In This Episode
In this special live episode from the Edinburgh Fringe, Nish and Coco bring two special guests to talk about the racist riots tearing Britain apart.
Nish, Coco and Ahir reflect on their personal feelings and experiences of racism in the UK in the wake of the violence, while sharing some advice for anyone feeling disturbed. Later, Tom Ballard jumps on stage to share how the UK took some of the worst possible inspiration from his home country of Australia.
The gang turn to the audience – while sharing advice for wearing sunscreen… And burrito-based magic.
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Guests:
Ahir Shah – Comedian
Tom Ballard – Comedian
Useful Links:
TRANSCRIPT
Nish Kumar Hello. Welcome to the Monkey Barrel. How are you? Fantastic to be here.
Coco Khan Yes, amazing to be here. This is only my second Edinburgh.
Nish Kumar What was your first Edinburgh.
Coco Khan My first. My first one was like 15 years ago. I was saying to Tom Ballard, one of our upcoming guests, that.
Nish Kumar Spoiler alert.
Coco Khan Yes. It was like. So when I came, I was more on the, like, pretentious theater scene rather than the comedy scene. So I’d be like, let’s go see two hours where someone talks about the view from the supermarket shelf if you were a cumquat. Do you know me?
Nish Kumar You can see that in the comedy section. 250 at the Monkey Bar every day.
Coco Khan I’m like, really heartened by that because so far I’ve walked around. Everything seems very polished.
Nish Kumar No, there’s still some absolute shite here. Look at the nodding faces for people who are listening to the audio. There are some pained expressions of the fact there is a young person, just on my right, who looks like they have seen conflict, whereas in fact, I know what they’ve seen. It’s of experimental student theater in a venue that was only designed to hold 12 broomsticks. Well, what was it? Can you give us a flavor of the vibe?
Audience Member Oh, God. It was a magic show. It was in the basement of a burrito shop, and the best treat was a tray of burritos falling down the stairs.
Nish Kumar Can I, take a shot in the dark and say that was not intended as a part of the magician’s act?
Audience Member To this day, I don’t know.
Coco Khan I think it’s very profound.
Nish Kumar So I told you. Go, go. There is some. Absolutely. This is the biggest arts festival in the world. Odds are a lot of it’s gonna be fucking shit, you know?
Coco Khan You know, people always say, is this the world? The left one? Yeah, this is the one. Let’s express ourselves through very bad theater. Speaking of which.
Nish Kumar Is that really the way you want to introduce our first ever live show, as Bob, to say. I mean, in fairness, it is bad theater. If you went to see this and it was billed as a play, you’d be fucking livid. Just by wavage here, who has heard the podcast before? *Audience Screams* Oh, okay. He was not heard the podcast before. *Audience Screams* Who shouted yes? And was it Gerard Butler who apparently is here for some reason? That’s not a joke. He’s really here. We don’t know why. We’re excited to have you, Gerard.
Coco Khan Pod Save the UK has fallen.
Nish Kumar Yeah.
Coco Khan Listen.
Nish Kumar We are really excited. We are pitching a film idea where terrorists take a live podcast recording. We’re here. So we’re here at the Edinburgh Fringe. So for those who don’t know, I’m Nish Kumar.
Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan, and together we are Jedward. Yesssss
Nish Kumar That’s what we need to say on the merch. That’s all we need. The Asian Jedward. We are very happy to be, at the Fringe Festival, a festival that brings together from people across the world. But let’s face it, mainly the south of England. Just as a straw poll. Is anyone here actually Scottish? *Audience Screams*.
Nish Kumar Yes, the Scots are. Hey. They’re here. Yeah, but they also recently got rid of their South Asian leader who they absolutely given a hospital pass to. So all the nations have something in common. Any, any Welsh in.
Coco Khan Wow.
Nish Kumar They’ve all sat together as well, which is actually kind of weird. And how are they English doing? *Audience Boos* That is exactly the amount of enthusiasm this country deserves. In this of all weeks. Are there any international people in. Where are you from?
Audience Member Northern Ireland.
Nish Kumar Northern Ireland. Now. I hate to be this guy. Yeah, I believe that still part of the United Kingdom. And there has been some consternation about that. That’s what they refer to as the consternation. You’ve got both. You got both passports.
Audience Member Irish and UK.
Nish Kumar Aye the Irish passport, the white person’s Brexit escape card. Any Americans in? *Audience screams*
Nish Kumar Oh, yeah. How are you feeling about your country? Well, one person said, maybe hopeful and the other one for much further away and yet more audible somehow shouted awful! The Americans are feeling awful. So look, we got some amazing guests for you.
Coco Khan We’ve forgot to ask if there’s any conservatives in.
Nish Kumar One of our live shows. One of our live shows at the Edinburgh Fringe. Like.
Coco Khan What?
Nish Kumar In all honesty, you’re more likely to see Gerard Butler here. Well, anyway, there are no conservatives in. If there are. Sorry. For what you’re about to hear. Okay, so, we’re in the know, avoiding talking about the horrible news of the week. There is going to be a, let’s face it, tonal shift. Once we sit down and actually, discuss, the terms of the week. But we’re very excited to see you all. Should we bring out our first guest?
Coco Khan I think so.
Nish Kumar So, without further ado, let’s get into it. Please give a very warm welcome to our first guest, my dear friend and biological son Ahir Shah.
Ahir Shah Hello. Hello. I just before we get into it, I just want to say what a pleasure it is to be back at Edinburgh. Obviously, I’ve been coming up here for a long time doing stand up. This year I’ve decided to sort of switch it up. I’m doing this, magic show. And underneath this burrito place, it’s one of the few sort of affordable. So good deals for, venues, on the thing. And I’ve got this part where burrito is full, from the ceiling. And a lot of people think that that’s just an accident, but it’s when you’re doing magic. My sort of level people are like, did. Was that supposed to. It’s always supposed to. That’s magic baby.
Nish Kumar How are you?
Ahir Shah Yeah. I’m good. I’ve, not been following the news, so I assume that it’s just silly season.
