Share This Podcast

This week’s episode of Pod Save the UK comes live from Sheffield’s Crossed Wires Festival. Nish and Coco sit down with two special guests: former trader and economics commentator Gary Stevenson and South Yorkshire’s Mayor Oliver Coppard.

 

Cracking open cans of Nish, provided by local brewery Triple Point, Nish and Coco discuss the recent vote on labelling certain protest groups as terrorist organisations and the not-so-slow creep in the loss of our rights.

 

One year into Government – backflips on Labour’s Welfare Bill have led to a new round of supermassive black holes for the Chancellor Rachel Reeves to plug. Gary Stevenson gives us some ideas on how to do it…

 

And what about tackling economic inequalities on a local level? Oliver Coppard reflects on the Government’s push to go further and faster on devolution and the difficult decisions he’s made to achieve his priorities for South Yorkshire.

 

Finally, with Independent MP Zarah Sultana quitting Labour to form a new progressive party, everyone gives their two cents on what this will mean for the future of the left.

 

Guests:

Gary Stevenson

Mayor Oliver Coppard

 

Useful links:

Gary’s Economics

https://www.youtube.com/garyseconomics

 

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

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

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/podsavetheuk.crooked.com

Insta: https://instagram.com/podsavetheuk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/podsavetheuk

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

Facebook: https://facebook.com/podsavetheuk

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PodSavetheUK

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD].

 

Nish Kumar Good evening Sheffield!

 

Coco Khan Hello, hello, hello!

 

Nish Kumar Nice to see you all!

 

Coco Khan Look at them!

 

Nish Kumar Good to be here! Yes! It’s us!

 

Nish Kumar Hello, I’m Nish Kamar and this.

 

Coco Khan Is Coco Khan. Hello.

 

Nish Kumar Coco has made a lot more effort. I’ll just address the elephant in the room. Coco looks like she’s on her way to an awards show and I look like someone who just robbed someone at an awards shows. We did not discuss what level of formality we were going at. And I have worn a t-shirt that currently has more than one stain from my lunch. So there is, if you’re listening to the podcast, Coco, you’ve gone fancy.

 

Coco Khan It’s a big night out for me. As listeners to the show will know, I’m a new mother. This is my… Woo!

 

Nish Kumar And as such, all of her opinions have more credibility.

 

Coco Khan Yes, exactly.

 

Nish Kumar All of her opinions carry more weight.

 

Coco Khan So this is my first night out, guys. Oh yeah, mum’s out, mum is on the loose, she’s looking for a bar at midnight, that’s gonna play, the girl’s allowed.

 

Nish Kumar I wish there was a place for it! Mums on the loose, by which I mean doing a live political podcast. Fucking hell, you’ve changed a lot from when I first met you. Your nights out are very different. And I’ll not be saying any more because whenever I mention Coco’s raving days, she says, please take that out. My mum listens to this. It’s very nice to be back in Sheffield. On the subject of nights out, people in the room and people watching this will notice that there are cans of beer on the stage that have my face on them. Because the last time I was in Sheffield, I’ve had a mix time. I had the shits, basically. I had violent diarrhea and I’d just broken my foot. So I was at the Lead Mill, the South, sadly dearly departed venue, iconic landmark of performance in Sheaffield. And I was shuffling awkwardly between the toilet and the sofa in the backstage area, saying to my support act, Leila Navabi, you might have to whack a fake beard on and do my show tonight. But then the last time I was here, the Triple Point Brewing actually brewed a beer called Nish Don’t Kill My Vibe. And it’s a can of beer that has my face on it. I don’t know why we didn’t go with Nish Brewmar. I don’t know why didn’t do that. That’s a huge administrative error on all of our parts. So as part of the night out, I was going to suggest that we drink these, but we’ve been told that we’re not allowed to. So then I said, can we give them to the audience? They were like, you definitely can’t give them out to the the audience.

 

Coco Khan What we can say is that maybe if you saw us outside, maybe we would have them to give out. Maybe?

 

Nish Kumar I’m not standing outside and handing free cans of beer out!

 

Coco Khan Nish, you told me the last time you were here, you had violent diarrhea and you had a broken foot. All I heard was challenge accepted. That’s all I heard. Oh yeah.

 

Nish Kumar I’m not handing cans out like those guys that stand around in shopping centers with Pepsi Maxes. I’m NOT DOING THAT!

 

Audience Member Get dressed, all right?

 

Nish Kumar Oh, fuck you, mate! Oh, you’re very clever, aren’t you? You live podcast cunt. Oh! We’re so smart. We’ve all worn shirts. Is everyone here from Sheffield? Who’s not from Shefield? You seem a lot more happier than the people who are from Shefield. Anybody else not from the UK in the room?

 

Audience Brazil! Brazil!

 

Nish Kumar Where are you from in Brazil?

 

Audience It’s so fun.

 

Nish Kumar You’ve come on holiday to Sheffield.

 

Audience You moved to Sheffield yesterday, so I’m like… You moved! You moved yesterday!

 

Nish Kumar Do you know anyone who lives in Sheffield?

 

Audience My partner, she’s from Sheffield.

 

Nish Kumar So you’re looking for new friends? Look at this! I’ll be honest with you, this is a group of people that have almost the exact same opinions. So, I say, you’re about to make a lot of fucking friends tonight.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Nish Kumar What’s, what’s your name? Lucas. If you live in Sheffield, I guess just go up to Lucas after the show and ask him if he wants to be your friend. How about that? We’re already making memories. We should do some news. Yeah, let’s do some.

 

Coco Khan Should we do some news? We’ll take the seat of news.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s applaud as we sit down for the seat of news. Okay, do you want to start with a story that’s going to immediately land us in legal trouble?

 

Coco Khan Yeah, I feel like let’s just get it out of the way. Let’s just our legal troubles. Just get them out in the open. Well, look, our dear audience, you’ve probably already heard about this, but the protest group Palestine Action has been prescribed as a terror organization.

 

Nish Kumar We started this. Let’s wait, hold your booze, because weirdly the boo may be actionable. I think you can be arrested for that, boo.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly

 

Nish Kumar For anyone from the police listening to this recording, a ghost came in.

 

Coco Khan So they’ve been prescribed to the terrorist group and so before we started this live show we knew we wanted to talk about this news piece so obviously we spoke to the lawyers, we sought legal advice to make sure we’re not going to send ourselves to prison.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I was fucking nuts.

 

Coco Khan So, we’re just gonna read you some bits from the Terrorism Act of 2000. So, a person commits an offense if they invite support for a prescribed organization.

 

Nish Kumar Which of course we cannot do here for legal reasons.

 

Coco Khan Now a person commits an offense if the person expresses an opinion or belief that is supportive of a prescribed organization and in doing so is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a prescribed organization.

 

Nish Kumar So we can’t make jokes about supporting Palestine action. We were going to lead a chant. We definitely can’t do that for legal reasons.

 

Coco Khan It goes on, a person commits an offense if he addresses a meeting and the purpose of his address is to encourage support for a prescribed organization or to further its activities.

