In This Episode
“Shocking… but not surprising” – the words of Stephen Bush, Associate Editor at the Financial Times and Chair of the Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community for the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 2020. Stephen joins Nish and Coco to discuss the fallout from the shocking attack on a synagogue in Manchester last week.
The trio discuss solidarity and protest, and why the government’s response to the Manchester attack is not making all British Jews feel safer.
Stephen has also spent the weekend in an all-but empty exhibition hall, at Tory conference in Manchester. It’s a land of misspelt chocolate bars and retro racism – have the Tories given up the ghost?
Later – Coco and Nish try their hand at some data analysis – introducing Pod Save the UK’s brand-spanking-new diarrhoea index – before checking in on a bold new idea straight out of the Green’s conference – abolishing landlords.
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TRANSCRIPT
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Nish Kumar Hi, this is Pod Save the UK, I’m Nish Kumar.
Coco Khan And I’m Coco Kahn, coming up on today’s show, we’re joined by political journalist Stephen Bush to discuss the horrific anti-Semitic attack at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur and new measures to further restrict pro-Palestine protests.
Nish Kumar And after weeks of hearing nothing from the main party of opposition, the Tory party conference didn’t turn out to be the boost that they needed. It turns out they can’t even spell the name of the country they want to run.
Coco Khan Meanwhile, at their conference, the Green Party membership have voted to abolish landlords. So what would that mean for the UK? So look, last week brought the awful news of an attack on a synagogue in Manchester while worshippers marked Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Two people were killed, one of them accidentally by the police, and three were seriously injured. The attacker was shot dead at the scene.
Nish Kumar It’s truly horrific news. The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council has issued a joint statement which ends, At a time of rising anti-Semitism in the UK, this attack was sadly something we feared was coming. We call on all those in positions of power and influence to take the required action to combat hatred against Jewish people.
Coco Khan Since the 7th of October attack by Hamas, actually two years ago this week, and Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza, there has been a sharp rise in reports of anti-Semitism across the UK. According to the Community Security Trust, there were 4,296 reports in 2023. That was a record. And there’s been 1,512 in January to June 2025. This Manchester attack stands alone though as the worst on Jewish people in the UK in living memory.
Nish Kumar It’s heartening to see, however, that in its wake, there have been powerful messages of support from the wider Manchester community who gathered in their hundreds to mourn. The Manchester Council of Mosques said that any attempt to divide us through violence or hatred will fail. The leaders of the Heaton Park Synagogue where the attack took place said they have been strengthened by the countless expressions of solidarity that are poured in.
Coco Khan To discuss the attack, the impact on British Jews and the political consequences, we are joined now by Stephen Bush. Stephen is a columnist and associate editor at the Financial Times. He also chaired the Commission on Racial Inclusivity in the Jewish Community for the Board of Deputies of British Jews in 2020. Stephen, oh my goodness, what have the last few days been like?
Stephen Bush They’ve been strange, I think, partly because I think if you’re sort of remotely engaged in communal life as a British Jew or indeed anywhere in Europe, you know that this is the kind of thing which can happen because when you have a big event, there will always have to be extra security. And one of the themes in my commission, which is about how minorities within the minority were treated and felt in the communities, obviously security was a big theme which came up. The thing that doing that makes you very aware of is the serious terrorist threat that we do face as a community in this country from the extreme far right, which has tried and failed four times since 2013 to kill Jews, and from jihadists who have tried and failed twice since 2013. So you kind of always knew something like this could happen. So it was sort of shocking, but not surprising, which is made for a kind of deeply surreal kind of couple of days because it’s It’s almost like when someone you’ve known who’s been ill for a long time has died, where you have this kind of weird mixture of grief. Not grief, but also where you feel like you’ve lived it before it’s happened.
Nish Kumar You wrote in the FT that, for many Jewish people, the attack is shocking but not surprising, inevitable. And that echoes a couple of the statements that were made this week. I mean, has there not been enough of a conversation outside of the Jewish community about the inevitability of something like this? Are we seeing the consequences of a failure to have that conversation at a more broader national political level?