Nish Kumar Yeah.
Ahir Shah And you I have, but there’s probably, like, a squirrel that’s done something funny or something, and, just have a little. I have a little nice, lighthearted chat about that one evening.
Coco Khan A very racist squirrel. A really large racist squirrel.
Nish Kumar I actually think that squirrel had some legitimate concerns. About who was going to be using its store of nuts.
Ahir Shah At the Edinburgh Festival. I think a very racist squirrel just sounds like a show that’s far too whimsical for its own good.
Nish Kumar It sounds like Noel Fielding’s gone right wing. The original plan for this show was it would be a thing where we’d get on. Friends of ours committed to engage with the news, and we thought that it would be, you know, a lighthearted celebration of a weird year of news. Obviously, those events have somewhat got out of the window, for the benefit of people abroad, who, have not been following this story. There was some context. The UK has been hit by a wave of violent rioting led by racist, hard right agitators. It started after three children, in Southport, were murdered and false information circulated online that the suspect, was a muslim migrant. It transpired that the suspect was in fact born in Britain, and, believed to be, Christian. Not that that’s relevant to whether or not you should be going around smashing up mosques, but that is what happened. Unfortunately, hard right agitators rioted and the riots spread across England, and Northern Ireland. Hundreds of arrests were made, we think, at the moment, as we record on Tuesday, the running total is 400. Demonstrators were heard trying things like, enough is enough and we want our country back. Others of them were pictured, openly, doing Hitler salutes. Many of them had quite visible Nazi face tattoos. It’s, by a by the weekend, the demonstrations had become more targeted on Sunday to hotels that had been used to house asylum seekers, had their windows smashed with bricks and, fire set in their rubbish bins. A library that served as the food bank in Liverpool was burned down alongside the Citizens Advice Bureau. It has been a sort of week of truly just disgraceful scenes across the country.
Coco Khan Yeah, I mean, it’s a a terrible state of affairs, but I wouldn’t say it was necessarily surprising. I mean, how are you feeling about it?
Ahir Shah I think in certain ways, in certain ways. Not surprising, as you say, that something like this might have happened eventually. Like, I do think that a lot of the way that it’s shaken out to it can’t be sort of ignore that. Like it’s really sunny and all of these people are on tremendous amounts of cocaine. And I don’t think that they particularly needed an excuse to, do any of this.
Nish Kumar I think we probably have to whack it allegedly, on there.
Ahir Shah People appear as though they have been consuming large quantities of allegedly. And I think I and I was saying this to, Nash earlier this evening and over the last few days as we’ve been texting about it, and unsurprisingly, as I’m sure you have been texting my family about it and friends about it, and talking to my wife about it and, everything as we go. And, I think that I am sort of stunned and upset and everything enough. But I would be far more so if I genuinely believed that this was representative of the country I love and the country that has been my home since the day that I was born. And I don’t think it is, in any way like I refuse to cede this, you know, this idea that this is the howl of the great, unheard of, majority or silent majority who are not going to be, first of all, like, I don’t think these people were ever particularly silent. You just needed to know where to look. I sort of feel as though one of the great privileges of doing the job that I do, having done stand up for a very long time. Is that like, I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, well, if you ever got out of your London bubble and actually saw the real country as it is, then you wouldn’t be. It was like, why do you think I do for a living? Right. Like, I it’s like my entire career has been like, I’ve covered more of this country than the fucking ordinance. That’s, is constantly wandering around. And one of my favorite things about that is that I have been able to see the full length and breadth of this wonderful place and see so many people in so many different places and so many different sizes of conurbations and different mixes of people in different areas and different classes of stuff, and none of what is spreading out. There’s an awful like violence, and the horror is in any way representative, in my opinion, of the country that I know and that I see. And I’ve lived in my whole life. Right. And so I think that. Yeah, I just don’t want to siege to like 0.001% of the worst of us. The idea that this is Britain, in any way.
Coco Khan I mean, I agree with all of that, but I would also say that, these tensions have existed here for a really long time. I think Britain does have a problem with race that it’s not willing to face up to and therefore will keep, you know, rearing its head. I, I’m not disagreeing, but I would just perhaps counter a bit that I don’t think this is an anomaly. I don’t think this is a one off. I don’t think this is just about cheap cocaine flooding the pubs, which I’ve heard about, I don’t know really much about.
Nish Kumar Allegedly.
Coco Khan Do you know what I mean?
Ahir Shah Yeah. Again, I think that it’s probably indicative of how much rarer it is that we’re talking about it as much as we are, as well. You know, when I hear about the sort of youths of the generation above me and my family where all of this sort of street violence and stuff was just so entirely normalized that it was just like, oh, yeah, well, obviously, like, I mean, I was out. So that happened. Right. Whereas now it’s at least sufficiently, different that it’s something that is worth like everyone going, oh my God. And the vast majority of people are quite rightly, going, oh my God. That was an interesting like sort of social surveys last year that I saw from Ipsos. That was done in 2020, where 93% of people disagreed with 84% strongly disagreeing with the statement. To be truly British, you have to be white. Which had changed from 2006, where it was 82% who disagreed and only 55%, disagreed. Strongly. The amount who agree with the statement had fallen quite commensurately. 89% of people said that they would be happy for their child to marry someone from another ethnic group. 70% strongly changing from 2009, where it was 75 and 41. Strongly. And I’m.
Coco Khan Glad you brought some facts to this. Thank you very much for doing that.
Ahir Shah And, so I do think, you know, the sample size that the population of this country is overwhelmingly white, right? So the sample size of this poll is overwhelmingly white. And I do think that that’s indicative of the fact that, yeah, I just don’t want, I feel like if you view everything through what hope is lost, then, you know, like I under in the. I just feel like on the spectrum of being hopeless and being naive, I really sort of have to be closer to the latter. Because.
There’s something in between the two, though, there’s something in between the two. There’s a, there’s there’s sort of recognizing that there’s still problems and those people are still reluctant to change. And there’s an eco system around them, from the media to politicians that capitalize on that, but also recognizing that when the far right came to Liverpool, Bristol and countless other cities, human beings in bigger numbers came out to put their bodies in between them and other people.