 

Nish Kumar So in regular English if we were to say anything in this live show which effect apparently is a meeting Yes, which is a bit fucking offensive Also, I don’t know what meetings these people are going to where they have to pay for tickets So look, obviously, this is deranged, but what we are allowed to say is we do not need to sympathize with… This is literally… I’ve had this lawyered and so I’m going to read it out verbatim because a lawyer has cleared this sentence. We do not to sympathize with Palestine Action’s aims to believe that its prescription sets a chilling precedent and undermines democracy. We’re allowed to that!

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar We’re allowed to say that. So we cannot express any support for the terror organization whose activities include such terrorist acts as breaking into facilities of companies they claim are profiting from the war in Gaza, chaining themselves to machinery, spraying buildings with red paint and destroying equipment. Some of those actions are clearly illegal, but a lot of them seem to bear direct comparison to the actions of the suffragettes, who are famous for smashing windows, arson attacks on properties. Eventually leading to the right for all women to vote, which is real terrorist stuff.

 

Coco Khan A nightmare. Yeah

 

Nish Kumar Also, I’ll tell you what it really makes me think. Kids these days have got it too easy. In my day, if you wanted to be a terrorist, you had to get a pilot’s license. You had to, with rudimentary shaving equipment, take a plane hostage, and you had to fly that plane into the World Trade Center. Fucking these kids these days, they don’t even know they’re born. Oh, I’ve spray painted a bit of red on a thing! I’m a terrorist! Fucking hell, Osama bin Laden is turning in his grave.

 

Coco Khan Well, given those actions, I’m sure… It makes total sense why the government, in all its wisdom, decided to prescribe Palestine action. Along with two other organizations, we should say. One, the Russian imperialist movement. They’re a Russian white supremacist organization that aims to create a new Russian empire. And the other, and I kid you not, is the maniacs’ murder cult. They are real. They are a group of neo-Nazis who claim that their goals are spreading disorder and chaos. They had a plot that was foiled. Thankfully, where they were going to get someone to dress up as Santa Claus and give out sweets to children in New York City at Christmas because they are against diversity, they’re against multiculturalism. And they are in the same bracket as Palestine action. So

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, it’s… Listen, I believe this is a technical political term, a dick move. Yes. And the actual prescription vote happened in parliament, went through largely unopposed, passing 385 votes to 26. 114 Labour MPs abstained, including, incredibly, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The Green co-leader Carla Denier gave a hint as to why there were so many abstentions tweeting, I just voted against prescribing Palestine action. Civil disobedience group as a terrorist organization, but I’m furious that in doing so the government forced me and others to vote against prescribing two other clearly terrorist groups, cynical and dangerous, from the government.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, well, cynical and dangerous, that’s your new album.

 

Nish Kumar That’s why you’re cynical and dangerous. I’m one of those two things. I’m only the second one if I’ve had too much dairy. Yeah, that actually sounds like one of the new British protest organizations. So, inspired by the direct action of groups, by Palestine Action, a new protest organization. I’m sure some people will be familiar with this. A new protest movement has formed that has an incredible name. It’s Yvette Cooper. This is a real story. A new civil disobedience organization has formed, influenced by some of the actions taken by Palestine Action and they have named themselves Yvette Cooper to ensure that if Yvette, the Home Secretary, decides to prescribe their group Yvette-Cooper, then Yvette will be designating Yvette a terrorist organization.

 

Coco Khan So this is the serious question, I guess. Yeah. Well, is this where we are with democracy in the UK? Genuinely, is it where our protest groups naming themselves after politicians just in an attempt to point out the slow creep in the loss of our rights? It’s lunacy.

 

Nish Kumar Yes, it’s obvious lunacy. It’s obviously cynical to tack two legitimate and insane sounding organizations to the bill to make sure that people who voted against it out of conscience and willingness to defend peaceful protest, then also had to vote against the prescription of terrorist groups that are clearly terrorist groups. Fundamentally, it is very concerning and it’s part of this kind of attack on protest rights that we’ve sort of been covering since the start of this podcast. We’ve been doing this show about two and a half years. And one of the first episodes we did of the show was an interview with Paul Pousland, who’s a lawyer who does a lot of work defending protest groups. And he warned very early on that the UK was going down a very, very dangerous road. And the dangerous road is here now because the prescription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization has genuinely terrifying repercussions for peaceful protest in this country. It’s very deeply, deeply concerning.

 

Coco Khan No, it really is. And as much as I want to make Yvette Cooper jokes, there’s got to be a diarrhea Yvette Cooper joke in you somewhere.

 

Nish Kumar Well, let’s see if I can squeeze it out later on in the show.

 

Coco Khan Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar I’m a big fan of people, if you leave, put box people into powerless positions, I’m big fan them reacting to that by doing incredibly juvenile pranks. I’m the big fan renaming things, Yvette Cooper. I think that’s an incredibly funny thing to do.

 

Coco Khan I think we should participate on this podcast as well. What? You know, I remember once a listener wrote in and said, there’s no word for the juice that’s at the bottom of the bin when you remove the bag. Of that Cooper.

 

Audience Applause

 

Coco Khan Listen, I also want to talk about another big story from this week, which was about Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, crying in Parliament. It was a bit of a non-story. I mean, I thought it was, but the fact it grabbed the headline so much and there was such a preoccupation with this woman crying, my misogyny bells were ringing very, very loud. I just want to read you all a headline from the mail. Weeping Rachel’s buster. In the text, by the way, like the main body copy, they refer to her waterworks, which I thought was a bit grim.

 

Nish Kumar That’s everything about that is so 1990s sounds like someone describing an episode from East End us

 

Coco Khan I can tell you don’t watch EastEnders with a comment like that.

 

Nish Kumar Of course I don’t watch extenders. I’m an intellectual. Don’t laugh at that, you bell-end.

 

Coco Khan EastEnders has some great dialog, I Ain’t Your Mother.

 

Nish Kumar That was a weeping bust up. That’s exactly how that would have been described in the 1990s.

 

Coco Khan If I wasn’t a slag, I was a total slag. These are poems for our time. But yeah, no, there was all sorts of just horrible lines and just this preoccupation with her crying. And I’ve been thinking a lot about it. And look, there’s lots about Rachel Reeves that I don’t agree with. I’d be happy to talk about her decisions and how they affect the most marginalized and poor and vulnerable in our society. The fact that she cries doesn’t really bother me. And I keep asking myself, what if it was a display of anger, as so many male politicians have done? Famously, Gordon Brown used to throw knockias at people.

