothing to address the myriad very real problems faced by the people of this country. Could have been a decisive moment in the sand where he walked away from that and said, look, that, you know, the party is racist and toxic. We don’t want to align ourselves with that. But once again, he’s kowtowed to, if I can borrow David Cameron’s old term for the hard right of British politics, loonies, fruitcakes, and closet racists. He’s kowed to them once again. What message have we been sending our young people of color in the last decade and a half in British politics. The message we have sent them… Is if you are the victim of racist abuse, you just have to take it on the chin and as long as you want to participate in these broad political movements. I’m so glad that I grew up in an era of, you know, Asian Dub Foundation and goodness gracious me. Yeah. I am so glad that my role models were people who spoke out against this instead of carol going to it. On top of all of this other stuff, what we really, really need to stress here is this shows that reform is not a proper political party. They are not organized, they are not capable of any kind of basic message discipline. And if they can’t organize that, how on earth do you expect them to run a government if that is what people are proposing happens at the next election?

Coco Khan If there are any young reform voters or members listening to this podcast who also have to be people of color, let us tell you as your auntie and uncle, you can convince yourself. That these people will overlook the color of your skin because of your shared beliefs in whatever it might be, low taxation or whatever. Maybe you have your own reservations about migration, you’re entitled to your opinions, you know, being a person of color, we don’t all have the same opinions, you know. That’s all absolutely fine, but they won’t overlook it. It will come and bite you in the butt. I’m just letting you know that that will happen, okay? So just bear that in mind. I think it’s also worth saying that even though you surf… Has explained that this was all just a misunderstanding. He hasn’t actually stepped back into the role. He has been replaced by David Bull, who’s used to be on telly, it turns out. He’s also been just-

Nish Kumar Listen, we all used to be on telly, okay?

Coco Khan No, but you were great on telly and this guy, this guy I kid you not, appeared live on Talk TV wearing a bandage on his ear as an homage to President Trump. Oh my god, it’s so sad, it is so sad.

Nish Kumar There have been allegations even within the wider leftist movement of progressive politicians engaging in gesture politics, but there has never been a more stupid piece of gesture politics than wearing a bandage on your ear.

Coco Khan Reform always acts like they’re patriots, but they’re just in awe and obsessed with America, in particular Trump’s America. Get some of your own ideas. It’s actually pathetic. So Yusuf, for his part in reform, he’s now set to lead what the party is calling its doge team based on the Department of Government Efficiency set up in the US by Trump. And of course, Elon Musk, get some new ideas. You’re obsessed. You’re actually obsessed. It is quite pathetic.

Nish Kumar Even the infighting feels like it’s been ripped off from Elon Musk and Donald Trump

Coco Khan Yeah, I know, but like a Poundland version, like a shit British version, oh no!

Nish Kumar Well, look, with Reform UK dealing with dramatic exits and awkward returns, we might be forgiven for forgetting that Elon Musk and Donald Trump, as I say, have been having their own extremely public view.

Coco Khan Yeah, so Musk is claiming that Trump is in the Epstein files, Trump called Musk a big-time drug addict. You can see where this is going.

Nish Kumar Tell us something we don’t know, lads. Is Donald Trump’s comb over ineffective? Does Elon Musk look like his skin doesn’t fit over his own body? These are all things we know.

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Nish Kumar So look, as we mentioned at the top of the show, over the weekend, Coco was on Laura Koonsberg’s BBC Sunday morning political talk show with some unsavory characters. Perhaps the worst of the lot was Richard Tice, who rocked up to tell us all just how much he detests Net Zero policies.

Clip We’re the only people talking about how the Bank of England should stop wasting tens of billions of pounds. We’re only people saying you should scrap net stupid zero and that would save 20 to 30 billion pounds a year. And we’re only saying actually we should stop waste taxpayers cash.

Nish Kumar Listen, it’s worth briefly noting here that sometimes when you’re the only person saying something it’s because you are defying the winds of history and trying to imagine a better tomorrow, but sometimes you’re only person is saying something because you’re wrong and a moron. It’s not fully enough to be the only one saying something. Also, you’re not the only person saying something, you are not a plucky band of rebels who are trying to push against consensus, you’re just parroting. Oil company talking points. Okay? Thijs is one of the UK’s most prominent climate change deniers, and here is a little reminder of some of his views.

