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Keir Starmer is not afraid of a U-turn. From abandoned policy pledges to reinstating the winter-fuel allowance, the list is growing. To add to this – this week, the PM has expressed his support for Israel’s military action against Iran, despite criticising Israel’s actions in Gaza. Then he caved in to calls for a full national inquiry into grooming gangs, despite earlier dismissing them as amplifying far-right demands.

Whether you think these are sensible or sly, these political backflips have certainly led to a lot of headscratching when it comes to one question: what does our Prime Minister actually stand for? Nish and Coco sit down with New Statesman Editor in Chief, Tom McTague, who has spent months with Starmer trying to find out what lies beneath the title.

The Government’s new Welfare Reform Bill is introduced in Parliament this week, which experts say will lead to nearly a quarter of a million more families being pushed into poverty. Nish heads down to Westminster to meet with hundreds of people who have gathered to call for an end to the rising tide of hunger and hardship in the UK. Nish speaks to Labour MP Brian Leishman, Liberal Democrat Wendy Chamberlain and Green Siân Berry about the calls for an essentials guarantee – while hearing from the lived experience of people working at food banks around the UK.

And as the Government’s new data bill finally passes in the House of Lords, Nish and Coco voice their concerns about what it means for the creative industries.

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Guests:

Tom McTague

Siân Berry

Brian Leishman

Wendy Chamberlain

Helen Barnard

Emma Revie

Useful links:

Tom McTague’s profile of Keir Starmer

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/06/what-keir-starmer-cant-say

Support the Trussell Trust’s call for an Essential Guarantee!

https://www.trussell.org.uk/support-us/guarantee-our-essentials

Write to your MP

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/

Audio Credits:

BBC

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Coco Khan I’m Coco Kahn and if you hear some strange noises in the background it’s because there’s a bunch of school kids in the park opposite my flat doing Sports Day! Brings back the memories doesn’t it Nish? All those memories of sporting unsuccessful and being really embarrassed in front of your classmates and your parents. So that was a good day for us.

Nish Kumar Yeah, not some of my finest moments at school, I’ll say, sports days. It was not my time to shine.

Coco Khan Anyways, today, as the Prime Minister attempts the latest of his political backflips, first over the UK support for Israel, and then the Grooming Gang inquiry, we’ll be speaking to the editor-in-chief of the new statement, Tom McTay, about who the real Keir Starmer is.

Nish Kumar Then I’ll be heading down to Westminster, where hundreds of people have gathered to call on the government to ensure that everyone in the UK can afford life’s essentials. Nearly one year into government, Prime Minister Saqiyya Salma remains something of an enigma. He’s seen by many on the right as a secret radical and to many on left as someone who’s trying to out-reform reform.

Coco Khan On the world stage, his reviews are positive. He’s nailed down trade deals with leaders from around the world. He’s garnered praise as a diplomat and peacemaker for his role in tempering Trump. But domestically, voters aren’t all too convinced about his leadership. He promises change and respect for the working people. But the public aren’t buying it. Polls are in the toilet after upsetting the country multiple times over his dour telling of the economic situation, his Island of Strangers speech, and the government’s sweeping reforms to benefit. To name just a few of the moments of political turmoil.

Nish Kumar But realistically, we are four years away from the next general election. So in some ways, the polls are the least of Keir Starmer’s concerns and he should be focused on the here and now, because tension is ratcheting up as the fires of war burn in the Middle East, the global economic outlook remains grim and backbench rebellions brew, all while the false promises of the populist right win over the public. It is clear that at this moment, the UK is in desperate need of unifying leadership.

Coco Khan So is Keir Starmer more than a middle manager? And what does he really stand for? New Editor-in-Chief of The New Statesman, Tom McTague, has spent weeks following the Prime Minister to try and figure this question out. He joins us now. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Tom.

Tom McTague Thanks so much for having me, it’s a real pleasure.

Coco Khan So Tom, you’ve been following the prime minister across land, sea and air. The journey, uh, involves a quite a spicy trip in an overnight aircraft carrier. There’s a helicopter ride in a special rubber jumpsuit. Uh, and that’s not a euphemism and that is actually what it is. Um, and a quiet beer that neither of you really wanted. So what, what did you learn from these strange encounters?

Tom McTague Yeah, I mean, in one sense, I remember going through the series of trips with him, four in total, and thinking to myself, God, am I getting anywhere with him? Am I managing to peel any of those layers off so that I can sort of find something real, something true, something that the country out there doesn’t already know? I once covered Boris Johnson, and you could at least write about the kind of flamboyant character, and that get you through a few pages before you kind of dug in and got the real. Boris Johnson. But with Keir, I think what I found was when he was sort of switched on and in the middle of the day, he was so on that you couldn’t penetrate, you couldn t get anywhere with him. He just gave you the same sort of answers that he’d give to anyone. And it was only really when you kind of got him out of that world, when you maybe talked to him at the end of the date or over a beer, as you say, that neither of us wanted. And you were able to sort of ask him about something that was nothing to do with politics, about his family. Or the way he was brought up or the ways he thinks about the world. That’s when you started to get somewhere, I think. And with him, the sense that I got was he’s a man who sees himself as a very normal man who tries to address individual problems in what he would see as a kind of normal and decent manner, engaging with people on a one-to-one basis and trying to fix their problems. In a way that he has always done throughout his career, as if he’s kind of prosecuting an individual case in court. But then when you try to get him to think about things sort of beyond that, systemically, structurally, why is it that we have all of these cases? Why is it the country feels the way it does, the way that you two described at the beginning there? That’s when I think he struggles. To some extent, I’m not even sure he does think in those sort of grander. Systemic terms, he just prefers to look at everything individually.

