Three weeks haven’t yet passed since the election, but Keir Starmer’s Government has faced its first rebellion. The response to seven Labour MPs breaking rank over the Government’s stance on the two child benefit cap was swift and fierce, leading to the whip being removed and anger inside and outside the party. Nish and Coco ask if Starmer has only stoked further division within the party. 

 

Clare Farrell drops in to discuss the landmark sentencing of five Just Stop Oil protesters and how the previous government’s draconian anti-protest legislation led to this moment. 

 

Later, chair of the NHS Federation Victor Adebowale joins Nish and Coco to discuss the National Audit Office’s recent findings into the state of NHS finances and what can be done to fix the service, while taking the pressure off of near-breaking point staff. 

 

 

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Guests:

 

Clare Farrell, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion

Lord Victor Adebowale, Chair of the NHS Confederation 

 

Useful Links:

 

Open Letter:

https://defendourjuries.org/wtf/ 

 

Just Stop Oil petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/no-prison-for-protest/

 

Pod Save the UK: live! 

https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/pod-save-the-uk-live

 

Audio credits:

 

BBC Radio 4 Today

Department of Health and Social Care

parliamentlive.tv

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan Record penalties for protesters. Dire straits for the NHS and dashed hopes for the so-called Red Rebel Alliance. I’m Coco Khan.

 

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar and this is Pod Save the UK. Today we’re hearing Extinction Rebellion co-founder Clare Farrell’s thoughts on the record sentences dished out to five Just Stop Oil campaigners.

 

Coco Khan And later we’re speaking to the chair of the NHS Confederation, Victor Adebowale, to find out how we can fix our broken NHS. But first, you are probably not going to like this 1 in 6 months time. I hope that the, cap has been abolished and in that time I will obviously go through the process with the party and continue to stick to my principles and speak up for my constituents who reelected me to champion causes such as scrapping the two child benefit cap.

 

Nish Kumar So in that clip from Radio Four’s Today program, that’s Sara Sultana, the recently reelected MP that last night was suspended from the Labor Party after voting against the government. Here’s what happened. On Tuesday evening, seven leftwing labor MPs, known as the Red rebels, formed a rebellion, voting on an SNP amendment to the King’s speech to drop the two child benefit cap, a policy put in place by the Tory government way back in 2017. Nevertheless, the government easily passed the bill thanks to its monster majority. But that’s not the big story.

 

Coco Khan Now. The big story is that the labor leadership suspended the whip from those seven rebels, meaning they’ve been suspended from the party. A review will take place in six months, pending an investigation. Now, of course, we’ve spoken about the two child benefit cap a lot on this show. But just to refresh you, it caps the potential benefits received by families that have more than two children, with some very minor exceptions. It’s a really cruel policy that only harms the most vulnerable in our society. Who’s more vulnerable than children? And it is furthering the conditions of poverty in that group.

 

Nish Kumar Estimates put the cost of reversing the policy somewhere in the ballpark of 3.4 billion pounds, which is certainly a lot of money. But if the government wanted to make it work in consideration to other spending commitments, it absolutely could. And the policy only applies to families with three or more children born after the policy was implemented. But when fully rolled out, it would affect about 1 in 10 families or nearly 3 million children.

 

Coco Khan Now, look, we’ve talked on this show about, you know, rebranding tax. Why is tax spoken about so negatively? Tax is cool. Tax is sexy. And I don’t know about you, but I think there is nothing cooler or sexier or more urgent or morally, imperative than taking children out of poverty.

 

Nish Kumar The government itself is also had been previously seemed to be faltering on the issue after not including it in the King’s Speech last Wednesday. In the hours before the debates began, the government announced a child poverty taskforce, perhaps hoping to stifle a criticism of their stance. Then on Monday, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, hinted that the two child benefit cap might be going, backed up by comments from the prime minister, Keir Starmer. However, Rachel Reeves told cabinet colleagues on Tuesday ahead of the vote the difficult decisions on public spending need to be made. There are backbenchers who potentially agree with the seven rebels. 42 members abstained from the vote yesterday and a few weeks ago the new labor MP, Torsten Bell, told this podcast that the two child benefit is something that all labor MPs want to see gone. Look, it’s likely that we will see a reversal of this policy in due course as this will continue to be a thorn in the side of the new government and its newly established child poverty task force. Because reversing this policy is one of the quickest and cheapest ways to begin to reverse the growing rate of child poverty, returning to the sort of politics of this labor, suspending the whip from the seven rebels will create a chilling effect for the prospect of other backbenchers speaking out.

 

Coco Khan Which is the point, right? That’s why they did it. That’s precisely the point. They want to create a chilling effect, and they want to show that this is a party where any deviation from their line will not be tolerated. Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It’s very reminiscent of Dominic Cummings at his most kind of control freak.

 

Coco Khan Yeah. And it’s weird as well because, you know, we I can’t get over the fact that labor has an enormous majority. So it doesn’t actually need to have the seven rebels. It is not it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference, really. It’s a show of power and a kind of message to lots of, you know, disaffected labor voters that like, actually, you may have voted labor in the past because of the Broadchurch, but it’s not that anymore, baby.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. I also just think there’s things to talk about with a two child benefit cap, only because there’s lots of anti-poverty campaigners that have been stressing this morning that that is not a silver bullet, that whilst we absolutely should get rid of it and there really should be no greater emergency in this country than lifting children out of poverty, there’s some positivity about the idea of, an anti-poverty taskforce specifically to look at this stuff. But I would also say I just don’t understand the logic of, of suspending MPs. You have the majority. So you won this huge voting block. That essentially means you can pass whatever legislation you want. Why create an antagonism within the Labor Party? Why create an antagonism within the labor movement? They’re going to have to raise this benefit. Cap okay. That’s just it’s going to go because ultimately, as much as we talk about 3.4 billion pounds as a, you know, seemingly huge sum of money in the grand scheme of the public finances, it’s not that huge a sum of money as a price to pay for lifting children out of poverty. If you want to get something done very quickly, this is the fastest way to do it in terms of the suspension of MPs. The whole point of Keir Starmer having this enormous majority was that he would be able to pass legislation. Yeah. And, you know, at some point in the life cycle of this parliament, customer is going to come under concerted political pressure from the political right and maybe even from the political center. And he’s going to need the support of the broad church if and if he keeps on prizing loyalty above everything else. The Conservative Party has given you a very serious lesson on where that leaves. I mean, it leaves you lacking competence. The problem with Johnson Cummings is that they kept on purging the party of people that did not toe their line. And when you price loyalty above all else, you end up with a cabinet of incompetence. And that is a really, really important political point within this bigger conversation where the focus should be on how do we get as many children out of poverty as quickly as possible?