 

Nish Kumar Now that is a 90s anecdote. There’s some people under the age of 30 that genuinely have no fucking clue what a knockier is.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, I can assure you, it would hurt. You would be brained. You would be absolutely brained by it. But unlike, you know, there have been other politicians that have cried in public. Winston Churchill has cried in public. Their favorite, the right-wing’s favorite, Maggie Thatcher, the Iron Lady, she has cried it in public, but there is this strange feeling that here in 2025… It’s not okay to cry. Women do cry a little bit more than men, we can have an argument over that socialization or whatever it might be. But if you want women in positions of leadership you should accept that maybe they might cry under high-pressure situations. In the same way you should except that we sometimes have periods and they should be period products. And the same you should expect that we have children. So I think we should be embracing emotion. I’d like to see a cry about, you know, all the vulnerable benefits claimants as you try to destroy their life even further. That would be nice, but let’s all have a cry-in-ish, you know? Let’s embrace it, let’s cry more.

 

Nish Kumar The only thing I would take issue with is don’t worry, some men do cry more than anyone else. The person who sat next to me when I watched the film Aftersun, I think is genuinely, I’m an anecdote that that man tells at dinner parties.

 

Audience HAHAHAHA

 

Coco Khan [AD]

 

Nish Kumar If people were going to be crying on the Labour front bench it would be fair to say they have a lot of good reasons to do so. Because we’ve just passed the first birthday of the Labour government and that silence That chilling silence is pretty emblematic of the mood, people are pretty fucking angry.

 

Coco Khan Yeah it’s been brutal and we should say probably no more than this past week the governments nearly collapsed while trying to pass their welfare bill. U-turns were being made until the 11th hour to the point where MPs were quoted as not being sure what they were even voting on.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, it’s a complete clusterfuck and the blackflips have led to a new round of massive holes in the Chancellor’s budget to plug. Now the conversation between today as we record and November when there is going to be a budget is going exclusively revolving around how we plug those holes. Is it going to from tax rises or is it going from further cuts? All of which is the absolute perfect moment for us to bring out our first guest. So please give a massive round of applause for the incredible Gary Stevenson! A rock star’s welcome!

 

Gary Stevenson Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar For the Mick Jagger of macroeconomics.

 

Gary Stevenson I do my best.

 

Coco Khan What they call him Mac Jagger. No?

 

Nish Kumar I actually thought that.

 

Coco Khan That was quite good!

 

Nish Kumar I thought that was better than these people gave it.

 

Coco Khan I mean Gary needs no introductions these days, but in case you’ve been living under a rock, he’s a former trader that made bank, I think that’s fair to say, made a lot of money in the wake of the financial crisis, quit, then became one of the UK’s leading voices for fighting inequality. Your book, The Trading Game, was a smash it bestseller. Readers in the audience. And your YouTube channel, Gary’s Economics. We say wealth tax, but you say Gary’s economics. It’s great to see you again. It’s an extremely well-watched channel. I also saw you with Jimmy the Giant at Glastonbury.

 

Gary Stevenson We had Jimmy on the channel.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, we have. And I had that weird feeling where, you know, sometimes you find out that your mates have got other mates. That’s how I felt. I was like, what? What do you mean they’re together? What are they talking about? Taxes?

 

Gary Stevenson You were talking tax at Glastonbury, right? I was trying to, yeah. Jimmy was quite drunk, but… How was the rest of your weekend? I was so… I forgot my ticket to Glastonsbury. I forgot to ticket and my tent blew away. I’m from London.

 

Coco Khan That’s a bad tent, Gary.

 

Gary Stevenson So what happened? Did you turn up and you go I don’t

 

Nish Kumar I don’t have a ticket, but.

 

Gary Stevenson Yeah, face ticket.

 

Nish Kumar FaceTent got me in eventually. FaceTen doesn’t quite work.

 

Gary Stevenson The same. Did you have to just blag a tent or something? No, I just found some Welsh guys and they put a tent up for me.

 

Nish Kumar The Welsh are resourceful as a nation. They will just put a tent up for you. You’ve also been touring for the last few months. What have you been doing? What have been chatting about?

 

Gary Stevenson I’ve been going around. It’s translations of the book. So, I used to live in Japan. I speak Japanese. I don’t know if you know that. I knew one of those two things. I didn’t realize you spoke Japanese. Yeah, so the Japanese translation came out. So I wanted to go and do… So there’s an interview of me speaking, talking about economics in Japanese now on YouTube. What? For those who didn’t know, check it out. I dunno what you need to search, but you can find it on my Twitter. So I went to go there to promote the book and then I went Italy and Portugal and Sweden and Norway. Just like providing translations, but obviously also like talking about inequality, talking about wealth taxes and it’s the same thing happening everywhere by the way.

 

Nish Kumar That’s what I wanted to ask you. What’s the kind of globe? It’s a common thread.

 

Gary Stevenson You go to Portugal and everybody hates their center-left party, they’re absolutely smashed. There’s a growing far-right party, their name is Enough Immigrants basically, and they’re just growing and they growing. It’s the same thing everywhere, which is, people always ask me, can you fix it just in one country? Can you fix this here in the UK? Why? Why just here? It’s same problems everywhere. You know, the same problems everywhere, can’t afford a house, can get a decent job. Can’t afford, grocery prices are going up, like this is an international problem. And you go around and I’m getting recognized on the street by Portuguese people. Like this is a, this is international problem, which we can and we should fix internationally.

 

Coco Khan But one of the countries you mentioned there was Norway, no?

 

Gary Stevenson Norway is like a really interesting kind of, well, what they’ve done is they’ve protected their wealth. You know, I always talk about inequality increasing, and I think sometimes when I say that, people think that’s like kind of like some abstract, like left-wing, like tree-hugging stuff, right? That wealth is not coming out of nowhere. Like what we’ve seen in the last 10, 15 years, this massive increase in wealth of the super rich, at the same time as governments going bankrupt, ordinary people can’t afford houses. That is the same thing. That is same thing, them accumulating wealth and you losing wealth is the thing thing and I think Norway is a really interesting example of a country which protected its wealth. You know, it had this oil, it sold the oil, it kept the money and it made the sovereign wealth fund and now they can afford decent stuff and you know, Norway is not a perfect country, inequality is increasing there as well but that’s an example of what we could have done here and what we still could do here. Protect our wealth, protect your government protect middle-class worlds.

 

Nish Kumar Have better living conditions. How do you do that from a sort of legislative perspective? It is the problem that we’re dealing with now, these companies that essentially exist as nation-states in their own right, and so no individual nation is actually able, like if you look at a company like Amazon, no individual country is able to actually tax them, so is then the argument that actually we should be proposing globalized policy-based solutions, like and nations should be uniting around ideas and legislating as blocks.

 

Gary Stevenson Yeah, I think 100% we should be looking to work together, and there are great economists. There’s a French economist, Gabriel Zuckman, who works with another guy, Thomas Piketty, who is quite well known, that are working on these things, getting countries to work together. But at the end of the day, Amazon doesn’t pay tax in the UK, because apparently, technically, Amazon has no profits in the U.K. The profits are all in Ireland. Where are the customers? Where are Amazon’s customers? They’re in the US, they’re in Europe, that’s where the majority of the customers are. To be honest, I think it’s a bit of a joke. We we say we can’t tax them as if these guys are like gandalf or something Oh, sorry profits are in Ireland. Yeah, we we can look. Where are your revenues? There’s not just look at whether and we say let’s tax them on the revenue I’ve honestly I get this against me all the time. You can’t text them. You contact them You can text them they’ll leave like they’re like these guys on magicians, right? Passive income is income that comes from somebody else if I own your house and you pay me terrible news for me.

