What a year! While Rishi Sunak held true to his January commitment to hold the election in the second half of the year – the spectacle that followed couldn’t have been predicted as 2024 dawned. 

 

Nish and Coco are joined by Sky News’ political correspondent Liz Bates and comedian Desiree Burch to chew over the gristle of the year that was. 

 

From racist Tory donors, to milkshaked MPs, creative political stunts and Rishi Sunak’s D-Day disaster – the first half of the year had plenty to keep us entertained. 

 

But once Labour took power – optimism quickly turned to gloom. The seven week garm-drama saga took the sheen off Keir Starmer’s newly minted cabinet, while the endless don’t-call-it-austerity chat has jaded people across the country.

 

As 2024 draws to a close – there’s still plenty to laugh about – including the best of the worst political pop songs of the year. Prepare to cringe. 

 

Useful Links:

https://choose.love/ – make a donation now!  

Ed Davey and the Bath Philharmonic Carer’s Choir – Love is Enough https://linktr.ee/love.is.enough 

 

Guests:

Liz Bates

Desiree Burch 

 

Audio credits:

Sky News

BBC

ITV

Channel 4 

Tiktok / Dawn Butler

Liberal Democrats

Talk TV

Fox News Via Channel 10 Australia 

 

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

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

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TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan Woo hoo! What a year.

 

Nish Kumar What a year.

 

Coco Khan I guess you could say time flies when you are having fun. No?

 

Nish Kumar Or time moves a glacial pace as you watch the collapse of your country.

 

Coco Khan It’s a bit like if fun was an Aldi waffle. Time flies when you’re having enjoyment. Time flies when you’re having food. That’s the UK anyway. Did you think we’d be sitting here with a new government?

 

Nish Kumar I honestly thought we should see that would be hanging on for dear life until the last possible second.

 

Coco Khan Which is better or worse?

 

Nish Kumar Hard to say at this point. Anyway, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Nish Kumar.

 

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan and today we’re looking back on the year that was. Pod Save the UK. Wrapped, if you will.

 

Nish Kumar And we’ve got some very special guests along for the ride.

 

Coco Khan Joining us now to recap this wild year is Sky News’ Liz Bates and comedian Desiree Burch.

 

Desiree Burch Hello.

 

Coco Khan Welcome. Welcome.

 

Liz Bates Thank you for having us.

 

Nish Kumar Thanks for coming in. Thanks for coming back, Liz.

 

Liz Bates Yeah, no probs.

 

Nish Kumar The return of Liz Bates to the podcast.

 

Liz Bates She has risen.

 

Desiree Burch Very festive.

 

Nish Kumar It’s the wrong wrong? Wrong christian festival.

 

Desiree Burch She is risen. Yes

 

Liz Bates I’m trying my best, yeah.

 

Nish Kumar And Desiree. Ugh, first appearance birthed in the barn.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. Well, thank you. Yes. Yes. I was just one of the animals that was like, What the hell is this? We have enough weird things happening in here. You see, there’s a camel. What? No, this is. Thank you so much for making me remember this terrible, terrible year. I was just trying to race to the end, but, yeah, let’s look back, because we got to do that.

 

Nish Kumar It’s like a.

 

Coco Khan Form of therapy, isn’t it? You know, you blacked out parts of it, and we’re here in a friendly way to like you.

 

Desiree Burch It’s like you’re giving us your therapy after enough spiders crawling up my nose. I won’t be afraid of spiders anymore if I can place it with my imminent demise.

 

Nish Kumar Now for our podcast listeners, the studio is I enjoy using this word, so I will festooned with holiday tat of a show by our producers that they actually got all of this from a charity shop. So they’ve got all.

 

Liz Bates No way?

 

Nish Kumar I believe so.

 

Liz Bates It looks so nice.

 

Desiree Burch It tencel I guess it would have come in a bag, but like, I didn’t know you could just be like, Hey, I didn’t use my Christmas decorations here charity shop like that seems like a I don’t know.

 

Nish Kumar I don’t know if the tinsel is charity shop or not, but certainly certainly the Christmas hats.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar Are charity shopped. Yeah.

 

Liz Bates I know what you mean. At what point in your life do your Christmas decorations go to the charity shop? Is it when you die?

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. Or was it when you stopped believing in Santa? Because everything is destroyed.

 

Liz Bates When you’re like I’ve given up on life. Yep.

 

Nish Kumar So anyway, you can get stuck in a studio with, let’s face it, a dead guy’s Christmas decorations and an equally dead person’s Christmas hat. So we’ve got a range of them.

 

Coco Khan And you are forced to wear them. So choose one.

 

Coco Khan Whichever you would like.

 

Liz Bates I like this modest one.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. Is this is this an elf one?

 

Nish Kumar For listeners, Coco has what I think we would call a fairly traditional Father Christmas hat.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah, little glam.

 

Nish Kumar It’s a little glam. Yeah, it’s a little. It’s a little Mark Bolan. Yeah. Desiree has a sort of spring on top of her head.

 

Desiree Burch Yes.

 

Nish Kumar With little things on it. Liz has an actual effigy. Is that the right word? A Father Christmas visual representation.

 

Liz Bates Yes

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. I haven’t lit it on fire.

 

Nish Kumar I see. I have got the Grinch hat. Yeah.

 

Liz Bates Yes, it works. It works.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It feels right. It feels relatively appropriate. Liz, we don’t actually see new since the UK election happened. How has it been covering it on Sky News? It’s been an interesting first few months for the Labor Party.

