Keir Starmer promised a Labour government would “turn the page” on scandal – but he’s already under fire after a late declaration of thousands of pounds of gifts. As the Tories clamour for an investigation, Nish and Coco take to the PSUK couch to weigh in on the row.

Later, they’re joined by independent researcher on migration policy Zoe Gardner to discuss why Starmer is seeking immigration lessons from Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Zoe tells us about Italy’s controversial migration deals with North African countries and Albania, as well as what a migration system with a degree of humanity might look like.

Next we open the mailbag to hear your unpopular policy suggestions – ranging from taxes on second homes to a maximum wage cap.

Useful Links: 

Tickets for Nish Kumar: “Nish, don’t kill my vibe” 

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Guests: 

Zoe Gardner https://www.tiktok.com/@zoejardiniere

Audio credits:

The Telegraph

Times Radio

X / Ed Miliband

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TRANSCRIPT

[AD]

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

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan. Nish. I can’t believe it’s happened so soon. We have a new scandal. A new gate.

Nish Kumar It’s been a while since we’ve had a new gate. Yeah. While I mean, probably three months. Think this gate, I think might be the lowest status gate of the world. What are we calling it? Freebie gate. Address gate.

Coco Khan Yeah. There’s been a few us in a glass gate. I’ve actually come up with my own version sort of. Here. Thread stretch.

Nish Kumar What?

Coco Khan Cause it’s about clothes, isn’t it? So it’s threads.

Nish Kumar Threads, dreads. Okay, that’s.

Coco Khan No, look, I can see that. Still working. Okay, What about this?

Nish Kumar You just introduced it as you’ve come up with a new, like, prefix.

Coco Khan I just like a new way that we could talk about it. Have you heard about the threads thread?

Nish Kumar Right.

Coco Khan Customer Okay. What about this Dom’s? That’s what the kids on the street. Cool clothes.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan Starmers gum drama.

Nish Kumar I don’t mind that.

Coco Khan Don’t you think it’s got more, you know, theater than frock gate or glass gate or Freebie gate? Starmers Garma Drama.

Nish Kumar Drama. Okay, so for the sake of the listeners that might not be familiar with Solomon’s Garma drama. It’s the basics of it all. Keir Starmer has been taking flak in the press this week for making a late declaration of gifts received from Labour’s Mega-donor Lord Waheed Ali, who’s given over 700,000 pounds to the party. I imagine American listeners will be losing their minds, laughing at the trifling amounts of money, the absolutely zero amounts of money involved in British politics. But yes, 700,000 pounds makes him a kind of mega-donor. Yes. And apart from donations to Labour, Lord Ali has also gifted the staffers tailored clothes glasses for the Prime Minister and a personal shopper for Victoria Starmer, who’s the prime Minister’s wife.

Coco Khan So this isn’t the kind of money you or I would be spending on clothes is quite a lot of money. According to Starmer’s Register of Interest, he’s received 18,625 pounds worth of work, clothes and multiple pairs of glasses. Here’s Starmer addressing the controversy in this clip from The Telegraph. See if you can catch his message.

Clip It’s the declarations of God and in accordance with the rules so that it’s transparent. And you can all see according to the rules, exactly what declarations were made. But it was because I insist on the rules that my team reached out to make sure that we were declaring in the right way under the rules, and then reached out again to the appropriate authorities, basically asking for advice about what’s the appropriate way to deal with this in accordance with the rules. Thank you. The rules. The rules are rules. The rules.

Nish Kumar The rules. The rules. The rules.

Coco Khan Yeah. So the thing that is off about this is that despite this being within the confines of the rules, the rules are a little bit, well, fucked, aren’t.

Nish Kumar They? Yes. And also a story that’s broken overnight is that Keir Starmer has actually received more in tickets and gifts than any other recent party leader. A total now topping 100,000 pounds. And Starmer told reporters that he is a massive Arsenal fan but can’t go into the stands because of security reasons. Therefore, if I don’t accept the gift of hospitality, I can’t go to a game. And you could say, Well, bad luck. But he’s this. He’s also arguing that never going to an Arsenal game again because I can’t accept hospitality is pushing it a bit far. So we’ve got this sort of what are you calling it, garment drama or whatever it is.

Coco Khan Even if it is within the rules. You know, Joe, when Johnson was in power, the opposition were spending a lot of time talking about how it was within the rules for them to fundraise for their decorating, their flats or whatever. But it wasn’t the spirit of the rules. The spirit of the rules is to try and ensure that people, politicians don’t live excessive lives, are far away from the people and that they are also not being unduly influenced, so to speak. So there’s a sense that the spirit of the rules isn’t being followed here.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I think that if your whole brand is integrity and you’re not really offering anything else to the country, I think that that is probably a problem. If there are questions being asked about your integrity, even if it totally falls within the rules. And all they really have talked about is how things are actually going to get worse for a lot of people living in Britain. And, you know, people are going to lose their winter fuel credit this winter. And they’ve told us that that’s necessary because we need to tighten our belts. And the country’s finances are in a difficult condition, that we need to be responsible and we need to be we might have to suffer through this winter. A man telling you to tighten your purse strings? Yes. Wearing expensive glasses are a private box at the Arsenal game. Is at least. At least, yes, at least, Tony, that everybody has to acknowledge that the optics of that are suboptimal. And and I’m not I’m not sure what the conceivable defense is. And I’ll tell you who else is not sure what the conceivable is. Every Labour MP that has been sent out like lambs to a slaughter to do the media rounds, he is just one of them. This is Dame Andrew Eagle on Tuesday being interviewed by Times Radio Stig Abell.

