As Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace faces a stream of allegations about inappropriate behaviour at work, Nish and Coco take on the entertainment industry’s toxic culture. Nish gives an insider’s view of why change is long overdue in an industry that enables massive egos, bad behaviour, even abuse. And Coco argues that to take women’s safety seriously we need to start with zero tolerance on bullying banter.

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s reset this week promises to focus on working people’s priorities but is this going to deliver results. And is Labour missing a trick? Journalist Zoë Grünewald on why the government needs a big vision for young people.

And with Reform UK support on the rise and soaring youth unemployment, is the left in danger of losing young voters to the right? Jacob Diggle of UK Youth joins us with solutions to get young people into work or study.

Guests:

Zoë Grünewald

Jacob Diggle

Useful Links:

UK Youth https://www.ukyouth.org

Credits:

Sky News

BBC Radio 4

Parliament TV

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

Contact us via email: PSUK@reducedlistening.co.uk

Insta: https://instagram.com/podsavetheuk

Twitter: https://twitter.com/podsavetheuk

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@podsavetheuk

Facebook: https://facebook.com/podsavetheuk

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PodSavetheUK

TRANSCRIPT

 [AD]

Coco Khan Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Coco Khan.

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar. This week Reform UK is on the rise. Starmer is doing a reboot, but can Labour see off the threat of the far right?

Coco Khan And Gregg Wallace eats humble pie. But there’s a bigger issue here. Is the entertainment industry actually just a rogue employer?

Nish Kumar Plus, out of work and out of ideas. How do we solve the UK’s youth unemployment crisis? So, Coco, last week we sat here talking about literally matters of life and death, the assisted dying bill. It passed after a really passionate and moving debate. It’s a huge moment in the history of this country. This week, though, it’s back to business as usual with Starmer’s revamp, an image I cannot erase from my mind. Keir Starmer sort of getting a glow up, but also a darker image. Much bleaker one is Gregg Wallace striding around the workplace wearing nothing but a sock, allegedly.

Coco Khan Yeah. So if you haven’t seen it, the news is being dominated by the story of Gregg Wallace stepping down from presenting MasterChef. 13 people and counting have made complaints about his sexualized jokes and inappropriate behavior. Now, there’s allegations of groping, too. Gregg Wallace is a look. He’s quite easy to laugh at. I think we can all agree on that. But there’s actually some really serious issues here. And we it’s all part of this problem of women’s complaints not being listened to.

Nish Kumar Wallace’s lawyers have said it is entirely false that he engages in behavior of a sexually harassing nature. And Wallace initially came out swinging at his critics.

Clip Now, in the newspaper, I can see the complaints coming from a handful of middle class women of a certain age. Just from celebrity MasterChef. This isn’t right.

Nish Kumar I mean, middle class women of a certain age. Has he hired Prince Andrew to do his crisis PR? Because that is that is one step away from I am medically unable to sweat. Like that is that is absolutely incredible.

Coco Khan Self-immolation PR a lesson by Gregg Wallace. All of this was one step too far for Downing Street. They’ve waded into the fray, calling his explanation misogynistic and forcing Wallace to apologize.

Clip I want to apologize for any offense that I caused with my post yesterday and any upset I may have caused to a lot of people. I wasn’t in a good headspace when I posted it. I’ve been under a huge amount of stress. A lot of emotion. I felt very alone under siege yesterday when I posted it. It’s obvious to me I need to take some time out now while this investigation is underway. I hope you understand, and I do hope that you will accept this apology.

Nish Kumar Not in a good headspace? Listen, as a man with mental health problems. It really does offend me how often men’s mental health is brought up when a man is accused of sexual misconduct. It is so grotesquely offensive and just absolutely absurd. So, look, the BBC has pulled its two MasterChef Christmas specials, but is under pressure from politicians to take the show off the air. While the claims against Wallace are investigated. Here’s Labour MP Rachael Taylor, who sits on the Women and Equalities Committee.

Clip It’s the BBC that are commissioning that production company and therefore it’s going out as BBC output and the public want to see that the BBC is taking action against this sort of behavior. And you don’t think that’s coming across? It’s it’s not coming across at all. And and I for one, don’t want to be watching sex pests spawning over fancy food around my Christmas time. I want to see action taken to protect women in the workplace. And do you think, therefore, that MasterChef shouldn’t be on our screens at the moment? Not just the Christmas specials? I think it shouldn’t be on our screens for a number of reasons. It’s it’s just a slap in the face to those women who’ve been affected by this sort of behavior. And it shouldn’t really be there until a full investigation has been carried out.

Nish Kumar She was talking to Emma Barnett on Radio four.

Coco Khan I can’t believe that in 2024, we’re having to have a conversation about, sure, that was inappropriate. It’s mad. I mean, just even listening there and just reflecting on Gregg Wallace, his comments about the middle class bear. And I was just thinking to myself, and that’s actually quite prejudicial in itself because it’s basically saying that if you’re a lad, if you’re a working class person, what you you’re sexually abusive to women. That’s ridiculous. It’s not it’s not carry on film. It’s not banter. And actually, I say this as someone who went to university with a very strong posh boy rugby contingent. This is a cross-class problem. Horrible to women, objectifying them, sexualizing them, harassing them. It’s it’s just mad that we’re having this conversation.

Nish Kumar This is a societal problem and it’s a problem in every workplace. And it given a string of the stories that we’ve been reading about allegations of sexual misconduct and much more serious offenses in parliament is probably also something that MPs should be maybe wary of moralizing too heavily over. I think the idea of confining this to one section of society might be missing one of the key facets of the problem, which is this is a problem of male behavior, full stop. But we cannot escape this idea that the entertainment industry and the media has had a serious problem of sexual misconduct. And I think the most important thing to wrap our minds around, those of us in the media and in the entertainment industry is that when you step onto a studio floor, it has lights, cameras and a makeup team, but it is an office that is a workplace that and your behavior in all of these places should be no different than anyone working in any office should expect in the entertainment industry. And the media does have a problem with particularly a kind of fetishization of on camera or on Mike Talent. I use that word in inverted commas, but it is the technical term that is applied to those of us who are in front of the camera on the microphone, The it’s referred to on official documentation. This is when the talent is arriving. That is a term that needs to be abolished. It needs to be abolished for any number of reasons. Just because the talent implies that.

Coco Khan No one else is talented.

Nish Kumar No one else is talented. Yeah. And that you can’t get a show on television without people that know how to operate cameras and sound equipment. Like it just wouldn’t work. And so you just have a lot of people with big egos talking to themselves in warehouses and so that there’s a whole side issue as to why that term needs to be abolished. But also with this specific issue in a much more serious way, it has really, really terrible implications because it, I believe, creates a culture of indulgence, of abuses. And I think it’s the core of why we keep ending up in this same situation over and over again. These are not new allegations around Gregg Wallace. The fact that they’re in the public domain is what’s new. These allegations have been going on for a decade. There has been an investigation. There have been complaints made to it about his behavior over a long period of time. The idea that this is a media that’s come out of nowhere is simply not correct.

Coco Khan No, absolutely. And I mean, I have heard the criticism, which is like, how is the government? You know, they shouldn’t be throwing stones. They live in a glass house. There’s loads of harassment in parliament. Yeah, there is. Let’s sort that oout as well.

Nish Kumar Yeah. You’re absolutely right. That’s not a reason to not.

Coco Khan That’s not a reason not to do it. This is a highly visible case. And the point is, I think it’s fantastic that the government’s got involved because this it’s kind of sending a message to the country, this is not okay, this is not normal, this is not all right. And I think also we are in a backdrop of lots of violence against women. Street harassment is out of control. The levels of abuse, you know, you could even draw a parallel between this being the soft end of a problem that’s leading to sexual violence. Let low convictions of rape. You know, this is a women’s safety issue. So I think it’s great that they’re doing it. Don’t stop here. Let’s go to workplace. You know what I mean.

Nish Kumar Yeah. And I think, you know, this idea that this idea that people are irreplaceable is just not true. Like with respect, everybody is replaceable. I’m eminently replaceable.

Coco Khan Don’t say that.

Nish Kumar Glad to be. I’m specifically replaceable by my celebrity doppelganger, Jason Mantzoukas.

Coco Khan And Mo Salah.

Nish Kumar That that’s an example where the reverse is not true. I’m replaceable by Mo Salah. I’m pretty sure he’s not replaceable by me. I don’t think anybody needs to see me as someone who has broken two bones in the last year and a half like football. I don’t think anybody needs to see me playing right wing for Liverpool.

Coco Khan After the break, we’ll be chatting to friend and sometime host of Pod Save the UK, journalist Zoë Grünewald about Starmer’s attempts to reset.

[AD]

Coco Khan So Keir Starmer has only been Prime minister for five months and things haven’t gone exactly to plan.

Nish Kumar We’ve had a row over freebies. The farmer drama, 22 billion pounds of budgetary black holes, a race riot, a budget that pissed off a lot of people, cuts to support for pensioners, disappointing economic results, talk of a Third World war. The worst possible result in the US elections and now, reform is on the rise.

Coco Khan So this week Starmer is busy seizing the agenda, whatever you want to call it, it’s a reboot to Keir Starmer, we’re recording Pod Save the UK the day before he sets out his plans for change. It promises to be radical to have a relentless focus on working people’s priorities and to give us measurable milestones.

Nish Kumar Will this be a word salad of broad missions and milestones, or a real attempt to nail down what this government can achieve? To help us figure out its political journalists and friend of the show Zoë Grünewald. Zoë, welcome back.

Zoë Grünewald Thank you.

Nish Kumar Nice to see you.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, nice to see you guys.

Coco Khan So I guess the big question is why me? Why?

Zoë Grünewald Well, I mean, you might notice it’s been a tough few months for Labour. They have had, as you pointed out, lots and lots of different issues.

Nish Kumar It’s a honeymoon period, but a honeymoon where everyone got diarrhea.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah. Yes. Yeah, it really is. And I think they are feeling like the narrative is slightly getting away from them and I don’t think they’re wrong. And I think there’s also a feeling that they possibly went into this slightly wrong. You know, they went into the say, everything’s really, really bad. It’s going to take us ten years with us, not really accounting for the fact that, yes, people understand that the economic situation is really bad. Public services are on their knees, but they did vote for change. That was the platform Labour stood on. And that means they’re expecting results. And then then of course, there was all the stuff about freebies. There’s been issues with very cabinet ministers. There’s been there’s been a whole raft of problems and I think Labour now want to refocus, bring it back and focus on actually what they can deliver. So that’s what the speech is going to do. It’s going to focus particularly on three targets, which is reducing immigration, although I don’t think we’re going to get a number. So slightly strange. One, increasing disposable incomes and this is the idea that they are going to basically sort of scrap just the kind of concept of growth targets. And I think part of this is because if you look at what happened in the US election, the economy was growing. But if people don’t feel it, it doesn’t really make a difference. So they want people to feel an economic change and cutting NHS waiting lists again. I’m not sure if they’ll be an exact number. I would imagine there might be for this, but they think immigration, cost of living, an NHS, they’re sort of tend to be top three voter priorities and lot of voter groups, if they can make tangible changes that they are hoping that they will keep people with them for five years.

Nish Kumar I sense I know the answer to this already, but do we know that there’s going to be actual concrete policy announcements that go with this?

Zoë Grünewald I suspect there will be. Yeah, because otherwise, how do you announce it, whether or not they’ll be specific numbers and whether it’s. Yeah. So today we’re going to get on with doing X is a different question. They’re kind of keeping the powder dry on this because probably because they do want people to pay attention that they do want to announce things and have the front pages. You know, they want the public to see that actually they’re really getting on with the job now, you know, quite a few months in.

Coco Khan I mean, I can see the logic of it. I don’t think the average person remembers the numbers of the targets. You know, they just have a general sense that things have improved. But then that does make it hard to hold them accountable against their right.

Zoë Grünewald It does. And if you look at Rishi Sunak’s, though, he had his five targets and he didn’t achieve cutting NHS waiting lists, stop the boats. And in fact he banked on there just being economic growth because that’s what economists were telling him. But none of those targets, he was actually doing anything measurable to try and enact them. And when he didn’t meet them, they were really easily thrown against him during the general election. As you have failed on your promises to the British people, I think this is slightly different because actually Keir Starmer does have a big majority. Yeah, he has a large mandate. He can actually get things done. Rishi Sunak could not get anything done because he couldn’t get his party to agree on anything. So he chose targets. He thought, Yeah, they’ll probably happen. NHS waiting lists are bound to go down, the economy will probably grow and actually it was a lot more difficult than that. So I think there is a stronger chance of Labour meeting their targets and choosing targets that they know they can make a difference to. But you’re right, if you don’t meet them, that can be very politically problematic. And some of the things that are going on in politics are out of your control. So if you look at what’s happening internationally, you know, you look at how international conflict, for example, affects energy prices. Yeah, you can’t account for that. So there is a risk to it. But I think they are hoping that if they can show policy changes and then point to the exact mechanism that they brought in that creates that policy change. So for example, building new homes, they can say that’s because we reformed planning laws, people might say. Okay. I do feel like they’re consequential. They’re making a difference. Okay.

Coco Khan And what do you think is missing in all of this? Because, I mean, the way you’ve outlined it there, it all seems to kind of make sense. And, you know, I do recall those pictures of Starmer looking like a head teacher that’s caught you in the wrong shoes. Change I remember vividly. And people do want it, but what are they missing on what’s what’s not being communicated here?

Zoë Grünewald So I think the biggest problem is that Labour are just not communicating a vision of what they want Britain to look like and what government they are. There was a sense going into the election in Labour circles that actually what voters just wanted was security. They wanted financial security. They wanted to feel secure walking the streets. They wanted to feel like their kids had a secure future. They wanted to feel like Britain nationally was secure. And actually, what they didn’t want was to constantly be thinking about politics and constantly thinking about who’s left the cabinet and what latest arguments going on. I think that is true after years of scandal. People wanted to hear less about politicians. But I don’t think it’s true that that meant that they just wanted a government that sits back and gets things done in a kind of managerial sense. I think actually there was an appetite for change and probably something quite radical. And they thought just saying the adults are in charge, we’re going to fix this, leave it with us, would go down. Well, actually, it hasn’t because people’s lived experience is all that. Actually, everything isn’t working. And they they voted for a different government to do that. And I think now what Labour’s realizing and why they’ve had this or shakeup at the center, they got rid of the gray, they put Morgan McSweeney’s very much in charge of the operation, is that they want to be selling something to the public and they’ve realized that is very, very important. The question is what is that? And is Keir Starmer the right person to sell a message? He’s not inspiring in the way you know, and same with Rachel Reeves as a chancellor. She’s very managerial. None of them are painting a picture of what Britain is going to look like in ten years time.

Nish Kumar Why wasn’t there a plan? Like, I’m not fond of using the first hundred days as a measuring stick for prime ministers because that’s something that we associate more than American government. But at the same time. Why was there no attempt to seize control and put policies in place? Because the material conditions are not 1997, Blair and Brown were able to come in and coast on an economy that was in recovery. And then after two years, Gordon Brown was able to say, look, we’ve met all of their financial goals, but now we’re going to change things up because we see the country needs it. And that was a political tactic and it worked very well. But in this situation now, going into this winter, the NHS is in crisis. The schools are in crisis. Everything is in crisis. Why? Why did Labour not arrive in office with a policy plan to deal with the sort of multifaceted collapse of Britain as it comes?

Zoë Grünewald Firstly, I think actually the timing of the election did slightly surprise Labour. It was earlier than many predicted. I think they were slightly taken off guard by that. And you can I think we should really hold Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives accountable for having a political strategy, which is I am going to call the election at a time which will cause the most discomfort to the next government, make it most difficult for them to govern just because it might give us a better chance of seizing power again in five years. I mean, that’s not that’s not ethical leadership. That’s very opportunist.

Nish Kumar Isn’t that sort of written into the conservative party like the message in this stick of rock

Coco Khan It is.

Zoë Grünewald You know, burn the country to the ground and then make it difficult for them.

Nish Kumar I think that was one of Boris Johnson’s pledges that he did stick to in absolute fairness.

Zoë Grünewald Well, on that, yes. I think they were very focused on winning. Laser focused on winning. And part of that was being incredibly cautious, as you say, basically straddling this underground, not wanting to rock the boat at all. And I think the preoccupation with winning dwarfed the preoccupation with governing. You know, there was it was suddenly like, my God, now we’re in power. What do we do? I don’t know why they didn’t call an emergency budget like straight away, you know? And there was this suggestion that they don’t get a proper look at the finances until they’re in government. Well, it’s a lot of it is public. You know, there are conversations going on with the Ifs. They do pre-election work with the civil service. There are things that you could do. It does feel like they’ve been slightly caught out. I mean, some of this has been been put on the shoulders of Sue Gray, possibly suggesting that it’s her fault. I don’t know how much that is. Labour briefing, factionalism. I think it’s a bit unfair to just blame Sue Gray as the former chief of staff rather than everybody else who was involved in the operation. There was a few things they did quite quickly that, you know, they instantly announced they’re planning reforms. They were talking about great British energy. Very quickly, rail, nationalization. Those things happened quite quickly. But you’re right, not the things that were really, really needed.

Nish Kumar You know, the emergency measures, things, cost of living and the NHS. I’m just talking about going into this winter, you know, we’re sort of all being asked to accept that there’s going to be people on hospital gurneys. And I think that I actually think the public would be understanding of that if there was a sense that there had been some kind of attempt to put policies in place that would mitigate against that. And I think this is also true of the Democrats. There was a very 11th hour attempt by the Harris campaign to put some kind of policy in place to prevent price gouging by big supermarkets. And, you know, part of the reason that your shop is more expensive is because, you know, of various inflationary crises. But those costs are being passed to you by the supermarkets. It’s not. We need to stop talking about inflation like it’s this like act of God that nobody has any power to deal with price gouging and, you know, the passing of costs onto the consumer in essentials like groceries is something that I would have thought particularly a center left government would be concerned with dealing with.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. And I think that’s a really good example. I think some of this you can pin down to maybe an experience of government. Yeah, there aren’t a lot of Labour grandees who have experience of governing within the government. I think that actually does show there are always teething problems around new governments. That is true. But has there ever been teething problems at a time of, as you say, such acute crises and with such a lack of patience from the general public? And I think Labour have now cottoned onto that, and that is what is forming this reset.

Coco Khan Once I hear all of that, there is just a part of me that is like, I just don’t fully buy that. You didn’t know how thin the patience of the public is and how desperate they are. I just I just also you can’t page of every paper.

Zoë Grünewald You can’t say we’re going to take a nun’s winter fuel allowance offer, but it’s not going to make a difference anyway for ten years. I mean, it’s to do with, you know, your narrative in order.

Do you want hear my sound. Listen, I thought, right. Same initials, a scapegoat. My goodness. Scintillating.

Nish Kumar How do I know the colors? You say the same as the colors, I say. Here we go now with smoke. Now with smoke. Your way to this. Governor.

Coco Khan I know that is serious stuff. General election is years away, but local elections, Senate elections, Scottish parliamentary elections or much closer starmer’s unpopular. The government’s unpopular. He’s made it clear he’s prepared to make unpopular decisions. But should Labour be worried about these upcoming contests?

Zoë Grünewald I think they are worried. If you look at you look at opinion polls in the Senate, right, reform and Labour a pretty much head to head. And there’s a reason that Farage launched his campaign. The general election in Wales, because he thinks that is a ripe battleground to actually go head to head with Labour reform. Always had this plan. Phase one.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Zoë Grünewald Wipe out the Tories. Phase two. Pick off the Labour supporters. Yeah. Wales is the place that they are going to try and put that plan into action. Now, actually, if you if you pick apart the numbers, it still looks like they’re just pilfering off Ex-tory voters. They haven’t really made a dent in Ex-labour voters. There’s a number of reasons for that. Some of them actually, I think, are to do with the fact that reform is economically off the right. And actually, I think that will always be a a stock for them because actually Brits are inherently very statist. They don’t really like right wing economics as a as a general rule. If you are a right wing party that is economically on the right as well as socially on the right, you cut yourself off to a lot of people who actually love the NHS and want more money going into it. So it will be interesting to see how reform play there. The big issue, of course, in both Scotland and Wales is some of Labour’s policies around things like the winter fuel allowance, the to child benefit cap. These are become points of contention and it’ll be really interesting to see how these actually play out because this is the first test of the voters actually voting on Labour’s policies, the policies that people say weren’t in the manifesto. And I think if they do see particularly reform pilfering voters, they will get pretty worried. And I’m concerned that their reaction to that will be to move further. Rail On things like immigration.

Nish Kumar Yeah. Which is of people listening, I’m just rubbing my forehead quite quite a stressed about it. Yeah. I’m sorry to be prejudiced by the things that have happened, but the last 15 years of government is people trying to head Nigel Farage off by doing a bit of Nigel Farage ism and then being slowly consumed by Nigel Farage. How worried specifically about reform? Farage is growing in popularity. Last week, conservative Andrew Jenkins defected to reform. Tim Montgomerie is the founder of Conservative Home and a sort of influential voice within the Conservative Party, is also has also defected to reform. It is very interesting, detailed that some of his support is coming from young men. It’s popular as the Green Party with men aged 18 to 24 and is making progress in Wales and Scotland. Terry, what would actually be the best way to see of reform? Because you’ve correctly pinpointed what everybody on this podcast’s working on this podcast and I suspect listening to this podcast is concerned about the Labour will trying to head off reform by moving to the right. That doesn’t work. It just hasn’t worked.

Zoë Grünewald It sends voters straight into the arms of the far right because you can never out Farage. Farage If you raise the salience of an issue, for example, immigration, you’re you make it more important to voters. You make it a priority to them. They’re going to go for the party that is strongest on that issue. I’m actually writing a piece looking at the rise of the far right in Europe amongst young people. It really shows that when centrist leaders try and meet those concerns about things like immigration, they just raise support for those far right parties. There are lots of different things to take into account about reform, but say they did see the success of far right parties across Europe. Say, for example, in Hungary, in Italy, in France. And they took from that that actually they need to move further left on the economy. They need to go big on public services, things like cash handouts for young people who are struggling to get on the housing ladder. I think that could make a real difference to their voter base. You could see a lot more young voters turning to what was reform. And I think that is dangerous for the Labour Party. I think what is really clear across Europe and across the UK is that we have a massive problem with intergenerational unfairness. So we know a lot of wealth and a lot of assets are hoarded amongst a sort of baby boomer generation. And the reason you have a lot of young people turning to the far right is because the far right is speaking the language of generational inequality. They’re doing it on tik-tok. They’re creating these policies that deliberately target young people, you know, things like housing, things like the economy. And it’s it’s bringing young people. It’s meaning young people are defying the expectations that we always had that they will always be. Said they will always be on the left. Well, I think the best thing that Labour can do is really tackle the issue of generational inequality head on. They’re already doing it a little bit, but they’re not telling the story. And I think there is a really good story to be told about. Not only do the inequities in housing, in the economy, in pensions, in social care, affect young people. They will affect the entire country because someone needs to pay for your social care. Someone needs to pay for your pension. You don’t want to be, you know, not able to get care in hospital because there aren’t enough young people working as doctors and nurses. Also, if you look at the reaction to the farmer’s inheritance tax. People care a lot about inheritance tax because they actually do care a lot about their children. The problem is they don’t trust the state to redistribute the money to them. I think a good politician could tell a story about what sort of country we are. That would be we are a country that is going to make things more equal, that is going to make life better for our children, not worse. We’re going to redistribute assets fairly. We’re going to put more money in education. We’re going to build more housing. We’re going to make sure that you guys are looked after in your old age and they have a future. Every future is better than the one before because that’s not been happening. And that is the language that the far right is easy. And I think part of the problem here is the left and the center have been quite blind to this. They’ve always taken youth support for granted. Yes, actually, this is a big problem. And this isn’t just 18 to 25 year olds. If you look at the generation that is affected by generational inequality, we’re talking up to 40 year olds and that voter group is just going to grow. And the older voters who are benefiting from it are going to die off. So this becomes a bigger and bigger problem. What the left needs to be doing is offering spending solutions that make people’s lives better. There was a really interesting proposal put forward by the Resolution Foundation a few years ago about if you equalized pensions with wages, that you could create enough money to just give every 30 year old 10,000 pounds when they turned 30 and it sounds like 10,000 pounds. Like what? What would that really achieve, actually? It you know, someone could say, maybe I will get married or maybe I’ll have a baby or maybe I’ll actually just put it in my pocket. But I feel way more financially secure now than I did. I’m ready to take a risk with my career or, you know, it’s these kind of these kind of policies that are actually progressive and statist that can bring in these young people who are feeling disenfranchized by a political system that has taken them for granted for a long time.

Nish Kumar Let us briefly, before we go, touch on this bizarre news story circulating that Elon Musk is going to donate a huge sum of money to reform. The figures involved include somewhere around $100 million. Farage has denied the claims and said this is news to me. But as we know, Musk has a very, very keen interest in British politics. And is he even allowed to do this?

Zoë Grünewald You’re not allowed to have donations from foreign. Yes, But there is a suggestion that he could give reform the money through his British arm of X. Yeah, because his company obviously has headquarters here. Yeah. There’s also a suggestion that he could become a British citizen. Yes. In order to donate the money, which, you know, I think raises some questions about reforms. Immigration policy obviously is very dangerous to democracy. Elon Musk also seems to have this strange obsession with just trying to constantly bait Keir Starmer on social media. And I think it is probably really concerning the Labour Party because they know they have to work with Donald Trump in January. If Donald Trump and Nigel Farage are best buddies. Yeah. Now, you know, Donald Trump is someone who actually does quite a lot just based on how much someone massages his ego. He does what he likes. I fully could see a situation where he is trying to undermine Keir Starmer because for his friend Nigel fraud, you know, the all the grown up diplomacy of American politics is in the bed with this trio. So I just think it’s very, very scary. Whether the donation will actually happen, I think is a different question because I think the rules are quite strict and I think there would be a lot of public concern about a donation that large from someone like Elon Musk. They can cap it. They’re looking at proposals to limit whether individuals and companies can donate to political parties. They want to tighten the rules around money in politics. Also, there’s been a national conversation about is there is an appetite to do it. So, yes. I don’t think Elon Musk is going to give that money to to reform, but I don’t think that’s going to stop him from being incredibly annoying about it and raising the profile of Nigel Farage.

Nish Kumar And in the interim, the Labour Party, separate from that news story, needs to be telling a better story about the things he’s actually doing they can do.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, they need to be looking at how to make society more equal. They need to be reengaging with young people and they need to do what the left does best, which is posit economic solutions and spend a bit of money. Brits are statist. They love the state. They want to see money spent on it. That’s the best way to self reform, in my opinion.

Coco Khan How do we get it onto a placard? That’s what we have to brainstorm this piece of homework for our listeners. If you can figure out how to summarize that onto a three word slogan, which is what they all must be. Let me know. T shirts done. Zoe, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Zoë Grünewald Thank you.

Nish Kumar After the break, we’ll be talking about the 1 in 8 young people who are out of work and what can be done about it. As we’ve just been hearing, is Labour at risk of losing younger voters to parties like reform if we don’t solve this problem?

Clip Happy Holidays is back at your helpful Honda dealer with our best savings of the year. All remaining 24 hours must go. See thousands with 1.9% APR Financing. Award winning Honda cars, SUVs, trucks, fans, Hydrogen EVs are all in stock, like the 2024 Honda Accord, now with low 1.9%. APR financing Do not miss it to have Happy Holidays. Search your local Honda dealer dealers for financing be told the world of our buyers offer in 2025.

Nish Kumar Last week, Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall introduced a new white paper outlining Labour’s changes to the benefits system in the first major shake up since Iain Duncan Smith introduced Universal Credit in 2010.

Clip This white paper starts to turn the corner on the last 14 years, putting forward the real reforms. We need to get more people into work and on at work to give young people the very best start in life and to ensure our employment and Social Security system understand this fundamental issue that a healthy nation and a healthy economy are two sides of the same coin.

Coco Khan The government plans to, and I quote, get Britain working and off benefits. They want to cut the welfare bill, which has ballooned since the Covid crisis. And to do this, they are launching a new national jobs and career service to replace outdated jobcentres. And with 2.8 million people out of work due to long term sickness. There’ll be much more coordination between employment and health support.

Nish Kumar A major focus of this plan is the nearly 1 million young people, 1 in 8, who are not in education, employment or training. Joining us now to give us the lowdown on why that figure is so high and to find out if the government’s plan will work is Jacob Jacob Diggle. He’s the director of strategy, research and impact at UK Youth, a charity that champions youth work. Hi, Jacob. Welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Jacob Diggle Thanks so much for having me.

Nish Kumar It’s a very serious job title, isn’t it? Director of Strategy, Research and Impact.

Jacob Diggle Impact. Yeah. The pressure is on the shoulders. Fortunately, you got a team that do do the hard work and I just get to talk about it.

Nish Kumar So, look, this is a pretty dismal statistic. 1 in 8 young people out of work. Why do you think youth unemployment is so high at the moment?

Jacob Diggle Yeah, it’s a really hard figure to get your head around. We talk about a million young people without any education, employment, training, a sort of becomes another one of these things that washes over us. Yeah, it’s like twice the population of Iceland, which are just young people sitting without hope, without opportunities, without the kind of self-worth that comes from feeling like, Yeah, I’m good at something. I’ve got a community that comes with that. It’s a it’s a pretty bleak statistic and it’s getting worse. I mean, it’s worse by 150,000 since the beginning of this year alone. And that’s going in completely the opposite direction to our other employment statistics. It’s as with all complex social issues, there isn’t just one cause, but there are two big factors that we hear from youth workers, and the research tells us. One is about mental health. This isn’t young people not wanting to work. This is young people not being well enough to work. And if you’ve underinvested in youth mental health services for such a long time, you’re going to get a lot of young people who are feeling really unwell and you’ve missed out on the early intervention support. And so the needs that young people have got now are really complex. And so we’ve got a million people, half of those 500,000 of them are not working because they’re too unwell to work, not just because they can’t find a job. And so that’s a really big driver we’ve got here. The second one is we’ve you know, we know it’s difficult economic times. Employers are feeling a bit risk averse and young people sometimes feel a bit like a gamble. Yeah. Which means that the meaningful opportunities to get some work experience to prove that you can make a good contribution, but also to kind of get a sense of like, what does it mean for me in a working world? What kind of jobs actually want to do. Those opportunities aren’t available to people. And frankly, the way that we talk about young people in society in general reinforces that risk aversion from employers. You know, we talk about young people as if they’re problems, not people. We talk about the challenges they’re facing rightly, but we don’t talk as much about all the amazing potential they’ve got and all the amazing things they’ve got to contribute.

Coco Khan Is there a regional element to this? I happened to to see some statistics about the areas where there’s the most claimants for out of work benefits. And it seems to me that like, as you pointed out, you know, these issues are related to other issues around like poor social care, lack of good jobs, you know, the leveling up project that completely failed. I just wondered if you could speak to that a bit.

Jacob Diggle Yeah. So it’s a it’s a challenge nationwide. So in some of the regions of the country where the youth unemployment rates are lowest, they’re still about 10%, right? So they’re still really high. But we’ve got areas like bits of Liverpool where the rates are almost 20%, right? So we’ve got really big regional variation and that is tied into the broader prospects for those areas where we’ve seen big cuts to public services and we’ve seen real reductions in terms of economic activity and jobs available. So it really is a bit of a perfect storm in some areas. I guess this is where we’re trying to be a bit hopeful about this. I think the White paper has the Government’s announced with their kind of plans for reform here, are trying to take a kind of more tailored approach to this rather than the one size fits all. So when the. Talking about their Youth Guarantee and the government’s promise that young people should be have access to really meaningful training or a job, a good job. They’re trying to pilot how to do this in eight, what they call trailblazer areas, which are areas where they’ve got some of the highest rates of youth unemployment because what is needed in Liverpool and what’s needed in Middlesbrough. They are different even though the problems are equally high. And so we, we, we are really pleased to see there’s that attempt to try and lean into what the communities want themselves and how do you tailor support for them.

Coco Khan So can I ask because look, when I heard that they were doing away with the old jobcentres to something a bit more compassionate and joined up, I thought that was wonderful. I mean, now I often say that the Jobcentre is a shame center and you go in and through bureaucracy, they essentially ring a bell and say, Shame, shame, shame. Like Game of Thrones. I mean, it seems a lot more about punishment and administering benefits and actually helping people. That all sounded great. But what actually is on offer is not clear to me. They talked about work placements. How do you get work placements if there isn’t jobs in the area? If there’s not businesses in the area, will the placements be unpaid? What’s the likelihood they’ll become jobs? You know what actually is going to happen?

Jacob Diggle I mean, the reality is we don’t really know at this point What the government announced in this white paper is a is a commitment to a couple of principles. Right. It’s saying that the support the people need isn’t going to be available from just one person, but the support itself should be joined up rather than making that person ping pong around. Right. So we need to integrate better health and mental health support into employment support. Right. When we’re administering benefits. We shouldn’t just be thinking about it’s about the benefit, yes or no, but also broader careers advice, thinking about the wider role of things like youth work and helping a young person figure out what is that I actually want to do? How do I try and navigate these challenges? So the government saying we recognize that there are multiple sources of support needed and we should join them up, how they actually works, how it’s going to be funded. They haven’t got the answers yet. And we really hope that there is a meaningful commitment to working with experts who have been delivering these services on the ground and with young people to iron out those details, because that’s really important details.

Coco Khan So you could say that the carrot part of this has not been decided, but the stick part of this definitely has. Right? The cuts to benefits to young people who refuse to work. You know, my concern is, is that there’s no evidence that sanctions work and it just pushes people into further poverty. What’s the thinking here?

Jacob Diggle Yeah. So this is being described as a youth guarantee so that everyone age 18 to 21 should have access to meaningful training or a job. But it comes with a big stick, which is saying if you don’t take up the opportunities available to you, we will sanction your benefits. Whether that’s going to be all of your benefits removed or whether that’s to be some of it, that’s up for consultation. But the stick is very much there. I think the the reality is young people need to be given really high quality opportunities because if you’re being told we’re going to take away all your money unless you take this really bad job, that’s really bad for you. Or this slightly meaningless training course. Right. Which isn’t going to give you any meaningful skills. That’s not a real choice. That’s not a real offer of support. Yeah, there’s guarantee is a promise to young people. It’s saying that we think you need to have a great start and we’re going to give you a boost. Right? But it can’t just be another stick To be young people is when the young people are making really meaningful choices about actually, how do I fit this work opportunity with my caring responsibilities, with my health. They need to be supported to make those trade offs and not be forced into some of these really difficult choices.

Nish Kumar One figure that we do have is this 45 million pounds that’s dedicated to matching up 18 to 21 year olds with work and training. So this is this is a concrete amount of money. So it for an organization like yours, is your focus now on the spring review and pressuring the government to actually commit these kind of these kind of sums of money?

Jacob Diggle Absolutely. The spring spending review is a huge opportunity where we’re going to see whether the government is prepared to invest in the promises it’s make at this moment. There’s a lot of warm language. Yeah, but actually the level of resource to deliver on those promises isn’t there. The reality is at the budget that we just had a couple of weeks ago, national government spending on youth services reduced by 25 million pounds next year. Right. So the recognition of the problem and the commitment to try and change something for young people is that the government, the actions are actually taking an allocation of resource are going in the opposite direction. And that puts a huge pressure on the Spend spring spending review. There are so many different bits of government that are crying out for resource and are going to have to make hard tradeoffs and choices. The challenge is and we would argue if you’re not putting young people at the front of that list, you’re just storing up problems for future generations.

Coco Khan Yes, because am I right in thinking that if you’re unemployed under the age of 23, you have problems with your wages up to 20? Years later, even maybe even further. I wonder if you could just tell me about how this aid is so crucial for the rest of their lives, right?

Jacob Diggle Absolutely. We talk about this as a scarring effect. Right. And it’s a really important moment when you first enter the job market and you’re trying to get your first experiences of work. If you’ve got a difficult experience, you’ve got a really bad first experience of work or you’re really struggling to get a job in the first place. We know that has a really long lasting effects on your on your work outcomes for the rest of your life. So if you are unemployed as a young person around that kind of 18 to 21 age group, you are much less likely to be employed when you’re 4045. And if you’ve got a really negative experience of work, you get the same knock on effects later on in life. And that’s a really important thing that we sometimes miss out is not just any job, any cost. A lot at the moment is focused on just need to get someone into a job. But actually, once you sign the contract, the support can’t go away at that point.

Coco Khan So earlier we were actually talking about Labour and whether they have a optimistic vision of the future, whether they’re communicating it well. And if they don’t, how they could be seriously threatened by the right. And when I talk about the right, I don’t just mean the Tories, I mean reform, who are doing quite well with with younger people. Do you think this is politically it could be good for Labour? I mean, it’s certainly politically important, right?

Jacob Diggle I think any government needs to present a more hopeful message to young people who are facing a pretty bleak and uncertain future. Right. We’re all aware of the impact of the climate crisis. Right. The challenges we just talked about in terms of employment prospects, the kind of division that we see in society and the race riots earlier this year. Young people are looking at that and saying, I don’t know where I can contribute to this. And I don’t feel that hopeful that things are going to be better for me. We are now we’ve got the generation of young people who, for the very first time for over 100 years are feeling less hopeful about the future than their parents did. Right. And the government has a really important role in setting out an optimistic vision for this, because if young people don’t feel like they’ve got hope and they don’t feel like they’ve got them to contribute, you’re going to see an increase in nihilism and you’re going to see a breakdown in terms of community trust and cohesion. And then it’s going to become a kind of let’s just burn it down mentality rather than a hopeful one. And people feel like I’m building to something and I’m part of something. And the government’s got a really key role in setting that out.

Nish Kumar And how do you square this rhetoric, welcome rhetoric about engaging with young people with the idea that in the budget we lost money from youth service. How do you Because I’m I’m scratching my head. I that doesn’t make any. It does make a bit of sense to me.

Jacob Diggle It doesn’t it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make economic sense. It doesn’t make political sense. It doesn’t make moral sense in youth services. And, you know, those take many different forms, right? Some of that’s like the uniformed services, like scouts and guides. Right. Some of those are the traditional youth clubs you go to on a Tuesday night. Some of those detached youth workers going to street corners or to skate parks where young people are. Some of this is about like residential outdoor learning experiences, right? All of these different amazing youth services have got a thing in common. Right. The providing a trusted adult is not a parent, not a teacher. Not going to get something from you is solely solely there to help you figure out who you are, what you want to achieve in the world, and help you navigate the challenges in your life. What we know is there are 14 million young people in the UK. 4 million of them have access to youth work regularly. That’s amazing. It’s a miracle, right? It’s a fantastic thing that’s changing millions of young lives every week. It’s also a scandal because it means you got 10 million young people who don’t have any of that at all and is disproportionately missing for young people who have no other support in their life, who don’t have other trusted adults to turn to. Over the last 15 years, we’ve cut government funding into our services by three quarters, right? At the same time, we’ve almost doubled spending on child safeguarding and children in care. Right. Because we’ve created an emergency in a crisis where we have to step in and intervene the state and have to take over of the parents role. And we’ve taken away all of the preventative support, which is stopping the problem happening in the first place. It’s it’s makes absolutely no economic sense. All the research shows about the impact of youth work is that it reduces youth mental health problems, it improves employability, and it reduces crime in the community. That was research published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, that really respected economics thinktank just last week showing that in London, when you closed centers, crime went up. Violent crime went up and GCSE results were half a grade two, a grade lower at GCSE for the young people in those areas following the closures of leisure centers. Right. The benefit of youth services has been proven to be 3.20 pounds for every pound you put in. Right now, when we’ve got huge pressure on the public purse and we’re having to spend emergency funds on the NHS, on mental health services, on trying to transform the welfare benefits bill, right, on increased policing in communities because we’re worried about. I mean, safety. We’ve got an intervention which is proven to be one of the most effective preventative interventions. If you only care about this in economic terms, you’d be pumping all your money into services.

Coco Khan Yes.

Jacob Diggle Let alone the moral and ethical argument.

Nish Kumar Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.

Coco Khan Yeah. Yeah.

Nish Kumar If I was to sort of wave a magic wand right now and set out recommendations. So we’ve got this white paper that’s like, cool, we’re going to be nicer to people and not punch them in the face, which has basically been the policy of the last 40 years. If you’re a young person, you get punched in the mouth.

Coco Khan Free punch for the under 18.

Nish Kumar Won’t be executed by the state. It will be outsourced to a private company to do the punching. But if I was to wave a magic wand now and say you could design a system that will come out of the recommendations in the white paper and then be joined up with financing from the Spring review, what would that look like?

Jacob Diggle I think that there are three bets for it to me. One is we’d be genuinely investing in youth work in new services, but youth work alone can’t carry the whole burden. And we’ve seen the challenges that teachers have been facing, right? And feeling like they’ve got the whole world on their back. All of these different professionals, whether it’s social workers or teachers or people in the criminal justice system, they’re all trying to do their best for young people right now. The policy pulls them in loads of different directions and there’s not real dedicated money to the cross-sector colLabouration across professional joint working together. That has to be at the heart of implementing any change. And then the third, the really important piece of this is we need to give young people time, right? It takes time to learn. It takes time to figure out what’s going to work for you and what doesn’t. What we learn best by making mistakes. And if we create a system, particularly a benefit system, where there’s a really harsh financial sanction, if your benefits get taken away. If we create a system that gives young people one shot, right? Yeah. The pressure is that all these really bad things happen in your life. Some of them are big world events, like the pandemic. Some of them are real personal tragedies like your caring responsibilities or how you’ve been treated. All these bad things have happened to you for 15 years, and usually it’s been the last two years. Left school didn’t really have good qualifications. Not really sure what you’re supposed to be doing. You’ve got one shot to take. This, even if it is good training.

Coco Khan It’s an 8 mile, Eminem moment.

Jacob Diggle You got one shot. And if you get this wrong, that’s your fault. You failed, right? And then we’re like, the mask slips and we’re going to go back to the punishment only. We need a system that gives young people time, Time to make mistakes, time to learn. And one of the most powerful things that youth workers do and this is tested day in, day out, in new centers across the country, is to say to a young person like, you can’t get rid of me. Ultimately, you’re going to mess up and I’m still going to be here, Right? And that’s how you build trusting relationships.

Coco Khan I’m going to cry. Don’t don’t push me. Do not push me. I will cry. Aw. It’s so simple and so beautiful and so cost effective. It’s so annoying it’s not happening. Also, just thank you for shouting out the scout leaders on this one. My other half did scouts when he was a kid. And you can tell. You can tell now. He’s an adult man and he’s just like, oh does someone need a compass? He doesn’t get lost. He never feels lost. He did orienteering. It’s a really nice thing.

Jacob Diggle It’s a it’s a perfect example because the the types of support, the type to youth work that different young people need is going to be different. Right. Because a diverse group, some people, scouts can be amazing. Right. For other people is going to feel like the absolute worst nightmare, they’re going to want something different, right?

Coco Khan For Nish.

Nish Kumar For me. Worst nightmare, absolute, worst nightmare.

Jacob Diggle And that’s why we’ve got a diverse range of services and that’s why we should give young people genuinely meaningful choice.

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

Nish Kumar And that’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Special thanks to listeners last week who got in touch after the episode. When Dr. Rosena Alan-Khan MP talked to us about the vote on assisted dying, some of you agreed with that position, some of you didn’t. I know it’s hugely important to a lot of people personally, so thank you so much again for sharing. If you want to get in touch, email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.UK.

Coco Khan Don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel on site.

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

Coco Khan Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and producer Mae Robson.

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos and our video editor was Narda Smilionage.

Coco Khan Thanks to our engineer Ryan Macbeth. And the head of production is Dan Jackson.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Louise Cotton and Madeleine Herringer. With additional support from Ari Schwartz.

Coco Khan And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

[AD]