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This week, Nish and Coco make sense of another chaotic week in Westminster, as Keir Starmer clings on in Downing Street, Wes Streeting resigns, and Andy Burnham’s route back to Parliament suddenly becomes very real.

They’re joined by Nadia Whittome, Labour MP for Nottingham East and one of the earliest MPs to call for Starmer to go, to unpack the mood inside the Labour Party, whether Burnham is really the answer, and what Labour needs to do to win back progressive voters.

Plus: after Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson’s latest rally in London, how should progressives respond to the far right without simply echoing its politics?

And: Nigel Farage faces questions over a £5m gift from a crypto billionaire. Does the man of the people have some very expensive explaining to do?

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Femi Oluwole
Nigel Farage Interview: The Sun

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TRANSCRIPTS

Nish Kumar I’m Nish Kumar.

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan, welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Nish Kumar It’s been a very, very strange week in UK politics as Labour MPs prepare themselves for a leadership contest that now feels inevitable.

Coco Khan We’re joined by Labour MP Nadia Whittome, who’ll fill us in on the mood in the Labour Party after its humiliating fortnight. Plus, is Burnham the right person to succeed Starmer?

Nish Kumar And once again, Tommy Robinson and his far-right comrades have marched through London. We asked the same question we’ve been asking for the last year and a half. How can progressives stop the spread of the far-Right?

Coco Khan Plus, Nigel Farage is finally being investigated for the five million quid he received from a crypto billionaire.

Nish Kumar Keir Starmer is in Downing Street, but the question is, for how much longer? So, Wes Streeting has resigned as Health Secretary and confirmed that he would stand if a leadership race was triggered. The MP for Makerfield, Josh Simons, has sacrificed – it’s amazing to me that all this has happened since we last did a podcast – the MP for the Makerfield Josh Simonds has sacrificed his position, clearing the way for Andy Burnham to finally reach Parliament. Simon said of his decision, the Labour Party had been imploding over last week, and it was too big an opportunity to miss.

Coco Khan Nadia Whittome is the Labour MP for Nottingham East and she was one of the earliest MPs to call for Starmer’s departure. She joins us in the studio today. Hello Nadia, welcome back.

Nadia Whittome Hey guys, thanks for having me.

Nish Kumar How’s it going?

Nadia Whittome Like the honest answer or theee.

Coco Khan Always.

Nish Kumar Always.

Nadia Whittome It’s not going great, is it?

Coco Khan What’s the mood? But surely there’s got to be a little bit of levity amongst certain factions of the party, right? This feeling of a change of direction, getting back to Labour values.

Nadia Whittome I’m certainly feeling a little bit of hope for the first time in a long time. I mean, I called for Keir Starmer to go back in November. So it’s been clear to me for much longer than that, that we need to change in direction and pretty obvious that that wasn’t going to come under the current leadership. So kind of seeing that there’s a space opening for things to change. Is giving me a little bit of hope, but there are a lot of variables at play.

Nish Kumar So according to the Labour list, the number of MPs calling on starboard to quit has reached 97 as of Friday. There are more than 100 MPs.

Nadia Whittome There’s definitely a new Labour joke in there somewhere, but you can workshop it afterwards.

Nish Kumar The most heartbreaking of numbers for Keir Starmer. 97. The last year he was happy and now the number has come back to haunt him. More than 100 Labour MPs have signed an open letter declaring this to be no time for a leadership contest.

Nadia Whittome Which isn’t the same thing as we throw our support behind Kissed Armor because lots of people on the left could have signed that letter saying now’s not the time for a leadership contest because at that time it would have just been a coronation for someone on the right of the party. So even that is pretty damning.

Nish Kumar And also, all of this has been complicated because Labour MP Rupert Hurt has denied signing the letter despite her name appearing on the list. So like, what’s going on? Has Rupert like been scammed? It’s like an online petition. It’s going to turn out half the MPs are bot accounts.

Coco Khan Um, back to-

Nadia Whittome Like, Luke Achurst is signing it under multiple email addresses.

Coco Khan All I kept thinking was that like, obviously Rupert Huck is a brown woman. I just thought, Oh God, there’s going to be a mix up, isn’t it? Someone’s taken names and been like, that’s her. Isn’t it, that is her, isn’t it?

Nadia Whittome It was Shabana who signed the letter.

Coco Khan Meanwhile, though, despite these people that may or may not support Starmer, his approval rating with the public is very, very low. It’s currently at minus 46. And his departure, I mean, it feels inevitable really. Meanwhile, Andy Burnham has been officially announced as the Labour candidate in the Makerfield by-election.

Nish Kumar So look, according to the Guardian, allies say that despite Starmer’s public defiance, he is now willing to stand aside if Burnham wins a clear mandate in Makerfield and no other challenger emerges. I mean, who are you backing to succeed, Keir Starmer? Or are you just in a position where you’re like, anyone but Keir, and to be fair, was because I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The one thing we can all agree on in this increasingly divided country is no one wants Wes Street to be prime minister apart from Wes Street. And even here you can see doubt in his eyes. You can see it, even as he’s saying it. Even part of his brain is like, no, not you, Wes.

Nadia Whittome Yeah, I mean, obviously, I would much prefer Andy Burnham to either West Reading or Keir Starmer, but you know, that bar is kind of in the Mariana trench.

Nish Kumar Is there someone that you would like to see run for Labour leader from within the party?

Nadia Whittome Obviously it’s not going to happen because he doesn’t want it and I’m sure you wouldn’t mind me saying getting on a bit, but John McDonnell I would unequivocally back.

Nish Kumar Big Johnny Mac. I mean, yes. Yes.

