In This Episode
Who says the special relationship is on the ropes? Coco and Nish are joined by Pod Save America’s Tommy Vietor to showcase transatlantic co-operation at its very best. From the battle of slopaganda to the real war in Iran – there’s a lot to talk about.
Donald Trump deleted a Truth Social post because he looked a little bit too much like Jesus for the Christian community – many of them have been some of his biggest supporters. Meanwhile Iran has released a series of sometimes-antisemitic, AI, Lego rap videos.
In the UK, Keir Starmer is being criticised for not spending enough on defence at a time when the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are focusing minds.
Plus – Your Party hits the skids in Scotland – we hear from an insider about what went down.
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GUESTS
Tommy Vietor, Host, Pod Save America and Pod Save The World
USEFUL LINKS
How to email your MP about NHS Palantir contracts – https://www.amnesty.org.uk/get-involved/take-action/sign-a-petition/mp-demand-no-palantir-in-our-nhs/
CREDITS
Donald Trump – @rapidresponse47, X
Iranian Propaganda Video – Explosive Media
Owen Maitland, Former Your Party Scotland executive committee member
Faiza Shaheen, Director, Tax Justice UK – ‘Politics Live’, BBC One
Saturday Night Live UK, Sky One
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TRANSCRIPT
Nish Kumar Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Nish Kumar.
Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan.
Nish Kumar Well, we’re six weeks into a war that isn’t a war, and we’re seeing some new front lines being drawn. Yes, it’s the Battle of Slopaganda. Truly, it is one for the history books.
Coco Khan Donald Trump had to delete a meme which showed him wearing what could only be described as very Jesus-type robes. Meanwhile, Iran is all about LEGO rap videos.
Nish Kumar Tommy Vietor from Pod Save America will be helping us judge who was the winner and to discuss the other actual real war. Meanwhile, we’ll be talking to him about how Keir Starmer has been getting it in the neck over UK defense spending.
Coco Khan And as a slightly less right-wing leader beats Viktor Orban in Hungary’s election, what’s the progressive take on the results?
Nish Kumar Now, people watching will be aware of this, but Coco and I are not in the same room currently.
Coco Khan What’s the mood like over there then? I feel like I ask you this every time, because every year you go over to the States and I always ask you the same question. And I feel I know what the answer is gonna be, which is like generally quite terrified, but otherwise a good time.
Nish Kumar The comedy shows have been a great time. I love seeing my friends and my family that live out here. Everybody is sad and stressed understandably right now. I mean, yeah, it’s a tricky time.
Coco Khan Normally when Donald Trump messes up, he refuses to admit it and he doubles down, whether it’s bombing Iran, insulting people, or pretty much anything else. He’s not one to admit he’s got it wrong, but thanks to Jesus Christ, he has backed down over a truth social post.
Nish Kumar And to be clear, he has not apologized. I don’t even believe the man’s face is capable of making the shapes that would require him to make in order to say the word sorry, but he has deleted this image and I mean, the image in question, I’m sure you will all have seen it is a pretty classic example. AI Donald Trump slop. So for listeners, it’s an AI generated image, with Trump dressed in what looks like Jesus type robes, laying his hand on a man in a bed and presumably healing him. He’s surrounded by four people who look sort of like the apostles. There’s a nurse, a soldier, there’s some sort of shadowy mythical figures in the background. One of them weirdly looks like, sadly, departed. Director of Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner, after whose death Donald Trump disgraced himself once again on social media by criticizing him. Yeah, it’s absolute chaos. I mean, I will say it’s no less historically inaccurate an image of Jesus than the one we’ve been used to seeing for the last 150 years. I say this as a man who, and I’ve said this before and I will continue to say it again, looks more like Jesus than any image of Jesus that is ever produced in any church in the West right now. This is no less accurate historically of Jesus than Jim Cavasio in The Passion of the Christ.
Coco Khan Look, we don’t know if Trump made this image. It’s an interesting thought exercise to wonder what he typed into AI to get this result. He’s now deleted it. He said he thought it made him look like a doctor, not Jesus, despite the very clear Jesus vibe.
Nish Kumar To be honest, whether it’s dogs are raw or Jesus, neither career option seems particularly likely for Donald Trump. This is a good point to bring in our guest, Tommy Vittal, from our much older, much more respectable sibling podcast, Pod Save America and Pod Save the World. Tommy, it’s great to have you back on Pod Save UK and it’s even better to be seeing you in person.
Tommy Vietor Lovely to see you in person.
Nish Kumar Go on the screen, it’s great.
Tommy Vietor To see you too Coco.
Nish Kumar Regardless of the circle.
Tommy Vietor Circumstances. You know it’s always terrible when we talk but it’s but it’s always fun to get to do it.
Coco Khan So let’s just get some background to the image. So we’ve all seen it, right? It’s Donald Trump. He claims he’s just the doctor. It doesn’t look quite Christ-like.
Tommy Vietor No, healthcare provider.
Coco Khan Is that what the health care’s like in the States? Because I’ve never experienced it. Just a man in a red cape really just touched you on the head.
Tommy Vietor No, that’s the for-profit system. You guys aren’t used to it. A man in a red cape descends from above and there’s like commandos behind him. One of them looks like Shredder from Ninja Turtles.
Coco Khan Oh, I see. I see what you pay for really. It’s just the healthcare and the theater. So the image seems to have been posted after Trump got into a war of words with Pope Leo because during his first Easter mass he called for global leaders to choose peace. Trump hit back at the religious sermon saying the Pope is, and I quote, weak on crime and terrible for foreign policy.