 

Liz Bates Yeah, it has. So I was here, I was on maternity leave when, not when we were talking about the actual general election. So I was watching that as a viewer. Yeah, there were just so many beautiful images like, you know, Rishi Sunak’s in the Rain. I think that was a defining image of this kind of conservative era. Yeah. And it was just quite funny, just him getting sulky and then going back to work covering the Labor government. I don’t know. I mean, it’s quite it’s in some ways interesting. It’s quite a in some ways quite a boring government, I think. Definitely more boring, a lot more policy based stuff. And I think there’s a sense of kind of mild disappointment. Yeah, not kind of rage, but yeah, but a bit of mild disappointment, but not things coming at you from all sides. Yeah. The last government I felt was a kind of political bit cocky in that sense.

 

Desiree Burch Absolutely. It was. It was over. Well, it was a bit much like after you get that much staff and you’re you’re like, I got I get the point. Why are we still doing this now? Like, this is still happening.

 

Coco Khan I do. You do you want to explain this turn of conversation necessarily?

 

Nish Kumar There was a discussion had before the record started.

 

Desiree Burch Someone learned a new word today.

 

Nish Kumar Today. So what led to this word today? It has, but it’s to shoehorn it, which is also sounds like a sexual act. So what it’s about is to shoehorn a word that she said. I’m not going to give away any names. Someone learned a word in the pre record chat, and has managed to get it into the podcast.

 

Desiree Burch Absolutely.

 

Coco Khan I’m proud of myself. I feel like I’m hanging out with like people that are a couple of years above me in school because you’re all like Christmas decorations, lame, let’s make porn jokes. And I’m like, I’m happy. It’s sparkly in the studio. I might sing later.

 

Desiree Burch I’ll ask my older brother.

 

Coco Khan Back to politics. Desiree, you had two elections this year.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah, sadly. It was. It was hard to watch a slow mo train crash, although this one was a bit better, at least the earlier one, because, you know, we kind of swung the other way. But was there ever any doubt that we weren’t going to be complaining about this government in a matter of months?

 

Nish Kumar No, it’s what we do. Yeah.

 

Coco Khan So let’s let’s cast her eyes back to the start of the year on the 4th of January. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, should I say? I enjoyed it. I’m having a great time. He declared that it was his working assumption that the. Election would happen in the second half of the year. Turned out he did keep his word, but only just.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s right. Like a lot of things about this government, the assumption wasn’t actually working properly. It was talking a big game, but he didn’t have any policies to back it up. Apart from his favorite catch phrase of stopping the boats the Tories planned, Rwanda deportation scheme dominated the political conversation for months, as it had done in the previous year. And looking back on it soon. Confident posturing, aged like milk. Here he is making a bet with a man who I am reliably informed is a journalist, Piers Morgan.

 

Clip I’ll bet you 1,000 pounds to a refugee charity. You don’t get anybody on those planes before the election. Will you take that bet? Well, I. Well, I want to get the people on the plane is of course, I want to get the people on the plane. Thousand pounds. I want to get the people on the planes.

 

Coco Khan So, Liz, if there was one policy that defined the end of 14 years of conservative rule, it’s got to be this one right. Rwanda. The Rwanda plan. Callous, Incompetent. Cost the UK an estimated 700 million pounds. What do you think? Does it summarize the end of the Tories?

 

Liz Bates Yeah, I think it does. And I think the reason that it kind of encapsulates particularly the final throes of the Conservative government is because it just didn’t work. You know, people in this studio are very left wing. The country is much more centrist and right wing. But the problem with the end for the conservatives was nobody believed that they could do anything. They just did not believe. Then when Rishi Sunak stood up and said, I’m going to stop the boats. People were people were like, no, you’re not. No, you’re not. Because you can’t even get your flagship policy to work. And I think that is in the end why they called the election so early, because they just stopped being able to do anything. It became a government of incompetence from the top to the bottom.

 

Nish Kumar The Conservative Party kills. I couldn’t escape the stench of former Prime Minister Liz Truss. She actually headed to your country desert, right to the U.S. thinking things. Do I need to attend to sort of Republican Party’s equivalent of Glastonbury that they call CPAC Conservative Political Action Conference? Here’s a clip.

 

Desiree Burch I faced the most almighty backlash for those conservative policies that I tried to put in place. It from the usual suspects in the media, from the usual suspects in the corporate world, but also.

 

Liz Bates From people that were meant to work.

 

Desiree Burch For the government.

 

Nish Kumar So she definitely didn’t do Rishi Sunak any favors. But that wasn’t only awkward moment of the year. She also stormed off the stage after activists unfurled a banner of lettuce behind her. And perhaps her best moment was when she popped up on Fox News to sell her book.

 

Clip Great to see you. Your thoughts. Great to see you. And here’s my new book. Let’s get it up. Sorry.

 

Nish Kumar Imagine being the strangest person on Fox News at any one time.

 

Coco Khan We should probably just tell the listeners the clip that we just played. Liz Truss comes across as being, I’m just going to say it slightly inebriated. I’m not saying she is. Maybe that’s just her giddy personality.

 

Desiree Burch It seems like she wakes up every day and like huffs something. And is like. They got mad at me for tanking the economy. Imagine that.

 

Coco Khan She’s yeah, she’s on camera and she says, this is my new book. She holds it up, it’s back to front. Then she flips it around, but it’s upside down. This is a little bit of sort of slapstick there.

 

Liz Bates But I have to say that level of self esteem is something that I really sometimes think I’d just like to try out for a day. I think you get you aim for a job, you get it, you fuck it up just so spectacularly quickly. It’s just it’s humiliation on the biggest scale possible. And at the end of it, you, like, got. Well, I did great. I did so great. Well done. Me. I guess everyone else was against me, but that’s fine. I’m going to write a book about how great I did.

 

Nish Kumar Call Teddy is to save the West. And Liz Truss may be the biggest threat to the West since I’ll call you to shut up shop and just be a weirdo was hardly the biggest conservative scandal. In March, The Guardian reported that Frank Kester, the Tory Party’s biggest donor, told colleagues in 2019 that Diane Abbott makes you want to hate all black women and that she should be shot. He did apologize, and this is an incredible quote for being rude, but denied that any of his rudeness was anything to do with her race or gender.

