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Nish and Coco celebrate the win of Progressive New York Democratic Mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani – and ponder what British lefties can learn from his social-media friendly campaign.

And is Chancellor Rachel Reeves about to rip up Labour’s manifesto promise not to introduce any new taxes on “working people”? She certainly seems to be laying the groundwork for it, after an unusual pre-budget speech on Tuesday. Nothing was announced – but it’s what wasn’t denied that tells a story…

Later – Nish and Coco discuss the disturbing influence of American anti-abortionist lobbies on the UK’s political system and what we can do about it with New York Times investigative reporter Jane Bradley and campaigner for sexual and reproductive health and rights Lisa Hallgarten. To nobody’s surprise, Nigel Farage is involved.

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GUESTS

Lisa Hallgarten – advocate, educator and campaigner for sexual and reproductive health and rights with a recent focus on young people’s right to better sex education. You can follow her on Instagram and Bluesky @FundamentalWrites

Jane Bradley – UK investigative reporter at the New York Times

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Jane Bradley’s NYT article

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/13/world/europe/uk-abortion-farage.html

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TRANSCRIPT

Coco Khan [AD].

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

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Kahn.

Nish Kumar On the show today is Chancellor Rachel Reeves about to rip up Labour’s manifesto pledges on tax.

Coco Khan And also, with Nigel Farage cozying up to the US anti-abortion group who were instrumental in overturning Roe v Wade, how can we protect our reproductive rights in the UK? We speak to investigative reporter Jane Bradley and campaigner Lisa Hallgarten.

Nish Kumar But first.

Clip So Donald Trump. Since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up!

Coco Khan That’s right. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, New York City elected Zohran Mamdani as their new mayor. With more than 50% of the vote in the biggest turnout since the 1960s, the 34-year-old has become the city’s first Muslim mayor and the youngest in more than a century.

Nish Kumar Mamdani’s grassroots campaign strategy and meteoric rise from relative anonymity to viral success on social media has left progressives around the world taking note. Representatives from the left group in the European Parliament in France and Germany’s anti-capitalist party the Left traveled to the US to meet Mamdani’s team in the hope of emulating his success in future elections.

Coco Khan Here in the UK, your party co-founder Jeremy Corbyn joined a phone bank to get the vote out for Mamdani, which left some people in Trump circles pretty pissed off. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted on ex-foreign interference in a US election? Now, we have of course heard accusations like this from Trump before, when representatives from Labour, for example, went door knocking for Kamala Harris. So what can we learn in the U.K. From Mamdani’s win?

Nish Kumar I mean, what I’ve learned most specifically is because of Zohran Mamdani’s general appearance, I found out what it would look like if I was the before guy in an advert. Mamdani really looks like the after guy to my before guy. I mean listen, as the resident of a city that has a South Asian Muslim mayor, let me tell you America, you are about to enter a new golden age of racism. Oh my God. Get ready. Oh, we’ve already seen some of it in the campaign. They would bring about 9-11 stuff.

Coco Khan Oh my God, it’s so awful.

Nish Kumar Flared trousers are back, anti-Muslim racism is in.

Coco Khan Yeah.

Nish Kumar The early 2000s are back.

Coco Khan New York, if you’re listening, protect him at all costs. We’ve had to do it. You do it too. It’s your time. We believe in you. So Green deputy leader Mothi Nalli reflected that British politicians make boring and simple videos and that the left needed to learn from Mamdani just in terms of his punchiness, his characterfulness and the way he translated a message on social media.

Nish Kumar I understand that there’s been a lot of focus on Mamdani’s messaging and because he is so, you know, telegenic and personable and has a real command of political messaging on social media and in short videos. It’s also really important just to keep restating that he also communicated a very, very clear policy agenda. He consistently kept the focus on childcare, transport, housing, food programs. And he consistently talked about how those programs were going to be funded by repeating a refrains about increasing taxes, small, very, very modest increases on taxes on the richest New Yorkers, of which, let’s face it, because of the way that the city has changed in the last 30 years, there are many of. So it’s a really, really interesting thing because I feel like I’m a little worried that people are only focusing on the messaging, which is undeniably Excellent. Yes. But without considering the fact that he has. Not been knocked off course in terms of consistently bringing it back to policy and policy, policy, policy.

Coco Khan I mean, we should obviously mention Zack Polanski, the Green Party posted on their Instagram today. Like, congratulations to him. There’s certainly a sense that he’s our version of that. You know, maybe there’s parallels to be drawn. I think there is, and you know, we touched upon the Islamophobic lampooning of Mamdani, and I think that there is something to be said about shooting the messenger, and they will try. But this message of redistributing wealth, of better child care, of… Access to good food. You can’t kill that message. That message is something many, many, many people want to hear. So, you know, if Polanski can do the same thing, I think it’s very exciting times for us as well.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I think one of the most important things I heard said yesterday was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congressman from New York, was asked about what the future means for the Democratic Party, because there were also other results that were of massive significance. Mikey Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia, and those were wins by double digit percentages. They are candidates that are seen as coming more from the center of the Democratic party. And Ocasio-Cortez was asked by MSNBC about whether Mamdani or Spanberger were the future of the party. And she said this, At the end of the day, I don’t think that our party needs to have one face. Our country does not have one phase. It’s about all of us as a team together and we all understand the assignment. Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters to the working class wherever possible. In some places, like Virginia, for the gubernatorial seat, that’s going to look like Abigail Spanburger. In New York City, unequivocally, it’s Zohran Mamdiani. It’s just a really important thing to restate this idea of the broad coalition that progressive movements need to build and how essential that is. Just from a personal perspective, I would like to see the Labour Party re-embrace the idea of broad coalition. You know, I saw Zarah Sultana on Twitter responding to West Street and praising Mamdani’s win by saying, if he was in the Labour party, you would have kicked him out. And I think actually focusing on rebuilding that broad coalition. Stopping the infighting between two wings of the same party is something that’s going to be really, really important. So all round, it was a good night for the Democrats. And obviously, if you want to hear more about that and more about Zohran Mandani, tune in to Pod Save America with Jon, Lovett and Tommy. Also, I can’t believe I’m saying this, Coco, but Christmas time is approaching.

