Share This Podcast

Warning: this episode contains strong language and a term of racist abuse. 

Just when we thought the disasters of the government couldn’t get any worse… New Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has made it her “moral mission” to raise Nish and Coco’s blood pressure. Cruel new plans to end the permanent status of refugees and curb housing and support for asylum seekers do perhaps justify the government’s slogan of the biggest overhaul of the system “in modern history” – but at what cost?

But – not to be outdone in terms of parties completely out of touch with reality – Your Party’s latest act of in-fighting leaves Nish and Coco with palms glued to their faces. Let’s face it – things have never been anything but fractious within the upstart political movement, but as their conference approaches the wind has never seemed further from their sails.

And ahead of the budget next week Chancellor Rachel Reeves is entertaining big cuts to the Warm Homes Plan in efforts to bring down energy bills. Nish and Coco chat to Robert Palmer, Deputy Director of environmental organisation Uplift, about why this quick fix is wrong-headed and short sighted.

CHECK OUT THESE DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS 

AURA FRAMES

https://www.auraframes.com Code: PSUK

CALM

https://www.calm.com/PSTUK

GUESTS 

Robert Palmer, Deputy Director of Uplift

USEFUL LINKS 

Claims of racism and antisemitism in Nigel Farage’s adolescence

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2025/nov/18/deeply-shocking-nigel-farage-faces-fresh-claims-of-racism-and-antisemitism-at-school

CREDITS

Home Office

Zarah Sultana / X

Reform UK

Parliament TV

Ed Miliband / IG

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

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

TRANSCRIPT

Nish Kumar Hi, this is Pod Save the UK, I’m Nish Kumar.

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan and this week Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is flooding the front pages in a bid to prove the government is tough enough on immigration.

Nish Kumar And Chancellor Rachel Reeves is mulling slashing the warm homes budget to help bring down energy bills. We speak to Robert Palmer, Deputy Director of Uplift, about the social and environmental impact.

Coco Khan Then independent MP Adnan Hussein has quit the Your Party Organizing Committee, citing persistent infighting. We take a closer look at what’s been going down.

Nish Kumar So, Coco, I have a friend who always tells me that we should start on the positive. Okay. So, let’s give the government a fair shake here. They have come good on one of their election pledges. We’re one for one.

Coco Khan Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yes. No, I know which one you’re talking about. You’re talking about the reselling tickets to live events. Yes. Doing that will be banned as part of a crackdown on tout and resale platforms. So we are now all in with a better chance of seeing you on tour.

Nish Kumar Tickets are readily available for my shows. I wouldn’t worry too much about getting them on resale But yeah, I think you know that that is a positive thing. There is way too much price gouging I would like to see them go a bit further and look at some of the monopolies that might exist around Certain companies that may own certain venues and certain ticketing platforms. I would go a slight examination of that But you know the only illegal activity we want to see around gigs is people selling knockoff t-shirts outside of a gig that often have the ax name misspelled. I’m going to see Joy Crooks tonight. I’m very excited to pick up a Jay Crax t-shirt. I want a Jay crax t shirt for the Brixton Academy.

Coco Khan That sounds amazing. And genuinely, I hope you get there. Anyway, let’s do the real podcast now.

Nish Kumar Yes, the headlines this week have been dominated by this.

Clip We need to reduce the numbers coming here illegally. We need remove more people who have no right to be here. We will always be a country that gives sanctuary to those fleeing danger. But we must restore order and control.

Coco Khan That’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announcing sweeping changes to the asylum system, which the government has called the biggest in modern history.

Nish Kumar So look, in policy terms, there’s a lot to digest. The really standout announcement is the change to refugee status. So currently refugees are given protection for five years, after which they can apply for indefinitely to remain ILR, which we talked about a number of times on the show, because it offers a pathway to citizenship. Now this is going to change. So instead, refugees will need to reapply to remain in Britain every two and a half years with no prospect of permanent settlement for 20 years. Automatic family renewals will end, benefits will be harder to access. Refugees could be returned to their home countries when those countries are considered safe. Perhaps the most objectionable policy involves, and I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, seizing valuables from refugees and asylum seekers to contribute to their accommodation costs.

Coco Khan The Home Office has also announced a ban on visas from three African countries if they do not cooperate more on the removal of irregular migrants. But in an olive branch to squeamish Labour MPs, Mahmood says the government will introduce new safe and legal routes to the UK. So what is Mahmoud hoping to achieve? Here she is making the case in the Commons on Monday. And just a warning, this clip and our upcoming conversation is going to involve references to an offensive racist term.

Clip Unfortunately, I am the one who is regularly called a fucking Paki and told to go back home. It is I who knows through my personal experience and that of my constituents just how divisive the issue of asylum has become in our country. I wish it were possible to say that there is not a problem here, that there’s nothing to see and that it is all, in fact, just extremist right-wing talking points, but this system is broken and it is incumbent on all Members of Parliament to acknowledge how badly broken the system is and to make it a moral mission to fix this system so that it stops creating the division that we all see.