Clip Should he not buy his own glasses? You’re wearing a pair of glasses now. You presumably paid for them yourself. I’m wearing a pair of glasses now. I pay for them myself. Why shouldn’t the Prime Minister? Well, the Prime Minister’s had his had his say on that. And if you next time you interview him, you could ask him yourself. I don’t. I don’t have an opinion. He must have an opinion. What the prime minister does in these instances.

Coco Khan Wow.

Nish Kumar This is a huge marketing opportunity for Specsavers for international listeners. Specsavers is a high street brand that sells glasses. Other brands that sell glasses are available, but their advertising slogan is You should have gone to specsavers. And this is if if someone at Specsavers is not it me? Lee a getting the canvas rope and knocking up some graphic design pictures of kids. Some of the got dislikes like this.

Coco Khan A way Dame Andrea Eagle’s answer because other politicians have been saying things like, well, you know, there’s no prime ministerial budget for clothes and other countries have it. I think those comments are really out of touch with the people. Do you know what I mean? Because that’s sort of saying, well, why are you getting angry about it? This is just what we do.

Nish Kumar It also also happens under 50 grand a year. You know, like you can afford a pair of glasses. And the other thing that I think is also really interesting here is that Silver is learning that a lot of the center right or right wing newspapers that might have lined up behind him, their support for him was incredibly temporary and shallow. Yeah. And, you know, maybe trying to curry favor with the male in the sun might have worked in the short term. But I think he’s learning very, very quickly that that does not last. And maybe some of those editorial pieces he wrote for the Saudi newspaper were a waste of his fucking time.

Coco Khan Well, it’s you know, definitely the way it’s being presented in the press there is they are trying to present this moral equivalence between stuff that the conservatives did and the scandal. I’m not saying that it’s not a problem what’s going on, but nonetheless, it’s not the same. You know, you really people want a proper break from the conservatives and this is just not a good look for Labour.

Nish Kumar Yeah. So, look, we’re going to be exploring the topic of how money infects our politics next week with a very special guest. So if you have any questions for us to ponder when it comes to the way our politics and gifts collide, send them into UK. Reduce listening Decode UK. If you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe so you can catch our episode next Thursday.

Coco Khan Now what the government really wanted to be talking about, and this is a very much overdue change is the environment. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband spoke to the Energy UK Annual conference to set out the government’s mission for clean Power. Now, there’s not much new here, but the tone is a market shift much more optimistic, much more enthusiastic. Miliband’s core points were that the cost of living crisis exposed the failures in our energy security and that renewable energy is the way forward. But check out the tone shift in this video from Miliband’s Twitter.

Clip It’s 2008. Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States. Usain Bolt is breaking records at the Beijing Olympics, and Batman is dominating at the box office. And I’m the energy secretary. Yes, white Batman. I’ve returned. Now, we’ve learned a lot. Back then, we used to talk or I used to talk about an energy dilemma. What’s the trilemma? A dilemma is a choice between two thing. A true lemma is a choice where there are three things and you can’t have all three. The choice between affordability, security and sustainability. And the idea was that fossil fuels might not be sustainable, but they did give you affordability and security. But since then, we’ve had the terrible cost of living crisis, which was caused by our exposure to fossil fuel. So that old trilemma has disintegrated.

Nish Kumar I mean the guy the guy is active on social media. Yeah. Listen, I think we have been somewhat critical of the Labour government governments and several critical of the Labour Party under the leadership because them is probably useful to acknowledge that some positive things are happening. And I, I spoke to some people that work in the renewable energy sector that I’ve worked with in the past and they did say that there’s been a marked tone in what their engagement is with the current government. They’ve gone from a sort of lobbying mode into delivery mode. And so there is a real sense that there has been a sea change in the way that renewables are being dealt with by the government, which is positive.

Coco Khan Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know, a lot of this stuff does remain to be seen. There is still that problem of the Treasury and they say these projects need money. Will they get that money? But it’s just nice to hear some optimism and some enthusiasm. And I know much is made of Ed Miliband’s infectious puppy dog energy, but he is also very, very competent. And I’m surprised they didn’t make more of him. That’s my thought. If you’re listening, Ed, please come on our show. I’d love to just have a chat. We can talk about Batman and the environment. We could do that. Could win it.

Nish Kumar Yeah, we we absolutely could do that.

Coco Khan Anyway, let’s discuss the one that has been on our show. Some interesting murmurs about a potential new progressive party broke out over the weekend. The Guardian reports that a number of influential British lefties, including Jeremy Corbyn, filmmaker Ken Loach, Unite director Len McCluskey, held a private meeting to discuss a new party called Collective.

Nish Kumar Corbyn gave the opening address, but a source close to him told The Guardian that his attendance was not an official endorsement and that he had attended the meeting to listen to and share a variety of views about the way forward for the left. We’ve spoken about this in various iterations on this show about what the left of British politics does now that it seems to be. In large part frozen out by the Labour leadership. And is the way forward actually for left wing Labour MPs and the sort of independent left wing MPs and perhaps the Green Party to form a kind of progressive alliance that essentially create a political counterbalance to reform, which is, you know, the sort of latest iteration that previously has been called the UK Independence Party at one point called the Brexit Party, but the Brexit Party Reform and the UK Independence Party whatever, you know, fucking latest round of branding that thing is called like, I can’t believe it’s not racist or whatever it’s called that they they have successfully exert it’s an influence on the Conservative Party pushed the Conservative Party in a particular direction of travel. That is absolutely what Nigel Farage seems to be doing at the moment as well. And so would it be productive, therefore, for there to be a counterbalance to that with a group of left wing MEPs? I mean, it’s really interesting thing, right?