Clip We don’t want a pope that says crime is OK in our cities. I don’t like it. I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime.
Coco Khan I was not aware that it was the Pope’s job to stop crime.
Tommy Vietor Get a badge buddy. I find it so funny. I’m sorry. I am not Catholic. I’d find this hilarious. The Catholic Church.
Nish Kumar Church is now too liberal for Donald Trump. The Catholic Church is too woke. I will say, historically, we’ve not tended to look to the papacy for foreign policy doctrine or policy on crime. There’s one crime we’d have all loved previous popes to stamp out. I don’t think we need to elaborate any further. We can just all watch the movie Spotlight. But there is definitely one crime would have liked popes, to be a bit harder on. But um What’s the fuck is happening, man? Yeah, this was a real… I don’t even know how to phrase the question. No, I know. Is this a good political move, a bad political move? Trump walked this back.
Tommy Vietor And I think you can count on one hand the number of times he’s done that, he’s deleted the image. So I think he knows that this was a bad move. I mean, first of all, the comments underneath the truth social post where he posted this image were like, you are the antichrist. This is… This is blasphemy. It wasn’t like, sir, delete this. It was like, you are evil, sir. You saw major supporters or Catholic intellectuals speak out about it. And it came on the heels of him tweeting, open the fucking straights, you mad men, on Easter Sunday, followed by praise Allah, which also kind of surprised some people in the Christian community. So I think Trump, You know, in the broader mood music is that a lot of conservatives are mad at him. It comes from the Epstein files, it comes from Iran war, and now this. And Pope Leo is an American pope, like he’s pretty popular among the rank and file. And you’re right, I’m not Catholic, I don’t look to the Catholic Church for moral leadership. But historically, there have been times when they’ve kind of been leading voices in calling to an end to communism. So there have be times when. The US has worked with the Catholic Church on foreign policy. They help facilitate the talks with Cuba during the Obama administration. And so for Trump to just like unload on them, to have his staff summon them to the Pentagon, their ambassador to scream at them, it’s crazy. It’s all nuts.
Coco Khan Cause the Pope didn’t say anything too crazy. He just said, peace is good, which feels quite on brand for a Pope. Is this unusual for a president to butt heads like this?
Tommy Vietor Yeah, I mean, I think it is unusual for a normal president. I was reminded as I read back up into this that Trump had attacked Pope Francis and said something to the effect of one day you’ll wish that you hadn’t attacked us because ISIS is gonna go after you because we know you’re the number one. It’s like some just absolutely insane thing. He’s also previously posted an image of himself as the Pope, which AI generated on Truth Social. So It’s interesting that this kind of broke people in the conservative Catholic world, but it certainly seems to have. The New York Times.
Nish Kumar Article about this yesterday, the sort of walk back, contains about four or five details that are just worth briefly touching on. As he received two bags of a McDonald’s food delivery to the Oval Office on Monday morning, Trump told reporters that he did not catch all the religious imagery. I thought it was me as a doctor, only the fake news could come up with that. He added, I make people better. So already… Already he’s talking about giving medical advice while getting a door-dash delivery of McDonald’s.
Clip I have a door that I should want to record you, Mr. President. That’s right, man. Look at this.
Clip It’s cause it looks staged, doesn’t it?
Clip They’re all your favorites.
Nish Kumar Everybody who’s had McDonald’s delivered knows it’s not as good. It’s got soggy in the bag.
Tommy Vietor The gross, the ice melts. Also this poor door dash grandma, I don’t know if you saw the clip, when he tried to be like, hey man, hey lady, do you think men should play in women’s sports? And she was just like, pass.
Nish Kumar I’m good. Pass. I should be retired. The very fact that I have this job is evidence of the failure of this economic system.
Tommy Vietor Dystopian thing. She’s like, please, please sir, I need to get back to my car to deliver seven more things in the next hour so I can pee in a bottle and then continue delivering.
Nish Kumar It then goes on to say, Mr. Trump did not apologize for either post, just as he did not apologize for threatening to wipe out the Iranian civilization last week. Now, just, I don’t wish to split hairs with the New York Times, but those are definitely not equivalent things. Those are 100% not equivalent. It is hard to get.
Tommy Vietor Over the fact that my president threatened genocide. Yes, that’s right. It’s even for him bad. Yeah, bad. And again, another thing that kind of led people to break with him. I mean, I don’t know if you listened to Tucker Carlson, had this 45 minute monolog that I think was kicked off by those tweets, by the things he said on Easter Sunday that Tucker found sacrilegious and has led to this broad side from Tucker and a lot of conservatives against Trump that is ongoing.
Nish Kumar I can’t listen to Tucker. It’s like looking at an eclipse. Like I have to have the protection of your podcast where you look at clips of Tucker. I find it riveting. I can lie. You are the condom that prevents me from raw dogging Tucker Carlson.
Coco Khan Okay, on that note, I’m going to move this conversation on. So, um, onto the other side of the slopaganda war. So Iran’s been going viral with a series of anti-Trump Lego rap videos. I’m sure that’s making your head explode listeners. So I think we’re just going to play you some of it so you get the idea.