Nadia Whittome The Tropfather. I think. We’ve got to kind of go back here to the conditions in the Labour Party that have been created by the Labour Together faction. They basically changed the rules so that MPs need a high number of nominations to get on the ballot paper. They made the percentage so it would effectively be impossible for any left-wing candidate, any candidate from the socialist a campaign group basically, which is… The grouping of Labour MPs that I sit in to get on the ballot paper. If you think back to 2015, Jeremy Corbyn only just got on because people lent them their votes. This has all been part of Labour Together strategy. This is the faction, sort of a faction think tank connected to Morgan McSweeney, Peter Mandelson. And basically for these people, their ultimate goal is to destroy the left. And everything else is secondary. So they had a plan for winning the leadership election in 2020. That was through a dishonest campaign that basically said that Keir Stalmer was going to be like Jeremy Corbyn, but with, with better comms. Yeah. Um, they then had a strategy to win the general election, which let’s face it, wasn’t difficult. The Tories imploded and lost the election. Any. Any Labour Party would have won. And of course, I’m glad that we did. But the problem now is that they didn’t have a plan for government and they didn t have a for when their piecemeal measures just wouldn’t be enough to significantly improve people’s lives. And then the other part of the gutting of democracy of the party was, and again, this is what Labour gathered it was. Kind of stitch up all of the seats so that left-wing or soft left, sometimes even barely soft left candidates were undemocratically kept off the short list and local Labour parties were denied the chance to have a proper open selection and vote for the candidates that they wanted. In fairness, this has happened to some extent under every leadership. But never on the scale that it did in 2024. So that means that we now have a Parliamentary Labour Party that is kind of made, or so they thought made in the image of Streeting and Mandelson and McSweeney, is You is not as rooted in the Labour movement as previous iterations of the parliamentary Labour Party would be. But even with this parliamentary Labour Party, the fact that we’ve got 97 MPs openly calling for the Prime Minister to go now from across all factions, I think just shows how dire the situation is.

Coco Khan So am I right in inferring from what you said there that the current front runners are not necessarily anyone that you’d be that excited about? Because anyone that’s a front runner is presumably someone who’s survived this culling is generally speaking probably more on the right of the party. Is that right?

Nadia Whittome No, not necessarily, because there are still lots of left-wing MPs in the party, but they don’t tend to be the newest intake of MPs, they tend to returning MPs. Some of the new MPs are actually pretty left- wing, and you can see the leadership kicking itself that they let this person slip through the net.

Coco Khan They turned up to their selection meeting wearing blue and they were like, they’ll never tell, you rip it open and it’s all red, baby. That’s what happened, right? That’s how politics works.

Nadia Whittome Yeah, well they won in seats that we were never expected to win in. Oh, fuck. Now we’ve got Neil Duncan Jordan and all his campaigns to deal with. Who is brilliant, by the way. He’s one of the 2024 intake MPs.

Nish Kumar The thing that is deeply strange in all of this, right, is that this think tank Labour Together, we’ve covered this a couple of times on the show. It’s been reported that they hired a PR firm who investigated the private affairs of journalists. The person who was the director of Labour Together at the time was Josh Simons, who actually had to step down from his position in government because of this investigation, because he said he didn’t want to become a distraction to the government’s agenda. He has stepped aside to allow Andy Burnham to run against Keir Starmer. Why do you spend all this time running a think tank that delivers Keir Starmer to power and then step aside to allowed the person most likely to remove him from his position as prime minister? Is it evidence that this is how far Keir Starmer has fallen in the eyes of even his most loyal supporters? I know it seems like quite a small point, but. It’s been fixating me the last couple of days just because I can’t work out what the hell is going on with Josh Simons. Like I really can’t. It’s really like, it’s really obsessive. I’ve become like Charlie Day in It’s Always Sunny. That image of him with the red wires going everywhere that’s now become a very popular meme on the internet. Just red eyed Charlie Day with string all over the wall. I can work out whats going on. I would Somebody from the official comms from the Labour Party to tell us what the fuck is going on. I sense an idea you don’t have a fucking clue of what’s going on, it doesn’t feel like they’re particularly clueing up the other MPs in the Labour party about what’s going on

Nadia Whittome They’re not even clueing up backbenchers who were ideologically close to them, let alone people like me. I mean, I, like, the romanticist in me wants to think that this is kind of a redemption arc story. But also I’m not naive, like Andy Burnham will be under pressure from all parts of the party. And I think because he has been on quite a political journey over the last. 10, 15 years. I think part of his appeal is that every kind of political tendency can kind of identify a bit of their own politics in him. I’m very glad that he’s coming back to parliament, I hope. I hope that we win the Makerfield by-election. I don’t think he’s the Messiah. I am under no illusions. I thing it will be really important that the left, both inside the parliamentary party. Labour members, but also the left outside of the Labour Party holds him to account and pushes him to the left because you can be sure that there will be forces on the right of the party trying to push him in the other direction.

Coco Khan I’m still interested to know when what, uh, Burnham is going to propose. I mean, it’s all very early days at the moment. But one thing that he has talked about in his campaign video is he talked about Manchesterism, which is a phrase that is kind of of his making, I suppose you would say certainly an idea that he had been very forthright in pushing. And broadly speaking, Manchesterism is a kind of business-friendly socialism, which he claims he’s, uh you know, he’s implemented to success in greater Manchester. Now look, we can get into the ins and outs of Manchesterism and there. He lived up to his promise or whatever, but even the idea of a idea being named, I found interesting because I feel like the Labour Party hasn’t said an idea, a new idea for a long time. And so even just the prospect of a discussion animates me, which is one of the reasons why I was so frustrated to hear that there were murmurs that if Burnham wins Makerfield, because the ultimate aim is to keep reform out, which I think is a good aim, they very, very scary and dangerous. If he proves that he can win Makerfield, which has got a strong reform base and could win, he proves he can defeat them, so there’s no need to have a contest. But the thing I want with the contest is an opportunity for a national discussion about what is Labour? What do we believe in? So, are we going to get an actual contest or is Mr. Burnham going to be crowned?

Nadia Whittome I think there will be a proper democratic contest, not because I think the people in charge of the Labour Party love democracy, as we’ve discussed, but because let’s be real, Andy Burnham is not their candidate and they’ll be hoping that he doesn’t win. I think right now during the by-election, it’s obviously not the space to be kind digging into these ideological debates and scrutinizing Andy Burnham. But that space needs to be opened up after, I hope, he wins, so that we can understand, well, what is your political journey? Why have your politics changed? What are they now? And people can hold him to account and get commitments from him. But we are sort of already seeing this.