Coco Khan Oh how do you feel seeing that clip I get really angry.

Nish Kumar If there are people listening not from the UK, it’s worth contextualizing that the word Paki is a slur that’s specifically aimed at the South Asian community. So obviously, it reflects a kind of depth of feeling that Shabana Mahmood has on the issue. So the argument that’s being made here is that we’re seeing a country divided, especially around the issue of immigration and asylum seekers and what Shabana Mahmood is saying. In the house of commons there is that the racism is starting to have negative consequences for people of color in this country. That’s something that we talked about, obviously on the show a number of times. And so the solution that she is proposing to this is that we need to deal with the problems within the asylum system in order to stop blowback happening for British people of color. That’s the argument that she’s laid out. I don’t personally believe that the way to end racism is by ceding ground to racists. And that is what I believe this policy is doing. Because the policy is driven by agitation and demands from the far right of British politics. And we’ve seen the extent to which this is true by the number of people like Tommy Robinson, like the leadership of reform party who have said. That this is a policy that they welcome. The reform have been essentially sort of trolling Mahmood by saying that they would welcome her in the party. Various reform people have been out saying that this a reform policy and she should just join the reform party.

Coco Khan They set up a website.

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, they set up a website encouraging her to join the Reform Party because this idea is so sort of redolent of their own policies. The two hosts of this podcast, and many people listening to this podcast grew up in a country where we were told, and at a time where we’re told by our parents that there are going to be people that you encounter in the street that hate you. You know, I remember the first time I was called a Paki, I was five years old. I’m not unsympathetic towards Shabana Mahmood’s concerns in that regard. But the one thing that our parents told us not to do is give ground to racists. And so the logic here that she is trying to express is because she is being called a Paki in the street, she has to deal with the broken asylum system. But I am telling you that what you are doing is siding with the people calling you a Paki. That’s what’s happening here. You are ceding ground to racist and the people that call you a fucking Paki will not stop doing that. It will not end. You are Opening a bottomless pit and and wellspring of hatred. My mom told me when I was a kid if somebody says that to you You don’t back down because you’re not ashamed of your roots. You’re not shamed of where you come from and To me this is giving in to racist bullying.

Coco Khan She’s saying, okay, there’s racial hatred on our streets, that every person of color is feeling it. We agree. We have noticed that. We have felt that personally, and we’ve heard from plenty of others who have felt the same way. God knows our inbox is full about it as well. And so she’s like, okay well I need to tackle the asylum system. Are you joking love? Do you actually believe that a racist knows the difference between a person of color and asylum seeker or a legal migrant? They don’t know the difference. Be real. This is ridiculous. You’re focusing on asylum seekers because you can focus on it, because you don’t want to talk about the need of migrants that we have in this country, many of whom are here to work and for education and our sexes depend on it. And that’s too uncomfortable and that would hurt our GDP or whatever. So we don’t wanna talk about that. So, we’re just gonna hit the most vulnerable people we possibly can. I hate the language of moral mission. Just stop it. Stop it. Like, it’s one thing to say the Labour Party will die unless I do this. Okay, I don’t like that, but at least we can engage in the truth and have a discussion about it. This moral mission business. Really wise me up she did and I’m going to stop ranting about she did an interview over the weekend where she talked about well my parents came here legally and that really irks me when people say that when British people of color say that you know my my parents come here legally your parents came illegally but they faced a completely different world I mean the legal barriers were not quite the same they were they were asked to come to fill jobs yeah that’s right in the NHS. That’s all I mean. I don’t mean people were nice, they weren’t nice.

Nish Kumar Level of conversation on this issue is sort of staggeringly lacking in intellectual rigor. So we are talking about a bunch of different things in one go.

Coco Khan Yes, exactly.

Nish Kumar We’re always talking about immigration and asylum as if the two things are interchangeable, but they’re legally quite different frameworks and there are lots of people of color in this country that are here because they were invited by the government. That is migration and immigration. There are also a huge number of South Asians here who came as refugees because they removed from Uganda in 1973. Not as economic migrants, not as immigrants. So it’s a really complicated conversation.

Coco Khan I guess I just mean, I don’t like it. This kind of implied we’re better than you because my parents came here illegally. I find that grotesque. And yes, I’ll be honest, I expect more from a person of color. And I expect more from person of color who’s in the Labour Party. I mean, this policies that she’s trying to enact, I mean Suella Braverman could never, do you know what I mean? We sat here on this couch so many times talking about how Sohealla Bravamen weaponizes her ethnicity to push a racist agenda. I’m Also. Put our emotions aside for a second and ask, would the proposals even work? So the Home Office has briefed widely that this is modeled on Denmark’s immigration system, a country which has spent the past decade turning itself into one of Europe’s toughest destinations for refugees. It’s the only country to have removed refugee protection on a large scale and the first to refocus its laws away from integration and toward return.