Stephen Bush All of the evidence is this guy was motivated by Jewish extremism and religious extremism, which in a liberal democracy, you’re always going to have some of. I don’t think actually that this particular attack is one where the failures talk about it more is a key issue. But in terms of the general sense of precariousness and anxiety that has risen in the Jewish community over the past two years to a decade, there has been a failure to talk enough about this violent threat, which of course is so, it is so linked to the. Wider rise of race and racism that we’re seeing in the United Kingdom more broadly, right? Although there are some members of the community who have a, I would say, very short-sighted view about the rise of Islamophobia, the rise, you know, the return of sort of quite traditional street racism, obviously for most British Jews who, you don’t have read a history book, what happened to the Pisaven Mosque days afterwards is another kind of Oh, God, things are getting bad here. Maybe we should leave the March. A week goes another. Oh, you know, things getting bad here, maybe we should lead. And I think then that broader failure to talk about those problems. I do think all contributes to attacks like this happening and also to how the community feels about them. Right. This wider backdrop of anxiety and precariousness for the community. And that is the thing I think we have failed to talk.
Nish Kumar Every minority is living scared in this country right now. You know, I didn’t think we would come to a point in 2025 where black and brown people are running scared because of, you know, rising incidences of street racism. You have an arson attack on a mosque and a terrorist attack on people praying in a synagogue. I’m trying to balance this idea out because I think you can lose perspective sometimes and think things have never been this bad before. This is the worst things have been of all ever. Or you can go over, over correct and say, look, we’re being naive. Things have absolutely improved. The reality is progress was never ever going to be a straight line. And we were never just going to steadily incrementally improve year on year on year, in terms of our treatment of minorities. I think it’s important to set this in context. Things have definitely improved in my lifetime, but we are in a moment of regression and it’s. As progressive people and people who are interested in the safety of minorities more broadly, the Jewish community is absolutely folded into this conversation as much as possible because an attack on one of us, an attack of all of us. You know, that’s a phrase that’s often repeated, but it’s never felt more true now than it is in this moment.
Stephen Bush Yeah, I think all of that’s exactly true. Things are undoubtedly better than they were when I was a child. People using the P word openly, people coming up to you and touching your hair, people speculating about, oh, if you’re mixed race, well, you’re never going to belong anywhere. And people thinking that was an acceptable thing to say to my mother in front of me. Now, obviously, all of has got better, but we are living through a reminder that progress is not inevitable and things can get worse and things are. In a period of getting worse. So I’m going to inevitably link it to the thing I did immediately after the attack, which is go to the Conservative Party conference to cover it, where you have Robert Jenner making remarks that are just unambiguously expression of racism. And you have kind of people going like, oh, well, you know, maybe what he meant was, guys, what the hell is going on here? It is kind of unnerving because it’s sort of like, you know, the plane is going down. But the pilot is bizarrely calm and he’s just going like, oh, you know, don’t worry. I’m still out here making jokes with the passengers. And you’re like, do you not want to get back in there?
Coco Khan I think we are living through something very, very scary and yeah, I understand it’s completely maddening. I suppose I return back to my question about, you know, how are you Stephen? You know, what is going to happen next, do you think?
Stephen Bush I always feel bad about the fact that, you know, like, when I feel that whenever I talk about Jewish life, I make us seem like we spend all of our time being like the ears of the ethnic minority world going like, things can get bad. But yeah, like I said, lots of Jewish, which is about joy. But I realized that my my kind of core memory of Jewishness is reading a book by Judith Kerr, who wrote the mob books, but also wrote books for slightly older children. One of the first of which is called When Hit the Stole Pink Rabbit, and it’s about family having to flee. First from Germany to Switzerland, and then eventually at the end of the book, ending up in the United Kingdom where she obviously grew up, lived, died, and wrote the mob books. But because I’m mixed race, I didn’t really think I thought of myself as an exciting new thing. I didn’t think of myself a Jewish. But there’s a character, her uncle Julius, who similarly doesn’t think of himself as Jewish, so doesn’t leave with the rest of the family, and as a result dies. And it kind of really lived in my memory Gaza. Oh, actually, like your sense of your identity is not the only thing that matters. Other yeah, others matter, yeah, how others perceive you does as well. And so sometimes, when I’m feeling depressive, I have this kind of sense of, oh, God, when i say things will probably be fine. Am I just being Uncle Julius? Are things going to get really bad? And then sometimes, and it can actually be completely unrelated to the news, I think Do you know what ultimately like we are going to defeat these people? We are not going to be as a country dragged into the dark. We’ve had the privilege of being the first generation of minority creators who have not mostly had to write about race, right? The thing which is sad about this regression is in an odd way, I realize I feel more anxious on the days I’m not writing about it, because I am vain enough to believe that like one more piece from a, like a self-involved mixed race Jew is going to like stem the tide of this stuff. When I’m writing about it, I realize I feel better because I feel I’m doing something. The weird thing and the slightly upsetting thing is when I like doing sort of a like more fun piece about like, you know, what’s on in the cinema, I occasionally have this, is this the last time and this will happen, etc, etc. But yeah, so my mood goes in waves, as I think It does, does for all of us.