Coco Khan I mean, yeah, it’s really interesting. I mean, I do wonder though, you know, if there’s an issue about splitting the left.

Nish Kumar This is always the fair. What you’re saying is exactly the thing that we’re all most scared of.

Coco Khan Yeah. Also, I feel sorry for the greens a little bit. And imagine them reading this being like, Excuse me. A new. A new party? You haven’t even given us a real go.

Nish Kumar But, you know, if this if this party, which, you know, could be comprised of the independent MPs, then forms a voting bloc with the Green MPs and Labour and PS, they’ve lost the whip. It could have an actual tangible voting influence.

Coco Khan In this in this Parliament, sure. But when we go to a general election, if you have all these multiple parties, what will that mean then?

Nish Kumar Yeah, I think that’s always been the fear because ultimately, for all we talk about the pressure exerted by Nigel Farage at general elections, he’s only taken votes of the Conservative Party when he’s chosen to. And a huge factor in Boris Johnson’s 2019 election win is the fact that Brexit Party candidates were stood down to make way for Conservative Party candidates. And the sort of progressive wing of British politics is often tied its underpants in various different nautical knots over whether we should think more tactically. Where is the right of British politics has often embraced tactical voting very, very enthusiastically.

Coco Khan Well, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on it, and that is for sure. Now after the break, we’re joined by a very special guest to find out what Keir Starmer has been up to in Italy this week.

Nish Kumar [AD]

Nish Kumar Now, there’s some tricky topics coming up in this next segment, so please consider this a warning. We were discussing cruelty to our fellow man and brief mentions of self-harm and suicide.

Coco Khan So Keir Starmer all dressed up in a green tie and one of his fancy pairs of glasses has been on a state visit to Italy this week to meet Giorgia Maloney, the Italian prime minister. The main reason for the visit was to learn from Italy’s immigration plans, which has cut small boat crossings in the Mediterranean by almost two thirds in the past year, from 118,000 to 44,500.

Nish Kumar Starmer’s under pressure to tackle irregular migration across the channel from France, where eight people died last Sunday after a boat capsized. But the visit has caused a stir among some Labour backbenchers and also people with brains. The Labour MP for Liverpool, Merseyside, Kym Johnson, told the Guardian that it was disturbing to see Starmer and this is a direct quote seeking to learn lessons from a neo fascist government. There’s also been broader criticism. For example, Amnesty International have called their plans to build migrant detention centers in Albania unworkable, harmful and unlawful. So joining us now on Pod Save the UK to chat through what Starmer is hoping to learn from Maloney’s ruthless immigration policies is somebody we have wanted to get on the show since the show started. An independent researcher, migration policy Zoe Gardner. Welcome to PSUK, Zoe. I would I said this to you off mic. I’ll say to you, I might describe you as having one of the most difficult jobs in this country, which is trying to have conversations about immigration that are rooted in facts and compassion.

Zoe Gardner Yeah. Um. I think it does depend on the context. Probably what most people see of my work is me having horrible arguments in mainstream media about migration and the framing. And the way that debate takes place is horrific. But, you know, a lot of my job is also talking to ordinary people and  *incoherent whisper* But yeah, I think I think that the mainstream media framing and political framing of this issue is just so horrific. And it doesn’t actually reflect the conversations you tend to have with normal people.

Coco Khan So can you break down what exactly Italy has been doing to deter irregular immigration? That means Starmer seeks the advice of George Maloney.

Zoe Gardner So Georgie Maloney was elected two years ago, and she is of the extremely hard right anti-immigrant flavor of politician like much more extreme than anything we have in the UK. Her party is the successor to the fascist movement in Italy. And even if people reject the sort of the label of fascists around her, they would certainly anybody would call her an extremely authoritarian, hard right figure. And that is driven primarily through migration politics. And she has completely failed, as all politicians do, to deliver on her, you know, hard hardline promises to cut immigration and make make refugees disappear from Italy of last two years. However, there has been a drop, as you said in the intro in in the last year and more specifically actually in the last six months. And that reflects a deal that Italy is at the lead of, but is actually an EU wide deal that has been made with Tunisia of greater enhanced cooperation between Italy and Libya and a new deal that’s also been signed with Egypt. And these are called migration management deals, which is euphemistic to put it mildly. Basically, we pay millions and millions of pounds. And I say we because the UK has in the past been involved with these deals and in the present continues to be involved in various ways, including financially. We pay huge amounts of money to governments, and I use that term even quite generously because Libya doesn’t essentially is a failed state and doesn’t have just one government. But we’ve picked one of them and we’re giving them a lot of money to contain migrants to prevent them from leaving. And essentially what happens and what has been happening specifically in Tunisia since this deal was signed is that the government there has been rounding up people, chucking them into vans and driving them out into the Sahara Desert and dumping them men, women and children in the border region between sort of Algeria, Tunisia, Libya with no water, no mobile phones, no nothing. And tens of thousands of people have credibly been reported to be subjected to this treatment. And hundreds and hundreds of people have obviously died. That’s how she’s cut the numbers.

Nish Kumar Wow. And where does this sort of Albania’s side of this fit into this conversation?

Zoe Gardner Albania has been presented in the media, sort of like how she’s achieved this. Actually, the Albania deal hasn’t started yet. Right. This is entirely the drop in numbers has entirely been achieved through these horrific deals with non-African countries. The Albania deal is yet to come into force.

