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British politics was shaken to its core this week when we all realised that, maybe, Keir Starmer isn’t as quite across the detail as he tries to make out. He had to explain exactly what he did and didn’t know about the developed vetting carried out for Peter Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s Ambassador to the US.

Right on the heels of that, came Olly Robbins, who was sacked last week from his role as the chief official at the Foreign Office. In a very civil servant way, he revealed the internal pressures and machinations that were happening during the appointment process.

Both men had serious questions to answer about what they did but Coco and Nish are joined by political journalist Zoë Grünewald to ask why everyone is obsessing over the process while almost totally ignoring the larger, moral decision to make the appointment in the first place.

Plus the comedian Rosie Jones arrives to totally derail the whole podcast with a mix of funny jabs at Nish while still telling us about the work of her brilliant foundation which is celebrating its first birthday!

Don’t forget to leave a review – it gives the show a boost and we love to see your comments.

**Warning: use of a racial slur during the Labour May election segment**

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GUESTS 

Zoë Grünewald – Journalist, broadcaster and political commentator

Rosie Jones – Comedian

USEFUL LINKS

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CREDITS

Sir Keir Starmer MP – Parliament TV

Emily Thornberry MP – The Mirror, YouTube

Sir Oliver Robbins – Parliament TV

David Miliband MP – Mornings with Ridge and Frost, Sky News 

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan.

Nish Kumar It was the battle of the two political big beasts this week. In the red corner, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister and fan are following the correct process. In the blue corner, sir Olly Robbins, the recently sacked permanent undersecretary to the Foreign Office.

Coco Khan Both had to face questions over the Mandelsohn vetting process, confirming what they knew and when they knew it. Zoë Grünewald is here to give us the scoop on the row that could bring down a PM.

Nish Kumar And the comedian Rosie Jones is coming to disrupt proceedings and to drain any sense of authority I still have as the host of this podcast. Can’t wait. We’ve now heard in long, sometimes torturous detail from Keir Starmer and Olly Robbins about their parts in the vetting process for Peter Mandelson’s appointment as a very short-term UK ambassador to the US.

Coco Khan So a lot hinges on due process. So established precedent and the inner workings of Whitehall. So we’re asking our political big brain friend, Zoë Grunewald, the journalist and podcaster to join us to discuss it all. Let’s work through this in order. So first up we have Keir Starmer. Now we’re all used to hearing rubbish puns and terrible jokes from the commons, but this statement from Starmer got a proper laugh.

Clip Mr. Speaker, I know many members across the House will find these facts to be incredible. To that I can only say they are right. It beggars belief that throughout the

Nish Kumar I tell you what, it is quite extraordinary, the look that he gives the house at that point, which is a kind of school teacher saying, listen, it’s not funny when I say the penis enters the vagina, okay? But the problem is, as with the penis entering the vagina. The facts being incredible is very funny. It’s very funny! So obviously it’s not the response that he’s going to be hoping for. There’s a lot of detail that’s come out this week, Zoë. Can you just do your absolute best to summarize where we’ve got to as we record at nearly 10am on Wednesday the 22nd of April?

Zoë Grünewald Sure. So I think the key thing is here is there is a lot of detail, right? And I think that’s kind of what is bogging down some of the reporting on this and maybe meaning this isn’t going to land as terminally for Keir Starmer in this moment as some may have predicted. So Tuesday, Olly Robbins gave evidence to the select committee about his role in the vetting process for Peter Mandelson, who of course was appointed U.S. Ambassador. Stammer on Monday gave a long update on the processes and investigations from the time of Mandelson’s appointment onwards. He admitted he was wrong for the decision to appoint Mandelson and took responsibility for it. On the 14th of April, so last week, he discovered for the first time that Mandelson clearance wasn’t recommended after the developed vetting process. Foreign office officials gave him developed veting clearance despite this. Now the key thing is that Olly Robbins maintains that this appointment was essentially already a done deal. You know, number 10 wanted it. The Cabinet Office were putting pressure on the Foreign Office to do it. They didn’t seem to really care about developed vetting. In fact, he said, actually, they even suggested maybe we don’t even need to vet Peter Mandelson for this role because it’s kind of sewn up and done. Keir Starmer is now maintaining if he had known that he had failed his security vetting, he wouldn’t have appointed him. Well, that raises the question. Why didn’t you wait for the vetting to be complete before you announced the appointment? So that’s where we are at the minute. We have these two conflictive edges of events. I think the key thing is Olly Robbins didn’t deny that he hadn’t told the Prime Minister. His argument was it wasn’t his place to do so. And it was already said up and done. Keir Starmer is essentially trying to move this from a question of his own judgment to a question process. He’s now changed the rules. So appointments can’t be made unless vetting has passed, hoping this will quell. The story. But ultimately, this all comes back with all the process and who knew what and where the forms were filled in and whether you should have a position if you passed your vetting or not. I think the key question for most people, for MPs and for voters is why was Peter Mandelson appointed in the first place when a lot of these concerns about his character, his behavior, his career history were already actually well Bye.

Nish Kumar Can I just say briefly here, it has really restored my faith in our security services. Because I have to say, when Peter Mandelson was appointed, I thought, what’s going on, lads? How has this fella slipped through the net? So it has slightly reassured me that the security services did have very serious concerns. Because again, one of the things that I’ve sort of found, and thank you for that brilliant summation of everything that’s gone on this week, there’s more to come, which we’ll get into. But also, it is quite weird that we’ve had to sit here and listen to series commentators and journalists and media professionals talk about what Starmer knew and what he didn’t know. We all knew that the Channel 4 Dispatches documentary aired in 2019. I assume Keir Starmer has access to a television. In the Dispatcher’s documentary, I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong, Keir, but That documentary raised concerns to Peter Mandelson. Had continued a friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after he had been convicted, you know, of these very, very grave and serious crimes. So we were all just sort of having to pretend that Keir Starmer didn’t know about any of this. I feel a bit gaslit by what’s happened and the way that it’s been talked about. I find it very, very strange that we’ve all had to go through this kind of elabourate process of saying, Well, it all depends on what case I’m in. We all fucking knew. There were people making jokes when the appointment happened. I think possibly me. There are lots of people making joke that were variations of, of course, Mandelson knows Trump, they were on the planes together.