Nish Kumar As we record on Tuesday morning, the very real prospect of all-out war in the Middle East is dominating the news. On Friday, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, followed by days of escalating strikes on both sides with numerous people killed and hundreds more injured. Stalmer has refused to rule out defending Israel and is sending jets to the Middle East when a week ago the government was actually sanctioning ministers from the Israeli government. We talked a little bit about how he struggles maybe to articulate. His vision for the country and the united kingdom and how we struggling to get that across in terms of his foreign policy philosophy what’s your perspective on that.

Tom McTague I think this is a fascinating question because part of the profile was giving him the chance to tell the country what he is trying to do in power, because that is one of the criticisms of this government that we’re a year in, as you say, and in one sense, we don’t know what they’re trying to. What’s the big picture here? What is it that they think is principally gone wrong in the country and the world? And therefore, what is it trying to do to fix that? And then I pushed him on this and I pushed them on it. And ultimately he didn’t have clear answers until I got to the point where I said, you don’t think the country’s fundamentally broken. You don’t need the model of the country is broken. You just think it’s been let down by a series of bad prime ministers who have effectively managed the situation badly. And he replied, yeah, you’re right. That’s what he believes that he’s caught that there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with the system that we have. Whether domestic or international, that needs to be upended. And so what he says is that he wants to mend it, to sort of fix it through sensible decisions, individual decisions. So whether that’s the economy in Britain, doesn’t need to be fundamentally changed. Public services, there’s nothing wrong with the essential models that we have for the NHS, for schools, et cetera. And then internationally, he wants to bind the United States into NATO and Europe’s defense. He doesn’t want to use Donald Trump as a sort of a moment to realize some kind of different foreign policy. And I think once you start to think about Starmer in that kind of small c conservative way, a lot of it becomes clear what’s going on. So in Israel, the position that he is taking is the position that every British government has taken basically forever, which is increasing criticism. In relation to certain actions that Israel has taken. But ultimately, it’s the same phrase that Israel the right to defend itself. They are a core ally of the United Kingdom and the Western world, and we will defend it. And that is what basically Stammer believes. He doesn’t want to upend anything about Britain’s place in the world, NATO, the G7. Relations with Europe, relations with the United States. And I think that lies at the core of how he’s responding to this crisis.

Nish Kumar Is that not a fundamental failing of him as a politician in some ways? Because if you look at the 21st century, the global order is sort of collapsing as these kind of despots rise, whether it’s Orban, Putin. Or Netanyahu, these people are almost openly hostile to the concept of liberal democracy, start rising to positions of power. We have the US and the UK engaged in regime change-driven wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There’s so much blood that’s been spilled in Afghanistan, and the status quo at the start of the century has been maintained. The Taliban is in charge of that country. Plus with the post 2008 economic systems have shown that that kind of third-way model of public spending through tax receipts generated by light to no regulation of the financial sector isn’t sufficient to manage these kind of super-national mega-corporations. Is Stammer’s reading of the situation not fundamentally the key problem with him as a politician in this exact time? He would have been a phenomenal leader of the Labour Party in 1997. He would have been a phenomenal Prime Minister of this country in 1997, much as I wish it was still 1997, because I’d be, you know, 12 years old and have hope in my eyes and considerably less gray. That’s wishing that was so is not is not going to make it the case if you’re not highlighted the fundamental problem with him as a politician.

Tom McTague Well, look, I think that is one of the central questions, which lies at the heart, I think, of this government and the judgment that it’s making, why it’s unpopular and why the countries feel so kind of fractious and on edge. Are we trying to maintain a system that is gone, that is broken, that is not coming back, can’t come back? You cannot go back to a world pre-2007-8. Could take the tax receipts from the city of London and redistribute them around the country in public spending. And that was the central political compromise that the entire sort of basis of Blairism, which Cameron tried to maintain in some form, is gone. It’s never coming back, you can’t do it. And that sense of starmer as a much less powerful figure on the world stage. One way of thinking about him, is he the first normal prime minister we have? He could be the prime minister of any country in Europe, you know, normal, centrist, suited man who manages a mid-sized country. And perhaps that’s what he is. He’s like the first one to not try to look back to some you know, great power days, you know. And all of those prime ministers who had tried to go back to that world have just failed. You know, Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, or even Liz Truss, you now, explodes in their face. Or is he, this is a more sort of worrying question, I guess, is he the last normal prime minister, the last one of a kind of failing order, the one who is understandable to us in 1997 term? The one who sort of still believes in that world. And when he fails, because he has fundamentally got that question wrong, that it’s not possible to recreate that order or to save it or to mend it in any sense. If he gets that wrong, then there’ll be somebody coming in next who will blow it up because they don’t believe in it. If the latter analysis is right, then we can see who’s coming. We can see that it’s Nigel Farage, or let’s say Robert Jenrick and the Conservative Party. And they’re quite clear, aren’t they, that the current system has failed. And now we can be very critical from the left and say, oh, do you actually think that, or are you just going to bring back a kind of form of hyper-globalization and free market capitalism and all of that? But on other questions like the European Court of Human Rights, they’re very clear, aren’t there, it’s just. It’s gone, it’s broken. And that’s, I think, the fundamental question here with Kiyosutama.