Coco Khan Goodness me.

Nish Kumar I thought you’d be more excited by that.

Coco Khan Do I strike you as Christmassy? This is not an Islamophobic dig. Don’t worry. You can speak freely.

Nish Kumar Do you strike me as Christmassy?

Coco Khan Really?

Nish Kumar You strike me as someone who enjoys Christmas party season, okay? And it’s not, you don’t strike me, I know for a fact you enjoy Christmas party season, OK?

Coco Khan There’s a lot about Christmas I don’t like. Anyway, I’m not going to get into it. I just find…

Nish Kumar But you love Christmas party season. I do. Don’t deny that.

Coco Khan Do you know what I really lament the most? What? I think Christmas party season is dead.

Nish Kumar What do you mean?

Coco Khan I just don’t think people are doing it like they used to. I’m really sounding really old now. It’s not like it was in 2009. Those were some Christmas.

Nish Kumar Okay, well, if unlike Coco Kahn, you’ve not embraced the spirit of the Grinch, Christmas is the perfect time to head to the Crooked Store and snag gifts for your favorite activists and friends of the pod. We’ve got everything from conversations starting stocking stuffers to cozy sweatshirts that you’ll be wearing all winter.

Coco Khan And remember, you can always get yourself a gift, regardless of what Santa, or whoever he is, says. I think you’ve been a very good little listener. I think that’s meant to be a thing about being on Santa’s good list, but I think it made me sound like I was doing some sort of kink with the listener, didn’t it?

Nish Kumar No, it made you sound like Ray Winston in a gangster movie. You’ve been a very good little listener, haven’t you? Sounded like you were threatening them with a knife.

Coco Khan Just remember that the last day to purchase to ensure you get your order by Christmas is December 11th. That’s for domestic mind you, so if you’re in the States, and for us international people, it’s December the 7th, so order soon.

Nish Kumar Head to crooked.com forward slash store to shop.

Coco Khan Now, over in Westminster, speculation about tax hikes has been dominating the week. At 8am on Tuesday morning, Chancellor Rachel Reeves was beamed into our TVs from Downing Street to level with the nation about the bleak state of the finances and to make the case about what’s to come in her November budget. I just want to point out I haven’t had any internet in my flat. Just side note, I doubt Richard Branson listens to this podcast, but fuck you, mate. Anyway.

Nish Kumar Coco, I regret to inform you that Richard Branson does not own Virgin Media.

Coco Khan I said what I said.

Nish Kumar Okay, I mean, I guess we can still keep fuck you, Richard Brownson. It’s not technically liable to tell someone to go fuck themselves.

Coco Khan It’s not is it so i don’t have internet so i have to watch linear tv so i watch this on the tv

Nish Kumar You watched it on broadcast television.

Coco Khan Television. It was sad. I just had this moment being like, I can’t fast forward it. I just cannot. But it was so long. Anyway, well.

Nish Kumar 45 minutes later none of us including the internetless Coco Khan were any the wiser about what the fuck is going on What is important to stay here? It’s not so much what she said which was

Coco Khan Nothing. Nothing.

Nish Kumar But what she didn’t do and what she certainly didn’t do was put to bed any of the speculation about incoming tax hikes. So when she was asked directly about whether there would be tax increases by Sky News’s Beth Rigby, which would obviously be a massive U10 and a breach of Labour’s manifesto commitment, Rachel Reeves dodged the question. Let’s listen slash watch it now.

Clip As Chancellor, I have to face the world as it is, not the world that I want it to be. And when challenges come our way, the only question is how to respond to them, not whether to respond or not. If you didn’t watch the speech, that really…

Coco Khan You a flavor of it. So many words, but what do we mean? It’s really hard to overemphasize how unusual this event was. Chancellors don’t normally come out and deliver speeches three weeks before they give the budget. Having said that though, this is a make or break budget for the Chancellor and possibly the government, so she’s trying a new tactic. I think she’s essentially priming us for something big.

Nish Kumar Yes, so the current rumor is that retirees might seek to cut national insurance whilst simultaneously raising income tax, which puts the focus more on taxing wealth and work and possibly finding a way to keep the, I mean, there’s no better way of saying this, the vibe of not taxing working people more whilst still increasing the actual tax receipts.