Clip It’s Theiss’ take on the climate debate. CO2. People make out that it’s some form of poison. It’s not. It’s plant food. It’s responsible for photosynthesis, without which we get no plants, no food. We all die. You’ve got to challenge the mainstream narrative on this. Oh, and by the way… Do you know how much CO2 is in the atmosphere? Is it 10%, 20%, 5%? No, it’s 0.04 of 1%. That’s like one limb on one person in Wembley Stadium of 100,000 people. It’s only just above a record multimillion year low. It’s not a problem. Stop worrying, stop being scared.

Coco Khan Wow.

Nish Kumar What the fuck did I just watch? I feel like I’ve got stupider watching that fucking shit.

Coco Khan I can’t believe that’s real, the Alan Partridge energy off him was huge and I’d probably laugh at it if it wasn’t so scary. He’s talking absolute nonsense. He really is.

Nish Kumar The production values on that thing were no good. I will say that. I also just don’t think if you want your points on science to be taken seriously, they should involve a penny whistle. Like I don’t think at any point this noise should ever, ever accompany a serious discussion of science.

Coco Khan Also, his argument is basically like, CO2 is natural, so therefore it’s safe. Like, loads of things are unsafe that are not. Cyanide is from plants, Richard Tice. There are many things that are produced naturally that could kill you.

Nish Kumar That’s right. The woke left wants you to think that cyanide is a problem, but I chew down at least 10 grams of it with my cereal every morning. Cyanide’s from plants. Are the woke left trying to say plants are illegal? If you eat cyanide, you will die, but you are one person out of a hundred thousand at Wembley Stadium. So what does it matter? Anyway, listen, it’s really always worth remembering every time that you ever hear Richard Ty say anything about the climate. Or the climate crisis or net stupid zero for pooh pooh bum bum heads or whatever he’s going to call it. It’s always worth remembering one key figure and that is that since the last election, reform has accepted 2.3 million pounds from fossil fuel interest, climate change deniers and polluters. And another number that’s worth bearing in mind is that amounts to 92% of the party’s donations. So, reform’s accepted 2,3 million. Which is 92% of the party’s donations from fossil fuel interest. Those are the only figures that matter when it comes to Tice’s take on the net zero. Coco, let’s talk a little bit more about Laura Koonsberg on Sunday. You had some policy ideas of your own. Here is you making your pitch for one of your favorite topics, tax, and also folding in one of your other favorite topics, bins.

Clip Tax is cool. I feel we need a rebrand of tax. Tax is a good thing. It’s the only vehicle we have to stop the ultra-rich taking complete advantage of us. And also my bins only get collected every two weeks. I’m very sad about it. I would pay more tax. I’d like to see more people be proud of tax, okay.

Clip I’m glad you’re not standing for Parliament, Coco, because I don’t think that line would go down very well.

Clip Tax is cool coming to a leaflet near you.

Nish Kumar Tax is cool.

Coco Khan Tax is cool. No, but like on a, on a serious note, it was weird being in the studio because you have like, you know, there was a Labour minister in there and there was, uh, a sense of a political consensus. That tax is a bad thing and the aim is to bring it down the way all the all the questions all the conversation was about like well your tax burden was very high well no your tax burden was high and you know your politicians on the back foot trying to justify it and I just felt that like if you were watching that you would honestly believe that everyone in Britain wants a small state and wants low taxation everyone in Britain want us to be Singapore or something and I just sort of felt like no that’s not true There’s lots of us in Britain who don’t want that. Just strong-arming my stupid opinions at the earliest possible moment, which I believe is what all politicians do. So yeah, I saw an opening niche and I went in there with taxes cool, and I like my bins collected more. You’ve got to take advantage while you can.

Nish Kumar I can’t believe you got to bins so quickly. That’s all. Yeah, the conversation was around taxation, nobody had mentioned bids.

Coco Khan Yeah, I know. I know I am a broken record when it comes to bins. But if you want to hear more about why tax is cool, come and see our live show at Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield on Sunday, the 6th of July with former trader and campaigner against inequality, Gary Stevenson.

Nish Kumar Tickets are on sale now, there’s a link in our show notes and we hope to see you there.

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

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

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

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

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

Nish Kumar And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify, or Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, Tyser’s take on bees, they’re natural, they can’t hurt you. By all means, stick your genitals into a beehive today. Don’t let the woke left spoil your fun of rubbing your genitals in a sweet, sweet beehife. Tyser’s take.