 

Coco Khan Yeah!

 

Gary Stevenson You pay your rent to me, and then I say I live in Dubai, the money comes from you. We can tax it at a source. I think, honestly, it’s a comedy. Did you see that comedy sketch? Who was it? I think Kevin Bridges, where he said, oh, these guys all say they live in the Bahamas or the Cayman Islands. He said, what’s the Caymen Islands going to do? Like, we’ll just… But it’s true. Yeah, yeah. The world is here. The world that’s here is in the West, and they are impoverishing ordinary working families in this country, all across Europe, United States, Japan, Australia. It’s happening everywhere. We can taxi them. We can talk to him.

 

Coco Khan But what about the whelflight, Gary? They’ll fly away on their jets to somewhere. And we’re scared.

 

Gary Stevenson Well, it didn’t work for Roman Abramovich did it? We’re all talking about we can’t tax the rich, we can tax rich, if you tax them they’ll leave. Suddenly government decides we’re going to tax specifically Roman Abromovich. He leaves, he’s in Russia. Where’s Chelsea Football Club? It’s in Chelsea. Is that money going to Roman Abrimovich anymore? No. It’s as simple as it. These guys, they always rely on… So what you’re saying is it doesn’t matter if they go, the revenues can’t move. This is the thing, they utilize the same confusion all the time. Which is in the mind of an ordinary person, you think a rich guy is whatever, a banker, a lawyer, God forbid, a YouTuber, who’s like working and making money, right? I know it’s standup comedians left off that list. If we decide- Don’t worry, I’m a journalist, not my problem. We decide we’re gonna tax Nish Kumar, who now has his own brand of beer, actually. You could go and you could move to Dubai, and you can do your work in Dubai, but we’re not talking about taxing working people. I’ve never once said tax working people, I’m saying tax wealth, not work. We’re talking about taxiing individuals and families that have a wealth of a hundred million pounds, a billion pounds. These guys own your assets. They own the land, they own the buildings, they’re on the government debt. They can go to Dubai. Those assets are still here. If I’m in the government debt, my money comes from… The UK government, it comes from the UK taxpayer and they always use this bait and switch which is they’ll leave, they’ll go work in Dubai. If I own your house it doesn’t matter where I live, that house is your house. We’re not talking about taxing working people, we’re talking about taxiing the people who own your country. And this is a question, do you want to live in a country where the people that own the literal country pay tax or not? Well if you don’t you’re going to have a big problem.

 

Coco Khan The house example is a really good example as well, because you hear that spoken about regularly. You know, if we bring in rent controls, the landlords will leave. Okay, but they’re not taking the houses with them. The houses have stood there before these people were born. So what happens to those houses? Will they return to local councils? Maybe that would be a good thing.

 

Gary Stevenson Yeah, that’s a good point. Sometimes when I talk about taxing the guys who own the assets, own the houses, I’ve had somebody say to me, but if you tax them, then where will our kids live? And I think that’s like a really fascinating thing to say because people have obviously in their mind confused taxing wealth with like burning down houses. And then the other thing people say, which I think is interesting, which they say you can’t tax them because they don’t have the money, what they have is the assets, they don’t actual money, I can’t pay because I don’t the money and then if you tax them they might have to sell the assets. Like God forbid they have to all the assets listen, if I give all of the assets to like 10 guys and they never ever have to sale any assets, how are your kids going to buy assets? Like what you want is for the super rich guys to sell their assets so that ordinary working people can buy houses. This is how it used to work, but we-

 

Coco Khan But what if the rich guys make more assets in Bitcoin?

 

Gary Stevenson You know, this is a joke, but the truth is, this is kind of where we are. We kind of, we live in this like mythological fantasy where it’s like, oh, we’ll just build more. We’ll just built more. If it was that easy, everybody would do it. You know I used to live in Tokyo, 38 million people, housing is unaffordable. You know it’s a global crisis of affordability. If it wasn’t as simple as building more, why is nobody doing it? And the resources you need to build more houses are also owned by the rich, by the way. You cannot just ignore distribution of power and distribution of wealth. Because the problem is it compounds, right? If I give Nish everything, and he never ever has to sell anything, then we’re never going to get anything. Deal, deal, deal! I’ll take that deal. You heard it. Legally binding, force majeure. You have to deal with it. You have deal with the distribution of wealth, the distribution power. There’s no other way.

 

Nish Kumar So, can I ask you specifically your thoughts this week on what’s been happening in the UK? So, there was this idea that… Did someone just go, oh, God? So there was this idea that the cuts to disability benefits had to happen to plug holes in the Treasury’s balance sheet. Now, before we get to the U-turn and what that means for us next, what were your thoughts when you heard that? This idea that there was no other way to plug this. And again, let’s not go down the road of, they didn’t know that this hole in the budget was there, they did know. We talked to Paul Johnson from the IFS on this podcast, where he said that both the major parties were lying about the state of the public finances, and they were both aware of this whole. There’s no point in almost relitigating that. Talk to me specifically about what you felt when you heard that the cuts to disability benefits needed to happen in order to plug the hole in the country’s finances.

 

Gary Stevenson Alright, so I did a video before the election where I said, I did it a few months before the election, saying Labour are going to win the election. It’s going to be a landslide. They’re going to wins enormously. They won’t do anything about inequality. Inequality will continue to rise. Living standards will continue be fall to fall. They’ll be forced into austerity. They will be unbelievably unpopular within a year and they’ll get smashed at the next election. And that my fear was that Labour would basically open the door to like Farage. Yeah. And I think that’s exactly what’s happening. But to be honest… It would be easy, you and me, to point at Keir Starmer, point at Rachel Reeves, and say, these guys are the bad guys. This is actually not a Labour-specific problem, right? This is happening in every country in the world. What you really have here is a failure of ideas, a failure understanding in the political center with regards to economics, which is these guys simply do not think about and do not talk about wealth inequality and wealth distribution. In a context of massively increasing wealth inequality, what that means is government wealth collapsing. Middle class wealth collapsing. Look at government wealth. The graphs are unbelievable. Fifty years ago we had a relatively rich government that owned stuff and could provide stuff. Now the government is massively indebted. So they can’t provide stuff, listen what you have here is a government, but it’s not just our government because I don’t want to personalize it just to Labour Rachel Reeves. But you have a government that has a hole in the bottom of the boat and wealth is hemorrhaging out of that hole and their solution is just row harder. This is inevitably going to happen. This is inevitable going to continue. If we play chess and you take one of my pieces every single turn, then I’m going to lose that game of chess. You have to protect your wealth. You have the protect your wealthy. I’m hoping, I think it’s becoming increasingly clear, Labour are going to get decimated in the next election and I’m hope they’re watching things like this and they’re watch the videos that I’m making and they realizing why. I’m hopin’ they’re realizing why because I’m disappointed, to be honest I’m not because they’re exactly what I predicted they would be. I would like to- call out anyone in Labour, this will get worse if you do not deal with the growing inequality. So you’ve got four years, four years to do something. If you do deal with that growing inequality, the government will get poorer and poorer and what that means is you lose the NHS, you lose education, you know what we’re seeing now is you’re losing support for disabled people but that is just the first cut, that is the first. But I don’t want to point fingers at Labour, you’ll be speaking backstage to Oliver, he’s The only way that we fix these things, unfortunately, is through the Labour Party. So I’m here to talk to them, and if they wanna talk to me, I’m here.