Coco Khan Ideological contest debate happening already. So West Streeting, he’s spoken about a special relationship with the EU. People have said that the reason he’s bringing up the EU at all is because it’s a way to put Andy Burnham in a strange position. Obviously, Andy Burnam said we shouldn’t have left the EU, Makerfield was a very strongly Leave constituency. So he’s now saying, well, actually, you know, it’s not really on the table. So is it even possible to not get into these ideological debates about these candidates until after?

Nadia Whittome I think there have to be some kind of ideological debates, obviously in a more macro sense. We need to be setting out how the Labour Party is different to reform. Andy is standing on quite a unique platform for a by-election because he’s saying, vote for me to be your local MP and to champion this area, but also vote for to change the Labour party. So of course that kind of necessitates a certain amount of like discussion about ideology and policy and politics. But yeah, I don’t think it’s helpful to kind of bring up questions of should we return as members of the EU? And as you kind of intimated, I think it was tended to be helpful.

Nish Kumar We, I mean, listen, it will be very easy for the Labour leadership to sort of dismiss this conversation as, you know, some millennial leftist malcontents complaining. But I would say that one of the things that I talked about yesterday with Tommy, one of things that Tommy Vito and Ben Rhodes, who again, like I keep having to restate this, yes, they are our bosses, we think. It’s actually unclear who our bosses are. But they, They were the communications team for. A center-left candidate who won two elections in the United States of America. And both of them have, for the last couple of weeks, been talking about the Labour Party and saying, do not make the same mistakes that the Democratic Party made in 2024. We had somebody, Katie, who was one of the executive producers on the show, was here a couple of days ago saying, did the Labour party not see what happened in 2024? Everything about the they’re conducting themselves suggests that they’ve taken the wrong lessons. That can be gleaned from Kamala Harris losing the election. And they keep saying, we forced Kamala on the election without a full and thorough primary process. Also, a leadership election or a primary process actually allows you to stress test a candidate’s positions before you put them to the wider country. So there is a massive, massive advantage in a proper, thorough, and democratic process. So again, I would say this to the Labour leadership, if you’re not willing to listen to us, listen to Tommy and Ben, who have done this job on an enormous scale and are really desperately trying to warn you against making the same mistakes that the party that they worked for made in 2020.

Coco Khan Also, Biden stuck around too long. So Harris didn’t even have enough time to show that she was different. Um, and that’s worry here. Starman, if this takes ages, then let’s say whoever gets in, if they don’t have enough road to effect change, then by the time we get to the next election, I mean, for me, this is the, like, this, is the big fear is reform. It’s a reform government. They are literally in the wings waiting and it’s terrifying what they will do to our communities.

Nadia Whittome I think there are lots of people in the Labour Party who say, oh, we need to be learning from Denmark and the Social Democratic Party there, and what they did on immigration, which was like a terrible immigration policy. And we have learnt from Denmark, and implemented something similar, and it’s been a disaster, as we all warned it would be. But what I social democratic parties in the US, in Germany, and how… Their failures paved the way for the far right, because they didn’t get a grip on the cost of living crisis. They didn’t go far enough. They were far too timid. And people didn’t see their lives change. And I think that is the same kind of challenge that the Labour Party faces. And the thing that you were saying about discontented young people, I mean, never mind the fact that people are across all demographics. Pretty discontented. We’re united in that, at least. But we are also an important demographic. There’s a lot of talk about us losing seats to reform. And then the conclusion that the top of the Labour Party has come to is, well, we need to shift to the right on immigration. We need to out-reform reform. Not only is that wrong morally and politically because of the consequences that it has for. Real people’s actual lives, but it’s also electorally a complete disaster. So we’re actually losing more votes to progressive parties than we are to parties on our right. There was some sampling by the organization persuasion and basically of 2024 Labour voters, 33% are still voting Labour, 22% are voting Green. 10% are voting Lib Dem and 24% are staying at home. That’s compared to just 5% who’ve moved to reform and 3% who have moved to the Tories. So it’s so clearly a dead end strategy.

Coco Khan I think John Curtis said that the famous pollster said the same thing. It’s true that Labour was losing seats to reform, but when you look at how, it’s because their progressive base abandoned them.

Nish Kumar Even before we get into what the national conversation is going to be about, the Labour Party, Andy Burnham has to win the Makerfield by-election. And that is not a given at the moment. Reform won more than 50% of the local election vote in Makerfield at the most recent round of local elections. In the 2026 Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council election, Reform won all eight council wards in the Makerfiel constituency. This is also Thank you. An area that very, as we’ve said, heavily voted to leave the European Union. So it is not a given that this thing is going to break for the Labour Party. But the advantage within that for Andy Burnham is if he does win this by-election, he’s going to be able to turn around to the Labour party and say, I am your best chance of defeating reform at the general election.

Coco Khan Been a lot of conversations on the Green side of things about whether they’re going to stand a candidate. Karen and Lucas obviously came out and said, I don’t think we should do that. We need to be united against reform here. I think the Greens shouldn’t stand. Do you have a view on this?

Nadia Whittome I understand the argument. I very much feel that that is a decision for Green members to make. I understand the argument that we need to unite to beat reform. Ultimately, I think the only way that we can beat reform now is really through electoral reform and proportional representation. And I’m not just saying that as a tool to beat them because I’ve long supported. I think it’s the right thing to do, I think it would be the right to do even if it disadvantaged the Labour Party.

Coco Khan Well, that would be the agreement, right? It’s like if the Greens step aside, it would be with an understanding that at some point electoral reform will be on the table, although Burnham himself has said it would need to be a manifesto commitment and he would need to. So anyway, there’s been just a lot of discontent on the Green side of things. That’s certainly how I perceive it, just looking online with people saying the objective of the Greens was to overtake the Labour Party. They cannot be the party we think they are anymore. And this fear of reform. That on that point though, the Labour Party cannot be that party anymore. Would you agree with that? They cannot be the party progressives anymore. They’ve made too many changes. They have abandoned those values too long.