Ahir Shah Yeah for sure.
Coco Khan So, so both can be true at once, right?
Ahir Shah Yeah. And that has been an extremely heartening thing to see. Like the people it’s. Yeah, the people who I wanna focus on, the people who are out with the dustpan and brush the following morning cleaning up and everyone doing it together because actually, like, that’s that community, though, the people who are coming together to clean everything up are actually from the community. It’s people who have come in to cause problems just for that. And then they bugger off again, and it’s left for the actual community to pick up the pieces. But then that’s where the community get to show their togetherness, and stuff like that. You’re.
Nish Kumar More generous person than me because those are not the people I want to focus on. The people I want to focus on, the I basically, I can’t deal with this idea that all of this was manufactured by Russian bots. I keep reading, it was Russian bots, it was Russian bots. It was asking about. And they’re like, well, Russian bots have clearly been incredibly busy because they seem to have been running a huge number of editorials for the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Times, the Sunday Times. They seem to have done a really interesting job on writing some adverts for Nigel Farage, his Brexit campaign. They did a really thorough job on Suella Braverman speech at the Conservative Party conference, where she essentially reprised large sections of Enoch Powell Rivers of blood speech that there are there are figures within what we might.
Ahir Shah Matt Goodwin has actually been a server in some speeches that for.
Nish Kumar That there are people that exist within the kind of what should be or what we normally consider to be the sort of mainstream conservative ecosystem and that including within the Conservative Party and, you know, within the kind of opinion that editorial pages a huge number of conservative newspaper columns that have consistently pushed this idea that immigrants are the problem, refugees are the problem. You know, the Labour MP for Tamworth, I think, I hope now has deep regrets about specifically citing the hotel in Tamworth that was housing refugees and asylum seekers that a number of these, you know, protesters in inverted commas, set fire to, I think that I think it’s fine to emphasize the kind of hopefulness in this situation, but I also think we need an actual conversation about the lack of accountability for some of the people who have fanned the sort of flames of this that still continue to exist within the kind of ecosystem of our mainstream political conversation.
Ahir Shah Oh, I gotta be right. Like, there’s. Like. And there is absolutely like, as you’re saying, sort of quote unquote protestors with quote unquote legitimate grievances. And yeah, my sister did not text me worrying about me traveling around. A few days ago because she was like, someone might politely approach you with legitimate grievances. Like you need to make sure that you’re across that equally and equally. That is, word for political violence conducted with the express aim of causing fear. And it’s not protest. Yeah, as far as I’m aware.
Nish Kumar Yeah. It’s kind of a personal frustration of mine because you and I have worked on things where we tried to have a more evolved conversation about race in this country and those things that we worked on. We were often sort of shouted down essentially by voices again in the mainstream conservative press. And like the most positive thing I think can come out of this is that we actually start to have a more honest conversation about how we talk about immigrants and immigration, and how we talk about asylum seekers and refugees. And this is a moment for like an actual temperature check, you know, the the kind of temperature check we didn’t have really after Jo Cox was murdered. So, again, for international listeners, for context, in the lead up to the Brexit vote, a Labour MP who was a very outspoken advocate, both of the cause of remaining of the European Union, but also the rights of refugees, was assassinated by a man who would go on to give his name in call as freedom for Britain. And the push to not talk about the implications of that was something that I think has led us on this kind of path to where we are.
Ahir Shah And led and led on the evening of the referendum result to Nigel Farage claiming that the referendum had been won without a shot being fired. Yeah. Which was, to say the least, spectacularly.
Coco Khan I mean, I have to say I also share your personal frustrations. You know, I come to it as a member of the press and seeing some of my journalistic colleagues, I use that phrase in a polite way now, not my colleagues.
Nish Kumar In the way that we’ve been using protests.
Coco Khan Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, the some of the things my journalistic colleagues have said, it’s fascinating. They blew the dog whistle for so long, and now the dogs are here and they’re surprised.
Nish Kumar Yeah.
Coco Khan And.
Nish Kumar Now they coming over all Baha Man on us.
Coco Khan Who let that dogs out. You know that’s a terribly sexist song. Did you know that?
Nish Kumar Is it.
Nish Kumar Yeah. I had. For years I thought it was about dogs.
Nish Kumar It’s actually not about dogs?
Coco Khan Apparently it’s about unattractive women.
Nish Kumar What?
Coco Khan I know
Nish Kumar Are there no heroes left? Will cancel culture, not rob us of another one of our icons, the Baha Man gods.
Coco Khan Yeah, and on a more serious point, though, it has been fascinating to see some of those antagonists dial their language back in the last few days, partly because I think they’ve seen what they’ve done and they want to distance themselves, but partly because there’s now rules coming in saying if you stir up shit on the internet, we’re coming for you, and you literally see them being like, oh, well, you know, I, I would, I wouldn’t say invasion and I wouldn’t say that’s like, yeah, but you have you have said it multiple times.
Nish Kumar I would say gunboats on the mic.
Coco Khan Well I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say that.
Ahir Shah Wouldn’t mind the policing bill being sent to Elon Musk directly. Yeah.
Nish Kumar Yes. You know, again for further context, Elon Musk has been, you know, being his usual temperate self. Yeah. He I tell you what, if that man has had any of his, neurologically enhancing chips implanted in his own brain is the worst fucking advert for them. He’s been suggesting that civil war is imminent, and he’s been referring to customers to to a care, referring to a, a sense, an analysis of this situation, a word I’m using very loosely, by people including Nigel Farage, that have established that there is some sort of two tier policing system between, the Black Lives Matter protests and the guy in the quote unquote, protest that have been happening over the last couple of weeks. I think we can all agree, if there’s one group in this country that have had a great relationship with the police, it’s black people. So second only to all women. But, Coco, I just want to talk to you a little bit about this. You like you come from a muslim background. There was a specific element to this that is very specifically and very virulently Islamophobic. How emotionally do you feel in terms of when you see stuff like this?