 

Coco Khan It is interesting because I’ve actually seen some conservative MPs, including Suella Braverman, point to Labor’s hypocrisy on this issue. I can’t believe it’s one that they haven’t resolved at the opportunity that they could, you know, and again, just going back to this, this prioritizing of fiscal responsibility, poverty, cos in the end, you know, in terms of like NHS costs, in terms of social service costs, in terms of lack of productivity of those younger people as they reach working age and the problems that they will face, like it’s cost effective, like you said, to do this. And so in a way, it’s just like the argument for ending the two child benefit cap has already been made. It’s already won in the public debate. I don’t know, why wouldn’t you take it? And then my final thought I would just say for the MPs it got suspended. You know, fair play to them for voting with their conscience. Their. I respect it very much. And I also think that given that they’re from constituencies where that issue is very pronounced, I mean, what would you expect they how would they face their constituents? How would they look them in the eye? I mean, yeah, I in a way, I would argue this goes so far as to be disrespectful to voters.

 

Nish Kumar But now, moving on from a backbench rebellion to public protest, we have a very special guest joining us on the couch.

 

Coco Khan Now. On Thursday last week, record sentences were handed down to five activists from Just Stop Oil. The co-founder of Just Stop Oil, Roger Hallam, was sentenced to five years imprisonment, while the other four defendants Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Lucia Whitaker, De Brew and Cressida Gethin were handed four years imprisonment.

 

Nish Kumar Now it’s worth taking a moment to catch up on what is alleged to have happened here. Prosecutors said that the defendants joined a zoom call in early November 2022, in which discussions were held about four days of planned protest and that they were aiming to recruit others for those protests. A journalist from The Sun, that organ of ceaseless, veracity, who had dialed in looking for a scope, recorded some of the conversation and passed it along to the police.

 

Coco Khan The protest went ahead and saw 45 people climb the M25 gantries. That’s those big metal constructions that hang over the motorway. So once they’ve got the signs and the cameras on them, which prosecutors allege led to an economic cost of at least 765,000 pounds, with cost to the police of more than 1.1 million. The demonstration allegedly affected more than 700,000 vehicles and caused over 50,000 cumulative hours of delays.

 

Nish Kumar Judge Christopher Her, here when passing down the sentence, said I acknowledge that at least some of the concerns motivating you are, at least to some extent, shared by many. But the plain fact is that each of you has some time ago crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic. You have appointed yourselves as the sole arbiters of what should be done about climate change. Bound neither by the principles of democracy nor the rule of law.

 

Coco Khan Now the activities of Just Stop Oil have divided the public and the media. Some have called the sentences just. Others have said that they shouldn’t have done it, while others, notably environmental energy magnate Dale Vince and previous guest on this show, Chris Packham, have demanded an urgent meeting with the new Attorney General, Richard Herbert KC.

 

Nish Kumar In reaction to the sentencing. Michelle Force, the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders, said that today is a dark day for peaceful environmental protest. When the convictions were made. He also suggested that the ruling might be in breach of international law. So joining us to discuss these sentences and what it means for our democracy is Clare Farrell, British environmental activist and co-founder of the Extinction Rebellion movement. Welcome, Clare.

 

Clare Farrell Thanks for having me.

 

Coco Khan So, Clare, you have a one of a kind perspective on this, not just in terms of your environmental activism, but also just in terms of you’ve actually been in the dock. You have been, the subject of a court case where the jurors, acquitted you. So you were arrested for civil disobedience as part of a campaign to fight air pollution in 2017, then again in 2019 for blocking private jet passengers entrance to London City Airport. That’s what were you were charged for? Found guilty of obstruction of a. Got that right. And given a six month conditional discharge which was later overturned. And then in 2023, you were found not guilty before a jury for breaking glass windows of HSBC in 2021. So, you know, this process very, very well is looking at these sentences have just been handed down. How unusual are they?

 

Clare Farrell Fucking unusual.

 

Coco Khan Right.

 

Clare Farrell Unprecedented.

 

Coco Khan Right.

 

Clare Farrell You know, and the judge who handed them out has jumped off the back of the sentencing of two other people, Morgan and Marcus, who hung on the QE two bridge in hammocks. And they got the sort of first deterrent, sort of hard core sentencing that we saw for for climate protest in this country using the guidelines, that have come from the new legislation that’s been introduced by the conservatives over the last couple of years.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. We should summarize that new legislation. So the Johnson government passed the police, crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022, which introduced the statutory offense of public nuisance, which is what the five Just Stop Oil protesters were sentenced upon, though, given that it was reduced by the Boris Johnson government, I’m not sure he wants to start a conversation about being a nuisance to the fucking public in this country. But that isn’t the only draconian legacy of the past government. The other big one is Public Order Act of 2023, which was introduced by Johnson but then passed by Sunak’s government, which clamped further down on disruptive protesting like that carried out by Just Stop Oil. There might be some interested parties at play in this one. According to Politico, Rishi Sunak admitted to the policy being drafted, at least in part by Policy Exchange, a right wing think tank whose funding is unbelievably transparent. Wait, I’ve made a mistake there. It’s incredibly murky and no one knows where the money comes from. At least some of it coming from oil related interests. On the second ever episode of this show, Paul Powell and, he’s a lawyer, and, you know, he’s something of an expert in this field, had warned us that those two pieces of legislation were leading us potentially down quite a dark and draconian path. And this is Clare effectively validating those things that you said to us. Right?

 

Clare Farrell Yeah, precisely. And what I’ve been trying to explain to people about the the story of this trial that we’ve just seen the sentencing for me, you know, the story itself of this trial begins, obviously, with this sting by this sun journalist who’s been. Bragging and gloating online, as far as I can see about how pleased they are about the sentencing and all of this kind of stuff. But actually.

 

Nish Kumar The one doesn’t have a, incredibly horrible record of working with the police to deliver incredibly terrible things.

 

Clare Farrell Precisely.

 

Nish Kumar Nobody Google Hillsboro.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, and also, don’t look at the Daniel Morgan inquiry.

 

Nish Kumar Don’t look at it.

 

Clare Farrell Apart from that being like, the sort of technical beginning of this charge for these activists, if you go back to 2019 Policy Exchange wrote a paper called extremism, Rebellion, which was an outline of this direction of travel. And the reason that they wrote it was because Extinction Rebellion was being so phenomenally successful, because we had a huge amount of kind of research from various people in the movement. We understood that if you design the right nonviolent strategy, you’re on the right side of history. You keep your nonviolent discipline, you can make the inclusive, popular, family friendly and, and, and a whole load of design aspects to it. Then you can. Expect to win in the long run. And perhaps you look at something like the civil rights in the States and you think, well, we ain’t got the time that these things took to win. But nonetheless, we’ve got a strategy, we’ve got a momentum driven mobilization. It’s working, you know, and I think in all likelihood, big industry and particularly the fossil fuel sector shut their pants. And for we have to shut this down. And they’ve read all the same strategy books as we have. So they’ve got extremely sophisticated variety of approaches in the pushback. But the ultimate kind of part that can prevent the kinds of actions that we’ve been doing has taken several years for them to put into place. And that really is the backbone of the thinking. And what’s led to this legislation. And of course, policy change come up again and again and again. Throughout this, this whole sort of story, if you look back over the last five years or so.

 

Coco Khan I really just want to drill into and just make it clear to our listeners and to myself about how what is happening now is unusual and is something that is, going to have ongoing ripples out into all areas of protest. So I suppose my question is, thinking back to those court cases that you had, if you think if these bills were in place, then do you think you’d be sitting here now?