Nadia Whittome I think the current iteration of the Labour Party is just not one that most of us recognize. But I do believe that we can fight to change it. Some people might think, well, that’s futile, that’s naive. Time will tell. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think that there is value in staying in immediate issues like we did on the disability benefit cuts. And in terms of like what the Labour Party looks like in the future, well we’ve got to be in it to shape what that is. I don’t feel like I can just hand the party over to the likes of Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson, even if it would make me feel better to kind of be like, you what I’d like to help with this, because I’m as angry as everyone else is. But I just don’t think that that would be the right thing or the most useful thing for me to do. Certainly not at this stage. Maybe I’ll be proven wrong. I hope I won’t be. I hope we can win it back. I think there’s every chance that we can. I believe in the Labour movement. I don’t that that’s something that we could give up on.

Nish Kumar Listen, I think what you said is incredible, because I think it’s the Labour Party, historically, through the 20th century, delivered huge amounts of change that completely retooled Britain as a country. If you think about things like the NHS and the welfare state, that was delivered largely by the mechanism that you just described with the disability cuts, you know, external pressure groups. Pushing for a change that then is delivered by the conduit of progressive Labour MPs. And you know, so much of what we recognize in modern Britain today is a sort of direct consequence of legislation enacted by the parliamentary Labour Party. Do you still believe in the Labour Party as an organization and an entity that can reshape this country in a progressive image?

Nadia Whittome I mean, that’s why I joined the Labour Party when I was 16. I never had any illusions about the Labour party. I joined under Ed Miliband and actually, I joined because I was so frustrated with the kind of austerity-like platform that he was standing on and putting forward, which is ironic now because I look at Ed Milaband and I think he’s doing a brilliant job. In the cabinet within those constraints. And I don’t know if that says more about like the state of the Labour Party or about his political journey or kind of returning to himself. But yeah, there you go. What I thought would happen before the election, I thought we’d get into government, the Labour party would do some good stuff that didn’t go far enough, and might also. Have some rhetoric that I didn’t really agree with, but that wouldn’t end up being policies like the really anti-immigration policies we’ve seen. Then there’d be a reaction in the polls because people wouldn’t see their lives improve at the kind of pace that they need and expect. And I thought the Labour Party’s response to that, I thought that they would be forced to. Implement some bolder, more popular policies like minor wealth taxes, like equalizing capital gains in income tax, maybe some form of rent controls. But instead, they didn’t listen to people, they did not listen to the public, they do not listen backbench MPs, they gutted the Labour Party of every kind of accountability mechanism that existed, like local Labour parties, having a voice, and instead of listening, they kind of double down. They kind of said, oh, you said don’t take money off pensioners. We listened, and we took it off disabled people as well. That was always going to be a disaster.

Coco Khan There is a stereotype of progressives that we’re like, moany, right? We’re moany and whingy and we’re negative, which I just find…

Nish Kumar And only some of us are, only me and quite a few others, but not everyone.

Coco Khan But I just find it ridiculous because my whole thing about politics of the less politics of progressive is that it is inherently hopeful. It’s like saying my fellow man has the ability for greatness. If only we could unlock it, if only we can work together, there’s nothing that we can’t achieve if we would. That’s the whole point of it. I think of it as very blue sky. But there is something to be said about how certainly the current Labour Party and you know, some of the leaders. In my memory anyway, I have taken this downbeat tone that is something about like, not that this is the best you’ll get, but the idea that things could get a lot better, I think has been neglected. Or if it has been communicated not effectively, did anyone really believe Keir Starmer was enjoying himself? That he wanted to go out and meet people? He always looked like he was pained, you know, compared to someone like Nigel Farage who’s not my politics at all, but he certainly seems like he’s enjoying it. Something has happened where the politics of hope is being associated with doom mongers. The doom mungers are going to bring nothing but hate and rip apart communities, but yet people perceive of them as hopeful candidates because they trade in lies. This is the brilliant future you could have. And no one’s really saying that. Anyway, Andy Burnham, at least he seems like he’s enjoying himself. At least he seemed like he genuinely loves politics and going out and meeting people and he had Oasis do his video, which I don’t know if that counts as an endorsement. But it was certainly interesting.

Nish Kumar After the break, we’ll cast all sorts of doubt and throw shit all over this optimism by discussing this weekend’s Unite the Kingdom March in London.

Coco Khan [AD]

Nish Kumar Now, last Saturday the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson addressed a huge crowd in London telling them to prepare for a battle of Britain. It was the second of his United Kingdom rallies, a gathering for the best and brightest of Britain’s Islamophobes and ethno-nationalists.

Coco Khan According to police estimates, the number marching was down compared to last year, but campaign group Hope Not Hate still described the march as deeply worrying. Journalist and friend of the show Femi Oluwale was at the rally. He sent us this.

Femi Oluwole It’s definitely an experience to be a lone black man in a crowd of tens of thousands of racists, many of whom you know would like to do you harm. Because like, I was at the Tommy Robinson March and I posted a video and there’s a comment on there which says, Femi, you need a good beating. And it has 94 likes on it. I think the issue is, the reason why I feel comfortable calling them racist is because of what they’re willing to tolerate. Because I think in big 2026, we could all understand that racism doesn’t necessarily mean I actively hate and want to hurt all black people or brown people. That’s not what it is, because you don’t have to, because the status quo is racism. So you don’t actually have to. It’s what you’re willing to tolerate. That’s what determines whether or not someone’s racist. And if you’re wiling to turn up to a march where you have a leader saying he wants to violently kick out pretty much all Muslims from the country and he’s enemy combatants, which implies that it’s green light to kill them. If you’re willing to show up for that kind of person, you’re a racist. So being in that crowd, knowing that many of them hate me was definitely fun. One funny thing was, though, however, there was one guy who came up to me, he was like an older dude, military guard for some reason, and he said, oh, I don’t want to sound like to insult you, but I thought you looked like Femi for a second. I was like, Yeah, that fucking loser.

