Combating Extremism and Building Community

some Facebook groups I won't name them because I don't want to amplify them, but they're satire groups. Yeah, yeah. And they kind of, I'd say it's pretty much twice a day now make up a fake news story about me. There was one a couple of days ago that said I wanted Big Ben to be called big non binary or something like that. Like I wanted to change . But just literally thousands and thousands of comments of people saying, He's always coming with these ideas, et cetera, et cetera, and then maybe the odd comment every so often saying, You do realize this is satire. And like my first response I actually have said that. I've always said, I think there should be a non binary big pen. I've been strongly behind that. I mean, now I'm having a conversation with I hate it when people say this person needs no introduction. We'll stop introducing them then and just start the thing . So here's Nish Kuma. This episode is sponsored by crowdfunder. Bring your bold idea to life at crowdfunder. co. uk forward slash bold. Nish welcome to Bold Politics as I've in the past like half an h our Yeah, nothing to do with you, I should say, unless maybe you know otherwise. Elon Musk has called me a traitor and a scumbag . Well, you know, Zach Elon and I are obviously old chums. We go back a long way and I've been giving him the inside track on what's been going on in British politics. I thought that was what was going on, so you just told him the truth . I told him I just told him I gave it to him straight Zach. I got your favorite from it. What's the context here? I mean, I don't Elon Musk, it's not exactly outside of his wheelhouse, let's be honest, but give me the specific context of what's been going on. Well, before this happened as well, I thought I've got a comedian on. This is amazing, but also it feels like a pretty dark time in politics. So we'll balance that. I posted this morning to say ultimately that Elon Musk was responsible, partly responsible for the incitement in terms of algorithm on X, particularly on Twitter. Still refuse to call it X that is pushing so hard . Yeah, these narratives that are divisive and toxic. And I posted that and he just replied with them, I'm a scumbag and a traitor. , a scumbag and a traitor. I mean, I think sometimes how you receive an insult depends on your level of respect for the insulter. I think it's probably a badge of honor to be called that violon mask. Someone in my team who I've replied kind of snapped back said, and Oh, should you snap back or is this a moment to rise above it? And I said, No, it's definitely a moment to stop . I think there is a broader point about everyone rising above this kind of thing, but I also think you need to meet that kind of language a stern and robust response. Well, and also I think I think actually in some ways, some of this is not a particularly new problem. I think it's been a sort of bugbear of mind for, you know, the last fifteen years that these companies are not regulated as publishers. However we feel about certain sections of the mainstream British press, the print press and the old newspapers and certainly our very strongly negative feelings about some of them and the feeling is mutual to be fair . They are regulated as publishers. And I think there's been such a problem that for so long social media companies have consistently turned around and said ,'re We not publishers. We're platforms. We have no editorial oversight, we have no control over these things. But at the same time, in terms of generating advertising revenue, they very much present themselves as publishers. And they've hollowed out our traditional media structures because they've essentially replaced those publishers . And we really grew up a bit older than you. I'm forty. I'm a bit older than you. Oh , really ? Wow, you the skincare route you're strong My skincare dream is bad. Somewhere in my treatment How old are you? Forty three. Yeah, right. So we really sort of grew up in a kind of era where British political discourse was really defined by Rupert Murdoch. Us and the generation ten, fifteen years older than us really grew up in a generation defined by , you know, Murdoch and Rothermire the Berkeley Brothers own in the telegraph. So there was this, you know, there was this constant sort of feeling that, oh, it's very bad that these media barons controlled this much of the media. And we've sort of gone from ten guys controlling it to five guys controlling it. So somehow we've managed to find a way for things to be worse. And the fact that the amount of our public discourse that is owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk particularly is really deeply alarm ing. And you know, it's not just the things that Musk is actively saying himself. It's also the fact that the platform is so slow and unwilling to deal with misinformation, to deal with, you know, in some cases, especially in the last week or so, AI generated videos and AI generated photographs, they're so slow to deal with that. They should be regulated as publishers and they should be responsible for the things that are published on their platform because when it comes to monetization , they are not particularly very good at sharing the money out. They want all the financial benefit, but none of the actual legal responsibility . And so it's , yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons everybody's rightly blaming Musk for his rhetoric, but there is also a wider issue of what of the system that he's part of, the tech oligarchs that own so much of the means by which we communicate with each other, it's almost hard to know where to start. Yeah , so hard to know where to start because he is a bad actor, but he's also a bad actor within a system that's corrupted the means by which we can communicate with each other. That puts it so well how we've created Elon Musk a bad system with a bad actor on top of it. And it strikes like on Facebook, there's some Facebook groups I won't name them because I don't want to kind of amplify them but, they're sat ire groups. Yeah, yeah. And they kind of I'd say it's pretty much twice a day now make up a fake news story about me. There was one a couple of days ago that said I wanted big Ben to be called big non binary or something like that. Like I wanted to change, but just literally thousands thousands and of comments of people saying, He's always coming up with these ideas, etc, etc . And then maybe the odd comment every so often saying You do realize this is satire . But those comments being maybe one percent and then ninety nine percent of the comments just getting really angry every single day and something that's so far away from anything I've said. And like my first response actually have said that. I've always said I think there should be non binary big pen. I've been strongly behind. I mean, now we're not having a conversation with Conflict . I've always said that. I would like to rename the flag union Jane, and I think Big Ben is non binary. But also I'm not sure if it can be big. I think that's discriminatory against short people shouldn't have kind of average height for happy non binary clock tower . And such a way , such a weird thing. I'm saying this to you. I realize that I've said it's labeled satire . And there's someone who works in comedy, this is a balance, right? People need to be able to make jokes and satire is a really, really important part . But how do we make it clear that what's satire and what's actual politics? Because understandably, the lines get blurred. I think there's sort of there is kind of an issue the kind of breakdown the demarcation of where you're getting your information. You know, and like this is going to sound like I'm sort of harking back positively exclusively to the print media era . But the one thing I would say is there was at least sections to a newspaper , you know? And so the news was very clearly demarcated from the opinion , for example . And the sort of the sketch writers or