 

Clare Farrell Possibly not. Although, those bills, they’re not designed to, deal with property damage. Right? So the main thing they’re drafted for is public disruption, because they were so concerned about the level of, I think the level of, awareness that you can raise by being very disruptive. I mean, when we shut down central London in early 2019, it did make the climate crisis a massive issue where it hadn’t been before. The school strikes obviously were part of this kind of cumulative swell. David Attenborough started talking about things in a quite a different way. Had a heat wave in 2018. There was a lot of sort of contributing factors. It wasn’t all us, but we definitely saw then, you know, this declaration of climate and an ecological emergency by the parliament. But it was it was definitely, true that the disruptive part is the thing that gives you the drama, the jeopardy and the newsworthiness. So if you go and do bad things to bad people like, you know, you go and punish the fossil fuel companies by protesting at them, no one pays any attention, really. You can see the, you know, the drama of us breaking a window of a bank, a group of women that makes people pay attention. Just Stop Oil blocked a lot of oil terminals. And people would say, why don’t you go and block the carbon? Why don’t you go and stop the people who are doing the thing? If you don’t get on the news, no one reported it. They you know, they almost caused a fuel shortage in south east of England. And it wasn’t news. And they did it by climbing on trucks, digging tunnels, going into the depots. It’s not a story according to the media.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s talk a little bit briefly about Michelle Force comments. He’s the UN special rapporteur on environmental defenders. What did he mean when he said this could be potentially in breach of international law?

 

Clare Farrell Well, the new legislation when it came in were a lot of criticisms of the fact that it conflicted with certain things that are standard practice in the UK. And a ruling called Ziegler, which is kind of a technical point on law, but like basically a ruling that said, if you disrupt a road, you have to consider the proportionality of that disruption compared with what you’re trying to prevent. Yeah. And it’s possible for you to have a reasonable excuse or a legitimate route to an acquittal, because perhaps you were trying to stop a genocide and all you did was block a truck, for example. Right. So, that piece of, ruling, the Ziegler ruling has been an issue for the establishment, let’s say, because it makes it legitimate to block a road and they want it to make it not legitimate in international human rights. You have a right to express yourself. You have a right to take up space. You have a right to be obstructive. You have a right to make a noise. You have a right to do these things, and you have a right to then argue why you did them. And a lot of the new legislation in this country is, has come into conflict with those rights, because it effectively means that you don’t have them anymore. And for example, in my trial, we broke the windows of HSBC headquarters. The trial was scheduled for a certain day, and then it was delayed. So it was delayed because the government appealed the Cawston case. So, you know, the Colston statues got pulled down in Bristol. They won their case partly because they had an article ten defense, which is freedom of expression. Yeah. You have the right to choose how you express yourself depending on the seriousness of what you’re trying to express. You can choose how to do that. Yeah. Then because you can choose how to do that. You can bring in an expert witness to testify to your beliefs. So I’m not mental. This guy really was a horrible slave owner, and everyone thinks he’s the statues. A stain on our city, or I’m not mad because climate crisis is definitely happening and everyone’s for sure going to fucking die. Yeah, and you should take me seriously, but listen to this expert. Let’s bring him in. Yeah. Or her. And that that defense was taken away because the establishment didn’t like the fact that the Causton activists got an acquittal from a jury. Right. So I wasn’t allowed to use article ten, so I wasn’t allowed to bring in any experts to talk about the financing of fossil fuels, to talk about the environment, to talk about their projects, to talk about climate breakdown, anything. So everything we got to use in court came from us and us alone. We couldn’t bring in any expertise to back up what we believe.

 

Nish Kumar And it’s that what happened in this case as well.

 

Clare Farrell Yeah. And actually, the judge went further in this case to say that professor Bill Maguire, who’s a. Legend and a massive expert on climate risk and what’s actually occurring in our. So in the breakdown of our world, he was described by the judge as, not fit to be a proper expert witness because he was an activist. Right. So he was kind of dismissed on an identity basis, which then led the bill to go online and say, if you’ve ever spoken out as a climate scientist, watch out, because maybe you’ll become an activist and then nobody will care about the fact that you’re a professor emeritus.

 

Nish Kumar If you were a climate scientist and your job is to analyze climate breakdown. Does that mean it becomes activism if you report what’s happening?

 

Clare Farrell Well, exactly.

 

Nish Kumar It doesn’t make any sense.

 

Clare Farrell Exactly. And I think that’s what, you know, for me, that’s what happens in, in the, in the legal system, particularly, in this context, the system ties itself in quite a lot of knots where you have a circumstance which is unprecedented, runs in conflict with the perpetuation of everything being kept exactly the same, which is basically what a lot of the law is trying to do. It’s trying to keep things the same. Yeah, and it’s quite hard to change it, which may be a good thing a lot of the time. Right, that you don’t want to just wildly, easily change laws and move the goalposts all the time. But in a circumstance like this, where our civilization is a grave existential threat, and we know that our societies cannot continue like they are because they’re in self termination, then you know, the law has got basically nothing to say about that. It’s only got something to say about people being really annoying. And now how annoying you can be is being squashed down and down and down.

 

Nish Kumar I definitely don’t want there to be laws about being annoying in public. I think that would really negatively impact my career and life. Life if I’m not allowed to be annoying in public, if that becomes illegal, I’m going to be in jail for the rest of my goddamn life.

 

Clare Farrell Watch out, Nish, it’s the direction of travel that we’re going on.

 

Nish Kumar I’m so fucking annoying. Jesus Christ. Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Going for hire. I just want to talk a little bit about Roger Hallam. Obviously, he’s a significant leader in the movement. And, you know, you mentioned previously that, you know, you’d been reading about other successful movements in the past. It’s been a sort of well established tactic to take out the leaders of movements. Right. That’s sort of.

 

Clare Farrell Yeah.

 

Coco Khan A thing that happens. And this has happened here. So my first question is, do you think this is a blow that is unrecoverable for XR for JSO? What has happened here? Do you think this is? You know, it’s not a death knell, but how much is it impacted the work you’re going to do moving forward? How significant is it? And then the other question I would ask is, what do you think about the argument that the sentences are like almost the point, like they’re needed, they’re necessary to have this public conversation?

 

Clare Farrell Well, interestingly, you know, I think there are people in history who like. Roger, and I know him quite really, quite well. Understood the part of nonviolent work can sometimes be to draw the poison and the violence out of a circumstance or system and get it on the surface where everyone can see it. Yeah. You know, and it’s a game changer. When people witness something that’s so blatantly unjust and, you know, some people would say structurally violent, I’m not sure Roger thinks going to prison is violent particularly. But, you know, some people experience it as that as well. But it’s the, the the point is to sort of pull it out and, and get it to hit you in public where everyone’s watching so that people go, oh shit, that’s what that’s what the system does to people or that’s what it can do. That’s what it will do. You know, in some senses, these sentences, although the the judge may think that they’re a big deterrent and they’re really help it. Well, that’s really shown that’s really shown them, you know, shoeless activists that they need to all stay at home and shut up.