Zoë Grünewald Keir Starmer said last week he was stunned by the revelations, right? Wouldn’t it have been stunning if Peter Mandelson had passed Vettel? Just simply with a quick Google search, is he right? That would have been actually the shocking newspaper headline, that man who has been friends with a convicted pedophile, who has been out of government twice, who works for a company that has links to China and Russia. He’s great to receive the most classified briefings from the top of government. He’s a thoroughly trustworthy man. I mean…

Coco Khan Picture that’s being painted at the moment is about this very high pressure situation where for what everyone’s denying who is applying the pressure, but that there is pressure to get Mandelson into this post. Why? Why? Why is there so much pressure? Why just waiting two weeks, waiting two months? Why would that really matter?

Zoë Grünewald I think this is the key question that we need to keep asking, and I think you’re totally right Nish. Keir Starmer is trying to flood this with detail to move the story on and make it about civil service processes and throwing civil service under the bus while he does it, which is never a good look for a Labour Prime Minister. But ultimately the key questions is, why did it have to be Mandelson so much? Why did it had to be a Mandelson? There was a perfectly good woman in post in the US, they got rid of her and they wanted Mandelson in there. Why? Well, we know that Mandelson was close with Morgan McSweeney. So, you know, there was a sense there that maybe they were doing each other a favor. There was also this sense that with a Trump administration, you kind of need to send someone in who can speak the language of the people around Donald Trump. And this is something that the government can’t really say, because it kind of admits quite publicly that we were willing to sort of. Debase ourselves because that’s how we perceive the US administration, that you need to send someone who’s quite unsavory and to deal with them. So that’s kind of the elephant in the room here that actually they thought Peter Mandelson would be good for the job. But there was a perfectly good person in post who was well known to the US, who was well liked. It was actually quite a strange decision to expedite the appointment of Peter Mangelsen who… Was so divisive on the Labour back benches, who, you’re right, had allegations about him being friends with Epstein. I mean, it wasn’t just the Channel 4 Dispatch document. The FT were on this for a long time. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. You know, there was that famous interview on the train where they asked him about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and he told them to fuck off. Yeah. That was all public knowledge. The question still remains, what was going on behind the scenes that meant this was so important? And I think it’s a combination of that kind of masculine, real politic that defined the team round Kislam, which I’m we’ll get on to. But also the fact that there was a group of people around Keir Starmer who were doing a bit of backscratching and trying to set up some jobs for their mates. And that’s not uncommon in politics, that’s cronyism, but that’s the exact thing that Keir starmer railed against when he was going against Boris Johnson.

Nish Kumar Possibly the moment of the day, certainly the clip that’s been doing the rounds on various news reports about this happened when the chair of the committee, Emily Thornberry, really made sure that we heard every word from the former chief of staff and close ally of Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney, in terms of his role in maybe expediting this process. It is the thing that sums up the pressure that McSweeny was putting to expedite Mandelson’s appointment.

Clip And said in terms stronger than those that I can use for the watershed.

Clip I think you should.

Clip I will just say that it was just to prove it with terms stronger than that. Does that accord with your impression.

Clip Just fucking approve it.

Nish Kumar Thornberry, just making sure that that got in there. Zoë, how normal is this kind of political pressure over this kind of an appointment?

Zoë Grünewald Political pressure over senior appointments is normal in many ways, you know, number 10 almost always has a preferred candidate, especially for a role that’s as politically sensitive and high profile as US ambassador, right? Prime ministers are also entitled to want people they trust and are politically aligned in key diplomatic posts, but there are clear informal guardrails and I think this is where this edges into the grayer, more uncomfortable territory. So the civil service runs vetting and proprietary checks independently. Ministers can express preference, but they’re not supposed to override those preferences or preempt the process, because then it just makes it null and void. And of course there is a strong convention that due diligence is real, that the government should be doing its due diligence. It’s not just a performative thing you do to tick boxes, but already you’ve got it sewn up. I think what was key about Olly Robin’s testimony yesterday is he kept talking about this constant pressure, this dismissive attitude to vetting. Essentially that the outcome was put first and the checks came later. And I think what was also particularly striking was that he said, Mandelson already essentially had already moved into the role. He was already accessing classified material before the vetting concluded. He already had access to the computer systems. He’d already been announced. They’d already set up the process to get him accepted in the US. It wasn’t just the routine… Procedure of, this is our preferred candidate, please can you progress it? It was, this needs to happen quickly, it’s already been announced, find a way to make it work. And I think that’s where as a civil servant, you start to feel compromised and the line starts to feel blurred.

Coco Khan Well, he certainly didn’t pull his punches. We’ve actually got a clip of Robins here.

Clip I’m afraid what that translated into for my team in the Foreign Office and certainly the handover briefing I was getting as I arrived at post was what I felt was a generally dismissive attitude to his vetting clearance. The focus was on getting Mandelson out to Washington quickly.

Coco Khan Well, I mean, he’s said it as clear as he can. I, my mind does keep returning to your point, Zoë, about the flooding the zone with the details. I mean I, throughout all of this, I keep coming back to the outrageous immorality at the heart of it. And I think sometimes, you know, we’re guilty of it as well. You can, you can lose that. And I the press have been particularly bad at it. We’re talking a lot about like due process rather than the fact that everybody knew that Mandelson was friends. With a convicted pedo. Everybody knew that and he was still allowed the pose. Do you think that any of this process is going to change that?