Clip America first oops oh boy that was the slogan you sold but babies pulling strings and your voters getting cold we’re not just fighting for Iran here this clear your people reached out to us yeah we got the DMs here if one nation’s gonna stand against the Epstein regime’s fear it’s us till the last breath we’ve been doing it for years
Coco Khan So for the listeners, the visuals of that is a series of scenes showing protests on US streets and also has Trump with Israeli leaders and fighters in Iran. And just to be clear though, all of that is LEGO.
Nish Kumar Or how do you feel this new iteration of, for communiques.
Tommy Vietor I mean, I imagine you guys, look, we should just be clear, there’s a lot of content in those videos that’s wildly anti-Semitic, right, and troubling and offensive to a lot people. As a communications matter, as a piece of propaganda, they’re unbelievably effective. I mean I have normies in my life, friends who don’t ever reach out about this stuff, who are like, have you seen these Lego things? Sharing the videos. There was one today about Melania and Jeffrey Epstein. That built off the press conference she did a week ago. So they’re very topical and timely. And I think they’ve not only used AI to generate the videos themselves, they’re clearly using AI to write the scripts, to write their raps. And I that’s giving them an ability to plug into the kind of memeified American cultural zeitgeist in a way that resonates with Americans and apparently is like dominating the propaganda war outside of the United States.
Nish Kumar It’s fun to sit and talk about Lego videos, even though, as we say, some of the content is very troubling and anti-Semitic. But the kind of serious underlying issue here is that the Strait of Hormuz and its importance to the entire sort of oil supply of the world is something that Donald Trump seems to have not considered at all, right? So where are we right now in terms of, from an American perspective, where is the kind American military on how far Trump has over?
Tommy Vietor Yeah, well, I think there’s just no doubt that we have overcommitted to this war generally. I think, you know, I was talking to someone yesterday who looks at approval ratings for Trump and for literally years, his approval would be at like 43% for the first time in a long time. You’re starting to see a consistent, significant downward slope of people saying, not only is this war a bad idea, but you lie to us and this is crazy. And so now we’re in a situation where we went from… Relaxing sanctions on Iran to increase the amount of Iranian oil in the global supply to keep prices down, to blockading the Strait of Hormuz along with Iran to prevent Iranian ships from getting in and out. Whether that will work, how that will work in practice is a bit of a mystery to me. Basically, there’s like 15 warships that will prevent these ships from going in and and out and board them, but will we board Chinese ships? Will we stop them? Will we take them over? Who knows? But I think, to your opinion point, I mean, I think. The rest of the world thinks Donald Trump is an arsonist. If you live in Southeast Asia, maybe you can’t drive your car right now. Governments in Africa furloughed non-essential workers. Farmers can’t get access to fertilizer. There could be a food shortage. I mean, this is an absolute crisis and it’s getting worse by the day. And there’s not a clear sign of an end game since the talks failed.
Nish Kumar From a British perspective, David Lammy has arrived in the US to meet JD Vance again. That must suck.
Tommy Vietor Poor Lammy, I know Lammy. That’s just gotta suck. There’s a picture of them together. Looks like a hostage video. It really looks like. It’s holding up today’s New York time.
Nish Kumar But I’m actually here on a mission from the UK government to extract David Lammy. With some Lego warriors. I think Starmouth still thinks there is a way for him to convince Trump of something. I think he still thinks he has the ear of Trump, and I think Lammy still thinks he has Vance’s ear. Are they deluded?
Tommy Vietor I think so, I’ll just be honest, I don’t think Donald Trump cares what Keir Starmer thinks. I think he expects him to obey and do what he says and he might pretend to listen to him in conversations but then he’ll go on and say some bullshit about, oh, he’s no Winston Churchill, we don’t need another Neville Chamberlain, right? And so I understand that it’s very easy from the cheap seats to take shots of Keir starmer and say, man up. Fight back because there are real equities. You know, the United States has shown a willingness and an ability to harm allies and partners through tariffs or other means. But things politically couldn’t be going much worse for Keir Starmer. The war is self-evidently a disaster. If I were him, I would pivot hard, like Mark Carney has up in Canada, to an anti-Trump, anti-US foreign policy narrative and see if that could help me right the ship.
Nish Kumar Associations you’ve had in your career. I mean, if you were having them right now with Keir Starmer, a center-left world leader, as you have done in your life, would you be saying to him, even taking out the kind of humanitarian impulse here, which we shouldn’t do, but we always do, that even taking the humanitarian impulse, here, just politically, it feels like it would be wise for him to go in the direction of Carney.
Tommy Vietor Yeah, I just think on policy and on politics, like the right thing to do is the same. There’s complete overlap in that Venn diagram. That almost never happens. It almost never happened. And so why not give it a whirl? Why not show some toughness and some fight and see if you can make political hay out of it? I mean, interestingly, far right parties across Europe are saying, no, this is too far to Donald Trump. The AFD, the neo-Nazis over in Germany are like, yo, this war thing is bad news. Georgia Maloney was criticizing Trump over in Italy about not only the Iran war, but the Jesus imagery.
Nish Kumar But what do we do? And the Pope fight as well. I mean, Maloney, I guess, is in an awkward position because obviously she has previously aligned herself with Trump, especially on things like immigration rhetoric. But I guess if you’re, if you run in Italy, you gotta keep the Pope on side. Get back that Pope, or else he’s gonna go to.
Tommy Vietor France, we’ve seen this movie before. We’ve seen the scroll before. What was it written back in the day?