Coco Khan It’s really weird because I am not especially religious. When I was growing up, there wasn’t a huge amount of I’m saying that because it might reveal that I’m old, Nish. So actually, maybe I’ll just I hear that people that grew up in the 90s.
Nish Kumar Allegedly, allegedly.
Coco Khan Like before 911, you were just Asian, right? You were just Asian. And there wasn’t a huge amount of distinction between your religion after nine over 11 that changed. So I sort of had a lot of my formative years in a. Community that was quite collectivist, really, that we all are othered in this world, not just us as Asians, but also, you know, our black community, East Asian community. There’s so many others, particularly in London, where I was growing up. And so I think one of the hardest things is, of course, coming from a muslim background, it’s horrible to hear the dehumanizing, like monster ring of people, that it’s just ludicrous. I mean, I don’t know if these people have ever met a muslim, and if they want to say if they want to come and meet mine, but actually, no fuck off on. So it’s it’s it’s of course it’s horrible. And of course it gets to you. And of course, you know, you have these quiet moments where it makes you sort of cry. But another thing that hurts me the most is not just my own community being so monster, but that feeling of isolation because they have been when I say they, I mean like the power structures, you know, institutional racism, all of that sort of stuff has been working efficiently, I would say, since 911, to create distinctions between us, to create a hierarchy, to say, you guys are worse than us, we’re better than you because we are more what, you know, whatever educated or we are more wealthy, or we are less terrorists or whatever it is. And so then you have this moment where like almost in a way, of course, like we are stronger when we’re together. I’m a united front and they chip away at that Chippewa in that. And then you’re just one community on your own. Is it a surprise they come for you then when you’re at your weakest? In a way, and I think that’s been hard. It’s not so much just for me and seeing how much my family are scared. I mean, like literally I get texts all the time from people being like, do you think I should take my pendant off? You know, I wear a little pendant. Do you think I should avoid this area? Friend of mine. Actually, I don’t know if I mentioned this to you. A friend of mine texted me the other day. She’s in Birmingham, and she was like, oh, I’m feeling really down. My sister’s got some Intel. It’s going to be an EDL march in small Heath. And you know, we’re all feeling anxious about it. So I said to her, you must tell the police about that. So she’s like, yeah, but it’s a rumor she got out of WhatsApp. I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t want to waste their time. And I was like, that’s the police’s problem. Tell the police. So she rings the police and they say, yes, we’re aware of this march. We’ve got intelligence on it. We’re going to be sending officers. But just so you know, stay home. Love telling your family to stay home. And it was weird, like, wow, you’re literally being told by authorities hide away. Close the curtains. Don’t let anyone know you’re here. It was it’s those stories really, really make you sad. But yeah, like on that wider level, just that feeling of like, wow, what happened to what happened to solidarity? Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, so it was really depressing. Go home.
Nish Kumar No, I think that would be I think it would be strange if, you know.
Coco Khan If I was really cheery.
Ahir Shah Yeah.
Coco Khan Yeah.
Yeah. Imagine that. Imagine if we all open with this is sick. We’re great. Yeah.
Nish Kumar We’ve had a great time. Some of the WhatsApp chants of the we’ve been having oh my God, it is meme central. Yeah.
Ahir Shah It’s yeah, it’s meme city. Mums are mums thrilled.
Nish Kumar But my mom has never been less stressed. Before we move on, I just want to say one very, very brief thing. And that is just like, because we have a lot of young people that listen to this podcast. Admittedly, none of them are here with respect. And I just want to say to like young people of color, I just want to say to you like, it’s okay to be scared right now because it is scary. I’m scared. Like, without wishing to delve too deeply into my back catalog, I had a panic attack yesterday because I have post-traumatic stress disorder that I, was diagnosed with after a series of racist death threats that I received in late 2019 and early 2020. So, like when I say I’m scared, I am medically scared. So I’m just prefacing that to to tell you that I think it’s okay for you to be scared, but I think we will be okay in the end. Right? Because none of this is new, like none of these people, anything that we’ve never seen before, these people on the streets, these people with their Nazi salutes, they have even got a new guy. They’re still abusing the same guy from the fucking 1940s. That’s how little they’re making new people. They stuff. They use the same guy. And these are the same people. They threw rocks. They set dogs on our grandparents and our parents. They’re the exact same people. It’s the same thing over and over again, right? The same hate that ran in those people’s blood pounds through their veins. Okay. But at the same time, we are going to be okay because we are the children and the grandchildren of the people who defied them the first time around. Okay, so it’s okay to be scared, but learn the lessons our mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers taught us. Stand your ground, be brave. We’ll be okay. Okay. And that’s all I want to say about. Just when you thought this show had all that it could possibly take. We are about to pull another trick out for you. Please welcome to the stage our second guest. The veritable burrito down the staircase. All the way, from Australia and all the way, indeed. From the back of the room. One of my favorite comedians in the world. The incredible Tom Ballard.
Tom Ballard Hello everyone. A pleasure to be here to provide the white perspective. Little, little bit of balance.
Nish Kumar Balance.
Tom Ballard Yes. Jynx.
Nish Kumar Coco, would you like to introduce Tom? In the way that you decided you analyzed his career and made a call on what you felt about him?
Coco Khan Well, I’m feeling quite bad about it. Why? Because I observed. So you probably already know, Tom, if you’re fans of comedy, but if you aren’t familiar with him, he’s very, very famous, particularly in Australia, because he had a satirical politics show not vastly dissimilar to Nish’s show, The Mash Report. And like the Mash Report, he got pulled by conservatives. So I sort of, you know, in a nice, friendly way, said You’re Australia’s Nish Kumar. And actually in on reflection, I think that was maybe not so nice.
Nish Kumar I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone be compared to me and thought they’re probably thrilled with that.
Tom Ballard Well, I’d be honored if anywhere near the same amount of people watch Tonight with Tom Ballard as the Mash Report. My show was once beaten in the ratings by a repeat of Deuce Bigalow European Gigolo. But it’s much cooler to say that we were censored by the man.