 

Nish Kumar So they’ve, you turned on a lot of these disability cuts and the PIP reform specifically under huge pressure, always worth acknowledging the huge hard work that was done by grassroots disability charities, disability rights advocate groups. We were down there at the mass lobby when it happened. That is politics at its best. It was pressure by organized grassroots organizations who were bringing their lived experience of what the realities are for a disabled person to. The Parliament and putting pressure on MPs is very, very important and very, very worth celebrating, right? But then Pat McFadden said that after the welfare back flip, they would now, that they wouldn’t be able to lift the two-child benefit cap, which felt gross. It felt fucking gross to hear, you know, a Labour minister saying that kind of stuff. But forgetting the four-year time frame, between now and the autumn, there is going to be a budget in the autumn. Take all the political realities out of it, and let’s look purely at the economics. How do we start fixing the hole in the boat? And we have this huge policy lever that the government can pull in the autumn with the budget. What needs to be in the budget?

 

Gary Stevenson I think you first need to accept that this massive wealth redistribution has happened. You need to except that. We have a government that is massively indebted. Their net wealth position is enormously negative. They’re increasingly turning to the middle class. The middle class wealth position is worsening. That’s the reality. And that means until you address that and fix that, the ability for governments to do things is very limited. We can all sit here and point fingers and say, oh, you’re not fixing things. Their financial situation is really, really bad. They need to address that. But it’s not just about money. We talk about government debt. We never talk about who owns that debt. If the government, I talk about it all the time. The government’s given out a trillion pounds since the beginning of COVID, 20,000 pounds per adult. Where is that 20,00 pounds? There’s this phenomenal naivety. There’s phenomenal naivity. And if you give away all of your resources, you will be poor. You need to get your resources back. That has to be about taxation. But taxation is not on the menu. Even on the left, there’s often conversations about, you know, conversations such as this, what should we spend on, what should we spent on, and I’m here screaming, protect your resources, god damn, protect your resources. You have to get your resources back and we’ve lost them. So, you know, the truth is until and unless you deal with that taxation question, it’s going to be a continual choice of do we want to like destroy the lives of disabled people or do you want to shut down the NHS? Government wealth and ask yourself where has that wealth gone, how do we get it back? Until we start having that discussion it’s going to be a constant, it’s gonna be squid game out there where we’re all fighting, protect my thing, protect mine thing, we need to stand together to get the wealth back that we’ve lost. It’s the only way to improve our living conditions.

 

Nish Kumar You start with a traditional wealth, the wealth tax that you’re proposing, a 2% tax on assets over £10 million, so that raises up to around £24 billion, right? So is that a lever that you think, that’s a lever the Labour government could pull? In the short term, in the budget, reform of the capital gains tax system, which is not a particularly left-wing idea. Nigel Lawson, when he was the Conservative Chancellor, also believed that the cap gains system needed to be reformed. That raises another 12 billion pounds right that that these are short-term levers that the government can pull but it requires what you’re saying is it requires them to start the conversation that there has been this mass transfer of wealth

 

Gary Stevenson I mean, when you say world tax is a short-term lever, you can’t just bring it in. I always remember when the conservatives brought in the second home tax, an extra 3% on second homes. And I was really shocked because I don’t really trust the conservatives. I see them as protecting the interests of the rich, and here’s them putting a tax kind of on the rich. So I looked into the details, and they had an exemption for people who buy seven or more homes.

 

Audience Ugh!

 

Gary Stevenson And then Jeremy Hunt bought seven homes and paid the reduced rate of tax. It’s not as simple as, you know, people ask me this all the time, what can they do, what can they, and to be honest, I understand the question but sometimes it frustrates me because I think it fails to recognize the seriousness of this problem. It’s, people say, Gary, if you were Chancellor, what would you do? Listen, I’m trying to get wealth taxation on the table, it’s not really going to happen short term, even if it was, the rich have their lobbyists, they have their newspapers, they’re going to swarm in and they’re gonna try and get loopholes in bill. And then I need to be able to make sure the loopholes don’t get in the bill. And people are worried that the tax will come in, it will be fooled with loophols, and it will hit the middle class. That’s a legitimate risk. That is a legitimate, but we need to get something on the table. I don’t want to be depressing, but you have to be realistic about how you win this. First, you win the public argument, right? This is what’s going to happen, right. Labour are going to get smashed in the next election. As we come into the next selection, I want to have 10 million YouTube followers, and they have to call me. And then I get in there and I say, what are you gonna give me on world taxation? You know, that is the only way we.

 

Nish Kumar Is that conversation not happening now because you did say in one of your videos that the Labour party is trying to bring you in And you’re still undecided about whether

 

Gary Stevenson I don’t know about bring me bring me in they message. Well, some people at Labour messaged us and they said We want to come on the channel want to send people on the tunnel Yeah, and it was like the beginning of this year was just crazy for me I didn’t really have time to and I thought we should have them on But then when I spoke to like my guys like I have a small team They were like that’s gonna be like rubbish that video is gonna be rubbish and we were like well Because you know what, you know, what all of is great I’ll see you’ll come in these nice bottom, you don’t you know where they’re like, right? Yeah, they’re boring and then So then we were like, the only way that the video will be good is if you have them on and you just rip into them, like that is what would get me views and that’s what would get like the channel to grow, but at the end of the day, there is, because of the electoral system we have, you know, we can get into it, there really is no realistic way towards progressive movement that does not go through the Labour Party. So I told my agent today, go back to them and say, look, if you’re not willing to talk to me off camera, I’m not willing to talk you on camera and we’re going tried to get some meetings but you know the truth is We have to go through the Labour Party. I don’t like, you know, that’s our political system. You know, it’s very, very, very difficult to build up new parties, to build out small parties. So we haven’t had them on. And for me, I’m using that as a bargaining chip. You know? I want them to give me access. I want to talk to me about policy. And if they’re willing to do that, then maybe I’ll be willing to have them on

 

Coco Khan I just want to ask you, you talked about the first step is winning the public argument. You’ve been to multiple countries, you’ve observed that we have the same problem. Is that not me? Have we not already won the public argument?

