Scrutiny of Farage's finances and property

I'm Nishkamar. And I'm Coco Kahn. Welcome to PodSave the UK. It's been a very, very strange week in UK politics as Labour MPs prepare themselves for a leadership contest that now feels inevitable. We're joined by Labour MP Nadia Whittam who'll fill us in on the mood in the Labor Party after it's humiliating fortnight. Plus, is Burnham the right person to succeed Starmer? Once again, Tommy Robinson and his far-right comrades have marched through London. He asked the same question we've been asking for the last year and a half. How can progressives stop the spread of the far right? Plus, Nigel Farage is finally being investigated for the five million quid he received from a crypto billionaire. Keir Starmer is in Downing Street, but the question is for how much longer? So Wes Streeting has resigned as health secretary and confirmed that he would stand if a leadership race was triggered. The MP for Makerfield Josh Simons has sacrificed it's amazing to me that all this has happened since we last did a podcast. Uh uh Make MP for Makerfield Josh Simons has sacrificed his position, clearing the way for Andy Burnham to finally reach Parliament. Uh Simon said of his decision the Labour Party had been imploding over the last week and it was too big an opportunity to miss. Nadia Whittam is the Labour MP for Nottingham East, and she was one of the earliest MPs to call for Starmer's departure. She joins us in the studio today. Hello, Nadia. Welcome back. Hey guys, thanks for having me. How's it going? Like the honest answer or always. Always. It's not going great, is it? But surely there's got to be a little bit of levity amongst certain certain factions of the party, right? This feeling of a change of direction, getting back to Labour values. I mean, I'm certainly feeling a little bit of hope for the first time in a long time. Um I mean I called for Kiss Darmer to go back in November. So it was been clear to me for well it's been clear to me, for much longer than that that, we need a change in direction, and pretty obvious that that wasn't going to come under the current leadership. So, kind of seeing that there's a space opening for things to change is giving me a l a little bit of hope, but there's there's a lot that there are a lot of variables at play. So according to labor list, the number of MPs calling on Starmer's quit has reached ninety-seven uh as of Friday. Um there are more than a lot. There's definitely a new Labour joke in there somewhere, but you can workshop it afterwards . The most heartbreaking of numbers for Keir Star mer . Ninety seven. The last year he was happy, and now the number has come back to haunt . Um more than a hundred Labour MPs have signed an open letter declaring this to be no time for a leadership contest. Which isn't the same thing as we we throw our our support behind Kirst Armer because lots of people on the left could have signed that letter saying now's not the time for a leadership contest because at that time it would have just been a coronation for someone on the right of the party. So it's ev even that is pretty damning. So like what what's going on? Has Rupert like been s scammed? It's like an online petition . It's gonna turn out half the MPs are bot accounts. Um but t like Luke A Khurst is signing signing it onto like multiple email addresses. All I kept thinking was that like obviously Rupert Huck is a brown woman, I just thought, oh god, there's gonna be a mix-up, isn't it? Someone's taken names and been like, that that's that's her, isn't it? it? Is her It was Shibano . Meanwhile though, despite these people that may or may not support Starmer, uh his approval rating with the public is very, very low. It's currently at minus 46 and his departure, I mean, it feels inevitable really. Meanwhile, Andy Burnham has been officially announced as the Labour candidate in the maker field by election. So look, according to The Guardian, I'll I say that despite uh Starmer's public defiance, he is now sort of willing to stand aside if Burnham wins a clear mandate in Makerfield and no other challenger emerges. I mean, who are you backing to succeed, Keir Starmer? Or are you just in a position where you're like anyone but Kia and to be fair, Wes Because n I've said it before and I'll say it again. The one thing we can all agree on in this increasingly divided country is no one wants Wes Dream to be Prime Minister apart from And even here, you can see doubt in his eyes. You can see it, even as he's saying it. Even part of his brain is like, no, not you, Wes. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I would much prefer Andy Burnham to either West Streeting or Kirst Armer, but you know, that bar is kind of in the Mariana trench . Is there someone that you'll you would like to see run for Labour Leader from within the party? Obviously it's not gonna happen because he doesn't want it and he's uh I'm sure he wouldn't mind me saying getting on a bit, but John McDonnell, I would unequivocally back. Big Johnny Mac . I mean yes. The trot father. think we've we've got to kind of go back here to the conditions in the Labour Party that have been created by the Labour Together faction. They basically changed the rules so that MPs need a high number of nominations to get on the ballot pap er, they made the percentage so it would effectively be impossible for any left-wing candidate, any candidate from the socialist campaign group basically, which is the grouping of Labour MPs that I sit in to get on the ballot paper. If you think back to 2015, Jeremy Corbyn only just got on because people lent them their votes. This has has all been part of Labour Together strategy. This is the faction, sort of a faction think tank connected to Morgan McSweeney, Peter Mandelson. And basically for these people, their ultimate goal is to destroy the left and everything else is secondary. So they had a plan for winning the leadership election in 2020. That was through a dishonest campaign that basically said that Keir Star mer was going to be like Jeremy Corbyn but with with better comms. Yeah. Um they then had a strategy to win the general election, which let's face it wasn't difficult. The Tories imploded and lost the election, any Labour Party would have won. And of course I'm I'm glad that we did. But the problem now is that they didn't have a plan for government and they didn't have a plan for when kind of their pieceme al measures just wouldn't be enough to significantly improve people's lives. And then the the other part of the kind of the gutting of democracy of the party was and again this is what Labour Together did was kind of stitch up all of all of the seats so that left wing or soft left , sometimes even barely soft left candidates were undemocratically kept off the shortlist and local Labour parties were denied the chance to have a a proper open selection and and vote for for the candidates that that they wanted. In fairness, this has happened to some extent under every leadership. Um but n never on the scale that it did in 2024. So that means that we we now have a parliamentary Labour Party that is kind of made or so they thought made in the image of Streeting and Mandelson and McSweeney is is not as rooted in the Labour movement as previous iterations of the Parliamentary Labour Party would be. But even with this Parliamentary Labour Party, the fact that we've got 97 MPs openly calling for the Prime Minister to go now from across all factions, I think just shows how how dire the situation is. So am I right in inferring from what you said there that n the current frontrunners are not necessarily anyone that you'd be that excited about. Because anyone that's a frontrunners, presumably someone who has survived this culling is generally speaking