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Oh dear lefties… We just can’t stop tearing each other apart, huh? One short month into the evolution of the new political party experiment undertaken by independent MPs Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn – and the whole thing has descended into acrimony. After a weekend of legal threats, “your” party is suddenly seeming to be a house of cards built amidst a hurricane. 

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage has seized the moment to vomit out a new wave of inflammatory anti-migrant rhetoric. The need for a unified left movement has never been more urgent – and new Green Party leader Zack Polanski is ready to meet the moment. 

Zack joins Nish and Coco in our (fully powered) studio – to talk about his vision for the future of the left, his plans to fight inequality and why he’s not actually thrilled to see Zarah and Jez at each others throats. He also brings up his ever-so-slightly hypnotherapy boobjob and in revenge, helps us pip the Sun to the post on a saaaaaucy exclusive. 

Later – Nish weighs in on the Jimmy Kimmel saga… It couldn’t happen here, right? Oh, wait… 

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GUESTS

Zack Polanksi – Green Party Leader

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TRANSCRIPT

[AD]

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

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan, and we’re back in the studio. The lights are on. The right could not stop us.

Nish Kumar Last week, there were technical difficulties that may or may not have been caused by a cyber hack by agents of the deep state.

Coco Khan By Richard Tice.

Nish Kumar It was not caused by that. Just to be clear, it was not cause by that, it was a problem in the grid.

Coco Khan But anyway, this week we’re discussing your party’s descent into civil war. Is it all over before it even began?

Nish Kumar But we’re also observing that one left-wing party’s loss could be another’s gain. This fallout has seen a surge in Green Party members and newly elected leader Zack Polanksi will be joining us on the show today to talk about how he plans to seize the moment.

Coco Khan And later we look at the Jimmy Kimmel saga because nothing like that could happen here, could it, Nish?

Nish Kumar I’m tired, I’m so tired, but not of the stuff before that, the rest of the show I’m excited about, but that bit, I am tired. For many people in this country, the prospect of a new left-wing party has been a beacon of hope in these troubled times. It inspired over 750,000 people to sign up, expectations were very high, party names were bandied around, Coco was put forward as Minister for Bins, and hope for a new kind of politics was infectious. Over the last week, though, the extremely public and hot-headed row amongst the leadership has seen the project descend into civil war. So here’s a quick summary of the beef thus far.

Coco Khan So, last Thursday, your party…

Nish Kumar I don’t know if we should call it the beef. It’s not Kendrick and Drake. I wish it was. That was great.

Coco Khan I would like to hear the diss track of whatever this moment is.

Nish Kumar Not the Drake one.

Coco Khan Anyway, the Corbyn district, I’m just getting carried away. So last Thursday, your party supporters received a string of confusing and conflicting messages into their inbox. The first was from Zarah Sultana directing them to pay for a membership via a URL that was different from the your party site. This was followed by an urgent email, urgent in caps, signed by Jeremy Corbyn and the four other MPs in the Independent Alliance. It said Sultana’s email was unauthorized and to cancel any direct debit. Legal advice is being taken, they wrote in an online statement.

Nish Kumar Things got pretty heated from there. About half an hour later, Sultana responded with a statement saying she’d been sidelined and accused the MPs of being a sexist boys club. And then, at the not particularly civilized hour of 11:30pm on Friday night, Sultana posted that she’d instructed specialist defamation lawyers over what she called baseless attacks on her character.

Coco Khan Yeah, it’s been quite frankly, to use what Nish said in our WhatsApp group chat, an absolute shit show.

Nish Kumar Yes, and your analysis, OMG, this is not chic at all, is actually also pretty on the money, I would say.

Coco Khan It’s not chic, it’s not what we want to be seeing. I mean, you could almost hear the collective groan of your party’s 750,000 supporters, might I add. There’s a substantial audience there.

Nish Kumar Thankfully though, things do appear to have cooled over the weekend, Sultana eventually backtracked on her plans to take legal action, writing in a statement, the stakes are too high for failure to be an option. Both Jeremy and I remain committed to making this project a success.

Coco Khan Meanwhile, a new campaign called Our Party demands that the MPs involved in your party step aside from leading its founding and allow members to take over. The MPs got us this far, but now it’s time to hand over the reins, they write. The people should take things forward from here. So what do you think, Nish? Are your party ironing out their problems? Could a real member-led movement emerge? I mean, that is quite exciting, really.

Nish Kumar You know, starting a new political party was always going to be tricky and especially starting something that’s member led. It’s quite easy to start a party like Reform because it’s a private company and all of the terms of it can be dictated in a top-down structure. Whereas this is obviously going to be more complicated by design. But also there are, there is a values clash. As well, generationally. Listen, I believe that the Labour Party has made a really huge mistake with Zarah Sultana because we are in a situation where political parties across the spectrum are trying to work out how to engage younger people with politicians who are both compelling and authentically internet savvy. They need a generation of digital natives to actually help communicate with that younger audience. I think it would a real mistake. The older lads in your party to also further alienate this compelling, charismatic young politician who understands how to communicate with the younger audience on platforms that they understand the vocabularies of it in ways that previous generations maybe don’t. As somebody who has spent most of their life trying to work out how to get young people to vote, even when he was a young person himself. Yeah, exactly. You could do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can do it I don’t know. I don’t know where all these disengaged young people are. Me and my friends can’t wait for our 18th birthday to vote in a general election He said to the rest of his debating society and model UN group

Coco Khan Oh, I love this vision of you and I mean I wish I could as long as I’ve known you you’ve always been like, you know, very cool. You’re a cool guy. I love his portrayal of you is just like I’m wearing my suit to the football.

Nish Kumar Are you mad? What? I think you do me a service. Is this a bit like when your mum says you’re the most handsome man in the room? It really has the energy of you’re the most Handsome. I imagine it would have done if my mum had said that to me. But it has definitely carries the energy. It definitely carries the energy off that.