Coco Khan Now, Keir Starmer has promised to do everything in his power to protect Jewish people, but it’s been disappointing for us to see that the government’s efforts have been directed at arguing for restrictions on pro-Palestine protests. So here’s Shabana Mahmood speaking to the BBC.
Clip The freedom to protest is a precious freedom in this country, but what I would say to people that are planning to go on a protest is just to take a step back for a minute. Imagine if you had lost a loved one to a terror attack in this county, and just because you have a freedom doesn’t mean to say you have to use it all the time. Sometimes a little unity, a little solidarity, some love and friendship to other people is required.
Coco Khan We all instinctively know that when there’s an attack on one minority, it stands to reason it will happen to another if it’s not already happening, you know, we should all be shaken by things that happen to other communities. So when I saw these comments, my instinct was like, no, the government is essentially trading in a divisive rhetoric, and it’s trying to make very unhelpful conflations. You know, this is, we’re talking about British Jewish people who have got nothing whatsoever to do with Netanyahu’s government, like… This is a really convoluted way of asking is when you heard the Labour response, how did you feel?
Stephen Bush I hear and understand the anxiety in the community that they are responding to, which is that sometimes on these marches, you have slogans of people saying things which are not legitimate criticism of the state of Israel, they are visible anti-Semitism. And afterwards, when some of those people are going home, you do then get a spike of someone abusing a strictly orthodox woman on the 106 bus, right? And so I understand, therefore, why there are some people in the Jewish community whose response is, you’ve just got to cancel the marches, you just got stop them, and there are people who, for the march, are themselves a great source of anxiety. And that is obviously the fear and concern that the government is trying to respond to. However, as I said, the reason why I think that is unhelpful is, to be honest, I think it creates a sense of anxiety about the majority of people on those marches. That is not actually helpful to Jewish flourishing. It doesn’t help us feel confident and safe in this country to have the government basically go, oh, well, your anxieties that a minority of people on this march actually represent the vast majority of people posting about and concerned about the Palestinian cause is not true, right? It’s a fear why I understand why some people in my community think it, but it’s not, I think, yeah, remotely helpful. The government to aerate it right and yeah and then for them to use that words like un-British to describe continuing to protest. I think it’s also part of a broader problem that all minorities have had with this government which is Keir Starmer’s weird inability to make arguments for things like he just wants to find a word which means that so he doesn’t want to go like oh I’m gonna make a complex argument where I go look I understand and share your views about what is going on in the Middle East. However, for some people who have just experienced an attack, this march going past their home this Saturday will make them feel embattled. So if you could just not do it this week and then go back to doing it next week, right? Instead, he has his instincts to go, oh, I’m gonna reach for a label that he thinks means he doesn’t have to make any arguments. And it’s just incredibly corrosive because it doesn’t explain to anyone what the problem is. Obviously for most people, I think in most communities. They do understand, oh, what happens to the Haredi community in Stamford Hill is also of concern to the Muslim community in Peace Haven. What happens to a Muslim community is also a concern to them. But the government has not done a good job of easing its convening power on those issues.
Nish Kumar Stephen, just following on from that, I want to quote Professor David Feldman, who’s one of the signatories on the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, and who has on a few occasions given this podcast his expertise and advice, and he said this, policy makers and activists must integrate action against antisemitism within a broader anti-racist strategy. That is to say, anti- racism must inform what we do. Not only when confronting anti-Semitism in the UK, but also when we address the status and treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, the occupied territories and Israel. And I would just add to that, the progressive communities in this country have an absolute moral obligation to reciprocate that to the Jewish community. And we talk a lot about systemic racism and we talk lot about how the systems that raised us contain prejudice. But then when we’re accused of prejudice in of ourselves, as products of that system, we instinctively become defensive, instead of thinking we are byproducts of imperfect systems. And so we have an obligation to continue to challenge our own beliefs and push ourselves forward and keep going. And the solidarity has to go both ways. And we have to understand that the Jewish community has always been an essential part of the fight against racism in this country. I also really strongly feel that any conflation… The actions of the Israeli government and the Jewish diaspora is incredibly dangerous and racist. And I mean that from both sides of the equation. If you’re a progressive person and you think you’re helping Gaza by conflating the actions with Jewish people, fuck off. You are not helping anybody. Equally, I think when the government immediately moves towards talking about Palestine marches, you’re being unhelpful, it is. Part of the textbook definition of anti-Semitism to conflate the actions of the Israeli government with the actions in the Jewish diaspora, and on every side of every political equation, we need to push back very, very hard against that.