probably more on the right of the party. Is that right? Um no not necessarily because there are still there are still lots of left-wing MPs in the party, and but they don't tend to be the newest intake of MPs. They tend to be returning MPs. Some of them were like some of the new MPs are actually pretty left wing and you can see the leadership like kicking itself that they let this person slip through the net or they turned up to their selection meeting wearing blue and they were like, ha they'll never tell, they'll never tell, they'll be you rip it open and Yeah well they won in seats that we were never expected to win in. Oh fuck. Now we've now we've got Neil Duncan Jordan and all his campaigns to deal with, who is brilliant by the way, he's one of the the twenty twenty four intake campies. I the thing that is deeply strange in all of this, right, is that so this think tank labor Together. They we we've covered this a couple of times on the show. Uh it 's been reported that uh they hired a PR firm uh who investigated the private affairs of journalists. The person who was the director of Labour Together at the time , was Josh Simons, who actually had to step down from his position in government because of this investigation, because he said he didn't want to become a distraction to the government's agenda. And now he has stepped aside to allow Andy Burnham to run against Keir Starmer. Why do you spend all this time running a think tank that delivers Keir Starmer to power and then step aside to allow the person most likely to remove him from the his position as Prime Minister. Is it evidence that this is how far Keir Star mer has fallen in the eyes of even his most loyal supporters? I know it seems like quite a small point, but uh I it it's uh been fixating me the last couple of days just 'cause I can't work out what what what the hell is going on with Josh Simons . Like I really can't it's really like it it's it's really obsessing me. I've become like Charlie Day in uh It's always Sunny, that image of him with the red wires going everywhere that's now become a very popular meme on the internet. Just red-eyed Charlie Day with string all over a wall. I can't I can't work out what's going on. I would love somebody from the official comms from the Labour Depart Labour Party to tell us what the fuck is going on. I sense Nadia you don't have a fucking clue of what's going on. It doesn't feel like they're particularly cluing up the other MPs in the Labour Party about what's going on. They're not even cluing up backbenchers who were ideologically close to them, let alone people like me. I mean I like the romanticist in me wants to think that this is kind of a redemption arc story. Yeah. But also I'm I'm not naive. Like Andy Burnham will be under pressure from all parts of the party. And I think because he has been on quite a political journey over the last 10, 15 years, I think part of his is his appeal is that every kind of political tendency can kind of identify a bit of their own politics in him. I'm very glad that he's coming back to Parliament. Um, I hope. I hope that we we win the maker field by-election. I don't think he's the Messiah, I'm under no illusions. I think it will be really important that the left, both inside the parliamentary party, um Labour members, but also the left outside of the Labour Party holds him to account and pushes him to the left because you can be sure that there will be forces on the right of the party trying to push him in the other direction. I'm still interested to know in what uh Burnham is going to propose. I mean it's all very early days at the moment. But one thing that he has talked about in his campaign video is he talked about Manchesterism, and which is a phrase that is kind of of his making, I suppose you you would say, certainly an idea that he has been very uh forthright in pushing. And broadly speaking, Manchesterism is a kind of business friendly socialism, which he claims he's uh you know he's implemented to success in Greater Manchester. Now look, we we can get into the ins and outs of Manchesterism and whether you know he lived up to his promise or whatever. But even the idea of a idea being named, I found interesting because I feel like the Labour Party hasn't said an idea, a new idea, for a long time. And so even just the prospect of a discussion animates me, which is one of the reasons why I was so frustrated to hear that there were murmurs that if Burnham wins Makerfield, because the ultimate aim is to keep reform out, which I think is a good aim, they are very, very scary and dangerous. If he proves that he can win Makerfield, which has got a strong reform base and could win, he proves that he can uh defeat them. So there's no need to have a contest . But the thing I want with the contest is an opportunity for a national discussion about what is labor, what do we believe in? So are we going to get an actual contest or is Mr. Burnham going to be crowned? I think there will be a proper democratic contest. Um, not because I think the people in charge of the Labour Party love democracy as, we've we've discussed. But because let's be real, Andy Burnham is not their candidate, and they'll be hoping that he doesn't win. I think right now during the by-election, it's obviously not the space to be kind of digging into these ideological debates and scrutinizing Andy Burnham, but that space needs to be opened up after I I hope he wins so that we can understand well what what is your political journey, why have your politics changed, what are they now? And people can can hold him to account and and get commitments from him. But we are sort of already seeing this ideological cont est debate happening already. So we're streeting, uh, you know, he's spoken about a special relationship with the EU. People have said that the reason he's bringing up the EU at all is because it's a way to put Andy Burnham in a strange position. Obviously Andy Burnham said we shouldn't have left the EU. Maker field was a very strongly leave constituency, so he's now saying, well, actually, you know, it's not really on the table. So it's is it even possible to not get into these ideological debates about these candidates uh until after? Well, I think there have to be some kind of like ideological debates, obviously in a like in a more macro sense. Like we need to be setting out how the Labour Party is different to reform, Andy is standing on quite a unique platform for a by-election because he's saying , vote for me to be your local MP and to champion this area, but also vote for me to change the Labour Party. So of course, that kind of necessitates a certain amount of like discussion about ideology and policy and politics . But yeah, I I don't I don't think it's it's helpful to kind of bring up questions of should we return um should we return as members of the EU and as you kind of intimated, I don't think it was intended to be helpful. We i I mean listen, it would be very easy for the Labour leadership to sort of dismiss this conversation as, you know , some millennial leftist malcontents complaining. Uh but I would say that one of the things that I talked about yesterday with Tommy, and one of the things that Tommy Vito and Ben Rhodes, who again, like I keep having to restate this . Yes, they are our bosses, we think. It's actually unclear who our bosses are. But um they they were the, you know, communications team for a centre left candidate who won two elections in the United States of America. And both of them have for the last couple of weeks been talking about the Labour Party and saying, do not make the same mistakes that the Democratic Party made in 2024. We we had somebody, Katie, who was one of the executive producers on the show was here a couple of weeks ago