Nish Kumar So look, according to the police estimates, the rally drew 60,000 people, which is down from the estimate of the last rally in September, which was 150,000. Sir Robinson has encouraged supporters to move beyond protests and fighting to become involved in local politics. As well as Tommy Robinson, those speaking at the rally included ex-apprentice candidate Katie Hopkins, the actor Lawrence Fox, and TV’s Ant Middleton. I will be completely honest with you, I still don’t fully know who Ant Middleton

Coco Khan Oh my god, I’m so, I also was like, who’s Anne Middleton?

Nish Kumar It’s not Ant and Dec and it’s not a member of the Kate Middleton’s family, like I believe. So it’s neither one of those things, but he’s always described as TV’s at Middletown. I’m like, guess that guy’s on TV. But it was very much sort of the Glastonbury Festival for people who use the phrase cultural Marxism. Like that seems to be the kind of general vibe of it. It’s worth noting that there was a pro-Palestinian march on Saturday to commemorate the votes as the mass displacement of Palestinians. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. For people listening to the show, Nadia has googled Ad Middleton, showed us both a picture of it, and I’m afraid to say we’re still none the wiser or serious.

Nadia Whittome There’s British TV personality which doesn’t shed any light.

Nish Kumar We’re still struggling right into the show. Solve the mystery, who is Ant Middleton and why do I keep reading his name?

Nadia Whittome Who is Aunt Middleton and what is Josh Simons doing?

Nish Kumar That’s the two mysteries of this week’s episode. What’s going on with Josh Simons and who is Ant Middleton? He just keeps saying he’s on TV. What for? It’s not all negative. The charity Choose Love set up an initiative encouraging supporters to pledge money for every meet of the group march. They’ve raised more than £130,000. The CEO of the charity and friend of the show, Josie Fernandez Morelli, told the Metro. It’s about drowning out hate with love and sending an even louder message that refugees are welcome here. It’s really important that the government doesn’t allow this kind of idea to fester in communities, right? But that’s got to be a two-pronged approach. There’s got be pushing back on this rhetoric and saying, absolutely no tolerance of this kind of language in British society. And also, we need sort of more economic intervention. You know, we’ve studied it. We’ve seen it play out repeatedly. Studied it in history that terrible economic circumstances are a petri dish for extremist thought. So it’s got to be a two-pronged approach, right?

Nadia Whittome 100%. I completely agree. I think it’s about the government needs to unapologetically stand against racism and all forms of discrimination, while at the same time, improving the economic conditions in which far-right radicalization takes hold.

Nish Kumar Stammer’s come out pretty strongly against the rally in a statement on X, he said the organizers were peddling hate and division, though saying that on X does feel a little bit like the calls coming from inside the house and it didn’t speak for the decent, fair and respectful Britain that he knows.

Coco Khan Which, you know, that is a decent response, but again, a bit of a distraction from Labour’s actual immigration policies, which have continued to toughen. So last September, the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper temporarily suspended new applications for refugee family reunion. So that was a scheme that allowed those who have already been granted asylum to bring their families to the UK.

Nish Kumar It is good for Starmer to be borrowing a bit of their rhetoric and enacting policies that have the kind of DNA of that hostility contained within them. That is a really serious disconnect. So the scheme remains suspended, right? A new analysis from the British Red Cross estimates that at least 550 children could remain separated from their families each month because of the suspension. You can’t talk about being in a fight for the soul of this country, which is what the prime minister has said we are engaged in against the far right. Whilst also pandering to them legislatively, right? Like this is not helpful.

Coco Khan Going back to what we were talking about earlier about needing to have a national conversation. It’s so overdue in so many counts, even in terms of where we are on race and what we want about race, where we aren’t about violence against women and girls. At this march, they’re just constantly talking about violence, against women, and girls, which is of course an absolute epidemic, but they use it only to suit their kind of nefarious racist ends rather than looking at the kind of. The data, which tells us that this is a problem in every class, in every race, in every single community and is a scourge to be dealt with in a kind of colLabourative way. I came across this fantastic Instagram post from the brilliant feminist writer, Natasha Walter. She’d released a book recently and Kathleen Stock, she’s a professor. She basically reviewed Natasha Walter’s book and said that she didn’t like it because essentially Natasha Walter argues that if you’re a feminist, you have to be prior immigration and she doesn’t I don’t really believe that. Natasha Walter rebuts and says, well, I’m sorry, but if you support border policies that stops women escaping harm, you’re not a feminist. If you support activity that stops women being able to liberate themselves, you are not a feminists. That’s how it works. I think all of these conversations we’re having, are you a leftist? I’m sorry, if you do support racism, you have to ask yourself, are you a Leftist? These are conversations we need to have and almost get back to basics, which I hope the leadership…

Nadia Whittome Contest will give us. I think it does also show that kind of right wing, anti-trans, Venn diagram kind of becoming a circle as well because absolutely you can’t, if your feminism only extends to a certain group of women and that gets ever narrower, then are you a feminist?

Coco Khan As you said. I think that, you know, with this United Kingdom thing, there’s a tendency for us kind of millennials, the wokes, whatever we call ourselves, to laugh at these people. And you know I get it, like I saw one clip of someone basically making fun of these attendees, telling them lies, being like, did you know Muslims? I can’t even remember what they were, but it was like clearly ludicrous things and kind of saying, oh, aren’t Stupid, aren’t they stupid? And I just, I’m so over that. I just don’t think that’s actually helpful. This is really scary, genuinely scary. I mean, for anyone who is visibly Muslim, seeing people putting bacon on their shoulders, like they’re trying to ward off vampires with garlic. I mean it’s so dehumanizing and so terrifying. And these people are in our workplaces, they’re in our communities, they’re people who pick us up in taxis, they’re the people who might treat us at the dentist. But you know, this is scary, scary stuff. And it needs to be taken really seriously. So look, you know, I’m glad Keir Starmer said what he said, but, you know, little less conversation, a little more action.

