Final Thoughts on Anti War Politics

Hi, this is Spot UK. I'm Nishkma, and I'm Coco Khan. The King of the North has come down to London and could be our next prime minister in a few short weeks. For a man who wasn't even an MP until last week he's played a blinder but what does any of this actually mean for us? Also, on the show, we're joined by Ben Rhodes, our counterpart from our sister podcast pod save the World. We'll be talking all things politics, identity, and lessons from across the pond . Okay , it's official. We will be getting our seventh prime minister in ten years . Standing at the infamous lecton of sorrow on Monday, Kirstarmer said that he will go with good grace, responding to mounting pressure from within Labour to set out a timetable for his departure after Andy Burnham's historic by election win. Burnham, fresh from being sworn in as Makerfield's MP confirmed he'll run for labour leadership and within minutes of his statement where Streeting, the most likely leadership contest contender, announced he would be backing Burnham instead. In a statement posted to social media on Monday, Streeting said we could spend the summer exaggerating small differences or we can roll up our sleeves and help him deliver the change our party and our country needs. It seems increasingly likely that Labour is looking solely to Burnham now to help win the fight of our lives against the forces of nationalism. So there is clearly no pressure on his shoulders sir . So are we looking at a coronation here? Is that a good thing? What the fuck is going on to discuss this? We've got Tom McTeague, the editor of the New Statesman. Welcome back, Tom, no pressure on you here either. Yeah. I was hoping you were going to tell me what was going on . We've never had a situation before in the history of British pol itics where someone who wasn't an MP has won a by election with a view to becoming prime minister within the space of a few months. We're in once again we find ourselves in unprecedented times and I think probably not in a good way. Like it does it speaks to kind of the constant the churn and the chaos of British politics . In May, you wrote that covering British politics today is to be trapped somewhere between despair , horror, outrage and intrigue . Where are you where are you where are you what point in that square are you bouncing closest towards? I must admit I'm in the intrigue bit of that of a square right now . Just because it is intriguing, right? It is completely intriguing . It's completely fascinating. You know, we've had this. Is it going to happen? Is he going to stand ? Is he going to win? Is he going to challenge? Who is going to challenge against him? And suddenly everything's kind of moved out the wayp.art A from , we should say last night on newsnight , Al Carnes did suggest that he was thinking about standing against King against Dani Burnham. So there is something, there is a potential challenge out there, but everything else is gone . And so we're just in this really odd place where we're expecting a coronation of a man many of us have known for a long time and yet hasn't been in Westminster for so long . So you know, I'm intrigued by what is going to be the program? What's coming? How is it going to look different? You know, is it going to feel like something really has shifted? You know, almost from, you know, Teresa May to Boris Johnson . But in terms of a contest , there does need to be worth, I mean, that's that's my desire personally, but as I understand it, the polling suggests the same thing. The public wouldn't feel comfortable with a with a coronation. Would he not be doomed from the start if he does this? I think this is a really interesting thing that you've picked up on and what polls are starting to pick up on. We're having a look at this as well. And certainly I'm picking it up from friends and family and just sort of ordinary people who just chatting to me, you know , you know, centrist dad's book clubs and things like that that I , you know, that I belong to where there is a kind of sense of , you know, hang on a minute. What's what's going on here? So I think there is of a mood out there. You know, is this too presumptuous? And so I think Andy Burnham understands that and understands that it's a challenge for him and that he is going to have to explain what is going on and where his legitimacy comes from . But I think there is an expectation among the country that it is ultimately their choice who gets to govern the country and it's their choice who is removed. So that's one thing that Andy Burnham has to has to watch for it. I think he will. When you were last on the show, we talked about the fact that you spent a chunk of time with Kirst er and written a very, very detailed piece for the statesman about him. And that possibly makes you , I think one of the most qualified people in the country right now to speak to Starmer and why how did a man who sort of was sort of seen as really an inoffensive candidate , two years after winning a landslide in an election end up being ousted by his own party and end up sort of historic levels of unpopularity for a British Prime Minister . What went wrong for Kirstarma? I find myself being surprised