Coco Khan So back here, Keir Starmer’s government has been getting it in the neck for the latest time. Now it’s the approach to defense spending. I feel like you can put issues into a hat and just lucky dick, which, which is it this week that Keir starmer is getting it into the neck. So in an interview with the financial times, the former Labor defense secretary, Lord Robertson said that Britain’s leaders had shown a corrosive complacency towards defense.
Nish Kumar Yeah, we know that NATO member countries have been attacked by Donald Trump for not spending enough. But this time the criticism is coming from someone who knows Britain’s military strategy inside out. He’s also the author of the UK’s recent defense review. Tommy, how do notionally progressive governments navigate conversations about defense when wars are raging? It feels like the military industrial complex is something we should be politically against. Against, but at the same time, there is a war on. There are conversations about defense spending. I mean, and Robertson became a Labor MP in 1978 and was the defense secretary under Tony Blair and then was NATO secretary general. He said that Starn was not willing to make the correct investment in defense. Our defense budget for 2024-25 is between 60 and 66 billion, which is about 2.3% of our GDP. It’s predicted to reach 73 billion by 2029. But at the same time, the country’s in crisis, and Sam Coates is the Deputy Political Editor at Sky, has revealed that the Treasury is looking for three and a half billion pounds of cuts to defense spending at the moment. How do you navigate defense spending at a time where the rest of the country is looking to government to invest and provide services and stimulate the economy because it’s, you know, people are struggling to pay.
Tommy Vietor The bills. We’re having a far more insane version of this same conversation here in the US because the Pentagon budget last year was about a trillion dollars in the U.S. Donald Trump has asked for it. Yeah, it’s always embarrassing to come here and tell you what our defense budget is. Why don’t you go search in the couch over in the Oval Office for your fighter jets. That’s actually the defense budget of Wisconsin. Yes, which is not a good thing, as you’ve laid out well, I think, in the prompt. But Donald Trump is now asking for a $1.5 trillion defense budget. And there was a Washington Post story about how the military literally couldn’t figure out how to spend that much money. Then there’s another conversation about whether they might come for a $200 billion supplemental funding request to pay for all the Iran war stuff, missiles and drones and shit we’re firing off. And initially the conversation about this for Democrats was framed as if we had time warped back to 2005. And it was like, will Democrats vote for this funding and support the troops. And luckily, I think Democrats have the courage to say, no, that is stupid. Voters want us to spend money on literally anything else besides bombs to drop on schools in Iran or anywhere else in Iran. And so I do think that the no, we should invest here, not their message is very powerful. I do you think just on the policy, I mean, it’s also coming at a time when the UK is. Slashing its development budget right after Elon Musk and his ketamine-addled idiot friends destroyed USAID, so the world is left hanging there. If I were to message how to talk about those investments in the military, it’s like, how are we evolving it to meet the needs of the 2026 and beyond? Because look at Ukraine, they’ve just evolved their military to an entirely drone-based defensive strategy and have held off the Russians going on, what, three, four years ago? And it’s like, what does that look like for the UK?
Nish Kumar And just on a policy basis, how do you navigate this kind of more Mark Carney hardline approach to Trump? Like the sort of Claudia Scheinbaum, Mark Carney way of dealing with Trump. And how does that manifest itself in terms of policy? Because obviously the UK is not committed currently in the war, but is allowing its basis to be used for what it calls strictly sort of defensive military operations. Would you? If you were advising Stalin now, would you be advising him to not allow the US to use those UK bases? Just from a policy perspective.
Tommy Vietor I would, yeah, I do. I mean, I think that the Spanish position that this is an unjust, immoral, illegal war is the right one, repercussions be damned. Now that might mean the US pulls troops out of Spain and moves them elsewhere in Europe. I think would be the United States cutting up its nose to spite its face. There will also be the timeframes on actually doing these kinds of things. Takes so long that Donald Trump will probably be long gone before there is any actual movement. But I do, if I were advising Stormer, I would say draw a firm, clear line that people can understand against the war. I think Mark Carney has done a great job rhetorically. It’s led him to multiple electoral victories, you know, including what, over the weekend.
Nish Kumar They’ve won a couple of by-elections that special elections that mean that he’s now got a kind of majority. Yeah. Now we can actually govern. Yeah. So, I mean, sounds great. Yeah. Do that. After the break, more from Tommy. Plus, we’ll get into why we haven’t felt the full economic pain of the war in Iran yet.
Nish Kumar [AD]
Nish Kumar This week the Resolution Foundation has been talking about the economic impact of the Iranian War, in particular this blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s calculated that the inflation shock we’re about to feel will make the average working-age household in the UK about £480 worse off this year. Fuel prices are already up and oil prices went above $100 again after Trump announced the blockade this week. And that is a resource that unfortunately impacts everything else so it’s predicted we can see British food inflation here around ten percent you know this is our family is the cost of living crisis.
Coco Khan Now we all know that the rising cost of living during election periods can have the biggest impact on voters and we are expecting Labor to be all but wiped out during the May elections. So tell me, inflation is the worst news any politician can hear during election time. Is there any saving star? How should he approach this issue?
Tommy Vietor Yeah, this is devastating. We saw this happen to Joe Biden. I mean, it, you know, it I think probably made it impossible for him to win, even though the United States handled the post-COVID inflation as well, if not better than almost every other country. It’s infuriated voters. This is another example though of where if I were Starmer, I would be loudly arguing against the war full stop. Because clearly, like the difference here is COVID was the thing that happened. We all had to react to it. And then there was a bunch of fallout that was challenging to predict. Donald Trump is the one person who made the decision to go to war with Iran. All the consequences were predictable and predicted and now here we are living through it. This guy is, he’s human COVID. Yes, he is fucking wrecking ball through the global economy. And I am like, Stormer’s options for bringing down inflation in the near term are limited, but his ability to message about why we’re living through this problem is very easy, Donald Trump. And so that’s the fight I would pick.