Coco Khan And what is the Albanian do?

Zoe Gardner So the Albania deal is different to the Rwanda deal. The Rwanda deal that we had was essentially that we would send people to Rwanda and regardless of who they were or what circumstances then occurred, they would stay in Rwanda, or at least they wouldn’t come back to the UK. This is not the same at all. This is about the Italian administration of their asylum system taking place in detention camps in Albania. So that means that they have built these huge detention facilities in Albania. They have again sent many, many millions of pounds to the Albanian government, and Italian civil servants are going to process the asylum claims of a select group of the asylum seekers who are seeking to land in Italy. They’re going to do that processing on Albanian soil. People will remain detained there until the decision is made on their case, if they are recognized under Italian law as refugees. They will then be returned to Italy. But the intention is that the people sent there will be people that Italy deems unlikely to be refugees, but the intention is that then they will be removed. If they are not found to be refugees, but they’ll be removed from Albania, so they’ll be detained in Albania until that removal can be administered by Italy. So it’s an enclave, it’s a neocolonial outpost.

Nish Kumar In terms of Keir Starmer and what he’s hoping to learn or glean. I mean, that all sounds pretty concerning and something that we should actively not be seeking to emulate. Yeah.

Zoe Gardner Yeah. I tend to pride myself on not being shocked by politicians behavior towards migrants, but I was shocked when Rishi Sunak cozied up to the extent he did to Georgia Maloney. So Keir Starmer is starting out his tenure as PM by going over there and having the exact same kind of giggly, cute little photoshoots with her really turned my stomach to a degree I cannot even describe. He’s going over there ostensibly to learn about, yeah, the offshoring element. So again, the irony is not the part that’s actually impacted arrivals because it’s not in place yet, so it simply cannot be argued to have done that. But still has made it pretty clear that he’s not ruling out almost anything and certainly not ruling out the possibility of offshore processing of claims, which is, as I explained, is different to the idea of the wrongdoing.

Coco Khan Yeah, I know you’re saying it’s different, but I mean, it doesn’t seem that different. I mean, like the general public was against the Rwanda plan. I mean, surely something like this, they would be against this. Well, it’s not different enough.

Zoe Gardner Yeah. No, I mean, it has a lot of, like, fundamental elements in common. The first and most important being that it is based on the flawed logic that through cruelty we can deter people from seeking safety and opportunity for their lives. And any expert will tell you that there is absolutely no evidence that that can be achieved. So first of all, like the Rwanda plan, this won’t work like there were on the plan. Also, it has human rights disaster written all over it. So there are some ways in which better Albania is closer to being a true democracy than Rwanda was. Albania is under the purview of the European Court of Human Rights. So there are mechanisms where migrants will be able to find some level of redress. There’s also things like pregnant women or children will not be included in the people sent there. So once again, men get a kicking. We don’t care about foreign men. But yes, there are differences. But ultimately it comes down to the fact that these will be people locked up in offshore camps. For long, long periods. Conditions will be atrocious. Suicide, self-harm will definitely be a feature of these camps. Abuse is just squalor is horrific and everybody should be against. It is different to Rwanda, but it has a lot of the same problems. And ultimately, of course it won’t work.

Nish Kumar It’s so rarely takes place that the conversation about this actually factors in the fact that we are talking about people and we’re talking about people who are fleeing home countries. Nobody leaves their home lightly. It is really important to understand that the reason that these people are leaving and undertaking these incredible journeys is because they’re coming from places that are themselves incredibly dangerous.

Zoe Gardner Yes. So, I mean, over the whole of Europe, the number one nationality of people seeking asylum, a Syrian and in the UK is Afghans. So we’re talking about people who are leaving from countries where situations are unlivable. It’s also important to note we’re talking about countries where your passport has the least value. Yeah, so UK passport gets you visa free or visa on arrival entry to almost every country in the world. A Syrian passport. An Afghan passport. There is no way to travel legally out of those countries. Not not to the UK, but not not to any other European country, not to any safe country where there is real opportunity to rebuild your life. And that is why people do so in such dangerous means. And you look at that list of the least powerful passports. They are the most dangerous countries and they are the countries where people are taking irregular journeys from Dubai.

Nish Kumar If we talk about migration more generally, there’s a lot of statistics that get thrown about. So last week, the Telegraph was reporting that what they deemed mass low skilled migration is a financial disaster for Britain, costing the taxpayer 456,000 pounds by the time they reach 81 years of age. And this is all statistics that they’re citing from a report by the fiscal watchdog, the OBR, the Office for Budget Responsibility. What do you make of that headline in that story?

Zoe Gardner Okay. So I have three problems with this story. The first of all, I just want to ask, like at what number does it become? Mass? Because mass migration, we’ve all apparently accepted that we we’re experiencing mass migration. I don’t know when it became mass. Yeah. And I would I would really love a definition just to define the term so that we can talk on an equal playing field. But aside from that, yeah, first of all, the headline there talks about low paid migrants and doesn’t talk about the most striking Obama finding, which is that the average migrant actually makes an immense fiscal contribution. As soon as they arrive in the UK, they start contributing economically to the UK. So it’s just it’s just misleading straight off the bat. The second problem talks about low paid migrants, doesn’t talk about the structural issues that create low pay in this country. And for it’s not migration. Disproportionately, migrants are represented in public sector roles, including healthcare and social care. These are areas where the government sets the pay scale, and it is the government’s decision to set pay low. I’ve never actually met a worker in any line of work who was the person saying don’t raise my wages. It is not the workers who hold down the wages. It is structures of oppression, greed and capitalism, and just under funding from government that hold down wages. So you want to talk about low paid workers. You know, you need to talk about the service they are providing. And the service they’re providing is frankly, in the case of carers, dogs is priceless. Yeah, absolutely. Prices and necessary for our country. So their calculation in terms of these crude fiscal measures does not take into account that we desperately need these people. And finally, obviously it just reduces people to just economic units rather than human beings. And every single migrant is one that just a human. That just to him.