 

Coco Khan But there are many ways how you could possibly do it without shoes.

 

Clare Farrell It’s just a joke that I always make about like, crusties. We used to have an office with a sign on the wall said, please wear shoes in the office. I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry XR. But what it’s done in their eyes is probably act as this chilling deterrent to say, don’t you dare be in this kind of level of resistance where you’re basically making it impossible to ignore, which is obviously what the UN secretary general has told us is the movement that we should do, but impossible to ignore. But also what I think it’s done is, you know, will make some people in. Just a few will say, of course we’re going to carry on. Yeah. Because it’s the right thing to do to carry on this, you know, campaign, to carry on pushing, to push for more because we’re we’re so far into overshoot. We’re in borrowed time. It’s not like we’ve got five years to change the world. We should have done it ten years ago. We are massively fucked. So, you know, some people will redouble their efforts to, like, continue finding creative ways to take action. But also it’s made everybody realize what these laws were designed to do. And it’s enabled a conversation like this.

 

Nish Kumar Well, look, perhaps the most important piece of context for all of this is that, Sunday, July the 21st, was the world’s hottest ever recorded day. And that piece of information, it’s probably worth sitting just in our minds as we have this conversation. Yeah. In response to the sentencing of the five to of all protesters, over 1200 famous British faces and me have signed an open letter which is addressed to the Attorney General, Richard Herman Casey. Following up on Chris Packham and Dale Vince’s request for an urgent meeting to discuss the sentences. We will put a link to this in our show notes if you want to sign it. As always, I don’t know what the show notes are. I don’t know how things go in them. It seems to be low level witchcraft to me. But that is where the, opportunity to involve yourself in this will be. Is there anything else that our listeners might be able to do to make their voices heard?

 

Clare Farrell Well, does the the open letters on 2000 signatures as I got a message this morning. So that’s just going up and up and up. So I don’t know if people can find access to that easily, but there’s a petition in the show notes. There’s a petition with Just Stop Oil. There’s, the open letter. And, you know, I would say that there are will be visible protests in the future around this. And there’s also really important people talk to each other face to face because, you know, the British public are not who the tabloids tell us that we are. And when you look at the statistics, actually the majority, the vast majority of people think these sentences are wrong. That’s what we have to get serious about now. It’s like thinking about how to construct new systems and new ways of including each other in making decisions and thinking through politics together, because the the sort of nexus of the tabloid media and Westminster isn’t working for anyone.

 

Nish Kumar Clare Farrell, thank you so much for joining us.

 

Clare Farrell Thanks.

 

[AD]

 

Nish Kumar Now. On Tuesday, the National Audit Office released a new report on the financial management of the NHS, finding that the scale of challenges facing the National Health Service today unforeseeable in the years ahead, is unprecedented and that the NHS may be working at the limits of a system which might break before it is again able to provide patients with care that meets standards for timeliness and accessibility. It’s a damning report backed up by language coming from the government. Here’s Wes Streeting, speaking the morning after Labor’s landslide win.

 

Clip This government will be honest about the challenges facing our country and serious about tackling them from today. The policy of this department is that the NHS is broken. That is the experience of patients who are not receiving the care they deserve. And of the staff working in the NHS who can see that despite giving their best. This is not good enough.

 

Coco Khan As we know the NHS needs more money, but what else does it need? To help us answer that question. We’re joined by Lord Victor Adebowale, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords and chair of the NHS Confederation, the membership body for health providers and commissioners in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Welcome to Pod Save the UK.

 

Victor Adebowale Hi. How are you doing?

 

Nish Kumar Lord Victor is strong.

 

Victor Adebowale Well for you, Victor’s fine unless you want to sell me something, in that case – thanks, Professor Lord Victor Adebowale CBE, but Victor will do nicely.

 

Coco Khan Is that the full title?

 

Victor Adebowale Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Oh wow.

 

Victor Adebowale But Victor will do nicely. That’s my name.

 

Nish Kumar Oh. So, Victor, let’s start with the National Audit Office report. What do you. It’s. It’s a sobering read.

 

Victor Adebowale It is. Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar And I was drunk when I read it. In fairness, I was like, but yeah, it’s a, it’s a so it’s a sobering read.

 

Victor Adebowale Not good for your health.

 

Nish Kumar It’s a sobering read.

 

Victor Adebowale Yes. Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar Absolutely. What do you make of it?

 

Victor Adebowale Well I’m not surprised by it, to be honest. I and I think that term, honesty, it’s about time we had some honesty and certainly, me and my colleagues at the NHS confide, they’ve been calling actually the last government as well as this government, to be honest with the public about the state of the NHS. And this report sets it out pretty starkly. But there’s nothing I’m surprised that we’ve known for years. The NHS has been underfunded for probably ten years now. And then we had the pandemic, before the pandemic went into the pandemic, with 100,000 vacancies in the NHS and then 125,000 in social care. We had waiting lists, that were rapidly in the multiples of millions before the pandemic. We have now gone up to about 7.6. They’ve dropped slightly because of the herculean efforts of NHS staff. But we’ve got a major challenge around social care, which is the major block to change. And, then we had the junior doctor strike. So, you know, if it wasn’t broke, the these things kind of broke it. So it doesn’t surprise me.

 

Nish Kumar Now, one of the government’s key missions for the NHS is cutting waiting times. Yeah. Full fact calculated that Labor’s pledge of 40,000 more appointments a wing works out as a yearly increase of 1.3%. Yeah. Is this target realistic or is it not ambitious enough?

 

Victor Adebowale Well, it’s a start. Yeah. I mean, to do it, to say that it’s not ambitious enough seems a bit mean given me. Only been in government, what, two weeks? But but it’s a start. And, the, the NHS is a is a large, complex system. And to think that you can just pull one lever and it’ll work would be foolish. You have to pull many levers and, in different sequences. And this is one which will help, you know, the fact of the matter is, 95% of people who enter the NHS enter through primary care. So if you don’t fix primary care, then the rest of the system takes the brunt of that.

 

Coco Khan A primary care is?

 

Victor Adebowale A primary care. Doctors, GP’s you know go and KTP. Well it’s it’s the services that are the first port of call really when you’re entering the NHS, which is usually a GP, but your GP plus other services like nurses, sometimes mental health, sometimes other interventions that take place in what we call primary care settings, first care settings.

 

Coco Khan So what does the government actually need to invest to cut these waiting times?

 

Victor Adebowale Yeah. Well, you know, my colleagues, very worried about the fact there’s a 3 billion pound hole in the current budget between what they spend and what they need. So that needs to be plugged. Then you’ve got the state of the buildings, the buildings and the things that you need. So I was in Doncaster, the Doncaster Infirmary, and it was it was appalling. I mean, I don’t think administration to say that passed ospital, but a death trap and and just an appalling state. And if you’ve got hospitals in that state, not only are they really, really depressing and dangerous place to work, but actually you’re undermining the efficiency of that hospital. So currently we spend about 7 billion a year on capital. We need to double that. We need 14 billion just to get. The things that we need to fix in the capitalist state, fixed so that we can then start to use hospital buildings more efficiently, more effectively, and actually start to bring down the waiting times.