the kind of comedy elements to the newspaper were pretty clearly demarcated. You know, when I used to read Charlie Brooker's TV Go home column in The Guardian, it wasn't next to a story about what was going on in Bosnia. You know, some of that demarcation is a bit of a problem. And also I'm sort of slightly haunted by something that Hussein Kesvani is a really brilliant writer and has written really brilliantly on tech. And he a few years ago said something to the effect of when we were growing up, the biggest joke degree you could do was media studies. It was a sort of trope. When I first started going to watch up comedy in the late nineties, early two thousands , you know, the joke degree was media studies. Right. You know, people just say, Oh, what do you know, media studies, media? It was a way of sort of saying you're doing a rubbish degree. took a Mickey Master. Mickey Master's degree. Yeah. And now our lack of media literacy is a massive problem. Absolutely and actually that has come back to kind of bite us in the ass. We're not engaging critically enough with the information that comes to us via the internet. And you know, we all have had experiences this where you're having an argument with somebody. I'm not even exclusively I'm not even trying to paint this as a problem of one side of the political spectrum or the other. It is a societal problem and we've all had conversations with people where they'll say, I don't believe anything I read in the mainstream media and you think, okay, that's good. It's good that you're engaging critically with that . But then they will present as gospel something they have been passed on the internet . And you think my God, you have to use the same critical faculties for whatever the information is that's coming at you . Engage critically with traditional media, look at the source, examine where it's come from. But when something comes to you through WhatsApp , when something comes to you via it being shared on Facebook, you have to use those same critical appraisal skills. You know, when we were kids when we were studying, you know, I did history to A level and to half of my degree, but we were constantly told if you're reading something, engage critically with who the source is. If you're reading something from the period that you're studying, who is that person? What were their biases ? Try and think about why they might be presenting the information in this way to you. And I think we've got a dual problem where there isn't enough where there is insufficient regulation and also there is an insufficient mistrust of tech platforms. Yes. There's such a massive, insufficient mistrust of tech platforms and it's causing really serious problems Listen, I've talked about this to every single person. I'm sure this is something that is not unfamiliar to you, but I would really urge everybody to read Dopelganger by Naomi Klein because I think that that book more than any that I've read in the last few years is really grappling with the information crisis. And it's doing it in a really relatable way because it starts with her getting obsessed with Naomi Wolf's sort of radicalisation. And there's bits of the book where her husband keeps saying, can you stop going on me about what everyone was done? And it's very relatable to have your partner say to you, Could you stop telling me about something you've read on the internet? And it's a really good way in, but it is going to say you have a Duelppganger's that bothering you. I was like, He's that's your right wing ramist. I don't think I have a right wing doppelganger. I got a perhaps sort of doppelgangers. There was a period and I will say I come off pretty well from this where people confused him with when Mohammed Salah's first season back at Liverpool every time he scored a goal, people on Twitter would congratulate me on the goal and I have to say there is a superficial similarity, right? Hair, beard, it's changed now that he's sort of cut his hair . But you have to say physically, I'm doing well out of that comparison. Like you have to say me and Mosala are not quite on the same level. And then there's sort of Jason Manzuc , who is an American actor and comedian, a good friend of mine, wonderful man. He's ethnically Greek and somehow he came out Indian. It's not really clear how that happened. I suppose my like I mean, the thing is when you look at some of the South Asian conservatives not a million miles away from me background wise. Okay . I mean, I think you know I mean because Sunak was so because he went to Winchester . L itike feels like he sort of was at Winchester's Yeah it feels a bit sort of outside of the realms of my experience . He's also not doing stand up either, right? Yeah, I mean I hope he's terrible But listen Steve Moraine was quite funny. I mean, I was funny. When he was prime minister, and in that kind of era, it's basically like a post Cameron, the South Asian Conservative intake is a kind of post David Cameron initiative . And I have always maintained , I don't know if it's the same now, but certainly five years ago, I was saying I am at any given moment fifteen tweets away from a Tory safe sleep. fifteen tweets. If I renounce every single thing that I've ever said and claim it was and claim it was the result of being brainwashed by the leftist elite . I would be the conservative MP for maidenhead. It's a plot for a film coming here. When you do that to play a double agent. Wait till you're Prime Minister and then you just fix it It's got elements of there's elements of the producers to it, right? To see if I could like me accidentally becoming a Tory MP whilst trying to make a point about how easy it that would be to do . But yeah, I guess there are a few. Some of the prominent South Asian Conservatives, you're like, oh, I'm not a million miles away from some of those people . And coming back to X, I didn't realize this was going to feel like therapy, but it does feel like I'm getting things off my chest. Listen, you want to talk about Twitter. You want to talk about Twitter based nightmares. I'm your man I've been getting abused on that platform since twenty sixteen, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you really kind of lined a lot of that tea . I'm the Roger Federer of being abused on the internet. I did it for a period of time no one could even comprehend and I took it to a level no one had previously imagined. I love that. We need to find the Alcaraz of Twitter now to take the new title. Like I hate being on there and the amount of people who say to me, why are you still on there? And I identify with that so much. Yeah . But it also feels like until the government leave and until like the journal ists who are reporting on the government . It feels like a space we need to be in. But I don't know if that represents how you feel too. And if I'm asking myself what is the line? And it feels like if there is a line it went a long time ago. Yeah, I agree with you. I would say I'm still on it. I don't really post on it . I hardly post on it anymore. Right. But I still have an account and having a Twitter account eating me and watching men's professional football are the three least ethical things I do. I think those are the three those are the three things I do that I know on some level are sort of ethically ind andividible. But tried to persuade everybody to not leave for a long time because she said we shouldn't seed this is a kind of public square. That would also make a lot of sense because you know you don't want to cede that platform to the kind of the nut cases . Or if they're going to be slow to intervene on fake headlines that are inciting violence or videos of women being undressed without their consent , then I don't know where I actually don't know where the line is . I really don't know where the line is. And yeah, I do think every time I go on it, I think I've got to leave this. Right. I've got to leave this. And I suppose I feel like not to underestimate our own importance, but if I