saying, are the la did the Labour Party not see what happened in 2024? Everything that, everything about the way they're conducting themselves suggests that they've taken the wrong lessons that can be gleaned from Kamala Harris losing the election. And they keep saying we forced Kamala Harris on the election without a full and thorough primary process. Also, you know, a leadership election or a primary process actually allows you to kind of stress test a candidate's positions before you put them to the wider country. So there is a massive, massive advantage in a proper, thorough, and democratic process. So I again I would say this to the Labour Leadership: if you're not willing to listen to us, listen to Tommy and Ben, who have done this job on an enormous scale and are really desperately trying to warn you against making the same mistakes that the party that they worked for made in 2024. Also, Biden stuck around too long. So Harris didn't even have enough time to show that she was different. Um and that's worry here. Starmer if this is takes ages, then let's say whoever gets in, if they don't have enough road to effect change, then by the time we get to the next election, I mean for me this is the like this is the big fear is reform. It's a reform government. They are literally in the wings waiting, and I it's it's terrifying what they will do to our communities. I think there are lots of people in the Labour Party who say , oh, we need to be learning from Denmark and the Social Docemratic Party there, and what they did on immigration , which was like a terrible immigration policy. And we have learnt from Denmark and implemented something similar and it's been a disaster, as we all warned it would be. But what I think they don't do enough is learn from social democratic parties in the US, in Germany, and how their failures paved the way for the far right, because they they didn't get a grip on the cost of living crisis, they didn't go far enough, they were far too timid , and people didn't see their lives change . And I think that is the same kind of challenge that the Labour Party faces. And and the thing that you were saying about discontented young people, I mean, never mind the fact that people across all demographics are pretty discontented. We're united in that at least. But we are also an important demographic. There's a lot of talk about us los losing ing seats to reform. And then the kind of the conclusion that the top of the Labour Party has come to is well we need to shift to the right on immigration. We need to sort of outreform reform . Not only is that wrong morally and politically because of the consequences that it has for real people's actual lives, but it's also electorally a complete disaster. So we're actually losing more votes to progressive parties than we are to parties on our right. There was some uh sampling by the organization persuasion. And basically, of 2024 Labour voters, 33% are still voting Labour, 22% are voting Green, 10% are voting Lib Dem and 24% are staying at home. That's compared to just 5% who've moved to reform and 3% who've moved to the Tor ies. So it's it's so clearly a dead-end strategy. I think John Curtis said that the famous pulser said the same thing. It's it's true that Labour was losing seats to reform, but when you look at how, it's because their progressive base abandoned them. Even before we get into what the national conversation is gonna be about the Labour Party, Andy Burnham has to win the Makerfield by election. And that is not a given at the moment. Reform won more than fifty percent of the local election vote uh in Makerfield at the most recent uh round of local elections. In the 2026 Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council election, reform won all eight council wards in the Makerfield constituency. This is also an area that very , as we've said, heavily voted to leave the European Union. So it is not a given that this thing is going to break for the Labour Party. But the advantage within that for Andy Burnham is if he does win this by-election, he 's going to be able to turn around to the Labour Party and say, I am your best chance of defeating reform at the general election. There's been a lot of conversations on the green side of things about whether they're gonna stand a candidate, Karen and Lucas obviously came out and said, I don't think we should do that. We need to be united against reform here. I think the Greens shouldn't stand. Do you have a do you have a view on this? I understand the argument. Um I I very much feel that that is a decision for Green members to make. Um I I understand the argument that, you know, we need to unite to beat reform. Ultimately, I think the only way that we can beat reform now is really through electoral reform and proportional representation. Um and I'm I'm not just saying that as a as a tool to to beat them I think it's the right thing to do. I think it would be the right thing to do, even if it disadvantaged the Labour Party. Well that would be the agreement, right? Is that if the Greens step aside, it would be with an understanding that at some point electoral reform will be on the table. Although Burnham himself has said it would need to be a manifesto commitment and he would need to so anyway, there's been a just a lot of discont ent uh on the green side of things. That's certainly how I perceive it just looking online with people saying the objective of the Greens was to overtake the Labour Party. They cannot be the party we think they are anymore. And this this fear of reform. That on that point though, the Labour Party cannot be that party anymore. Would you agree with that? They cannot be the party of progressives anymore. They've made too many changes. They've abandoned those values too long. Well, I think the the current iteration of the Labour Party is just not one that most of us recognise. But I I do believe that we can fight to change it. Some people might think, well, that's that's futile, that's naive. Time will tell. Like maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but I think that there is value in staying in the Labour Party. Fighting, both on kind of immediate issues, like we did on the disability benefit cuts . And in terms of like what the Labour Party looks like in the future, well we've got to be in it to shape what that is. I don't feel like I can just hand the party over to the likes of Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson, even if it would make me feel better to kind of be like, you know what, like to to help with this, because I'm I'm as angry as as everyone else is, but I just don't think that that would be the right thing or the most useful thing for me to do. Certainly not at this stage. And maybe maybe I'll be proven wrong. I hope I hope I won't be. I hope we can we can win it back. I think there's every chance that we can. I believe in the Labour movement. I don't think that's something that that we can give up on. Listen, I think what you've said is incredible then, Adi, because I think it's the Labour Party historically through the 20th century delivered huge amounts of change that completely retooled Britain as a country. You know, if you think about things like the NHS and the welfare state, that was delivered largely by the mechanism that you just described with the disability cuts, you know, external pressure groups pushing for a change that then is delivered by the conduit of progressive Labour MPs. And, you know, so much of what we recognise as modern Britain today is a sort of direct consequence of legislation enacted by the Parliamentary Labour Party. Do you still believe in the Labour Party as an organisation and an entity that can reshape this country in a progressive image. I mean that's why that's why