 

Gary Stevenson We are winning it, but so there’s this quote that I mentioned sometimes, which is from an American economist, Milton Friedman, who I’m not a massive fan of, but I think the quote is wise. Was it all?

 

Nish Kumar It was an odd woo in this room. That’s someone who’s just a fan of the name Milton.

 

Gary Stevenson At times of crisis, the solutions will be chosen from the ideas lying around at the time. All right. And I think it’s obvious, increasingly obvious to everyone, not just in this country, across the world, that there’s a massive loss of faith in the establishment of political parties, establishment of politics, establishment of ways of dealing with economics. But I think its also obvious to every one, what is the loudest idea lying around at the moment? And not just in this country, everywhere. There’s this massive increase in the idea that your economic problems are caused by immigrants, are caused my foreigners. And that’s the way that it will go. I’m very proud of what we have done in raising the profile of the problem is inequality, the problem isn’t very rich, the solution is tax. We have now, politicians cannot go on the news without being asked, why are you not doing a wealth tax? And I’m proud of that, and I think everybody who supports our channel should be very proud themselves for what they’ve done. Yeah. But we are not the loudest voice in the room in terms of alternatives, we’re not, we simply not, like we’re a long way behind Faraj and the equivalence to Faraj in every country which exists everywhere. But you know, they will win elections, they won the last US election and they will fail on the economy. They will fail on the economic. So…

 

Nish Kumar Well, he’s already failing on the economy. The living standards, egg prices. I’m not gonna say the name of that fucking law because it’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard in my life, but it’s adding huge quantities to US national debt. It’s again, further supervising this transfer of wealth to the richest people that he oversaw in his first term. Like, he will fail on the economic.

 

Gary Stevenson Yeah, he will fail so I think we’re winning the the public on wealth taxation But the problem is this new new right all right far out whatever you want to call them their way ahead of us But you know look at the speed of growth of my channel what I really want the reason I had Jimmy on my channel I want people to be watching my channel and being like wow this channel is so popular Let’s copy this guy and the reason I was in Italy and the reasons I was import going to Sweden because I want to see copycats I want you to copy cuts everywhere. You know I’m trying to show people there is a way to communicate progressive ideas to the public that they will support. There is a way we can compete with that far-right rhetoric. We can provide an alternative, we can provide an idea, we could provide a story that’s positive and works. And I’m trying to build that, but the truth is, we’re not there yet. We need more people, and thanks to you guys for the work that you do as well. I would love you guys to speak about inequality, about taxation more, I know you already do. The way that we are there, we are growing, we’re growing really quickly, but we are behind the far right and there’s a lot of work to do. And I’ll be doing that, and I know you guys will too.

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan Well, you said about you wanting to be in the room with the Labour Party. Haven’t got Keir Starmer here, but we do have a very good guest who’s not boring. So joining us now, let’s give him a warm welcome, is the Labour Mayor of South Yorkshire. You’ll probably know him, Oliver Coppard. Give him a big hand.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard No pressure.

 

Nish Kumar Oliver, could we first ask you to welcome the newest resident of South Yorkshire?

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Who is this?

 

Nish Kumar Lucas from Brazil has moved to Sheffield yesterday.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Welcome.

 

Nish Kumar Let me just restate that. Has moved from Brazil to Sheaffield. I’ll say this for your partner. Huge vote of confidence in you.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar A very positive reflection on you.

 

Audience There are other Brazilians in the room, right?

 

Nish Kumar There’s other Brazilians?!?

 

Coco Khan Oh wow!

 

Nish Kumar Has everyone moved from Brazil? They said if they elected Lula there would be a wealth exodus. They didn’t say it would be to Sheffield Um, Oliver, what’s your- just for Lucas’s benefit, what- what’s the best things about Sheffield? What’s the things about-

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard How long we got? When we off?

 

Nish Kumar Well, we got some time.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Yeah. Well, there’s plenty, isn’t there? I mean, the Peak District on our doorstep. You’re sat in the biggest theater district outside of London. We are the home of football and the home of World Snooker, which is obviously played on this very stage.

 

Nish Kumar Fucking love snooker.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard I’m sure in Brazil, snookers is a huge game. So that’s obviously an attraction.

 

Nish Kumar It’s a game we play because we’re bad at football.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard A growing economy. And a load of nice people.

 

Nish Kumar Okay, now, if I could give a counterpoint.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar This is not Yorkshire specific, but it is specific to local councils. It feels like, just in the lifespan of us doing this show, we just constantly, every couple of months, talking about another local council that’s gone into bankruptcy. According to the latest figures, almost half the councils in England are at risk. Can you just tell us as simply as you can possibly manage it, how do local councils get their money and why are so many of them going bankrupt right now?

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Well, so basically there are a few ways that councils get their money, to simplify it. Essentially they get a government grant, so they get money from the government, and then councils have to raise money through both council tax and then doing things like putting in permits and things like that that they then sell to communities, parking permits, whatever else it might be. The problem that we’ve seen over the last decade plus is that the rebalancing of that away from government grants that used to constitute a bigger part of what local government got, and now increasingly relying on council tax to fill the void. So essentially here in this region where we have a lower council tax base, we are therefore worse off. So the bad news is for our new Brazilian resident that places like South Yorkshire have been made worse off by the change to the way that council funding works because we simply don’t have as many wealthy properties that pay more council tax. And as I think we all probably would agree, the council tax system is broken. So people in wealthier parts of the country in big houses are not paying a commensurate amount of money for their council tax compared to somebody who lives in a place like Sheffields, who will be living in a nice house, but nothing like, frankly, Buckingham Palace. So those are the challenges that we face alongside councils being given more and more to do. So I think councils run on average about 800 services. And that’s because the government have increasingly handed over services to local councils whilst taking money off them.

 

Coco Khan Our mate Gary had an idea.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Not just one, actually.

 

Coco Khan About raising some revenue for the Exchequer. And just for clarity, if that were to happen, this area would benefit. Mayors would have more money, right? It’s as simple as that.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Well, we’re talking about two slightly different things, aren’t we? We’re talking one, how do you raise the money, and then how do distribute the money? So on the first point, how’d you raise it, I’m up for any ideas that make South Yorkshire potentially better off. I personally think I was in the Yorkshire Post the other day saying that places like South Yorkia should have more opportunities to raise more of that money ourselves. So things like a tourist tax. I mean, I don’t know how many of you are from outside of South York and come into South York for the Crosswise Festival or to come to this podcast. We’re saying actually look, just put a quid on. Hotel room bill, right? And it would raise money for cultural events in South Yorkshire, for things to happen here like this festival and more of them besides. So raising more money locally is one way of doing that. A wealth tax might be another, I don’t know the details as well as you do, but I think we should be looking at all those ideas. The second point though is when you’ve got that money, how do you redistribute it? And part of the problem for the last 14, 15 years is that that money has not been distributed in a way that has helped South York, it’s gone to wealthier parts of the country and that’s why we’ve been made worse off.