left or we left, that would bring it down. I would leave in seconds. Yeah. And I feel what would actually happen is there would just be less voices on there saying anything. Yeah, that's the yeah, that's true. That's that's always the sort of that's been the debate of the last ten years that I've had with anyone sort of vaguely left of center is basically what is the correct level of engagement. You know, because people like Grace Blakeley and Asharka, I don't know how they feel about this now, but they've certainly both said to me in the past, they like going into those slightly hostile sp aces like for example Question Time or Pierce Morgan Trail or something like that. Like Aaron Jones often does it and they like doing that because these are just expressing that viewpoint or those viewpoints in that space is so foreign to what's normally allowed to be it's a perspective that's so foreign to what's normally allowed to be expressed in those spaces that even if it reaches one person who wouldn't otherwise have heard it. It's a worthwhile activity entirely. Yeah, and you've always been quite happy to step into any of those spaces that are willing to have you basically . And I think that I do think for a politician, that's very important. For a politician, I think that's extremely important. I sort of go back and forth on it because I sometimes feel like I'm going in there to sort of my sort of presence is there just to rile up the angriest people. Like the fact that I'm, you know, if I'm on a question time panel was designed to upset people who were , you know, disinclined to listen to me. And I worry sometimes that that puts people off from listening to what I might actually be saying, which they might actually agree with. You know, ultimately all I'm ever talking, all I'm ever trying to advocate for on these things is just a better quality of life for low income people and human rights to be afforded for women and minorities. You know that it's yeah when you actually poll it 's the thing we've all been saying for years which is when you actually poll a lot of these things, the public is sort of broadly behind all of these things in the on an issue by issue basis , but yeah, so I sometimes worry that I've kind of gone and that by going into those spaces it's actually an unhelpful thing for the causes that I am really passionate about. But at the same time, I think for you, you're the leader of political party. Like, you got to go into those spaces and I think that it is really important that people who might not encounter perspective actually hear views like that. And it don't think it's a coincidence that you guys have had these really positive election results because actually during election periods there, you know, there is still legal guardrails in place that actually ensure a certain amount of broadcast coverage for all the political parties. And it is interesting because when people actually get to hear a lot of what you're actually saying rather than what you're portrayed as being saying in elements of the mainstream right wing press and by people like Elon Musk, it's actually, you know , it's pretty unc ontroversial to a lot of people. Absolutely. I think there's two other things there too. So we're talking about print press. If someone's just written opinion , they can pretty much say what they want. Yeah, which I don't think that's tenable or sustainable in the long term that like something can be printed as long as it says opinion, it can be blatantly untrue. When I was doing comedy shows about the news on the BBC, we were sort of pretty rigorously fact checked Wow. And if I was saying something out landish . It would have to be very clear that it was a joke. So we never actually got we never actually got told that something that was clearly a joke couldn't go on the TV . But we couldn't I couldn't go on there and make something up about Boris Johnson. You couldn't go on there and make something up about Nigel Farage You actually, you know, there's quite a lot of guardrails put in place. And I sort of and only I raised Stewart Lee because he has specifically talked about this exact issue where he feels that he's fact checked in a way that Boris Johnson never was. It's so mad. It's so odd that there's a sort stand ofard that comedians are expected to be held to, but at the same time some columnists and some politicians have not been held to that standard. And it feels like until we have Levison too, until we have some kind of and obviously you've got to balance this with a free press. I've been at pains to say recently that you know, journalism's a really important profession. There's people dying around the world reporting on the war zones and it's incredibly we never want to turn or I never want to turn into a farage or Trump. And always going oh the press are all bad. Everything they print is rubbish, you know, burn the system down. It can't be that . But they've got away with so much for so long. And not been challenged. But the problem is, I think libel law is so kind of loose that it means they know they can get away with a lot . It's yeah, it is tricky. That has been the sort of quote that is the quandary for progressive people is kind of making sure that you absolutely at all points defend the free press , but then also balancing that out with not allowing a media ecosystem that is controlled by oligarchs to essentially just pump out misinformation. You know, I mean, you're seeing things are getting even worse in the states. You know, I think the potential Ellison land grab in America of the media ecosystem is absolutely terrifying. You know, the control of CBS news that might now extend to CNN . And then add to that the fact that Bezos was just sort of able to buy the Washington Post, you know, it's that is really , really deeply alarm . And yeah, I think but I still believe as much as it's I think I still believe that the two principles are fundamentally not contradictory that you there should be a free press, but also some regulation to prevent people from just pumping out lies into the ecosystem. I have to believe that there is legislative framework that can steer a course between those two ideas. I think Pots over the UK is probably a good example of that, right? Where you clearly have views and opinions and they're clearly laying on we've got views for days But also you do kind of you report things even when they're inconvenient to report or I've seen you kind of both you and Koke kind of test your presuppositions or test kind of the ideas in a way that feels like that's both free speech and it's funny and you're genuinely informing and entertaining people. Well, listen, Coco is a journalist. You know, Coco's properly come through the system. She was on she was staff at the Guardian when she came to do the show and our producers are journalists . And they have that rigorous journalistic background . I cannot tell you the amount of stuff that is removed from that show that would get me suit . And I'll tell me like an outtakes version at some point. There's just an hour of using super things. Outtakes of pod save the UK is just a long list of is just a list of people that would rightly be able to sue me for things that I've said. So they're always they're always protecting me by their journalistic rigor. But also, yeah, it is a really important principle. You know, if I say something outlandish on the show again , we do try and keep it in the realms of it's pretty clear that I'm making a joke. You know, that's so there's stuff that I've said on the show . I mean, the I guess the most memorable example is that we managed to get to and I did this in I did do stat up about this in the air. We got to a point where I was able to use the phrase Peter File Jason to describe the king's brother because we were able to legally say that there was sufficient photographic evidence of him adjacent to a known Peter File that we were able to get away with it. I'm just going to check with our producer Peter File