Nish Kumar The sort of constant specter through all of this is the threat of the far right and how Starmer is trying to manage that and huge news story over the weekend that happened here was a very politically loaded backflip that various people observing the situation might say is an attempt that Starmer’s making to head off criticism from the hard So it involves a Baroness Louise Casey’s review into. Child sex abuse gangs, which recommended a full national inquiry, a recommendation that the government has accepted. So previously, Starmer has argued that the issue had already been examined in a seven-year inquiry, and the best action was to action the recommendations of that inquiry that had been sat on by the previous government. And Starmer had in fact sort of been very, very critical of politicians that he perceived were pandering to the far right by demanding another inquiry. Casey’s review highlighted critical failings in the collection of data around ethnicity of offenders, and that has been one of the driving forces behind her recommendation of a national inquiry.

Coco Khan So when announcing her findings, Casey said that instead of examining whether there is disproportionality in ethnicity or cultural factors at play in certain types of offending, we found many examples of organizations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist, raising community tensions, or causing community cohesion problems. She also noted that the system claims there is an overwhelming problem with white perpetrators when that can’t be proved due to the lack of collection of the ethnicity of the offenders.

Nish Kumar It’s so important to note in the middle of all of this conversation that Richard Fuchs is the director of Hydrant who did a kind of massive investigation into this, said that the offenders broadly reflect the ethnic mix of the UK population and that in general terms what we see across all group-based offending is that no particular ethnicity stands out based on population data. Now despite all of that, there’s been a huge amount of frothing at the mouth From the usual suspects around this and demanding it’s a new inquiry and Elon Musk picked up on it earlier this year so. Tell me what’s your read on why stoma has changed his tune on this particular subject and gone from saying that politicians demanding this new inquiry work under to the hard right to actually now suggesting that there will be a follow up inquiry.

Tom McTague I mean, he had no choice. You cannot have Baroness Casey coming back with such stark findings and to then ignore the sort of central recommendation in her report. This goes to the heart of a problem that Starmer has, and it’s a repeating problem for him. You know, he is now having a reputation for U-turning on decisions, whether it’s, you or on this. It’s a thing that’s starting to… Picked up by the press, by the public, by his own MPs. And I think the problem I have with this is that I’ve spoken to people very close to Keir Starmer months ago. They spoke in powerful emotional terms about the sort of trauma of what happened to these girls and the failures of the system, and they were totally aware. How scandalous it was and they would have been telling the Prime Minister this and he has got himself into a position where he had dismissed this as a pander into the far right. He should have known that he’s going to have to U-turn on this and yet he’s been nine months in the making. It just seems even if you put aside questions of sort of morality on this, it’s politically absurd what he has done. I think it comes back to another fundamental problem I think that he has. He increasingly relies on other people to create a cover for his own changes of direction. So again, you could say about on gender with the Supreme Court ruling. We don’t know what he really thinks about it. We just know that it wasn’t until the courts changed the guidance that key change. So it’s not that he’s like leading on a moral question. I mean, he could he change the law if he doesn’t agree with the Supreme Court. He could change the Law and say, no, I don’t agree this actually. And I’m the prime minister and I’m gonna take a moral stance and lead on this. Or he could say that about grooming gangs. He could have led the way in either direction. We’re not really being given this clear articulation of what he thinks about any number of subjects. And we kind of drift. Until somebody else intervenes, whether it’s Baron S. Casey or the Supreme Court or whatever it is. And so we have a kind of government by Baron S Casey. I mean, that’s the kind of crazy place to be, I think.

Coco Khan And do you think it has to be Starmer who fills that void? Could it be Rainer? Could it Be Miliband? Could it other ministers that give you a sense of the Labour government as a, as a whole, or must it be Keir Starmer? Must it be the Prime Minister?

Nish Kumar I think I’m really interested by that idea because I think if he’s somebody who sees himself in this kind of managerial role, surely it would benefit him to have more forward facing ministers. You know, he’s assembled a kind of a sort of Lincoln like team of rivals that have different perspectives that like push him forward. Wouldn’t it make sense to have more? Of those ministers be quite front-footed on individual issues, but then does that undermine his authority as prime minister? Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to make more of someone like Angela Reyna or more of someone like Ed Miliband?

Tom McTague On those questions, you know, it’s quite interesting to think, who are the most popular Labour shadow? Sorry, I was gonna say shadow cabinet. Who are the popular Labour?

Coco Khan 14 years of it, isn’t it?

Tom McTague Yeah

Coco Khan Fair play.

Tom McTague Remember, Tom, Ed Miliband is in the government. But you know, Ed Milibande is the most popular Labour minister. And why? Why is he right? Because he wasn’t exactly a successful leader of the opposition. He’s the most successful minister because I think he has quite a clear idea of what he wants and what he believes we kind of know what Ed Miloband believes, right? He believes that the system is kind of fundamentally broken And we need to. Be running much more quickly towards a net zero and a completely different energy mix. And so I think he carries with him this sense of purpose that people then understand. And you can take a position against, right, for or against. You can say he’s wrong, he’s crazy, you know. Other people can say, well, I know where he stands and I agree with him. I totally agree with him and I think there aren’t that many in the cabinet where you, where you have that sense of clarity. And I guess what Angela Rayner brings. Is a sense of authenticity. And she’s also a kind of formidable political operator. And you kind of also know who she stands for, who she’s against. And that is, as an aide close to Keir Starmer put it to me in the profile, that is at the heart of politics. Who is it that you stand for? Who are you there for? And this person said to that the problem with the Rachel Reeves winter fuel was that it raised that question, oh, hang on, if we’re electing a Labour government that’s doing that, who’s side is it on here? And so I guess that’s kind of why Rainer and Miliband, two figures that you mentioned, are seen as so popular. And of course, Milibrand really can’t become leader, so it only leaves you with Rainer, and a few others.