Nish Kumar I think there’s a really important distinction to draw here, which is there are people who go on these marches that are kind of encouraged to blame societal problems by large sections of the British political class, large sections of the English media on immigrants, refugees, on multiculturalism, and those are people that the Labour Party needs to be reaching out to. I will say, if you are standing in your house getting ready to leave to go to a political march. And you slowly put raw bacon on your shoulders to ward off Muslims, you may be beyond help. If as the point that raw bacon touches your clothes, you don’t think, okay, I’ve lost my fucking mind here. You might be beyond hell. Listen, the three people on this podcasts currently are all, to some extent, by-products of multiculturalism in Britain. Right? That’s a huge part of our biographies. I’ve also spent most of the last 20 years of this country on a variety of mega busses, trains, coaches, and I’m not going to lie, in the last half decade, a very nice electric car that I rent. Traveling around this country. You know, I’ve done gigs anywhere that would have me. And you know, for most of the first decade of my career, I was not able to look at the electoral demographics of the towns and cities and villages that I was going to do stand-up comedy. And I don’t want to sound too idealistic or naive here, but my experience of traveling around this country for 20 years has, you know. Showed me a couple of things. One, the country is suffering. I’ve seen towns and cities decline as I visited them once or twice a year over a period of two decades. I’d seen high streets close up. I have seen the Wicked Gifts shopping center in Croydon, where I grew up going every weekend, become shuttered and weirdly only used recently for a Taylor Swift video. I’ve seen the real economic consequences of… Decisions that have been taken by successive governments in this country, right? But that all being said, most people in this county are living pretty happily side by side with each other. There are nefarious forces at work in our political system that are trying to drive us apart so that it can, you know, it’s an overseer class essentially trying to defend itself, right. Capital will do anything to defend itself. And it will align itself with whatever force it believes is going to defend it the most rigorously. And I think it is really important that we just sort of don’t lose sight of the fact that charlatans like Robinson, like Farage, like whoever Aunt Middleton is, are not representative of the majority of people that I’ve come across in my life.

Coco Khan Right. And that’s why, because this project, this racism project is clever and they change it to be as live and fluid as it needs to be to continue their agenda. And I won’t start doing my get on the soapbox talk about like, you know, racism serves a capitalist agenda that allows us to exploit the global south. But what they’ve done in just highlighting Muslims only. Is they’ve tried to take it out of the space of race, right? Cause most people don’t want to be regarded as a racist. They wouldn’t agree with racism. Instead, they turn it into like a disagreement of theology, almost. A disagreement of ideology. But the fact of the matter is in this country, most Muslims are brown and they’re black. So when you are anti-Muslim, let’s be real about it. So look, I just find it incredibly scary. At the moment, I keep asking my question, which is who is able to stop them? Is it the Labour Party? Is it a Green Labour Coalition? Is it just the Green Labour, whoever it is, I support you. I’m willing to turn a blind eye to certain shortcomings because I’m scared, you know?

Nish Kumar Who is able to stop a kind of voluble and unpleasant minority through kind of gremlins in our electoral system essentially being placed in charge of the entire country?

Nadia Whittome I think right now it has to be a radically reformed Labour government.

Nish Kumar Jesus Christ, when you said reform better, I was about to be like, oh my God, what the hell? Yeah, I saw your eyes. I was like, we’ve got an exclusive, but not the one we were hoping for.

Nadia Whittome I think it has to be like a radically changed Labour party.

Coco Khan Like you’re in the party, you go to that place, Westminster, is this being taken seriously?

Nadia Whittome I think people understand what is at stake, but I don’t think they have the answers to deal with it or they’re actively pursuing the wrong strategy. So like we were saying earlier, people are fundamentally decent. Most people are not actively hateful towards black and brown people, Muslims, refugees, migrants, but people are also being preyed See you next time. Bye! Capitalist class so that they punch down instead of looking up at the people who have actually caused the problems in our society. What the Labour government’s response to that should be is firmly standing with the whole of the working class in our full diversity and saying zero tolerance to racism, but also, at the very least, not having a racist. Cruel set of immigration policies ourselves, and also answering the kind of the economic problems. Allow that far right radicalization to thrive. Currently, the government isn’t doing anywhere near enough on the economics and they’re doing, and also in some ways, are going in the wrong direction, like Benefit Cart’s winter fuel allowance, and… On the kind of unapologetically standing with all working class people, including black and brown people, are actively going in the wrong direction.

Coco Khan That. And do you think, going back to that thing, who can fight this terrifying wave? And obviously I know that there will be activists and community organizers who will of course be doing a lot of groundwork and this is not to say that the only cure we have, the only way to be political is through the parliamentary system. I’m not saying that but nonetheless, is the Labour Party able to push back?

Nadia Whittome On this. We have to change the Labour Party so that it is able to push back. The current Labour Party is not pushing back. And the reason why I’ve been so outspoken, and some of my colleagues say, weren’t you always kind of on the left of the party? You’re probably enjoying this. Actually, no, I’m really not. And I asked myself, if it was like political hero who was leader of the Labour Party, if it was John McDonnell. And he was messing things up this badly, if he was chasing the right on immigration and being completely timid on the cost of living crisis and the kind of transformation of the economy that people need, would I speak out and say the same thing? I absolutely would. I’m confident of that. And the reason why I’m speaking out is the consequences of us not changing is. Well, firstly, it lets people down in this country. It means that the government isn’t delivering the change that people need, but in the longer term, it will hand the keys to number 10, to Nigel Farage. And we need to do everything possible to stop that from happening. And, you know, Labour is literally in power. Everything possible is quite a lot of things. We can do a lot, but we need to get on and do it. We can’t keep burying our heads in the sand and saying. Oh, you know, if we just show loyalty and stick together, then we’ll avoid chaos.

Nish Kumar Nadia, thank you so much for joining us today on Pod Save the UK. As always, it’s a pleasure to see you. Coming up, Nigel Farage’s finances are being scrutinized at last.