 

Nish Kumar And are you confident that the new Labour government is interested in distributing that money through local mayors like yourself? I mean, municipal mayors have been a big part of Labour’s campaigning and big part of the Labour conversation, right?

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Yeah, I mean, look, I have to say, look I’m not here just to defend the government because that’s not my job, but I have certainly felt a huge difference since this government came in, in terms of what money I’ve been given, what powers I’ve given, the access I’ve be given since we had the Labour government compared to when we had a Tory one. So, my first day on the job three years ago, came into office, walked into the building, said, look first thing I want to do, I want write to Boris Johnson. Prime Minister at the time, I wanted to write to him and say, look, you want to level up the country, I’m a new mayor, I want level up South Yorkshire, let’s work together. And I wrote that letter to him, didn’t get a response to that letter. This government, as soon as they got elected, invited all the mayors down to number 10. We have a regular meeting with Keir Starmer, regular meetings with Angela, Rachel, everybody else besides. Now, I’m not saying that that means we get everything we want because we don’t, but we certainly get more access and more opportunity to influence, and on things like transport, we just got £1.5 billion committed to South Yorkshire for transport to be able to do the big things we want to do, take the busses back under public control, extend the tram network, do everything else besides.

 

Coco Khan And one thing you did that really stood out to me as a new parent is in March last year you announced £2.2 million of funding to provide a safe space to sleep for every child aged 0 to 5 in South Yorkshire. At the time you were having an interview with The Post I believe it was and you said that one in nine babies go home from hospital in Sheffield without a safe place to sleep. That is fucking terrifying. Going to bed in drawers, in boxes, it really… Upset me, so first of all I’m so glad you did that, second of all why are you doing that? No offense, but shouldn’t that be the Prime Minister’s job? Well, child poverty is a plague. I’m surprised that it came down to a mayor to resolve it.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Well, we started that under a Tory government. So we started when we weren’t getting the support from the government to do the things we wanted to do. We did that because, frankly, it’s morally unacceptable that babies in this place a mile away from here are going to bed in a bouncy chair, a box, a drawer, whatever, you name it, so we intervened. It was a project that we’ve been working on with Bloomberg Philanthropies, with Harvard University, with partners locally and regionally, and now every baby in South Yorkshire has a guaranteed right to a safe place to sleep, a car, a Moses basket, or anything else. In answer to your question about why should mayors be doing that? Why shouldn’t mayors being doing that. That’s my point. Give us the money and we can fix these problems. That’s what devolution’s all about. The problem I’ve had is I’ve not had the money to go bigger, go further, to intervene when it comes to things like food for kids, when it come to things opportunities for kids. When it comes things like transport for kids I haven’t got the money to do that. But if we’re gonna level up this country and make sure that everybody in this country gets the opportunity to stay near and go far then we need the money here in South Yorkshire because I know where those kids are. I know how to reach those families. I know the partners that can work with them. And you can’t do that from 200 miles away and dictate how that system should work. So mayors should be doing that, absolutely. The challenge to this government, just like the challenge to the last government, is to give mayors the money to be able to intervene directly and do the things we know need to be done.

 

Coco Khan But you take my point though, right? About national strategies for things like child poverty. We talk a lot about the Labour Party and our concerns that they are cutting back the funding for vulnerable groups en masse. And of course, if you have a mayor that is able to, let’s be honest, sticking class to that, then great. But there must be some frustrations here. There must be a sense that this is not the work. That should be left at local level.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard But no, look, I think that mayors should absolutely be at the front line of solving the problems in our communities. The problem that I have is that I don’t have the cash to do it. You can set a framework, of course. You can give me targets if you want. You can tell me that I’ve got to try and achieve certain things, but kind of leave me to work out how to do because I know my community best. In some places, bed poverty is going to be a real issue, right? In South Yorkshire, absolutely bed poverty as an issue. In other parts of the country, not so much. In other parts of the country it might be something else. But I want South Yorkshire to focus on those things we face uniquely as problems. Cancer is another example, right? We have a huge problem in South York when it comes to cancer outcomes, more so, worse than other places in this country. So we’re now putting in place a cancer strategy, but I can’t get the NHS, I can get the systems to work on my behalf to answer those problems because it’s the national service that doesn’t respond to our needs locally. Let’s make the devolution revolution real so that people in this region can have real agency to make change happen.

 

Coco Khan Maybe a better thing for me to be saying would be, what about the people who don’t have a mayor like you? I guess that’s my-

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard I feel sorry for those people who have called.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah Obviously, we want more industry moving across the country. We want more investment. One of the big areas of investment in Sheffield is the defense industry, which is obviously going to be a contentious thing for a lot of the listeners and frankly, hosts of this podcast. It’s not something that sat well with us the last few months, the increasing calls for arms spending. And what’s even trickier to swallow is the UK continuing to supply parts of the F-35 fighter jets responsible for raining death on the people of Gaza. Now, there was a massive protest at a steel firm in Sheffield, with hundreds of activists blockading the plant over claims that they were manufacturing parts for the F-35. We should note that the manufacturer denies any involvement in it, but last week the High Court ruled that it is legal for the UK to continue to export F- 35 parts to Israel, despite the government saying that they would no longer export arms that might be used in Gaza. Oliver, for you, with your interest being focused on Shefffield and bringing industry Sheffield, how do you square that circle with? People that live in this city and people that live in this region’s disquiet with some of that money and some of the investment coming from the arms industry.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Yeah, genuinely it’s really hard. I don’t make any bones about it. I represent a region that is really poor. We don’t have enough jobs, we don’t a big enough economy. To a certain extent we’ve been left behind. People here will know about the deindustrialisation of the 1980s and 90s, what we lost in that time. And we’re trying to build a bigger and a better economy. So it’s not just about bringing anyone that will give us money or create jobs, that’s absolutely not how we’re going to build an economy. But when people do want to come here and create good jobs in industries that are frankly being supported by the national government, and they have to go somewhere in this country, I don’t even necessarily get to control that, right? I don’t get to tell companies whether they can come and set up factories in South Yorkshire. But if I am asked to support them, I have to take them on their merits. And if they are creating good jobs in South Yorkshire for people in this region, then I have look at them and talk to them and work with them to figure out if we can bring them into this region and help them to create that wealth in this, region for people who desperately, desperately need jobs. Because of the reasons you’ve articulated in terms of beds and babies and kids going to bed at night too hungry. So look, it’s a difficult thing. I struggle with it myself. I know the other leaders in South York just struggle with that. And I don’t claim to have some sort of moral superiority and know the answer to those questions because we are balancing very difficult needs. The needs of people to feel safe across the world at the same time as people in this region needing jobs and good opportunities to get on in their lives. And that’s a difficulty thing for me to balance and ultimately. I struggle with it every day but I want people to come and set up factories in this region so ultimately I think I’ve probably come down on the side of wanting them in here. Look, I take your point, and I am more than willing. No, no, listen, I absolutely hear you and I’m more than willing always, actually, frankly, to sit down and have these conversations because I recognize it’s really hard and it would be easy for me to come into this room with an audience like this and say, look, no. But I know for every 500 people that are in this room, there are 500 people in other parts of South Yorkshire that desperately want me to frankly do anything to get jobs into this region. And I have to try and balance that every single day as a mayor. And I’m not here to just imprint my principles on this region. I’m here to listen to this community and try and do what I can for this community to take us forward together as one place.