 

Coco Khan And does that include building new hospitals? Because I know the conservatives promised 40 new ones. They never got built. Is that included in this?

 

Victor Adebowale No, no, this is just maintaining the current state. There’s a question most certainly in my mind to speak about the, the, the new hospital program and, and about how we define what hospital is actually in the current age, because let’s be honest, and I’m speaking personally here. Do you want to go to hospital? No, I don’t know anybody that does. So the question is how do we bend the demand curve. And this is in the Audit Commission’s report. How do you bend that demand curve so that we’re dealing with people well before the need to go to a hospital such that they might never need to go to hospital, which is about preventative care. It’s about care in the community. It’s about actually providing you with the support you need to stay healthy and the information you need to stay healthy, as opposed to waiting until you get ill. And I think that’s where we’ve got to go if we’re going to save the NHS and do it properly. And that’s what we’re saying and we generally agree with him.

 

Nish Kumar That’s a big culture shift, right? That that various people who are experts in this field have been saying for a while. Yeah, that’s to happen. Yeah.

 

Victor Adebowale That, that, that we need to start bending the demand curve. We need to start thinking about prevention.

 

Nish Kumar Just explain. I definitely understand that, but for the benefit of any listeners that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Victor Adebowale Please go me the case that is that currently, you know, we have this winter crisis every year. Yeah. And we pretend that winter’s a surprise. It’s not a surprise that happens every year.

 

Nish Kumar Oh my God. November.

 

Victor Adebowale There you go. And it’s and it’s horrific. And, and that puts pressure on the acute hospitals and they do an amazing job and we need them. But we’ve also got increased demand from an elderly population, which is increasingly, suffering from multiple, what we call comorbidities, which means just lots of illness. Yeah, yeah. And then we’ve got the problem of inequality and inequity, and it’s just worth explaining the difference, inequalities where you don’t get equal treatment. Yeah that’s fine. But inequities where you don’t get the treatment that’s appropriate to your needs. Right. And that has all kinds of implications. I mean, we’re all brown people here and I’m a darker brown than you, but with old brown people, what I can tell you that people that look like us get a far worse treatment by both experience and outcomes than people that don’t look like us. So all those things lead to a kind of demand on the NHS system, which ultimately results in the most expensive care being used, which is basically in hospital. And so what we need to start doing is resolving some of those issues the inequity, the inequality, the, the social care demands brought about by an increase in elderly population, you know, and co-morbidities. And and we need to do that. We need to start bringing health care closer to you, closer to your community, actually helping you stay healthy so you don’t need to get as ill or illness quicker. And we need to do that in places that need it the most. So in London, I can tell you about a woman in barking and Dagenham has an active life expectancy of 55 before they start sort of falling down, their health starts deteriorate. In Richmond upon Thames, it’s over 70.

 

Coco Khan That’s where I’m from. Barking and Dagenham.

 

Victor Adebowale There you go.

 

Coco Khan So.

 

Victor Adebowale Yeah. Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Wow.

 

Nish Kumar That’s sobering news.

 

Victor Adebowale It’s not great.

 

Coco Khan Alright, guys. Come on, look after me. Yeah, Nish? Look after me. Be nice to me. Bring me apples.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s move to Richmond.

 

Coco Khan Well.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, I think I’m not sure it’s the living at Richmond. is the issue. Yeah.

 

Victor Adebowale No, it’s not just the living in Richmond. But if there is the ability to afford expensive Lycra and just do stuff. Yeah, and look after yourself. And I’m in a health care system that works for you. So that’s what I mean by bending the demand curve.

 

Nish Kumar And there was, there was a story this week that said the birth of babies to black women were twice as likely to have NHS met.

 

Victor Adebowale Again, unsurprising to me. I set up the Reston Health Observatory because I observed that, and experienced that the fact that if you’re black, your service is likely to be worse. Also, if you if you’re a black employee in for the NHS, I’m afraid your experience is likely to be worse. And during the pandemic, the first ten people to die were all black and brown. People like us who worked in, who worked for me NHS in the most dangerous parts of the NHS and that continued. So I set up the Race and Health Observatory, which is part of the NHS Confed, so that we could actually get execution movies to people who run the NHS. To say this is unacceptable.

 

Coco Khan I think all of us on this sofa would have firsthand experience of knowing full well when you’re asking for care, that you’re being second guessed. Now, do you really need those painkillers mess, you know, and all the different stereotypes that play into it with.

 

Victor Adebowale Painkillers is a good one, because there’s this very clear evidence that if. You are. If you are black, the less likely to get painkillers sufficiently, because there’s a weird belief that we can take it, which is just not good.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

 

Victor Adebowale Pregnancy stuff is deeply shocking. It’s not just women in pregnancy, by the way. It’s also, what happens to babies who are brown when they’re born? Yeah. In order to test that you’re healthy, they use something called the applicant Apgar Score, which is based on skin color and was developed in the 50s, I think, when they just didn’t look at brown or black babies. Well, look, when I say black, you know?

 

Coco Khan Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Victor Adebowale But you shouldn’t look at black babies in the same way. So that guy score often? Made wrong readings and he wasn’t. It’s not based on brown skin.

 

Coco Khan This is when you, you know, we’ve sort of, picked just a few of the stories and the and the problems. And so then it just brought to mind how that was all that controversy about having, like, an LGBT flag on an NHS or having things that speak to like, you know, Black History Month or South Asian hair and what a Ferrari that cause and you just think, well, actually, when those communities are being treated like this in the NHS as patients and employees, that the least you can do is do a nice little analogy. Yes, it.

 

Victor Adebowale Is bizarre, isn’t it? But the notion of of work, I always consider the what’s the opposite of not work.

 

Coco Khan Sleep.

 

Victor Adebowale There you go.

 

Coco Khan Sounds good.

 

Victor Adebowale Who would you rather have looking after your NHS? It’s not. Not a difficult one, is it?

 

Coco Khan So let’s talk about pay. Obviously, that’s one of the biggest issues at the heart of the NHS. The government’s making moves. This week, West Streeting began formal negotiations with England’s junior doctors. They’ve been demanding a pay rise of 35% and striking since March last year, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves has indicated that some NHS staff may be in for above inflation pay rises. So why are these pay rises so important? And can you just talk about that number 35%. Because I think there will be a lot of people who think, whoa, that’s enormous.

 

Victor Adebowale A lot of money. Yeah. Well, I mean, look, you know, I’m not here to do negotiations on behalf of the government. The point is that the doctor strike has to be resolved. As simple as that. It’s cost billions of pounds already, and it’s caused the waiting list to increase, as well as causing great dissatisfaction amongst my junior colleague doctors. And the last government set, you know, 35% too much. But in other countries, Scotland being one of them, there has been a settlement. So it is possible to put this to bed. And the government has said that they’re willing to do that. In my experience, the only way to do to resolve the dispute is to sit down and talk. Right. And you you know that you’ve reached the good point when both parties are unhappy, but you’ve got a settlement. Yeah, that’s what it’s got to get. That’s what it’s got to get to.