at the level or the depth of vitriol against Kirstarma. And I think we have to acknowledge that, but that is it is out there. He is the most unpopular prime minister in history and we've had some pretty bad ones of late and he is more unpopular than them all . And he hasn't overseen a recession or a major foreign policy calamity or crisis. He hasn't really overseen a major, major, major crisis. You know, there have been scandals, the Peter Mallison scandal, you know, the clothing , the freebies scandal at the beginning . But I think there's something deeper going on. I think there's fundamentally two things at play. One is the reality that the status quo isn't wor and that people are frustrated and they keep voting for governments get a grip and to change it and to clearly show that they're improving things and that they're changing things. And I don't think we've really had a government with any real sense of energy, a kind of explosive energy that it is just gripping things and changing things in a way that you could so quickly understand and see and kind of form an opinion about it. Even if that opinion is negative , that you look at it and you go, I don't like that , but he's doing something. So we haven't had that. We've just had this sort of incremental ism where it effectively feels like nothing has changed. And I think that gets to the core point here , which is in that profile that I did of him, you know, he was looking for a reset because his first year in government had not gone well and people were asking what is the purpose of this government? What is it for? What are you trying to do? Tell me. And that was my pitch to him. You know, I said, Tell us what is the Kystaarm project. What is the point of this government? And I spent six weeks with him and fundamentally he couldn't really explain it. You know, and I went over and over again and asked him over and over again. And I think it boils down to this fundamental point . He doesn't think the status quo is broken or in a fundamental way that it needs overhauling . He thinks a sensible manager can make it work . He was trying to maintain the status quo to make it work just through incremental change . And I think it is broken and the public effectively have come to that conclusion a long time ago and they want something far more radical . I think I've repeated that every week since you said it look a version of citing you. I've not presented that as my own opinion of analyzing system. I've been very clear that it came from you. I've mentioned it ad nausem in conversations I've had with my friends and family. There's been there's a lot of reasons there's a lot of reasons people on the left of the British political spectrum are, in my view, justifiably upset , particularly the prescription of Palestine. I think that that is a sort of astonishing moral failure on his part. I think also the Bit Mandterelson scandal is a disgr . And I guess just from a kind of personal perspective, I know when I hear Nigel Farage say things like why is everyone so interested in five million quid, you know or when Boris Johnson described asim Perister Minial sal asar chiesicken feed, I understand why those people are disconnected from reality. I don't understand how Ki Stama can't identify that the systems in this country are broken. Just in terms of if you're a person who gets on a train or needs to see an NHS doctor or has children in state education , you can see that the instruments of the British state are not functioning proper ly and require radical overhaul. I'm interested in getting your opinion Tom on how is how is it possible that he couldn't see that? I actually think there's something psychological going on here. There's almost like a fundamental misunderstanding of what the job of being Prime Minister is . I remember thinking this of Theresa May when she went we had the terror attack in Manchester . And she didn't go to Manchester for the vigil that was taking place. And I think she did that because she thought it is my duty, my responsibility as leader to ensure that we are on top of all of the details . But actually, the job of being Prime Minister in that moment is an emotional one. It is to lead the country's emotional response to this awful event. And you have people who can manage the crisis, your home secretary, your Pervan secretaries and so on. You have to get the right team in place. But that part of the job is really, really important . And I think Kier Starmer is somebody who has spent his life succeeding in every position , every exam that he's ever taken, he'll have done very, very well in. But that is not the job when he bec omeime Pris Minter to ace the exact , to just manage the system well. It is to change the system , to break it, to look at why it's failing, and to say to have the imaginative understanding to say , That's not working and you have to then say to the country why it's broken and how you therefore intend to fix it. Do you think that actually now he has learned that lesson? And that is why he's not standing . You know, he was talking about that he would contest Burnham. Now he's saying he won't contest Burnham. Do you think finally that it's sunk in? Yeah, I think just reality sort