Coco Khan Well, it’s a certainly a fascinating prospect to leave this on. Tom McTague, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Tom McTague Thanks for having me.

Nish Kumar Now, what you’ve just heard is a cut-down version of a much longer interview with Tom. You can hear that full interview or indeed watch it on our YouTube channel later this week. And in the meantime, you can read Tom’s profile of Starmer, what Keir Starmer can’t say in The New Statesman now, or you can hear more of him on The New statesman podcast.

Coco Khan [AD].

Nish Kumar Hello, we’re here on Parliament Square, stood right in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament. Not enough in the shadows for my liking. It is a hot day and I’ll be honest with you, I am sweating from my breasts. The reason that we’re is we’re taking part in a historic day. About 700 people have come down who volunteer at food banks across the country and also some people that are actually having lived experience of using food banks to try and pressure the government over these round of new welfare cuts that they’re proposing. The statistics are absolutely alarming. One in five British people is using food banks and their use has increased by 45% in the last five years. The situation is clearly dire, a new round of cuts is only going to make that worse. I’m here with Emma, the CEO of the Trustle Trust. Emma, we hear things like food bank use is skyrocketing. What are the reality of some of the numbers on this issue?

Emma Revie So we know from our research that 9.3 million people, including 3 million children, are facing hunger and hardship. The kind of level of hardship that means you’re having to come to a food bank because you simply don’t have enough money for the essentials like food, like heating bills, those key essentials that we all need to survive. And food banks for years now and increasingly are seeing people coming to them and they’re holding people in that situation, trying to provide emergency support. But we need our government night to play their part, to tackle the underlying reason why we’re seeing so many people come to Hartford Vance.

Nish Kumar And what are you calling for the government specifically to do with this essentialist guarantee?

Emma Revie So the essentials guarantee is really simple, that’s why it’s saying at the very least our universal credit, so our social security system, which should be there to protect us all, should cover the cost of essentials. At the moment it’s not, which is why we’re seeing so many people relying on food banks to get by. So we’re asking them to take steps towards making sure that we can guarantee people that our essentials, that the level at which we pay our social safety is enough to cover food, essential heating bills, essential travel costs. Those core essentials we all need to get by. Today, in parliament, a bill starts to go through parliament that will see seven billion pounds’ worth of cuts to disabled people’s social security. When we know that three in four people who are coming to food banks are disabled, we feel that this is so important and cannot continue. So we’ve all come together, even though people are really busy. What they’re having to leave behind at food banks to come here, but this feels so important because they want to make sure that their MPs really understand the reality for people on the front lines.

Nish Kumar So there’s two kind of objectives really with this, one is to vote, essentially pressure MPs to try and vote down this bill, stop this new package of cuts that’s particularly going to affect the disabled community in this country, and two is to kind of get them not only to reverse those cuts but to actually increase the provision of universal credit so it covers these specific essentials.

Emma Revie Absolutely, we’re asking them to look for independent advice on the level at which Universal Credit needs to be set, or to cover the cost of essentials, and then set it there, or at least be moving us towards that. They’ve taken steps saying they’ll increase Universal Credit from 2029 by five pounds a week. Let’s do that now. We know it’s not meeting the cost essentials now, let’s take that step earlier in April 2026.

Nish Kumar I’m here with Brian Leishman, the hottest man in Westminster. Shirt. Tie.

Brian Leishman Well, I think at least the hottest man in Westminster, London, Europe, possibly Northern Hemisphere. I think my first private members’ bill has got to be relaxing at the dress store in Westminster.

Nish Kumar Talk to us about what’s going on today. This is a huge day, this is the first reading of this bill right?

Brian Leishman Yes, and it’s diabolical welfare reforms that the government have put forward. The sort of reforms that, to be honest, are going to impoverish so many people across the country. When we think about, perhaps, 1.2 million people losing their eligibility for PIP, that is a disgrace. That’s personal independence payments, right? That’s exactly it, yeah. The sort payments that, to be honestly, are genuinely life-saving for people. Are we here?

Nish Kumar You know, statistics in the press and we talk a lot on the shows about the various statistics, but you’re a member of parliament, you’re hearing directly from your constituents, what are you hearing from your constituent constituents about food bank usage?

Brian Leishman My my inbox issue is absolutely inundated with people are struggling because what we’ve seen over the last 14 years has been chronic austerity the sort of policy that has been designed to make people poorer and Basically make people and communities all across the United Kingdom worse off food bank usage has escalated dramatically and we’ve got to basically address the real reason as to why that’s happened.

Nish Kumar I mean we kept hearing during the election campaign, no return to austerity, no return of austerity. This feels a lot like a return to a austerity

Brian Leishman I’ll be honest with you, there’s no way it can be sold as an end to austerity when you’re cutting five billion pounds from some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people in our society. What we’ve got to do, what every Labour government should do, is we should be trying to alleviate poverty, lift people out of poverty, not put people in. You said you’re going to vote.

Nish Kumar Against this bill? Absolutely. Do you have a sense of the number of Labour MPs that are also going to be rebelling on this?

Brian Leishman When I speak to other Labour MPs, there is a good amount of us that still cherish and hold so dear the real founding principles and the values of the Labour Party. And those founding principles are social justice, equality, building a society that looks after the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. That’s why I joined the Labour party, that’s why became a Labour councilor, and that’s I ran for parliament to become a Labour MP.