 

Nish Kumar In a way, it’s part of the general disgrace of, Rishi Sunak’s time as prime minister, that in order to make a sort of, political point about how tough he was, he sort of stonewalled a lot of those conversations. Did you see a kind of optimism now? Because at least there’s a willingness to meet at the table.

 

Victor Adebowale There’s a notion that increasing public sector pay causes inflation. I’ve yet to see the economic evidence to support that. I mean, I think it’s really quite dodgy. Yeah. On the one hand, on the other hand, you know, and I’m speaking personally now as, rather than as the chair of the NHS confirmed. But my view is that austerity is a very expensive way to run a country. Yeah. And we’re seeing not just in the NHS but across public services that the, the cost of that because all you deal with is putting off the cost. Unless you’re prepared to see people dying early, unless you’re prepared to see, you know, your streets fall apart. Crime, then, then it’s a very expensive way to run a country. Yeah. So in the NHS, what we’re seeing is really the results of two things a massive increase in demand and a massive reduction in resourcing over more than a decade. And you arrive at a point where you have to fix both things at the same time. And that’s going to cost money. But it’s not just about money. It’s also about reform. It’s about changing what you do for the current era. We do need to change the way we deliver health care in this country. And, we need to get better value for the money that we spend. And we need to create a healthier nation. And in that, we welcome the Keir Starmers sort of mission approach, which is you only get health care if you have health in every policy. You know, you need to you need a health creating nation as opposed to just doing nothing and leaving it to the NHS because the NHS only deals with about 20% really of health. It’s the rest of it’s created by other things housing, you know, social care, employment, transport, all these things contribute to health. And if they’re not contributing to better health, then they’re costing us.

 

Coco Khan Well, I mean, like, you can’t have wealth without health. There you go. They rhyme for a reason.

 

Victor Adebowale No, no. You’re taking the words of my mouth. I I’m very clear about that. You cannot have you cannot have wealth about health. And in fact, the waiting times that we’ve got at the moment, which are well over 7 million, are actually contributing to. Poor economic growth and poor productivity. Because for every one of those people, that can’t work. Yeah. You’ve got somebody looking after them who equally can’t work. You know, you’ve got somebody looking after the person looking after them. So it just brings the whole thing down.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, absolutely. I do just want to go back to that 35%, though, just because, as I understand it, part of that number, which may seem shocking, is because it’s taking into consideration the what other countries pay doctors that we pay and nurses much, much.

 

Victor Adebowale Yeah. Depends on which countries you look at. But we certainly pay them more than they do many African countries in South Asian countries.

 

Coco Khan But isn’t international poaching a major problem?

 

Victor Adebowale It is. Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar Because that’s the staff retention problem here. But well, we’ve got 100,000 vacancies across the NHS. There’s been 168% increase since 2019, in staff leaving for work life balance. What’s the solution? I mean, this seems like an insurmountable.

 

Victor Adebowale Well, it’s not insurmountable. And I don’t believe that that’s the case, at all. I think that, if you if you look at what? It’s not just about pay. Yeah. It’s also about the conditions in which they work. It’s also about something called moral harm. Now, if you allow me to explain moral harm. So what happened during Covid was that, this became a real issue. People who work in the NHS want to help people. That’s why they become nurses and doctors. And, you know, they have a moral mission in a sense. And when they can’t do that, when because of the conditions in which they work. It affects them very it affects them emotionally and it affects them morally, because you want to do what you’re trained to do, what you want to do, but you can’t. And you watching people die and you watch people get ill because you haven’t got the resources you haven’t got. And that has an impact on your emotional, mental and often physical health. Now, there are things that you can do about that. One of them is to acknowledge that it’s happening rather than ignore it. The second thing is to allow the people that are suffering to explain how and why they’re suffering, and to debrief. And then the third thing is that you talk to them about how they can have more control over their jobs, over their roles, over how they work and how choices are made. You know, give them how to design the work better from their point of view. And then you regularly reflect on that to learn with them. And so there are things that you can do and that we will need to do that aren’t just about paying people more training. It’s about actually listening and listening. If I tell you I’m listening, that’s great, but you need evidence that you’ve been heard. Right. Yeah. And and that’s that kind of engagement, with frontline staff, I think is going to be necessary.

 

Nish Kumar I went did some fundraising stuff in the kind of local hospital in Croydon where I grew up, and I was just talking to a member of staff who were there on the administrative side. And this would have been in 2022. And I said, you know, how is everybody? And she said, do you really want to know? And I said, yes. And she said, I think the medical and non-medical staff here all need to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. Yeah. Because doctors, as they enter the profession, understand that they would be put in situations where they have to make life or death decisions. But this was multiple times per day. They were picking which patient was going to get the ventilator. And the whole staff of that hospital, medical and non-medical, were exhibiting signs of a trauma response, which when you actually consider what was going on. Makes total sense. Correct. And I don’t really see I haven’t really heard a huge amount of discussion about that.

 

Victor Adebowale Hearing it now.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah that’s great.

 

Victor Adebowale I do think that it’s it’s really important that we do acknowledge the, the the frontline and the managers as well. You know it’s been a, it’s been a struggle and it still is.

 

Coco Khan Let’s talk about physician associates. Right. So physician associates, I’ll be honest, I haven’t really heard this term before. I understand it’s a new role. They are healthcare professionals that work underneath a senior doctor, and they appears to be a push to try and get patients to see these people as their primary care, as you defined earlier. So we actually wanted to hear from some doctors directly. We want to share their names. But there’s a question from a doctor about this issue. And they said, according to research published by the Royal College of GPS in June this year, six out of ten job seeking GP’s have struggled to find a vacancy to apply for. This seems to be a funding issue where if a practice wants to expand their team, they’re essentially forced to employ a physician associate. How is the NHS going to fix the issue of GP’s not being able to find work?

 

Victor Adebowale Well I mean you know Wes has talked about more appointments for GP’s. There’s been more attention to primary care. Indeed the first place he went to was a primary care service which is great. My organization is working quite hard with primary care networks, on ensuring that GP practices can operate efficiently. I’m aware of the controversy and I’m aware that some GP’s, and clinicians are very concerned about the. Somebody referred to it in an email to me, dumbing down and replacing them. I don’t necessarily agree that that’s the case. I really don’t. I think you could argue that. The increased clinical responsibilities and work of nurses, in primary care settings, GP settings and others could be argued was a dumbing down of the GPS. I don’t think that’s the case. I think we have to work. I think we have to listen to what clinical colleagues are saying. But change isn’t always easy.

 

Coco Khan I can’t speak for this person, but, is it the issue that they’re sort of alluding to here is that there seems to be a prioritizing of cheaper staff?

 

Victor Adebowale I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, our members are very concerned. This is why we’re not talking about the 3 billion gap between expenditure. And, you know, that’s what I’m talking about. We’re talking about, leaders in the NHS having to cut clinical staff, you know, not just administrative staff, clinical services. And of course, it does lead to, decisions being made cheap against, you know, appropriate. And that’s why they’re worried about the 3 billion. We need the 3 billion. Keep the show on the road currently as we approach winter, we don’t want another winter crisis. So, I think an element of what you’re saying is, is, is displaying kind of the general concern, you know, we need we need some money. Like now.