Nish Kumar You did get in trouble, for describing a right wing politician as a [Unrecognized], though, right?
Tom Ballard That is not true. Fake news.
Coco Khan I thought that was just a greeting in Australia.
Tom Ballard Greg, Greg Larson was playing a character and even referred to a conservative commentator as a cuntious.
Nish Kumar But come is. I’ve been to Australia, and let me tell you, they throw that word around like confetti.
Nish Kumar Tom, I don’t know if you can, relate in any way, to being, incredibly disappointed by your country at this moment in history. You. I watched your show, which is absolutely brilliant. And you should go and say it. One of the pivotal events that’s contained within the show, is, the Indigenous voice referendum. Now, for non Australians or people who don’t follow Australian news. Could you just contextualize what the premise of that referendum was?
Tom Ballard Yes. It was a, controversial culturally toxic referendum. I don’t know if you guys do that kind of thing here, but, if it ever comes up. I try not to. This is a referendum we had last year. To change the constitution, we have to have a referendum. If you want to change the wording of our written constitution in Australia. And the idea was to establish what was called the First Nations voice to Parliament. It was a constitutionally enshrined body that was going to be, voted for and elected, made up of First Nations people to advise the government and the parliament on laws affecting First Nations people to try and close the very shameful gap between, indigenous people and non-Indigenous people in Australia. Our Constitution does not recognize the First Peoples at all. It’s a colonial document. And, you know, welcome back.
Coco Khan That’s really nice that you took credit for that. That’s sweet. That’s really sweet. It’s like when a child wears that. It’s nice.
Tom Ballard Does that bot. Does that bot. so sweet? Yes. So. And it was, it was, it was the promise of the Labour government when they were running for election 2022. They said if we win, we will hold this referendum. It harked back to a statement that was, created by First Nation leaders called the Uluru Statement from the heart, which is trying to outline the vision for First Nations justice in Australia. And, we’re all very excited. The polling start off really positive. Sound familiar? And then over the course of a very demoralizing campaign of a yes or no campaign, which is publicly funded, the no campaign led by conservative Aboriginal people, which was fucking annoying. Eventually, the results came down and 61% of Australians voted no, didn’t get a majority. Yes, vote in a single state across the country. And it was. Yeah, it was seen as a as a massive failure and a big step backwards for First Nations justice. Yeah. In Australia.
Nish Kumar This show sort of deals in your particular anger towards that. How do you maintain an optimism for the idea that you can push towards because, you know, you, you’re a comedian, but also you’ve been very active in the Australian Green Party. I would say in terms of the stakes of political comedians, you very much sort of put your money where your mouth is and you work very hard.
Coco Khan So you’re the British Tom Ballard?
Nish Kumar Yeah. I don’t put my money where my mouth is. I put my money in my house. But but how do you push back against hopelessness, especially at a moment like this where it feels like, I don’t know, I mean, again, just as an outsider, somebody that has spent a decent chunk of time in Australia, has a lot of Australian family and friends and, you know, feels invested in that country moving to a version of its better self. How do you sort of maintain the optimism in the aftermath of a moment like that?
Tom Ballard Oh Fuck, I don’t know. You saw the show. I mean, look, the point of the show is, yes. That feeling of of of I mean, look, this happened on October the 14th, which was, you know, a week after the October the 7th attacks. Cal Wilson, an amazing Australian comedian, passed away that same week. It was a really shitty, shitty fortnight. And it was a moment similar to 2016 Brexit, Trump. That’s that feeling where like, oh, I know the world’s pretty fucked up, but moments where you’re like, oh, it’s actually worse than previously imagined. And actually those kind of political moments that shake your faith in the common decency of most people, right? Like, yeah, I’m a democratic socialist. I have to think that most people are right and want good things. And the voice was so moderate. I mean, a big critique from the left is that it didn’t go far enough. It wasn’t give First Nations people enough power over their own affairs. So that was there was a left wing progressive no vote. It was quite marginal, but it did totally exist, led by some First Nations leaders. So it was like this cost nobody anything. It would make nobody’s life worse. Everybody agrees that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been fucked over by Australia’s colonial history. How how could you really think that the best thing for the country was to reject this, this idea? That’s what was particularly demoralizing. And when you’re again on the left, we need to believe that most people are right. You need to believe that most people, if you talk to them about the left wing political program you have, will make their lives better. Those moments when you go, oh, actually, maybe not a pretty hard to bounce back from.
Ahir Shah Do you think that conducting things like referendums is more difficult in Australia because all of the forms are upside down?
Coco Khan I feel like.
Tom Ballard That’s pretty fucked up and racist, man.
Nish Kumar I spent so much time with Ahir. Both because we’re friends and because we did so much work together. And I could always tell what he’s got two things on the brew. A shit or a stupid question.
Tom Ballard Well, they are particularly hard in Australia because it’s compulsory voting. And to get a referendum through to change that constitution, you need to get a yes vote for the majority of all the voters, and a yes vote in four out of the six states.
Nish Kumar Yeah.
Ahir Shah Can we just clarify, I got a good answer out of that. Yeah. That was information that I did not have going in.
Nish Kumar God you like an accidental Graham Norton. Whoops. I slipped and landed in some insight. You do have mandatory voting. That’s you know, what was.
Coco Khan People talk about that a lot here as being a salve.
Nish Kumar In the embassy about 60% or something.
Tom Ballard In the 60s?
Nish Kumar Yeah, it was about 60%. It’s constantly seen as something that, you know, you know, mandatory voting is something that it’s interesting because Australian politics here, you know, there’s lots of huge cultural relationships. Both countries are kind of both shaped by the Murdoch owned media in so many ways. And there’s often two things that are held up by the two, I guess, loosely different wings of politics in this country. The more progressive side, I would say, often floats the idea of mandatory voting as being something that we should bring in. But you get fined if you don’t vote, right?