I joined the Labour Party when when I was 16. I never had any illusions about the Labour Party. I I joined under Ed Miliband and actually I I joined because I was so frustrated with the kind of austerity like platform that he was standing on and putting forward, which is ironic now because I I look at Ed Miliband and I think he's doing a brilliant job in the cabinet within those constraints. And I I don't know if that says more about like the state of the Labour Party or about his his political journey or kind of returning to himself. But yeah, there you go. What I thought would happen um be f before the election. I thought we'd get into government, the Labour Party would do some good stuff that didn't go far enough and might also have like some rhetoric that I that I didn't really agree with, but that wouldn't end up being policies like the the really anti-immigration policies we've seen, then there'd be a reaction in the polls because people wouldn't see their lives improve at the kind of pace that they need and expect. And I thought the Labour Party's response to that, I thought that they would be forced to implement some some bolder, more popular policies like minor wealth taxes, like equalising capital gains in income tax, maybe some form of rent controls. But instead, they didn't listen to people, they didn't listen to the public, they didn't listen to backbench MPs. They gutted the Labour Party of every kind of accountability mechanism that existe d, like local Labour parties having a voice. And instead of listening, they kind of doubled down, they kind of said , Oh, you you said don't take money off pension ers. We listened, and we took it off disabled people as well . That was always going to be a disaster. There is a stereotype of progressives that we're like Moni, right? We're money and Wingy and we're negative, which I think. And only some of us are . Only me and like a f quite a few others. But not everyone is. Not everyone. But I just find it ridiculous because my whole thing about politics of the less politics of progressive, is that it is inherently hopeful. It's like saying, my fellow man has the ability for greatness. If only we could unlock it, if only we could work together. There's nothing that we can't achieve if we work to that's the whole point of it. I think of it as very blue sky. But there is something to be said about how certainly the last the current Labour Party, uh, and and you know, some of the leaders in my memory anyway, I have taken this downbeat tone. That is something about like, not that this is the best you'll get, but the idea that things could get a lot better, I think has been neglected. Or if it has been communicated not effectively, did anyone really believe Kirst Armer was enjoying himself? That he wanted to go out and meet people? He always looked like he was pained, you know, compared to someone like Nigel Farage, who's not my politics at all, but he certainly seems like he's enjoying it. Something has happened where the politics of hope is being associated with doom mongers. The doom mongers are going to bring nothing but hate and rip apart communities. But yet people perceive of them as hopeful candidates because they trade in lies. This is the brilliant future you could have. Uh and no one's really saying that. Anyway. Andy Burnham, at least he seems like he's enjoying himself. At least he seems like he genuinely loves politics and going out and meeting people. And he had Oasis do his video, which I don't know if that counts as an endorsement, but uh was certainly interesting. After the break, we'll uh cast all sorts of doubt and throw shit all over this optimism by discussing this weekend's Unite the Kingdom March in London. PodSave the UK is brought to you by BT. 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Companies using Vanta spend far less time dealing with audits and can complete Companies have cut audit time by more than 80% with Vanta , which means less admin, less back and forth, and more time actually growing your business. That's why more than fifteen thousand companies around the world trust Vanta, from startups right through to major organizations. A recent report found Vanta customers see an average of more than half a million dollars a year in benefits, with the platform paying for itself in just a few months. Get started at vanta.com, that's van ta dot com forward slash pst uk. That's vanta dot com forward slash pst uk Now last Saturday the far right agitator Tommy Robinson addressed a huge crowd in London telling them to prepare for a battle of Britain. It was the second of his United Kingdom rallies, a gathering for the best and brightest of Britain's Islamophobes and ethnonationalists. According to police estimates, the number marching was down compared to last year, but campaign group Hope Not Hate still described the march as deeply worrying. Journalist and friend of the show, Femi Olawale, was at the rally. He sent us this. It's definitely an experience to be a lone black man in a crowd of tens of thousands of racists, many of whom you know would like to do you harm. Because, like, I was at the Tommy Robinson March and I posted a video and there's a comment on there which says, Femme, you need a good beating. Uh, and it has 94 likes on it. I think the issue is and the reason why I feel comfortable calling them racists is because of what they're willing to tolerate. Because I think in big 2026 we can all understand that racism doesn't necessarily mean I actively hate and want to hurt all black people or brown people. That's not what it is because you don't have to, because the status quo is racism. So you don't actually have to. It's what you're willing to tolerate. That's what determines whether or not someone's racist. And if you're willing to turn up to a march where you have the leader saying he wants to violently kick out pretty much all Muslims from the country and he's calling British Muslims, he c referred to them as enemy combatants, which implies that it's green light to kill them. If you're willing to show up for that kind of person, you're a racist. So being in that crowd, knowing that many of them hate me was definitely fun. One funny thing was though, however, uh there was one guy who came up to me, he was like an older dude. Um And he said, Oh, I don't understand to insult you, but I thought you looked like Femi for a second. I was like, yeah, that's a fucking losing So look, according to the police estimates, uh the rally drew sixty thousand people, which is down from the uh estimate of the last rally in September, which is 150,000. Um Robinson has encouraged supporters to move beyond protests and fighting to become uh involved in local politics, as well as Tommy Robins on, those speaking at the rally included ex-Apprentice candidate Katie Hopkins, the actor Lawrence Fox, and TV's Aunt Middleton. I will be completely honest with you, I still don't fully know who Aunt Middleton is. Oh my god, I'm so I also was like, who's Aunt Middleton? It's not Ant and Deck, is it? It's not Ant and Deck. Oh my god, it's not Ant and Deck and it's not a member of the uh Kate Middleton's family. Like I believe. So it's n it's it's neither one of those things, but he is always just described, he's always described as TV's at Middleton. I'm like, guess that guy's on TV. But it was very much sort of the Glastonbury Festival for people who use the phrase cultural Marxism. Like that seems to be the kind of general vibe of it. It's worth noting that there was a pro-Palestinian march on Saturday to commemorate the Nakba, which is the mass displacement of Palestinians during the nineteen forty-eight Arab-Israeli War. For people listening to the show, Nadir has Googled at Middleton, showed us both a picture of it, and I'm afraid