Coco Khan Anyway, anyway, anyway. I agree with you on it’s a complete mistake to to sideline Zarah  Sultana. I’m really conflicted because I like the idea of a truly member led party is quite exciting. And I think that actually there has been a problem with our cult of personality political times. Having said that, though, I do feel like yes, well, cult of personality is what we live in. And Okay, for the people who sign up to your party, 750,000, that is a lot of people, but that is not enough in terms of votership. You need to get millions if you really want to move the dial. So you will need a great personality. And you have one in Zarah Sultana. And whilst I am excited about the idea of a new model of politics, which is what we genuinely need, not top down, but bottom up, there is a part of me that thinks, is this the time for an experiment? Is this the moment when we have certainly what I perceive as the far right growling at the door. I’m quite scared. They’re there. They are sharpening their pitchforks. They are ready. Is this really the moment? Do we have time for this?

Nish Kumar Zarah Sultana was on this show, she was trying to tell me to, and I think the direct quote was not to shit myself, because we’re still quite far off in elections. So in a sense, there’s an argument to be made that this is the time to do this now. When we’re potentially four years away from the next election, regardless of what reform seemed to be saying, or Elon Musk, we’re four years from the election, so maybe this is time to this. Sometimes when I see progressive people fighting with each other… And stay with me on this. It is obviously frustrating, it is upsetting. And I do feel like it’s part of the reason why we’ve been trapped in conservative governments, especially for the best part of last 15 years. But there are times where it does fill me with some, I don’t want to say pride, but at least some sense that we’re trying to improve our value system. And the only reason I say this is because part of reason we’ve ended up with these right wing parties that have nonsensical policy platforms that are a kind of mix of xenophobia and tax cuts is because there hasn’t been enough pushback and enough infighting within conservative political projects and they’ve just given themselves over to their most extreme elements. And there are occasional moments amidst my frustration where I do think at least progressive people are trying and willing to argue with each other. Some of this is good. Some debate and discussion. And dissent is how you build the framework of political movements that actually move societies forward. Maybe that’s just me really grasping at straws for something hopeful.

Coco Khan No, I mean, if it is true that we need to take all ideas to the people to be truly democratic, then an amount of being honest about these tensions is required. And yes, it’s a bit like going to therapy, I suppose. Like, yeah, okay, it is icky, it revealing, but the point is, is that we emerge from it stronger and better. And actually, everyone has participated in this. So yeah, I don’t think it’s grasping at straws. I think there is a role for it. I guess my question is just about time. Do we have the time for this?

Nish Kumar Listeners, we, as ever, want to hear your thoughts. Is your party doomed? Should it be given back to the members? Is there another path for turning things around? Drop us an email on PSUK@ReducedListening.co.uk or share what you think in the comments.

Coco Khan Now, if we need a reminder about what the stakes are for the left getting it right, Donald Trump and Nigel Farage, well, they gave it to us this weekend, that is for sure. So Nish, I want you to picture the scene. Yes. It’s a beautiful autumn morning. I’m out and about.

Nish Kumar My favorite season. I’ll say it.

Coco Khan Oh is it?

Nish Kumar I’m Big Autumn Boy.

Coco Khan Layers.

Nish Kumar I love a sweater. It’s a good time of year for me. Salma’s too exposing. I don’t have the body type for shorts. When I wear shorts and t-shirt I look like Bart Simpson. Carry on.

Coco Khan Do you know my husband wears shorts all year?

Nish Kumar Respect. I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t be me.

Coco Khan I find it really strange. Anyway. So picture the scene. It’s a beautiful autumn morning. I’m walking around. I’ve got a coffee in my hand. I’ve Got my baby strapped to my chest. I’m listening to six music. It’s Kate Moss talking about Kate Moss turns out is a really big David Bowie fan.

Nish Kumar Yes.

Coco Khan She’s got a podcast about David Bowie. So I’m listing to Kate Moss.

Nish Kumar There’s some really cool photoshoots that they’ve done together.

Coco Khan And it’s like, honestly, it’s, like, I felt almost patriotism. You know, Kate Moss talking about Bowie, that’s the royal family, basically. They’re my royal family. She’s all like, oh, you know, I met David and I wore some of the outfits from Ziggy Stardust. I’m Kate Moss, get the London look. You know? And that’s, it was amazing. And then, and in come the headlines. Donald Trump has advised women not to take paracetamol because it might encourage autism. And then next line, Nigel Farage is threatening to deport. People who have indefinite relief to remain. And you have this moment where obviously the Trump news doesn’t directly affect me, but then you kind of it does because you know that whatever he says is sure to follow that Farage will be saying it.

Nish Kumar Yes, so it’s not been a it’s well, it’s just I mean, it has been another bad weekend. It is worth digging into Farage’s immigration announcement or his latest immigration announcement. As Coco said, there is a threat to deport people. What that means practically is that they are proposing the Reform Party to get rid of indefinite leave to remain and also remove that status from people who already had it. So if you don’t know what indefinate leave to Remain is, it’s basically permanent residency and it’s a vital step towards British citizenship. On most visas, you have to renew them every two to five years, while ILR, generally granted after five years in the United Kingdom, depending on your visa, allows you to stay from that point onwards. Reform wants to strip all that away and force all non-citizen immigrants to apply for a work visa every five years which will have a £60,000 income requirement unless you are in a shortage occupation. So Coco, it’s worth us talking about how poorly thought out this plan is.