Jason has been legal on a number of platforms . Are we getting the thumbs up from the control rib? Yeah, as far as I know I have not been Peder File Jason. I will say I am a person who works in the comedy industry and therefore we know I have been one hundred percent adjacent to a sex offender . We know that I've been stood next to, we know that I've been stood next to sex offenders . Allegedly. Allegedly definitely guys got all youregeedgedly. All ly I think Russell Brand is still allegedly. Really? Yeah, I believe so. That clip of Russell Brand with the Bible just with Piers Morgan, that was a clip of the year. You know, it's I mean , I mean, it's it's about a year before 'cause we'd all heard these rumors and you can sort of see there's a point at which if you look on his IMDB page, you can see the point at which people decided to stop working with him because you don't really have any power because you can't really go to the police. The only power you have is to withdraw your labor and so you can see that comedians and people who work in comedy in the UK stopped wanting to work with Russell Brand from his fucking IMDB page. Wow. And that's the only and that's really the only power we had, but I remember at the time partner saying to me, listen, he's going to come back out. When this stuff comes out, here's what he's going to say. And she literally went through the five points that he brought up in that video initially And then when he some riot for him did she on the side . God check it actually. I don't believe she's freelancing for apologies for creeps . But it would when he got baptized in the Thames by Bear Grills, I do remember thinking yeah, here we go . Here we go. The thing about Russell Brandy's is so stupid that he doesn't even know how to run away from sexual misconduct allegations . The last thing you want to do if you're trying to avoid allegations of industrialized sexual misconduct is to affiliate yourself with organized religion. What kind of maneuver are you pulling here, man? But yeah, it's he's a very unpleasant man . Brand is still alleged. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly allegedly. We're stronger when we're together , but the reality is there's been a deliberate shift to make us forget about the things that matter in life kindness , community , looking out for each other . Decades of austerity and growing regional inequality has left so many towns , districts and villages with community projects underfunded . Green spaces neglected , vulnerable people slipping through the cracks. And the flip side of that is if we're only looking out for ourselves , it's only going to get worse . That's why Bold Politics have partnered with Crowdfunda to inspire people across the country to do something amazing for their commun ities . Whether you want to create a local litter picking group , start a community garden , or turn an unused building into something useful like a food bank. And whether you've got a big idea that leaves a lot of money or you just need a little bit, crowdfunder have raised over three hundred million pounds for charities, projects and communities. And there's a crowd of people out there waiting to turn your bold idea into reality. Hey, we'll even give you fifty quid towards your first project if you raise two hundred fifty pounds from at least five donors. What could you do for your community? Turn your bold idea into a reality at crowdfunder. com. UK for slash bold . The other thing was you mentioned question time, I don't think I've told this story, but you have negotiations when you go on question time, which I can't say firsthand because obviously you have teams talking to each other. At one point during the local election, it looked like there was going to be a leadership question time and so I was straight in there been trying to debate Farage and it sounded like Farage was going to do it. Yeah. So we got to a point where I was preparing for this debate for Farage and Reform just weren't confirming who was going to be on there. So we got into a position where I said, I'll do it if Farage does it. And you're kind of all playing chess with each other. And then in the end they end up putting up Zeusf. Yeah. And if I've gone on question time, I've been on question time twice now both times I've been with Zeus . I was like, I'm not going on for a third time with Zeus when it's very blatant that reform theer trying to raise his profile by getting him into a fight with me. And it's always that kind of judging of like when do you fight people? When do you just let them be? Yeah . And it's just telling that like I've challenged for a debate four or five times still. Where the fuck is he? I'd just absolutely disappointed . Where is he? I'm enjoying his five million pounds. Well, this is the thing allegedly. There's the issue of the five million pounds. There's a five million pound question. And then there's also I mean , I would say if I'd made an allegation that a foreign power had hacked my phone, I'd want some more I'd have some more follow up questions rather than just dropping that and running. But he's made a very serious allegation that the information about the five million was obtained due to information procured by the Russian government hacking his phone. We've had as far as I know and I'm happy to be corrected, but as far as I know, we've had no further information about that. We don't know where the five million quid s come from. And it listen, maybe he's like on a spiritual retreat, maybe he's like maybe he's going to be baptized at the Thames by Bear Girls. We don't know. But what I do know is it looks like he's turned chicken shit and it looks like he's sort of fleeing scrutiny. And I will say that is there is an element of the Trumpian playbook and how you handle the media, which is where possible, do a runner. Yeah, avoid difficult questions. I remember in the twenty nineteen election, that was the election that Johnson at one point hid in a fridge. Hid in the fridge, took a journalist's phone off them when they were trying to show him images of people who were waiting in the corridors at A and E, obviously there was fridge gate. And then on top of that, he just didn't show up to he was supposed to be interviewed by Andrew Neil and he just didn't show up. You know, they're still thinking that debate might not happen happened . We were waiting for it for quite a while. I'm starting to think it's not going to happen. Andrew Neil's still in the studio. That's what people don't realize. Andrew Neil never left the studio. That is, unfortunately , a really common tactic that we're seeing from a lot of these kind of hard right leaders around the world. And I suppose it's even more sinister 'cause not only has he disappeared, he released that video on the morning of a cold range . Yeah, exactly , where he didn't even have the kind of courage or clarity to then answer questions on the statement he's released. And I would say he knew exactly why he was doing. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Farage is the thing about Farage is that I do think he is the most consequential politician of my lifetime. I really do. I think in terms of the impact of what he's been able to in politics in terms and in terms of the reshaping of the British like essentially the operations of the British Government. I mean, leaving the European Union is a really significant reshaping of the British government. He has always understood his place in the political ecosystem of this country. And his place a lot of the time has been to with actually, I mean pre twenty twenty four, without actually holding ministerial position. He was an MEP, but without actually holding a ministerial position, he has essentially been able to conduct the Conservative Party's business for most of the twenty first century the electoral threat posed by Farage. I mean, I keep talking about this. It's really, really important in terms of understanding what's happened to this country in the last fifteen years. David Cameron comes to power in twenty ten, having said that the Conservative Party needs to end its obsession with Europe and describing Eurosceptic Conservatives as a basket of loonies, fruit cakes and closet racists, I think it's the Cameron phrase. And then Cameron is essentially eaten by those eurosceptic MPs because Farage has been able to essentially call the shots for how the Conservative Party is going to operate because of their fear of losing ground to him. Now the position that Farage is in is interesting because he is an MP . And so now he has to answer questions of like what are you doing? Yeah, what are you actually productively doing? You represent the people of Clackton in the h ouses of Parliament. What are you doing for their local concerns? Also, he's the leader of a political party that's currently leading in the polls. So it is really important that he answers questions like where did that five million pounds come from? It did come from Christopher Harborne? What are the conditions upon which that five million pounds was given to you? And it does matter that he's used the phrase pure cold rage. The thing with Farage now is for the first time, I don't think he understands fully what his place is in the ecosystem because he isn't the tail wagging the dog. He now is the dog and he's now being wagged by the Elon Musk backed restore party led by Rupert Lowe. And I think that for the first time in a long, for the first time in a long, long time, Farage doesn't look like he knows his role. And I think he has known his role for a lot of the twenty first century. I think that's really observant. And I think my other perception is that brought Nadin Zahawi into the party . And at the same time, there was lots of conversation in the media that were looking to be kind of fiscally responsible, to start looking like a government, to kind of tone down some of the communications, to just kind of moderate themselves . And then it feels like in the past month has been a very deliberate decision because I started to dip in the polls to not do that. And then as you say, we've now got restore and I don't know how they're going to deal with that threat. Are they' rightre if they're just going to get more and more extreme and also I worry about what that does to Starmar or frankly for new labor prime minister whoever that is going to be the time we've released this one No it's so I just I have no relish for that psychodrum . You know, I'm sure there's some people that are that enjoy the , you know, sort of cut and thrust of Westminster, but you know , man, I would really like somebody to be in the job and do the job. Right. You know, in the British state has been struggling to function properly since twenty ten. You know, the reality is we talk about sort of economic growth, but in real terms , in terms of people's data, the average person's day to day life in this country, it has not recovered from two thousand eight. Yeah. And not only has it not recovered, things have actually backsled further from the early twenty ten s and there's been no I think part of the thing that the Starmer Government has failed to really grasp is the fact that people that turning back the clock to twenty fifteen is not really enough. People were really struggling in twenty fifteen. What Cameron and Osborne did in those first years of that government has done so much damage to this country, so much damage. The politically motivated decision to remedy the deficit created by a bank bailout by hacking public spending is something that we're still counting the cost of and ripples of that decision take in an issue like Brexit. It takes in an issue like the pandemic response. You know, this I know that people don't want to people are trying to not talk about Brexit, people try not to talk about the pandem ic, but like we kind of have to. Like they're kind of the two biggest things that have happened to us in the last decade. And I understand that there's very little political will to revisit either of those two things . The economic impact of Brexit has been disastrous for this country . On top of that the specific cuts to our state left us in a position of extreme vulnerability at the time that COVID hit. You know, it created serious, serious problems . Also the cuts to social care and the invitation of private equity money into the retirement sector is another factor in why the pandemic was so catastrophic in this country. I just read, we just interviewed Hetty O'Brien who wrote The Asset Class and it's a book about private equity. And it's sort of terrifying how much of our state we've just kind of allowed to be brought up. It's really worrying. As I was listening to her, I think something I don't say enough, and I probably need to say in every interview is that we had a private debt crisis. Not a public debt crisis. Yeah , and all of this conversation about bond markets and borrowing actually often doesn't focus on the fact that this came from the banks and the financial markets. In terms of obviously you're not a politician, but in terms of your I say obviously maybe you are, I don't know, maybe that's the sorry seat. He's coming. I shouldn't rule you out. There's an old job Malady joke from Comeback Kid from one of his stand up specials where he says there's a long story about him meeting Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton went to University with his parents. And there's a bit in it where he said when he was a child, he said, I'm going to be president like Bill Clinton. And then he says, and I know now that I'll never be president, not unlock get real cool with a bunch of stuff . And you're like, I think I have no ambitions to be in politics . And always just wanted to be a comedian. And the comedy that I do is not particularly unusual in the history of stand up comedy or television comedy. You know, there's like a pretty long lineage of people that I grew up. You know, when I was a kid, I'd watched Bill Hicks do stand up, I grew up watching Hicks, I grew up watching George Carlin. I grew up watching Richard Prior. I grew up on TV shows like Brass Eye and The Day Today. You know, I've watched a lot of have I got News for you when I was a kid. I love John Stewart . You know, I don't see anything particularly I don't see myself as I can outrider in comedy. There's quite a sort of well trodden path that I've gone down comedy, in stand up comedy and television comedy, people just can't be asked doing it anymore. People just don't want the grief. And so now I end up in this position where you're like, people are like, well, you must be interested in politics because that's the logical endpoint of what you're doing. And you think, no, no, there is a logical endpoint of what I'm doing. You know, people like Carlin, Jon Stewart, these are the people that I sort of grew up admiring. So I don't really have any ambition to get out of that sphere. And also I'll be frank with you, Zach, it looks pretty stressful . It looks pretty stressful for I mean you always have a way of you've always in the last particularly in the last, you know, we interviewed you a few times in the run up to the leadership contest I've seen you a few times since . You have a way of making it look like you're enjoying yourself. That's good. I don't know whether that's the actor in you. You're having a great time to be like , I think it was maybe Simon Hattonstein's piece about you in the Guardian. Right. The sort of thesis of it was he seems to be enjoying this . I don't know why I do feel that if somebody's done so much com edy about politics and politicians, I think there's sort of this assumption that I must have some deep contempt for politicians, but the it could not be further from the truth. You know, I want our political system function properly. I really, really want us to have a I want things to be good for people in this country. And I still believe in represent ative democracy. You know, members of my family have been people that have