Coco Khan So so you put a lot of effort into trying to rebalance all the myths and disinformation, really, about migrants. And I notice that you’re on Tik-tok. I follow you on there. You are truly doing the Lord’s work. Thanks.

Zoe Gardner I hate it pretty negatively.

Coco Khan You received some pretty negative reactions. Why do you do this work on social media? Why is it better to be out there than trying to be on mainstream media? I know you do do a lot of that, but I just find it interesting in terms of like directly reaching the public.

Zoe Gardner Yeah, I think it’s important that I tried to go on mainstream media. I would I would love more opportunities to do that, frankly. But I do find that we’re constantly on the back foot, that we’re constantly reacting to the framing that is put upon us by, you know, the government is doing something horrific. Is this good? And you get very little space. And it’s always sort of like locking people up in detention centers abroad, good or bad? Yeah. I was like.

Nish Kumar This is like.

Zoe Gardner Okay. And what it what it doesn’t give us space to do is what I think the majority of the country actually wants to think. The majority of the country doesn’t like the fact that if you’re born in Sudan, you have such unequal chances in life. And if you want to change that, you risk drowning. I. Don’t think people like that. I think people want to see that managed better. But we are not given options to manage it better. We are given options to lock people up and push people away. And people want to understand what the alternatives are. And the only way that I am able to do that is spaces like this, or if I am the one creating the content and creating just just a narrative about the alternatives. Because the real big lie about migration is that the choice is between having it or not having it. And the real truth is the choice is between managing it well in a way that benefits us all. All this horrific cruelty and death that we see at the current time.

Coco Khan It is incredible to me how little people know about other countries. Now, I know it sounds weird. I was having a conversation, one of those like uncomfortable conversations you have to have because it’s a, you know, a holiday and someone’s brought their in-laws and whatever, and you sort of begrudgingly have this conversation. And I remember talking to someone and they said this line being like, I just don’t understand why they come here. Why can’t they stay in their own countries? Well, because their own countries in war, for example. Well, then they should get that sorted. Then they should stay there and sort it out. Well, you know, it’s like, wow, you really know very little about how it is in other countries, so you expect them to sort it out.

Nish Kumar Well, we’ve done I believe our governments have done some interesting sorting out in Afghanistan, and we’ve had some interesting, interesting takes just sorting the situation out there.

Coco Khan And you just mentioned being like, well, what do you think will happen? You know, some of these places are not functioning democracies like, you know, you know, you’re dealing with militias with guns. What do you think is going to happen?

Zoe Gardner One of the most common comments I get is like, you know what? Why are they, you know, spending 6,000 pounds on a smuggler’s boat when it costs 35 pounds to fly here from Paris on Easyjet and. Right, mate? Yeah. You know what? That real dumb piece I.

Coco Khan Should have got.

Zoe Gardner From some post is I heard Easyjet was their target audience, right? Absolutely insane how little people understand the privilege they have of being British, basically.

Nish Kumar Yeah. Is that what you go and say? Because I first became aware of you years and years ago through Twitter, I would watch you would really admiringly have conversations on these programs, political discussion programs where it would seem like you were basically asked questions like migrants yes or no, but it had real like Chris Morris, day to day, broad, solid kind of energy, good.

Coco Khan Migrants, bad moments here or not.

Nish Kumar And is do you still find value in that because is your perspective that you might get through to somebody who otherwise might not of you might not have access to actual facts about migrants of migration?

Zoe Gardner Yeah, I think there’s something here, right? One is just the responsibility that we have to to be doing what we can to change the narrative, because the narrative is bad but is getting scary here and across Europe. And I think everybody just has the responsibility to use whatever voice they have to to have better conversations. So one is that the other is, I don’t know how much good I’m doing because, you know, you remember Trump and they’re eating the cats, the dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s kind of hilarious, right? But like, I’ve been thinking about that, like, it’s really got under my skin. I’m like, What’s the purpose of this? This is so clearly a lie. And then and then it brings me back to, you know, politicians who respond to humans drowning in the channel by saying that we need to go and talk to any fascist in Italy about the camp she’s setting up in Albania, when we all know and I’m sorry, we all know, that there is one way if you actually have one. First priority was to save people’s lives and stop them drowning. You would create a route for them to cross the channel without taking those boats. That is that is what you would do. We all know that. So what what purpose does the lie serve? The lie is not to convince somebody that that’s the truth, right? We all know that that’s not the truth. The lie is to somehow create an alternative world, a justification, a narrative where we can pretend we’re acting in a in line with morals or or practical reality. It’s to create a fiction. And so and so the truth, when the purpose of a lie is not to convince somebody of the lie, then the truth loses its power against that. And I really do worry that even though I’m putting out stuff that is factually accurate, I’m not successfully going to challenge that narrative because the point of it isn’t, you know, to convince people of a lie is to use a lie to justify situations that aren’t going well.