Tom Ballard Yeah, like 50 bucks or something. And most people, yeah, know not most people who do that probably don’t aware. I mean, you can also just turn up and just put the form in blank. You don’t actually have to vote if you to have to turn up and get your name crossed off.
Nish Kumar Right, right, right.
Tom Ballard I mean, I think it’s, it’s it seems like the least that one could expect of a civic duty of everybody. And, I mean, some would say that it has something of a more, centrist effect on our politics, perhaps. And that’s people say you have to win Australian elections from the center. So maybe it’s a main factor. Yeah.
Nish Kumar Here is fucking brown Starmer.
Tom Ballard But I think it’s it’s good. Voting is fun. We have sausage sizzles as well. So you get like.
Nish Kumar The like please contextualize this because I think this is one of my favorite and most intrinsically Australian facts. They literally have barbecues, voting barbecues for sausages.
Tom Ballard Voting barbecue for sausage.
Nish Kumar That’s kind of how I understand it.
Tom Ballard When you go invite, it’s a tradition. If you vote at like a primary school or whatever, there’s often a barbecue there and you get what’s called a democracy sausage. Yep. Guys, we are a real country, okay? And we have serious issues. But also get a bloody sausage on there, a demo sausage. Strife. I’ll just. It’d be bloody civic rights.
Ahir Shah What I’ll say for someone like me.
Tom Ballard Yeah. Yeah.
Ahir Shah Is really interested in voting. Yep. But does not eat sausages. Yeah, what would I. What are the vegetarian options at the democracy sizzle?
Tom Ballard We’d tell you to go harden the fuck up, man.
Nish Kumar But the other side of it. So the, the progressive side sometimes follows this idea of mandatory voting. The other side of it is the conservative movements in the last decade in this country have used Australia as a kind of model for an immigration policy, but they also detention like it was awful.
Tom Ballard Yes.
Nish Kumar And the points based immigration system was horrendous.
Tom Ballard Yes. Zero stars would not recommend. Yeah. I mean look you’ve got the constant xenophobia, the immigration conversation in Australia. We had something called the White Australia policy that wasn’t dismantled till the 70s, for fuck’s sake. So there’s the general, xenophobia, fear of people of color through immigration, through legal routes, we might say. But then there’s been particularly this insane panic about boat people ever since, really, like, you know, 70s really, when, you know, in the wake of this.
Nish Kumar Again, we are struggling to connect to the idea of a confected panic about people arriving on boats.
Tom Ballard Well, Australia’s the OJ stuff. Stealing ideas. Yeah. 2001 was particularly big flashpoint. We had this moment where a, boat called the Tampa was was held offshore in the wake of nine over 11, an elections coming up. And John Howard sends the army in. Make sure that these people, these people fleeing Afghanistan, some of the most vulnerable people in the entire world, are perceived as some kind of threat. There was footage of some people in the boats and there were children in the water. The government tried to sell that as if these people had thrown their children into the water in order to be refugees. It was called the Children Overboard affair. It was a total bullshit. It was an absolute smearing of those people, one of the most disgraceful moments in Australian history. And then since then there’s just been these constant panic and this war. But, you know, most heartbreakingly, our Labour Party shifting to the right, can you relate? And you know, initially declaring, John Howard’s Pacific solution to be inhumane and monstrous, as it absolutely was, they reversed it. More boats arrived. They responded by moving even further to the right and saying that anyone who comes to Australia by boat will never be resettled there and set up these detention camps in Nauru and Manus Island. It’s it’s horrific. And his and Stop the boats was like literally the slogan of Tony Abbott, one of our former prime ministers. And it is it is wild to say it all just play out exactly the same way.
Coco Khan Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it? Because, you know, you’ve relayed the several policies that have been emulated in the UK and all of them went terribly wrong. And I imagine that there’s someone in conservative well, was conservative HQ that was like I heard there was a great idea in Australia. Let’s not look at what happens. Let’s not just, you know, just as a brainstorm, but the feeling is that we’re just a weird position to be in.
Tom Ballard Well, I mean. Look, in in brutal political terms, if you’re literally just interested in stopping the boats, I mean, you would say that the horrific policies that were implemented did stop the number of arrivals of boats that came right now. The cost of that was putting people in fucking torture camps and letting them linger there indefinitely, forever. So if your concern is, hey, these are some of the most vulnerable people in the world who have a legal right to seek asylum under the Refugee Convention, that Australia played a key role in establishing something we should be fucking proud of. If your concern is about their welfare and their ability to seek asylum, right? It was a total catastrophic failure from a political point of view in terms of actually stopping the number of votes arriving, you know, it did it did work in that respect. That’s the that’s the thing that, is particularly depressing about it. And people who, who’ve advocated for this policy were able to play some kind of humane card in which they were saying, well, people are dying at sea, which was true. They were taking very dangerous journeys, and some of them were shipwrecked, you know, shipwrecked and died. And obviously everyone has an interest in stopping that. It’s just that the way you do that is not to send them to literally an island where the human rights are being abused and in many cases, were being sexually assaulted by guards there by private security guard, and some people were driven to suicide. There was a horrific, truly horrific case of a man becoming so desperate that he set himself on fire. And a very famous political cartoon, which is a depiction of a man putting himself on fire. And the subtitle is Not drowning. Okay? Like just exposing the horrific logic of this policy and where it leads him. It’s a very funny show.
Ahir Shah It with a. So this started with people who were coming from Afghanistan to Australia.
Tom Ballard Well, yes, or originally Vietnamese folks. And then and then, yes. As more conflict that we partake, it, kicks off. Surprise, surprise.
Ahir Shah Its interesting because like, I correct me if I’m wrong, but I was of the belief that, like, lots of the interior of Australia was originally mapped by like, people who explored it, who were brought from Afghanistan, because of their expertise in getting over that. So. Right. So it’s sort of really weird to me, like, thanks for letting us know what’s in our country. Now get out of it forever.
Tom Ballard We have a shitload of camels there I believe that we’re also, yes, imported by those folks. Yes.
Nish Kumar I can’t fucking believe that that’s the same bloke that just asked if the forms of the wrong way around.