Coco Khan Yes, you kept saying this phrase, we all have to do our bit, you know, like your primary school teacher telling you, we have to all have do our best. She kept saying it, I think that’s the hint. So given the dire polls, the question is, is this actually an opportunity for the government to start being brave? They’re already very unpopular. So maybe this is a, yeah, this is chance for them to make positive changes to the tax system, show themselves to have a spine and hopefully deliver something that is genuinely… Helpful to working people and shows those with deeper pockets that they won’t be pushed over.

Nish Kumar It remains to be seen how this is all going to shake down, and it also remains to be seen if Rachel Weaves is going to do what has been thought of as being unthinkable in British politics and look at the triple lock on pensions. Commentators on the left and the right at this point are both suggesting that now might be the time to look at that the way that the state pension is indexed. State pension is expected to rise by 4.7% this year. Now, it would be incredibly unpopular. Given the dire economic circumstances and given the way wealth is distributed in this country, it’s something that needs to be considered. If we’re talking about everything being looked at. I mean, if we’re being really brutal here, it’s something that we need to at least be willing to have a conversation about. Do you think that there is any chance of them looking at stuff like that?

Coco Khan I don’t claim to be an expert on pensions, but just generally speaking, one in four millennials doesn’t have a pension. I feel like our generation doesn’t take an interest in this, but this is the social contract. And okay, fine, if we’re having a conversation about taxing health, not work, okay, certain pensioners they have. Whatever they’ve accumulated somewhere through assets or through other things. So I’m not sure how that relates to the state pension, but I suppose if those pensioners are doing well, then perhaps it needs to be rebalancing. As you can hear from my waffle, it’s extremely boring. But at the end of the day, is taking from the future justifiable to now? So is taking the pension away from us when we’re older in the future justifiable now? I don’t know if I feel comfortable with that personally.

Nish Kumar I mean, listen, I think they have to consider any and all measures at this point. I think the thing that I’m finding really frustrating is this idea that the state of the public finances is this dire as a surprise to anyone. I’m sat in almost the exact spot that Paul Johnson when he was still in charge of the think tank, the IFS was sat in when he said to us. Labour and the Conservatives are lying to you about the state of the public finances. They’re in a much worse condition. Neither party of these two parties is campaigning with any sense of the reality of Britain’s public finances and whoever wins the election, they’re going to turn around and say the public finance is in a way much worse position than we thought they were in. So I’m finding it very, very difficult to hear that all of this is a shock now, given that they were warned by various experts, including Paul Johnson about the state of the public finances in the lead up to the election. The reaction to Reeves’ announcement, my reaction notwithstanding, the other reactions have included the Conservative leader, Cami Badenot, calling the speech one long waffle bomb, and Daisy Cooper, the Treasury spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, saying, it’s clear that this budget will be a bitter pill to swallow as the government seems to have run out of excuses.

Coco Khan So, Zack Polanski said that Reeve’s speech highlights the need for a wealth tax, saying this must be a cost of living budget, that’s a moral imperative. And on the other side, ahead of Reeves speech, Nigel Farage delivered his own, promising to put deregulation at the heart of his economic agenda.

Nish Kumar Yes, so Farage and Reform have talked a lot about the Department of Governmental Efficiency and creating an equivalent to it in the United Kingdom to the one that was briefly run by Elon Musk in the States. Deeply strange stuff from, I think we can all agree, a very weird man. But the strangest comment that the weirdo made this week was in a news conference after the speech when he said that minimum wage is too high for younger workers. So Nigel Farage appears to be declaring war on the youth.

Coco Khan Yeah, just in case you were worried that youngsters are getting paid too much, the minimum wage is currently £12.21 an hour for workers aged 21 and over and £10 for those between 18 and 20 for people aged under 18, so who are on apprentice rate. The minimum is £7.55. They’ve got it too easy. It’s just this intergenerational warfare thing, isn’t it? And I feel I have been guilty of it at times. I have be guilty at times of looking at the boomers. And being like, Oh, look at you little boomers. Look at you in your four pound 50 house and your pension that you’ve got. Even, and I have to stop myself being like no, okay, fine. Yes. They lived in a historically favorable time, but there are also working class boomers who didn’t benefit from that. And we should all have solidarity and try and create the conditions in which we too can thrive as a generation. And I don’t want to get drawn into this and they are playing this game. That’s how it seems to me is that they know that their base. Is primarily 50 plus, maybe even 60 plus, and they’re turning the screws to just really just turn against your own children, your own family. I mean, how much more divided can we be? I don’t know.

Nish Kumar It’s just a very strange time in the history of this country to say that a younger generation who is sort of facing a landscape of climate crisis and also consistently lowering economic standards and standards of living, and who has just lived through a pandemic where several of them, essentially, generations put their lives on hold, often for the benefit of expecting people that are much older than them. That they’ve had it too easy. It’s just a very strange time in human history.

Coco Khan They get paid too much if they even have a job because we know that the rates of employment for young people are very poor.

Nish Kumar It’s worth noting the amount of attention that what Farajah said was given, because there is a time in British politics in our recent memory that the Labour Party and the Conservative Party would have just ignored his speech, but both parties actually issued lengthy pre-buttal comments. Before he’d even made a speech, a Labour Party spokesperson said reforms approach could take us back to austerity, and the conservative shadow chancellor Sir Mel Stride said It’s impossible to take reform seriously on the economy when their promises disintegrate after five minutes. Mel, we don’t agree on a lot, but we’ll give you that one. And what I will say is if anyone understands what it sounds like when promises disintegrate, after five minutes, it’s a member of the conservative party. That’s the one thing they absolutely have had a track record of.