Coco Khan Is this the oldest scapegoat in the book? Right. And, you know, in times of economic downturn and, you know, let’s be honest, government mismanagement, government ideologically pursuing an agenda of neo liberalism and giving favors to millionaires and billionaires and so on. Who better to blame than the migrants? Do you think we can actually ever have a good conversation about migration without. Talking about rebalancing the economic gap in Britain.

Zoe Gardner No, I mean, they’re fundamentally tight. They’re fundamentally tight and there’s always winners. And I think that the point I’m trying to make there about like, you know, what’s the purpose of the light is to justify a status quo is status quo doesn’t work for us. We’re pretty sick of it. It’s it’s unpleasant. It doesn’t work for the people who hate migrants because migrants continue to arrive and it doesn’t work for migrants. Pretty bloody, obviously. So who is it working for? Because they’re still doing it. And what is the lie justifying? And that is exactly what you say. Like there are people making an absolute killing out of this, whether it’s the Albanian government, the Tunisian autocratic regime, the Libyan militia, or whether it’s or the Rwandan dictatorship or whether it’s the private firms that sell us drones, that sell us fences, that, you know, run the detention centers and the deportation centers, there is an entire ecosystem of massive profits in this horror show that we call deterrence of migrants. Graham King, He he’s just the most recent Sunday Times rich list concept that freaks me out. But whatever. He’s a new entry to the Sunday Times rich list, one of the richest people in the UK. What does he do? He runs Clear Springs, which is a housing accommodate. They they run the asylum hotels. There’s a reason we have left people in asylum hotels is because there are people and he’s a Tory donor. They get very, very rich off this. And those are the real villains here. And they are hoarding wealth that should be distributed among all the vulnerable people in our population in. Yes. So economic inequality is absolutely at the nub of this, but it is tied in as a reason it continues even though it’s failing.

Nish Kumar Before we let you go, be remiss of me not to ask. Of an expert or some and somebody spends a lot of time looking at this kind of thing. What, from your perspective, should our policy on migration and refugees look like? What if you if if you were hired by Keir Starmer tomorrow, how would you reshape our policy?

Zoe Gardner So obviously that’s quite a big question.

Nish Kumar It’s a huge question. It’s just like being. Good morning. Britain’s migrants, good or bad?

Zoe Gardner I’m going to have to phone a friend. No, seriously, though, there’s the immediate term and then there’s the longer term. Right. So so in the immediate term, if I was advising Keir Starmer and I know that he, you know, hangs on to every word.

Nish Kumar So a huge part of this podcast.

Zoe Gardner Yeah, yeah. Obviously, obviously have my Twitter feed. I wouldn’t be okay immediately speaking, you need to decrease the salience of a tiny, small, small proportion of immigration, which is refugees and asylum seekers. 5.5% of the people who came to the UK last year came on a small boat 5.5%. Slightly disproportionate coverage in media and attention from government. So.

Nish Kumar Okay, now.

Zoe Gardner Just just just comment the ever loving fuck down. Sorry, but like just stop making your your policy be driven by those people. Stop performatively, you know, trying to detain them and lock them up and and work on European wide solutions to share responsibility for safe routes for people to reach protection. But keep it in its place and then move on. The fact that our real the bulk of immigration is people coming for work and our immigration system forces people into exploitation and low pay because of the way it’s structured. And I’m not going to get into that whole detail there, but please, guys, follow me on everything about it. And and then finally, we need to talk about what is a little bit uncomfortable in these circles. But I don’t know. A better word for it is integration. Right now on the left, people get like, why should people have to integrate? Integration goes. Yes, integration goes both ways. Right. And some of the least integrated people into British society are the richest. Right? Like all of that is true. But I think we need to talk about integrated communities and how our immigration system stops migrants from being able to put down roots and become full members of our communities because it keeps people in a temporary status for a really long time. It separates people out from the welfare state. It separates people out from all sorts of ways in which we become entwined in each other’s lives, like things like the most family unfriendly immigration system that you could possibly imagine. British people who are married to people who were born abroad. And God forbid you fall in love with a foreigner, you have these insane income requirements and incredibly onerous bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through. That’s like families that we are keeping apart through an immigration system. So when I talk about integration, that’s the kind of thing, I mean, and then just finally, over the longer term, what you really need to look at is changing the face of our immigration system to one that works with the reality of migration. So people will move because they need solutions, because they’re fleeing from danger. We desperately need people. We have an aging population, you know, talked about care workers, health care workers, all of these people, farmworkers. We need them. We actually go out and quite aggressively recruit for those people. Right. In some countries and at the same time push away other people. We need to recalibrate over time our immigration system to reflect the needs of the people who migrate as well as the needs of the country.

Coco Khan Well, Zoe Gardner, thank you for joining us on Pod Save the UK and seriously, do check out her work on social media. It is very, very good. We will put a link in our show notes or you can just search the name.

Zoe Gardner Thank you so much.

Nish Kumar Thanks Zoe.

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Coco Khan Now, last week, we invited you all to send in your ideas for unpopular policies that might make the UK a better place for all of us. And you’ve responded in your droves. We’re very grateful.

Nish Kumar As in the producers described as a deluge, a deluge down your imaginations in ways we could not have anticipated. So firstly, Coco’s suggestion, which I thought was an absolute bananas decision from you to even talk about this, was a license on animals, but it actually went down incredibly well with a lot of the listeners. So I guess it’s not that unpopular in the end. But we did have one contrary opinion that we thought would be worth sharing. Megan wrote in to say that the UK actually used to have a license for owning dogs and that at the time batsa dogs and cats. I sometimes have to cover the fees to stop animals from being separated from their families. So we thought it was worth considering. The team here has dug a little deeper into it and they found that dog licensing was a policy from the Victorian era that was scrapped in 1987, where at the time it cost a meager 37 pounds. However, when it was first introduced in 1867, it was relatively costly at seven shillings and sixpence, which was roughly equivalent to a day’s wages at the time.