 

Desiree Burch Rude. Did he throw a bouquet in there somewhere that I missed in the quote where he said, you want to shoot all black women because sounds like someone who just wanted to kill black women and you need to find a famous one to point to to be mad at. Because blup.

 

Nish Kumar Liz, did that make any difference in terms of the conservative value? Was the Conservative Party already doomed? And is it like the Rwanda plan a thing that sort of reinforced the idea that this government was a combination of sort of incompetent and just plain racist?

 

Liz Bates Look, I think at that point we were living in the shadow of the kind of Boris Johnson era, right? There was so much incompetence, so much lying party guy, all of that. And I think that by the time we got to Frank Lester, under normal circumstances, that would have been a much bigger scandal. But, you know, we went through this bizarre period where you had ministers going on TV saying the comment wasn’t about race or gender when he literally said black women, she he literally pointed out her race and gender. It was about over. And so we were just so we were in the twilight zone where you’re sitting, you know, you sitting across from a minister and you’re like, but you’re just saying something that is total nonsense. It’s wrong. And I think by that time there was just so much frustration around the government. The reason that they didn’t give the money back, I think they probably would have liked to give the money back, but they couldn’t because he’s such a massive donor and side knows a lot of things. He’s a massive a lot of things. He’s a man. I won’t say it, but side note. He made his money from NHS contracts. So it all goes round in a big circle.

 

Desiree Burch So he’s like, literally is killing your grandparents so he can hate black women and say they should be shot.

 

Liz Bates It’s like, what is this? Right? The government oversees a structure via which there is privatization in the NHS. People like this total wanker. Frank Kester I think I can say that with complete impartiality. That’s objectively true.

 

Desiree Burch He’s a wanker. He doesn’t get to be in the book.

 

Liz Bates He makes loads of money. Then he sends it right back to the government so they stay in power so that he can keep making money. Yeah. And, you know, in between that, he just says, like loads of random racist, sexist shit in meetings. I mean, that’s nuts. And that is the world that we live in.

 

Nish Kumar It is like.

 

Liz Bates Merry Christmas, everyone.

 

Nish Kumar [AD]

 

Clip Earlier today, I spoke with His Majesty the king, to request the dissolution of Parliament. The king has granted this request and we will have a general election on the 4th of July.

 

Nish Kumar So that was the 22nd of May. Rishi Sunak calling the general election. Without a doubt the standout political moment of the year. A journalist at the time described it as like watching his soul leave his body and watching the lights go out in his eyes. And that journalist was, of course, Liz Bates on this show, Liz. It couldn’t have started. It could have started worse.

 

Liz Bates No, I mean, we were all hits. We sort of all happened. And yeah, it was just a mess. It was just a mess. And I think it was when you look back on it now, you can see the drizzle was sort of perfect because the whole government just felt soggy and he just seemed knackered. And the people that I was talking to that were working behind the scenes were just looking for jobs. Yeah. You know, that’s they were spending their time like genuinely job searching and because everyone just felt like it was done and then it was one thing after another.

 

Desiree Burch Can I just say that clip gets talked about all the time about like, and he’s just getting rained on and rained out. And how embarrassing is it as an American? We’re all like, that’s what we expect this country is. It is just a sad little man in his suit talking about boring, depressing things while getting what looks like fraternity hazed with water and like he’s the prime minister, They can’t afford an awning to go over him. Like, what the hell is going on with this country? Like, it’s so hard to look at that. Well, without being like, Yeah, that’s kind of what we imagine. You all do it. Just make speeches in the rain on a random street.

 

Coco Khan Labor, of course, seemed very excited about the announcement, but they also seemed like they were. I believe the official term is shitting themselves. We often talk on this podcast about whether they were truly ready. Their strategy seemed to involve just going to spectacular lengths to say nothing at all. You say it best when you say nothing at all. I’m feeling the music reference is coming. It will not be the last in this episode. So yeah, they said nothing apart from the word change. Change? No, Stop me. Anyway, the LibDems took a different approach to campaigning. Leader Ed Davey took himself to every available campaign podium and the Tories focused on churning out red meat.

 

Nish Kumar Yet the classic policies that got thrown out to rally the conservative base included tougher sentences for offenses including knife crime, grooming and the cells against retail workers. All of which was completely undermined by the fact that there was no plan to deal with chronic overcrowding in prisons.

 

Coco Khan And who can forget the return of mandatory national service, which would have required every 18 year old to spend a year in military service or one weekend a month volunteering? But the same time that Sunak was trying to inspire the younger generation, he was pissing off the older generation by leaving the 80th anniversary of D-Day early to record an ITV interview where he spoke about the things he had to go without as a child.

 

Clip So what sort of things had to be sacrificed? Lots of things. I mean, give me an example. All sorts of things. Like lots of people. There’ll be all sorts of things that I would have wanted as a kid that I couldn’t have. Right. Famously, Sky TV. That was something that we never had growing up, actually.

 

Liz Bates Famously. Sky TV.

 

Coco Khan Famously.

 

Nish Kumar Leaving. Leaving the D-Day celebrations early to talk about the sacrifice of not having Sky TV.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. And if he had any comic acumen, he would have been like, I had to sacrifice having working class friends. It would have been like, actually, we’re missing out.

 

Liz Bates And that would have been better. Can I just say, though, as somebody who works for Sky, I don’t think there’s anything sadder than a child growing up. without Sky.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. Okay.

 

Liz Bates Shout out to my bosses.

 

Nish Kumar You would have been unable to watch my stand up comedy special, Your Power. Your Control available now on Sky TV. Or hold the front page. We had just become available on Sky TV. It truly is the tragedy. Two adult tragedies.