to say we're still none the wiser as serious . Says British TV personality, which doesn't shed any light. No. We're still struggling. Right into the show. Solve the mystery. Who is Aunt Middleton? And why do I keep reading his name? Who is Aunt Middleton? And what is Josh Simons doing? Yeah, that's the two mysteries of this week's episode . What's going on with Josh Simons? And who is Ant Middleton? We keep he just keep saying he's on TV. What for? Um it's not all negative. Uh the charity you choose Love set up an initiative encouraging supporters to pledge money for every meet of the group march. They've raised more than £130,000 . The CEO of the charity and friend of the show, Josie Fernandez Morelli, told the Metro it's about drowning out hate with love and sending an even louder message that refugees are welcome here. It's really important that the government doesn't allow this kind of idea to fester in communities, right? But that's gotta be a two-pronged approach. There's got to be pushing back on this rhetoric and saying absolutely no tolerance of this kind of language in British society. And also , we need sort of more economic intervention. You know, we've studied it, we've seen it play out repeatedly, we've studied it in history that terrible economic circumstances are a petri dish for extremist thought. So it's got to be a two-pronged approach, right? A hundred percent. I completely agree. I think it's about like the government needs to unapologetically stand against racism and all forms of discrimination , while at the same time improving the economic conditions in which far-right radicalization takes hold. It starts come out pretty strongly against the rally. In his statement on X, he said the organizers were peddling hate and division. Though saying that on X does feel a little bit like the calls coming from inside the house. Um and it didn't speak for the decent, fair and respectful Britain that he knows, right? Which you know, that that is a decent response, but again, bit of a distraction from Labour's actual immigration policies, which have continued to toughen . So last September the then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper temporarily suspended new applications for refugee family reunion. So that was a scheme that allowed those who have already been granted asylum to bring their families to the UK. It is good for Star mer to be borrowing a bit of their rhetoric and enacting policies that have the kind of DNA of that hostility contained within them. That is a really serious disconnect. So the scheme rema susinpendeded, right? And new analysis from the British Red Cross estimates that at least 550 children could remain separated from their families each month because of the suspension. You can't talk about being in a fight for the soul of this country, which is what the Prime Minister has said we are engaged in against the far right, whilst also pandering to them legislatively, right? Like this is not helpful. Going back to what we were talking about earlier about needing to have a national conversation. It's so overdue in so many counts, you know, in even in terms of where we are on race and what we want about race, where we are and about violence against women and girls, you know, at this march, they're just constantly talking about violence against women and girls, which is of course at an absolute epidemic, but they use it uh only to suit their kind of nefarious racist ends rather than looking at the kind of the data which tells us that this is a problem in every class, in every race, in every single community, and it is a scourge to be dealt with in a kind of collaborative way. I came across this fantastic uh Instagram post from the brilliant feminist writer N,atasha W alter, she'd released a book recently in Kathleen Stock. She's a professor. She basically reviewed Natasha Walter's book and said that. She didn't like it because essentially Natasha Walter argues that if you're a feminist, you have to be pro-imigmration, and she doesn't really believe that. And Natasha Walter kind of rebuts and says, Well, I'm sorry, but if you support border policies that stops women escaping harm, you're not a feminist. If you support activity that stops women being able to liberate themselves, you're not a feminist. You know, that's how it works. And I think all of these conversations we're having, like , you know, are you a leftist? I'm sorry, but if you do support racism, you have to ask yourself, are you a leftist? I think I think these are conversations we need to have and almost like get back to b basics, which I hope the leadership contest will give us. I think it does also show that kind of right wing anti-trans Venn diagram kind of b becoming becoming a circle as well because uh absolutely you can't if if your feminism only extends to a certain group of women and that gets ever narrower then uh like are are you a feminist? Exactly as you said. I think that, you know, with this United Kingdom thing, there's a tendency for us kind of millennials, the wokes, whatever we call ourselves, to laugh at these people. Uh and you know, I I I I get it. Like saw one uh clip of someone basically making fun of these uh these attendees, uh telling them lies, being like, did you know Muslims? I can't even remember what they were, but it was like clearly ludicrous things and kind of saying, Oh, aren't they stupid, aren't they stupid ? And I just uh I just I'm so over that. I just don't think that's actually helpful. This is really scary, like genuinely scary. I mean, I for anyone who is visibly Muslim, seeing people putting bacon on their shoulders like they're trying to ward off vampir es with garlic. I mean, it's so dehumanizing and so terrifying. And these people are in our workplaces, they're in our communities, they're people who pick us up in taxis, they're people who might treat us at the dentists. I'm glad Kirstarmer said what he said, but you know, little less conversation, a little more action. I think there's a really important distinction to draw here , which is there are people who go on these marches that are kind of encouraged to blame societal problems by like large sections of the British political class, large sections of the British media on immigrants, refugees, on multiculturalism, and those are people that the Labour Party needs to be reaching out to. I will say , if you are standing in your house getting ready to leave to go to a political march and you slowly put raw bacon on your shoulders to ward off Muslims, you may be beyond help. If if if as the point that raw bacon touches your clothes, you don't think, okay, I've lost my fucking mind here. We mu the it we you might be beyond hell. Listen, the three people on this podcast currently are all to some extent by products of multiculturalism in Britain, right? That's huge part of our biographies. I've also spent most of the last twenty years of this country on a variety of mega bus es, trains, coaches, and I'm not gonna lie, in the last half decade, a very nice electric car that I read travelling around this country. You know, I've done gigs anywhere that would have me. And you know, for most of the first decade of my career, I was not able to look at the electoral demographics of the towns and cities and villages that I was going to to do stand-up comedy. And I don't want to sound too idealistic or naive here, but my experience of traveling around this country for 20 years has , you know, shown me a couple of things. One, the country is suffering. I've seen towns and cities decline as I visited them once or twice a year over a period of two decades, right? I've seen high streets close up. I've seen the Whitgift shopping centre in Croydon, where I grew up going every weekend, become shuttered and weirdly