Coco Khan Now, after the break, we’ll be speaking to investigative journalist Jane Bradley and campaigner Lisa Hall-Garten about the growing threat to abortion rights in the UK and how we can hold the line. And I’m afraid we will be hearing more about Nigel Farage.

Nish Kumar [AD]

Nish Kumar So you might have noticed that Nigel Farage has taken a much harder line on abortion recently. Back when he was the head of the Brexit party, he had no stance on the topic, yet out of the blue, last November, Farage began calling for the abortion time limit to be reduced from 24 weeks to 22. And here he is again talking about the subject in May of this year.

Clip I am pro-choice, but I think it’s ludicrous, utterly ludicrus, that we can allow abortion up to 24 weeks.

Coco Khan Thanks to a recent New York Times investigation, which claims growing links between anti-abortion activists in the US and reform, we know a lot more about what’s behind Farage’s keen interest in our wombs. A key force behind the Supreme Court’s controversial decision to overturn Roe vs Wade and end the constitutional right to abortion was the Christian Conservative group, the Alliance Defending Freedom or the ADF, and now they’ve set their sights on Britain.

Nish Kumar Joining us in the studio is one of the reporters behind that investigation, Jane Bradley and Lisa Hallgarten, who’s an advocate, educator and campaigner for sexual reproductive rights and health with a recent focus on young people’s right to a better sex education. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Jane and Lisa.

Lisa Hallgarten Thanks for having us.

Nish Kumar I don’t have a huge amount of background for Farage’s interest in abortion until he starts. Sort of banging on about it. How sort of surprised were either of you to hear him talk about it? I mean, Jane, were you aware, had you been looking into this for a while? I presume that story was quite a long time in the making.

Jane Bradley No, I was surprised as you were when he started talking about this. And that is kind of what started me off investigating this. I’ve covered British politics for 18 years and I can’t remember a time Faraj has ever made abortion a campaign issue. So I was like, that’s weird. Why is he suddenly talking about abortion? What’s the immigration link here? And at the same time, I’d noticed that this American Christian anti-abortion group called Alliance Defending Freedom, had started funneling more money into its UK operation, basically expanding in the UK. So I had these two questions, which was, what is this anti-abortion group, which is one of the most influential in the US? You know, they’ve got, they helped overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right for abortion, very high up allies in the White House. I was like, what’s their interest in the U.K.? What are they up to here? And why on earth is Faraj kind of speaking about abortion? And that’s when I got a tip off from a reform source Who basically said that, oh, if you’re interested in influence and money, you should look at the ADF. They’re basically positioning themselves as a power broker between the Trump administration and the UK right. And specifically, I found out Reform and Farage.

Nish Kumar Lisa, I guess I’ve always taken the right for abortion as something that’s not going to be contested in my lifetime. In the United Kingdom, frequently polling has just suggested the overwhelming majority of this country is in favor of preserving a woman’s right to choose and that it’s a sort of non-issue. But given the kind of rollback on reproductive rights and given the fact that a lot of the conversation in America was no one is talking about ending Roe v Wade, nobody’s talking about this, blah, blah. Have you been more cautious about this the entire time given your work?

Lisa Hallgarten I mean, we’ve seen the influence of anti-abortion campaign and anti-Abortion funding in the UK forever. This feels like a real ramping up. What was interesting for me with the overturning of Roe v Wade was people in the U.K. Went, this is terrible. This is such a shock. But anyone watching and paying attention would have seen that the campaign against Roe V Wade started in 1973, the minute the ruling was handed down. And the moment Trump tipped Supreme Court in favor of anti-abortion judges, it was pretty much doomed. So it was interesting for me, though, that everybody in the UK is going, oh, that’s so terrible, that so terrible. But they’re not looking at the UK. We don’t have robust abortion rights in the U.K. And we’ve seen recently several challenges to those. But over the years, there have been many, many challenges. So, yeah, for me kind of unsurprising. And we did see also Nigel Farage give evidence to a committee about how free speech was being stifled in the UK because we allow buffer zones outside abortion clinics. So he’s clearly positioning himself as a reliable partner for the kind of anti-abortion Project 2025 agenda in the States.

Jane Bradley Well, I’m glad you mentioned that Senate hearing, because that was one of several briefings and meetings that we discovered the ADF had basically secretly brokered behind the scenes. So, you know, Farage got up, like you said, and started attacking the UK’s free speech record, talking about abortion. But one of the things kind of we wanted to do with this investigation was kind of figure out the power and the influence behind the scene. Like, how did that happen? And actually, that was a result, Farage’s appearance there was a result of almost a year long campaign. Behind the scenes by the ADF to basically come together and talk about free speech rather than abortion. I’ve had it described to me as the ADS kind of using or the anti-abortion movement kind of using free speech as its Trojan horse. So they’re framing it all around. This is about free-speech and you know Christians who are silently praying outside abortion buffer zones, these areas around clinics designed to prevent harassment from women and staff. It’s not about abortion. And in my interview with the ADF, what was really interesting to me was they were, one of the few times they interrupted and one of points that were keyness to really make clear was that they are pro-speech as much as pro-choice, and that their abortion buffer zone where it was entirely separate to abortion.