 

Desiree Burch Why did he have to leave a D-Day commemoration to do that? Like he was the prime minister? They couldn’t bump it back an hour.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Desiree Burch What?

 

Nish Kumar It’s completely inexplicable. He also he sort of left, leaving Keir Starmer essentially there, greeting all the world leaders, essentially. All right. Cameron Cameron was there. Yeah. Farage was there, presumably because they have to invite people to represent the side that lost on D-Day. So like, they presumably like they needed everybody in that list was this. I know that we’re talking about all of this chaos and all of the missteps. Was was all of it ultimately irrelevant? Was this like just an unwinnable election?

 

Desiree Burch Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Liz Bates I think it was. And I think the other thing is when a narrative starts around you, it’s very hard to get away from it. Yeah. So it was like that doing badly. Somebody said to me at the time, and imagine if Zelensky had stood in the rain and made an announcement about something everyone would have. You know, in his kind of army gear, everyone would have been like, He’s so tough. He doesn’t he doesn’t need a fucking umbrella.

 

Nish Kumar It’s because Obama like giving his campaign speech, I think. Yeah, absolutely. Pouring rain that sort of uses the example of his like like. Bravery to I guess what brave water. But yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

 

Liz Bates It’s like if you’re cool and you’ve got it going on and you’ve got the momentum, then you can kind of get away with anything. And if you stand in the rain, everyone’s like, okay, that’s cool. Like, he doesn’t even need an umbrella. He doesn’t give a shit about the rain. But because it’s Rishi Sunak’s, everything just suddenly became about What is he going to fuck up next? And that was the entire narrative. And so everything that he said, you know, picked out all the funny bits and it was the government was so done.

 

Nish Kumar And on top of everything, we don’t even have time to go into the scandal of one of his closest aides having to resign because he had placed a bet on the date of the election. But in any case, five short weeks after the election was called, it was all over, and even the commentators couldn’t quite believe it. Here is Sky News, his reaction to the exit polls.

 

Clip Whoa. Oh my God. Ohh Ohh ohhh ha ha haaa

 

Liz Bates Hang on.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah. Does it sound like a boycott? I feel like I’m sorry.

 

Desiree Burch Just to steal that for me, I get a little delight. You’re like.

 

Liz Bates I only learned about them half an hour ago, but that is a good coffee.

 

Nish Kumar I’ve had one cocoa and my mothers listen to this podcast. There’s just a lot. I got two days. I got to get a text from our website. So what is it?

 

Desiree Burch Because and you’re like, You do not need to know Mother, It is fine.

 

Nish Kumar I’ll give you blah. You’re not blessed.

 

Coco Khan Well look, I think it’s fair to say that many of us on the left have complicated feelings towards Labor under Keir Starmer. But watching that landslide, 412 seats come through one by one on election night, I mean, it was quite enjoyable. Let’s just, just take a little moment to just remember that feeling.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. And I guess in some ways the biggest story is that Liz Truss lost at sea. I mean, that’s kind of unprecedented in recent political history. The most recent Prime minister, apart from the one actually running in the election, would lose their seat. There was Penny Mordaunt, Grant Shapps losing their seat, most delightfully for those of us with a slightly longer term view of British political history, Jacob Rees-Mogg, losing his seat whilst stood next to a man dressed as baked beans.

 

Desiree Burch And we know how you feel about them because you want them everywhere, any place, any time.

 

Nish Kumar Just just to be clear, the band dressed as baked beans, did not win, but Rees-Mogg lost to his labor opponent. It wasn’t just the Labor Party that had a great night. The Liberal Democrats won the most number of seats ever, with 72. The Green Party took four seats and six seats went to independents, including the former Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, I think like if you are progressive, whether you support the Greens or independents, there was lots to be happy about. I had a jager-bomb for every Tory MP that I really particularly hated losing their seat.

 

Nish Kumar Did you really?

 

Coco Khan Well, I tried to. I don’t really remember all of it.

 

Nish Kumar You had 412 jagerbombs?.

 

Coco Khan No, I didn’t it. I didn’t it.

 

Desiree Burch Just the most loathsome leaders.

 

Coco Khan Just the most loathesome.

 

Desiree Burch Which is like 419 jagerbombs.

 

Nish Kumar So presumably Rees-Mogg Truss , surely they were jagerbombs.

 

Coco Khan yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And when the exit poll first came in, I had a jagerbomb.

 

Nish Kumar Oh really.

 

Coco Khan Just to see the Tories decimated.

 

Nish Kumar I do actually remember the next day you were, I would say little fragile.

 

Coco Khan Oh yeah, for sure.

 

Nish Kumar There was another electoral success story that we absolutely should not overlook because it could be one that continues to shape narrative politics in this country for years to come. We obviously have to mention the reform success in the election, but before we do that, let’s just revisit Nigel Farage getting milkshakes while campaigning in Clacton.

 

Clip You’ve got what seems like a milkshake for you was up. Was that what it was? I don’t know what was straightaway, but it hit me in the face fair and square. I quite rightly.

 

Coco Khan Fair and square’s the right phrase. Actually.

 

Desiree Burch Would you like to go ahead and take that? That I don’t know what it is, but it hit me right in the face, Liz?  I just I feel like it’s Christmas.

 

Liz Bates No, I can’t think of anything that reminds me of.

 

Nish Kumar Yes. So that’s right. That was Nigel Farage talking about getting milkshake for a second time, sort of presenting it like it was his own personal Donald Trump ear bandage moment. Unfortunately, Farage went on to win his seat in Clacton. We’ve also just heard that confirmation overnight that the undisputed villain of the year, Elon Musk, is backing reform with speculation of a donation in the sort of millions of pounds. After there was a meeting between him, Nigel Farage and the new party treasurer, Nick Candie at Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar a Lago. That is fairly concerning to me, right? Like, yes, reform won the third largest share of the popular vote, 14.3%. And it’s striking that that’s about 2% more than the Liberal Democrats. But because of our screwy electoral system, the Lib Dems were more than 14 times the number of seats as reform, at least in the midst of it being obviously profoundly funny that the Conservative Party suffered so badly. Each potentially is of concern that reform did so well. And I only say that because reform seems to be inviting further political influence from Elon Musk into this country, which I think is necessarily something that is beneficial for our democracy.