financed Maoist militias in Karela. Like my family in Karela is like is proper their proper , you know, academic Marxists. That's the lineage of mind. I always have to explain to people when I've been painted as a sort of extreme leftist . I always have to explain in the grand thing , like in the grand political sort of arc of my dear that Security Seattle. I'm David Cameron, baby. I'm basically David Cameron. My family they are proper died in the wall. Marxist my grandparents on both sides of my family . And but still I have a strong belief that representatives of democracy is still the best way. I believe it's a I believe it's the best system available to us. I believe it's a good system. I believe that it has been compromised by interests more vested than Bruce Willis and Diehard. Like I believe that my, that's my issue with it my issue with it is that the proliferation of lobbying and also the fear that politicians have had, particularly in the last twenty five years to act against capital in the interests of the majority of the people living in their country is the kind of core sin that we're all living the consequences of and I'm not sort of angry politicians per se. I'm sort of I just want them to do better. We live we live in a country where there's so many demonstrable examples of how politics can improve people's lives. You know, if you , you know, if you look at something like the National Health Service, when people talk about things that you want to be patriotic about , you know, I never understand why your patriotism can only manifest itself in hanging a fucking flag off a lampost. There are things in this country, you know, that are always , you know, it is really complicated and it did take a lot of horse trading. It was really , really hard to do. But the simple bare fact is that one day people in this country woke up with an ability to access healthcare regardless of their economic circumstances. That is only because of politics. And politics still hasn't, I have to believe that politics still has an ability to change people's lives. And I think it's more difficult because the sort of tentacles of capital are now so enmeshed in all of our politics, you know? And I think it's really important that we don't that we consider people like Bezos and Musk as not a new type of obstacle to democracy . You know, ultimately, Besolza Musk are just Rockefeller and Murdoch in t shirts . Right. You know, they don't have the decency to dress well . But that is essentially all it is. You know, they have the same basic aims and their basic aims are no regulation, no taxation. But I really believe in I still really believe in politics ' ability to change people's lives, but there needs to be more of a willingness. And I think also there needs to be an acknowledgement of what's actually going wrong in the country . I remember speaking to interviewing Tom McTeague for Pods of the UK , who is the new statesman editor who did a long profile of Kirstarmutt. And I think McTeague likes Starmut personally and I think he likes the maybe he likes the platform that he ran on, but I certainly think personally he likes Starmer. But he said part of the problem that Samara is having is that he does not believe there's anything wrong with the institutions that run Britain at the moment. He just thinks they've been badly managed. And that I think is a catastrophic miscalculation of what's going on. There is there are serious institutional problems in some cases because those institutions have been massively underfunded for a decade and half. In some cases, it's because the institutions themselves need wholesale reform because they're not fit for the challenges posed by the twenty first century . I don't think the home office as an institution right now is ready to meet the challenges that it's facing. I think it's got too big a remit. I think there's structural things that we need to start looking at in the operations of the British day . But I think , you know, I think the tech sector as a whole, that is a challenge . That is a challenge for democratically elected governments, you know, because there needs to be international cooperation because we need to be taxing these companies properly. They are. There's so much money pissing out of our country because we can't get control of these kind of enormous monolithic corporations. And it is a real issue, you know ? And the thing that worries me sometimes is we have we when it comes to the tech exercise have we acted too late, you know, monopolies mergers should definitely have stopped some of these things happening. Those companies need to be broken up . Even from even purely from a kind of capitalist perspective, it's an impediment to pure capitalist competition if a company can just buy up innovators. That's actually you disincentivizing innovation because you know that eventually if you become a public listed company, you will essentially just be eaten by one of the larger companies. You know, Facebook starts it's an upstart company, it's a disruptor. Then Instagram and WhatsApp start eating its fight. It buys both of them. Even outside of the realms of a progressive or left wing critique of capitalism from by its own terms, deregulated capitalism is not delivering on what it promises. Trickle down economics, fueling innovation. These are not things that are happening right now. And so yeah, I think it's like it's about we have to start rethinking a lot of these things. And I think that's a big problem with the Labour Government is that they haven't grasped the scale of the challenge. So how are you going to propose solutions if you aren't even confronting the proble ms. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of during the election in America where United States where Camla Harris was asked, you know, how was she going to change their economic plan or their national strategy? And she's like, it's going to be the same because in her head, everything that the Democrats were doing was just fine . And she kind of missed the point that people were so frustrated and angry at Joe Biden and really, really suffering. Yeah. And I feel like you see a lot of that from the Labour Government, the kind of sense that everything's okay if we just don't have Nigel Farage and if we just don't have the right . And I think it misses that well it's exactly what you said. People don't want things to go back to twenty fifteen or twenty ten. I'd argue all the way back to Thatcher and the seventies it can,' t be just about going back. We should look forward . But things have been eroding for such a long time that just going back a few years also isn't going to cut it. Yeah, I could completely agree with that. I also just think I mean, I yeah, may maybebe you have mixed feelings about this because actually it's a big part of why I think you guys are doing so well at the moment right now, but don't don't tell your natural voting coalition to go fuck itself right. Like, don't do that . Don't do like you know, the Gaza policy is a humanitarian catastrophe. Biden's Gaza policy. Stalam is saying that you know, Israel had the right to shut off paramount water to Gaza , that is a humanitarian catastrophe. It's also very, very stupid politically . Because you're fragmenting your own electoral coalition. You know, the progressive people and you know, people keep talking about it as young progressive people. You've seen the you've seen the protests. You see the people that are on the front page being physically dragged away . These are not these are pensioners , you know, but what I spoke to somebody you know, we make a podcast for crooked media who have their own slightly fractious relationship with the Democratic Part y now . And Katie Long as our executive producer said to me, Jesus, did they not see what happened to us in twenty twenty four ? Did the Labour Party not watch what happened in twenty twenty four? Don't depress your own base , you know, in trying to win over this very small section of voters that I understand can be electorally significant because of our sort of screwed up electoral system. You know, he delivered an electoral victory he has no base to lean on when immediately ten seconds after that election , the murder press turns on him, you know ? It's so sort of naive and for somebody for a party that's talked so much about grown up politics and you know, this isn't we're not we're not this is not student politics. This is not naive . You're the most naive magic bean buying motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life . What are you doing? I play that on a poster, by the way . Next election, Nish Kima says you're so crazy. be buying mother face. It's so naive to think you can govern without your base . That is that's basic politics . You know, that is something that the political right in this country have understood the entire time. You don't alienate your base They know who their core voters are. I think maybe now the Conservative Party doesn't really anymore. I think the Conservative Party is experiencing a bit of an identity crisis . But in the kind of twenty ten's, the Conservative Party knew who its base was and it acted in the interests of that base We leaped out by the way when I said motherfuckers, you can say it, but I can't . Motherfuckers is the bad one. Right . You can't BBC rules. You can after the watershed, you can swear but you can't MF and C. Off the table.. Oh wow I got that that was, you know, when we were working, that's the like last vestige. Like BBC rules. And if you talk to comedian on who's done stuff on British TV , they know what BBC rules means. So it's like if it's after ten, you can say what you want, apart from C and MF. Those are off the table. I feel like they're in different categories. Like I feel like C is like I just wouldn't definitely that's the , you just don't do it. That's the big red button. Yeah. I mean, I do it so often . But like , you know, but it do it stand up. You know, I think it's you know, it's for people to expect some fruity language in a stand up show. But obviously on the BBC , they don't the producer was just waving a side of the window that says, have you seen the document of banned words? I have not seen the document of bad words, banned words. The only words I was told I wasn't allowed to use were CNFM. Whose document is this? Like just is this on some there's like a can you hear me? Yeah, there's like an offcom booklet essentially with all the slurs that you can't say and the reasons why you can't say that's the rudest thing I've heard. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh yeah, I don't think oh yeah, obviously all slurs were off the table, but I don't think we were looking for we weren't looking to use any slurs . Slurs were never a problem for us, but yeah it is yeah, so I guess yes, I think slurs we assumed were off the table. But everything else was pretty much on the table apart from season MFs. Do you think we're going to see a resurgence political comedy? I'm thinking very specifically about SNL UK which, you know, yeah, hands up I've absolutely loved. I just think it's been great. And they've taken hits at me too. So this is me like enjoying them from a political perspective. I just think it's genuinely funny and exc iting and feels live while it is live. There's a lot of political comedy now being done on social media as well. You know, there's there's a lot of people online who are doing really funny stuff. Cody Darla. Cody Darler very funny. Frequent co host of Pod Tape the UK . I think with SNL it's just we just needed somebody to put some money into British comedy on TV because the talent has been there the whole time . It's never been an issue and I was really pleased to see it because I feel like the last generation of comedians that were sort of blooded into TV was my era of comedians. You know, when in the kind of mid twenty ten s , you know, there was an ecosystem by which you do Edinburgh again and again , and then you would do Motor Week have Vi Got News for you, Live at the Apollo. And then you were sort of thrust into an ecosystem. And then when we started the Mass Report, which was a satirical show that I hosted on the BBC, it was a bunch of comedians that were sort of some of whom were making their first television appearances. It was a way of blooding like a whole new generation of comics that all came through in that kind of gang. And then there kind of hasn't been anything. And that's not to say that there haven't there aren't brilliant comedians that have just kept doing stuff. There are so many really great stand ups and character acts and sketch act and yeah that have come through in that intervening decade, but there hasn't necessarily been the money behind them to kind of push something out in a kind of broader way and everybody sort of had to cultivate their own siloed fanbases and that works for some people. And also it's nice to see sketch. It's nice to see sketch on British TV. What I love about the sketches too and I've said this to the writers so I'm not just gossiping behind their back. But some of them just really haven't worked. And I think that's great. Like you watch it and some of them are amazing and there's others that don't work and you're like, I'm really glad they were brave enough to kind of do something that either landed really well or sometimes you're like, it didn't really work. It's great that you had to go. Great you had to go. When you do a weekly show , you part of the sort of the Zen like acceptance you have to reach is it's not all going to work . You know, and also it's definitely not all going to work if you keep trying to take risks. There is a way of doing it where everything can kind of be fine , but if you're trying to do something interesting , you are going to , you know, YouTube has been very kind to SN S and LUS, I think YouTube is brilliant for SNL US and I think part of the reason is that , you know, like I watch I watch the USSNL every week, but I watch it like much of the day. Right. You know, like there's various listing websites that will say these are the five brilliant sketches from last week's SNL . And but also, you know, people who have worked on that show for years and years and the states will tell you you only get the good stuff by you know it's an omelet egg situation like there's going to be a few things where you go oh yeah that just did not work . And you know , listen, I'm the patron saint of comedy that doesn't work. My God, I've tried some stuff where you're like, oof , that was that didn't that was bad. He said to me, I look like I'm enjoying myself as a politician. I have to say the scariest thing I've done in my time as a polit ician was stand up . You probably know Ava Vidal, but she ran the fundraiser and it was me and Beverly Knight and a few comedians and she was like, Will you come and do a speech about climate crisis? Yeah. I was like, a fundraiser, like a comedy fundraiser that',s not gonna work. I was like, Shadi stand up. And she looked at me and was like, You sure? I was like, I will give it a go. I have never been more terrified. Like each time people laughed, I just remember being like, Oh my God, thank God . And I got the last leg as well, right? Yeah, I really enjoyed that twice. Yeah, right. And that's fun, right? Because also they had you doing some comedy stuff in there. It wasn't they didn't just have you on, you know, they didn't have you on 'cause they can have politicians on where they kind of do the comedy and then they turn out how to do it the way. Yeah, they wanted you to sort of be incorporated in I have to say Judy Love could not have been lovelier or is in like I just felt like she picked me up and carried me through that first episode. Judy Love is yeah, Judy Love is like a national treasure. Yeah. I was about to say national treasure in waiting. I think that's actually no longer accurate. I think Judy Love is now like a full blown national treasure. I mean, you talk about somebody that just