Coco Khan Yeah. And I think also, and we can talk about the numbers and how unworkable it is, but I think it’s just worth mentioning that he’s essentially saying, I’m going to split up families, I am going to split up marriages, and I am going to ensure that the only people who get to come here and find love here and contribute to our society are people who earn more than the average Brit, substantially more than average Brit. I actually don’t know at the top of my head what the average salary here is in the UK, but I’m fairly certain it’s not 60k.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I mean, it’s an unworkable plan based on nonsense data that, you know, would directly affect friends of ours, people who work on this podcast, are using Indefinite Leave to Remain. We keep returning to the same conversation and it feels like we’re having it every week. And I’m sorry if, like me, you are finding a lot of this repetitive and unpleasant, but it is an important thing that’s worth restating. Here’s the thing. This will not Okay, because Nigel Farage will never ever be satisfied. There is not a number you can deport. There are not a numbers of people that you can kick out of this country, out of their homes, that will satisfy Nigel Fararge. And part of the reason that it will never be enough for him is because the problem is not immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. That is not the problem that bedevils our country, okay? The problems in our country are of a broken economic system. But nothing will ever be enough for Nigel Farage. We’ve gone in the last decade from a position where anti-immigrant sentiment was largely seen as the preserve of a small section of the hard right of the Conservative Party, a section of a Conservative Party that David Cameron on becoming Conservative leader dismissed as loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists, to a position that a Labour government is making online videos about… Bragging about how many people it has deported. That’s how quickly that has happened in the course of a decade. And now Farage has won that battle that the conversation can only be about how people we deport. He’s moved on to indefinite leave to remain. Once he wins that battle, he will then move on to the next phase of whatever his project is. But I’m telling you, there is no end to this.

Coco Khan It’s terrifying. It’s as weird as what being children of immigrants. I mean, my mom’s a citizen and your parents are citizens. I mean you sort of know in yourself all that’s meaningless anyway, because no doubt he’ll probably change it at some point. So even if you’re a citizen, it has to be two generations or whatever it might be.

Nish Kumar Also, your contribution is never enough. We saw that with the Windrush scandal. How much more could you have given to British society than those people that were kicked out of their homes? We’ve already seen this idea of saying, well, look at what immigrants contribute. It’s not fucking enough for these people. Anyway, listen, his comments have created a rare moment of unity in the Westminster establishment. Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the plans have no basis in reality and the numbers just fall apart. And Davey said Farage was borrowing from Trump’s America. And Shadow Home Secretary Chris Phillips said the plans were half-baked and unworkable. It does feel like the government has realized its current course of action is potentially ruinous for the Labour Party. So ahead of the Labour party conference, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced that he will launch a progressive strategy for dealing with the rise of the divisive ideology propagated by Farage and his colleagues in the grift of economy. This conference speech is huge for Keir dumb. And the announcement that’s at this Labour Party conference happening this weekend are absolutely critical.

Coco Khan Yeah.

Nish Kumar The progressive people of this country will be watching with interest what is announced.

Coco Khan Yeah. And I really hope that they come out a bit more full-throated than what we’ve seen. Yes, it’s been great that the Westminster establishment’s condemned him, but the language to me wasn’t strong enough. Unworkable. The numbers fall apart. No, this is a moral outrage that will destroy families and rip them apart. But anyway, this policy, I don’t know. It’s unlikely to go ahead in the form it was presented on Monday. I don’t think that means we should sit idly about it. We need to be injecting stories into the public domain, which are hopeful and also tell a positive story of immigration. So on that note, if you’d like to share your story, please do drop us a line on psuk@reducedlistening.co.uk.

Nish Kumar After the break, we’ll be speaking to new Green Party leader Zack Polanksi about how he plans to become the left-wing challenger to the government.

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Coco Khan So your party is in disarray, and if this row proves terminal, the 750,000 people who registered interest could be left with no political home. So the question is, who wins from this fallout? Could it be the Greens for the taking?

Nish Kumar Here to talk to us about the Greens’ plans to seize the moment is the new party leader, Zack Polanksi, who stormed to victory at the start of this month with his promise of a radical, not afraid to pick fights, eco-populism. Zack, welcome back to Pod Save the UK. We’d anticipated there being a bigger gap, but obviously you and I were both at the Trump protest last week, so welcome back for the second time in as many weeks to the show.

Zack Polanksi I’m very delighted to be here and I’ll come on next week as well. How have the first weeks been? And they’ve been amazing. I caveat that straight away with the world is in turmoil and it just feels pretty grim at the moment. But actually people say to me constantly, it must really get you down in kind of the state of the world. And I felt this even before I was leader, that if you’re an activist in a party or someone who’s going out door knocking, there’s like a real empowerment to, this is all going on, but actually I’m doing something about it, like every single day, every single moment there is something I’m working towards. I’m thinking while we record this, we might be about to hit 80,000 members, which is pretty huge for the Green Party. That’s over, I think, 10,000 in the last couple of weeks since I won. And those people are turning up to local party meetings and they’re saying, we are ready. We are ready to take on this Labour government and take the fight to reform.

Nish Kumar The photo of your winning moment, which I’ll describe briefly for listeners of the podcast, Ellie Chowns is looking so delighted for you and you sort of looking so delighted by her. We’ve had both of you in the studio for a sturdy and robust debate, but there was never a sense that the leadership contest might create actual damage within the party. No. Yeah, and it felt like whichever one of you won, the other one would immediately just be up for. Doing whatever they could to get them elected basically.

Zack Polanksi We are very nice in the Green Party. Like we take the work seriously, but also there’s genuine camaraderie. I remember we were on a TV program and me and Ellie were about to go on and the producer said, okay, you’re going to make your point, then you argue your point. And Ellie was just like, we’re not going to argue, we really like each other. And the producer just looked really, really kind of sad about it.

Coco Khan I mean, it has been, this is just an aside, but just watching you be in the press recently has been really exciting. You know, they always say in broadcast, you know, if you’re having fun, the audience is having fun. Obviously, fun is not the right word to be using when we’re talking about such serious issues, but maybe energized is the right words, you seem really energized. Clearly the membership is energized, are you feeling positive?

Zack Polanksi Hugely positive. I think fun probably is the right word. I don’t think it’s only the word. If I was just having fun then I’m probably in the wrong job. Like there’s a lot of serious work to do. But as soon as I won, the first place I went to was a migrant union, United Voices of the World. And I just had this moment where I was like, wow, there’s this platform now to be able to highlight people who really need to be highlighted. The issues really need be highlighted and we were at the Trump rally the other night. Again, not fun in terms of ha ha, this is great, but kind of going, actually, there is an energy in this country. That is so rarely represented other than on shows like yours, but in most mainstream media you just don’t really hear from these voices or these stories. Someone did a Google trend and apparently I’ve had third of the coverage of the Prime Minister. I don’t know what I’ve compared to Nigel Farage, I’d probably say it’s like miniscule. But actually there’s that real sense of if you’re having fun, if you’ve got things to say, then people will cover you and I don’t think it needs to be in an Ed Davey kind of banging drums on a water board, whatever he’s been up to today kind of thing. And I don’t mean that to diss it, but I just think if you don’t have something to say that’s important and new, you have to kind of do those things. But the Green Party have got really important things to say.

Nish Kumar So we’re a decent amount of time, probably four years away from the next election, given the approval ratings of the government, they will probably take this parliament long. So you’ve got four years to build a manifesto and a coherent vision for the country. So let’s talk about some specifics. What should the UK’s immigration system look like?

Zack Polanksi It should look fair, and it should be managed in a way that is treating people equally. So if we start with the small boats, now I’m starting there, but it’s important to say small boats are 5% of migration, but I get talked about 95% of the time. I also want to stop the small boat, so I don’t want anyone clinging for their life for safety. The way to stop with small boats we could do it tomorrow is through safe and legal routes and make sure that people are processed in this country in a proper way. In terms of legal migration, we’ve obviously got forages. I almost don’t want to repeat the frame too much, but the outrageous things that he’s been saying this week, which are just vile. I’ve spoken to so many people this week who are feeling worried and scared about even the possibility of this now a public conversation. And again, to see Starmer, we saw this with the Island of Strangers speech and we see it with the fact that he’ll criticize it as not effective enough or not workable enough, as opposed to what we should be saying. This is inhumane, this is immoral, and this actually isn’t British. I think we need to reclaim a patriotism and actually say, pride in this country is being proud of your community center, the people who are in your area who don’t look or sound like you. Pride or patriotism in this county is recognizing that we can build a better country by recognizing we are so much better by standing together than this divisiveness. The final thing I’d say though is I’ve just said all of this and I can say it till I’m blue in the face. We need more powerful stories because actually I think if people don’t feel that statistics are true even if they are true. They just kind of go, oh, that just sounds politician-y speak. And I think we’ve got to find ways of telling powerful stories that really connect with people. And one example of that was, I was in Clackton the other day. I met a guy called Paul on the street who said to me that too much migration. And then he said, I’m Irish. I don’t hate migrants. I come from a migrant family, but look at my community. This is his words, not mine. It’s a shithole. And then you’re telling me more people need to come over. So I’ve invited him onto my podcast, so I’m not promoting a podcast on another podcast, but Bold Politics with Zack Flansky. I’ll make sure in the next one to shout out our podcast. But I invited him on to the podcast because actually, I think that kind of conversation and that kind story is really important for people to hear, that very often people are not coming from a, I hate migrants point of view, they’re coming from, look at my community, I’m scared, it’s not had investment and that needs to change. And I think when we have the conversations about taxing multimillionaires and billionaires and redistributing that power and that wealth. That’s, I think, how we rebuild communities and that’s how we need to deal with the immigration discussion.

Nish Kumar That feeds pretty organically into a conversation about the economy. When Tom McTague was on this show, the New Statesman editor, he talked about his concern that Starmer believed that there was no problem with the actual infrastructure of the British state and the British economy had just been poorly managed. Now that is something that for a lot of us who’ve grown up, particularly in the aftermath of the financial crisis, seems completely counterintuitive to our experience. So what is the green party under Zack Polanski’s vision? For how we redraw the economy of this country.

Zack Polanksi Well, the first thing is we need to have a conversation about privatization. The water companies are the most obvious ones here, where it’s often talked about like taking water into public hands would be an experiment. It’s completely the other way around. Privatization was the experiment and privatization has utterly failed. Whether we’re talking about the movement of council homes to private landlords and whether we’re talk about water companies who took those water infrastructure with zero pounds debt and now have billions and billions of pounds of debt. They’re pumping sewage into the water and charging us extra for the privilege. And the reason why I start there is because every time anyone hears from me, particularly from the first time, the first thing I want them to know about me is I want to lower their bills. I think above everything else, we need to recognize people in this country are tired and exhausted, their wages are not going up, but the bills are going up. And so we need lower the bills and raise wages. And one of the number of ways we could do this is by stopping this kind of exploitation of every single person in this county who uses a water company. That has been sold off for private profit at our expense, and we’re paying the consequences for that. So I think the first thing is about having a big national conversation about public ownership. Nothing we need and need to use should be in private hands. All of those things, all of our utilities should be nationalized. And then I think, the next thing is a fair taxation system. I’ve already talked about a wealth tax on assets. People will often say won’t the wealthy just leave? The important thing to say is it’s on assets, So that means, you know, the Duke of Westminster owns half of Mayfair. He can’t just pick up and take Mayfair, he might be a very strong man, but he’ll struggle to do that. Yeah, he’s not playing a game of Monopoly.

Nish Kumar Even in Monopoly, you can’t do that without getting a pair of scissors and cutting the Mayfair square off the board.

Zack Polanksi There’s a video in that. I like it. So when I’m talking about taxing the super rich, I’m not talking about your hairdresser, your plumber, someone running a small business, someone who’s running a corner shop. I don’t know who. It’s not about tax and people’s ambition. It’s talking about people who, when they go to sleep at night, earn more money than any of us could possibly earn or make more money, than any of those could possibly earn in a lifetime. And that’s the point. They’re not earning it. They are making it. It is on their assets and it’s obscene. And so a fair taxation system to redress that I think is really, really important. And then finally, this is a bit more geeky, but I’ll do it quickly, bringing capital gains tax in line with income tax.

Nish Kumar Yes, I feel like we’re doing a sort of whistle stop tour through a potential greed party manifesto. I love it. But let’s talk about foreign policy briefly now. Obviously over the weekend, the UK, along with a wave of states, formally declared recognition of Palestinian statehood. It’s a long overdue move. It sparked fury from Israel. It sparked criticism from people within the United Kingdom who have said that it’s not going far enough and it’s too little too late. What would the Greens position be? Moving forward in how the UK navigates its relationship with the Israeli government and the potential Palestinian state that’s just been recognized.

Zack Polanksi Yeah, it’s right to recognize Palestine and I’m pleased the government’s done it, but at the same time they’re still arming Israel. They’re still sharing intelligence with Israel and Israel are committing a genocide. So there’s no kind of strong enough words of condemnation for the cynicism of saying we recognize your state, we’re just arming the country though that is potentially trying to kill every single person who exists there and it doesn’t get much darker than that. I’m also aware I just want to spend a to talk about the flotilla. That is going to Gaza as we speak. This is a group of peace activists who are carrying aid, who are trying to breach to get the aid into Gaza. Now it’s important to say it’s symbolic. There’s not enough aid there to be able to do enough. But I think we all have a responsibility in public life to talk about this flotilla as much as possible, because the people on that need to be kept safe. And the only way they can be kept save is for the world’s eyes to be on that flotiller. More widely to your question, we need to end the occupation and we need make sure that we’re finding a way forward that involves both Israelis and Palestinians at that table. I don’t think that’s for the British government to decide. I think we’ve already interfered enough in terms of a Balfour Declaration and the mess that we’ve created. But I do think there’s a role for third countries. I suppose the final thing I’d say is I’m one of five Jewish people who have been in leadership positions in British political history in the last hundred years. So I feel the responsibility towards what is rising anti-Semitism in our country and the rising Islamophobia in our county. These are two sides of the same coin and when they come from one community they come for all of us. And so some of my favorite work that I’ve done and I see happening around the country is interfaith work where our communities stand together because I think the only authentic response to all of this is solidarity between those communities.

Coco Khan So we’ve got to talk about Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, your party, it’s imploded.

Zack Polanksi Your tone of voice made me think you’re going to talk about hypnotherapy, by the way. We’ve got to talk a lot about hypno-therapy, so much rather talk about Jeremy Corbyn than Zarah Sultana. We could talk about that too, but I was just like, oh, okay, here we go, okay.

Coco Khan Because of these old, these headlines that previously in the past you were hypnotherapeutic.

Zack Polanksi I mean, one story from 12 years ago, but yeah, that’s…

Coco Khan What is this about? Just for our listeners, it’s been recirculating in the political press.

Zack Polanksi I’ve dug a hole for myself here, haven’t I? Once I won the Green Party leadership, apparently the Labour Party took less than a minute to tweet out this story again. And what’s really noticeable about that is they congratulated Kemmy Badenlock when Nigel Farage won, kissed him across the chamber to go reach him, but when I won, they went on an all-out attack. And obviously I didn’t know this, the BBC told me live, they said, did you know the Labour Party have just bought. I’m so pleased. My response was, they said, how do you feel? I went, I’m absolutely delighted. The Labour government are that scared that they’ve gone on the attack within 30 seconds. And it’s very easy to explain. So 12, 13 years ago, a Sun journalist said to me, would you do an article about body image? And I was working with, in drama schools, particularly you guys who have been around drama schools with young women who are facing the mirror kind of constantly, particularly ballet dancers who… I was suffering from all sorts of things, anorexia, bulimia, eating disorders, but generally confidence, and so I was doing a lot of work around body confidence. And the son said, would you do an article about this? I said, sure. They said, the-

Coco Khan That was your first mistake? Yeah, well taken.

Zack Polanksi Someone said to me the other day, it’s a quote, if someone says they work for the Sun and they’re a journalist, both of those things can’t be true. I was like, great. Anyway, they then suggested this and I said, that sounds absolutely absurd, I’m not going to do that. And they said, would you do it as an experiment? And I said as long as you make it really clear, not something I do, not something I charge for, and this is just because you’ve asked me to. They then wrote actually what was a really lovely article that tells me that I can do these things, which I was quite surprised about, and then I charged £220 to do it. I went out on BBC Radio the next day, so not 12 years later when I became a politician, but literally the next to go, this article doesn’t represent me. And by the way, to all the men in my email box, this doesn’t work on other body parts either. And although I’m joking about it, I’d say two things. Tony Ben, one of my favorite politicians said, I don’t care where you came from, care where you’re going. And what I’d say is to people, you know, I can understand why this is an odd story if it’s the first time someone’s met me, but look at the history and record I’ve got in the last few years as deputy leader for standing up for marginalized people, for speaking out against violence in women and girls, the work I continue to do on body image and challenging the media and the advertising industry for the awful kind of images that they’re projecting every single day. And I’d save a second thing is I didn’t at 16, 17 decide to be a politician. And I meet so many politicians who have been doing it their entire life, who don’t believe in anything. It was always about getting to the role. And actually, this one story is embarrassing, and by the way, I’ve got lots more embarrassing stories to tell. The Sun got in touch with me two days ago. I can’t believe I’m telling this story to you guys, you’re very good children. And they got in contact with me. I was in a play in 2012 with Michael Parr, who’s an actor from Emmerdale. He plays Ross Barton. The Sun go in touch for the Green Party Press Office to say, By the way, we’ve got a picture of Zack Polanski and I play shirtless. Stimulating oral sex on Michael Parr and we’re going to print it. So I got in touch with Michael and said, what should we do about this? He said, I’ve already replied it wasn’t stimulated.

Coco Khan Well done, Michael.

Zack Polanksi And they’ve not run the story yet, but anyway, I’m sure that one’s coming out in the next few days. But you know, I was getting paid as an actor. People have jobs when they’re not politicians and I don’t regret a second.

Coco Khan But anyway, what I did want to talk to you about, well, I’m really glad we made this dive out. It was all over.

Zack Polanksi That was all a ruse to not talk about Jeremy Cove. I was like, throw the boobs on the table.

Coco Khan I’m sure you’ve been following what’s been going on with your party. I don’t know what will happen now with the party. It all remains to be seen. It has obviously been a little bit of an embarrassment. I think that’s fair to say. Almost 1400 people signed up to the Greens in the 24 hours after the row went public. So I think, you know, one does need to ask about if this is beneficial to the party and I do want to just read a comment from one of our listeners, Jonathan. He wrote, It seems the less penchant for self-immolation has been satisfied once again. I sympathize with Zarah enormously as she’s clearly been mistreated by the Labour Party, the media and the public in so many ways, but I’m concerned that she is hoisting herself by her own moral puritard. I guess my question is, is it time to throw everything behind the Green Party? So what do you think?

Zack Polanksi It was time months ago, if I’m honest. We are the party of environmental, social, racial and economic justice. We got nearly two million votes in the last election in 39 places where we’re in second place. Our membership is rising, so I think there’s clearly a very obvious reason to join the Green Party. And I would say that, as a separate question to your party, what I don’t want to do though is put the boot in, because actually I really like Zarah, I really liked Jeremy, and I think the politics they’re talking about is important. And I’ve meant what I’ve said for weeks now, I’m sick of being, this is an exception, but on a panel of people. Where everyone, you know, is a couple of steps away from Satan or, you know, Mussolini, where I’m just like, and that’s presented as centrism. And like, people turn to you and you go, what, you want to ceasefire? You don’t think children should be dying? Right, exactly. And so, for more people, we have like Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in our public life, who having microphone in front of them, I think that’s a completely positive thing. I see that as a separate question to… You know, people sometimes say to me, I join the Green Party, but it’s one policy I don’t agree with. And I’m like, you know, we’re a fully democratic party. We’re literally one member, one vote. So if you don’t like a policy, as long as, you know, the policy you want to change isn’t, you know, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, those aren’t welcome in the Green Party. But if it’s a genuine policy difference around, you know, something specific, then join the party and lobby from within the party because it’s one member, one vote, and that’s how our policies get changed. So I think there is a puritanism sometimes to, oh, I’m not joining the Green party because, you know, in 2014, your one person said this or I disagreed with this. I’m like, fascism’s at our door. And at some point we’ve got to move on. And that’s again, is no diss to your party. But what I am saying and I think is undeniably true is we’re up and running. We’ve got momentum and we’ve go a genuinely democratic structure. One of my favorite things that someone on my team said, probably shouldn’t repeat this as well, but I’m still gonna say it. He said, we elected him today and we’re gonna fight him tomorrow. And I just think there’s a real. I embrace that. I’m the leader of a party, but we’re a grassroots party, and we never get to a position where leadership is more important than the membership. So whether you join the party two months ago, or you join my party straight after this interview, just another subtle hint there, you have as much power as the leader in terms of you go to conference, in fact you’ve been to our conference haven’t you, and you can vote. You couldn’t vote because you’re not a member. Sorry, I was just trying not to put you in the neutral water there. Neutral water, though.

Coco Khan I was there to observe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was my role.

Zack Polanksi But when you come to the next conference as a member and you get up and deliver a fantastic speech, that’s when I’ll be up and applauding. But seriously, if people don’t like policies then we have mechanisms to change them.

Coco Khan No, I was interested because obviously the conversation around your party, they’re now talking about it becoming our party, the MPs taking a step back and it being led by its members. In what way would that be different to the Greens?

Zack Polanksi In absolutely no way whatsoever. So this is what confuses me. And I suppose if I think about what might someone in the comments be saying right now, which is always a dangerous thing to be thinking about, those comments. But they’re saying, but the Green Party has three problems. One, people don’t care about the environment enough. Two, you’re middle class. Three, you are not diverse enough. So let’s start with environment one. I’ve just won the leadership with 85% of the vote on a very, very clear message that the party is behind, which, is we will always care about environment. That’s never going away. You can’t be an environmentalist without tackling inequality. The Green Party incidentally used to be called the People Party. And so I think those roots are still there, which is ultimately we’re about grassroots power and community organizing. That’s already there. In terms of being diverse and working class, I think it’s a myth from years ago. Actually, when I look at the elected councilors we’ve got, they’re more and more diverse, they are more and more from working class places. Are we as diverse and working-class as I want us to be? No, there’s still loads of work to do, but politics isn’t as diverse a working class as I want it to be. And so the solution there is not just to sit outside the party and go, oh, when you’re perfect, then I’ll join. The solution is to join the party, get involved with the organizing and help get us to an even better place.

Coco Khan Because we asked Zarah Sultana what the difference is, and she said, we’re a socialist party. How do you feel about that?

Zack Polanksi I mean, we’re a socialist party. And I think, again, I don’t want to get into, I wouldn’t get into spats with Jeremy and Zarah because again, they respect them a lot, but I think that’s a lazy answer. All the policies I’ve just been talking about to you, if that’s not going to have socialism on it, I didn’t know what is. Is there a question of do we shout that we’re socialist party regularly? No, because I think most people don’t know what that means. And you switch people off. So instead, I talk about lowering bills about the public ownership of public services for closing the title. And taxes on multi-millionaires and billionaires. These are all socialist policies and they’re all embedded and deep within the Green Party.

Nish Kumar The thing that struck me about the demonstration last week was that, you know, you were there, Zarah and Jeremy were there. Sadly, the Labour Party wasn’t represented there, but we know from interviews we’ve conducted on this show- Clive Lewis is growing on the floor. Clive Louis, we know Nadia Whittome. We’ve spoken to Labour MPs that are sympathetic towards these views. How do we harness the political energy that seems to currently be split across bits of the Labour Party. Bits of the Liberal Democrats, bits of the SNP, the Green Party and whatever your party ends up being called.

Zack Polanksi My first answer would have been, we need to stop Nigel Farage, so we would have got that. Anyway, I think that should sharpen minds, the fact that we have fascism at our door and actually we need do things that we might never have done before in order to stop that happening. I suppose I have three slightly different answers depending on who I’m talking to. There’s Keir Starmer, there’s Nadia Whittome, and then there’s a group of everyone else. So very briefly, Keir starmer. He could stop Nigel Farage right now by offering proportional representation. We’ve got this horrendous situation on the first pass for post. Where Nigel Farage could win 25%, 30% of the vote and have a huge majority. And in fact, Labour policy is for proportional representation. Trade union policy is the proportional representation, just Keir Starmer decided, nope, I’m not doing that kind of unilaterally. So if he really wants to stop Keir starmer, what he could do right now is support proportional representation and this would change this entire conversation because even I, as leader of the Green Party, would start to go, we probably need Labour in power right now to moving to proportional representation He’s probably printing leaflets off right now for the next election that say it’s Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage. And I don’t think that’s gonna work this time because I don’t think the country will be held hostage by this idea that they can’t vote how they want to vote. If it’s Nadia, my tone softens dramatically. Say, please come in, the water’s warm. I would love Nadia to join the Green Party. But I also understand, you know, I’ve had this conversation with Clive many times. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me saying both privately and publicly, like someone I consider a mate. Having said consider a mate, I think it almost starts to look delusional if you’re within the Labour Party and you’re like, oh, I can still change things. Because the argument he makes, for instance, is that they managed to get the welfare benefit cuts to be less bad by a progressive kind of coalition. And that is true, but they were still pretty bad. And I think those left-wing MPs in Labour, and there’s a few of them who are all brilliant, are being used as a shield by Keir Starmer to go… I’m doing all of these awful things that are pretty right wing, but don’t worry, you can still trust me because look, I’ve got this nice group of people and I think they should stop themselves being used by that. If genocide is not your red line, and I just mean that seriously, at what point do you go, this is too much? More widely to the country, if you’re not Nadia Whittome or Kirst Alma, which is a lot of other people, I think we need to see what it looks like in four years and I’d probably echo Zarah’s thing of let’s stop shitting ourselves about it. We’ve had conversations, we’ve worked with other parties in the past, and I couldn’t see a situation, in fact, I could say right now, my door is open to Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. I’ll talk to them any time about anything. Love the idea they’re popping to chat about celebrity traitors. Sorry, I’ve distracted myself there. But it’s also important to say. We’re a democratic party, so it’s one member, one vote. So those decisions of strategy are not made by me kind of having coffees with people, they’re made by the membership deciding things. That being said, I did win with a big mandate, and so I do think there’s a platform there for me to say, this is what I think negotiation should look like, and the honest answer is I don’t know right now because we don’t even know if another party is going to exist or not. The rest of the media seem to think I’m really gleeful probably that it doesn’t exist, and that’s genuinely not true because I think there is a space that that can occupy and we can work together well, even if that’s informally in terms of, here’s the seats we’re targeting, here are the seats you’re targeting. Let’s get out of each other’s way. I think that would make sense to stop Nigel Farage.

Nish Kumar Zack, I suspect this is a string of conversations we will have. Next week, right? Yeah, next week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for now, let me just say, thanks once again for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Zack Polanksi I’ve loved it. Thank you guys.

[AD]

Coco Khan Earlier in the show, we were talking about, what should we call it? The slow march of US style fascism towards our shores, but over the last week there’s been something else happening in the US that you’re in a pretty unique position to comment on. So let me put on my best mainstream media voice. So Nish, I would like to talk to you about freedom of speech. This is me doing Radio 4. They always say that you should state the job that you want, right? When you’re on air. That’s how you get it. If you’re listening Radio 4. I can do it. Last week, comedian Jimmy Kimmel was stood down from his late night show after he said that the MAGA movement was doing everything it could to score political points for the murder of Charlie Kirk. I mean, nothing serious like that could happen here, right Nish?