Nish Kumar There will be some serious pressure being exerted behind the scenes on MPs. Are you worried about the threat of deselection?

Brian Leishman I’m worried about doing the right thing, and I’m worried about being a good constituency MP. There were so many people that voted for me. There were many people who didn’t vote for me, but whether they voted for or didn’t vote for, they wanted a member of parliament who was going to come down to Westminster and represent their interests. And that’s what I’m doing. I am not the Labour member of Parliament for allowing Grangeworth to impoverish people. I want to improve things for my community. I’m here.

Nish Kumar With Green MP Siân Berry. Siân, what are your constituents telling you about food bank usage?

Siân Berry Brighton’s got an incredible community of people who’ve sprung up right through austerity to put together food networks, food co-ops. There are traditional food banks as well all over the city. It’s a real partnership with everybody and all they’re telling me is how much demand is going up, how many more people are needing to use this and the fears they’re hearing about these cuts to benefits that are coming forward as well. Things are bad enough already, after… All the years of austerity and they just don’t want to see it get any worse. Why do you think there’s a…

Nish Kumar Unwillingness to engage with this issue so far from the Labour front bench. We should make a distinction between the front benches and the back benches here.

Siân Berry That is, that is absolutely correct. And I think the whole cabinet is being led by a big spreadsheet at the moment. They’ve all been given numbers that they need to cut out of their budgets. And if you are Liz Kendall in the DWP, you’re being asked to do harm. And the treasury is not accepting that. And how much are you?

Nish Kumar In communication with Labour and peace because we often see, especially around election time, there being soft cooperation happening on the right of the political spectrum. How much cooperation is going on between you guys and Labour back-benchers who are thinking of rebelling and the Liberal Democrats? Is there cross-party conversations that are happening?

Siân Berry There are a lot of those, and I wrote to every single Labour MP saying, please vote against these cuts, please make a commitment, we can change course. I think more and more Labour MPs are expressing in private their disfaction, their worries about this, not just their political worries, but their genuine worries for constituents. We’re all hearing from hundreds of constituents every week about these issues, and no MP can ignore that kind of outcry.

Nish Kumar I’m now going to go and do what I came down here to do which is host the welcome event for the mass lobby. Let’s go do it

Emma Revie I am delighted to introduce our emcee for the morning. Comedian, TV and podcast host, and Russell supporter, Nish Kumar.

Nish Kumar I have an absolute pleasure to be on this media. Firstly, I don’t want to be disrespectful for me to be in front of you all in a t-shirt. I apologize if I begin perspiring from my breasts. So, most people living in this country want a social security system that is fit for purpose. And like our NHS, it’s available to every single person that needs it in this county. That is why we are here today. So, I just hosted the welcome event for the lobby day, it was an incredibly inspiring thing. They had three people up there from the Essential Voices group, which is a group of people with lived experience of living on Universal Credit and benefits who talks us through what it’s like on a day-to-day, week-to week basis for them. We’re now going to go and speak to a few more people from that group right now. I’m here with John. John, um…

John Thanks for talking to me. Why have you come down today? We are lobbying our MPs to guarantee the Central’s campaign and using my own experience of using the food bank.

Nish Kumar How much of a lifeline were the food banks for you?

John So I used the food Bank many years ago when I was homeless in London. And they were a place of safety, a place of safety. They were welcoming. I don’t think I would have survived as well as I did if they weren’t around. But you’re all here.

Nish Kumar Essentially to try and ask the government to make policies that mean food banks don’t have to exist, right?

John Exactly. We are one of the six richest countries in the world and we have food banks.

Nish Kumar I’m here with Cass from the Southend Foodbank. As somebody, as you say, has been working in Foodbank since 2013. What have you observed in that kind of 12 year period?

Cass That we have gone from small and on our doorstep and working in our one room. So I was a single mom and income support back in the day when we opened and I volunteered my time. You name it, I ran it. I did the Christmas everything. And now we’ve got a warehouse, we’ve go staff, we’ve a van, we got distribution centers. It is great, we were so embedded in the community, but why on earth were we so profoundly invested in feeding people? When, you know, really, why is there not a safety net that means that people don’t need to use a food bank?

Nish Kumar I’m with Jacob and Amy from the Epping Forest Food Bank. Are you going to meet your local MP? Do you have a sense of what you’re going to say to them about what you want from this government?

Jacob What’s really important for us to say is that we have so many people that do come to our food banks, you know, it’s got up to about nine and a half, ten thousand people every year in Epping Forest. And the interesting thing is that in Eping Forest we’ve got places like Chigwell and really well-known, affluent places, so people don’t think that we had the needs. And that includes our MP because it’s not always the priority for the area, so it’s really for us for us come and speak up for the people that are in need.

Nish Kumar What would you like to see as a co-policy change, what would you like to see the government be doing at this moment?

Amy Well, that’s a long list, but, you know, essentially it is to make sure that universal credit is livable. It’s not livable, it never has been livable and so now they have the opportunity to make that riot for over nine million people.

Nish Kumar I’m here with Wayne. We should really stress what we’re talking about with the essentials. It’s not frippery, it’s not luxury. It’s things like soap and toothpaste.