Coco Khan So after the break, Stephen is staying with us to discuss the Tory Party Conference and to be frank, it’s total irrelevance.
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Nish Kumar Now, Stephen, you’ve been at the Tory party conference this week and we thought it might be worth getting your thoughts on how this played out. Now, again, when I say worth, we again, not to tip too much of the production process of this podcast, we have a Monday meeting where we discuss the issues that may come up within the show and the producers and us have a back and forth about it. And there was, I will say a 10 minute discussion about should we fucking bother with the Tory Party conference? Stephen, how much of that was reflected on the ground.
Stephen Bush The weird thing about what’s happened to them is they’ve managed to turn themselves into a minor party. But what I didn’t anticipate until I arrived, which I think, if we’d known that, I think more people would have gone, oh God, why are we bothering, is that they have all of the what is the point of being here of a conference for a smaller party, but they still have the ego of we’re really relevant. So you have all of the security theater and all of those things which make doing a big party conference faintly annoying. But none of these people matter. So few of them seem to want to matter. I’m glad I went, it’s actually because the, as a sort of physical moment in the potential death of the oldest and most successful party in the United Kingdom, arriving at this plate at Manchester, where I’ve covered them so many times, through so many victories, when it’s been full of, you know, full of people, to arrive and get into the security fence. And being able to see all the way to the other side of the security zone because there were so few people that even between the metal fencing they weren’t enough to block your view out and it was like a real oh wow there used to be a political party over there I bumped into a friend from another organization and he was just like why are we here yeah But what’s the point?
Coco Khan Wow. Truly humbling. I feel like there’s a lesson here, you know, one minute you’re up, the next minute you are irrelevant. It’s like the Conservative Party and Peter Andre to just remind us of that. That’s not really fair to Peter Andre. He had had a comeback. The Independent had an enjoyable headline. The Tory conference is a ghost town. Even the protesters have a bother to show up. And on Tuesday, there were scenes of Shadow Home Minister Chris Philp. Dropping jokes to a nearly empty room. I mean, you said, oh, it was strange to see, you know, the most successful party, certainly in… Certainly the last 100 years, 200 years. Do you really think it’s the end of them? Do you believe that?
Stephen Bush The thing that lots of conservatives say to you, not unreasonably, is, look, Faraj could die. Which, you know, ultimately he’s in his 60s, he smokes and drinks, right? And so it’s, it’s one of those odd things where when you say it feels distasteful because it is distaste for, but it is nonetheless, of course, a thing which could happen. I think it’s also important thing that people know that people are saying because it captures actually just how desperate they are, right? Then they are essentially at a point where they’re like, Oh, you know, maybe Providence will save us because there are ways that you can imagine them coming back, but I just don’t think that they are as an institution capable of doing so in the, one of the reasons why the last year has been the Farad show. Is with the exception of Laura Trott and the partial exception of Mel Stride. None of the Shadow Cabinet have at any point ever been able prosecute an argument about what the government is doing in their brief. Basically, the week in which we were arguing about the government’s education plans is really the only week in the conservatives have successfully done their job as the main opposition. And if they were to start doing their jobs properly, I think we would talk less about immigration, an issue where basically everyone in the country, for one reason or another, thinks the conservative record was terrible. But every day that immigration is in the news is a day which… Saps power and life from the Conservative Party and hastens their own their own death. Even if they were to change leader, there are only 119 conservative MPs, like you really are sort of like moving around a Sudoku and once you’ve eliminated the people who are old and don’t want to, mad and shouldn’t want too, and indeed I would say there are several people in the shadow cabinet who should not be in the front bench of a party that considers itself to be a respectable one. It’s hard to see, is there actually something viable still here that can fight back for its life? So yeah, I just feel to me like we are witnessing not maybe their death, but we’re witnessing the transition that happened to the liberals a hundred years ago, where you go from being the main party on the left to the kind of weird one where people go, oh, you know, because I’m way cooler, I occasionally rewatch old election programs. And I was watching the 1955, which is on the iPlayer, just in case any listeners that I, um, but there’s this weird thing where they have like the liberal spokesperson who’s a guy in his sixties, who was a member of the young liberals under Asquith, who’s going like, Oh no, we’ve done well. And they basically stood about maybe 50 and 50 candidates across the whole country and this thing is just thinking when that guy joined the liberals, he was joining the dominant party of government. So that stuff can happen. And I think we possibly are living through a, a similar moment where, you know, in 50 years, there’ll be a conservative. Spokesperson on election night going, oh, well, you know, we stood 80 candidates this time around. And we had a very good showing in Richmond Park. Because yeah, yeah, parties can die.