just it sort of it just pours out of her like she's so in control of how she's funny that she almost just can't she almost can't stop being funny. She's so , so good. And also that show has been running for so long that whenever you go in and do it, you sort of feel like you're you're in a kind of safe environment because everybody knows what they're doing on that show . Well, the second time I did it, I'd been up all night at Gordon and Denton and I had just won. I'd done, I think, three or four hours of serious media interviews and then went live on the last leg. And Alex Brooker came out in like a huge kind of hallucinatory like outfit . And I just remember being like, What's going on? You turned to me and he went the other one he wants to legalize drugs mate . And I did have a moment where like, what am I doing? Who am I? What's going on? There's definitely been moments when I've done that show having had a full night's sleep that I felt like I was hallucinating. I definitely at one point remember being in a go cart. I can't fully remember why, but there's definitely points on that show where you're like, Josh comes out dressed as a tree and you're like, what ? Also because I've known Josh for twenty years. It is a bit like a dream because it's what one of your friends turns up in your dream do something weird. So there are times where I've looked across at Josh dressed like a frog and thought, right? Just pinch yourself to make sure you're not. I need to spin the top like decap it inception. I think stand up comedians have done an amazing job at our own PR of talking about how fucking difficult our job is and it's not as difficult as we've made it out to be. And also now there's this whole ecosystem of podcasts of comedy podcasts where people are saying, yeah, it's just man, it's just like it's just true art, is it pure, you know, it's like, shut the fuck up glads. You just it's body, nobody is curing cancer here. Okay, as far as I know, so let's all just calm down. But yeah, we've made it look very difficult. I feel like I want to be nicer to stand up comedians than you are, but we don't have enough time for me to do reverse therapy. I suppose the final thing I want to ask about is, you know, we open with this that it has been a grim week and you're someone who's been an amazing voice both as a comedian, also a commentator and a journalist, but also you've been on rallies, I think we spoke together on a stop Trump rally and you spoke really powerfully about migration and the benefits of migration . And we're just in a period where it really feels like that if there was a consensus feels like it's really breaking down and it's in the kind of ties that bind our communities together feel like they're at risk of fraying . What role does comedy have in this? What do you think we all need to be doing moving forward? And how do we work to bring people together in such a moment of division? You have thirty seconds . I mean, I don't know , I don't know what role comedy has beyond so much of the strength of our comedy scene has been the kind of diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints that people have brought. It's sort of the country's sort of comedy. The country's cultural life, I think, has been so sort of enriched by its immigrant communities in general. I think that that's a really important thing to say. I think often also there is this kind of there are still spaces within comedy that I think are actually apolitical but create a kind of shared community. You know, I think of a show like Tas kmaster, like in a sense, it's Taskmaster might be one of the only things keeping this country together, you know, because regardless of your background, you can watch that show and think Alex Horn is Zack Palansky. Yeah I hadn't thought about that. Yeah . Yeah, it's yeah, it's like someone stretched you 're horde it's cartoonishly massive. I don't think people realize that he because's normally sat next to Greg. I didn't know full blown giant. Right. But Horde is really tall. But yeah, anyway, I think it is a company can still provide sort of shared spaces like that that sort of transcend backgrounds and political beliefs and all that kind of stuff. I think in terms of community cohesion , we it's sort of incumbent on all of us to fight for our communities. You know, it's really important that we don't allow mistrust and division to be sewn into our societies. And that's on all of us. It's in all of us kind of participating in protests, counter protests. It's also in a lot of us participating in , you know, showing up within your community spaces. I think that stuff is really, really important . But also we need strong political leadership at this point. And we need what we don't need is politicians kind of indulging in the politics of division. And also we need to be we need to actually be telling an accurate story about what's going on . You know, it just happens again and again through history that the far right really can only thrive in it's a bacteria, right? And it needs conditions in which it can thrive. And economic hardship and spiraling inflation tends to be a gateway that the far right walks into and that's that's happened over and over again. It's so interesting. People in this country only always want to talk about World War two until you actually want to have a conversation about World War two. You know, like we want to talk about like tanks and the D ay landing, but you're like, let's also talk about Nazi ideology. Let's talk about , you know, fashionism. Yeah, I saw you having that , you know, getting into a bit of Zeriaus of using that of saying that some cultures are superior to others. Yeah, come on, what are we doing here? What's what are we what's what's going on Why are we learning from lessons from history? We talked about this on the podcast. I looked at some of the cartoons of you the week of the last by election and I thought, We're not learning anything here. Those That is the one thing , the dehumanizing anti Semitism of those cartoons. I saw the ghosts of it in stuff that was being drawn pertaining directly to you like about a month ago. I was shocked, like I was really, really shocked . We want to talk about World War two in terms of like types of tanks or RAF planes. Let's talk about the actual conditions through which extremism took hold in a Western European country. And when we say never again, we mean never again , right? That's what I mean. And increasingly, I'm starting to feel like a lot of the it seems to me like there's a lot of sections our political class in our media class whose only problem with the Nazis was that they were German. That's the one problem that they have with them . I'm saying let's really talk about how we prevent something like that from happening again. Let's really talk about how we don't foster extremism. And a big factor in all of this is fixing the economics. And the only way we can do that is if we start actually identifying that the problem the problems in this country are not to do with immigrants, right? And you can keep deporting us and keep deporting us and it ain't going to help you. You deport us until there's none of us left and I promise I promise you Elon Musk is still going to have a disproportionate control of the capital in your country. That you're not fixing the real cause. It's scapegoating and it distracts you from actually making improvements to people's lives in Britain right now. That was so powerful. I'm not convinced you're doing stand up right, but that's Listen, I don't give that shit away for free. You want to see that? You got to come and see me on tour. On Tour, I dress it up with a joke. On the podcast No, I mean, yeah, it's you may be thinking you have another question though. How can someone come see you on tour as the date's coming up? Oh yeah, yeah, I'm on tour from September all over the UK and Ireland and the tickets are available at nichcomard. co. uk Niche, thank you so much. It's been so good. Thank you, Zach.