Wayne No, absolutely. And I mean, I meet a lot of people, unfortunately, who are at the point of crisis. I often say to people, you know, with the best will in the world, I hope we never meet again, by which I mean that I hope that they can go on to have far more fulfilling experiences than the crisis of coming to a food bank. So, yes, this campaign, you, know, given that inflation has risen, given that there is a very real need for people to have more money in their pocket to be able to afford the very basics. Of life, then yes, 100%, it’s a very simple request. And to be honest, it’s kind of crazy that we’re even standing here talking about it needing to happen, that it isn’t just automatically something that’s already happened.

Nish Kumar I’m with Helen Bernard from the Trustle Trust and former guest on PSUK, welcome back.

Helen Barnard Thanks for being here.

Nish Kumar It’s been such an inspiring and moving day listening to people talk about what the essentialist guarantee would mean from a policy perspective. What’s a policy that you’d like to see the government to design to help maintain this kind of essentialist guaranteed?

Helen Barnard Well, at the moment, Universal Credit is not set with any reference to how much essentials actually cost, which is extraordinary. So what we want is for the government to bring in legislation that would say there will be an independent body that will assess what is the amount that you need to cover just your bare essentials. They would then use that to help decide what level Universal Credit set at. It seems

Nish Kumar unfathomable that the figure for Universal Credit would essentially, I mean, is it just sort of plucked out of thin air? I don’t really understand how you arrive at that figure without having an independent panel that tells you what people actually need on a week-to-week basis to survive.

Helen Barnard Yeah, I mean, it is extraordinary. I mean it’s been that way for decades. It’s been in that way from the beginning that benefits were never set with reference to how much does stuff cost people. But how does that work? So you have, is that work, I know. So basically every year you have a political debate about how much to raise it. Is it with inflation? Is it a bit more than inflation? Is it freezing it? We had at one point a four year freeze in Universal Credit while prices were going up. But it means every year, it’s basically a political football. Yeah. And it doesn’t have any connection to the reality on the ground. I mean, what food banks and people who are experiencing severe hardship are telling us today, it is not connected to that at all, which, you’re right, is crazy and is extraordinary.

Nish Kumar So great to hear from people with lived experience of both being on Universal Credit and also volunteering at food banks. Now we’re actually going to go back to Parliament to speak to another MP. I’m very excited to be here with Wendy Chamberlain, Lib Dem MP and chairperson of the all-parliamentary group on ending food banks, is that the official term?

Wendy Chamberlain Yeah, ending the need for food banks, need to be really clear about that because I have had people who say the food bank does so much good work, it’s really important in the community, it is ending the needs for foodbanks and specifically these emergency food distribution that Trustall obviously leads in, in terms of number of food banks.

Nish Kumar It is a huge amount of public support for a version of the essentials guarantee that trusts are calling for. Why is that not translated into political will so far?

Wendy Chamberlain I think just because historically the benefit system has not been set up to look at what a sufficiency looks like, it’s been set as arbitrary in numbers and then we increase them every year. And what we have seen, and the food bank use was going up from 2016 onwards before Covid, is what we’re seeing is with the cost of living, the increases that we’ve in housing, the insecurity of housing, employment etc. Means that the benefit increases have just not kept up with the actual cost of living and that’s what surely sufficiency is about.

Nish Kumar People who listen to the show will know that I’m very happy to showcase my ignorance as often as possible but I must confess I was completely shocked by the idea that the figure around Universal Credit is not particularly based on specific consultation about need and it’s been linked to inflation which again as we know it hasn’t prices on you know gas bills electricity bills your weekly shop that has been increasing way out of step with inflation wages have stagnated in the last 17 years that’s baffling right that that’s not a situation that can continue.

Wendy Chamberlain No, I don’t think it can. I mean, you know, certainly when I’m speaking to constituents or organizations like Citizens Advice in my constituency, you know people are coming to them in crisis and they’re already in negative budgets. And then at the moment we’ve got some transition activity around people on legacy benefits moving on to universal credit, where the five week wait means that we’re putting them even more into distress. They’ve then got rent arrears with the council and that just makes things. Really, really challenging. And in terms of food banks, you know, the data is there that when the 20 pound uplift happened during COVID, demand for food bank use went down. So let’s not pretend that people are on benefits and utilizing that money in a not thoughtful or planned way. They are doing it to manage.

Nish Kumar The essentials. So it’s something that I think the public want, it’s something that if we examine the sector and the numbers and data, we can see that it would make a tangible benefit to people’s lives. So is there political will for something like this to happen?

Wendy Chamberlain I think there has been, and in this parliament obviously, big Labour majority and lots of interest from Labour MPs and indeed we’ve already had a government minister in to see the group, but the £22 billion black hole seems to be some of the challenge, but let’s be honest it’s going to cost a lot of money and we’ve got a government that says that isn’t a lot to go around.

Nish Kumar I mean, we’re not talking about partisan thing here. You sit on an all parliamentary group, you’re working with MPs from totally across the political spectrum. Do you think that there is enough will to get an essentials guarantee, to get enshrined in law that benefits will be tied to recommendations from an independent body of experts?

Wendy Chamberlain I’d like to think longer term that has got to be the aspiration, but I think if I’m quite honest that at the moment that doesn’t look like something that’s on the table, but certainly you know that is the whole point of those all party groups is to pull people from different parties where there are common interests to try and work towards that and I would hope you know the Deputy Prime Minister stood up at questions today and that they’re the party of work and the party of welfare. I can only hope that they continue to engage with the APPG and the other opposition parties on stuff like social care in the way that they’ve said that they will do.

Nish Kumar Are you going to be saying to people today? You know, you understand the need for it, given what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis, but also you understand that political reality means there is, you believe that there’s a chance that this isn’t going to go through in the short term. What’s your message for these campaigners that come out in such strong numbers today?