only used recently for a Taylor Swift video. I've seen the real economic consequences of the decisions that have been taken by successive governments in this country, right? But that all being said, most people in this country are living pretty happily side by side with each other. There are nefarious forces at work in our political system that are trying to drive us apart so that it can, you know, it's an it's an overseer class essentially trying to defend itself, right? Capital will do everything to defend itself. And it will align itself with whatever force it believes is going to defend it the most rigorously. And I think it is really important that we just sort of don't lose sight of the fact that charlatans like Robinson, like like Farage , like whoever Aunt Middleton is, are not representative of the majority of people that I've come across in my life. And that's why because this project, this this racism project, is clever and they change it to, you know uh uh to be as lithe and fluid as as it needs to be to continue their agenda. And I won't start doing my like get on the soapbox to talk about like, you know, racism serves a capitalist agenda that allows us to exploit the global south. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. But what they've done in just highlighting Muslims only is they've tried to take it out of the space of race, right? 'Cause most people don't want to be regarded as a racist. They wouldn't agree with racism. Instead they turn it into like a a disagreement of theology, almost. A disagreement of ideology. But the fact of the matter is in this country most Muslims are brown and they're black. So when you are anti-Muslim, let let's be real about it. So it's just look, it's just I just find it incredibly scary. At the moment, this I keep asking my question, which is who is able to stop them? Is it the Labour Party? Is it a Green Labour coalition? Is it just the Greens ? Whoever it is, I I support you. You know what I mean? And I'm willing to turn a blind eye to certain certain shortcomings because I'm scared. Who is able to stop them, Nadia? Who is able to stop a kind of voluble and unpleasant minority from through kind of gremlins in our electoral system essentially being placed in charge of the entire country. Well I think right now it's it has to be a radically reformed Labour government. Um because it's Oh Jesus Christ. When you said reform there, I was about to be like, oh my God, what the hell? Yeah, I saw your eyes so we've got an exclusive, but not the one we were hoping for . I I think it has to be like a radically changed Labour Party. Is it being taken seriously? Like you're in the party. You go to that place, Westminster. Is this being taken seriously? I think people understand what is at stake, but I don't think they have the answers to to deal with it or they're actively pursuing the wrong strategy. So like we were we were saying earlier, you know, people people are fundamentally decent. Most people are not like actively hateful towards black and brown people, Muslims, refugees, migrants, but people are also being preyed upon by the capitalist class so that they punch down instead of looking up at at the people who have actually caused the problems in our society . What the Labour government's response to that should be is firmly standing with the whole of the working class in our full divers ity and saying zero tolerance to racism but also at the very least, not having a racist, cruel set of immigration policies ourselves . And also answering the kind of the economic problems that allow that far right radicalisation to thrive. Currently the government isn't doing anywhere near enough on the economics and they're doing and and also in some ways uh are going in the wrong direction, like uh benefit cuts, winter fuel allowance. Um and on the the kind of unapologetically standing with all working class people, including black and brown people , are actively going in the wrong direction on that. And do you think going back to that thing, who who can fight this terrifying wave? And obviously I know that there will be activists and community organisers who will of course be doing a lot of groundwork. And this is not to say that the only cure we have, the only way to be political is through the parliamentary system. I'm not saying that. But nonetheless, is the Labour Party able to push back on this? We have to change the Labour Party so that it is able to push back. The current Labour Party is not pushing back. And the reason why I've been so outspoken. And you know, some of my colleagues say , weren't weren't you always kind of on the left of the party , you're probably enjoying this. Actually, no, I'm I'm really not. And I asked myself if if it was like my political hero who was leader of the Labour Party, if it was John McDonnell and he was messing things up this badly, if he was chasing the the right on immigration and being completely timid on the cost of living crisis and the kind of transformation of the economy that people need. Would I speak out and say the same thing? I absolutely would. I'm confident of that. And the reason why I'm speaking out is the consequences of us not changing is, well, firstly, it it lets people down in this country. It means that the government isn't delivering the change that people need . But in the longer term, it will hand the keys to number 10 to Nigel Farage. And we need to do everything possible to stop that from happening. And you know, Labour is literally in power. Ever ything possible is quite a lot of things. We can we can do a lot , but we need to get on and do it. We can't keep burying our heads in the sand and saying, oh, you know, if we just show loyalty and and stick together, then, you know, we'll avoid chaos. Nad ia, thank you so much for joining us today on PodSaver UK. As always, it's a pleasure to see you. Coming up, Nigel Farage's finances are being scrutinized at last . PodSave the UK is brought to you by Incogni. Your most private information isn't just out there. It's being bought and sold by data brokers who profit from your personal details? Incogni helps you fight back by finding and deleting your data from hundreds of shady directories. Instead of spending hundreds of hours doing the work yourself, Incogni automates the entire process and keeps a watchful eye to ensure your data doesn't reappear. If privacy is something that concerns you and who can blame you, it's such a valuable tool. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has found themselves scrabbling over passwords set up years and years ago. How would I ever be able to uh get those back? And so uh an automated service, which is scrubbing your data for you, is just such a relief. Getting started is simple. Create an account, provide the minimum details needed to find your profiles and authorise Incogni to act on your behalf. Once you've given the green light, they handle the heavy lifting of contacting hundreds of data brokers. For the ultimate cleanup, their unlimited plan includes a custom removal feature. Just send a link to a privacy expert. They'll scrub the rest. Take your personal data back with incogni. Go to incogni.com forward slash podsave the UK and use code podsave the UK to get 60% off an annual plan. That's code Pod Savetheuk at incogni.com forward slash podsave the UK for 60% off. Try it risk-free for 30 days with their money-back guarantee. Podsave the UK is brought to you by Shopify. Picture this. You're shopping online. You found something you actually want. You've added it to your basket, and then comes the bit that always slows everything down. You're trying to remember yet another login, which email you used, what password you definitely changed at some point and immediately forgot again. And then sometimes right there at checkout, you see it. That purple button at the top of the payment options, and suddenly everything gets easier. No digging for your wallet, no faffing around, logging in again, just a simple tap and you're done. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names like Gymshark and Heinz to brands that are just getting started. With hundreds of ready-to-use templates, Shopify helps you build a brilliant, beautiful And when it comes to getting the word out, it's like having a marketing team behind you. You can easily create email and social media campaigns to reach customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your one pound per month trial today at Shopify.co.uk slash podsave the uk. Go to shopify.co.uk slash podsave the uk. That's shopify.co dot uk slash podsave theuk Now, Nigel Farage, I think we can all agree, man of people. Ordinary, everyday bloke down the pub. And just like every ordinary bloke down the pub, he received a five million pound gift from a Thai based crypto billionaire. So this story It's as English as unseasoned meat. So this story was originally reported in The Guardian a few weeks ago. It revealed that Farage received the money just weeks before he stood in the 2024 general election. At the time, he said the gift from businessman Christopher Harbin was purely private and was given for security purposes to keep him safe and secure. Now, importantly, the working class hero never declared this on his MP's register of interests and is now facing an inquiry from the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner into whether his failure to do so broke Commons rules. Now, this is gonna sound like I'm just sort of reading a calendar off here, but the dat es are really important, okay? So Farage was given the money on the 5th of April, 2024. Two months later, on the 3rd of June, he announces that he's going to stand for election as an MP in Clacton. Parliamentary rules state that any benefits should be declared for the twelve months before taking up office as an MP. There is an exemption for personal gifts, but the rules state if there is any doubt the benefit should be registered. So what could the watchdog do if they find that Farage has broken the code of conduct? Well, punishments range from a written or oral apology to a suspension from the house or even expulsion in the most serious cases. Now, in the interests of uh covering ourselves legally, Nigel Farage and Reform UK continued to deny wrongdoing. A spokesperson for Reform UK said he has always been clear that this was a personal, unconditional gift, and no, rules were broken. We look forward to this being put to bed once and for all. Again, just as a as a follow-up to that right to reply, it's worth noting who Christopher Harborn is. So he's one of half a dozen people who own Tether. Now, Tether is a company that issues the most widely traded cryptocurrency. Farage has publicly backed Tether, following Harborn's multiple donations to the party. Um Farage has said Tether is a stable coin. Stable coins, crypto. This world is enormous, and I've been urging for years that London should embrace it. So in parallel reforms proposed crypto assets and digital finance bill sets out a bold post-Brexit roadmap to make the UK the world's premier hub for cryptocurrency. Over the past seven years, Christopher Harborn has given more than £22 million to Nigel Farage's political party. And it accounts for two-thirds of all funding received by Reform UK. So every one of those details is incredibly important here. He's saying that this has no bearing on the political direction of his party, but it comes from the same person who was given two-thirds of all of the funding received by Reform UK , and in parallel, he has proposed a series of legislative agendas that would massively benefit anyone who is making a load of money from crypto. But there is more to this story than it first seems. So on Thursday. There's even more. It already seems more. There's even more. So on Thursday, just as the inquiry was announced, Farage's story shifted during an interview with the sun. Five million quid, it's a hell of a lot. I know and it's very unusual for someone to give up twenty-seven years of their life to campaign for something, and this was given to me as on an unconditional basis, completely unconditional basis, but frankly, it was given as a reward for campaigning for Brexit for twenty seven years. And it had no it had no impact on your decision to come back into public life? No. Hang on a second. I can't be bought by anybody. No, not not anyone. He's also told Nick Ferrari in a separate interview that account activity relating to the five million pounds had been illegally obtained information. We should also say in regards to this U-turn, so him going from saying that it was for his security to saying it was, to be frank, a reward for working for Brexit for 27 years. The reform party spokesperson has said to the observer that both can be true at the same time. It was a reward after the years of danger he's put himself in and is still in now because of his campaig ning for Brexit, and now he can be safe for the rest of his life. Can I also just say, as a mild side note, it does always entertain me when Nigel Farage says that he worked to deliver Brexit for 27 years. Because the second it passed, he fucked off. If I'd worked to deliver something for 27 years, I'd see it through to its conclusion. The second Brexit was voted for, he went for some kippers and then he got the fuck out of there for a good solid couple of years. Like it it 's insane. Imagine if he'd actually bothered to stay it to see it through to actually be delivered. He'd have got 25 million quid probably. Oh my god. Well I mean it's it's it's been a fascinating stor y for so many different reasons. I think the first thing I would say, and it's something we've discussed a lot on this show, is about the uh scrutiny given to progressive candidates over uh right-wing candidates. You know, if you compare the freebies scandal to this . I mean, it's been chilling how long we spoke about the freebies scandal, which we should, absolutely we always should, but we should apply that to everyone. Um you know, I was listening to one of the many right-wing shows I occasionally tune into because I am a masochist. And, you know, it's amazing the excuses that his um his people come up with. You know, I've heard them saying, well, Nigel Farage needs that money for security , you know. People stand outside of his house. I'm sorry to break it to people, but uh journalists standing outside politicians' house is quite a normal thing. That's not unusual. There have been firebomb threats, no one's saying that, you know, things haven't been a little bit more hairy, but I'm sure there are other politicians who also could say that they need the same thing. Um and the fact of the matter is is that like for me, at the I mean there's so many problems with it. I there's problems with money in politics anyway , the whole donor model makes me very uncomfortable. I think there's lots of tightening up that needs to be done there. This is not the first time he hasn't declared money that he's received. There's been other incidences. It's one rule for him, one rule for everyone else. And he clearly doesn't register that five million pounds is a lot of money. But like how you just forgot, did you? Like what is this? And he's never made clear what the relationship is. He keeps saying it was an unattached donation. So is he a donor ? Is he a friend? Is he your fin-dom? What is it? That needs to be made clear, right? And he just he just won't do it. And also, I would like to say the plot thickens, but as we've already established, this plot is like my ass, thick as