Nish Kumar Yeah, it’s an interesting point of comparison politically as well because the party that’s done this is Denmark’s center-left party, and their hardline zero asylum seekers approach has reduced successful asylum claims to a 40-year low. But critics of this policy say it’s come at a cost. The professor of global studies at Roskilde University in Denmark, Michelle Pace, has warned that these measures may reduce asylum numbers but they come at a human and legal cost. Families are left in uncertainty, long-term planning is impossible, and life in departure centers can be harsh and destabilizing.

Coco Khan And crucially, it hasn’t put the immigration debate to bed. In fact, it’s only become worse. The far-right Danish People’s Party, which is not in government but has an increase in support, is now calling for remigration. So that’s the mass deportation of people with immigrant backgrounds living in Denmark.

Nish Kumar And the center-left political party have now lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in the city’s electoral history, and among the reasons cited by analysts are fatigue and frustration with the Prime Minister Metta Frederiksen’s rightward turn, including hard-line policies on issues like integration and immigration. So it has had the negative consequences because again, we see this time and time again, there’s a lot of studies that are done by various political think tanks and universities. That center-left parties attempting to ape the rhetoric and policies of the hard right emboldens the hard-right and actually splinters the center- left’s electoral coalition. So let’s look at what the fallout has been for the Labour Party this week in terms of its own electoral coalition, it won’t be a shock to you that this has not gone down with refugee charities and backbench Labour MPs. So in a Guardian op-ed on Sunday, which is, you know, again, because it’s in the Guardian, we have to assume is aimed squarely at that progressive audience. Mahmood wrote. Dark forces are stirring up anger in this country and seeking to turn that anger into hate. We must take the opportunity to stop that from happening.

Coco Khan The spectator, new statesmen and Labourists have all been totting up the number of Labour-backed benchers who have come out publicly against these reforms at the time of recording the count was 21 and according to the Guardian at least one was on resignation watch.

Nish Kumar Just to look at the politics of this for a second, we’ve seen backbench frustration over winter fuel payments and welfare cuts lead to government U-turns. I think it’s an interesting question to pose whether rebellious MPs are going to turn the government’s hand again.

Coco Khan Tony Vaughan, MP for Folkestone and Hive in Kent, which is where many boats carrying refugees, that’s where they first arrived. Vaughn is also co-chair of the Refugees APPG. He said that the proposal risks creating a kind of perpetual limbo and alienation, which doesn’t help refugees and it doesn’t help society. Imagine you come as a refugee and you cannot become a citizen for 20 years. That is outrageous. It’s so, well you have family You work here. I’m actually blown away that I’m reading this out from a Labour party.

Nish Kumar So the move has delighted Tommy Robinson, which we talked about briefly earlier, who tweeted, the Overton window has been obliterated, well done patriots. Farage has put out a statement saying the Home Secretary sounds like a reform supporter and Reform MP Danny Krueger has invited Mahmood to join the party to which she responded, over my dead body. The thing that I think is worth discussing from the sort of politics side of this, obviously We are a wealthy nation There is global chaos. That chaos is only going to increase as the climate crisis intensifies. So we are going to see mass patterns of migration. It is incumbent on wealthier nations to take some responsibility, particularly because in the case of climate refugees, we are the countries that are largely responsible for the pollution that’s driving a lot of this stuff. So there’s a moral side of it. There is also just a personal side of for us as people whose families did come to this country who have a kind of, probably like a particular sensitivity on this issue. But I also think if I take both of those things out, we always end up saying this stuff, if you take the moral and questions of basic decency out of this conversation, let’s just park both of these things for a second. I don’t know when people are going to realize the problem in this country and the problem of many of these countries is inequality. That is the biggest problem facing our societies. On paper, when you elect a Labour government, what you expect it to do is keep the focus class-based politics, and you expect it to keep a focus on reducing economic inequality. That’s the bare minimum that we should expect from a political party that emerges out of the trade union movement in the early part of the 20th century. However, this Labour government has simply turned to the playbook that’s been written for them by the past decade and a half of Conservative governments, which is keep the focus on immigration, keep talking about immigration. You can deport all of us, please, just keep trying it. Keep deporting, get rid of the asylum seekers, get rid the refugees, change people’s indefinite leave to remain, get of me, get out of Coco, get rid all the fucking Pakis and whoever you want. It’s not gonna solve your problem. That is not going to solve your problem. Your lives are not going to be made better by deportation. You can keep deporting us and deporting us and deporting us. And I’m telling you, it is not going to deal with the underlying problems that affect the majority of people in this country, which are the result of grotesque economic inequality. We keep saying it over and over again. And the only reason we keep saying it over and over again is no political party at the moment in frontline British politics that has had its hands on the wheel of the government has been willing. To actually address the problem that afflicts us as a society and giving ground to racists and giving ground to the people that hate us is not going to deal with that problem. This is a bottomless pit of hate that you are attempting to paper over and it’s never going to work. The people that thought Shebana Mahmood were a fucking Paki this morning think she’s a fucking Paki tonight. Nothing she has done has shifted that dialog at all.