of, you know, hit him and our cover story in this week's magazine by our political editor Alvare Ray sort of gets at this what went on and the sense is that his wife had a lot to do with it. You know, as there c'irscles around him sort of shrunk, trunk and trunk and he was left with, you know, his inner his inner core of friends and family. It ended up being , you know, his wife who was who told him that the sort of the game was up . I think from Starmer's perspective, he said , hang on, I won a landslide two years ago. I survived all the various crises that happened and now I'm being booted out in two years with no one really quite telling me why , other than losing popularity. And yet, the fundamental reality of our politics is you are only Prime Minister for as long as you can command a majority in the House of Commons. So what do we have? We have the fact that two hundred MPs or so went into Westminster Hall and greeted Andy Burnham, the conquering hero . There is the reality . two hundred are backing your rival who has just basically launched a coup against you. So I think it was that kind of realization that ultimately led to him sort of accepting reality . Okay, so let's go back to Bernam then. So if there is going to be no contest, even though there is still this possibility of Al Khan's running against him , do you actually think potentially a coronation whilst it might be expedient and might be something that the country actually wants? Do you think that there is an argument that it might be bad for Andy Burnham in the long term because it doesn't give him an opportunity to set out his stall? Do you think actually correlation might not serve him well. I think it's a good point. I know that that's something that quite a few people have raised with me. They want at least something , a way of hearing from him and what he thinks and what he intends to do and how he intends to manage , you know, having change. How do you stick with the fiscal rules and everything else has got Kirstama and Rachel Reeves into such difficulty and have radical change that's going to transform this country? There is a scenario in which he stands for the Labour leadership against somebody and he is able to set out his stall and people can listen and people can come to their own judgement. I think the difficulty is that winning the Labour Party membership vote is a different thing to projecting to the country. Before you go, and we will have to let you go, general election, there's been some voices saying that this is what needs to happen . What do you think? Will it happen? I know for sure that those around Andy Burner are thinking carefully about how they get a kind of public mandate of when they go for it . I think it's something that is in active , you know, it was in active discussions. I think he sort of tried to push it back when he was campaigning , but it's something that is clearly playing on their mind. And I think certainly , at the very least, we can say that the chances of a general election in twenty twenty seven are much higher now than they were just a few weeks ago. Good lord. Well do you remember that clip from Brenda in Bristol? Not another away. Yeah. Yeah , I'm feeling that a lot . On that bombshell Tom , as ever, thank you so much for joining us . I look forward to passing off more of your insights, my own. Thanks . Thank you. Stay with us after the break. We're going to be speaking with Ben Rhodes about the state of US and UK politics today and his new book Charting The History of America through famous spee ches . Potsay the UK is brought to you by Saley. We all know that one of the least enjoyable parts of travelling is landing in a new country and then immediately trying to figure out how you're going to get online without accidentally racking up a massive phone bill. That's where Saley comes in. 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That's a iLY dot com slash pod sa ve. Pod save the UK is brought to you by PowerPlays. If you've been watching football over the past few years and wondering how the World Cup became wrapped up in corruption scandals, political theater and increasingly controversial host nations, then there's a new p odcast you should check out. Power Plays is a five part audio documentary series from the Human Rights Foundation. It's hosted by investigative journalist Karim Zadan. The series traces the authoritarian history of the World Cup from Mussolini's Italy in nineteen thirty four and Argentina's military hunter in nineteen seventy eight through Putin's Russia in twenty eighteen and Qatar in twenty twenty two before looking ahead to the current tournament in the United States and future ones in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Through interviews with dissidents, football experts and historians, it explains how politics and football have become increasingly intertwined. 