Zoë Grünewald There are still questions about Keir Starmer’s judgment here. And I think the other thing that came out yesterday, which is gonna further those questions about Keer Starmer judgment and the ethics of the decisions he makes, of course is the fact that Olly Robbins suggested that Matthew Doyle, his previous director of communications, was also trying to be set up for an ambassadorial role, again, despite being friends with a convicted sex offender.

Nish Kumar This is fairly extraordinary. So Stalin was essentially getting rid of Matthew Doyle because he wasn’t very good at his job. That seems to be the sense that I’ve been getting from reading some of the reporting, but he’s basically suggested that there was pressure put on them to find an ambassadorial job for him while they were in the process of getting rid of him. And also, Robin has claimed that he was told to not inform the then foreign secretary, David Lammy. Now the job never actually materialized and Doyle went on to become a Labour peer. But as you say, it emerged that he had campaigned for a friend who had been charged with possessing indecent images of children. There’s two things that I think mean this is a problem for Keir Starmer. One, it looks like being friends with a pedophile is a qualifying factor for getting a job with Keir starmer. The appearance of this is not good. To a point, one friend of a paeophile may be considered folly. To a Point two is like a real issue here. Suddenly this looks like a pattern of behavior. You know, it looks like jobs for the boys, and the boys themselves are friends with some very, very unpleasant people. But isn’t the real problem, even beyond that awful situation, that Keir Starmer’s offering to the country is not one of an ambitious policy program that reforms the machinery of the British state and delivers decisive change to the county. His offering is that he will manage the institutions of this country more effectively. I think Tom McTague from the New Statesman, after he wrote the profile of Keir Starmer, he came on this show and he said that his belief is that Starmer thinks that there is nothing wrong with the institutions of this county, they’ve just been managed poorly. And Starmer made a huge amount of political hay from criticizing Boris Johnson over Partygate, criticizing the way that the previous Conservative government interacted with the civil service. Now, if you have no offering to the country other than. Effective management of institutions and a sense of moral probity combined with a sort of granular focus on procedure. And then it turns out that you’re not really managing your institutions properly because you’re spending all of your time trying to get jobs for your friends and that your moral probities in question because those friends have friends that are some of the most unpleasant people in the history of our species. And then. The third thing is that you are not observing granular detail because you’re trying to expedite the hiring of those friends of unpleasant people. That means that Keir Starmer is toast here because he is failing in his principal offering to the country, not just in the election campaign, but since the election. That’s why I think he’s done. And I think what you said about the idea that there isn’t an obvious person in waiting, I think is the only thing keeping him in the job right now.

Coco Khan Yeah, absolutely. I mean, how bad do you think the brand of the Labour Party is right now with all of it? I mean I find this whole story absolutely mortifying, genuinely. I use the word real politic and I do appreciate that politics can be a grubby business, but you kind of must stop. You have to have a line, right? You have a lot. And I think Labour has always had a brand that was that they had certainly a slightly better baseline than the Conservatives. I suppose they’re all just very lucky that this is Everything that happened with Jeffrey Epstein went across party lines. And I suppose that’s lucky because it’s the sort of thing that another side would, would go for him. I mean, I could imagine certainly sections of the right, if it wasn’t Donald Trump involved with it, would be going for this really, really hard. And certainly as someone like myself who spends time on the kind of angry parts of the internet, you hear this emerge in the Epstein class. You hear this phrase and lots of people are just, they really do just see Labour as, as bad as everyone else. That’s been creeping for a while. Do you think the brand of the Labour Party is done?

Zoë Grünewald I think it’s really been damaged. I think, Nish, you’re totally right, your analysis of Keir Starmer and how he’s basically failed on every metric you could use to deem his success. The metrics that he set out for himself, essentially. Yeah, his attention to detail, his morality, his wanting to kind of restore the institutions. I mean, when it’s jobs for the boys and it doesn’t matter if they’re friends of the pedo and, oh, I wasn’t across that document, so I don’t know. Well, you’ve alt, quite frankly. And I think you’re right, Cokie, like all of those things are now feeding through, because voters can tolerate mistakes, right? This is the thing. Voters understand that politicians are going to make mistakes. What they don’t tolerate is hypocrisy and cronyism, and that’s what this story reeks of. Keir Starmer was stood there on the opposite side of the dispatch box with Boris Johnson during Partygate skewering him over both those things. Now he has leant into both of those things and just said, oh, you know, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I think particularly, and I really want to pick up on this boys’ club thing, because I feel personally aggrieved by this, as I’m sure other journalists in Westminster do, because I remember before Keir Starmer was prime minister, when he was leader of the opposition, there was lots of disquiet on the Labour backbenches and amongst pads and amongst staffers about this boys club around Keir Starmer, about this group of men who made decisions unilaterally, who didn’t engage with backbenchers, who had that real politics. Approach of, you guys don’t really understand what real politics is like, leave it to the guys. Just this sense of actually, it was a very sewn up close knit group around Keir Starmer who made decisions and they just didn’t really care about the lived experience of marginal people or the years of experience on their back benches. And I remember saying to quite a senior broadcaster, I think one of the issues for Keir Starmer is this perception of a boys club. And he shut me down. He was like, I don’t think so. I’ve not heard that. That’s not a thing. Now, I obviously felt really stupid because I was quite, I was a junior reporter, I was like, oh, maybe I’m misunderstood, or maybe that’s just how politics works, you know, that’s kind of my bad. Now, it is seen as almost the original sin of this government, right? If you, if you think about all their failures on winter fuel, trying to, disability cuts, two child benefit cap, all of those come back to this being a kind of heartless government that didn’t engage with its backbenchers. Over what they were seeing amongst their constituents and what they themselves have experienced. And also, this lack of loyalty on the backbenchers was because they never engaged with them, they didn’t respect backbencher’s perspectives on things, you know, they weren’t interested. When it comes to Matthew Doyle and Peter Manderson… I’m not saying that women are totally infallible. You know, famously one of our worst Prime Ministers, Liz Truss, was a woman, okay? I’m saying that if there were more women in the room, every decision would have been correct. But I can’t help but feel, if there was more lived experience, more marginalized perspectives in the rooms, someone would have said, why are we appointing a man who’s friends with a pedophile? What does that say about us as a government? I think ultimately, you can almost track all of Keir Starmer’s failings to this big bully boys club.