Nish Kumar Is part of the problem now that there is no reason for the Conservative Party to exist in the modern British political landscape.
Stephen Bush Yeah, I think the big difference is in the 90s and 90s, they were doing very badly. They also had the added problem and the Labour government at the time was rather more popular and successful than this one. But there was nowhere else for that. Broadly speaking, in any democracy, you’re going to have a party that is more pro business and a party which is more pro-worker. In some cases, you’ll have like a centrist party, which is genuinely both. But most centrist parties have a wobbly wheel, right? They’re either like Arulid Dems. They’re a centist party, but they tilt to the left. Or they’re like the FTP in Germany, they’re a centrist party, but they tilt to the right, right? So there’s always gonna be a party filling that market demand as it were. And at the moment, it looks like reform are able to successfully do that. There is also a broader global story, right, that the center right is in quite a lot of trouble in most democracies. Even in Japan, where they’ve been hegemonic, they’re now, they’ve lost their majority, they’re trying themselves to move to the, right to. So shore up that flank. The Republican party, of course, has been completely transformed. Yeah. Yeah. The difference is, is that there is somewhere else for former conservatives to go. I do also think quite an important difference is that the Thatcher major government were successful on their own terms. They actually had created a lot of winners who felt themselves to be winners, who knew that they owed their own prosperity to those government, who therefore had a reason to stick around. And the last conservative government was not very good understatement of the decade, right? Just like on its own terms, right, like, you know, if you’re a small business, you’d like trading goods with the EU shafted by the conservative. If you’re someone who cares about immigration shafted, by the conservative, if he used public services shafted buy the conservative reason why they’ve become a party of very rich pensioners who own their own houses in a handful of rural constituencies. That is the only demographic that the last government was not a failure for it. One of the other big things which kept leaping out at the conference was it’s a party in which essentially a condition for entry now, not an official one, but the de facto bar to participating in conservative politics fully is you have to be willing to say Brexit was good. Well, you’re never going to appeal to successful people in their 30s, 40s and 50s. If you’ll, you know… The shock troops of conservatism being people in that age bracket who’ve done all right for themselves, if you are required to tell them then it’s actually good that their business has more bureaucracy, it’s good that it’s harder for them to go and it’s also good that the euro stock queue is longer and more unpleasant. Those aren’t things that anyone believes. Even some of the people in the conservative party who say it with the conviction of a hostage video, don’t believe it, but I think and they haven’t realized them. That is just a form of halitosis with them. And there’s just reform who are, if you are attracted to that kind of politics, are a much more attractive vehicle. A, because Farage doesn’t seem to hate everyone, seems to hate most people, but it doesn’t seemed to hate everyone in the way that the conservative leadership does. And he also isn’t culpable for it. So yeah, that is their big problem.
Nish Kumar We could sit here and talk about how the conference was a disaster. We could bring up the weird reform branded cigarette packet. We can bring up that the gift bags had a chocolate bar in it that said when Labour negotiates Britain loses, but the word Britain was misspelled. We could all bring that up and.
Stephen Bush Did you get one, Stephen?
Stephen Bush I did not.
Coco Khan Did you get a-
Nish Kumar You didn’t get a when Labour negotiates Britian loses.
Stephen Bush Uh uh well it’s more accurate to say than because i’m greedy i i ate it through the wrapper away without looking at it uh so yeah we can add that to my list of missed scoops um uh yeah i just like hey look when someone gives me a chocolate bar Stephen wins.
Coco Khan I love making fun of the Tories, of course, but even I felt a kind of embarrassment for whoever was involved, just a human-to-human, like you spelt Britain wrong, and I was just thinking to myself, they’re going to release a… Statement saying no, no, it’s our new our new target Tory voter Brit Ian. It’s Brit Ian, he’s our new character that we’re talking about. Brit Ian! Yeah, yeah, when Labour negotiates, Brit Ian loses. Anyway, you can have that for free, CCHQ, if you’re listening to pull it back. Um, but let’s go back to, to Jenrick. I know we’ve already alluded to this. It was certainly the biggest story on Monday in a brilliant stroke of editorial timing, the Guardian released a recording of Kemi Badenoch’s leadership rival, Robert Jenrick complaining about visiting an area of Birmingham. Let’s take a listen.
Clip I went to Handsworth in Birmingham the other day to do a video on litter and it was absolutely appalling. It was as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country. But the other thing that I noticed there was that it was one of the worst integrated places that I’ve ever been to. In fact, in the hour and a half that I was filming with news there, I didn’t see another white face. And that’s not the kind of country I want to live in. I want to live in a country where people are properly integrated.
Nish Kumar Stephen, this is an incredibly staggering comment for somebody to make, especially somebody in Jenwick’s position, who a lot of people, myself included, assume he will be the next leader of the Conservative Party.
Stephen Bush I suppose we shouldn’t be stunned at the number of things that Robert Jenrick is ignorant of, but a British Indian, a British Pakistani, a West Indian and a British Zambian all living together, that is a British integration success story. Quite famously, Indians and Pakistanis aren’t from the same country. Like he.
Nish Kumar Spoiler alert to anyone who’s just got to, who’s only reached 1946 in history, but some shit went down, the British were involved.
Stephen Bush When Robert Jenrick says it was the worst integrated and the reason I know this is because I didn’t see any white people, he would just say, oh, that person is black, probably not well integrated. Oh, that persons Asian, oh probably not well integrated, like that is just the text of his argument, right? I mean, it’s one of those things where it’s so retro that I’ve like started to end up using words in copy than I’ve only ever read in history books, like I actually typed the word skin color prejudice this morning and I was just like, what the? Yeah I sound like an anti-racist activist from the 1960s like, you know, yeah, it’s just
Nish Kumar Next week, Stephen for his newsletter will be discussing the rise of phrenology, skull shape measurement.
Coco Khan I hope Robert Jenrick doesn’t watch this on YouTube, because he’ll see us three and he’ll say, oh my God, they’re not integrated, but don’t worry, we’re going to invite a random white person on called Brit Ian, and he will make up the quota.
Nish Kumar What you’re saying, Coco, is 100% exactly correct, and just to go back to Stephen, like your analysis of it, what you’re say is, let’s take from the text what he said. What he has said is, he didn’t reference language, he doesn’t reference anything, he said, I saw a bunch of people that weren’t white, and I used that as evidence that they were not integrated. Were he to be on this podcast recording right now, based on the same evidence he gleaned from the part of Birmingham that he was in, he would describe this as an integrated. Zoom call. It’s hard sometimes, but sometimes you just have to judge somebody by the things that they have said.
Stephen Bush And this thing is, it’s not the first time, you know, I mean, like one of the reasons why I decided in the end, I was not going to go to any of the final night parties is I just growing so sick of Tory MP going like, oh, what you don’t understand is, and it’s just like, no, I think what you understand is you think he’s going to become leader. You don’t want to have to lead the Conservative Party. So you’ve come up with some convoluted like, Oh, well, you have to think about a thing. But so it was explicit what he said. And it’s the first. Right. He has consistently talked about areas in terms of the portion of the white British. It’s like, well, look, we measure whether or not people are participating in the Labour market. We measure what people think about social aptitude. We measured whether or not, people speak English well. Indeed, these are all things that we measure about Hansworth. And it shows a very different picture to the one Robert Jenrick once said. He is someone who has repeatedly chosen to talk as if, as saying, this is not an indirectional idea than white British is the only thing which counts. And I think we should be clearer than actually. It’s the existence of conversations like this that I think he is really motivated by. I think if you want to understand the journey that Bert has been on, it’s when he resents that he was passed over in favor of Rishi Sunak, then he was passed over by Rishi sunak in favor of James Cleverley and then conservative members chose Kemi Badenoch over him. And then his politics is about a resentment and a belief that he has received less than he deserves. I mean, given his ministerial record, I think he’s received rather more, but Yeah, then and it is your classic skin color animus. And the reason why I think that is because that is the obvious explanation based on what he actually says and actually does.
Coco Khan Well, so he’s just a jealous bitch this whole time. Wow. Well, thank you, Stephen Bush, for joining us.
Nish Kumar For all the conversation we’ve had today, Stephen, thank you so, so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.
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Coco Khan Now after the break, is Badenoch cutting through? We get into the data and on a more jubilant tone, the Green Party kicks off their first eco-populist conference with a promise to abolish landlords.
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Coco Khan Okay gang, so this was Kemi’s make or break conference and we thought it might be worth quickly analyzing some Google search trends, see we’re doing some serious work here, to give a flavor of whether or not she’s been cutting through. So I’m going to be talking about graphs right now, which I’m gonna do my best to describe. So we’re looking at the search interest between Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer over the last 30 days and the only time where Kemi has managed to just about beat Starmer was around her conference speech on Sunday and around the generic drama on Tuesday.
Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s right. So on the graph lines, you’ve got a red line for Starmer, a blue line for Badenoch, and it just peaks above Starmer just for the conference speech and then the generic thing. However, when we look at Nigel Farage across the same period, he is averaging a search interest just below Keir Starmer’s, and there are occasions where his search interest is substantially higher.
Coco Khan Yeah. So he’s really tracking closely behind Starmer. It sort of reminds me of like, I mean, you never played netball, did you Nish?
Nish Kumar I do not play netball.
Coco Khan But if you play netball. That’s a great image. But if you play Netball, you know, you have to mark one person. You can really get that sense of it, of him kind of following Starmer
Nish Kumar Yeah, so there’s a yellow line to Marx Farage on this for the benefit of the podcast listeners, and there’s sort of periods in late September where the interest in Farage really spikes. Now just as a point of reference, if we throw the search term diarrhea in as a control, which we know the American spelling poles higher, you can see that there are times where both Starmer and Farage have crossed the diarrhea threshold, which is a very important term in political science, which is where on A couple of occasions, people have searched Keir Starmer’s name more than they’ve searched the word diarrhea. And on one occasion, Nigel Farage crossed the diarrhea threshold. Kemi Badenoch is a long way away from being as interesting to the British public as diarrhea.
Coco Khan Daria was always going to be a very popular search term though, in this country, we are known for our terrible gut health and love of takeaway foods and spicy foods. But it’s clear that Kemi isn’t cutting through. So we’ve seen the reform aping strategy fail within Labour. Why does Kemi think it’s going to work out for her?
Nish Kumar I think she’s just falling victim to every single Tory leader for the last 15-16 years, which is that you think you can ape Nigel Farage and eventually the only way to successfully – you just end up giving him everything that he wants. That’s basically what every Tory leader has done. I think that more often we should use the search term for My rear is a metric for political cut-through.
Coco Khan Well, maybe we can, we can start it here, a PSUK exclusive, the Diarrhea Index.
Nish Kumar Nigel Farage actually did give me diarrhea, I don’t know if I’ve spoken about this on the podcast, but I did have violent diarrhea the morning Brexit went through and I’ve always held Farage personally responsible for that. My stomach sensed a storm coming.
Coco Khan Okay, let’s go back to talking about the greens, the lovely, lovely greens.
Nish Kumar It was green actually, weirdly. Some of it was green.
Coco Khan I was going to try and make some like joke about like healthy diets and greens and vegans, but it’s just, it’s all, it is too bowely, all of this. Anyway, so look, the Green Party conference kicked off last Friday. Here’s Zack Polanski practically bounding onto stage to give his inaugural speech as leader.
Clip This May is huge. Hateful, divisive politics will be on the ballot paper. We can, and we must reject that. Let, instead, let’s look after each other. The Green Party’s moment is now. We are ready. Thank you, Conference. Let’s go!
Coco Khan I really feel the energy and the excitement in the room. The Green Party, we should say, is now the fastest growing political movement in the UK. It’s got more members than the Lib Dems.
Nish Kumar Yes, this was the Greens’ first eco-populist conference, so messages of bold politics and pledges of bold plans were everywhere and mugs decorated with the grinning Polanski and the slogan Zaktivist sold out within hours. Also, crucially, the Green Party had a leg up on the Tories in that they consistently spelled the name of the country correctly, which is absolutely huge, alongside making the case for immigration and ending what called Rip Off Britain by nationalizing public utilities and taxing wealth. One of the big stories from the conference was on housing. A motion was passed by the membership to call for the abolition of private landlords.
Coco Khan Under the terms of the motion, the Greens would put more regulation and taxes on private rentals to make it difficult for landlords to make a profit, while also backing the building of more council houses through a state-owned manufacturer. They would also levy national insurance on rental income, which according to The Times, Chancellor Rachel Reeves is also considering. I mean, it all sounds quite good, doesn’t it?
Nish Kumar It definitely feels like the party is targeting policies at what I believe is its core demographic of sort of younger urban dwelling individuals in Britain. I mean, if you compare this to the Tory offer of a £5,000 tax break for young people in their first job, which is kind of help to buy your first home, there’s no doubt the Green Plan is more appealing. As anyone who’s tried to buy a house knows, five grand is not going to get you that in the current private housing market. And Green MP Carla Denia, and former guest on the show, notes that it doesn’t actually abolish landlords, but will reduce the proportion of the housing market that is privately rented over time and increase the proportion for council houses. The reality is, we need more council houses, we more housing that’s actually affordable for people on low incomes. We know that housing is an issue that animates a lot of our listeners, and we I know that a lot of the listeners to this podcast. Been very engaged by the things coming out of the Green Party in the interview that we did with Zack Polanski after we became leader. We would love to hear your thoughts as ever. How are you feeling about the Green party? How are we feeling about it as a viable alternative to the Labour Party? Also, what do you think of this housing policy? And would you vote for anyone if they promised to give you five grand? If that is the I would say value yourself a little bit higher. Don’t settle for just five grand. If you’re gonna be bribed, be bribed big.
Coco Khan Now before we go, we have a small shout out for ourselves. Last week we were absolutely honored to receive the Podcast Champion Award at the British Podcast Awards.
Nish Kumar The judge’s citation for Pod Save the UK at the BPA said that the podcast champion goes to a show which tackles tough issues with wit, humanity, humor and clarity. The hosts comedian Nish Kumar and journalist Coco Khan are joined by politicians, experts and famous friends to unpick the latest news with sharp political insight, fearless humor and refreshing honesty, building a loyal community and redefining how audiences engage with politics.
Coco Khan And for clarity, we did not write that. They wrote that about us. So, great. It’s good to hear when you try and do something and it’s received with the intent that you meant it. Anyway, we didn’t actually get a chance to make a speech at the event, so I’m thinking maybe we could do it here. So first of all, we’re obviously very flattered to have received an award like but we have to say this is an award for all of us. Including you, our beloved audience. We’re always absolutely delighted by the feedback that we receive from you, even when you’re calling us out. It hurts, but it’s meant in a good way, we know. And you really helped shape this show into what it is today, whether it’s emailing in your thoughts and opinions, tipping us off to stories, or just reminding Nish that he’s not really that old. It’s a big thank you to you, honestly.
Nish Kumar Yeah, this is an award that we share with the audience. Not literally, I cannot stress that enough. None of you will be getting a piece of the trophy.
Coco Khan I wanted to try and figure out what we should say, so I asked my old friend Chatty G. ChatGPT.
Nish Kumar Oh my god
Coco Khan I know, I know. I know I know anyway, it was actually it was quite good. And he kind of he, he’s a he everyone knows ChatGPT is a he, unsolicited opinions, tells you too much you didn’t ask for. And then you know, says back the thing that you said and pretends it was his idea. So that’s ChatGpT. Anyway, I did ask Chatty G. And what was really funny about it is he kind have covered the spirit of what we said here. Really latched on to the idea of save the UK and so delivered it all in like this stock British voice being like oh core blimey We’ve won a bleeding award and I feel like that’s missing from this show, Nish. We don’t do that enough.
Nish Kumar What Mary Poppins-esque Cockney accents?
Coco Khan Yeah.
Nish Kumar That’s what you think is missing from this show?
Coco Khan Yeah, so I’m going to do the credits like that.
Nish Kumar Okay, well I will not be doing that. I will read the credits as normal in spiritual protest for you using ChatGPT to write an acceptance speech that we weren’t allowed to give.
Coco Khan Um listen, I did not use it, it was merely an inspiration, that’s all I’m saying.
Nish Kumar Listen, I’m genuinely amazed that it got that much correct about the show.
Coco Khan It was making jokes. It was like, oh, more u-turns than a Liz Truss economic policy. I was like oh, Chatty G. Look at this. It’s actually very scary. Anyway, let’s do it.
Nish Kumar And that’s it! Thanks for the award, and thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Don’t forget to follow at Pod Save The UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, and Blue Sky. Pod Save The UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.
Coco Khan Cheers to Senior Producer James Tindale and Producer May Robson, I’ll see you down the pub!
Nish Kumar You’re from East London. You actually have an authentic East London accent.
Coco Khan The East London accents change a lot. It’s no longer really Ray Winston. It’s more like, do you know what I mean, fam? It’s one like that. We can do it like that if you prefer. Yo, shout out to Senior Producer James Tyndale. Producer May Robson smashed it, bruv.
Nish Kumar I feel like I’m on a pirate radio station in the early 2000s
Coco Khan One time!
Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.
Coco Khan The Boss Man is Louise Cotton and Katie Long with additional support from Ari Schwartz. Hear me now!
Nish Kumar And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcast.
Coco Khan I’m just gonna stop, it’s just awful
Nish Kumar Also, we promise Coco will not do that again.
Coco Khan I’ve just been watching too much old UK garish sets, I’m sorry.