Coco Khan Absolutely. And I think if I’m trying to, again, put the morals aside, put my emotions aside, it’s my understanding that the Labour Party believe that they have no chance of winning the next election unless they tackle this. So for them, they’re feeling like this is an existential threat. And so I think that’s why they’re doing it. I mean, everything we’ve said before, like, you know, you’re not going to win those voters over. And meanwhile, you’ve abandoned your entire core base. Looks to you for some sense of morality, maybe not perfection, but some sense of decency. I honestly believe that it is self-immolation. I’d be very interested to see if I’m wrong. Certainly the comments online seem to suggest that there’s a section of the public that actually likes this tactic of the Labour Party. We shall see. I mean, if there was a threat posed by the Green Party before, it’s definitely a big threat now.

Nish Kumar Let’s move on before I have a rage stroke, it’s that time again listeners, we’re going to be running a new year mailbag special where we answer all your questions, that’s any and all questions from the personal to the political.

Coco Khan Yeah, you want to know how Nish keeps his lovely curls. What is the routine? Drop the routine, Nish.

Nish Kumar I will never drop that routine. That’s private, that’s my personal business. You might want to know what Coco’s most conservative opinion is, I’m sure it’s something to do with the bins, but anyway.

Coco Khan Anyway, I can tell you what it is boy racers. Fuck off. Don’t that don’t give it away It’s just why do they drive so far? Big what about all the children that are woken up? Why the car so noisy anyway

Nish Kumar You also might have questions about UK politics, which we can’t rule out. Send us those questions at psukatreducelistening.co.uk or drop a note in the comments. After the break, it’s time to discuss the only party doing a worse job at UK politics than the Labour Party, and that is your party.

Coco Khan Ooooh.

Coco Khan [AD]

Nish Kumar Okay, so the party that’s probably not called your party’s inaugural conference is fast approaching. It’s scheduled for the 29th and 30th of November in Liverpool. There’s still a lot of energy around the party and it’s no surprise that co-leader Zarah Sultana is still making a massive impact across social media, consistently holding the government accountable for its actions with a particularly fiery and impressive performance this week following the immigration debate.

Clip Seizing valuables belonging to asylum seekers, making refugees wait 20 years before they can apply to settle permanently, and deporting entire families, including children, who have built new lives here because their country of origin is deemed safe. These measures are straight out of the fascist playbook.

Coco Khan She’s definitely a force, but the drama that has followed your party since its inception continues in full view of the public. So the latest round of drama saw Adnan Hussein, a member of Jeremy Corbyn’s independent Alliance, resign from the party’s organizing committee, citing a toxic culture.

Nish Kumar Adnan Hussain actually hasn’t seen eye to eye with Zarah Sultana from the start with particular division around Sultanna’s support of trans rights, but he’s not the only member of the Independent Alliance with frustrations. There is still this issue of the money that was collected during the swiftly canceled membership portal.

Coco Khan So, just as a quick refresher here, a membership portal was opened by Zarah Sultana in what was widely regarded as a unilateral move without the consent of the Independent Alliance MPs. The Independent Alliance issued a statement essentially saying, don’t give these people money, it’s not us. And the portal was closed, but not before collecting around £800,000 in donations. Since then, your party have created their own super-duper, actually official membership portal, but the original money hasn’t made its way over yet.

Nish Kumar So what’s the holdup? Well, like with everything surrounding your party, the answer to that question is it’s complicated. All the money currently sits with MOU Operations, a company set up while your party membership plans were being worked out. Zarah Sultana has since taken sole control of MOU and a spokesperson for her told the Guardian that as sole director she is legally responsible for ensuring the company’s costs, liabilities and expenses are settled and this process may take some time.

Coco Khan This all blew up in the media last week and following a partial transfer from MOU to your party, the Independent Alliance MPs issued a statement saying, Hundreds of thousands of pounds were donated to the party by supporters in good faith, but have since remained beyond its reach. This has been extremely frustrating and disheartening.

Nish Kumar And this statement seemed to have been timed for maximum damage, dropping as it did just before Sultana appeared on the BBC’s Question Time last week. Sultana was offered to transfer more than £500,000 of the £800,000, arguing that the rest should be retained for future legal or administrative expenses, say for example, demands of refunds. But The Guardian reports that sources close to Jeremy Corbyn believe Sultana was trying to keep the money to help fight a leadership contest over the next few months. Coco, is it possible to read this story without immediately rubbing your face with your own hands for about 15 minutes, to the extent that your eyebrows start to slightly be it down.