 

Liz Bates I mean, it’s a pretty strange type of scenario where there’s really nothing that we can do about it. But the richest man in the world might decide to bankroll what is still you know, they did get a big share. And they do have they they do well in the opinion polls in UK politics, but they’re not hugely represented in parliament and he’s going to funnel cash into them. I mean, usually I’m old enough to remember when people used to do these kind of behind the scenes because it wasn’t considered legit to just throw money, a political party and try to swing an election. But apparently now it is. I think it will have a huge, huge sway on the next election. It’s still a long way away. I could see a scenario where, you know, reform breakthrough in a big way in the UK. Seriously. And the money that Elon Musk and people like him. I mean, Nick Candy’s a big donor as well. They that they will provide will will be decisive in that. And so we’re basically at the whim of of of billionaires and whatever they feel like. You know, I mean, Elon Musk feels like he’s just in his kind of I want to fuck with the world era and this is the way that I’m going to do it today.

 

Desiree Burch Well come to fuck with the world, because it means I’ll get whatever I want for my, you know, like, you know, he makes money off of, you know, working different government deals and whatever to just rake up more money for like the things that he wants to create and like, literally whatever millions he’s giving to reform is like the equivalent of Rishi Sunak’s 1,000 pound charity donation. But what he gets for that is just carte blanche to walk in and be like, Here’s what you need to do, because like, they were a lot of things and I’m coming to understand someone who’s only been here for a decade now that are like, you know, common practice but not written down anywhere as locker. And it’s very easy for all of the stuff that like, you know, MAGA wants to do in America to start coming over here. There are plenty of people who want that, although MABUGA is not as good an acronym for that.

 

Coco Khan [AD]

 

Nish Kumar [AD]

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan Once the debris from the election passes had been cleared and Keir Starmer unpacked all his boxes of Arsenal scarves, free suits and glasses into Number ten, What did Labor do next?

 

Nish Kumar Assembled his ministerial team on his first full day as Prime minister, confirmed the and the plan was dead and buried and that the money saved from it would be redirected to the Government’s proposed Border and security command, which sounds slightly like it belongs as the name of ITV’s next gritty police drama. Okay.

 

Coco Khan Anyway, things turned out quite badly in the summer we had the horrible attack in Southport, followed by devastating riots spurred on in part by newly elected MP Nigel Farage, who amplified fake news reports that the man involved in the Southport attack was known to British security services. Starmer condemned the rioters but wouldn’t explicitly call out their racism, opting for the vaguer phrase whatever the apparent motivation.

 

Nish Kumar By September, we’ve been treated to the first sort of scandal of this Labor government. You always remember your first when it came to light that ministers accepted thousands of pounds worth of gifts that they failed to declare. And it did seem for a point like every government minister had spent some time at the Taylor Swift Air restore his education secretary, Bridget Phillipson.

 

Clip Look, I’ll be honest, it was a hard one to turn down. I appreciate there’s big demand for the tickets. It was a privilege to be there. One of my children, you know, was keen to go along. It’s hard to say no if you’re offered tickets in those circumstances, but it was declared.

 

Nish Kumar Less in comparison to previous scandals in the last decade and a half. It was sort of broadly chump change. But is it does it matter more because Starmer’s made such a play about, you know, the Labor Party. Dotting the I’s and cross the T’s in terms of following regulations?

 

Liz Bates No, I mean, look, it. Not really. I mean, it won’t hang over this government. I don’t think that’s not the sense that I get. And I think what was going on was we were so used to constantly looking for scandals that this became the kind of Labor government scandal for a few weeks. They took free tickets. They registered them. You might think, as I do, politicians need to stop taking so much free shit. I would really like to see less free shit taken. But it’s.

 

Desiree Burch So the kind of corruption you expect. Like that puts the average voter at ease. Like, they’re just taking free shit. They’re not like having a party in the middle of a plague or like doing weird sex stuff, you know? Like, I mean, it’s wrong and it’s messed up and there’s a scale of, like, taking free shit leads up to, like, you know. And here’s the Elon Musk. Well, you know, on the other hand, you’re kind of like, Yeah, that’s what politicians.

 

Liz Bates Look, because I want to say I love free shit. Like I love free stuff so much.

 

Desiree Burch They call you Liz Swag bag Bates.

 

Liz Bates Like, literally, if this like some free sandwich, just go in. I’m like, Yes, I’ll take it. I’ll eat ten and take some home with me. But I just think the problem was there was a lot of false equivalence going on between what happened to Boris Johnson was it was all open. He never declared anything that was the problem. So they were finding out like, hang on, like where did this money come from to redo the flats on fucking Lord that we never heard of. Like it was it wasn’t all properly declared. And so there was this kind of, you know, there was a feeling that it was still going on, but it was actually a different thing. Maybe they shouldn’t be taking so many Taylor Swift tickets. Maybe. I don’t know why Keir Starmer is taking so much so many clothes from Lord Ali.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Liz Bates But it was. It was different. Is different.

 

Coco Khan Then, of course, in October, we got to the first Labor budget in 14 years. Nish is actually wearing a Grinch hat.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I’m just I think I will say for listeners of the podcast, I’m struggling to keep up. I have a massive head and I also have.

 

Coco Khan He means that literally, not in the metaphorical way.

 

Nish Kumar Way, well, I have that as well. I have a massive head, but metaphorically.

 

Liz Bates Surface area on that head for a bekaki if he wanted one.