Nish Kumar We used to get all of our jet fuel from the Middle East, but we’ve now become the biggest importer of your jet fuel, so.
Tommy Vietor Thank you for that. You’re welcome. There was a report this week in the Financial Time that exports of oil and gas from the US might go up by a third, which is gonna put upward pressure on prices here. Donald Trump doesn’t seem to understand that it’s a global economy. But meanwhile, these economies in the Gulf are struggling enormously. Economies in Asia, again, they’re running out of fuel. I mean, this isn’t that.
Nish Kumar I go from here to Austin, Texas. I am hoping we have enough fuel to get me back to London because I love my time in most of this country. I have no desire to be marooned in Austin, Texas. If I were you, I’d get out of there as fast as I can.
Tommy Vietor I have no desire to be marooned with Joe Rogan. No, no, no thanks. And yeah, in the U.S. We’re kind of dealing with oil gasoline prices at the pump to fill up cars and diesel prices. But you guys are gonna have an entire, entirely separate crisis for natural gas and heating homes. And you know, what happens if this drags on until winter?
Nish Kumar Yeah. And I mean, we’re not starting from a good position in any case. Look, let’s pivot slightly from Iran. So JD Vance, it’s hard to know what his job is, but presumably for the last few weeks, his job has been, you know, as Trump sort of envoy, why Marco Rubio was not doing that and why he is at UFC fights with Donald Trump. Again, these are not questions any of us can answer. JD Vant seems to have been the kind of delivery system for a lot of Trump’s diplomacy. So it is fascinating that in the middle of this huge international crisis, JD Vance managed to find time to visit Hungary to campaign for Viktor Orban, who was up for re-election, and who also lost. Badly.
Coco Khan Well, they call it the JD Vance curse, right? If he shows up to root for you, then you will lose. Everywhere he goes, it ends really badly.
Nish Kumar And he killed the Pope. People don’t talk about that enough. Allegedly. I think we’re covered legally. Allegedly
Coco Khan Honestly, the list of people that Nish accuses of killing figures, Liz Truss killed the Queen, Janie Vance killed the Pope.
Nish Kumar Come at me, wokeists. Hitler got the vaccine and then killed himself. Let’s talk about Vance briefly. He has whatever the reverse of the Midas touch seems to be at the moment. He failed to get a deal with Iran and now also this thing with Orban. Is there any disquiet in America, even amongst the kind of MAGA-based about JD Vance going to Hungary in the middle of a kind of international crisis that we’ve already discussed, is dividing even the kind hardline Trumpists?
Tommy Vietor So I think that, unfortunately, the MAGA world, or at least the MAG intellectual class, they love Viktor Orban. Right, yes, yes. You know, there was a period of time, like 2021, where Tucker Carlson flew over to Budapest to the week of programming about Orban and living in Hungary, and he’d sort of become. A model for other. And he’s been hosting CPAC, the sort of CPAC European event as well. Because he’s that much of a kind of. Connects all these, you know, far right figures. And so he’s seen as sort of a model for the kind of kleptocratic right-wing populists, wannabe authoritarians. So it’s great that he lost. It’s very fun. Yeah. That we get to look at the betting market charts and see JD Vance’s face right at where the lines intersect. Where all of a sudden people started thinking Peter Magyar was gonna win and Orban was gonna lose. Look, there’s like two ways I could argue this. It’s like, you know what? He’s your guy. You got one shot to campaign for him. We’re not giving the college try. But I’m more convinced by the fact that people in Hungary are dealing with an affordability crisis too. They know that Trump is directly responsible for it. Having JD Vance come over and directly interfere in their politics while also having none of the charm. Or sense of humor or political skills that his boss has was probably the wrong decision. So it’s fun.
Coco Khan Obviously, Orban was terrible for all sorts of reason. He was very proudly liberal. We won’t get into his relationship with Russia, rolling back LGBTQ rights. But is his successor Petr Magyar, is he really any better?
Tommy Vietor I think that we need to allow ourselves to feel joy and take the win.
Nish Kumar Ha ha ha.
Tommy Vietor And that Victor Orba, if Mitt Romney won against Donald Trump, I would genuflect and bow at his feet and say, you know what I mean? We thank you, our Mormon God. Yeah, thank you. Praise Mormon Jesus. Yeah, if a flaming bag of dog shit won an election against Donald and was my president for four years, I would be thrilled. And so you’re right, Peter Magyar, he was a member of the Fidesz party. He’s probably way to the right of everyone listening to this. Frankly, his political views at this moment are not that clear because he kind of obscured them and made the campaign a referendum on Orban. That said, Orban is a terrible human being. He’s a kleptocrat. He stole from his own people. He was used by the Chinese to block any criticism of China at the EU. He was by the Russians to screw over Ukraine. He was use by the Israelis to block any criticism Israel at the E.U. So I think just saying sayonara to that guy, I’ll take the win.