Coco Khan I mean, there is a part of me that’s like, okay, you know what, Coco, what do I really know about the teething problems of setting up a party? Maybe I just don’t know, maybe this has happened to every single party, I don’t know, but there is just a part me that is like, mum and dad, stop fighting, stop it, stop it, it’s in front of everyone, it is so embarrassing.

Nish Kumar I’m not the first person to cite this in the last couple of weeks, but there is an old onion headline, left-wing group too disorganized for FBI agents to infiltrate, and that has been posted and reposted in conjunction with this story. It all seems very strange and very chaotic and… Zarah Sultana definitely agrees with our assessment that it was a particularly timed statement. She tweeted before my question time appearance there was an attempt to sabotage the movement we’re building. The drama is not over either. So this is ongoing train wreck. Sky reported that Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t been invited to Zarah’s Sultanas conference opening night event. The Times is also reporting that she may even be blocked from speaking at the conference proper. I would be amazed if that happened. I feel like that is gonna be resolved before the conference. I mean, it’s a shit show, right?

Coco Khan I mean, it is a total disaster. It really is. I mean the money thing, I mean what? It’s not good enough. It’s just not good. Enough. We can have a conversation about like, what does a broad church look like? What? Okay. Put that aside. It’s no good enough Nish, it’s just no good. Enough. I can’t believe that we’re, we’re seeing this play out. As we record today, reports have emerged that Sultana has been referred to the parliamentary commissioner for standards. She has separately been reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office for gathering data and funds through what Corbyn’s allies call a fake membership website. Maybe this will all come out in the wash and actually it’s all just a bunch of, you know, human error and teething problems or whatever, but it doesn’t provide you with confidence and the fact of the matter is, if you are a progressive, you’re up against an entire machine. And I don’t think it’s wrong to demand extremely high standards of our leaders. I don’t think that’s wrong, to say that, because we recognize what we’re up against. And these sort of mistakes, no, it’s just not good enough. I keep returning to that phrase, not good.

Nish Kumar It’s just the optics of it are dreadful and it doesn’t feel like this is good for anybody except possibly the Green Party who sort of just, you know, continue week on week to lay out a sort of evolving policy platform. Zach Plansky was very strong in responding to the immigration policy announcements this week. Your party is running out of time to define itself as a political force. This conference now. So significant for them. And every once a week, we have a moment where they go, we’ve settled it, everything’s fine. And then within the end of the sentence, that has consensus has completely collapsed. The stakes couldn’t be higher for your party. Basically at this point, I think that it’s sort of natural political constituency are totally losing patience with it. That’s just my sense. I have no polling data to back that up. I’m only basing that on every conversation I’ve had with every single person I know about your party, where someone – maybe this is true of listeners as well – if you’re in a conversation at the moment with a bunch of people who are sort of broadly progressive in their political outlook and someone mentions your party – someone else in that conversation does this. Like says fucking hell whilst inhaling. Anyway, something to sharpen all of our focus on why in-fighting on the left and in progressive political movements is something that we need to get a handle on because we need refocus our energy on what’s really important in British politics. And that is addressing the rise of reform. So the latest reform shenanigans are they’ve launched an absolutely vile attack on neurodivergent children.

Coco Khan Yeah, well, I mean, they’ve got their way on immigration. So they need a new target to pummel to beat down on. So at a press conference on Monday, Richard Tice said that there’s a crisis of overdiagnosis with neurodiverse children. Here he is.

Clip You’ve got to the mad situation now where children who don’t have any form of label are now starting to feel left out. They’re feeling that, in inverted commas, they’re the normal minority. This is insane. And it’s becoming a sort of school joke. And I’ll just raise one more point. The sight of children in classes wearing ear defenders, I’m sorry.

Nish Kumar Insane. Fuck are you talking about, man? First of all, the ear defenders, that is something that people with autism sometimes use as an antidote to noise sensitivity. Also, what’s that based on? He’s not citing a medical study. He’s not citing any kind of information. He just saying that this sort of stuff is happening in the playground. My question for you, Richard Tice, is why do you know what’s going on in the play ground? What are you doing hanging around in playgrounds? Why are you hanging around a playground? Where are you getting your information from? I’m just I’m not asking the question, I’m just listening to… While we’re making sort of faceless and baseless assertions, I’m just asking Richard Tice, why have you been hanging around in playgrounds? Were you gathering your information directly? You’re hanging around the fucking playgrounds. We should also note that there’s been some pretty extreme allegations about Nigel Farage’s teenage antics running in The Guardian this week, including allegations that he was chanting Hitler Youth and BNP slogans and making a not covering new ground. There’s been constant whispers about his time at Dulwich College, sort of elite private school in South London that he went to. He’s brushed these rumors off as saying some stupid things in his youth. But after this most recent report that’s happened this week, he’s strenuously denied the claims of many of the people interviewed for the story. We’ll drop a link to that story in our show notes. It’s pretty concerning stuff.