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And if Bernam does become labor leader, what lessons can be learned from mistakes by parties elsewhere? Joining us now to talk about this and so much more is Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes is the co host of our much more well presented sister podcast on safe the world and served as Deputy National Security Advisor and Chief Speechwriter to President Barack Obama. Since leaving the White House, he's spent a lot of time examining why right wing populists win power, why opposition parties struggle to stop them, and what we can learn from the rise of Donald Trump. He's also just released his new book All We Say, which explores the speeches that shaped America and the stories that nations tell about themselves. Ben, welcome back to Podsaf the UK, what a week. What a week, it's great to be here with you guys. It's Hod. You got a new prime minister and I am very well qualified to talk about the mistakes that Senator Left Party have made in other countries. I'm an expert on the mistakes that Senator Luckarties have made in other countries . Yeah, it's a hell of a wig for you to land in the United Kingdom. There's a lot going on. It's a lot of flux, hot weather . Let's just kick things straight off with the Prime Minister situation . You and Tommy Vita on Pods I think I've been talking a lot about Starmer's record in last the few weeks. Do you think it was the right decision ultimately for him to step down? I do, I do. I understand the argument that it's probably not the healthiest thing to have what maybe up to seven primeister Msin in a decade . It would be it would be I'm forty in my first thirty years there were five different prime ministers. So that's just contextualizing how bad the last decade has been. So that's not ideal But the reality is Starmer has not demonstrated that he has any capacity to find like that other gear that can tell the nation a story about where it's going that can make people believe that he's the right man to stand up to reform , to lay out a kind of visionary program that Britain needs. I mean, to me, actually was quite telling that yesterday was a tenth anniversary of Brexit. Yeah, because nobody in either party has been able to tell people in this country where it's going since Brexit. And with Starmer, what I've seen to just get at your framing, it is very reminiscent to me of the Biden years because you're so afraid of losing that you don't say the things that are going to be necessary to actually win against these populists. You know, it's all small ball policies . It's all like very defensive rhetoric . It's kind of like a talking points machine that looks like if you poured water on it, it might malfunction, you know . And look, I felt a little bad for Kirstarmer. I really did, actually , because he won this mandate, he kind of brought Labor Beck in from the wilderness. Like he is not governed terribly , but I think he just in extreme times which we're in you need to have more than someone who just presents as the safe option . The safe option has been losing to these populists. And I think obviously that was validated in like by election after by election . And you know, Andy Burnham, it seems like a better shot if you need to kind of , you know, you have a couple years to get your stuff together here to try to prevent this country from being the next one to go the way of Nigel Farage. You' saidve that there you felt a bit sorry for Kirstara and I wonder if that's because there's a sense that he was blamed for for so much stuff that was beyond him. I mean, I feel like to a certain extent all the frustration and anger of the last fifteen years ended up at his doorstep, even though yes, you know, if we're just being specific, I mean it wasn't all of that was him. I accept that he should have changed tack . But isn't that story just going to repeat itself? Like it very well may, but I'd say like a couple of things. Like you cannot make that go away. You cannot change the fact that in this country, there's not a clear path to growth. There's not a lot of money to do stuff, right? Like the piggy bank's kind of empty here . But I think what you can do first of all instead of, you know, I would try to like divine from afar. You guys know better than me like what his agenda was and it was all these kind of bite sized things here and there. Pick one or two things that you're really going to lean into . And by the way, if you if you're not going to be able to get everything done in the next couple of years, lay out kind of a vision that people can get excited about. Like this is where I want to go. Like these are the I'm going to here's when I'm going to prioritize in social services or here's the kind of long term pathway back to growth. Or here's how we're going to rebuild a relationship like with Europe. Like just give people something that they can grab onto through the kind of rough waters that you're in. I think the second thing is he seems so def ensive in his posture and his communication. And frankly, just to take foreign policy issues, I'm looking at this from the outside and I'm like, wait a second, like why are these people like not at all to the left of the Tories on things like Gaza. Why are they locking up people in the UK for like saying free Palestine? Like what is going on here? You know, I mean, I don't expect Kurestarmer to kind of emerge as like a leftist on any of these things , but it just you could kind of sense the fear of taking principle positions on things . And I think that makes