 

Coco Khan My goodness me. See, now this is going into harassment. This is now going into HR

 

Desiree Burch This is now going to be used as evidence.

 

Liz Bates I felt like we hadn’t said it for like 5 minutes.

 

Coco Khan It’s you can see how it happens. You you have a sort of an ongoing blue joke and then. no, it’s turned.  I just feel like, you know, if we’re going to chat about the budget, the Grinch hat is very nice.

 

Nish Kumar A large head, and large hair, and I’m struggling to. Which I imagine would be a nightmare scenario, cleaning up after it.

 

Liz Bates Yeah, it would.

 

Nish Kumar One of those. But yeah, I’m trying to keep the keep the keep the house visible as possible. We did go into the first Labor budget in 14 years detailing 40 billion pounds in tax rises. It pissed a lot of people off, but even on the Tory benches and I can’t lie, it does still feel good to say this. The Opposition were arguing with each other about how to rebuild their party and reverse the disastrous election result for the Labor government. There was a huge advantage in that the Conservative Party was all over the place because they were still trying to deal with the leadership contest and as the race proceeded into its. An ultimate round. Conservative MP has managed to do the funniest thing imaginable and accidentally tactically vote out their favorite candidate. The former Foreign secretary, James Cleverly, has cleverly his adviser, describing what happened on LBC.

 

Clip To be honest, is an almighty cock up.

 

Desiree Burch Was that the description?

 

Nish Kumar Good luck? This might be the dirtiest PSUK of all time. It was an almighty cock up. Liz it’s pretty funny that they tried to tactically engineer the person who would be up against James cleverly and ended up voting out James cleverly.

 

Liz Bates Yeah.

 

Desiree Burch Is that what happened?

 

Liz Bates Yes thats what happened.

 

Nish Kumar It was the supporters of James Cleverly were trying to guarantee that he was in a run off with Robert Jenrick, I think.

 

Liz Bates Yes.

 

Nish Kumar Instead, they managed to accidentally overcompensate the other way and end up with him not having enough votes to get through to the final two. So the final two was Jenrick and Kevin Bacon.

 

Liz Bates So they lent their votes to the person that they wanted to see him go against in the final round. Basically, they lent too many votes and ended up with all.

 

Desiree Burch The people who voted for Kemi then if they were leaning their votes over to Jenrick like they were genuine people who wanted Kemi.

 

Nish Kumar There’s definitely people wanted Kemi. Yes.

 

Liz Bates Yes, exactly. The problem is it’s such a small party now that they’d sort of miscalculated in terms of numbers. And so, yeah, that went badly for them. And also.

 

Desiree Burch Basic politics. I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, like Nancy Pelosi always talks about because I know how to count and I walk around and I’m counting things and I figure out what needs to happen because I know how to count. What are these guys doing where they don’t know how to count?

 

Coco Khan Doesn’t make you feel great of the sort of control of the budget they held for many years? Yeah.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Nish Kumar So look in the end of course Kemi Badenoch did win with just over 56% of members votes and became the first ever black person to lead the Conservative Party.

 

Coco Khan Now, as the day started to get colder and shorter, there was one massive, overwhelming, terrifying news event that seemed to overshadow all others. And it’s, of course, the US election. Convicted felon and sexual abuser Donald Trump won the White House again, beating Kamala Harris across all swing states and won the popular vote for the first time. Now the dust has settled Desiree, how are you feeling?

 

Desiree Burch I mean, it’s hard to feel any more hopeless than I did in 2016, except for the fact that, like everybody I know who is liberal feels that way. There was a very stark sort of reaction of like, let’s get back in there and fight because it’s like it doesn’t work. Please stop telling us to do the same thing. That has clearly been proven not to work like Kamala did have one thing right. We’re not going back. And Mike, in terms of we’re not going back to politics the way they used to work, like, you know, and ultimately, we were the establishment in this case. I mean, Brian Eno called this right after the 2020 election and saying basically, I don’t know why people are celebrating. You know, the Democrats are going to have to take the heat for everything the Republicans did because that’s just like, you know, Trump was like, look what I did for the economy. No, Obama did that, but nobody’s going to give him any credit for that thing. Everyone’s just going to be like, Forget that guy. This guy is great. He leaves, There’s a bunch of mess to clean up. You spend four years cleaning up the mess and everyone’s like, How come everything’s messy and expensive? No one in America knows that the American economy is the envy of the world because everybody went through the plague and also corporate greed, full stop, you know, And like nobody was able to point that out. I mean, Starmer and the Labor Party and Trump did the same thing of say Nothing. Trump is exceptionally good at saying nothing very loudly over it and just look there, look anywhere. But essentially it’s just like, say nothing and let everybody be mad at the people who are standing behind the podium right now and then come back into power. I mean, the people in my life that I know who are like. But what about the price of gas? Don’t know how much gas costs everywhere else, but what about the price of cereal? Well, I mean, we don’t need that much like cereal. But the president isn’t wake up every morning going, hey, let’s make eggs, eight bucks and cereal, nine bucks today, because it’s like, no, those are the corporate overlords that are now in the cabinet in America.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s just purely looking at this from a British perspective, the first wave of economic conversations around the budget was it was all going to be about growth. That obviously now feels completely compromised because we don’t know what Trump’s tariffs are going to be and what impact that will have on global trade, which again has a direct impact on the economic growth. It’s supposed to raise all this extra money for the Treasury to fund our public services. Do you think the Labor Party has figured out? How it approaches Donald Trump now. I mean, last week we had them sort of deploying the royal family. Does anyone within the government have any sense of how to manage the special relationship?

 

Liz Bates I think what you’ve seen with this government so far is there was a long period of time and we did we did the podcast during that period where we thought maybe they’ve got a plan and they just keeping it a secret. And then during the election campaign, we were like, Well, they seem like they’re not really ready. All of a sudden be ready to get ready for government. And then they got into government and we were like, they’re just not ready. And they actually don’t have a plan. So I think when it comes to lots of things, that’s that they’re figuring it out.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Liz Bates And I think when it comes to how to approach America, they’re doing that as well.