Coco Khan Yeah, it’s really awful. So Christmas is around the corner, so it is the perfect time to head to the Crooked store and snag gifts for your favorite activists and friends of the pod. We have everything from conversation-starting stocking stuffers to cozy sweatshirts you’ll wearing all winter.

Nish Kumar Last day to purchase to ensure you get your order by Christmas is December 11th for Domestic and December 7th for International Shipping, so please order soon. Head to crooked.com forward slash store to shop.

Coco Khan Now after the break we’re speaking to Robert Palmer from environmental group Uplift about briefings that Rachel Reeves is planning to slash the warm homes budget.

Nish Kumar [AD]

Coco Khan Okay, Nish, so you know I love a segment where I get to shoehorn in one of my favorite subjects. No, it’s not bins. No, It’s not how I’m going to be a rat catcher when journalism fails. It is. It’s cold, isn’t it?

Nish Kumar You’re shoehorning in the small talk of every British person.

Coco Khan Excuse me, this is not British small talk. This is a woman’s plight. Any woman like me who has the misfortune of living with a man knows that rooms are kept too cold. I actually do have a serious point. The latest data shows that around 12.1 million UK households. Are struggling with unaffordable energy bills. Five million of us are in deep fuel poverty. That means 20% of income is spent on energy. So that’s what defines deep fuel poverty. While bills are being forecast to fall by £22 or 1% next year. That’s a substantial amount. Everyone’s feeling the strain.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I mean, it is a serious political headache. And I mean given the amount of conversation and energy that we all expend talking about immigration, you’d be forgiven for thinking all anyone’s thinking about is immigrant. But the reality is most people are thinking about how they can make their bills come down. And with the budget around the corner, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being urged to prioritize this. To do this, The Guardian has reported that Reeves is finalizing a multi-billion pound energy support package, which could see reducing energy bills as much as £170 annually per household. Sounds good, but here’s the catch. It could involve slashing funding for more energy-efficient homes, known as the Warm Home Plan, which specifically targets low-income and vulnerable households.

Coco Khan I know £170 per household is good, but there was a part of me that thought, God, that won’t even touch the science for so many households. Anyway, so we are in the midst of COP30 where Keir Starmer promised the UK was going to step up and he was going to show leadership. We want lower bills, but can we bring them down without sacrificing our climate goals? So here to tell us how it can be done is Deputy Director of Uplift, Robert Palmer, an organization that campaigns for a fair transition away from North Sea oil and gas. Welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Robert Palmer Hello, thank you for having me.

Coco Khan Why are our energy bills so high? I assume the answer to this would be immigration if it was reform speaking. But this is the one question surely.

Robert Palmer Because we are importing something, which is oil and gas. So the reason our bills have spiked is because the energy price, you know, the bills that you pay for your electricity is almost always set by the price of gas. That is based on international markets. And the reason bills have gone up so much over the last couple of years is because Putin decided to invade Ukraine. And so that rocket booster under gas prices. And so really the way in which we bring down bills over the long term and help tackle the climate crisis and have more reliable electricity is this shift to renewables, which the UK is already doing. And the UK, you know, I’m going to, here’s some optimism. The UK is a real world leader when it comes to offshore wind. There’s a way in the future we could have lower bills and help tackle the climate crisis, and have more secure energy by investing in renewables. So at the moment, bills are too high in this country. Everyone knows that. You look at your bills and it’s painful. I turned on my heating for the first time this week and I had a little wince. Wow, you lost it till now. I live in a flat, so I also get to basically steal the heat from people above and below me.

Coco Khan This was the biggest man thing you said so far, that you’ve only just put your heating on. I’m just… Anyway.

Robert Palmer Yeah, I will hold up my hand, you know, slippers, blankets, but I have cracked and I’ve turned on my heating. But part of the reason why our bills are so high is we have really leaky, damp houses. All those Victorian houses that we love, that drive all those property shows that people want to own, they are not the most efficient. And so the government has promised to invest in supporting people to put in insulation, put in heat pumps, put on solar panels. This is the like boring but important stuff of how we move away from fossil fuels and how we bring down bills.

Nish Kumar So just talk us through the Warm Homes Plan as it stands right now, we’re speculating about speculation at the moment because obviously we don’t know what Rachel Reeves is going to say in the budget, but as things stand right now without anything being announced, what are the specifics of what the Warm Homes Plan is and what it aims to achieve?