people think that you're not going to fight for them on other things, right? If you look like you're afraid of kind of powerful interests, or you're afraid of like who might attack you or call you your name at all times or just how they seemed on some of these issues , then it makes you feel like well this person, are they really going to kind of go to battle for me? And then the last thing is just as a communicator, and I've been dealing with this question of political storytelling in my book , you know, Starmer never really told a story that made sense. It was a story about kind of being a safe p air of hands. And that can work in certain political moments . But in these kind of existential crises that we're going through on both sides of the Atlantic, like you need someone who can get up there and like kind of tell a story about again, how we're going to get out of this moment and get to something . See, my worry is with Andy Burnham , by all accounts, he's a wonderful communicator. He seems to really connect with people. He comes across as a genuine human being. Some good ideas have been floated about like social care reform., think We we need that've got an aging population. And he has had success in some of the projects he's had in Manchester in terms of public transport into public ownership again. So I think that speaks to something national ization as a project. But does any of that seem like enough to win people over? No. I mean, I think he starts from a slightly higher place. Again, as an outsetter watching this, not knowing Annie Burnham as well as you guys. I think that's very kind baby. I think I think you know Adri Bernard as well as he does seem like he's got more charisma. He's he's won and not just the by election, but obviously he's married he's won in Manchester that this is the part of the country, right that Labour needs to kind of reca pture . And by the way , actually, I kind of like as much as it probably divides people in the party that he went for the jugular. You know what I mean? Like that that, you know, I'm going to run in this biola just like take down the king. He went for the king and he didn't miss. You know And so that's like not a bad instinct. I do think he has not been that clear about what he's going to do . And again, like when you can't solve all the problems, right? Like if Britain's got plenty of problems. By the way, we're in the I'm coming to you from the largest glasshouse on earth. It's called the United States America. So please don't feel like I'm talking down. I'm actually looking up from where I am. Very nice looking across I think we're about even right. But it's ten years since twenty sixth day. Exactly. We've sort of been looking across each other. We've been looking across each other like , oh boy . But I think when you 're let's say you have ten things that are big problems, right ? You don't give half measures on all ten . You again, you pick a couple things . Like here's my plan to fix X, you know, to make the NHS work or here's a role for Britain in the world that is more principled and gives so actually you create a frame to take a position on things like Gaza. It's not just like calibrating between the left and the center. It's like, here are my principles for my foreign policy. By the way, one thing I'd say is get in a fight with Donald Trump. You know? Like Kirstar was like doing the carriage rides and like the flattery and and made him look super weak. I mean, that's how it looked to me . Georgia Maloney to take a page out of her book book, you know, like stand up to this guy, give people something to kind of rally around, you know, a little habit of little like nationalism of the progressive variety, you know? Because precisely because you're not going to be able to like turn the whole country around in two years , they just got to know like what are the things that this guy is willing to fight for and where is he trying to take us? And I don't need like nine hundred small proposals . I need like a couple big things that he's pushing for. Yeah, I think what you said there about triangulation is the biggest floor of policy terms of Stalmer's leadership. Even on something like Palestine , Labor pledged recognition of a Palestinian state, but also prescribed as a terrorist group, as direct action group, as you've already alluded to. So everything was an attempt to constantly triangulate, you know, they they banned far right agitators, but also Hassan Pika from coming into the country. And the problem is when you triangulate like that, A, no one knows what you stand for. And B, it makes you look like you don't have the ability to make value judgments. So on things. This is so important . And first of all, the Hussam Viker thing was like a crazy. I've been I've been on a stream like he's just a curious guy with opinions that are fairly mainstream in the world today. I mean, he's got like his opinions are probably seventy percent in the world, but put that aside. Let's talk about Zoram Mamdani for one minute because it ties directly to what you said which, is Zuramdani took positions on Israel that here might have gotten public hand, right? Like maybe you wouldn't be allowed to come here, right? You know, even people that didn't agree with his positions on Israel , when he took those positions and then a bunch of people were like, you know, coming after him, attacking him, including some powerful people and like Chuck Schumer wasn't endorsing him, and he stuck by his position on Israel. They're like, maybe he will fight to lower my prices. Yeah, right. Because what he he showed is had a political backbone. And I think that's something that center left progressive politicians have lost sight of, like Obama used to say something to us that I thought was really interesting. If you don't show that you're willing to lose an election over something , you probably won't win an election. And the Democratic Party and the Labor Party appears so afraid of losing that nobody knows kind of what they stand for and what they'll actually like go to the mat for. You spent a lot of time thinking about what went wrong for the Democrat and writing about what went wrong for the Democrats and particularly in twenty twenty four and what they need to do to form an effective opposition to Trump . How are you viewing comparable challenges in the UK in terms of the rise of Nigel Farage and Reform ? Are you seeing the kind of warning lights flashing on the dashboard in the same way as they probably should have been for the Democrat Party in twenty twenty four. I'm seeing the warning lights flashing. And you know , there's so many things you could say. I'll just take through a few. I mean, thankfully at least your guy's not eighty years old I think generational change is like critically important . But the other things I'd say about the lessons from the Democratic Party . First of all , if you have like a right wing populist , you don't deal with that by tacking right and being like, well, we're going to embrace some of their positions to try to diffuse that , because then people will just say, well, why don't I just go for the genuine article? Yeah, you know , if you keep legitimate as well as you're legitimizing their narrative, and you're also just suggesting that you're not offering like an actual contrast. And so you might as well go to that person. The other thing I'd say is and this is more important , you cannot get pulled into the trap. This is the trap that Trump laid for the Democrats and some of the smarter people around them probably laid because Trump is just being himself . If you're the ones defending the institutions, if you're the ones defending the quote unquote norms, if you're the ones who look like you're kind of trying we're to keep things at the way that they were and these people are the scary people, you're wildly out of step with the mood of the public overwhelmingly in the sense that there's no going back or there's nothing to preserve. Like people want something different . And if you allow the right wing to become the counter culture and the reformers and the people that are trying to break a broken system , you will lose. Like we have to be for a different system too . Like we have to show that we're disruptors. We have to show that we don't want to preserve something that is not working for people. And then the other thing I'd say is people want like authenticity from their political figures. They don't want you to sound like a politician. Like Kier Starmer sounds literally like he was designed in a laboratory to be a centrist British politician. Like if you look at the Democrats who are getting traction now, like a Graham Platiner in Maine . Like it's a human being. He's a flawed human being. But by the way, the more his flaws come out, the more people are like, well, you know, shit, man, that guy's been through some shit, man. Yeah. Like he's on a journey, you know? He's on a journey that kind of makes feels a bit like the journey that we've all been on this country, you know? Like and so that idea of like authenticity and not sounding like the politicians that everybody's sick of and not like speaking in talking point jargon and not defending establishments and ways of doing things that people are sick of and not just tacking right on everything because it looks like you're afraid that you're going to get out flanked on immigration or something like having like a different vision of it. Like all of these things are lessons that we learned not capitulating on Gaza that destroyed the Democrats in twenty twenty four. Like I see the same movie playing over here except with a slightly younger man . And I've seen the ending of that movie and it's not good. I mean, just on a personal level, I've heard anti starmer chance at football matches. I went to buy a coconut the other day and a man I propose of nothing. I hate Gear Starmer. Okay, that's great now. I'm just saying I'm just trying to buy a coconut. Such a great window into coconut's life that just of an evening of an afternoon she's got to buy a single coconut's very hot.. It's extraordinary It is a drag. It's a drain. But anyway, and so like that felt me unprecedented, but then I reflected that we live in a social media age. We are algorithmically being driven to have these strong opinions . Yeah. Are we sure that this is unique to Starma or if algorithmically we are in the same trap and it will happen over and over