Nish Kumar There’s also, it’s worth watching news reporting from Hungary, it it’s not like a lot of voters weren’t aware of his limitations as a candidate. John Oliver did a really good piece in Last Week Tonight about it, that where they pulled lots of news footage from various news agencies going and speaking to Hungarians who all sort of said a similar thing which is, yeah, we know this guy sucks, right? But we need rid of Orban. You know, the corruption is now so open and the damage he’s doing to relations with the European Union, you know, in service of, presumably, his. Paymaster Vladimir Putin are so catastrophic that right now we just need him gone. So it’s not like a lot of the Hungarians being interviewed are going into this blindly thinking this guy is a miracle worker. It’s more about, you know, it’s voting practically to get rid of a more threatening political leader.
Tommy Vietor Yeah, you saw a version of this debate with Alexei Navalny in Russia before Putin murdered him. I mean, he’s no liberal. He said some horrible things in his past, both offensive and bad on policy. But he would have been, you know, obviously an enormously better outcome if he were president.
Nish Kumar Someone who might be sad to see Orban go is failed reform candidate Matt Goodwin. I don’t know how much impact Matt Goodman has made over here, Tommy. He ran in a special election that we had that was won by the Green Party. He has become colloquially known in the United Kingdom as Matt GPT. After he released a book that seems to have been largely written by him. Oh really? I don’t know anything about Matt Goodwin. But also features, but like features citations from ChatGPT. Like he’s sort of, he’s kind of openly, he’s all openly been talking about it. Koko and I’ve talked to plenty of guests on the show who have said, we knew Matt Goodwine, he was kind of a normal guy. Then he kind of Jordan Peterson, he essentially sort of pivoted from being a conservative academic. It seems to be quite a calculated financial pivot based on things we’ve been told. Got it. Anyway, the financial pivot has worked because the good law project investigation has found that he allegedly received a salary of 10,000 euros a month from a Hungarian educational institution funded by Viktor Orban.
Tommy Vietor Wow. Is he a bigger dipshit than Matt Hancock?
Nish Kumar Well, it’s hard to say. I mean, dipshit is a really interesting descriptor because I would still say there is no, there is not shit dippier than Matt Hancock in British politics. You know, he, he got caught grabbing an ass on CCTV. Do you know what I mean? Like Goodwin is kind of one of the sort of, you know, conservative, hard-right intellectuals and I’ve got the biggest air quotes in human history around that, around that that.
Coco Khan Yeah, but the thing with Goodwin is that he’s not unique. Orban actually had quite a lot of influence here in the UK, funding far-right organizations, people, think tanks. Apparently there was a report by journalist Dan Nolan in Democracy for Sale about the scale of this. In the case of Matt Goodwin, he was paid as a visiting fellow at the, I’m going to say this wrong, Matias Korvinas Collegium, which is a Hungarian government-funded institution. It’s been described as Auburn’s Petch University.
Nish Kumar The scale of conservative cooperation is fascinating, and it is not that often that we see it laid as bare as this, right? Like you can see how the whole thing links up. You can see why Vance was interrupting what should have been an incredibly busy, prohibitively busy schedule to go and campaign for Auburn.
Tommy Vietor How worrying is that? I think it’s quite worrying. It’s something Ben and I have talked about a lot. There’s no similar infrastructure on the left because you’re seeing CPAC started for your listeners in the UK as this fringe group of insane people that we 20 years ago would all laugh at like the bar scene from Star Wars. Once a year in DC, you’d make fun of these fucking absolute goobers. Then all of a sudden those absolute goober were the presidents. It was just like a Trump rally. But over time, CPAC franchised, and you’d see CPAC in Latin America. You’d see CPac Brazil. There would be CPAC Hungary. And it became this very effective way to spread this far-right populism. And people like, well, for some reason, Liz Tress always comes. And it’s funny because six people will watch her speak. But I think there’s been effective cross-pollinization. And that doesn’t exist on the progressive side. I would say for the UK in particular, like. It’s this Hungarian money. And then also you guys have been dealing with a separate scandal of the Russians paying off a bunch of people. And it’s like, you gotta lock that shit down. That is troubling.
Nish Kumar Well, it’s, yeah, I mean, for UK listeners who might be interested, we’re actually having CPAC UK in July this year. And Liz Truss is the kind of, she is the sort of keynote speaker, I believe. And even Nigel Farage has already said that he’s gonna be, this is a direct quote from a Reform UK spokesperson, steering well clear of CPAC in July. Like, Liz Trus is such. Sort of electoral toxin that Farage I think probably rightly is aware that he should limit his alignment with her. So that might be a problem for CPAC actually having, you know, real impact in the UK because Nigel Farage is still the most effective delivery system for those ideas, but he’s decided that this is too much even for him. For legal reasons, we have to I’m sorry if I, uh, that, uh. Whilst Matt Goodwin himself has not responded to the Good Laws Project claims, a reform spokesperson denied that the MCC paid him 10,000 euros a month. They also added this, it is standard for academics to hold fellowship positions at other institutions around the world. Toby?
Tommy Vietor It’s a pleasure to see you. Thank you for having me. It was a blast talking to you guys. I hope I didn’t create any legal problems. If you’re listening to this and wondering what I’m talking about, it’s because we cut a lot of stuff. Yeah, we cut lot of the stuff. If you did create any illegal problems, as I say, I’m pretty sure you’re my boss. Yeah, you got a PO box. Slide that summons over.
Nish Kumar If you want to listen to more from Tommy and Trump, Iran and bizarre pipe memes, make sure you head over to Pod Save America and Pod Save the World.
Coco Khan After the break, could we be witnessing the end of your party, or at least part of it? It’s all kicking off in Scotland and a closer look at private firms profiting from the NHS.
Coco Khan [AD]
Coco Khan Now look, we shouldn’t laugh because for many, the creation of your party represented hope. We were hopeful about it as well, particularly at a time when politics was so depressing, there was something quite magical about the whole thing. But at this point, it really is either laugh or you cry because on Monday, the National reported that all 12 of the Executive Committee for your party Scotland had now resigned and the Scottish party itself, it’s declared itself over.
Nish Kumar According to the group, the mass resignation came after complaints the UK leadership had sidelined Scotland. It appears they were prevented from contacting members and even standing candidates in the Scottish Parliament elections. Owen Maitland, one of the Your Party Scotland committee members who resigned, sent us this video to help explain the fallout.
Owen Maitland I resigned yesterday afternoon along with the rest of my colleagues because it become clear to us and I think clear to many other people that the party was effectively dead. What’s basically happened over the last month is the party headquarters have completely ignored us. They’ve ignored every attempt that we’ve made to try and actually enact the democratically agreed decisions of the party conference. After a month of no contact HQ sent us a very threadbare proposal which we were instructed not to share which had no detailed plan for Democratic candidates elections and no detailed plan for. How the campaign would run and made no mention of an SEC election at all. All of this came just two weeks out from the deadline for candidate nominations for the Scottish elections. The Greens aren’t the viable option for Scotland that they are in England and Wales. Different leadership, different policies and they’ve pretty much been part of the government in some form or another for most of the last decade. We’re in a scenario now where in all likelihood reform are going to be the second biggest party in the Scottish Parliament. We need to have a new party of the Scottish left which is built and run by Scottish activists, not controlled by secretive cabal.
Nish Kumar Yeah, thank you so much to Owen for sending that in. I mean, Coco, this is a fucking shit show. It really is. Even in the context of your party, this a huge fucking shit show. So according to The New World, your party is now not standing a single candidate in the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections next month, nor for the 4,850 local council elections in England. And again, Owen kind of brilliantly covers everything that’s pertinent here, which is that, you know, there are a lot of left-wing people in Scotland that… Don’t see the Scottish Greens as a viable alternative. So I mean, there is clearly an opportunity here, but I mean what can you say? What more can you say about this absolute catastrophe?
Coco Khan I’m really mindful that your party was trying to do something quite groundbreaking. I myself have never set up a political party. I’m sure it is difficult. I am sure there are challenges and one could argue that these are just teething problems, but we just happen to know about it all because of social media. Maybe that’s being generous. I don’t know. But nonetheless, the thing I can’t move away from is knowing that if it doesn’t succeed, not just your but just in general. The progressives, if we don’t succeed, what is around the corner. Owen outlined it himself, reform, right? That’s really, really scary. I mean, even earlier today in this episode, we talked to Tommy and he was talking about CPAC in different parts of the world, you know, you just can’t imagine that, can you? You can’t even imagine there being a, I don’t even know what it would be called, but something, some progressive conference all around the world where we trade insights, where we work together, where collaborate, opportunity miss is putting it politely.
Nish Kumar In response to the resignations, your party said it was fully committed to the autonomy of the party in Scotland and said that it would continue to put in place clear, fair and workable structures that serve all members in Scotland. How that’s going to happen at the moment is not clear to me in any way, shape or form.
Coco Khan So from one show to another, I suppose, the NHS. So it’s a point of national pride. Of course, it is. I’m sure anyone listening to this show knows how much we really worry about it. But just how public is the NHS these days? So this week it was revealed that private firms have made 1.6 billion pounds in profits over the last two years. That’s according to the Center of Health and Public Interest Analysis of NHS Contracts in England.
Nish Kumar The think tank found that £2bn of the £12bn worth of contracts went to firms with owners based outside the UK. £533M of that £ 2bn went to companies owned by people living in tax havens such as Jersey and the Cayman Islands and firms especially those owned by private equity outfits used £353m of their £12billion worth of NHS income to pay interest on debts.
Coco Khan Just to put this into context, according to the think tank, this £1.6 billion would have been enough to pay more than 9,000 doctors or 19,000 nurses during that time. Health Secretary Wes Streating has said that he won’t shrink from opening the NHS to the private sector, but with such large profit margins, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the NHS is being taken for a big ol’ ride.
Nish Kumar Now, understandably, this has upset quite a lot of Labor MPs. Stella Creasy said, it’s frankly scandalous and called for an urgent cap on this rent seeking and profiteering and total transparency on where this money ends up. And it’s really worth pointing out here that the government has already capped profits that drug and defense firms that win public sector contracts can make. And begs the question, why are they not doing the same here? So David Roland, who’s the director of Think Tank called the Center of Health and Public Interest. Is now urging ministers to bring in a cap modeled on the 8% limits the government is legislating to introduce for children’s social care providers after similar concerns were raised there.
Coco Khan Sorry, I just had to take a moment to reflect on the sentence you said. Children’s social care providers. Wow. That’s, that’s quite horrifying, isn’t it?
Nish Kumar We’re constantly told that the private sector’s involvement in the public sector brings in a financial efficiency, but it feels like it’s the same story here with the water companies. We’re seeing huge hemorrhaging of money that could be better spent in the sectors that these companies are supposed to be delivering services and goods into. It’s getting increasingly to be a completely indefensible position, just from a perspective of financial efficacy. So look, we do have to read a right to reply here. So the Department of Health and Social Care has defended the NHS’s use of private firms. A spokesperson said, the independent sector has a role to play in tackling the waiting list backlog and building a more sustainable health system. However, in working with independent providers, we will neither tolerate gaming the national payment tariff to cherry pick the simplest, most profitable cases, nor any quality shortcomings. And that rhetoric is welcome, but it has to be backed by substantive policy changes. And this profit cap does feel like a very quick, sensible thing the government could do and should be doing. Another controversial NHS contract that has been making the headlines is with Palantir, which is the US tech firm that was co-founded by Peter Thiel. Now, as we previously discussed on the show, Palantirs technology has been used here in America. Buy ice to track down migrants and by the Israeli military as they commit genocide against Palestinians in occupied Gaza.
Coco Khan Despite this frankly egregious record, NHS England awarded Palantir a £330 million contract in 2023 to provide a new data platform. Speaking on Politics Live on Monday, Director of Tax Justice UK and former Labor candidate Faisal Shaheen made this point direct.
Clip To the UK head of Palantir. Palantire has such a key role in helping Israel kill children in Palestine and Lebanon. That has to be a line, surely. And what does a company that is so involved in how to kill children with Israel and how to deport children from the US have an interest in the NHS and in our data?
Nish Kumar It’s a very fair question, and it’s one that’s worth asking. It’s also worth noting that the person that Pfizer was speaking to in that clip from BBC news is the head of Palantir in the UK, Louis Mosley. Now, you might hear that surname and feel an uncomfortable tension building in the base of your spine. It’s not a coincidence. He is Oswald Mosley’s grandson, as in Oswald Mostly. Head of the British Union of Fascists. If I was his grandson, I’d be well out of the public eye.
Coco Khan I was watching that clip then obviously I was thinking about the substance of Faisal Shaheen’s points and how great they were. Now I’m thinking what color shirt was he wearing?
Nish Kumar You certainly want to be avoiding black shirts where possible. If your surname is Mosley for the sort of nerd community listening to this, who will be absolutely screaming at us to at least reference this one’s in the Lord of the Rings of Palantir is a seeing stone that can be used to distort truth and present selective visions of reality once again, as always with these tech companies, they are signposting how dreadful they are. They are absolutely side posting how dread full they are They are picking things from science fiction and fantasy that are side-posting the fact that these people are villains. I look forward to an NHS contract being awarded to Sauron Tech in collaboration with the global company Darth Vader Industries.
Coco Khan Wow. I’m so excited for the eye of Sauron to take on optical care. I mean, I’m really excited with it. You ever seen that meme of the goose chasing the man? You seen that? What? It’s basically, it’s like a line drawing of a man being chased by a goose and the goose is saying some sort of truth, right? The Thames water story really upset me. And I think one of the reasons it really upset is because obviously water is finite. This idea of putting competition into water is ridiculous. It’s a natural monopoly. NHS is our main healthcare provider. And so anyway, this is a long way of saying that goose follows me around about the public sector. There’s a goose going off all the time in my head saying, we do not need competition in this space. Anyway, that’s a tangent, but I just want you to know, yeah, there’s Lord of the Rings as a reference, but also what about that goose on the internet? He’s important for law. I think we should be discussing him.
Nish Kumar When we spoke to Stuart Lee, the comedian on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, he was questioning about how TV shows are engaging with the concept of political satire and was encouraging people to go after for these kind of systemic things. It’s a great interview and worth going back to listen to if you haven’t or watch it on YouTube. He definitely got his wish this week because Saturday Night Live UK had the following sketch which we are going to play in for you now.
Clip It’s insane. Giving the keys to our health system to Palantir, a sinister military contractor with links to the CIA, which makes billions profiting from targeting systems for drone strikes, is such a great idea. I love Palantire.
Nish Kumar For listeners, as Paddy Young, who is one of the anchors with Andy Magliano of Weekend Update, was speaking about Palantir, laser gun sights started appearing on his chest.
Coco Khan So the contract is a divisive issue within NHS England. This week, the Financial Times reported that NHS staff have been told that they might lose their jobs if they raise concerns about Palantir’s data platform.
Nish Kumar But due to the public pressure that’s already been building, MPs are planning to debate Palantir’s NHS contract this Thursday. So that’s Thursday the 16th of April. You can email your MP and ask them to attend and raise concerns on your behalf. I will certainly be doing that and we’re going to put a link in the show notes for how you can do that.
Coco Khan Do you think someone from Saturday Night Live is listening to our podcast?
Nish Kumar I doubt it. It’s quite an intense production schedule from what I understand. From my friends that work on that show, they don’t have time to listen to us gassing onto Grandad of Outcomedy.
Coco Khan You just said you had friends on the show. So maybe they are, I mean, I just, I like the idea that maybe we’ve contributed to a little moment, a cultural moment.
Nish Kumar They are so stressed to try and get the show made every week. I imagine if they’re consuming any culture, it’s just like soothing ASMR videos. So that’s it, thanks so much for listening to Pod Save the UK, if you liked what you heard, please leave us a review, it really helps to boost the show.
Coco Khan You can follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok, BlueSky and X.
Nish Kumar Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.
Coco Khan Thanks to lead producer May Robson and digital producer Jacob Liebenberg.
Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos
Coco Khan Our engineer is Crooked Media, thank you Crooked media, and our social media producer is Nada Smilinic.
Nish Kumar The executive producers are Kate Fitzsimmons and Katie Long 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.