Robert Palmer So there are a number of plans the government has to help people bring down their bills and make their homes more comfortable and warmer. There’s the warm homes plan, details to come to be announced. There’s also something called the Energy Company Obligation, snappily called ECO. And that is an extra small levy on people’s bills that is designed to help poorer, lower income households invest in insulation. And what’s been reported is that Rachel Reeves is thinking about taking money from this investment in insulation in poor homes and putting it into a cut of VAT on our energy prices. And you know, stand back, you think tax cut on my energy bills? That sounds good. But the way VAT works is if you spend more, you’ll get more of a saving. And the people who spend more are people who have bigger houses and rich people. And so what this could be is you’re taking money for investment in installation in poor homes and giving a tax cut. To everyone, but the people who will benefit the most are going to be the wealthy. And it just feels like another example of this government being quite short-termist. You know, chicken in a headlight, we’ve got the budget coming up, bills are going up. What are we going to do? We need to do something on bills. The government promised to cut bills by 300 pounds a year, and that has not happened. And so this feels quite desperate.

Nish Kumar I think that that is a really, really important detail. If the way that they’re administrating that handout is via VAT, that’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a regressive taxation. VAT cuts tend to benefit higher earners, but that’s a real political blunder for them, isn’t it?

Robert Palmer Yeah, and I mean, I think this is, this is treasury brain, treasury civil servants being this is a cheap, quick, efficient way of doing this. And again, it speaks to the short-termism of the government. You know, something else, we’re talking about potential blunders, something else we’re seeing with this budget is there’s a lot of lobbying from the oil and gas companies who have, you know, made huge profits to have a tax cut for the oil gas companies, you know, there was. Some report out the other day, the energy companies, so that’s oil and gas companies, your electricity companies, the companies that run the pylons, have made 125 billion pounds in profits over the last five years. And another stat, which I just find incredible, is that one pound in every four that you pay on your energy bills goes to the profits of the energy company. So we’re talking about a system where there are some really wealthy companies that are making quite a lot of money and I think This also speaks to a broader point about when we think about climate change, which is who pays and who is going to pay. If you look at what the public say, like they want action on climate change. They can see what is happening in their communities and around the world, but they are rightly nervous and concerned that as usual, ordinary people are going to end up footing the bill and wealthy individuals and rich companies are not going to contribute their fair share. So I think when we about how we bring down bills over the long term, bringing it back to the topic. We need to be thinking about how we’re investing in renewable electricity made here in the UK. We need think about how to help people make their homes more efficient, warmer, more comfortable. This kind of long-term thinking is really important and it feels really worrying to me that we’re getting short-term sugar high of a tax cut on VAT, which as we talked about will mostly benefit the wealthy, and not really thinking enough about how we invest in the long term.

Coco Khan A lot of these homes that low-income people live in are already fucking freezing. There’s already, how many episodes, Nish, have we done of housing? We’ve had Kwajo Tweneboa sitting in these, talking about just the state of mold and damp that is, it leaves me speechless that when the treasury is looking at all these different things, they think, let’s not improve those homes. Oh my God. I mean, how bad do they need to Yeah.

Robert Palmer Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree. And so let’s just hope, you know, budgets always have a cycle of the government being like, oh, we’re just going to leak something and see how it lands. And, oh we’re going to test the waters. And so this isn’t a done deal. And I think that’s important to remember is there’s still scope for the budget to be changed and to kind of like fight to protect this. And I think we need to see this in this wider context of what this government is doing on climate, you know, Keir Starmer, Ed Miliband, you know, they talk about how committed they are. It’s about climate action, but it’s also about tackling the mold in people’s homes, it’s about bringing bills down. It’s how we have a tangible impact on people’s real lives, because sometimes when you talk about climate, it can feel really abstract.

Nish Kumar In terms of how you can influence governments in general, Global Witness has reported that one in every 25 COP 30 attendees is a fossil fuel lobbyist. And the windfall tax that you’ve already talked about, that’s been the subject of a lot of fossil fuel lobbying, isn’t it, to get rid of that windfall. How does an organization like yours push back against a such a well-financed. Organization that has such a very clear and specific political agenda.

Robert Palmer Yeah, I mean, it’s a really good question. And like, I think it’s important to say we’re part of a much wider network of trade unions, climate campaign organizations, renewable energy companies, and members of the public. I mean I think ultimately what it comes down to is our power is people power. And it is, if you look at the polls, there is significant support for taking action to tackle climate change. Oil and gas companies are some of the most hated companies out there. And, you know, there are politicians who will. Who will listen but also operate in the constraints of politics and economics. And so what we try and do is we make the climate case, you know, we can’t be burning more oil and gas for a climate reason that the science is just 100% clear on that, but also make the economic case. Because in the UK, the North Sea is a declining basin. We’re basically pumped most of the oil and gas. You know, it’s a bit like being at a pub and trying to squeeze the carpet for the last drops of beer. You know it’s like, this is- We’ve all been there, no judgements. Exactly. This is like, this is going. So making the economic arguments that the future for jobs, for communities, for the UK’s economy, is renewables, not in the oil and gas industry.