 

Nish Kumar I’m going to ask you both just two very quick things. Firstly, on Thursday, the independent MP Zara Sultana, who lost the Labour whip last year after voting for an amendment that would remove the two child benefit cap, announced that she will form a new progressive party alongside former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. I’m very interested briefly in both of your opinions about whether you think this is good for progressive politics in this country because it will drag the conversation further towards conversations like wealth tax or whether you thing it’s bad because it further splinters the progressive vote and helps open the door for reform and Nigel Farage. I’m interested as quickly as possible what you both think.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Yeah, I mean, essentially the latter version of what you just said there is where I am. I don’t like seeing us split, like I don’t like seeing a fight amongst ourselves when frankly the fight should be whether or not people can get beds for their kids, whether we can go make sure that kids have food on their plate and that people can a bus to work. Those should be the conversations we should be having and the more that we split and talk amongst ourselves about the ideas that we separately have, which frankly aren’t always that different, I think the more it weakens us and the more it is easier for the far right and the right to take over that conversation. Isn’t that an impo-

 

Nish Kumar message for the Labour leadership as well, who seems to have spent a huge amount of rhetorical and political energy attacking its own natural support base. And aren’t they going down a very dangerous road that the Democrats went down, spending an election campaign essentially attacking young progressive voters who form the core of their vote? That’s a plague on both your houses, right?

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard Well look, personally it’s why I like being a mayor, not being in parliament, right, because I feel in parliament it’s this sort of slightly poisonous system where these small differences get magnified, where there are personalities at play that then actually get in the way of the real politics of like changing this country. As mayors we don’t really do that so much, right. We are responsive to our communities, we’ll place over politics. There are huge differences within the mayor’s group, but we all get on and work together because that’s the right thing for our places. I think there is a more mature politics that we could all adopt, quite honestly, and I think mayors are leading the way.

 

Nish Kumar Your thoughts, Gary? Based on what you said about the Labour Party I sense you have an opinion on this.

 

Gary Stevenson People might not believe this, but I don’t consider myself to be a political person. When I was a kid, I had no interest in politics. I wanted to make money, I wanted to be rich, and then I got this job where my job was to analyze economies and I realized that economies were going to absolutely collapse to absolute shit forever. And that politicized me, right? And I think it’s important to recognize he wasn’t wrong. It’s important to recognize that that is what is happening here now, and that this will get worse, and this is a serious situation. So what I would like to say is politics is not football, okay? It’s more important than that, right? You know, we talk about kids going to bed in drawers, you know, that will get worse unfortunately. That will get worst. So listen, I’m willing to work with whoever is going to help me fix that problem. You know? I don’t care if that’s Jeremy Corbyn, I don’t care if it’s…

 

Coco Khan But not Nigel Farage though, we have to draw a line there.

 

Gary Stevenson I will work with whoever I have to work with to stop this country from collapsing into poverty. I don’t think Nigel Farage, who is funded by billionaires and is trying to cut billionaire taxes will help me do that. But I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to make friends, I am here to stop the country from collapsing to poverty. Yeah, look, we have a stupid political system which really punishes division. Division can be difficult. But I understand why these guys are doing it because I was there before the election screaming at Labour, are you going to give us something on inequality? And they said no, and they said, no, they said not.

 

Coco Khan But it’s so hard, isn’t it? Because I remember this is not quite the same, but I remember starting a magazine and pouring over every single article and having this moment where we’re chatting to the editors and we just basically, someone said, look, when you start out, you have to have the highest standards because you know they will get dropped. Start high because you’ll get pushed. And so in a way, when we say let’s all unite behind a banner, isn’t there a sense that you’re saying to people drop your standards? And in the end, don’t we all pay for that? I’m not saying that’s my opinion, but I understand why we-

 

Gary Stevenson I’m not saying that. When I say politics is not football, that’s exactly what I mean. Don’t unite behind the banner. Don’t paint colors over your face and say I’m this team. Fight for your interests. Fight for you interests. What I talk about is tax wealth not work, reduce inequality. You fight for your interests.

 

Coco Khan I guess what I’m getting at is that, look, we’re talking about splitting the left here. And I am someone who’s very nervous about splitting in the left, but I also look at what reform’s doing and the influence they’ve had over the Tories. And I wonder maybe if we had a split on the left we could also do some of that to Labour. Because if you’re otherwise if you were a bit on the left in Labour you’ll just literally just told to piss off.

 

Gary Stevenson But if you use it to pressure, it’s fine. You use it the pressure. You know, I know Labour are hated. I know Kier’s hated. Listen, don’t allow who you like and who you don’t like to damage your interest as a group. Unfortunately, listen, I’m sorry, but this is a serious thing that’s happening here. And sometimes you do have to work with people who you do not like. And I don’t like it either. But listen, serious things are happening. We need to form alliances where we can. We We need to protect ourselves.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard All I would say is, I’ve been a politician three years, right, I have been in politics kind of all my life, one way, shape or form, like delivering leaflets, whatever it might be, right? But I guess being a politician for three years has taught me quite quickly, you know what, politics is just incredibly messy, and it’s like incredibly difficult, and you don’t get to just say that these are my principles and I’m just gonna hold onto them and I gonna expect everybody else to mold themselves around me. I have to work with people I don’t like, I have work with with people that I don’t agree with, I have do things that I necessarily think are in the greater interest of this country but they might be better for South Yorkshire or vice versa, right? There are things that have to do that I dont necessarily like or enjoy but politics is messy and you gotta try and get to where you want to go and sooner or later that means actually you gotta make a bit of compromise happen and ultimately I think in this country we’ve lost the art to a certain extent of compromise. Of being able to talk to each other and find a way through where we can all collectively stay as one community and move forward. And I think that’s where we need to get back to.

 

Coco Khan But it works both ways, right? Because also, you can’t take advantage of your voters and assume they’ll come with you, which you were quoted in The Guardian this weekend saying, and the headline was, A Mess of Our Own Making, Labour Mayors Reflect on Stama’s First Year, which I think, you know, we talked about.

 

Mayor Oliver Coppard That wasn’t my quote, just for the record.

 

Coco Khan But you know, as you say, don’t take for granted your base and also as voters maybe we should also compromise a little bit as well.

 

Nish Kumar We have run out of time, thank you so much to Crosswise for having us, thank you to The Crucible for looking after us and thank you so much for our wonderful audience in the room. Please, will you join me in giving a massive round of applause to our guests, Oliver Coppard and Gary Stevenson. Coco Khan everybody!

 

Coco Khan Thank you! Nish Kumar everybody!

 

Nish Kumar Thanks for being here, see you in Marmaduke’s!