Nish Kumar Right. Okay. So it’s two completely separate issues. It just so happens that their two biggest interests conflate in this one conversation.

Jane Bradley Exactly, and ultimately they admitted an interview with me. They do want to see, and I was quite surprised they kind of admitted this in such direct terms, but they said that ultimately they want to abortion rights in the UK rolled back. They don’t want it to stay at 24 weeks with and as part of their wider aim to kind of empower Christianity in Europe.

Nish Kumar Why focus on the UK?

Jane Bradley That was my question, I was like, don’t you know you’re never going to overturn abortion here while you’re throwing away your money?

Nish Kumar Oh, I thought you were going to be dismissive about the UK. No, I was there. Why this shithole?

Jane Bradley There’s lots of people saying that for us. No, I have that exact question, why the UK? And there’s kind of two things. One, they genuinely believe that the UK is in the midst of a free speech crisis. The ADF, the conservative Christian right more broadly, they generally believe that. Two, you know, they believe that we have an extreme abortion regime here, but also the UK’s very influential both politically and legally. So they said to me that what the UK says or what happens in the UK matters internationally, in Europe in particular, which is their big focus. So it’s kind of both that they think, in your words, it’s a shithole and there’s lots of bad stuff happening here, and also the UK can be a useful bridge end for their wider mission, their wider influence campaign.

Coco Khan Wider mission is genuinely a religious mission.

Jane Bradley Yes, and to them, freedom of speech is intrinsically tied to religious freedom. Like they use this term, a God-given right to free speech. And that, in their words, expands to the life and the rights of the unborn child. And that’s a big part of it. So abortion is like one of their key missions and one of the most important and certainly one of ones we should be paying the most attention to. But it’s part of this wider conservative Christian agenda.

Lisa Hallgarten I mean, I think it’s worth saying it’s not just the ADF, there are other huge funders of anti-rights activity all over Europe. And Neil Datta, who works in the European Forum for Reproductive Rights, has done all sorts of studies about this and reckons there’s somewhere around £78 million being poured into Europe at the moment, not only from America and American foundations, but also from Russia. So a lot of this is about destabilizing civil society across Europe. I’ve been working very hard in the last few years around relationships and sex education, and there’s been absolutely ferocious opposition coming through the legislature, coming through various parts of faith groups, trying to fight back on having mandatory relationships and sex education in the UK. So these things are all connected, and the ADF is like a piece of this quite toxic puzzle.

Coco Khan It was only in June this year that Parliament voted to stop women from being prosecuted for abortions outside the 24-week limit, as well as the medical staff that helped them. And in Northern Ireland, abortion was decriminalized late, only in 2019. So you might think our political system is on the side of abortion rights and therefore the ADF, their tactics won’t work here. To what extent is that wishful thinking?

Lisa Hallgarten I mean, I think we always have to assume it’s wishful thinking. Don’t be complacent. And I think there’s a huge amount of complacency in the UK. Everyone’s like, well, I know someone who got an abortion. It was quite straightforward. I don’t think it’s a problem. We’ve got the Abortion Act, which allows abortion within certain circumstances. And the whole of the medical establishment has made it work to the extent that abortion does feel quite accessible for most people in most circumstances. But the actual legislation that remains and that underpins that is the 1861. Offenses against the Person Act. So it’s a 19th century act, which was brought in before the light bulb, before women had the vote, and still underpins our abortion law. And that’s what’s allowed the prosecution of people in this country for ending their own pregnancy. And actually the piece of legislation that’s going to overturn that, which is an amendment to the crime and policing bill, isn’t completed. That’s still going through parliament and there’s still MPs pushing back against that. So we can’t be complacent. And because we don’t have a constitution in this country, we can’t give people a constitutional right to abortion as they’ve got in France. We can only have legislation, and legislation can always be overturned. So if we had a reform majority parliament, we’d really have to be kind of vigilant against a reduction in time limits.

Nish Kumar Stella Creasy has been on this show talking about the amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill. Do you think that there needs to be further legal provision to enshrine this in British law? And then is then the fight going to be if there is a reform majority at the next election, protecting that act of parliament.

Lisa Hallgarten Yeah, I mean, what we really need is complete decriminalization. We need to take doctors out of the criminal law. And we see that in Canada where they did that decades ago with absolutely no ill effect whatsoever. We don’t suddenly see people going to the supermarket to buy an abortion or suddenly turning up at 28 weeks saying, I think I have an abortion. It’s made absolutely no impact on the kind of level of request or demand for abortion, but it has made it easier and it’s taken doctors and women and others having an abortion out of the criminal. Code which is really important and it’s not just about prosecutions. It’s also because we’ve got this clunky 1967 act which was life-saving and radical at the time But actually leaves a huge amount of red tape and process which slows up the process

Nish Kumar [AD]

Coco Khan Let me get this straight. The approach would be, kick off a conversation about abortion through the prism of free speech, i.e. Buffer zones. That is a free speech infringement. People should be allowed to talk about their problems with abortion. That, therefore, opens the door to having a conversation. Is it really okay? Then what? Then, what’s the next step. So you make it popular with the public. Because that’s the only thing that I’m taking hope with is that the public, surely the common sense of the public. In the UK, we have such favorable opinions towards abortion. I understand how there’s money and political expedience of reaching the politicians, but changing public opinion. Surely that’s in the big arse.