Coco Khan [AD]

Nish Kumar Now, Nigel Farage, I think we can all agree, man of the people, ordinary, everyday bloke down the pub. And just like every ordinary bloke down the pub, he received a £5 million gift from a Thai-based It’s as English as unseasoned meat.

Coco Khan So this story was originally reported in The Guardian a few weeks ago. It revealed that Farage received the money just weeks before he stood in the 2024 general election. At the time, he said the gift from businessman Christopher Harbon was purely private and was given for security purposes to keep him safe and secure.

Nish Kumar Now, importantly, the working class hero never declared this on his MP’s register of interests and is now facing an inquiry from the parliamentary standards commissioner into whether his failure to do so broke Commons rules. Now, this is going to sound like I’m just sort of reading a calendar off here, but the dates are really important, okay? So, Farage was given the money on the 5th of April, 2024. Two months later, on the 3rd of June, he announces that he’s going to stand for election as an MP in Clapton. Parliamentary rules state that any benefits should be declared for the 12 months before taking up office as an MP. There is an exemption for personal gifts, but the rules state if there is any doubt, the benefit should be registered.

Coco Khan So what could the watchdog do if they find that Farage has broken the code of conduct? Well, punishments range from a written or oral apology to a suspension from the house or even expulsion in the most serious cases.

Nish Kumar Now in the interests of covering ourselves legally, Nigel Farage and Reform UK continue to deny wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Reform UK said he has always been clear that this was a personal, unconditional gift and no rules were broken. We look forward to this being put to bed once and for all. Again, just as a follow up to that right to reply, it’s worth noting who Christopher Harbourn is. So he’s one of half a dozen people who own Tether. Now Tether is a company that issues the most widely traded cryptocurrency. For I was just publicly back tethered. Following Harbor’s multiple donations to the party, Farage has said, Tether is a stablecoin, stablecoin’s crypto. This world is enormous and I’ve been urging for years that London should embrace it.

Coco Khan So in parallel, Reform’s proposed Cryptoassets and Digital Finance Bill sets out a bold post-Brexit roadmap to make the UK the world’s premier hub for cryptocurrency.

Nish Kumar Over the past seven years, Christopher Harbourn has given more than £22 million to Nigel Farage’s political party, and it accounts for two-thirds of all funding received by Reform UK. So every one of those details is incredibly important here. He’s saying that this has no bearing on the political direction of his party, but it comes from the same person who has given two- thirds of all of the funding received by Reform UK. And in parallel, he has proposed a series of legislative agendas that would massively benefit anyone who is making a load of money from crypto.

Coco Khan But there is more to this story than it first seems. So on Thursday- There’s even more.

Nish Kumar It already seems more. There’s even more.

Coco Khan So on Thursday, just as the inquiry was announced, Farage’s story shifted during an interview with The Sun.

Speaker 6 It’s a hell of a lot. I know and it’s very unusual for someone to give up 27 years of their life to campaign for something and this was given to me on an unconditional basis, completely unconditional basis but frankly it was given as a reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years. And it had no impact on your decision to come back into public life? No. Hang on a second. I can’t be bought by anybody. No, not anybody.

Nish Kumar He’s also told Nick Ferrari in a separate interview that account activity relating to the five million pounds had been illegally obtained information. We should also say in regards to this U-turn, so him going from saying that it was for his security to saying it was, to be frank, a reward for working for Brexit for 27 years. The Reform Party spokesperson has said to The Observer that both can be true at the same time. It was a reward after the years of danger he’s put himself in and is still in now because of his campaigning for Brexit. And now he can be safe for the rest of his life. Can I also just say, as a mild side note, it does always entertain me when Nigel Farage says that he worked to deliver Brexit for 27 years, because the second it passed, he fucked off. If I’d worked to delivery something for 27 years, I’d see it through to its conclusion. The second Brexit was voted for, he went for some kippers, and then he got the fuck out of there for a good, solid couple of years. Like, it’s insane. Imagine. If he’d actually bothered to stay to see it through to actually be delivered, he’d have got 25 million quid probably

Coco Khan Oh my God. Well, I mean, it’s been a fascinating story for so many different reasons. I think the first thing I would say, and it’s something we’ve discussed a lot on this show, is about the scrutiny given to progressive candidates over right-wing candidates. If you compare the freebie scandal to this, it has been chilling how long we spoke about the freebies scandal, which we should. Absolutely, we always should, but we should apply that to everyone. You know, I was listening to… One of the many right-wing shows I occasionally tune into because I am a masochist. It’s amazing the excuses that his people come up with. I’ve heard them saying, well, Nigel Farage needs that money for security. People stand outside of his house. I’m sorry to break it to people, but journalists standing outside a politician’s house is quite a normal thing that’s not unusual. There have been firebombs threats. No one’s saying that things haven’t been a little bit more hairy, but I’m sure there are other politicians who also could say that they need the same thing. The fact of the matter is that for me, I mean, there’s so many problems with it. There’s problems with money in politics anyway. The whole donor model makes me very uncomfortable. I think there’s lots of tightening up that needs to be done there. This is not the first time he hasn’t declared money that he’s received. There’s been other incidences. It’s one rule for him, one rule for everyone else. And he clearly doesn’t register that five million pounds is a lot of money. I mean, what is he so forget? He has so much money. Well, he is actually the richest MP. So to be fair, he does have a lot of money, but like, how you just forgot, did you? What is this? And he’s never made clear what the relationship is. He keeps saying it was an unattached donation. So is he a donor? Is he a friend? Is he your Fin Dom? What is it? That needs to be made clear, right? And he just he just won’t do it.