again? We are in an algorithmic trap, and that's another thing that I thought a lot about because the way people consume political speech, right, has been transformed in just the last fifteen, seventeen years since I entered the White House, right? You used to actually be able to see whole arguments. Now you see clips that make you either really affirmed that you're right or really angry at people that you disagree with . But I think one way that you deal with that beyond again being authentic , another lesson from the Biden years, Biden was constantly affirming these things he was doing. Like, well, I've passed an infrastructure bill. And, you know, I , you know, I'm investing in this and it's getting better. And Star I saw all the time, like, you know, we did this small thing and change has come and no acknowledge what a steaming pile of shit everything is. Yeah. Like I think people are ready for someone to tell them the truth. You know, like capitalism is completely fucked, like inequality is completely out of control. Like nobody believes that their kids' future going to be better than the present. Like artificial intelligence is coming for our jobs. Like I'm worried about my kids being friends with a chat bot . There's like war all over the world . Like there's a lot of shit going on, you know, and both of our countries have kind of lost a sense of national identity. What does it mean to be British in the two thousand twenties? What does it mean to be American? And so I think what you can do that too many politicians are afraid to do is level with people at how bad it is and don't say that you're going to fix it in a year. Be like tell them like this is going to take some time people, but here's here's what's going to guide me through that. And here give me my priorities. And here's here's the here's the step by step you know that I want to follow to get to a different future than we're in the present. You worked on a political campaign with an at the time obscure American politician who came from a background that was, you know, not impoverished but certainly not aristocratic in any way . It made sense that the Obama campaign was insurgent was promising change . How have progressive people , have progressive politicians like Kirstarmer and Joe Biden ended up becom ing perceived as defenders of a status quo that really progressive people shouldn't really believe in, right? Like we are living in the wake of Reagan Thatcher economics , right? That's why there's not enough money in the budget to pay for things that people want. That's why there's runaway inequality. That's why jobs have been shipped overseas. And yet we've been left holding the bag for it . Yeah , because Trump comes in and he rants and raves about bad trade agreements or the white working class getting screwed. But then meanwhile, all he does is give more and more tax credits to rich people. I woke up after the Donald Trump victory in twenty sixteen and when I really thought about it, I was like, shit, man, he had the same message that we did. We ran against Hillary and said, she can't be trusted to bring change because she's part of the establishment that got us into this m ess. And that was frankly like the same message to Donald Trump running and Tilion. When you are defending these institutions and ways of doing things against people that are scary , you don't have to defend the whole thing though. Like you can you can you can run against the system too, right? I mean, this is the core point like progressives actually should be the ones running against the system , running against a rigged economy, running against a stupid foreign policy that spends too much money on wars and bombs and not enough money on schools and healthcare, right? Like that should be our happy, safe places progressives . But instead, it's like we are so upset by the kind of disruption of these populists that we're left kind of defending regular order and government and a certain kind of foreign policy in the world. Like, no, no, like throw that all out and liberate yourself to think about what the system be precise because the system doesn't work. Like what should replace it? What is a different kind of economy? No . Before we go to our next break, we wanted to tell you about another from p theod crooked media family. It's What a Day. We don't need to tell you that the news is an unrelenting hellfire, but it doesn't have to be this way. What a day gives you what you need to know about news, politics, and the stuff you care about in just twenty minutes a day Monday through Friday . Host Jane Coston is here to guide you through the nonsense and give you reporting and analysis on the stories that are shaping our world right now with the help of some of the smartest thinkers and doers around yeah, in the specific case of this week, I would also like to add and me . I think I qualify as neither one of the smartest thinkers nor doers of our age , but occasionally they decide to have a stand up committee . So look, gets everything you need to stay in formed, there's no endless doom scrolling required. So check out Water Day now on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts Pod save the UK is brought to you by Vanta. What's the one thing in business that's spreading as fast as AI ? AI risk every new tool your team signs up for, every vendor that turns on AI fe atures, every new integration. 