Jane Bradley I think that’s a really good question. The ADF, their lawyers are focused. They said, you know, again, in the interview in straighter black and white language, their focus in the UK is on using these legal cases, not to build up to eventually get a Supreme Court case that would overthrow the right, but to incrementally change abortion rights through people’s attitudes, through lobbying, through parliament. What they’re very successful doing the ADF, is getting these headlines where it’s like… Veteran, man, Christian, convicted for thought crimes, for thought prayers, and they’ve been successful. I’ve seen with some of the supporters they’ve spoken to that they’re keen to point me to. These are kind of independent peers, crossbench MPs, who have said to me, you know, look, I’m pro-choice, I am pro-abortion and I hate the anti-abotion people, but I think they’ve got a point. They shouldn’t be arrested for praying outside the abortion People should be allowed to protest and agree. And that is the first sign, I think, of the ADF’s campaign working and being successful. And kind of probably the greatest success they’ve had to date is when Vance president, sorry, when Vice President JD Vance stood up and…

Nish Kumar That’s definitely how he refers to himself. That man is so congenitally uncool that there is no way that he doesn’t refer to himself as the vice president.

Jane Bradley I think you may be right, but he got up in February this year on stage at the Munich Security Conference, one of the biggest international political stages we have, and specifically called out the UK for a free speech crisis and directly cited ADF cases. We don’t know whether this was the direct result of ADF briefing Vance’s team, but what it does show is just the inroads that they’ve made, their recruitment of Raj as an ally. Who will come up and talk about abortion or free speech with the platform he has, it’s really useful for an organization which does not have much UK influence yet.

Nish Kumar It’s really important to, I think, establish why Farage, why have they spent so much time cultivating Farage? Because I mean, listen, I kind of understand what the benefit is for him out of this. This is huge international exposure. It makes him look like he’s constantly tried to position himself since Trump was reelected as president as essentially the informal ambassador between the United Kingdom and the Trump administration. He repeatedly told you in your reporting that the idea that he had found a new interest in reproductive rights was bollocks, which obviously, because you’re a British writer who writes for the New York Times, the article has to contextualize what bollock means.

Jane Bradley You would not believe the editorial conversations we had to put in. At one point there was a conversation about whether we had to explain the literal meaning of the word. I was like, we will never be taken seriously to the UK. We won’t be right there.

Nish Kumar For American listeners, I don’t have to be taken seriously. It means testicles. It literally means testicle. A kick to the bollocks is a swift kick to the plums. But the thing with Viraj is, his personal interest is always in whatever is going to advance him and, you know, I can see easily the appeal of like being brought to the States.

Coco Khan Actually, I understand Nigel Farage, if he is trying to enama himself further to the Americans, but surely this is self-immolation to actual British people.

Jane Bradley I mean, are they giving him money? That’s what I want to know. This is the conflict and the tension here. I found no evidence that they’re giving him money, at least yet, but usually I find the money follows building up a relationship. And it’s the early stage of their relationship. But this is the tension that I found really interesting, which is, yes, you can see the advantage of Haraj and reform from a US perspective, all the influence and the doors that the ADF opens, the platform, they can help him get. And to the ADF, there’s a similarity between Trump and Farage and their relationship with the anti-abortion movement, which is both men are kind of disruptors with no proper stance on abortion. You know, Farage doesn’t go to church. He has previously described himself as pro-choice, as we’ve heard. But in the case of Trump, the antiabortion movements and the ADS included in that was really helpful for helping. Propel him to the White House. But Farage has to be really careful in the UK because it’s not the divisive political cultural issue it is in America. There was a study put out last week, actually, which found that the UK broadly is much less conservative when it comes to social policy than Americans. And in particular, it found something like 82% of reform supporters support abortion.

Lisa Hallgarten One of the reasons they need to get to reform is because reform has the potential to have a majority of seats in the next parliament. That’s what it looks like in the polls. And even though Nigel Farage is completely unreliable and probably wouldn’t stand by his word if he said that he was going to bring legislation in, they believe that’s their only chance of changing legislation in this country. They’re not going to do it through the Tories who aren’t going to get enough seats. They are not going do it though Labour or any other form of coalition. He is an important target. And the real question is what happens if he got to power? Would he care about this? One of the things about UK people not caring that much about abortion is that those people who are pro-choice in reform might not care enough to make that the thing that makes them not vote reform. They care more about the other things. They care about immigration, they care more the state of their finances, all of the the things that reform are promising to kind of address. So… Yes, they don’t care that much and they’re not going to kind of put a huge amount of weight behind an anti-abortion candidate, but they’re also probably not going to fight an antiabortion candidates either.