Coco Khan Also this like this diversion into history podcast, it would do.

Nish Kumar Also, I did not know this. Northern Ireland actually still has dog licensing. It cost 12.50 pounds years to have a dog license in Northern Ireland. So you’re not actually alone in this. The RSPCA had previously called for the reintroduction of animal licenses, saying that in 2017 the mandatory microchipping that was introduced in 2016 didn’t go far enough to solve the problems that come with the wide ownership of dogs, including dog health and welfare, anti-social behavior involving dogs, dog by incident, stray dogs, population issues and risks to human health, and that a license could help to raise money to deal with this issue. The RSPCA has also noted that there are substantial arguments against the idea. For example, the fact that councils already have a lot of things to worry about. But listen, anyway, thank you so much for writing in, Megan. It turns out your idea is not as controversial as I thought.

Coco Khan Anyway, on to some of your unpopular ideas. We’ve had nodes in and again, a really big thank you to everyone that took the time. One of the other topics that many of you were excited about was home ownership. Jess wrote in to say we should implement Wales’s second Home Council tax rules and take those nationwide. Make it an escalator for third homes, for homes, etc.. It’s a very interesting suggestion. So let’s explain it. In Wales from April 2017. Councils were able to charge up to an extra 100% of the standard rate of council tax on long term empty dwellings. England and Scotland have since followed suit, but from 2023 the premium in Wales increased to up to 300%. The Welsh Government says the policies are designed to bring long term empty properties back into use and increase the supply of housing. There are some exceptions, naturally, like when a house is for sale or marketed for length and holiday lets like Airbnbs. Those are all exempt from the rules if they classify as a business. So I guess the question is has any of this been effective? Well, kind of. There’s been an increase in the number of homes on the market, but actual sales do remain low. Local real estate agents claim that the properties coming onto the market are too expensive for first time buyers and that many homes are being listed. But they’re exploiting the loophole of the extra tax not being payable if the House is listed for sale.

Nish Kumar So there are people who are basically trying to cheat the system by putting their houses on sale for prices. They know no one will pay for them to get out of this. Yes, I think this is a really great policy. I remember when this got introduced in Wales and it was to solve this problem. Basically, from what? From what I was told by Welsh people to I know basically to solve the problem of English people buying secondhand in the beautiful Welsh countryside and then leaving them unoccupied for large proportions of the year. And I think it is a really, really interesting thing to look at. It feels like very, very sensible policy, I think. I think with policy there’s always going to be loopholes that are going to be exploited by unscrupulous people. You try and crack down on those loopholes as much as humanly possible. But I do think that it is, you know, anything that’s unpopular with estate agents has got to be a good thing for us to continue even on the topic of council tax. Our listener, Adam, wrote in to say that we should switch our council tax for a property tax targets owners over residents, knowing that it’s a form of wealth tax that is easily enforceable. Now, Adam’s suggestion is actually backed up by fair share, which is a campaign to tear up council tax and move to a proportional property taxation system. So this organization advocates for applying a simple flat rate of 0.48% to the current value of your property, which could actually bring in more money for councils than the current system. About 75% of households would actually pay less money compared to the current council tax system. Fair Share also argues that it would increase this A. Life. Housing might make it easier for people to buy. So I don’t know how unpopular this policy actually is when you get into the nuts and bolts of it. When he was a guest on this show, we spoke about this with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson. It’s an idea that makes a lot of sense, and it’s an idea that I’m certain would obviously be unpopular with landlords. But as Paul noted, these things always have pressure on both sides. For instance, landlords argue if they were the ones to be paying the tax, it might disincentivize them from investing in property leading to a lower supply in the rental market. But if you’re generating more revenue, maybe councils could build more council homes, which would again help with a situation that we’ve got in this country, a crisis in housing and the lack of affordable housing. I think, again, anything that targets the people with the broadest shoulders and can bring in more money for the government that can be reinvested in affordable housing has got to be a good thing. It’s absolutely fascinating. There’s a lot of countries around the world that pay a property tax instead of a council tax. And it’s something that several economists now are starting to argue that we should be factoring in. At the very least, we need to be thinking about a reform of our council tax system.

Coco Khan Despite that, though, it doesn’t seem to be something that the Labour Party are interested in. So in the run up to the election, Labour said it’s not looking to change up council tax banding. And since being in Government, Housing Minister and Deputy PM Angela Rayner has refused to rule out scrapping the 25% council tax discount for single occupiers. That might be another of the Government’s forewarned tough decisions and is sure to be unpopular.

Nish Kumar Another topic we have a lot of engagement around was wages. And if you’ve you had some ideas around a maximum wage. Both Cathy and Daniel wrote in to propose a maximum wage. That is a multiplier of the minimum wage. And that would mean that anyone earning over the maximum wage would be subject to a 100% wealth tax. Now, this is again, very interesting. And we turn to the history books looking to, of all places, the United States of America, that bastion of wealth distribution. This old allied communist economics. In 1942, the Second World War pushed the American government to introduce incredibly high taxes. The top marginal tax rate was set at 90%, where it remained until the Kennedy administration in the early 1960s brought it down to 70% and later brought down by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to 50%. According to Sam Betsy Ghazi, who’s the coeditor of Inequality Talk, this actually had a profound effect on inequality. In the 1970s, the top 1% share of the pie was 10% of US income versus a quarter in 1928. For some context, according to a 2021 study by Credit Suisse, the top 1% in the UK owns more than 50% of the country’s total wealth. Now, obviously this would be unpopular with certain people. My question for you is. Do we care about that?