 

Nish Kumar In the past, Wes Streeting has suggested that labor government might need to look to the private sector to bring down waiting times. Is that something that could be useful, or is that something that actually ends up being more expensive for the NHS in the long term?

 

Victor Adebowale Well, you know, first of all, if you’re in agony. Yeah. And I know people are in agony, you’re not going to be too bothered about whether you’re really not that firstly. Secondly, most private care is done at the same price as NHS care, same as what called a tariff. Yeah. So it’s not more expensive. Right. And thirdly, the NHS also already through the way in which we employ GP’s as private. Contractors working for it. So I think it’s the wrong argument to be honest. The argument, if we’re going to have wall mass to be about value for money and how we get value for money rather than, you know, whether it’s point our point B, but provides that service. And with Wes, when he argues that, you know, he’s not going to allow the waiting list to go up because of ideology.

 

Coco Khan But, I mean, and listen, I’m not a economist.

 

Victor Adebowale Neither am I, so don’t ask me an economics question because you won’t get an answer.

 

Coco Khan Private services primarily. Yes, of course they deliver care, but they are run for profit. That is the point. And so there will be a certain amount 10%, 12%, 25%. I don’t know what the profit margins are that will just go to pay off shareholders or whatever it is. That money, if it was all done in the public service, would be back in the public service. That would be 20%. So how can you say it costs the same? It doesn’t make sense.

 

Victor Adebowale But you’re talking about where the money goes, not how much it costs. So the tariff for private sector providers of, of elective surgeries is exactly the same as it is for the NHS. The the issue then becomes where does how do they do to make a profit.

 

Coco Khan Exactly. How are they doing it?

 

Victor Adebowale I don’t know because I don’t run a private healthcare service.

 

Coco Khan It’s got to be a worse service.

 

Victor Adebowale No, it’s not a worst service because. So during in 1997, when labor government got in, one of the things that they had to do to bring down the waiting list was bring in the private sector to provide actually mainly hip operations and the operations for a period of time, they contracted with the private sector to bring down those waiting times. And it worked. And if you need a new hip, believe me, you need the operation. So it worked and then they wound it down. So it was, in my personal view, an appropriate use of the private sector that actually added value to the NHS for the patient. It was free at the point of access and yes, the private sector made the profit it be. In an ideal world you would need them because the NHS would be fully funded. But we’re not living in an ideal world. We’re living in a far from ideal world and the NHS needs intervention. What I would say in closing the I. I happen to be the chair of the Social Enterprise UK. Now. Social enterprises are businesses like any other business, but they don’t have any shareholders and something like 38, 39% of all community services, mental health services, substance misuse services are provided by social care, that and social enterprises. And we could be and should be doing more with social enterprises to ease the pressure on the NHS. And I think we probably will be. So it’s not all private care profiteering and what have you. Quite a lot of it is provided by people that actually work within for the NHS alongside the NHS, but aren’t distributing profit.

 

Coco Khan It’s good to hear of the reminders of those success stories. I mean, I’m sure I’m not the only one that after everything that happened with Covid and people running away with money to provide certain medical related services, and they essentially defrauded the country, you can see why the average citizen, myself included, is skeptical and nervous.

 

Victor Adebowale I think I’m an average citizen last time I looked I may be a member of the House of Lords.

 

Coco Khan Listen you’re a Lord.

 

Victor Adebowale Bit tricky, but I’m still average.

 

Coco Khan Just your average Lord.

 

Victor Adebowale But but honestly, I’m with you, I thought. I mean, just just mentioning it makes my blood boil. Yeah, it was some of the stuff that went on was outrageous. But let’s not confuse that with the need to basically provide people with care when they need it for free at the point of access. And if we need to bring in private sector providers to get the waiting list on under control, let’s do it.

 

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

 

Victor Adebowale It’s been a pleasure. Thank you.

 

Coco Khan [AD]

 

Nish Kumar Now. Last week, the streets of Leeds were unfortunately met with a riot after state intervention from social services took one family’s children into care. Anger quickly erupted, leading to smashed police cars and the burnt out bus. Something no one wants to see. And it’s certainly not a situation for the permanent gonorrhea of British politics to wade in on. We don’t want to talk about it. We were trying not to mention him by name, but he has been recently elected to Parliament as the leader of a far right party. And he had an opinion on this, which may not surprise you.

 

Coco Khan I think we need to discuss a new name for him. Yeah. Oh, no. We didn’t want to talk about him. And we don’t want to mention his name, but he is going to continue to do these things that deserve calling out. Yeah. So what are we. What are we going to go for? What? We’re going to call him. Oh, producer James has given a suggestion. Nasty. Ever. Yeah. Although I keep misreading it and thinking he’s saying the heifer like.

 

Nish Kumar Look, he’s a cow. Let’s not. Let’s not besmirch cows.

 

Coco Khan No, no, cows are great. And then I went on to Google to look up names that we could possibly give him. And I came across a now defunct Facebook page called Ed Miliband’s. And it’s from 2015. It’s a different type. Okay. It was a different time. Facebook. Ed Miliband I think there was one post. It just said, I think we should all start calling Nigel Farage night, all because he’s a boring cunt that puts you to sleep.

 

Nish Kumar What is that? Why is she allowed to say cunt?

 

Coco Khan I’m quoting. I’m quoting. That’s not my my phrase. I mean, I think it’s weird when you even see that, because on a serious point, obviously that was 2015. So the idea you just described is like a boring, monotonous person. But she is so, like, generous to him because he’s actually much more mendacious, isn’t it? Yeah, but nighttime is not a bad start. So in lieu of that, let’s talk about Nye told the member for klaxon.

 

Nish Kumar Well, the member for Clacton decided to tweet about the riots in Leeds. Whilst obviously doing important work for the local community he now represents by going to America to attend the Republican National Convention. He tweeted, the politics of the subcontinent are currently playing out on the streets of Leeds. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Alex Sobel, who’s the labor MP for Leeds, replied this is a situation you know nothing about and no one has briefed you on. You are inflaming a situation with misinformation. Politicians have a responsibility to not exacerbate situations, particularly with no knowledge of them. I expect you to issue an apology, to which, the fuckwit replied, when will you and the Labor Party apologize for irresponsible mass migration? Now, look, this is an evolving situation, Leeds, which needs to be discussed, but it needs to be discussed when there’s more information that’s available. What we definitely know is that this issue has absolutely nothing to do with, the South Asian communities, in this country. And so the phrase which absolutely drips with colonial contempt, the phrase the politics of the subcontinent, which could not be more redolent of imperial nostalgia, of a kind that is the only thing capable of raising an erection from that particular gentleman. It is unbelievable that he’s been allowed to use this, and I know that. And I understand that his whole career is essentially based on making people like me angry like that. But owning the libs or whatever you want to call it, is one thing when your job is essentially to do that for, a conservative news broadcasting organization. He’s a member of Parliament. He is should now be held to the standard of a person who holds public office. It is an absolute disgrace that he posted this. It is an absolute disgrace. And it is quite astonishing, this idea that he’s able to spread misinformation. And we seem to have no recourse to do anything about it, given that he’s a member of Parliament. The, the, the invocations of politics to the subcontinent is, to my mind, a piece of uncomplicated racism.