Nish Kumar I do think it’s an astonishingly bold move for a man to say, there’s no boys club, shut up. Even for the British media, that’s bad even for us. The image that you’ve been trying to portray is of a kind of cabal of people not interested in not even just the wider interests of the country, but in their party. When you consider that there is this group of people that isn’t taking into account what their ministers are saying. That explains how it’s possible for them to be surprised by the scale of the rebellion on something like the winterfuel, because they aren’t meeting with the backbenchers. They aren’t talking to their own people.

Zoë Grünewald There are lots of critics of Morgan McSweeney who say that was his approach. You know, he was very much of the kind of blue Labour ilk. He was kind of a lot more sort of socially conservative and, you know, actually didn’t like the progressive wing of the Labour Party very much at all and kind of set out to destroy it. I was just thinking when you were talking to Nish, Emily Thornberry, making sure that comment was heard in full. I’m sure that was a reference to this because there has been so much frustration amongst MPs about the way that that number 10 operation was conducting itself, the lack of respect it had for backbenchers or civil servants, whatever. I mean, you can see that. And when you think about who has departed this Labour government, now, of course, Olly Robbins has gone, but before that, it was Lou Hague, Angela Rayner, Sue Gray. I means, there was a raft of senior women that were pushed out and very few men. And so when Morgan McSweeney’s head was finally on the chopping board, a lot of people felt able to say, it’s because it’s a boys club. And it’s not just a gendered thing. If you speak to people in BAME Labour as well, B-A-M-E Labour, they will say they also feel sidelined. Disabled people, campaigners who are on the fringes of the Labour group, they’ll say we were sideligned when they were trying to reform the disability system. So I would say this, these questions over Mandelson and Matthew Doyle, they all feed into this sense of it’s just, it’s a certain… Male, white male masculine Labour party at the minute.

Nish Kumar Ed Miliband certainly wasn’t pulling his punches, shall we say. So here’s what he said to Sophie Ridge on Sky when he was suppressed on this.

Clip Prime ministers make errors. Prime ministers are fallible. Prime ministers a human. As you know, I steered well clear of Peter Mandelson when I became Labour leader in 2010, but people make mistakes.

Nish Kumar That’s a drive by.

Zoë Grünewald Hmm

Nish Kumar That’s a drive-by from red Ed

Coco Khan I see how it happens, obviously it wouldn’t happen to me, but I can see how it happens.

Nish Kumar But just looking forward, Zoë, you believe, just for want of an alternative, that Starmer is still going to be in post at the time of the May elections, which is obviously what we want to talk about next with you, but with the remaining Mandelson files, so we haven’t seen all of the information yet, do you have a sense of when they’re coming and if there are more damaging revelations?

Zoë Grünewald So the next tranche of files will be released after the King’s speech, which is May the 13th. I’m not sure we’ve got an exact date, but that’s when we’re expecting the next round of documents. Obviously, that’s after local elections. It will be interesting to see after locals, if we start to get a sense that a, you know, Keir Starmer is getting ready to step down, that there are other contenders waiting in the wings. In terms of what’s more to come, I mean, remember, we still have a police investigation as well. Ongoing into some of the contents of the Epstein files, and that includes obviously Prince Andrew as well. There is obviously-.

Nish Kumar Just Andrew.

Zoë Grünewald Oh, Andrew.

Nish Kumar Randy Andy.

Zoë Grünewald Formerly known as Prince. It’s hard to say, it’s hard to say what will be in them and what won’t be. I think at this point, I mean, there is, again, it goes back to that thing you were saying, okay, there’s so much terrible stuff already out there. What more do we need? Like, you know, what can tell us that Peter Mandelson did, that could be the smoking gun, that’s for us.

Coco Khan We’ll just go back to my bingo card of doom. Just see what we’ll pull out. Peter Mandelson also spread COVID. I don’t know. Just put it in there.

Zoë Grünewald And people would just go, oh, you know, and kiss Tom would go, well, if I knew that, I still would have appointed him US ambassador. I can’t believe I didn’t know he kept bats. Everyone knew he got bats.

Coco Khan We just…no one…

Nish Kumar The fact, I am shocked at the fact that Peter Mandelson takes his holidays at the Wuhan wet market. This information is shocking to me.

Zoë Grünewald I think the key thing, though, is that it’s going to keep being in the news. So Keir Starmer can’t just like brush us away as a failure of judgment. It’s going to keep coming up and people keep going to, you know, grab their heads and say, why Starmer? Why did you do it? You’re right. He’s toast. It is just a question of when the party is ready to get rid of him. I say there’s no way he’s going to lead us into the next general election. He’ll probably, probably be gone by the end of the year. Although, again, when something like The, you know, people tend to, what was that phrase Boris Johnson used, make a protective ring around the Pritzter. You know, because it feels so big and existential and having a leadership election in that can feel quite self-indulgent, so time will tell. But I don’t think, to be honest, I don’t think Keir Starmer would like to lead this party into the next general election.

Nish Kumar Okay, well, let’s look at the next big marker for some as leadership. Labour was already expecting a wipeout in the May elections. So I guess let’s talk about how bad it can get for them and who maybe the likely beneficiaries of that wipeout will be.

Coco Khan [AD]

Coco Khan Now, in just two weeks, voters will go to the polls across the country in what is shaping up to be a huge reckoning, not just for Labour, but for the two party system itself. In Scotland and Wales, there’s elections for all the seats in the devolved parliament, while across England, around 5,000 council seats are up for grabs, plus there’s six mayoral elections.

Nish Kumar Zoë, for a while now, everybody’s been predicting a massive Labour defeat. Ben Walker, who’s the polling expert and co-founder of Britain Elects has said that May will be a total blood bath for Labour. How bad is this really going to be? How much blood is in the bath?

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, it’s funny because having just moaned about Westminster, this is actually one of the reasons I love it as well, because local elections and bloodbath in the same sentence is like so hyperbolic. But if you really care about local elections, sure, it can be a bloodbather. Yeah, so obviously, there’s going to be a lot of expectation management going on with Labour at the minute, because they are going to have a lot of losses. They’re not hoping for gains. I think if you’re looking at where Labour is likely to suffer the most, it’s going to be councils. Where they won or overperformed when there was that kind of peak anti-Tory sentiment a few years ago, and areas where reform are eating into their vote and where greens and independents are eating their vote. I think the big structural problem for Labour is, of course it’s the party of government, so it’s going to absorb all the frustration and that is very typical for locals. It’s mid-term, there’s not a lot of change, there’s a lot difficulties that people are experiencing in their life, councils are facing cutbacks as cost of living. It’s quite natural that they would face losses, but then equally, they haven’t built a deep, loyal electoral coalition. Part of that is because they’re only two years in. Part of that’s because they seem intent on destroying their deep, loyal electoral coalition. So voters are going to drift and protest. So it’s going to be difficult for them. They’re still going to perform relatively strongly in Scotland and Wales, probably compared to England, but it’s not going to do anything in terms of clear momentum.

Coco Khan Well, the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has certainly taken a different approach to campaigning. At a live podcast recording on Tuesday, she told hecklers to fuck right off when they accuse her of copying reform policies.

Nish Kumar I’ve read the remarks. Whenever she’s pushed on these immigration policies, she said she accused them of being white liberals. Obviously, we talked about this on the show at the time. She said that she’s the one that’s being called a fucking packie in the street over immigration. She is weaponizing her identity as rhetorical cover for the implementation of draconian immigration policies and I’m struggling to differentiate her. From Rishi Sunak and Suella Bravaman in terms of the use of a marginalized identity as ideological cover for draconian hardline immigration policies. I have such a deep well of upset and frustration. I think it’s disgusting. I think is absolutely disgusting.

Coco Khan Nisha’s going to melt, so we will move on. But I did see Michael Gove talking about Shabana Mood with saying that she was his political crush. I think he also meant literal crush. But anyway, we’ll move on from that. And that really does tell you something, you know, that if you have figures like Michael Gove saying that he’s seen her political journey and where she started, i.e. Probably a bit more progressive, where she’s ended up and loves that, oh, makes my skin crawl.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah. If I can just jump in, obviously, Nish, I don’t want to cause you to have aneurysm, but I agree with both of you. I also think there’s something weird going on here, right? So a politician telling a group of voters to fuck off, especially a minister, essentially to say, that’s unusual. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that that is not really very normal. Also, a former minister saying publicly that they have a crush on another Again, a bit gross, unusual. There’s this kind of deliberate coarsening of political language and debate going on. To me, I think it’s spilling over from the fact that so many politicians live on X now where there’s just like no guardrails, no rules. But I think we have to be aware of it. And I’m not saying we should, you know, I understand people feel angry towards politicians and it changes the way we speak. But I just feel it’s a deliberate attempt to bring politics into quite an unpleasant space.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan Yes

Zoë Grünewald Where you can be full of like hate and disrespectful to minorities and women. I don’t think Michael Gove should be sexualizing Shabana Mahmood in that way. I just think it’s something we’re seeing and we’re saying more and more of it. And, you know, people love Donald Trump. You know, his voters love Donald Trump because he says it how it is. And he, you know, he swears at the Iranian regime. Do we want to import that level of political rhetoric? I don’t know, maybe I’m being too kind of.

Coco Khan As they say on X, the bar is on the floor. So look, with Labour forecasts to do so poorly in reform riding high in the polls, everyone had assumed that Nigel Farage’s party would do well in May. Reform said they’re hoping to hoover up as many as 1,500 council seats, but it might not be such smooth sailing.

Nish Kumar A more in common national poll released last week puts reform on just 25%, so that’s still in the top spot, but it’s down five points. And most polls have shown some kind of downward trend in the last few months. Zoë, is it possible that reform have peaked a little too early in this conversation? Let’s hope so. I mean, and also, is this for people listening? Zoë did a sort of excited dance at the prospect. A little jiggle. I just don’t know.

Zoë Grünewald Like a little jiggle, just a little shimmy. A little shimmer.

Nish Kumar Is it the fact that Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party is siphoning support away from reform? Restore has been polling around 4% nationally and we have to assume that that’s eaten away a bit of Faraj’s support. Is this an either or situation where it’s also connected to Faraj support for Donald Trump and the war in Iran? So the day after the war began Faraj said Britain must back the Americans in this vital fight against Iran and urge Dharma to allow British military bases to be used. He’s then backtracked saying he’s worried about Trump’s war aims. The backtrack may be too late and the backtrack potentially is not tracked back far enough because UK voters largely at the moment are still against the war. Is it Rupert Lowe? Is it Donald Trump? Is it a combination of the two or is it something else?

Zoë Grünewald It’s a combination of the two and a secret third thing which is that you can’t be a protest party vehicle forever. The closer and closer you get to government, the more that voters have to take you seriously and they actually wonder if you can achieve all the things that you say you are. And I think there have been some policies recently, particularly on their really hardline immigration deportation stuff. Also things that seem slightly incoherent and you can pay for, like some of that economic policy around the triple lock and Things like that. It just has given more scrutiny on the party, and I think it’s kind of for some voters that will sort of turn away, for example, former Tory voters who don’t want that or former Labour voters who didn’t want. So there’s a bit of that as well, definitely the internal fragmentation that was always going to be a problem for them, because Nigel Farage doesn’t want to be tied to people like Tommy Robinson or Rupert Lowe, but there will be other people who will drift that way. And if there’s an option for voters who like that, they’ll choose that option. Definitely, Iran has been difficult for both Farage and Badenok, because they made completely the wrong call, and also, obviously, Trump is looking increasingly deranged and that’s no good for Farage who causes up to him. So there’s all those things, and the fact that a lot of people don’t like Nigel Farage. In some ways he’s the party’s best asset, in other ways, he’s going to put so many people off. A lot of the people don’t like him. They see straight through him. He’s actually not as popular as the media likes to make out that he is. You know, you look like Gorton and Denton. And you look at carefully, reform didn’t win either of those. And both of those were target seats for them. They should have been opportunities for them to prove themselves. They actually struggled. And some of it was their strategy. I mean, why they put Matt Goodwin out there. That was a terrible decision. The most unlikable man out there, again, they live on X. Yeah, well, exactly. So, you know, and there’s some things they can maybe learn from that. And then if I can add in another thing, it’s that actually, and I guess it goes back to Trump. I’m tentatively hopeful that the populist right is slightly on the retreat across the world. I mean, if you look at what’s happening in Europe, if you look at France, where the national rally isn’t performing as strongly as it was doing, or if you look at Hungary, where Orban obviously just, just lost. And other countries, you know, in Italy, Maloney, she’s still polling well, but she’s struggling actually to implement a lot of her agenda. Trump is also just this kind of, you know, poison that’s spreading. And you know it doesn’t it doesn t look good in it. And it definitely reveals some of the hypocrisies and inconsistencies of having a nationalist agenda because all it takes is one madman across the world and you’re all sucked into his orbit. So I think there’s lots of things going on here. I am hopeful and I always like to give a bit of hope to this podcast that 25, 30%, that really could be reforms ceiling. The difficulty is if they can split enough of the vote and if Labour are facing a split on the left, Could you see a pathway where there is more reform dominance or a reform victory?

Nish Kumar So let’s talk about Wales and Scotland, because that is potentially a danger in both of those countries. So in Wales, Labour could see its most devastating result. Labour’s won the most seats in the Senate since its inception in 1999. But now, the more in common polling is putting them third. So Plaid Cymru would be taking the top spot with reform in second. This is a huge, huge, big problem for Labour, right?

Zoë Grünewald So this is probably where the most kind of structurally significant shift is happening. There’s been long-term economic underperformance in Wales, so lower wages, higher poverty, the cost of living crisis is hitting really hard, and then those kind of UK-wide decisions like the tax threshold freezes are feeding into this kind of devolved dissatisfaction. Labour’s dominance hasn’t just disappeared overnight, but it’s becoming a lot more conditional and voters are elsewhere. So, you know, Plaid Cymru are really benefiting from this. So they’re mixing a lot of economic critique, so concerns over the cost of living crisis with national identity and sort of saying, you, know, decisions made in Westminster aren’t in your best interests. This is where I think both with the Greens and Gortner-Denton and Plaid Cmru, we’re seeing actually that the left or the center-left is starting to wake up a bit and tweak and refine their messaging to appeal to those disaffected voters. So reform could world. Do well in Wales, you know, they can tap into this economic frustration, particularly in those kind of post-industrial areas. But again, this isn’t just one shift, it’s fragmentation. Labour’s losing to different parties across Wales because they are isolating their voter base and they’re not actually dealing with people’s material concerns.

Coco Khan Let’s go to Scotland. So all 129 members of the Scottish Parliament are also up for re-election. Scotland’s First Minister and leader of the SNP, John Swinney, has tried to center their campaign around the cost of living crisis. Last week he announced their pledge to cap the price of certain essential supermarket groceries, so that would limit the cost to things like bread, milk and cheese. What do you think about these policies at the moment? They’ve got a touch of the Zoran mumdani about them. Do you think that they’ll cut through? Do you they could be popular?

Zoë Grünewald I think what the left or the center-left are realizing is that people are angry because they feel materially worse off. So having a strong economic offering, which was typically what the Left was known for, is kind of the way forward. So you’re right, touch of the I’m Donnie.

Coco Khan About it. Can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I’m up for this policy because I recently have been radicalized by Kroster and Molica. So I was in, do you know that upmarket chilled pizza brand? Oh yes, Kroster Molica, I do, yes. I’ve never heard of it. You’d recognize the branding. You’d recognize it. It’s a fancy chilled pizza. Anyway, so I was in the chilled pizza aisle and I saw it. I thought, oh, that looks nice. Oh, how much. I had this moment where I looked around at all the various chilled pizzas and thought, God, those have… You know, just occasionally have a little moment where you’re like, wow, I know that food inflation is going up, but just occasionally it really hits you.

Nish Kumar Are they frozen peas?

Coco Khan No, they’re chilled pizzas. Chilled pizzas? Chilled, they are in the fridge section.

Nish Kumar They just relax.

Coco Khan They’re in the fridge section anyway, I don’t know why, but I just went into this deep dive about why chilled pizzas are so expensive, particularly compared to frozen pizzas. And you know, there was all this different stuff about the rising cost of ingredients and also the process of chilling them and transportation. But also fundamentally, a lot of the chilled pizza pricing is not about the cost of the product, but about where it sits in the market. So lots of people can’t afford to go out and eat a pizza. And so this is where those brands come in. Oh, you can have a fancy pizza at home. So it’s nothing I mean, obviously it is something to do with the cost of ingredients and all these other things, which supermarket bosses also like to talk about and food leaders also like to talk about. But let’s be honest. A lot of it is just marketing. So I mean I’m up for it. I’ve been radicalized by Kruster and Mollica.

Nish Kumar This has opened a whole new world up to me. I only believed pizzas came in hot or frozen and this sort of third way Quinton and Blair era Social Democrat chilled pizzas really blow my mind.

Coco Khan Zoë, thank you so much for joining us.

Zoë Grünewald Thank you for having me.

Nish Kumar [AD]

Nish Kumar Okay, brace yourselves everybody. Rosie Jones is in the Pod Save the UK studio. Rosie Jones as a comedian and it says here living proof that chaos can in fact be organized into punchlines. She’s been here for about 10 minutes and has mentioned her vagina five times.

Rosie Jones No! Four! Eight! At least!

Nish Kumar They’ve written an intro for me to read and they’ve insisted it’s me that reads this.

Rosie Jones I quite like this, because you never love complimenting me. Carry on.

Nish Kumar Alongside her award-winning st- What awards have you won?

Rosie Jones All of them!

Nish Kumar She’s also been a regular on TV shows like The Last Leg and picked up a BAFTA nomination for her chaotic travel show Trip, has it? That’s not to mention co-writing a six-part comedy-drama, Pushus for Channel 4, acting jobs from Casualty to Silent Witness to playing God in a Play in Glasgow recently, and authoring several children’s books. Basically, Rosie Jones is terribly talented.

Rosie Jones Oh, damn good. I am so good.

Nish Kumar For context for listeners and viewers, Rosie Jones and I are old friends, go back a long way.

Rosie Jones No… You want to be my friend, and sometimes I give in.

Nish Kumar Rosie was my opening act at various points in my 2018-19 tour and so we go back a long way and she does not respect me.

Rosie Jones Can I tell everyone how I would introduce you to your own show every night?

Nish Kumar Bear in mind, you pay a comedian to warm the audience up for you. That’s the context. The job she’s supposed to do is get the audience laughing and then welcome me to the stage with some fanfare.

Rosie Jones So I will do 20 minutes of pure gold stand-up material. The audience will be electric. And then I will say, right, now is the time that I got to introduce next week to my aunt. But before he comes out, I just need to say, don’t get your hopes up. I mean, it’s OK, but it’s no rummage. I’m paid!

Nish Kumar Later!

Rosie Jones Bye!

Nish Kumar Her money to do that job and then I would come out and say give it up for Rosie Jones I only got her to support me so we could park closer to the venue.

Rosie Jones Yesssssssss! Very good.

Nish Kumar I’m happy to see you. I love you.

Rosie Jones I love you! I’m so happy to see you, you have gone gray.

Nish Kumar I’m aware of that, okay?

Rosie Jones Very gray

Coco Khan You know, it’s been a very stressful few years, hasn’t it?

Nish Kumar This is a UK news podcast, we’re not here to talk about my gray hairs or your vagina, okay?

Rosie Jones I’ll see you way out! Your head, gray, my vagina, bald. Ha ha ha! To be fair, I’m glad that I sat with you!

Nish Kumar This is a UK news and politics podcast.

Coco Khan I’m honestly trying to find a way into the news. I’m like, part of me was like, okay, Mrs. Gray hair is stressful, let’s talk about the news. Rosie, I’m going to ask you a serious question.

Rosie Jones Okay.

Coco Khan Okay.

Rosie Jones I’m trying.

Coco Khan Um, it’s not just comedy, it keeps you busy.

Rosie Jones No.

Coco Khan You’ve got a foundation as well.

Rosie Jones I do.

Coco Khan The Rosie Jones Foundation.

Rosie Jones Yes.

Coco Khan How’s it going? What’s the mission? Tell us about it.

Rosie Jones Really good, so we just turned one year, so with babies, and our mission is simple. We want to create a world in which no person with cerebral palsy feels alone or unheard. And I… I started this journey a few years ago because I love comedy, I love making people laugh but I’ve always been so aware that the world is burning and I wanted to do something and and I was so shocked to find that there was a severe lack of services and help out there for people specifically adults with cerebral palsy. And I know this firsthand when I was a child. I got physio, I got speech therapy and at 18 I got bye bye! Really? See you later, good luck and CP is one of the only life long conditions that you don’t get help with. From the NHS over 18 and 36 now, so I haven’t seen a medical professional specifically about my disability in nearly two decades. And then, aside from that, again, I never said about what a physical disability takes in terms of your mental health to enter the world. Every day that doesn’t make you feel welcome. And we, during that research, found that if you’ve got a physical disability you’re much more likely to suffer with your mental health. So I was first. Mission setting up the foundation was we found an incredible service provider called Disabilities Plus which matches people with disabilities to see a counselor. With the same disability as them and go to see a counselor with the disability as me is a game changer. In six months alone were funded over 800 sections. For people with CP so yeah we are small but we are making a real tangible difference already.

Coco Khan I imagine it’s more necessary now, right? So, you know, we’ve seen Labour try to push through a series of cuts to disability. From this month, almost three quarters of a million ill and disabled claimants are at risk of having the health element of their benefit halved to 50 pounds a week. I mean, what are your concerns for the people that you’re currently helping and how will this make it harder to help others?

Rosie Jones Oh, there’s so much concern that links me with a lot of others. As soon as Labour came in, we were like, Good times ahead. And it’s just time and time again, Brown my heart to see This party here, I actually refuse to call Labour because there’s not any kind of Labour party that I recognize and I hear from disabled people every day everywhere. Struggling because of the benefits and it will only get worse. Millions of disabled people out there are not capable of taking on more work to bridge that gap. Which means that more of our community will fall into poverty.

Nish Kumar It should be devastating for any Labour MP in the government to hear that, because the background to this is 14 years of austerity, a lot of the cuts disproportionately affected disabled communities, so we’re starting from a position of these are communities that have been under a kind of economic siege for the best part of a decade and a half. Do you have a kind of message for? The Labour leadership here. I mean, we went to the mass lobby day around the benefit changes and we heard from disabled people that were going to be affected by the law change who was sort of devastated. We do not have language restrictions on this show, so go for your life.

Rosie Jones Darn it, sort your shit out, you fucking spineless [Unrecognized]. And now, my proper answer. I can’t believe I’m still saying this, but simply… Bring us into that conversation because I know with Lashes Benefit because none of the disabled MPs voted for that so yet again it was non-disabled people. Making decisions for us and I think we get it with every minority out there but I think the fundamental problem in the world is when the decisions are made for us without talking to the people who will be impacted by these changes.

Coco Khan So I wanted to ask you about a subject, I don’t know if you know this about, so I have a special interest in bins, it’s a thing that I’ve talked about on the show, but I’ve got another special interest which is toilets, I just find it fascinating, again it’s like bins, they’re very quotidian public toilets specifically, a quotidian part of life, but actually the fact that they exist, the fact they’re meant to be free, tells you about a functioning democracy and about inclusion. So obviously hearing that, The Guardian has reported that the number of public toilets in England has fallen by 14% creating what they’re calling lavatory deserts. Certainly took my interest. This is a little side note of cocoa trivia, but did you know that the suffragettes took up the cause of toilets? Because at the time, the fact that there were no public toilets for women meant that women were confined to the home. They could only travel for as long as they could hold their pee, essentially. That stopped them from participating in life. So the suffragettes took this cause up. So I think, you know, this is a cause that a progressive should take up. Anyway, just on this subject, have you heard about this story and how important do you think it is for the country to be a fair and decent place?

Rosie Jones Which are important and I think even the simplicity of toilets and accessible toilets, you’ll notice, but it brings me back to the social model, which is the idea that… My disability doesn’t make me incapable or disadvantaged. I literally can do everything apart from drive. And I prefer to be driven, darling. And now. I cannot wear high heels and I am a lesbian, so adopt Martin’s all the way. But what does make me disadvantaged, what does make me less in society is people’s opinions on the disabled community. And that goes right from what people think of us It’s too- Building, building’s making them accessible, making toilets, I, because on my CP I have a very weak bladder when I need to, we are fucking need to go. And more often than not, they’re there. Non-disabled person using the accessible roof is usually an issue.

Nish Kumar Now, I would like to get out ahead of that. That was one time, and I apologize to you.

Rosie Jones He does the very hot nandos. So yeah, what you just said about the suffragettes, it wasn’t that women were incapable of leaving the house. Hey, George. Creating a world in which everybody can fairly access society.

Nish Kumar We’ve sometimes talked about the kind of limitations of representation politics. You know, the idea that just by having more women and people of color visible in positions of power, that doesn’t necessarily guarantee better outcomes for those communities. But this is like a pretty amazing example of what happens when. Political class is unrepresentative of the wider public. The very fact that the country’s infrastructure for its disabled citizens is collapsing, can be linked pretty directly to the lack of political representation of disabled communities.

Rosie Jones I get it on a personal level when I meet somebody. I know if they have very little interactions with a disabled person and initially they’re awkward, they don’t want to answer questions. I’m the hen. You can see it clicks, they get it and then they go, well of course Rosie should have access to everything that I am and that’s the thing I fundamentally don’t think the current government are. Thinking of disabled people as people. They’re thinking of us as cities.

Nish Kumar They’re considering implementing the right to try policy, which will come into force at the end of April, if it is actually implemented, and it’s going to allow disabled people to work without fear of losing their benefits. What else could the government be doing to support disabled people? Because it feels like the interest in that policy feels like it comes from getting the benefits bill down, or getting the unemployment statistics down. Could the government be doing to support disabled people living a dignified life that for example, a foundation like yours is kind of exists to essentially fill in that gap between what the government could be doing and what it is doing.

Rosie Jones That’s it. I really feel like they are driven slowly to employment. And I get it, we need to get unemployment down, but that’s… Not the best way to ensure longevity and take care for those people. I would say they need to focus on mental health. They need to focus on making those disabled people physically. Mentally prepared for the world and then we’re able to tackle work because every disabled person I know wants to work but we cannot be like great yeah you do that Yeah, that all worked. When we’re not caring for that individual person.

Nish Kumar Before we go, what’s next for Rosie Jones? What should our listeners be looking out for? And also, what can they do to support the work the foundation is doing?

Rosie Jones So if you want to see me, turn on your TV.

Nish Kumar Always humble, Rosie Jones.

Rosie Jones And yeah, please give what you can, £60 will fund a counseling session for a person with cerebral palsy to see a trained counselor also with cerebral palsies. And if you want to donate or learn more, Rosie Jones foundation.com.

Nish Kumar Well, Rosie, I’ve always felt you are somebody that backs up the things that they say with the actions that they actually do, and you are a very force for good in our society and particularly within the comedy industry. I also think you’re a piece of shit.

Rosie Jones Nish, I love you so much and although nobody at home would think that, but for not only being a brilliant comedian but you taught me how to speak out and how to do a job, but as well as I keep that social conscience in the front of people’s minds. So, Nish, you’re my hero and we cannot talk about this ever again, you piece of shit!

Nish Kumar We’ll cut this. If anyone sees this, I’ll say it was AI. I’ll so it was an AI Rosie Jones.

Coco Khan Rosie Jones, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Nish Kumar And that’s it. Thank you so much for listening to Pod Save the UK. If you like what you heard, leave us a review. It really helps boost the show.

Coco Khan You can follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok, BlueSky and X.

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

Coco Khan Thanks to lead producer, May Robson, and digital producer, Jacob Liebenberg.

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan Our engineer is Jeep Vasani and our social media producer is Leo Shi.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Kate Fitzsimons 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 potl-