Jane Bradley I asked the party whether they had a party policy on abortion, and I got deafening silence. But the week after we published our investigation, it was announced that James Orr, the professor James Orrr, the Christian academic who, you know, Labour have pointed out, has said he’s against abortion in all circumstances, even rape. He’s very well connected, you now, to the US and the Trump administration. You’ve had Vance calling him his British Sherpa. Uh, over here. Yeah. And then, and then Danny Kruger as well, the Tory defect, who’s got a very hard line, a conservative views on abortion and same sex marriage. You’re seeing kind of, and I’ve seen reform accused of this. And I think there’s growing evidence of it becoming kind of the party for anti-abortionists. Um, and I don’t think the farad particularly cares about it still. And the party doesn’t have an official stance in it, but the people they’re appointing and the influence they have. I think definitely raises valid questions that we should be asking about the issue and reform.

Nish Kumar Lisa, is that something that concerns you? Because I mean, James saw has been appointed as a senior advisor, as you say, Jane. And I mean James saw his views on abortion, but also across a whole range of subjects really put him in, in the absolute bat shit corner of even sort of hard right politics. Do you think that by the referage is almost signaling to that hard right, that we’ve got somebody from your team very close to the center of our operation? And equally, we’re calculating that, as we say, our voters that are voting, that don’t really care about abortion, are not gonna care enough about the issue wholesale to actually bother considering it when they vote for reform.

Lisa Hallgarten Yeah, they are the natural conclusion of where everyone wants to go to, you know, you start by saying 22 weeks or 21 weeks or whatever and you end up with like, nobody should have an abortion under any circumstances, even when a woman’s dying on the operating table, which is what’s happening now in the States. And I think that, so for us, it’s useful to kind of say, this is where it goes if we don’t stop the bus. From Viraj’s point of view, it is useful to have somebody saying really, really extreme stuff because it makes him look really reasonable. I think he’s happy to have James Orr there. I think it should be a massive red flag for all of us that someone like that is even finding a space in UK politics. And soon he’ll have us all in pinnies back at the chain to the cooker.

Coco Khan We understand what the approach is, or we think we understand what the approaches and the tactics that they’re taking from the U.S. And trying to roll them out here. What about solutions from the US? You know, what can we learn from across the way to help us? I mean, essentially safeguard our lives, our autonomy. How can what can learn?

Lisa Hallgarten I mean, one thing I would say is this has been about money. There’s no money to campaign for reproductive rights in this country. And one thing we could learn from America is philanthropy. There are huge philanthropists who have spent the last kind of 30, 40 years backing reproductive rights in America, legal cases, backing networks that support people to get abortions in states where it’s very difficult, backing legislators to kind of put forward. Their positions, fighting legal cases, all of this stuff. We don’t have that money here. So one thing that we could learn is philanthropy, like where are the feminist philanthropists who are backing that in the UK? I think we can learn about the kind of way in which community works in America so that we can be robust if any of these threats come to the fore. So we learn from an American who came to England, Mara Clark, who set up the abortion support network. You need to have networks that support people to cross borders to have abortions if necessary. They’re brilliant at training doctors. We’ve got a massive problem here with training the next generation of abortion doctors. So there is loads and loads to learn and maybe it’s because they’ve been up against it in a very visceral way for much longer than we have in the UK, that they’ve developed all these kind of alternative ways. And I think there is hope, not just from America. I mean… It was Brazilian women who identified that misoprostol, which is actually an anti ulcer drug, could be used to perform abortion. And that’s been absolutely revolutionary across the world because it’s an over-the-counter drug which allows people to end their own pregnancy safely.

Nish Kumar I just want to ask you one final question, Jane, about the specific UK political situation when it comes to foreign interference. Democracy for Sale revealed earlier this year that foreign donors are still going to be able to use UK-registered companies to pour millions into British politics, and the proposed election bill that Labour’s putting forward doesn’t do anything to address that. What can we do about the influence of groups like the ADF on British politics? Are there loopholes that can be tightened? Are there restrictions that can imposed? Is it more a question of just investing in counter networks to push back against that kind of rhetoric?

Jane Bradley I’ve done a lot of reporting on Russia and donations and money. So from then I was like, if this was Russia, we would be straight up calling this an attempt at foreign interference, because it’s America, we’re much shyer about using that term. But if you’re a lobbyist group, a campaign group, and you are behind the scenes without declaring it in kind of transparency registers and things like that, acting as this power broker, setting up meetings, connecting, kind of trying to influence. UK, the UK public and UK politicians on a major issue, then surely that is foreign interference or an attempt at foreign interference. And the fact that, you know, Labour, it has turned out that Labour are not going to close this massive loophole, which was obviously really exposed when Musk was suddenly rumored to be giving a hundred million pounds to reform and that amount of money like would have been more than every single political party. The Tories, Labour and Lib Dems got that year. The rules are around who can give money. And the rules around how you declare it, but I think that doesn’t go far enough, clearly. That doesn’t far enough. So for me as a journalist, like I’m not a campaigner, I think there are other people doing a great job in this area. For me I think all we can keep doing is lifting the lid and lifting behind the curtain and show people what is going on and what impact that might be having on policy, on what politicians are saying on stages or not. And so people are complacent and people can’t say they didn’t know.

Lisa Hallgarten And I think be aware that we’re not just going to see the very big arguments about abortion, it’s going to come through, especially through social media, in a very disaggregated way. What’s the messaging for like the under 18s who will have the vote next time? What’s messaging for vegans, for example? I wouldn’t kill an animal, why would I kill a fetus? It’s going be very disagregated, it’s gonna be very sophisticated, and it’s not going to be something that we can kind of bop on the head with a mallet. We’re going to have to tease out who’s hearing what. And the big money. Is going to allow that to happen in a really sophisticated way. And us saying, it’s your rights, it is your body, is not going to cut it. So we also are going to have to think about really sophisticated ways to work out who’s hearing what and how we tackle those arguments.