Wendy Chamberlain I think, you know, from a trustful perspective, or those who operate in this space, it’s about keep providing us with the evidence and the data that means that we can challenge government appropriately. I mean, I think there are two huge challenges with the benefit system, which the government are looking to address, even if they’re not going to tackle the essentials guarantee. And for constituents, often there are issues with their individual cases. And that’s one of the things that I am there as an MP to do is to help them address that. Just recently I had… A constituent who, we got £11,000 back from the DWP for benefits, that’s life changing for that family. So, you know, for people who are not empowered to be able to challenge themselves, that’s exactly why I see my role as an MP to be there to do.

Nish Kumar Look it’s been an incredible day. I found it so powerful to meet people talking about their lived experience of what it’s like to use food banks or to be on benefits and so inspiring how many people volunteer for food banks and have then taken time out of their lives even further to come down to participate in this mass lobby. What they’re demanding seems incredibly basic. And like absolute good common sense that the benefit system and the amount of money you receive on benefits is enough to cover the basic essentials a person needs to get through their day to day lives. We are talking about people choosing whether they’re going to feed their children or buy toothpaste. That is the situation that people are being driven into in this country. It is absolutely illogical that the amount of money that people get from the benefit systems is a figure that’s essentially Selected arbitrarily and is linked to inflation when the cost of living is increasing at a pace that cannot keep pace with inflation. So we’re in a situation where we know what the situation is, we know needs to be done. It was really exciting to meet someone like Wendy Chamberlain who is chairing an all-party parliamentary group, working with people from different political parties to get this legislation across the line. But as often happens, when you actually get to the grinding reality of this vote, even she’s concerned that there is not enough political will. In order to get this over the line. So what I would say is that it’s still incumbent on all of us to keep writing to your MPs, keep emailing your MP’s, keep up the pressure on them. What the Trust or Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation are demanding is common sense. And I’m afraid it’s up to us as an active and engaged electorate to keep the pressure on the members of parliament to get this over-the-line. Now, this week, the government’s welfare bill enters parliament for its first reading. As we’ve spoken about many times on the podcast, this is going to hit people claiming benefits hard. Labour backbenchers are feeling rebellious. A couple of weeks ago, I went down to Westminster to see another mass lobby in action, and here’s what Labour MP Nadia Witton told me at the time.

Nadia Witton These are the biggest disability benefit cuts on record. We’re talking about taking money away from some of the poorest people in our society during a cost of living crisis. You can call that what you want, but in reality, this is austerity 2.9.

Coco Khan There will be a link in our show notes to go back and check that episode out if you haven’t already. But, now, the party has reportedly offered an olive branch to its disgruntled MPs, proposing a 13-week stay on losing benefits to allow someone more time to find a job. There’s also an increase on the four weeks initially pitched. But, unsurprisingly, that doesn’t seem to have changed many minds.

Nish Kumar Labour MP for Stroud, Dr Simon Ofer, told the BBC’s Radio 4 Today program that it doesn’t change the basic fact that they’re planning to cut disability payment to quite a lot of people, really. And a group of 15 Labour MPs attended a photo call on Tuesday to declare their steadfast opposition to the changes.

Coco Khan It’s not just backbenchers that are up in arms about this. The Guardian reports that the government is poised for cabinet resignations if the bill goes ahead in its current form. They also report that it has been suggested to some MPs that the vote on the bill may be treated as a confidence issue, meaning that those MPs who choose to vote against it may be suspended or even deselected. That’s quite scary, isn’t it? I mean, I think it was fair to say that on this podcast, we also are very anxious and upset by the welfare bill. I think that’s quite natural. Response for any progressive. So the idea that there’s a threat to MPs who want to voice their concern on this is really alarming and speaks to what we’ve noticed, which is the death of the broad church and the Labour Party, which so many of us were invested in and cared about and thought was important to the running of the country in a fair way.

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s right. And I mean, I think it’s fair assumption to assume a lot of the people listening to this right now will be very concerned about this. And so we should take this opportunity to remind you that if you want your voices to be heard right into your MP and let them know that you care about this issue, we’ll drop the link in our show notes for you to show how you can do this.

Coco Khan But now, it’s not just the government who are in hot water, the UK’s university students are too. According to an investigation by The Guardian, thousands have been caught cheating using chat GPT and other AI tools in recent years.

Nish Kumar The numbers are pretty alarming. There were almost 7,000 proven cases in 2023 to 2024, which is equivalent to around five for every thousand students. That was up from 1.6 cases per 1,000 students in 2022 to 2023. But according to experts, this is only the tip of the iceberg as cheating students can use tools that are specifically designed to avoid detection. So for some this is turned into a sort of existential threat to the entire system of learning one op ed for higher education described as a plague upon education that stands to demolish the process of academic inquiry.

Coco Khan There’s also false positives in the system, though, with students reporting that they have to prove they haven’t cheated. Other uses, of course, might actually be good. For example, students with learning difficulties can use these tools to help with certain areas of research and things they might need for accessibility.