Nish Kumar And also, I would like to say the plot thickens, but as we’ve already established, this plot is like my ass, thick as hell. And the thick plot thickened even further because questions have now begun to emerge about how Faraj paid for his 1.4 million pound Surrey home purchased on the 10th of May, 2024, weeks after receiving the gift. So Reform UK has denied that the property was bought using Harbourn’s money. Faraj’s spokesperson told the BBC that he paid for the Surrey property purchase. With his 1.5 million fee for participating in I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here in late 2023. Now as a side note, I have a few friends that have been on that show, and I imagine when they find out Faraj got over a million quid, they’re gonna be absolutely livid. He said that the earnings from this reality show were paid to his personal media company, which is called Thorn in the Side Limited, which is so embarrassingly Alan Partridge. It’s unbelievable how a partridgey that is. Um, so the FT has now highlighted that the company accounts show its cast position rose over the relevant period, but no dividend was paid out, meaning that the money stayed in that company. Um, again, The spokesperson for reform has said the house was not bought with Harbourn’s gift and the spokesperson has suggested this was proved by the fact that anti-money laundering checks relating to the purchase were carried out before the gift was made and the spokesperson has said Nigel has multiple sources of income as you can see from his parliamentary register. He did not respond to the question of whether the reform leader stood by his claim that Money from the reality show was used to buy his home. Now, obviously there’s a lot going on here and yesterday the Guardian ran a story under the headline, Has Anybody Seen Nigel? Speculation Swells as Faraj Performs Disappearing Act. It’s been six days, sorry, it’s now been seven days since he canceled a scheduled appearance at a Reform UK rally in Sunderland, which is a really key election target for them looking forward to the next election. And he has been sort of oddly quiet and Farage does this, there have been points in his political career where in the kind of midst of scandal he’s sort of gone to ground and I think it’s really important that he is appropriately scrutinized from across the political spectrum because this is something that we should be asking questions about. Like this is really serious. And I will say Farage has occupied a special place in the British press for the last 25 years. He’s enjoyed. I would say a kind of gossamer thin level of scrutiny that is rivaled only by one man and that man, I believe, is Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson’s political demise was the direct result of a scandal, the Partygate scandal and then the idea that he’d been hiring somebody who’d been committing sexual misdemeanors in the full knowledge that they had been committing misdemianours. If you remember, the gentleman in question was Christopher Pinscher, and Boris Johnson had said Pinschr by name, Pinshr by nature, so there were sort of two things. And I always believe that part of the reason those scandals brought Johnson down was that they attracted scrutiny from across the political spectrum, and it was the first time in Johnson’s career that he’d really been exposed to the full weight of properly resourced media accountability in this country. And I will be very interested to see if the same set of scrutiny is applied across the spectrum of the British political media to Nigel Farage and whether he is able to withstand that scrutiny if indeed it is applied.

Coco Khan If there’s one thing we know about the British public, we really hate hypocrisy and indeed part of the, this swell of feeling about our political class is related to this idea of hypocrisy. And this is hypocrisy, what he is doing. I mean, there’s so many elements of that with Nigel Farage. I mean I, you know, I learned recently that he does all his MP surgeries remotely, even though he’s campaigning against work from home. You know, it’s just the whole thing’s back. So I hope that there will be proper scrutiny of it. My worry, of course, is that. I saw a couple of clips from some journalist, Nicola Thorpe, who we both know, she was interviewing some people at the United Kingdom March. One clip stands out in my mind where the gentleman says, I haven’t watched legacy media or whatever language he uses for some time. My worry is that even if there is this galvanized press who actually is doing their job across the board, will it even reach them? I don’t know. And, you know, I really feel that Nigel Farage. Is a con man and people are getting scammed because he reaches into their deepest anxieties. Basically, I think his base won’t care because he has manipulated their deepest anxiety, some of their prejudices as well, and so they will let him do anything. But nonetheless, let’s see. Let’s see what happens.

Nish Kumar It’s sort of a lot easier to be a politician when what you’re doing is defending capital because if you’re out there advocating for like a fairer tax system or to fight the climate crisis, who’s going to give you five million quid? Attenborough? A polar bear? Like it really, it really sucks and I would like to say right now that on the basis of this, I’ve had a huge change of political heart, I am now, I’m a full supporter of cryptocurrency. If there are any cryptocurrency billionaires who are currently not based in the UK for tax reasons. I will take five million pounds of your money and I will be openly, and the two things will not be connected, openly advocating for more use of cryptocurrency and for children to be given cryptocurrency as early as seven years old. But the two thing will not be related.

Coco Khan Love the idea of Nishcoin, what do you trade it in for? I don’t know how it works, it’s not like Pogs is it?

Nish Kumar I’ll be trading in butt coins and it will have nothing to do with any donations I may receive. This podcast cannot be bought.

Coco Khan If you got to the end of this episode and are thinking, I really need to hear more of this scintillating political analysis.

Nish Kumar Then what the fuck is wrong with you?

Coco Khan You’re in luck. Nish spoke to Tommy Vietor in the latest Pod Save the World episode. Do check it out. We’ll be putting a link in the show notes.

Nish Kumar And if you want to watch me do stand-up comedy for 97 minutes, you can do that. Nish, don’t kill my vibe is available on YouTube. Also, when I plugged it last week, I forgot to plug the fact that I’m also going on tour because I’m great at self-promotion. Fantastic at it. Tickets available at nishkumar.co.uk. If you live in the UK or Ireland, I’m there, September to December. Why not watch my stand- up show for free on YouTube and then pay to watch a completely different hour of standup in person.

Coco Khan Can you pay using Buttcoin?

Nish Kumar Tickets are available in even the most discredited of cryptocurrencies. I will accept donations. Minimum spend, five million pounds.

Coco Khan And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK.

Nish Kumar Pod Save the UK is an Intelligent Squared production for Crooked Media, and whichever discredited cryptocurrency has donated money to us this week.

Coco Khan Do you know, I was just thinking, if you plug your butt coin, is it a butt plug? Thanks to Senior Producer Katie Grant, Digital Producer Jacob Liebenberg and Assistant Producer Jasmine Davis.

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos and our engineer is Dana Roka.

Coco Khan The executive producers are Bea Duncan and Katie Long.

Nish Kumar Remember to get in touch with us. You can email your questions or thoughts to podsavetheuk@crooked.com. It’s a new email address.

Coco Khan New email address! That’s PodsavetheUK@crooked.com.

Nish Kumar You can also follow us on at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok/X and Blue Sky and remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays.