Donald Trump has left the world reeling with a plan to turn Gaza into *checks notes* “the Riviera of the Middle East”. He vowed that the US will “take over” and “own” the Gaza strip, effectively endorsing the ethnic cleansing of 1.8 million Palestinians who would have “no alternative” but to leave.

With rumours circling that his inner-circle are calling him an “HR manager” rather than a leader, in classic style, Keir Starmer has pushed back but avoided directly criticising Trump.

News Agents co-host Lewis Goodall joins Nish and Coco to discuss this latest tidal wave of horror and whether Starmer has it in him to stand for something.

On a more hopeful note, the decision to greenlight the giant new Rosebank oilfield off Shetland has been ruled unlawful by the courts. At the forefront of the fight has been Uplift Director Tessa Khan, who calls in to celebrate this major win for climate action and let us know how we can stop this oilfield for good.

Later, Coco sinks her teeth into our household waste, after Green-led Bristol Council unleashes the wrath of local residents.

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Guests

Lewis Goodall

Tessa Khan

Audio Credits

The Guardian

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar. Once again, we can’t escape Trump. The president has unleashed a tidal wave of incredulity around the world, from backflips on tariffs to Elon Musk’s interventions in the apparatus of American government. And just this morning, as we record announcing a completely insane plan to take over the Gaza Strip.

Coco Khan Absolutely insane, incoherent and obviously terrifying. You know, in my naivete. Yeah, I woke up really early this morning before the news circulating and thought to myself, great, on today’s episode, we can talk about the Grammys or something nice like that. Do you know what I mean? There seems to be a natural pause in the devastating, horrifying news.

Nish Kumar No, there’s no pause. There’s not even time for us to make fun of Drake. That’s how serious the situation is, to discuss these waves of chaos and back in the UK, the salacious allegations that inner circle described Keir Starmer as an H.R. manager. We’ll be joined by a very special guest, the news News Agents’, Lewis Goodall.

Coco Khan Let’s start on this Gaza news. Here’s President Trump announcing his plans. Well, understand if you skip the next 30s, if you can’t stand the sound of him.

Clip The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings. Level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.

Nish Kumar That’s Trump announcing his plans for Gaza in a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Just to summarize some of the other headlines coming out of these announcements, Trump said that the Palestinians would have no alternative but to leave Gaza. The US would own and develop the Gaza Strip. He’s called Gaza a symbol of death and destruction and that the only reason people would want to live there is because they have nowhere else to go. And he spoke about it in chillingly cold terms. He spoke about it as the real estate developer he always has been and said that he envisions Gaza as a Riviera of the Middle East.

Coco Khan On a slow revolt. You know, I’ve heard some of his team or certainly his former team doing the press rounds this morning, and they only ever talk about Israeli security. And no one seems to mention the right to being a people’s for the Palestinians, which don’t seem to factor at all. It’s really, really chilling.

Nish Kumar So in terms of what this means for the Palestinian people, he suggests that the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza should move to neighboring countries with humanitarian in their hearts. So this is ethnic cleansing. This is, you know, the use of violence and force and intimidation to essentially drive a community of people out of their homes. Yeah. If you watch that footage of Trump giving the press conference, Netanyahu is stood next to him on the lectern and is sort of nodding approvingly throughout. What you’re seeing really is the realization of Netanyahu’s ambitions for Gaza, which is effectively to drive the Palestinians out of their homeland and make it part of Israel. This is why Netanyahu has been so open in his support for Donald Trump, because he knew that Trump would open the door for exactly this happening. But if international law is to mean anything anymore, then the international community has to stand strongly in the United Nations, has to stand strongly against this plan because it is ethnic cleansing. And I know that there are people who are going to kiss me of naivete for even asking questions like this. But this is a defining moment in the history of these institutions. And if they are unable to enforce the laws that they themselves have laid down, then there’s simply no point in them continuing to exist. I’m sort of slightly lost for words, but articulate how significant this feels at the moment.

Coco Khan Of course, these institutions are deeply, deeply problematic. But do we want to do away with them entirely, i.e. they they don’t exist. We don’t have anything like that. Or do we want to improve them so that they are more fair? Yeah. That point, you know about naivety. I feel that as well. I was thinking about Donald Trump as I do every minute of the day, but I was thinking about how he’s so naked in his ambition and the way that he speaks, and he kind of reveals the problems with the machine, right? Like that. Actually, all along it’s just been about money and power and who has the biggest guns. All along it’s been my is right and vested interested all along. But this time he’s not keeping it quiet. He’s proud of it and he’s showing it. And there’s something about this as well in this situation where I just was thinking to myself, well, I suppose if Phil has felt like in a way that we’re all in this through the looking glass when we talk about Gaza and that Israel’s response has been, I don’t know, proportional or something ludicrous like that, people have still saying this thing. And if you follow that to the nth degree, if you take that logic, where are we just going to completely forget all of the history, all of the occupation? We’re just going to only think about the last, however months long it’s been. Well, obviously, this is going to be the logical conclusion, isn’t it? This is the logical conclusion of like dehumanizing Palestinians. Them not having a voice of the only thing that matters is Israeli security and about ultimately securing a kind of Western presence in the Middle East.

Nish Kumar The Turkish foreign minister has described Trump’s Gaza plan as unacceptable, and Hamas has said that the Trump plan will pour oil on the fire from the British perspective. Our foreign secretary, David Lammy, was at a press conference this morning with his Ukrainian counterpart, and he said that we have always been clear in our belief that we must see two states, we must see Palestinians live and prosper in their homelands in Gaza and the West Bank. I’m pleased to hear the unambiguous language from Lammy in that moment. If they stand aside and allow this to happen, then where is their moral authority? To criticize Vladimir Putin. I really I’m asking genuinely. I don’t see how we can continue to maintain this kind of strong line on Putin whilst also allowing Trump and Netanyahu essentially to run right in the Middle East.

Coco Khan Yeah, even just listening to Trump earlier then when he talked about like, we will own us. So I’m like, okay, so we’re going to go from an Israeli occupation to an American occupation. He went from crony capitalist to crony imperialist in, what, two weeks? Something like that. I’m still processing it and I still feel like angry and shocked and confused. And there’s a part of me, a negative part of me that like, Well, what did you expect, Coker? What did you expect was going to happen? Did you really think that this relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, which has been signposted for a long time, was going to come out?

Nish Kumar You know, ever since he while Barack Obama was still president of America and Netanyahu didn’t meet with him and instead met with Trump when Trump was a candidate for the 2016 election.

Coco Khan You know that phrase when someone shows you who they are, believe them. I mean, these people have been showing us who they are for such a long time. And there’s a part of me that thinks, well, what did you think was going to happen? Not really. Coker What did you think when they announced the cease fire deal and even the fact that, like, you know, the UN aid agency weren’t allowed in there? In a way there’s part of me that thinks, well, this is this was inevitable. This was going to happen. I hope, for God’s sake, that governments around the world have had this conversation about when this happens and have a plan, you know, to mean is it’s a horrible.

Nish Kumar Horrible day for the global fallout of the US elections keeps happening because this week Trump also announced and then deferred tariffs to Canada and Mexico, as well as applying a 10% tariff on some Chinese goods. But what about the United Kingdom? Sorry. Here is another unfortunately Donald Trump clip in regards to our government.

Clip So the UK is way out of line and well, we’ll say the UK, but European Union is really out of line. UK is out of line. But I’m sure that what I think that one could be worked out but the European Union is it’s an atrocity what they’ve done.

Nish Kumar I mean that made almost no sense. If you can try and sort of extract some coherence from Trump’s words to the BBC from that clip is described, the UK is way out of line, but maybe okay, we don’t seem to be directly in the firing line, but the EU, which seems to be very much firmly in his crosshairs. That’s a hostility that also aligns with a lot of the tech companies that have been outright supporters of him because of some legislation that he’s trying to look at in terms of online safety. But anyway, that’s a separate conversation. But in terms of the way out of line, common, our government didn’t agree. A spokesperson for Keir Starmer said We’ve got a fair and balanced trading relationship and that our trade is worth about 300 billion pounds. The spokesperson also noted that we are each other’s single largest investors with 1.2 trillion pounds invested in each other’s economies.

Coco Khan Like the Gaza situation, this is definitely a sign of things to come in terms of US foreign policy. Trump will probably keep throwing his toys out of the pram and world leaders will at least partly acquiesce.

Nish Kumar But look, that’s the obligatory US update done. But if you want the US perspective on Trump’s delayed trade war or Elon Musk’s growing grip on the government Pod Save America unpacks it all how Musk’s handpicked crew is dismantling key agencies. Why Trump’s trade deal changes little and whether Democrats can stop the chaos. Plus, former Obama advisor Brian Deese breaks down just how bad things could get.

Coco Khan Listen to the latest episode now on the Pod Save America feed or watch on YouTube. But back on our home turf, we have some news that will give us a little bit of hope in this. It’s been hard to find reasons to be hopeful recently, but we’ve have a victory for the climate. The Rosebank Oil Development’s given the green light by Rishi Sunak’s government was ruled to have been unlawful due to a lack of clarity on just how much CO2 would be emitted by the project. A couple of months ago we spoke to Tessa Khan, one of the lawyers leading the fight against the proposed development, and she sent us in an update.

Tessa Khan Hi, everyone. Some good news for a change. Last week, a court in the UK agreed with acid uplift and Greenpeace that the last UK government’s decision to approve the massive, undeveloped oil field, Rosebank, was unlawful on the basis that the government hadn’t taken into account the really significant climate harm caused by burning rice banks, hundreds of millions of barrels of oil which would create carbon emissions that are equivalent to running 56 coal fired power stations for a year. There are also a bunch of other reasons that Rosebank is a terrible proposition for the UK, including the fact that most of Rosebank soil is going to be for export. So it’s not doing anything for our domestic energy security. It’s also not going to take a penny off our energy bills. And what it. Will involve is giving billions of pounds in tax breaks to already incredibly profitable oil and gas companies like Equinor, who wants to develop the field.

Nish Kumar Listen, there’s not much to celebrate at the moment, but it is really, really worth highlighting when this kind of stuff happens, when positive things happen through specific actions by activists and experts like Tessa, it’s really, really good news. But the fight might not be over. There’s speculation that the government might attempt to reissue licenses and the oil companies can continue work on the developments and gather further data about just how much CO2 it might emit. But for drilling to happen, they would need to be issued a new license from the government.

Coco Khan And, you know, we were talking about Heathrow just last week and how frustrating it must feel to feel like so many decisions, particularly in terms of the environment and the ecological damage are already made and there’s nothing you can do about it, but you can, as they’ve proven, and these are victories, of course, we should be celebrating. By the way, guys, if you’re listening and you know of any other victories, let us know. I think we all need some hope and optimism. So if this is something giving you hope at the moment, if there’s some grassroots activism, if there’s a case that isn’t actually being spoken about enough, but it is really meaningful to the causes of the environment or social justice. Just let us know. We’d love to hear about it. So. Email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.uk and we’ll aim to share some of the light around.

Nish Kumar For now, let’s be positive and take the wins where they happen. And this is a huge shout out to Tessa and all of the people that scraped together to fight this. You can still write to your MP and let them know that you oppose Rosebank. And if you want to do anything to help kick this oil field to the curb for good, then head to the Stop Rosebank website that’s stoprosebank.org.uk. There’s loads for you to get involved in.

Coco Khan Now after the break we’ll be chatting with the News Agents’ Lewis Goodall about some damning Labour leaks from Keir Starmer’s inner circle and the fallout from Trump.

Nish Kumar [AD]

Coco Khan Now. It’s been a tricky week for Keir Starmer in between dealing with Trump and the EU. Revelations from a new book, Get In the Inside Story of Labour under Starmer have put his leadership style into question. It claims that Tony Blair said he’s too soft, not tough enough inexperienced, and that the PM’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, described him as acting like a HR manager, not a leader.

Nish Kumar Now is Keir from HR what the UK needs to reset our relationship with the EU. Is it enough to ward off strongman tactics from Trump? Or is he deluding himself to set the record straight? We jumped on a call with Lewis Goodall, journalist, author and co-host of the News Agents Podcast.

Coco Khan Lewis Goodall, welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Lewis Goodall Why, It’s my pleasure. It’s nice to be on a proper show for once.

Coco Khan So that’s extra funny, that quip, because for listeners of the podcast, you can’t see that Lewis is talking to us from the News Agent studio. Looks very, very professional. Me and Nish are at home, the bottom half of me is track suit bottoms.

Lewis Goodall You’ve got it right. You’ve got it right. Jon Sopel You do not know how much? Jon Sopel Would love to do everything from home honestly. If he could do everything in his If he could do everything in his boxer shorts, he would and sometimes he does.

Coco Khan I’m just glad you didn’t say is boxer shorts in that studio because that’s seems like an HR situation.

Lewis Goodall Yeah. Well John’s one walking HR situation, I think no- it’s  a joke. It’s only a joke.

Nish Kumar I could tell you from personal experience, Lewis. That doesn’t matter to them.

Lewis Goodall Yeah, well, disclaimers need not apply.

Coco Khan It’s fitting to have you in your studio because, you know, the news agency has become a fixture of Westminster political journalism. I bet you spend many hours in there. How is it going for you? 20, 25?

Lewis Goodall Well, today I today I start the day by doing something in the James O’Brien on LBC. So I spent three hours talking about some the reordering of the international political order, redrawing of the Middle East map and listening to a man, honestly who, you know, was actually Trump’s ambassador to Israel in his first term, playing a clip, honestly discussing whether or not Gaza should be called Gaza, Largo or Gaza.

Nish Kumar My God.

Lewis Goodall So I would say, yeah, just another normal day, really. I mean, not so different stories really for, you know, I mean, basically now I suppose the difference now is now that we we all have to inhabit, don’t we? The burning hedge maze that is Donald Trump’s brain and try and each day see if we can navigate our way out of it and always fail.

Nish Kumar Most of your career has been spent covering the sort of looking directly into the heart of darkness. Less. Well, let’s be honest. It’s you. You’ve come of age as a political journalist in, I guess we say, sort of an interesting period of the history of this planet and I guess this country as well.

Lewis Goodall Yeah, I sometimes wonder and I suppose I could again ask our boxer friend Jon Sopel about this. I sort of wonder like what, like what did political journalists kind of, well they do in late 1999. You know, they sort of like they’re just like, are we going to join the euro? No, we’re not next in line. It’s all it’s all very, very odd. I mean, yeah, obviously, that is a challenge, right? I’m particularly with Trump. It’s like putting back on that kind of particularly though I keep sort of reaching for the kind of below the waist kind of metaphor, but like, you know, it’s like you correctly.

Nish Kumar Assess the tone of our show.

Lewis Goodall Yeah. It’s just an instinct. You know, it’s like wearing a particular sort of comfortable pair of trunks that you haven’t worn for a long time. It’s like you got to try each and every day to try and differentiates like what is matters and what doesn’t matter and what and try and raise the kind of hysterical bar. Right. Because the problem is this is his great genius. Right? His great genius is that he makes all of his enemies seem hysterical, even when there is loads to be hysterical about. Every day is a challenge. Well, let’s let’s.

Nish Kumar Stick with Donald Trump before coming back to some of the big domestic political news he’s just declared. Today’s we recall that the US is going to take over the Gaza Strip, hence his former ambassador to Israel’s Gaza logo. Whatever it was remarks to you this morning and relocate Palestinians to neighboring countries which would amount to ethnic cleansing. And it certainly has put Keir Starmer in a tricky position. Here is Starmer’s response to all of this at PMQs today.

Clip They must be allowed home. They must be allowed to rebuild. And we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two state solution.

Coco Khan What do you make of the government’s response there, Lewis?

Lewis Goodall Well, you know what? As the response to various sort of madcap things that Trump has come up with sort of day by day goes, he’s probably the strongest, most strident kind of point of disagreement that he’s had. And obviously, he didn’t say, you know, Trump is wrong. They will do everything that they possibly can right now to avoid saying the words Trump is wrong, but what the hell was he talking about? Whatever happens to be. So, you know, it is a qualitatively kind of different, different stance. But I mean, I think you look at Starmer right now and his biggest problem is, I mean, you can feel how utterly offices he finds himself being being in government. You know, you finally get the bully pulpit, right? You finally get the ability to command. You finally get the ability to be able to set the terms of political trade. Right. You basically say what’s happening every day and everybody else responds, particularly in the media. Right. That’s one of the great kind of convening powers of being in government. He doesn’t have that right now because every single day Westminster and British journalism wakes up and doesn’t actually think at the moment like, what is Downing Street saying about something? It’s what is the White House saying about something? And then like paragraph B is this is what Downing Street is saying or often like not saying in response to what Trump has said. He’s a figure who the best of times Starmer struggles to command the narrative, and right now he is basically being completely and utterly removed from it by force by the kind of leviathan that is Trump.

Coco Khan Well, I mean, that seems like a good time as any to talk about this this ongoing conversation about what sort of leader Starmer is. So I’m sure you saw the news over the weekend. There was an extract from Gabriel Cochrane’s and Patrick Maguire’s new book, I guess, in the kind of most spicy trains and all that. Tony Blair and Morgan McSweeney have questioned Starmer’s politics, his leadership. I mean, I don’t know. There’s a part of me that notes that it’s often in the right wing press that we see these stories. But if you’re close to this, how much credit do you give these rumors?

Lewis Goodall Well, I don’t think it’s a secret this that there’s been a lot of people within the Labour Party who are very uncertain about what starmer’s politics are. Right. He is quite thinks like about it. He is someone I mean, the Labour Party. Right. Loves to its principal activity. Right. Is to over intellectualize. Right. Like it constantly and this is one of the reasons probably it loses by comparison to the Conservative Party. You know it constantly engages in self-reflection. Like if they are good at one thing, it is beating themselves up and thinking about all of the different things. That kind of a making up their politics at one given time. Sorry party just tends to sort of go on and crack on with things and and do it, you know, like the Labour Party could win 649 seats of 650 and it would be really worried about not winning the 650th. Right. That’s what somehow it would really sort of starting all go. But we might lose next time. We might lose next time, you know? Right. So that’s the difference. Starmer is quite different in the sense he doesn’t like to over intellectualize anything. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t really like thinking about much at all. I mean, this is a guy who was asked not long ago who his favorite authors were, what his favorite films were, and he looked entirely blankly. They said, I don’t really read stuff. I don’t read novels. I don’t you know, I don’t think he has a very broad kind of intellectual life beyond what is right in front of them. That’s not to say he’s not intelligent. He clearly is. He doesn’t have a very broad sort of intellectual life. And so I think and I’ve asked him about this, you know, you sort of ask politicians, who are your political heroes or who are you more like you? Are you more like Harold Wilson? Are you more like Tony Blair? And normally Labour leaders in particular really enjoy talking about stuff they might like sidestep the question, but on some level they kind of enjoy it. Starmer recoils from it. He hates it. He actually eschews and is distraught, distrustful of political ideas, full stop. And so that can be helpful sometimes because it means he’s quite let’s put it this way, intellectually nimble. He can kind of move quite easily from kind of one arrow to the next. But what it does mean is that your troops are kind of like uncertain about what we are actually fighting for here. What are the things we really, really care about? And crucially, in an era which is actually being defined by big ideas and those ideas right now are coming all from the right. You know, they’re fighting a war of intellectual aggression day after day after day, painting very clearly exactly what is going on, why they think is going on and what should be done about it. Starmer has very little to say. I’m not entirely certain really what it is that Labour or Starmer can see even the question of politics right now to be let alone the answer. Does that explain.

Nish Kumar The slight lack of initial direction in the Labour Party as a party of government after the election? Because they’ve talked a lot about, you know, the sort of nebulous idea of economic growth. They’ve had various economists question whether that’s possible. They’ve talked about in terms of the NHS opening a mass public consultation. What hasn’t happened is an imposition of a actual cohesive vision for the country, which is only a surprise insofar as they’ve been in opposition for so long. And I think a lot of us assumed that they were fighting an election campaign in a kind of defensive mode in order to guarantee an election win. But then once he won an election and you arrive in office, it’s that sort of absence, that kind of intellectual nimbleness, actually a bit of a problem and leads to a slightly directionless party of government.

Lewis Goodall I think you’re right that the problem is with that is twofold. One is Labour leaders are expected to actually provide a lot more intellectual justification for what they do than others than conservatives, partly because the media environment is so hostile to them, partly because, as I say, the Labour Party actually is a much more kind of like over intellectualize these things generally. But I think it’s important for another reason, which is that the Labour Party, I mean Harry Wilson once famously said that the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing, right? The whole point of the Labour Party is that it isn’t supposed to just be a party of the status quo. It’s supposed to be a party which offers a moral and political critique to capitalism. Right. And the thing about Starmer is, is and what he’s offered is that everything he talks about is great. I mean, of course we want growth, right? Of course we want the trains to run. But of course we want the economy to be better. Of course we want more investment, all of this stuff. Any party would want that. The Conservative Party would want that. Rishi Sunak would have wanted that. And if your politics. Is simply a politics of delivery. If your politics is just okay, we might want the same things. But we can deliver it in a way the other party can’t because we’re more competent. Well, there are two problems with that. One. What happens if you fail? You’re left with literally nothing in terms of your politics. You have no kind of adhesive which binds together your political coalition because it was born based on efficacy and delivery. And the other problem with it is, is that in an era, as I say, defined by very big ideas, which we’ve got at the moment, these sort of intellectual ideas from the right which are being fought out every single day. You have obesity taking a water pistol to a knife fight because you’re not really engaging with them on the actual substance of the politics itself. And that’s for me, the parable, the parable of this, which I’m surprised Downing Street is less concerned about. The parable is Joe Biden. Joe Biden, who actually did deliver quite a lot, was overwhelmed by the intellectual force of the attacks from the right because he was unable or unwilling to communicate exactly what he was doing. So you can make and I think in the area of the smartphone that we’re in and the era where and I don’t like saying this, but vibes are basically dominant in politics. I think you could deliver all of the things that Starmer says he wants to deliver and still lose because people actually are more likely to recognize what they see digitally on their phones than the stuff in their actual lives around them. That’s a kind of weird sort of matter. Reality, political reality. We’re living it. Let’s assume for a for a moment that reform is actually going to be the main threat to Labour with the sort of main where the main oppositional energy is. That certainly it’s certainly true that they’re defining the terms of trade for sure. I’m not clear what Labour thinks, whether they’re willing to articulate what the clear difference is in terms of how they see society as opposed to reform. Now I think I know what they think privately, but what sort of society they want to defend. Is it a liberal society? Is it the multicultural society? Is it a society which, you know, traditionally, traditionally for a Labour Party would have been based on equality and fairness. Now, that would be a very clear dividing line in terms of equality between Farage and so on. But it’s not something they talk about. You know, at the moment. Labour I think is lacking, is what you really need in politics, which is the normative part of politics. What ought to be what ought to be not just growth. So growth is a good example. Yeah. You want growth, What sort of growth do you want? Where do you want it to favor most? Is everybody? Is it the poorest? That is these are the sort of central questions of Labour ism which go down the ages. And right now it seems to me that Labour is defined by a kind of a politics of nice things, and basically they just want everything to be somewhat better. Everyone wants that, everyone wants that. But in a society, in a politics which is increasingly about dividing lines and it’s about having arguments about who your people are and who your people are not, and which issues you cared about and which you don’t. It just feels to me like Labour at the moment just failed to articulate that clear sense. And I think that is without. I think that is a prerequisite to political success.

Coco Khan Well, I mean, I suppose as well that far right strand have made a really good case of saying it’s not possible for everyone to have nice things. It’s some people will, some people want. That’s the natural order of things. And really it’s just about choosing the winning side. Do you think that if they were to ever get in charge, they would just selfemployed or what do you think’s next for reform?

Lewis Goodall Look, there is there is not a great history of populist government forces when they take office. I mean, usually actually engaging with the realities of governing of the trade offs that are inherent in governing doesn’t usually go well. They’re very good at critique and they’re very good at throwing in grenades from the outside. They struggle. I mean, Trump was the best example of that. He’s he has oppositional energy. That’s the thing on which he thrives. But in terms of what’s next to them, look for for us. I mean, the one thing that Starmer has got on his side, the real, real trump card, as it were, is time. He’s got time, right? He has got theoretically, if Starmer wants to push this parliament to its maximum extent, he will have seen the Trump presidency come and go. We’ll have a new president by July 2029. Right. Lest there’s been some. If we don’t, then America is not a democracy anymore. So we can’t put that entirely was one side.

Nish Kumar I keep on feeling the need to caveat what people say, stuff like that. We hope. We hope. We hope.

Lewis Goodall All being well. All being well.  If the constitutional niceties are observed, then all being well, we should have a different vote.

That IF is getting bigger by the minute. As Elon Musk starts trawling through federal employees emails that IF starts to get bigger.

Lewis Goodall I kind of feel I mean, that may end up in the sort of Futurama situation where we actually have President Nixon’s head in the jar, you know, just because by that point or Trump. But yeah all being well and so that means anthropology is witness is is that his is a politics and political project which relies basically on a sense of constant momentum. Right. It relies on a. Sense that he’s always growing, it’s always getting bigger. And that relies on the media buying that narrative. And the media love that narrative, right? Particularly right wing press. They love that narrative. But sooner or later, they get bored. That’s a long time to keep that narrative going for years. Right. And there are going to be lots of things attempted to get interested in it on the way. And there’s lots of potential for him to make mistakes. All they need is a few bad performances or a by election which goes wrong, and suddenly that narrative changes. And because what they don’t have is a actual base right now, they don’t have a governing base. Like in the old days, ironically enough, they had the European Parliament. Right. 2026 will be the key moment for them because they will have to do well and I think really well, both in Wales and in Scotland in the devolved elections of that year. So in order they know order to give them a springboard for the rest of the parliament. So they’re looking very strong right now. And I wouldn’t underestimate them for a moment, but it’s not all plain sailing between now and 2029.

Coco Khan I’m going to let you go, Lewis, but just before I do, what is there to be hope for? Like we did our show today. Really? We did our show today.

Lewis Goodall Finally.

Coco Khan Reason to get out of bed in the morning, you know. Thinking about the politics of Britain and the world, you know, where do we find the green shoots of change that can make certainly a progressive audience feel like, you know, what this to pay for. Let’s keep going.

Lewis Goodall I know things can seem really depressing and relentless, and I get it. Believe me, I get the hang of it. But I’m afraid we don’t get to just kind of remove ourselves or sidestep from the historical and political moment we’re living in. I know it must. We all think, God, I wish we were back in 1998, 1999, That’s gone. That political world is gone. And the only way, the only way that we bend the arc of history back to something that we might prefer is if we engage with it properly and we engage with the reality of the moment that we’re living it. So I think what is there is to be hopeful about is that there are millions and millions and millions of millions of people out there who actively reject so much of that many of the things that are going on.

Coco Khan And what a bit of a shit sandwich there wasn’t it, though? I mean, I see what’s to be hopeful about and yeah, there is stuff, but. Okay. Great. Thanks, Lewis.

Lewis Goodall Hey, what do you want from me? What do you want from me? Well, maybe. Maybe, maybe I’ll. Maybe that maybe there’s going to be loads of beachside properties Mar-o, in Gaza. And who knows? You know, it’s a great time if you’re a middle East beachside property developer. Yeah, right.

Coco Khan Well, I was just thinking more you might say something about like, I don’t know civil assemblies or something like democracy.

Lewis Goodall I tell you what, I noticed yesterday it’s still light at 5:00. You can’t beat that, can you?

Coco Khan Can’t beat that.

Lewis Goodall You cannot. Trump will never be able to change the galactic astrophysics and our movement around the Sun, even if he thinks he can. Good luck with that, Don. Yeah, I can. Yeah, I can. You just watch.

Nish Kumar What a note to end on. Lewis Goodall, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK and of course.

Lewis Goodall My pleasure.

Nish Kumar You can catch more of Lewis on the News Agents podcast.

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Coco Khan Okay, so we’re back in the studio and Nish, I must talk to you about the bins.

Nish Kumar Must you?

Coco Khan I must. You know how I feel about the bins. I just think if I may have a moment to just be, like, really, like deep about bins, don’t you think It’s amazing? Collective sanitation. What an unbelievably amazing thing that we did. We all got together as a society and we decided, let’s just clean this up otherwise before you just throw your shit on the streets. Disgusting.

Nish Kumar Absolutely horrible.

Coco Khan And you know, that wasn’t that long ago. Anyway, I just think society great.

Nish Kumar Also, we live in London, so there are still people doing that, you know, like, I’m not sure anyone who lives in a major city doesn’t at some point in the day go, What on earth is the back story to you? Just dumping a full soap on the floor and leaving it? Well, why did you think that was an acceptable thing to do in a public streets?

Coco Khan It’s really what I was listening to because I sometimes listen to bean based content. It’s a big part of my background and I always wondered if it’s like a particularly British thing to have an obsession with the beans. I don’t know. I actually don’t know if that’s the case. I think.

Nish Kumar Everybody’s pretty obsessed with their bins.

Coco Khan Anyway. This is this is kind of it. But I was listening to a podcast about the beans and about how British people uniquely are a bit obstinate about beans. In other parts of the world. People are happy to have seven beans and recycle, but there seems to be something about the British who would not have an extra beans. You can’t stop me. I’m going to put everything in one bag. That’s my right. As a Brit.

Nish Kumar Most of us have between 2 and 3 bins. Basically. Most of us now have a bin that’s a bin. And then we have a recycling bin, and then we have like a food waste bin.

Coco Khan I’ve got a bin for batteries, bro.

Nish Kumar You’ve got bin for batteries?

Coco Khan Yeah, well, it’s just the bag. I leave it on top of the bins anyway.

Nish Kumar Oh really?

Coco Khan Yeah. This is.

Nish Kumar This is really boring. This is. So I have to take my batteries to Sainsbury’s. And dispose of them in a special batteries bin in a Sainsbury’s.

Coco Khan Yeah, I know, but look, you know, look what the state could do for you. It could help you. Anyway, the reason we’re talking about the bins is that Bristol is bidding to become the first council in England to move to a four week black bin collection cycle. So that means they’re not talking about the recycling bin, the green bin that will be collected more, but the black bin, which is the stuff that tends to go to landfill or be incinerated, is meant to be full of stuff that you can’t recycle, but in reality often is full of stuff you can recycle. So that will be picked up every four weeks is cause a massive fuss in Bristol and Labour are taking advantage. It’s been Labour who are behind a petition to get this policy overturned is still in consultation stage anyway. It’s been national news. It’s been an interesting thing to see progressives online who, you know, the Greens picked up a lot of progressive support.

Nish Kumar Massively, yeah.

Coco Khan Hugely especially under the under 40 is it’s been interesting to see those people online being like, please, no, stop it. This is not the hill to die on. Greens, please. Really fascinating to see. So I think this is probably a big test for them. What you you you four week two week bin what I’ve been.

Nish Kumar But obviously my instinct is we should collect the bins as often as possible. That’s obviously my initial instinct. But as the number of things you use in your house becomes more recyclable, you know, as kind of plastic waste becomes recyclable. And I know that there are question marks about what actually happens with that plastic recycling, But as that sort of stuff starts to happen, you would think, yeah, the amount of stuff you putting it in your bin bin should decrease. So in theory, like in theory, it shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Coco Khan Well, I mean, I think what people are finding frustrating is that the Greens have a point when they say that we don’t recycle enough. I’m putting too much stuff in that black bean bag and if you’re forced to kind of know you have limited space, it might push you to recycle a little bit more. A number of the the recycling rates in Bristol have been flatlining, even though Bristol was very famously very good at recycling. So they’re giving this economic this ecological argument. But the reality is, is that they need to save money. Now, every council in Britain has come out of 14 years of conservative rule. There’s no effing money. And so it will save them 2 million pounds. I think there’s this sort of frustration of being like, just be honest. Like you need to do this for cost cutting. But there’s a lot of posturing being like, No, no, no, no, no, no. This is great idea. This is a this is objectively a great idea for the for the planet. I think people find that annoying.

Nish Kumar Here’s my question. Right. Nappies. So what happens with nappies? Because if those start to build up over the course of a month, that’s not great. Listen, I know that children’s feces is not as disgusting as adults feces, and I only know this because my nephew took a dump of my hand earlier this year. But like, so I know as a non parent you can sometimes not be aware of.

Coco Khan Why was his buttocks uncovered in your hand?

Nish Kumar Carrying him and he just decided to unload like what could he do? He is 14 months old respect to the general, but like four weeks of nappies building up would be gross, right?