Tom Ballard He contains multitudes, Nish.
Ahir Shah Why do you think that we never copy any of the fun Australian policies, like going to Eurovision and everyone being excited to see it? Like, that would be a fun one if we did that.
Tom Ballard You should give that a go. Yeah. We’re trying to get into NATO too, which I think is a really, really bold move.
Nish Kumar Well, my brother’s called Nathan, so when he’s in Australia, he’s already called NATO. But Yeah. I mean, the one thing that’ll be interesting to emulate is the fact that the Australian election result that, happened at the, mid in 2022, there was a huge influence of an environmental vote, right? Both in terms of people voting for the Greens and also people voting for the tails of a group of independents. You kind of worked tactically to oust, Scott Morrison. But I mean, is that does it feel like that’s something that can be imported politically from, say, AI, or is that simply because you are at the sharp end of some of the most serious problems of the climate crisis? You know, the fire season in Australia is worsening every year as the average temperature increases. Like, is there a way, is there a way for people to have that awakening, that green politics actually has to be a part of the way you think about how you vote in elections, without it occasionally just being the case that your country is on fire.
Tom Ballard Is it constantly on fire and flood? It really does attune some people’s minds to it. Well, I think a big response to 2020 was a reaction to this very strong presence of climate denial in Australia, which I don’t think is as acute. I mean, we have conservative governments in the UK who have actually done some shit, I think, or at least taken some.
Nish Kumar Let’s say the politicization of the climate crisis is actually a relatively recent phenomenon, and it was part of a kind of increasingly desperate conservative party trying to, you know, essentially find anything that it could use as a wedge issue in an election. It probably was going to lose. But yeah, it previously, regardless of how conservative the government has been that, you know, there hasn’t been the same politicization of the climate crisis yet, but.
Tom Ballard Like, yes, whereas that is not the case. I mean, the fossil fuel industry, you know, begs massive donations to our both our political parties on both side. The gas industry particularly, is a massive donor to the Labour Party. And Labour is mad for gas now. Guest, guest guest. But as recently as Tony Abbott, who was prime minister up until 2015, this is a guy who said that the climate science is crap. Wound down. You know, the carbon tax that we introduced that was actually reducing emissions. I mean, the presence and the fuel of climate denial in Australia is very, very powerful. The mining industry is huge, and I think that’s played a big role in it. Yeah. Well, I was.
Ahir Shah Going to ask like there’s a lot of that to do with the sheer weight and size of the domestic mining industry, particularly like concentrates out west, and the fact that being able to be the lucky country throughout 0708 and riding that wave of no recession for absolutely ages because you were able to export raw materials to China for. I’m just trying to prove that I don’t actually think that, forms.
Nish Kumar It is a shame that Australia has still invested so heavily mining and does not have access to any means by which to harness solar power, because it’s famously a country that receives almost no sunshine.
Ahir Shah I got a sunburn in Australia once.
Nish Kumar You got a sunburn, I got a sunburn in Kenya. Once you get it, you get why white people are so angry, don’t you? That was the first time I understood I was in the sort of equatorial sun. And it is worth noting. And again, it’s another public service announcement to go along with my genuinely heartfelt speech about staying brave in the face of the far right. If there are people of color out there, it can happen to us. It can. There’s a person of color on the front row site. To me, it can. And it did happen. I seem to you you think it’s not going to happen. I was in the equatorial sun in Kenya, and I was with, my friend who is white, and I said, I think I’m allergic to something. And he was like, yeah, the sun. Okay, listen, we are almost finished with our actual time. Does anyone have a question? If you don’t have questions, don’t. No. We go straight up. Listen, we’ve got to have a question from you because you contributed pretty heavily to the old should, nonwhite people put suncream on chat?
Audience Member Hi.
Nish Kumar Hello.
Audience Member The first thing I want to say is I used to sunburn when I was a baby. And my sisters used to laugh at me because I literally lived in the south of England. I know that’s not my question, by the way. My question is, I feel like sometimes to counter British nationalism, like, like I’m both Sydney’s, British. And I would say I very much feel both, but I feel like sometimes when, like I see these riots and like, I feel like I have to really accept being British and like, downplay being in order to, like, be like, yes, I am British and I love living here, but sometimes I don’t always feel like that. So I just wondered, what were your thoughts on that kind of thing?
Tom Ballard I’ll field this one. I’m sorry. I’ll shut up and apologize.
Nish Kumar I mean, I think the sort of fight is to be able to always acknowledge all the elements of your character and personality. You know, like, I’m a British person who was born here. Neither of my parents was born here. So I have very strong cultural and familial links, to India and to Indians and Indian culture. And I have never really seen either of those as I’ve never really understood. I guess it’s the fortunate of the generations that we grew up in. Like, I feel like we grew up with enough British Asian role models. And I’m thinking specifically and I don’t, you know, being flippant when I say this. Comedians like Sanjeev Basket, Meera Saya, Nina Wadia, Calvin, the guy who were doing Goodness Gracious Me, that was a show whose comedy inherent within it celebrated the idea that it was possible to be completely conversant with your Indian identity, whilst not denying the fact that you yourself were born in Britain and grew up. I’ve never understood why those two things are fundamentally incompatible. I watch the video and I know this sounds trite, but, you know, I watched a video of a group of India and Pakistan cricket fans in England who were taking a break from watching the live game so that they could watch the penalties in the England football shootout. And that’s the group. That’s the person that I’ve always been, you know, that’s who I’ve always been and I don’t see any reason why I need to turn up or turn down any part of my character.
Ahir Shah 100%.
Nish Kumar We’ve got we’ve got more questions that we should have allowed more time for the Q&A.
Audience Member First, I want to say one time I did venture into whiteness and got sunburned twice while skiing. So yeah. Yeah, it’s not technically snowburn, but it’s so embarrassing. You get it because it reflects off the snow. It’s just like, oh, we did this to ourselves. We don’t belong in the mountains. What the fu… Anyway.
Ahir Shah Happened to me once when I was looking too closely at Tom.