Nish Kumar Get smart, get sophisticated, get organized. In the interim, should we think about putting Nigel Farage’s face on condom packets? Just to make sure people would just, you really want to make if that’s something you want to go through with as a sex act. I’m just putting it out there. The man could be a human contraceptive. Jane and Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Lisa Hallgarten Thanks so much for having me here.

Nish Kumar Now, last week on Pod Save the UK, we put out a call for listener stories of communities that are organizing against the far-right flag campaign, especially after the reform-led Nottinghamshire County Council spent £75,000 on flags. But look, people are fighting back against this flag shagging. Following flags popping up along Stonehouse in Gloucestershire, our listener Izzy wrote in to share a story about locals creating St George flags embroidered with words that reflected true core British values like respect. Fairness and unity and she said it really cheered her up. Thanks Izzy.

Coco Khan And it seems like the reform-led county council, Kent, might have got themselves in a bit of a sticky spot over their love of flags. Their leader, who once vowed not to remove flags put up unilaterally by the people of Kent, has ruled that Union and St George flags must come down in order for the village Christmas lights to be put up, so the council has a choice. Festive lights that probably will bring people together, or flags on lampposts that will probably do the opposite.

Nish Kumar Honoring this vow in a statement to the Guardian, the council explained that they can’t take the flags down themselves as the flags and street columns are not council property, the parish council is not permitted to use public funds to pay for their removal. However, Kent County councilor for the Greens, Stuart Jeffrey, disagreed. He said the parish councill could remove the flags as they had not been put up with Kent’s permission and removing them would not be breaking the law.

Coco Khan Oh my god. I mean, you know, I’m very conscious that I don’t want to be falling foul of the law. But one suggestion might be that if you live there, you take them down.

Nish Kumar I don’t think we can advocate for that, only because I don t want our listeners to get beaten up by Lunatic.

Coco Khan Okay, yeah, that’s fair enough. That is fair enough

Nish Kumar If you can do it without being detected, please don’t get in a fight with anyone who’s put up a flag. I’m not sure they’re the most stable group of people in human history.

Coco Khan You know, I think you’re absolutely right. One should always stay safe. I think I’ve basically drunk my own Kool-Aid because this week I had a little bit of a moment where I socked it to the man in my own little weird way. Talk me through it. Okay. Basically, right, bit of context. There’s some ill feeling towards women with buggies, right? Buggies take up space. And also we live in this strange time where people hate women and children, right. And that seems to be socially acceptable say that.

Nish Kumar This does play into my Canadian mother-in-law’s opinion that British people in general prefer dogs to babies, which she has always said she finds quite a strange element of our culture.

Coco Khan I mean, there’s loads of class things involved. If you’re a woman on a bus, you know, you’re taking the bus. Presumably you need to use public transport and perhaps you don’t have means to do it elsewhere. So this is all the context for, I was on a bus with my buggy and someone had placed a sticker in the buggy area that looked like it would be a TFL sign. They used the same font or whatever, but luckily their, their own arrogance gave it away because they signed their graffiti artist’s name in the corner. So that’s how that was the, the tell that it was a fake. And the sign said something along the lines of, it is now required that you fold down your buggy to give other people space, right? It’s all part of this thing being like, make yourself small, you shouldn’t get special privileges because you’re raising the next generation of, you know, pension payers or whatever it’s going to be that’s going help us all keeping this society going. And it really annoyed me because I knew that there would be some woman who would see that at first glance and think that was true and make herself smaller. And heaven forbid she should have a lower price buggy, which is really hard to put up and down anyway. I just thought, you little bastard. As it happened, Nish, I had a Sharpie, had it on me. So I graffitied the sticker.

Nish Kumar What did you, what did you graffiti it with?

Coco Khan I really wish I wrote something cool, but I just wrote, this is fake, not true, something like that.

Nish Kumar Well, that’s good.

Coco Khan Bit of fact checking.

Nish Kumar Yeah, a bit of fact checking.

Coco Khan Feeling of transgression when I did it, because I was really angry about it. It was such a thrill. You know, I grew up at a time when people were like, oh, the pen is mightier than the sword. Obviously, now we know the ring light is the most powerful.

Nish Kumar Yeah, sure.

Coco Khan But in that moment I was like, my sword, my Sharpie, I’m sticking it to the man. It felt so good.

Nish Kumar Listen, I think there’s nothing wrong with what you did. I think that’s completely correct. I’m just counseling people to be careful with the flags, okay? These are not a group of people that I understand. I don’t personally need to see flags all the time because, and I don’t want to brag, I always know what country I’m in. I always do. Every time. I know what I’m from. Every day. I don’t need to see the flag, I woke up this morning, England England, two out of two.

Coco Khan Well, that is it. Thank you for listening to Pod Save the UK!

Nish Kumar Don’t forget to follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and Blue Sky.

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

Nish Kumar Thanks to producers May Robson and James Tinesdale, with additional assistance from Leo Shi.

Coco Khan Our music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Tanya Hines 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.