 

Coco Khan I mean, I have the same the same thoughts. And I keep wondering, is he is he less accountable now that he’s an MP? Do you know what I mean? Like, where do we go for when he was spouting his crap on JB news? At least you could write to Ofcom. I mean, not that anything would come of it, but you kind of knew where you were meant to go to, to to challenge these things and hope for some kind of consequence. Not that they ever really came or certainly not enough to stop him spreading these kind of vicious lies.

 

Nish Kumar The unrest was triggered after, children from a Roma family were taken into care, and there were obviously very serious questions that need to be asked about the way that authorities handle that community. There are serious questions to be asked about what the background to all of this, but that needs to only happen when we have more information about it. What we definitely know is this has absolutely nothing to do with the South Asian community.

 

Coco Khan Back to the comments. So as I understand it, at this moment in time, as we recalled on the Wednesday, they’re still up. This man has shown no contrition. I mean, now that it’s all been revealed that this was not actually. To do with that community. And, you know, he if he doesn’t show contrition, he won’t regret it. He’ll probably just dig deep and do more of it. So I think there is a it’s worth us calling it out. And B, if you are also incensed about it, listeners, maybe we should tell our MPs how upset we are about it, and maybe someone should bring it up in comments because it is absolutely disgusting. So consider this the beginning of our first campaign against Night Hall. Please write to your MP. Please write to them and say this guy said racist things. Can it be brought up in Commons

 

Nish Kumar Can it be brought up in House of Commons?

 

Coco Khan SBecause I think it is worth, causing a fuss about this.

 

Nish Kumar Listen, after all the years of conservative chaos and the weeks of campaigning and the government voting this week to keep Tory policies, it still hasn’t quite hit me that we actually have a new government. And I don’t think I’m allowed here is the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, speaking in the House of Commons on Monday.

 

Clip We will, of course, work with others. And in relation to the particular point, the Prime Minister, the leader of the old habits die hard. The part of the leader of the opposition to be on security and cooperation with our EU allies.

 

Nish Kumar There is something very labor about, and even the Labor Party can’t believe is in government.

 

Coco Khan It’s better that that was that way around, because imagine if Rishi Sunak referred to himself as the Prime minister. I mean, it can’t get worse for him, but that. That would be horrible. Terribly embarrassing.

 

Nish Kumar But listen, all of us could be forgiven for thinking not much has changed given how some conservatives have been acting. Here is a clip from the Commons this week, where freshly minted Environment Secretary Steve Reid was attempting to address the Commons.

 

Clip And rebuild our NHS with 40,000 more appointments every week 8500.

 

Nish Kumar For our podcast listeners, the yelling you could just hear is Shadow Secretary of State for Health Victoria Atkins jumping up to interrupt and bashing the despatch box.

 

Clip You could say the the right honorable lady has behaved abominably. Secretary of state.

 

Nish Kumar There were whispers that Victoria Atkins might have fancied herself as the new leader of the opposition, but that was not necessarily a fantastic way to launch your campaign. Just smashing the despatch box and yelling in the middle of, you know, in the middle of Steve Reid tried to make a point about just basic things the government is planning to do is very strange.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, it was a bit like a the you what may form of leadership. Yeah. What you say would you say to me maybe against me which I get that we’re all looking for new forms of leadership. No, I was expecting the yeah pop role, style. But it also does reflect something which is like, you know, the standards in are really low standards in government at the moment.

 

Nish Kumar Well, I mean, I did read that. I think at this point, 1 in 4 conservative MPs is now part of the Shadow Cabinet, right, because of the numbers of them that remain. The talent pool is shallow, shall we say, in terms of, looking for the next Tory leader. That process has been kicked down the road until November, after the party conference in October. So far, only James Cleverly has announced, that he will officially, be running for Tory leadership. But presumably between now and November, will his name start to come in? And we will all be frantically googling that because we have simply not heard of a lot of these people. Because the Tory party has been decimated largely by its own doing at the last election. So, until the end, the Prime Minister, I mean, leader of the opposition, Rishi Sunak, will remain in post.

 

Coco Khan So he will just continue looking at pictures of California as a screensaver. I could just imagine them just like slideshow of Monterrey slideshow situation.

 

Nish Kumar He’s it. He’s so rich and yet he still has to turn up to do this job. It’s a very strange, sort of weirdly like he’s in a sort of purgatorial situation.

 

Coco Khan Luckily for us, well, lucky for him, he’s I think he’s I see right rival. So I guess it’s fine. That’s it. Thank you for listening to Pod Save the UK.

 

Nish Kumar Well. Thank you Coco. Thank you to all of us. I don’t know, I thought you were going to read the rest of that. IThe rest of that bit of the script. But you just sort of lost faith in it.

 

Coco Khan I read the sentence, and then I was like, oh, not my line. I’ll just. I’ll step back.

 

Nish Kumar I felt like you were. Well, we I mean, listen, I don’t want to throw too much of a glimpse behind the magician’s cloth, but sometimes there were scripted lines that we obviously reading.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar And some of them were allocated to me and some of them are allocated to Coco. But normally what happens is one of us starts reading something the other one was supposed to read and just carries on and we slip switch, switch that process. But today Coco’s just been like, not my line. I’m just going to stop.

 

Coco Khan I’ll start it, but I won’t finish. It’s like the opposite of the like, mastermind approach. So do you want me to finish it?

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. I would go.

 

Coco Khan And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Also, we want to hear your thoughts and your ideas about what we should be calling the member of Clacton. Email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.Co.Uk or drop us a voice note on WhatsApp. Our number is.. What’s our number Nish? Do it without looking.

 

Nish Kumar 074944933444.

 

Coco Khan Yes. Come on.

 

Nish Kumar Internationally that’s plus 44794933444.

 

Coco Khan You looked down. I saw you cheating.

 

Nish Kumar Right at the end.

 

Coco Khan Don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the UK. I did that one from memory. That was really easy.

 

Nish Kumar It’s just the ame of the show.

 

Coco Khan There’s signs all around us saying Pod Save the UK, look at me I remembered the handle. Don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, well, make sure you subscribe to our new YouTube channel. So search Pod Save the UK or click the link in our show notes and hit subscribe to make sure you get uninterrupted pod ovation. We’re putting loads more clips and exclusives up there. We wouldn’t want you to miss out.

 

Nish Kumar We have the last few tickets available to catch us live at the Edinburgh Fringe. We’re doing shows on the 6th and 7th of August at the Monkey Barrel. Find a link in our show notes to grab tickets.

 

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

 

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and digital producer Alex Bishop.

 

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

 

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer Hannah Stewart.

 

Coco Khan The executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Dan Jackson and Madeleine Herringer, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

 

Nish Kumar Remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

 

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