Coco Khan I mean, yeah, definitely. And I think that there are questions to be answered about if this does. Go ahead. What will happen? Will there be specialist nappy collections, for example? Because you’re right, there is just stuff. Human shit needs special treatment and means me needs more regular treatment. Look, it’s I think it’s a pretty difficult position for progressives when they come in to power because they obviously make promises about like, we’re going to be the anti-austerity candidates or we’re going to roll back some of the cuts. But fundamentally, if from Westminster there is not money going to these councils and there’s just going to be more cuts coming down the line, we’ve talked about this before in our in our previous episode about councils. And so I do understand that the Greens are in this really, really difficult position. There is a part of me that is fascinated with this because obviously Labour want to win Bristol back. It’s been a shell seat for them for a long time and it’s just amazing that this battle will just distill to be about the bids. I think this is a conversation we should keep an eye on because there’s national interest and just generally because the conversation around bids. But also I think this speaks to something that Labour will be trying to take advantage of while also not accepting that they do the same thing.

Nish Kumar So where do you stand on four week versus two week collection?

Coco Khan I’m very pro collection. I would like more collection. Yeah, I would like bins taken regularly and I’d like my refuse workers to be paid handsomely.

Nish Kumar That’s fantastic.

Coco Khan That’s my take away. But anyway, Nish, I heard you had a a funny encounter with a listener over the weekend.

Nish Kumar It was a job application that I have never received before. I don’t get. I don’t employ people. So it’s quite surprising to get a job application because those are delivered in a way that I’ve not really anticipated. I, I’ve a varied career.

Coco Khan Yeah.

Nish Kumar And an interesting life, Coco. I’m very blessed in the way that my career has worked out. One of the things I could not have foreseen is that I’m occasionally a deejay slash hype man for James Acaster when he is djing. Yes. So on Saturday, I was in East London in my sort of capacity as a stand up comedian.

Coco Khan And Happy Mondays.

Nish Kumar Yeah. Sort of best Flavor Flave, energy, I should mention for any day, just this thing. We don’t really deejay. I mean, James is getting better. He’s actually learning how to beat much of I’m just playing songs off an iPod. But sometimes people send messages to us via the notes app on their phones. They will hold up their food. Yeah, with a message in the notes app that they’ve made it almost. And generally those are either like positive messages of support for us. Yes. Or specific song requests. And apart from this, we kept on Saturday night when a person was holding up a sign saying, Is PSUK looking for a researcher at the moment?

Coco Khan I respect it.

Nish Kumar We’re not actively hiring at the moment.

Coco Khan Yeah, yeah no we’re not.

Nish Kumar If we are hiring we will let you know via the podcast.

Coco Khan And also but and those tactics will we appreciated.

Nish Kumar Those tacticss will be massively appreciated if the person who held their phone up saying is PSUK looking for Researcher I was trying to communicate. We aren’t currently, but I really appreciate job applications coming in this form. And also if we are we will let you know of the podcast. But I just wanted to say thank you to that listner and I really appreciated it and I’m sorry that we can’t do anything for you professionally at this particular time.

Coco Khan That whole holding the notes thing up.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan That is quite new, isn’t it? Because I’ve been to many raves and I haven’t. I haven’t really seen that. I, I’ve only. So I saw a clip that Diplo posted where someone was doing that to him. And what it said was, I love you. Calvin Harris. Which I thought was very, very funny.

Nish Kumar James and I deejayed at Glastonbury at the music festival last summer and someone from the crowd held up a sign that said Play Hey Ya and then the phone disappears, and then it just comes back and it just says, please. just the one please.

Coco Khan It’s okay. Well, that’s it. That’s the end of the show. We always want to hear from you and hear your thoughts. Let us know what you think about Bristol in the bins. Also, maybe you could communicate to us via notes apps for the rest of our lives if you ever see us. Remember, we also want to hear what’s giving you hope at the moment, so please email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.uk.

Nish Kumar Next week we have the amazing Ash Sarkar in the studio with us to discuss her new book, Minority Rule Adventures in the Culture War. So if you have any questions for her, drop us a line. Ash is probably one of the only people who was boiled the piece of water 80 mile radius to me. So that’s that’s something to look forward to.

Coco Khan And some very big news from us. We’re excited to announce that we’ve gone and got our very own blue sky account. That’s right. You can follow us on at Pod Save the UK. crooked.com to stay up to date with all things Pod Save the UK. I’m actually on there too if anyone wants to follow me, but I don’t post anything good. It’s really just sporadic work tweets and just sort of rambling aging millennial stuff like “how does this work”?

Nish Kumar I’m on there as well.

Coco Khan Are you on there?

Yeah, it’s just my profile picture is a picture of me with my head in my hands on the Channel 4 election coverage.

Coco Khan Rude, you’re not following me, that’s so rude.

Nish Kumar I’m not following anyone currently.

Coco Khan Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. sure.

Nish Kumar I need to engage with Blue Sky.

Coco Khan Don’t forget to follow 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. You get to see us in color. It really adds a whole new dimension to see Nish’s disgusted face what he talks about Trump.

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

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

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan Thanks to our engineer Jeet Vaswani.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Anushka Sharma, Tanya Haines and Madeline Herringer with additional support from Ari Schwartz and Katie Loni.

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

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