 

Coco Khan But there has been a bit of a sort of renouncing of labor strategy like I think they have learned a lesson from the American election result where they have understood that it’s not enough to say that our economy is buoyant. If people don’t feel it in their pocket, they will they will disregard it. Living standards in the UK are very, very low and are getting lower. So when, after five months in office, Starmer finally declared that the government had a plan and the plan is change, maybe now is the time. We believe it all. What do you think, Liz?

 

Nish Kumar Does he mean literal change? Like is the plan now for there to more coins.

 

Desiree Burch Guys, You gotta fill them jars.

 

Nish Kumar Reverse pickpocketing every person in Britain and putting like two 2 pound coins in everyones pockets.

 

Liz Bates Think if they like, we should suggest policies to them and they would they would probably go for this point.

 

Nish Kumar I thought there was a certain elegance to the way that you summarized the read our perception, especially on this podcast of the Labor Party, which is assuming that they’ll be applied. The idea there wasn’t really applied, but assuming that be applied for, was that red government, the Tory government? The thing that I keep returning to is what was st get out. So there would be a consultation on how to deal with the NHS. And I did. A part of me did go what? Hold on. Why have you not.

 

Liz Bates Not just not just consultation at consultation with the public.

 

Coco Khan I know.

 

Liz Bates With the public. Is it consultation with experts?

 

Desiree Burch We’re running a competition guys. Who’s got the best ideas for the NHS? Yeah.

 

Liz Bates Are you going to keep its people in the UK? No. Literally. Anyone?

 

Desiree Burch Anyone? Whatever.

 

Liz Bates It’s like they’re opening the windows in Whitehall and going, Is anyone got any policy ideas out here?

 

Desiree Burch Just should there not?

 

Nish Kumar Am I being naive to assume that there should have been a plan and should they not have been a plan that they were rolling out for the NHS?

 

Desiree Burch Yes, yes.

 

Liz Bates Yes. I know it sounds like an obvious question, but yes. Yes. Is the answer it shame you any of their meetings before the election, but lots of UK government and how it rolls out is about the character of the person at the center of it and that is Keir Starmer. And I think the sense that I have got from him and what has come across is he basically and he managed to big organization in the CPS and he was like, I’m really great at managing things. I think I should manage the country. And so that’s it. He’s he thinks, surely let’s just manage this better. And so that plan is like make the NHS better, make the education system better. He’s not really a political strategist and he hasn’t brought in any political strategists and they’ve been out of office in opposition for 14 years. And so they’ve all got into Whitehall and been like, Jesus Christ, this doesn’t work very well and how do we sort it all out?

 

Desiree Burch And also you can’t manage that into success like it is broken. You need someone with a new idea. And is the problem that any new idea is going to be pissing off the billionaires who are profiting off of the NHS not working as well so that things can get privatized? Like, I mean, who has ideas that are going to be like and someone’s going to get rich off of me because I’m part of the problem.

 

Coco Khan And I think as well, I mean, going back to that initial thought, okay, five months later, when he says change, he was saying change all along. Do we finally believe it? Well, that’s the crucial word change. Is it change? Is anything changing or is it just managed better? And do we need managed better?

 

Liz Bates I think, look, one of the things is when you look at the 14 years of the conservative government, it was kind of overshadowed by Brexit and Boris Johnson, and that was genuinely chaotic for the way that just the country runs. And so having a consistent government is just trying to get departments to run things better is actually not a bad idea because we weren’t doing it. So that is a good idea. Separately from that, I think there’s disappointment within the Labor ranks and probably within amongst Labor voters now as well, that there’s no broader vision for shifting the way that the economy works in a way that feels fairer. So taking on things like water privatization, right, you would think a Labor government will come in and say, okay, we’ll sort that out. But then they just they just that approach to that is a will will make that will make the regulator better. Yes. So it’s the same.

 

Coco Khan The polls have put Labor behind reform and the Conservatives will some of the polls anyway, despite the new leader, Kemi, about not having nothing to say beyond picking fights with bread if the latest story is to be. Last week, she declared that sandwiches aren’t real food. The polls are in the gutter. The tabloids are having a field day. This week, the Daily Star rejoice in the headline, saying that Keir Starmer is the worst prime minister in recent history. According to Brits. Who else would it be? According to? According to you, it sounds like, you know, we have these rogue operators on the outside promising change. And of course, when you scrutinize it, you know, that’s not going to change anything unless making richer and poorer even more stark is the change you’re looking for. But the fact remains the people are not happy with Mr. Starmer.

 

Nish Kumar It sounds like what you’re saying is Starmer’s focus has been dealing with 2017 to 2024, which is a period post-Brexit of administrative chaos, elections, chaotic government corruption, in some cases mismanagement, but not actually handling structural problems that have been much more deep seated and are also at the roots of some of this political instability.

 

Liz Bates Yeah, exactly that. And because and it’s basically because he’s not a great thinker. When you look back on some of the transformative governments, whether you like them or not, in this country. So, you know, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, they had an essential kind of political and economic thesis.

 

Nish Kumar A thought for late 1945, the 1940.

 

Liz Bates Exactly. Exactly right. So they they spend time you know, in some ways it feels quite separate from politics day to day. But it’s intellectual. It’s thinking about the future, a vision of a country and a world that is different from the one that you’re in now that has never been done before. So, you know, look at Thatcher and the way that she privatized everything. And then you look at Blair and the kind of third way we’re living with the the consequences of both of those kind of political theories now. But they pushed those through and made them into policies day to day. His son is not that guy like he is not that guy. He did not sit around for ten years talking to his friends and talking to his political associates about political vision and and political theory. He literally just managed a big organization. And now he’s like, I’m going to manage, you know, the one that’s even bigger.