hell. And the thick plot thickens even further. Uh, because uh questions have now begun to emerge about how Farage paid for his £1.4 million surrey home, purchased on the tenth of May 2024, weeks after receiving the gift. So Reform UK has denied that the property was bought using Harborne's money. Uh Farage's spokesperson told the BBC that he paid for the Surrey property purchase with his 1.5 million fee for participating in I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in late 2023. Now as a side note, I have a few friends that have been on that show. And I imagine when they find out Farage got over a million quid, they're going to be absolutely livid. Um he's told uh he said that the earnings from this reality show were paid to his personal media company, which is called Thorn in the Side Limited, which is so embarrassingly Alan Partridge. It's unbelievable how partridgey that is. Um so the FT has now highlighted that the company accounts show its cas position rose over the relevant period, but no dividend was paid out, meaning that the money stayed in that company. Again, the spokesperson for reformers said the house was not born with heart was not bought with Harborn's gift. And the spokesperson has suggested this was proved by the fact that anti-money laundering checks relating to the purchase were carried out before the gift was made. And the spokesperson has said Nigel has multiple sources of income, as you can see from his parliamentary register. He did not respond to the question of whether the reform leader stood by his claim that the money from the reality show was used to buy his home. Now obviously there's a lot going on here and yesterday the uh Guardian ran a story uh under the headline Has anybody seen Nigel? Speculation swells as Farage Performs disappearing act. Um i it's been six days uh well sorry it's now been seven days since he cancelled a scheduled appearance at a reform UK rally in Sunderland which is a really key election target for them looking forward to the next next election. And he has been sort of oddly quiet. And Farage does this. There have been points in his political career where, in the kind of midst of scandal, he's sort of gone to ground. And I think it's really important that he is appropriately scrutinized from across the political spectrum because this is something that we should be asking questions about. Like this is something that re it's really serious. And I will say Farage has occupied a special place in the British press for the last 25 years. He's enjoyed, I would say, a kind of gossamer-thin level of scrutiny that is rivaled only by one man, and that man I believe is Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson's political demise was the direct result of a scandal, the Party Gate scandal, and then the uh idea that he'd been hiring somebody who'd been committing sexual misdemeanours in the full knowledge that they had been uh committing sexual misdemeanours. If you remember the gentleman in question was Christopher Pincher and Boris Johnson had said Pincher by name, Pincher by Nature. So there i th there were sort of two things. And I always believe that part of the reason those scandals brought Johnson down was that they attracted scrutiny from across the political spectrum. And it was the first time in Johnson's career that he'd really been exposed to the full weight of properly resourced media accountabil ity in this country. And I will be very interested to see if the same set of scrutiny is applied across the spectrum of the British political media to Nigel Farage and whether he is able to withstand that scrutiny if indeed it is applied. If there's one thing we know about the British public, we really hate hypocrisy. And indeed part of the this sweller feeling about our political class is related to this idea of hypocrisy. And this is hypocrisy. What he is doing. I mean there's so many elements of that with Nigel Farage. I mean I you know I learned recently that he does all his MP surgeries remotely, even though he's campaigning against work from home. You know, it's just the whole thing smack. So I hope that there will be proper scrutiny of it. My worry, of course, is that I saw a couple of clips from um uh from some journalist about Nicola Thorpe, who you know, who we both know uh, she was interviewing some people at the United Kingdom march. Uh and one clip stands to it out in my mind where the the gentleman says, Oh, you know, I don't I don't I haven't watched legacy media or whatever language he uses for some time. So there's my worry is that like, you know, even if there is this galvanized um press who actually is doing their job across the board, will it even reach them? I don't know. And you know, I I really feel that Nigel Farage is a con man and people are getting scammed because he reaches into their deepest anxieties. But nonetheless, let's see. Let's see what happens. It's sort of a lot easier to be a politician when what you're doing is defending capital. Because if you're out there advocating for like a fairer tax system or to fight the climate crisis, who's gonna give you five million quid? Attenborough? A polar bear? Like it's it really, it ri it's it really sucks. And I would like to say right now that on the basis of this, I've had a huge change of political heart. I am now in uh I'm a full supporter of cryptocurrency. If there are any cryptocurrency billionaires who are currently not based in the UK for tax reasons, I will take five million pounds of your money and I will be openly, and the two things will not be connected . Openly advocating for more use of cryptocurrency and for children to be given cryptocurrency as early as seven years old. But the two things will not be related. Love the idea of niche coin. What do you trade it in for? It's probably called bot coin or something. Like I'll be trading in bot coins and it will have nothing to do with any donations I may receive. Well, if you This podcast cannot be bought. If you got to the end of this episode and are thinking I really need to hear m more of this scintillating political analysis. Then what the fuck is wrong with you? You're in luck. Nish spoke to Tommy Vitor in the latest PodSave the World episode. Do check it out. We'll be putting a link in the show notes. And if you want to watch me do stand-up comedy for 97 minutes, you can do that. Nish don't kill my vibe is available on YouTube. Also, when I plugged it last week, I forgot to plug the fact that I'm also going on tour. Because I'm great at self-promotion. Fantastic at it. Tickets available on nishmand.co.uk if you live in the UK or Ireland, I'm there. September to December. Why not watch my stand-up show for free on YouTube and then pay to watch a completely different hour of stand-up in person. Can you pay using buttcoin? Tickets are available in even the most discredited of cryptocurrencies. I will accept donations. Minimum spend, five million pounds. And that's it. Thanks for listening to PodSave the UK. PodSave the UK is an intelligent squared production for crooked media and whichever discredited cryptocurrency has donated money to us this week. You know what I was just thinking, if you plug your buttcoin, is it a butt plug? Thanks to senior producer Katie Grant, digital producer Jacob Liebenberg, and assistant producer Jasmine Davis. Our theme music is by Vasilis Vertopoulos and our engineer is Dana Rooker. The executive producers are B. Duncan and Katie Long. Remember to get in touch with us. You can email your questions or thoughts to podsave theuk at crooked.com. It's a new email address. New email address? That's podsave theuk at crooked.com. You can also follow us on at PodSave UK on Instagram, TikTok, X and Blue Sky. And remember to hit subscribe for new shows on Thursdays.