Coco Khan I don’t know them, so I don’t know who they are. As Zoe very succinctly pointed out, some of the least integrated in the UK are the ultra wealthy. I do know one. I do not have one. The number on my phone is No. One. They can do them all to me.

Nish Kumar I think there’s a real problem in terms of we’re facing a series of different crises and certainly underpinning a lot of it is a lack of money being pumped into the country via the government. And how do you raise that money? How do you get money into the health sector? How do you get money into building affordable housing? How do you get money into our infrastructure which is crumbling all around us? Like, why are we not considering radical solutions? Why we why would we consider tough choices? Do we only think about cutting edge?

Coco Khan They always say the same thing, isn’t it? Because they always say, if we do that, then the 1% will leave. We’re just all really sad about that, I guess. I don’t know where they’re going to go. Monaco. I don’t want to go there anyway.

Nish Kumar There is another thing that we asked you to write about, and again, I would describe the response to this as being unprecedented. Off the back of your fixation with a retelling of Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott’s visit to the Highgate Cemetery to see the grave of Karl Marx, which, according to Jeremy, took her on as a romantic night out. We asked you to send in your own very painful left wing dates.

Coco Khan I don’t think it was that night, but anything that happened at night.

Nish Kumar Or it was still supposed to be a date.

Coco Khan No, I know. I know.

Nish Kumar I think I meant date night as a catch all.

Coco Khan But I was just thinking, well, that would be extra weird, wouldn’t it?

Nish Kumar Be treated like breaking into Highgate Cemetery at night to look at Karl Marx’s grave?

Coco Khan So we thought you had some wonderful suggestions.

Nish Kumar Yeah, well, not suggestions. We’ve had some.

Coco Khan Oh yes.

Nish Kumar Absolute horror stories. So let’s start with Ferdinand, which I’m reliably informed is not his real name. He’s written. And so to set the context in the early 20 tens fed I numbers living and studying in a German city with a couple of flatmates, one of which was one of the local organizers of the Occupy movement. A bit similar to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Through this flatmate, he met a girl. And now I’m picking up the story from Watford and on to send us for our third date. She thought it was a splendid idea to join the Occupy protests in Frankfurt, driven entirely by base desires and exactly zero political fervor. I followed her straight into a street brawl with the police getting surrounded for multiple hours by cops in riot gear while stones and bottles fly overhead. Wasn’t exactly my idea of a romantic afternoon. To this day, that day has been one of my most memorable ones and thankfully also the only one that has ended in criminal charges. Wow.

Coco Khan Wow. Should we go for a romantic kettling?

Nish Kumar Wow. I also really appreciate the honesty of further that a guy built Israel Day to say it was entirely driven by base designs of zero. Was that political? Imagine having the horn so much that you were willing to brawl with the police for.

Coco Khan Criminal charges as well. You’re a cop of hope that they got together because it was such a wonderful wedding speech.

Nish Kumar Well, I’m assuming it was based on the fact that Carrot has written it as well and said, when I was 16, I found my first boyfriend, an environmental activist training camp. Fantastic. Yes. Right in the middle of the brand of our listeners. It was long distance relationship, but in spring he took the train for two hours to come see me and go to the cinema. I picked a movie I was keen to see as it had great reviews for its act and it was still in theaters. We watched Downfall. Yet 16 year old me looked at the German movie about the last days of Hitler and thought first proper date material. We storm. We somehow stayed together for six years after that. I don’t think I was permitted to pick a movie about the downfall as a date movie. Wow.

Coco Khan I once had a date to go see Alien.

Nish Kumar Fine.

Coco Khan Fine.

Nish Kumar Horror movies are quite sort of. Also, horror adjacent movies are quite common type things, right?

Coco Khan Well, I mean, downfalls horrific in its own way as well.

Nish Kumar It has a happy ending. What? The bad guy dies.

Coco Khan Yeah I know. It is a happy ending. We had one in from YaYin my most painfully left wing date was seeing this show in class guy this week. 100% would do it again. Nish you really are doing your bit for Pod Shag the UK.

Coco Khan You’re providing entertainment for Left wing dates.

Nish Kumar Pod Shag the UK was an ill advised joke were made about setting up a dating service for our listeners that I say was ill advised because it led to a deluge of people dating profiles to us.

Coco Khan Pod Shag the UK never dies.

Nish Kumar Very quickly clamped down on. But yes, thank you very much for coming to the talkshow in Glasgow. It was a lot of fun. I take painfully left wing statements. It really is a huge badge of order.

Coco Khan You should get that on the poster, my friend.

Nish Kumar Yes. The tour rolls on. I am all over the UK for the next two and a half months, so if you are interested in a painfully leftwing date, by all means tickets available in the UK.

Coco Khan And that’s it. Thank you for listening to Pod Save the UK and we want to hear your thoughts. We want to know what you think about Starmer’s donations and how money infects British politics. Email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.UK.

Nish Kumar Don’t forget to follow us Pod Save the UK on Instagram tik-tok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer James Tindale. Assistant producer Mae Robson.

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Nish Kumar Thanks to our engineer Ryan McBee.

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

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

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