Coco Khan Well, speaking of being reliant on gas, this is a perfect segue to what Ed Miliband’s been speaking about. Let me just play you a clip.

Clip Small modular reactors are a new nuclear technology that can create good jobs.

Coco Khan How do you feel as a professional?

Robert Palmer My toes, my toes were literally curling. So, I mean, maybe it’s not quite my thing, but again, if I was going to do the glass half full, yes, I think, you know, the social media at the moment is really the terrain of the right and the center right. There are a few good people who are kind of, you know, Zack Polanski from the Green Party, someone called Gary Stevenson who’s campaigned around wealth taxes. But in general, the left, you know, we can be earnest and serious and so I think having a politician that’s willing to try and be playful and play into some memes is probably quite useful. Yeah. I don’t know, what did you think?

Nish Kumar I mean, it’s too close to the mic for me. I have to say that I don’t sort of generally find ASMR videos that relaxing broadly. This isn’t particularly a reflection on Ed Miliband’s efforts. I find it quite stressful to have somebody whispering into my ear. I don’t know why. I think that’s a problem with my brain chemistry. But listen, I agree with you. Tommy Vietor is one of the sort of owners of this pod. Is he our boss? Hard to say. But from Pods Save the World, it’s always. Saying a variation on, we need to be wherever the conversation is happening. So, you know, if the conversation it’s happening online, then that is we need to be there. And we have to focus on the fact that these measures will bring your bills down.

Robert Palmer Absolutely, and if we don’t, if we don’t tackle the climate crisis, everyone’s bills is going to go up. And you can already see there are places where homes are uninsurable because of flood risk or fire risk. So the way of tackling bills and tackling climate is the same. Public support is there, but they are rightly nervous that it’s going to end up costing them. And so I think really doubling down on how we can tackle the climate crisis but also make people’s lives more affordable and better is really important.

Coco Khan And it’s not just now as well. Like we live in really insecure times, in unstable times. This is how we secure and stabilize our future. This is where jobs will be. This will, literally, I added to my list of jobs I’m gonna do when journalism’s over. It’s really been lingering large in my mind with the whole Donald Trump taking on the BBC and all that sort of stuff. Insulation installer, future-proof job, guys. All I’m saying, adding it to my lists. Robert Palmer, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Robert Palmer Thank you. It’s been a delight.

Coco Khan Now look, before we go, we could mention the Institute for Government’s damning report on the Labour government’s complete lack of forward planning whilst in opposition. We could do that. But instead, let’s focus very briefly on one positive story. The government is banning plastic wet wipes, which might lead to slightly fewer fatbergs in our sewers.

Nish Kumar I mean listen, obviously fatberg is funny. It’s a funny word to say, it’s a funny thing to have happened because it’s a bunch of poop and wipes that congeal into a massive drop.

Coco Khan Oh no, it’s more than that. It’s an artifact to our decay as a society. Everything bad goes down there. All sorts of mad things go down there, there’s a lot of drugs, let’s just be honest, there are a lot baggies, a lot drugs being put down there all sorts of other things as well.

Nish Kumar Listen, if you are a raver, please try and source your drugs in a reusable plastic baggy. We do not condone the use of drugs on this show.

Coco Khan But if you are going to do it, please use biodegradable products.

Nish Kumar We need biodegradeable baggies. Listen, we’ve all walked around Glastonbury and thought, my god.

Coco Khan If only these were biodegradable.

Nish Kumar Yeah, we found, we seem to have found Hobbit’s sandwich bags. Oh no wait, those are baggies for drugs. Just, we need biodegradable drug bags. That’s my campaign for 2026. Don’t do drugs.

Coco Khan Drugs are for mugs. Stay in school. Listen to your elders. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Another reminder to send us your questions for our Mailbag episode. Remember you can ask us anything.

Nish Kumar Like what our favorite drugs are.

Coco Khan And don’t forget to follow at Pod Save The UK on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and BlueSky.

Nish Kumar Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media. Thanks to our producers, James Tyndale and Mae Robson.

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Will Yates and Katie Long, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

Coco Khan And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcast.

Nish Kumar And remember, if you have to do drugs, don’t do cocaine, because it is really unethical. It’s causing a huge amount of damage in Central and South America. Also, for your friends that aren’t on cocaine, and I can speak on personal experience of this, it’s so boring to be around people on coke. It’s so boring. Don’t do coke.

Coco Khan That can’t stay in.

Nish Kumar See you next week.

Coco Khan That absolutely cannot stay in

Nish Kumar See you next week, if you’re not in a k-hole.