Nish Kumar I am sort of loosely aware that I have an almost irrational hostility to AI. Like I’m getting to the point of like Will Smith in iRobot. Me too, I’m there too. But I also accept that there are incredible uses for AI, right? You know, there’s so many fantastic ways in which it can change, but I’m specifically thinking in terms of medical science like this, all this information about how AI can help doctors sort much faster. Through cancer scans and help doctors work more quickly and more accurately through all of that. That’s fantastic. But what I would say is, I mean, there’s lots of pieces of technology that are useful for doctors that I don’t need. I don’t need an x-ray machine in my kitchen. Like the x- ray machine has probably saved hundreds of millions of lives and it is an essential tool. But it’s an essential for the people that know how to use it. I certainly don’t need one. To check my post to see if it’s worth opening or whether I should just chuck it straight in the bin. I do sort of feel a bit like that with AI that it has incredible uses, but those uses are in highly specialized areas and actually using AI to say can you generate an image of a cat dressed as a businessman is not worth dumping a load of water down the drain for.

Coco Khan This is just a side note, but when we were trying to choose a name for our son, my other half was like, let’s ask GPD and so like put in being like looking for a name that like, you know, it’s easy to say for my like English family but has like, Arabic roots or whatever and it doesn’t come up, just like Ali, basically every single time it just come up with the same thing. Anyway, um On a more serious note, like, you know, I’m a journalist, right? And so I’ve been in an industry that has been decimated by the rollout of technology, right. Like the news industry is, I think it’s fair to say, fucked. Journalists have lost their jobs. Our pay has been Decimated. It’s affected the quality of our work. And to be honest, we’re all poorer as a society for the death of journalism. Every time I hear about these stories of AI, I just think about all of my friends, not just the journalist friends, but also loads of creatives. Those are people we know, Nish, are just fucked with their jobs. They’re just completely out of work, whether they’re illustrators, I don’t know, script developers, just everyone I know that is a creative is, is really in a bad place, so I struggle to not get emotional about the AI push because it’s just sad, it’s people’s jobs being ruined and now it seems like people’s education as well.

Nish Kumar And look, this news comes as the government’s data use and access bill finally passes in the House of Lords, meaning it’s one step away from royal assent. It experienced months of holdup in the House Of Lords over one particular sticking point, copyright. Celebs in the creative industry, including Elton John and Paul McCartney, have criticized the bill for opening the floodgates to AI companies to use copyrighted artists’ content to train their models without paying for it. Here’s Elton Jon on Laura Koonsberg’s ABC Sunday show.

Elton Jon Some people aren’t like me, they don’t earn as much as I do, but when they’re creative and it comes from the human soul and not a machine, because a machine isn’t capable of writing anything with any soul in it, if you’ve got to get rid of that and you’ve got to rob young people of their legacy and their income, it’s a criminal offense I think. I think the government are just being absolute losers.

Nish Kumar That is a national treasure calling the government absolute losers. The house of Lords did vote to add transparency requirements, which would make AI companies disclose what materials they were using to develop their content. But ultimately Elton John, the house of Lord’s, and I guess all of us have turned out to be the losers here because the house has voted to reject this change now, this is really, really concerning stuff. The thing that summarizes all of the problems in this specific strand of the AI conversation is Nick Clegg, who some of you will remember as the former Deputy Prime Minister of this country, and others of you who will remember with a string of expletives. Nick Cleg has been working for Metta for the last few years. He’s written a new book and in event promoting his new book, Nick Clegh actually essentially just articulated everything that we already think, which is these people are fundamentally. Criminals, because Nick Clegg said that asking for global permission for rights owners to train models would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight. He’s essentially acknowledged that paying people for their work would make the AI industry fundamentally unworkable. Now, what I would say to you is that means that it is a fundamentally un-workable industry, okay? If paying people for their work means that it kills your entire industry, your industry is not a real industry. Like, it’s so stupid. It’s like saying that anti-theft laws have been stymieing the British highwaymen industry. We used to produce highwaymen on such volume, and now, because of our draconian laws making theft illegal. We are no longer able to produce them at the same rate as we used to. It’s open acknowledged theft of people’s Labour. I mean, Nick Clegg, I would say he should be ashamed of himself, were it not clear that he’d had the capacity to feel shame surgically removed at some point in 2010. The man is an absolute fucking waste of space.

Coco Khan Also, I just want to add to that that the Labour government have been saying, yeah, yeah, we hear what you’re saying, creatives, and we will look at this copyright thing just a bit later, just for now, let’s just accelerate this AI growth opportunity. We’ll look at it later. Later will be too late. It doesn’t take long to rob people, but building stuff up takes a really, really long time. It just, I feel like, and also I’m really annoyed that this story moves so quickly that I didn’t get to make on this podcast, my Elton John I’m still standing joke. It was basically just going to be Elton John says they’re still losers, but you know, we’re all still standing, so get in touch with your MP or something like that. But actually it sounds like it’s too late. So that’s great.

Nish Kumar A tragic loss.

Coco Khan We lived our lives like candles in the wind. No, I’m working on it.

Nish Kumar Coco’s working on something. Maybe use ChatGPT to help you out.

Coco Khan Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Nish Kumar Um, yeah, listen, AI is clearly a subject we’re going to return to. Uh, and speaking of subjects, we will be returning to, we’re actually going to be talking about housing and rent control in a very special episode next week. Uh, we want to know your thoughts, uh, specifically on the issue of rent control, but also more generally about housing where we are with it in the UK, uh email us at pod save the UK at reducedlistening.co.uk. If you’ve got any questions about housing or specific thoughts about how and if rent controls could and should be implemented in the United Kingdom, or more general thoughts about how we ease the housing crisis.

Coco Khan And that’s it! Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Don’t forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and on bluesky at podsavetheuk.crooked.com and if you want more of us make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

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

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan The executive producers are Anishka Sharma and Katie Long with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

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