Tom Ballard Hey!
Audience Member I live in Germany, and.
Nish Kumar Guten Tag!
Audience Member Yeah. Hi. Actually, not so.
Nish Kumar I wasn’t that funny, man.
Audience Member So, we’re in this thing called the EU. And, there was.
Coco Khan Rub it in then.
Audience Member There was the obviously the vote and, you could vote when you were 16 and everyone’s, like, hopeful and yay, the youth are going to save us. And in Germany, a large portion of 16 to 24 year olds voted for AfD, which is like just a less kind of I don’t know if less intelligent Ukip is. I don’t know who I’m insulting more there, but, it was disheartening. And the thing about, you know, you should teach in school and everything. I went through the German school system and you learn like, essentially, year Eight through 12 all you do in history is Nazis and usually taught in a way, like they’re bad so I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know, like, how do you, if that’s, what, 16 to 24 year olds, how they’re voting. What? I don’t know if you can really answer that, but what do we do with them?
Coco Khan I mean, there’s there is a lot of, quite extreme right wing views brewing amongst younger demographics. I think it’s unrealistic to say that they’re not and to paint everyone as being progressive. I think it’s an issue. I mean, I came across an interview with someone recently and I can’t remember who it was, so that’s fine because it’s not going in the podcast. So I don’t need to have facts, but say that they were saying that they felt that sometimes there’s a head case and there’s a heart case for everything. And actually many times the heart case is just I just want to fuck it up. I want to transgress. I want to have that feeling of kicking it to something, even if it’s kicking yourself in the face or getting a brick to your balls, as we saw some far right people did. And I think there is an element of that with younger people. And I think that feeling of like wanting to kick against something, you know, like I still don’t fully have a handle on why people become so far, right, so quickly. I think that we’ve identified factors on this show, you know, dog whistle politics, right wing media, disinformation. But I think also it’s maybe because the the counter stuff, we don’t have as much of, we don’t have as much community solidarity shared shared projects. We don’t have that either. So, I mean, I don’t know how to fix Germany, although I am open to, you know, a friend of mine is a techno. This is true. I’m not making it. I’m not doing stereotypes of Berlin. But a friend of mine is a techno DJ and got hired of course, and got hired to do a Europe Day techno party to encourage young people to vote no. Yeah, Keir Starmer could never.
Nish Kumar I also think there’s a real like. And I only know this, recycling information I’ve been given from my cousin who is 16, but he’s always saying, you know, this idea that like, all these like, TikTok and stuff is just full of cool, just up oil, progressive people is kind of a fallacy. And like, there are lots of surveys we talked about. I wanted to share a couple of weeks ago about how young boys appeared to be being radicalized by people like Andrew Tate, and we’ve seen this week that Andrew Tate’s misogyny goes hand in hand with views about immigration and peace, about, LGBTQ rights. There is there is an issue with unregulated social media platforms that we mean that we’re bringing another crisis. In younger generations.
Tom Ballard Well, I’ll just say briefly, just the assumption that young people are inherently going to vote left or progressive is not doesn’t play out in history. Thatcher won the youth vote. Reagan won the youth vote in Australia. John Howard won the youth vote in one year. Yes. I mean, there are stats now that millennials and stuff are staying more left wing as they get older, which is sort of good news. But yes, there’s certainly, some very troubling trends at the moment. And I think that says much more with the material conditions, the future that young people are faced with, which can often be pretty bleak. That’s when the far right comes along and says, well, you know who to blame for that. These fuckers over here and on the left, I think we need to point that anger upwards at the ruling class.
Ahir Shah My answer is in three parts, preceded by an addendum to something that Tom said, just because it’s, again, really important to me that, you know, I, I think that, yeah, one of the things for, millennials, sticking to, generally speaking, left parties, but certainly in the Anglosphere is probably to do with the fact that the housing crisis is most acute. And that’s and I think a lot of stuff is downstream of housing pressures. Yeah. As you said, if you were born in the 1950s in the UK, 2024 was the first general election where, if you voted along with the majority of your age cohort, you were on the losing side. So you were on the winning side in 79, 83, 87, 92, 97, like, because you just thought so. The popular thing amongst teens in their 20s, was to vote for Thatcher during the entire 70s. There is no I think that additionally, and I would say this because I’m a boring liberal, but, there’s something particularly dangerous about thinking that one’s own conception of the good is the only conception of the good that can exist, or that everyone can particularly agree. And there’s just something nefarious about people who don’t particularly agree, with this conception of the good. And I think that your, your point raises something interesting about, things like, expanding the franchise to younger ages or mandatory voting or the, increases and proportional systems, where I only really trust people who are advocating it if they are willing to accept the worst consequence from their perspective of what will happen. So, for instance, I would completely accept the desire for proportional voting, system in this country, if the person making that argument was on the left and willing to accept that, that would most likely lead to a far right government within the next decade in this country, through, sort of sequence of coalition buildings, which would probably end up being deeply unpleasant. And if you, that intellectually committed to it, then God love you.
Nish Kumar Now, unbelievably, we’ve run out of time. Absolute boner shrinker Ahir. To be fair to him. Good point. Unbelievably, we’d all rather have ended on one of his stupid questions about Australia. His show ends, which won the best show at the 2023 Edinburgh Comedy Awards. You can catch that at the fringe from the 10th to the 23rd of August. And he’s going to be on tour across the UK and Ireland later this year and early next. Tickets available are AhirShah.com and you can catch Tom’s show. Good point. Well made here at the fringe as well. He’ll be touring it across Europe and the UK until October. Tickets available at TomBallard.com.au I have seen both of these shows. They are both fantastic. I suspect if you listen to this podcast you will very much enjoy them. Thank you so much for listening to Pod Save the UK and thank you most of all to the live audience who came, which we were surprised about in the first place. Thank you very much to the audience.
Nish Kumar Thank you so much for joining us. If you’re listening at home. We’ll catch you next week for another show from the fringe with some more fantastic guests. That was a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media. Thank you. And good night.