Nish Kumar Yes, listen. I’m going to try to speak carefully about this. So the Kimmel story, which has been heavily discussed on various outlets, worth checking out Pod Save America’s episode about it. So Jimmy Kimmel was pulled off the air by ABC, which is network, and in a decision that was made by the heads of Disney, who were the ABC’s parent corporation, after the remarks he made about… The politicization of the death of Charlie Kirk, ABC said that it had then taken a preemptive decision to pull Kimmel off the air. There was a huge amount of outrage over the weekend and in better news, Jimmy Kimmel has actually returned to air on Tuesday night and in the was unequivocally pulled no punches. I think it’s fair to say he called the threats against comedians, anti-American, and said this show is not important, which I think was very nicely expressed, but what is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. So while this was kind of happening last week, I was sort of contacted by a number of different news shows to talk about. I was sort of asked if something like this could happen over here. And I felt very gaslit by the conversation. So like, people who listen to the show may know this, they may not know this. But I used to host a show on the BBC called The Mash Report, which was a political satire show that ran on the BPC from 2017 to 2020. BBC’s Director General changed and the new incumbent of that job, Tim Davey, took the job and in September he gave an interview where he said that he was essentially going to target comedy shows that were seen as too left-wing, redressing what was perceived to be a bias against the Conservative Party, Donald Trump and Brexit in his attempts to restore trust and confidence in the BBC. The week that he gave an interview suggesting this was going to happen. The Daily Telegraph in September of 2020, I’d run an interview with the conservative MP Ben Bradley, who told the newspaper in recent years lots of BBC comedy shows are just constant left-wing rants about the Tories and Brexit. If the BBC is truly to represent all licensed fee payers, that needs to change. So then the mass report was canceled because we were told they needed to make room for more comedy shows in their schedule. Then The Sun ran an article on the 11th of March in 2021 saying that Tim Davey had axed the Mash report in his war on woke lefties. The article said that it had ax the show because the BBC comedy needed a radical overhaul as it was too biased against the Tories and Brexit. So at the time, I sort of internally pressured the BBC to issue a statement saying that that wasn’t the case. They didn’t respond to that. So I gave an interview to The Guardian and the New York Times about it, the New York Times tried to pressure the BBC into clarifying that that wasn’t the case. The BBC restated their original statement on the cancelation of the master report that they’d had to make difficult decisions to make room for new comedy shows. So they didn’t engage with the substance of what the Times was trying to get at. My kind of remarks on this are eminently Google-able and, you know, I said at the time that all I’ve done is lay out a sequence of events. I have no way of proving that that decision was connected to the remarks Tim Davey made or the remarks Ben Bradley made in the Daily Telegraph, but that it might be a useful myth for the BBC to have out in the public domain that the Director General canceled a comedy show because it was too left-wing. And I sort of warned that the BBC might be playing a dangerous game because those people who are criticizing the BBC don’t want it overhauled or improved, they want it existentially destroyed. Anyway, then last week I got asked to comment on this on a number of shows and I sort of ended up having to say, well hang on a second, I mean, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say in this situation because it feels a bit like, or there’s certainly one interpretation of events, that that is what happened to me. And the BBC then went on to cancel Mock the Week, which was a comedy show that looked at the news and politics and Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, which is also comedy show. Frankie Show particularly looked at things from, I guess, a pretty explicitly progressive perspective. Listen, I just felt completely gaslit by the conversation.

Coco Khan It’s a bit weird though because they intentionally ask you to come on the show.

Nish Kumar Yeah, yeah, yeah

Coco Khan Because implied in that is that you have some experience that might be relevant to this.

Nish Kumar But it all seemed to be news to them, like it didn’t seem like anyone had googled me. This information is on my Wikipedia page. I’ve not buried it deep in the recesses of my SEO. This stuff is all pretty available, so I’m sort of being invited to imagine something the It happened to me, yeah. That’s how it felt. It felt a bit like someone saying, can you imagine a world in which Manchester United endures a decade and a half of failure after the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson? Could you imagine a time where you might eat a cold chicken soup from a street vendor in Peru and end up shitting yourself on the side of a mountain? Yeah, I can imagine those things. Those are things that fucking happened to be. It has been taxing. Like this conversation was very taxing last I’m like There is a part of me that’s reticent to comment too openly on my mental health of this show because every time I do it, some crazy people in the comments write things like, you are a weak man. Now, I am a weakman, but that is to do with my physical strength, not to do my mental-health problems, which are not evidence of weakness. But the way that this conversation was conducted, I will say, was not helpful to my already quite fragile mental states. And so, like, I…

Coco Khan Is there not an element of the fact that they are asking, but isn’t that proof that you were right?

Nish Kumar I don’t fucking know anymore. That is a sequence of events that I can lay out, and I’m grateful that this show has given me a forum to discuss these issues because I have felt sort of patronized and at times actively gaslit. I would say that at points we in this country have a tendency to be distracted by the theatricality of American authoritarian, hard-right, ultra-conservative, whatever you want to call it, nativist, xenophobic politics. And the serious point within this is our freedom of speech and the way that our attitude to governmental censorship is something we should be talking about more often and is not beyond reproach. And the space that you can have in our public sphere for progressive ideas does feel like it’s narrowing in certain quarters of the mainstream media. But I think the really, really important point here. Is that because of the kind of theatricality and the box office, you know, really, of the kind of collapse of American democracy, whilst that is interesting to talk about and important to talk, and I think that the Kimmel story last week and the way it was being framed is a microcosm of a wider problem, which is we have a tendency in this country to think, well, it’s not as bad as it is over there. Is over there.

Coco Khan Exactly, exactly.

Nish Kumar Whilst at the same time watching our country descend at the same rate, I absolutely think that the BBC is an essential part of our information and news ecosystem and should be funded. It’s also a huge part of our cultural ecosystem, right? And it’s an institution I will defend till my last breath, okay? But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think these institutions can’t be improved. And when it comes to governmental pressure and what the BBC can and can’t say, that is a discussion we should have. We should have a conversation about Gary Lineker. We shouldn’t have had a much more open conversation. We absolutely should be having more conversations about this. We shouldn’t frame this as a uniquely American problem that we can then say, well, you know, could this happen over here? Fuck you. It did happen. It fucking happens all the goddamn time. Why doesn’t Gary Lineker host match of the day anymore? All of shit has been going on. And just because we have a neighbor and a friendly country, with which we have a close relationship, that is more theatrically destroying itself, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take an inventory and clear headed stock of where we are as a nation. And I think beyond my own mental problems, I think that’s what I found frustrating and concerning about the conversations that we were having last week.

Coco Khan Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because, you know, quite often, I mean, we’ve talked about it on the show, I’ve talked about it, on this very episode, where you say, we look at America, if it’s happening there, it will happen here. But on this case, we were actually ahead of the

Nish Kumar We’re ahead of the curve.

Coco Khan So there you go, trendsetters, that and turfism. Look at what we offer!

Nish Kumar Fucking hell

Coco Khan BRIT!

Nish Kumar One of my jokes from a previous show that is some variation of racism is sort of like The Office in that America sort of took it to new heights and filled it with increasingly incoherent celebrity cameos, but like The Office, we invented racism, okay? We started it, and so I will not have our prejudices be miscredited to America.

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 Blue Sky. Pod Save The UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.

Nish Kumar Thanks to senior producer James Tyndale and producer Moe Robson.

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Wendy Parker and Katie Long with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

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