 

Desiree Burch But like legitimate question, because I don’t know the answer. But do we think those kinds of leaders could get elected in this time? Because it does seem like it is sort of just populist leaders who come to the fore and complain about the status quo long enough to get into office and to make things worse for everyone and better for themselves. And it does feel like this particular government might be priming everybody for a big swing back to something like reform when they’re in the middle of cleaning up a mess, but not actually progressing anything for it.

 

Liz Bates Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And look, I mean, it sounds like some kind of shit backing hit. You know, the war I’m talking about is really kind of the perfect idea of a leader, which is somebody who has a great vision and then can also, you know, make that happen day to day. That’s a really difficult thing to do. He’s a middle manager and maybe we do need that. I don’t know what that means for the next phase of British politics.

 

Coco Khan To close this off with something a little more silly, it’s my favorite bit, the bit where politicians we recap on how the politicians around the country have been using some songs to make their voices heard this year. So for example, we had Paul Thomas, candidate for reform of his rendition of the Spice Girls.

 

Clip I’ll tell you what I really, really want. I’ll tell you what I want. What I really, really want. I want a reform win.

 

Desiree Burch I guess nobody likes to try hard, but, like, could you try at all? That was so deeply.He’s like. I mean, that’s like. I mean, how much it’s trickled down. He’s like, he hears that at the gym two times a year when he goes and he’s like, I know what they want, what they really, really want.

 

Nish Kumar Of of every song in the canon of popular music in the West. That song is one of the hardest to deliver without any rhythm, just because of the vowel sounds like it’s very naturally the fact that he has managed to completely extract the rhythm from that is is actually genuinely quite impressive. We also had Labor MP Dawn Butler trying. I had this belter from the South solid group.

 

Clip If you like me never knowing about the shadow cast. 21 days later they got to go. 21 days to go. 21 days to go to to to go, 21 days to.

 

Desiree Burch I mean, genuinely slaps.

 

Liz Bates Come on. That’s actually good.

 

Nish Kumar I don’t always approve of it, but Dawn Butler definitely has boss like I sometimes think would be patronizing to the electorate. But I will say Dawn Butler definitely has buzz.

 

Coco Khan I had like two incidents recently where I was like, I am really consuming too much political content. One was I was walking past a ball and had a song called Free Prosecco, and I just assumed someone called Prosecco was wrongly imprisoned. I’m reading way too much political content.

 

Nish Kumar Prosecco does sound like an Italian.

 

Coco Khan I think another incident recently where I was listening to Beyonce’s Irreplaceable to the left, to the left. And you know, the chorus is you must not know what I mean. I could get another you in a minute. And I thought I was like, this is the song about Keir Starmer.

 

Desiree Burch My God. If anyone could kill that song. It would be Keir Starmer. Can you imagine? You must not know about me. Just don’t do it.

 

Coco Khan I feel it. I feel. Actually, that’s us as disenfranchized Labor voters. We’re seeing that to him. We could get another you in a minute.

 

Desiree Burch Yes. To the left.

 

Liz Bates To the left to the left.

 

Desiree Burch Yeah, well, everyone should hear that a little bit more I think.

 

Nish Kumar I think Beyonce’s got bigger problems.

 

Coco Khan She does. But anyway, in the spirit of this far too much political content, in his final show of electoral spectacle for the year, Lib Dem leader Sir at Davy is vying for Christmas number one. He’s performing alongside the Both Philharmonic Young Carers Choir with their song Love is Enough.

 

Clip Clip

 

Desiree Burch Was that him Googling at the end?

 

Nish Kumar It does the benefit podcast listeners. The last shot we saw from that basic video was Ed Davy looking at something very intently on his phone. We think it was the song lyrics.

 

Desiree Burch He got bored of lip syncing the song so we know he’s not so good at.

 

Liz Bates Yeah, he’s clever because he knows we can’t take the past carers. So listen, we have to be like, That’s really cute.

 

Desiree Burch Playing that from a pedicab. Okay, so it’s Christmas.

 

Nish Kumar Season, you know, the track is actually the top 40 right now. If you’re feeling particularly liberal at do go give it a spin does way Birch Liz Bates, thank you so much for joining us on this show.

 

Desiree Burch my god. It’s been a bucocky of joy of holiday cheer. Thank you so much.

 

Nish Kumar Once again, please tell us, right? Is a fellow stand-up comedian. One of our countries finest standup comedian and I would say operates on a similar level of juvenile juvinellia we have to be kind of cut. But once again, I’m thrilled that we have dragged professional journalist, Liz Bates down to our level.

 

Liz Bates And I would just like to thank you guys because I felt like I started off with the boo-cocky thinking maybe that’s going to be a bit rude and inappropriate, but you just went with it?

 

Desiree Burch Wait-where’s the line? Not anymore.

 

Nish Kumar And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. We want to hear your thoughts. Email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.UK.

 

Coco Khan Don’t forget to follow Pod Save the UK on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube Channel.

 

Nish Kumar And do please consider checking out Choose Love Make a difference with a donation. Find the link in our show notes.

 

Coco Khan Nish and I are taking a little holiday break for the next two weeks. Not together. That would be fun, wouldn’t it? But we’re back with you in early January.

 

Nish Kumar I didn’t like how quickly went to not together. I think we’d have had a lovely Christmas. Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.

 

Coco Khan Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producers May Robson, Narda Smillionage, and Artemis Irving. With extra research from Adam Wright.

 

Nish Kumar At the music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

 

Coco Khan This thanks to our engineers Jeet Vaswani and Ryan MacBeth. The head of production is Dan Jackson.

 

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Anoushka Sharma. Madeleine Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

 

Coco Khan Remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Have a great non-denominational holiday. See you in the New year, guys.

 

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