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Plus Wise runs over seven million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. fifteen million people already trust Yes to manage their money internationally . Be smart, get wise. Listen, I travel a lot. I am all over the place. I don't think it's a humble brag. I think it's just a full on brag. Yeah, you know, I go places, I'm international. Guys, I'm a man of the world. I am professionally and occasionally personally required to be abroad due to a combination of being a touring stand up comedian and also having family that has managed to span the entire span of this planet. It is very helpful to have a card that you know is going to mean that you're not getting ripped off and that is a secure and safe way of spending money in a different country. Just one last thing to think about, which you've probably got a lot to think about in your global jet set lifestyle. Well, for someone as sort of broadly administratively incompetent as me, one last thing to think about is extremely helpful, frankly. So download the Yes app today or visit wise. com terms and conditions apply . You and Tommy talked about this on podside the world bit. Elon Musk is now sort of backing restore and saying only restore can save Britain. You also have to pick fights. I mean, one thing Trump is great at is he's just constantly picking fights. I mean, I'm getting exhausted by it, but it took Kirstarmer like was kind of passively watching this rise of reform and well lately he's been doing it because he wanted to survive but like pick you what you know what they do well pick the worst person on their side and just go after that person. This is my personal pet theory about this. believe that part of the reason that have maybe not been as aggressive on this as they might have been is A it's part of this triangulation campaign. So Kitama on the one hand would say you know this is very unbritish disgrace all this stuff, but also they pursued a much more draconian immigration policy. I also believe that they thought that they were being politically smart because I think they thought that if reform becoming successful is actually good for the Labour Party because it would destroy the vote on the right. And you would hear like anonymous briefings from labour ministers come through in bits of the press where they believed that Farage actually would split the vote with the Conservative Party. What they did not foresee , which anyone with anyone who's paid half an eyes worth of attention to British politics in the twenty first century could have seen this coming, that farage would eat the Conservative Play. That is the inevitable result of post Brexit British politics. I really believe that that's what was happening there. We went through this too . There were Democrats who thought Trump would be good. Yeah , because oh, he's crazy, you know, split the Republicans and then we'll be Trump. And look where we are ten years later , right ? And I think what it misreads is we are in a completely transformative moment in our politics. It's not the normal pendulum swing back and forth between the two parties . Like we are in a revolutionary moment globally . Like the entire system doesn't work, like globalization, neoliberal economics, the international order , like it's all unraveling . And so if you don't show in your words and actions and approach to politics that you get that , you're not going to be able to survive the storm that is coming through. And so I think the question is , you know, there's why allow the populist label to be a right wing label . Like we need what is a left wing populism that is not just about you know, we've had this dumb debate in the United States and you've had it here too. Like do we, talk about kitchen table issues or we talk about protecting the democracy? Or do we lean into these culture war issues or do we try to avoid them? No, like, you have to lean into everything. Yeah . And you have to show that, hey, if we don't have a different kind of government and different kinds of people running the government and different ways of doing politics, we're not going to get better outcomes, right? Like the kitchen table issues depend upon a different kind of politics and we can't avoid these culture issues . We actually have to kind of lean into them and show people what a different national identity is for Britain or what additional different national identity is for the United States. Not mean that everybody's going to agree with you on every single culture issue . But again, like I even saw like, you know, everybody's so burned by Brexit. Pure Starmer was like reluctant to like do pretty modest things with the EU, you know, like no, what is your vision that hangs Brexit on the Conservatives and says like, okay, maybe I don't know whether you guys are ready to move in the EU or not, but like what is a different relationship with the world? What's a different relationship with the U? Just being the junior partner to the United States when the United States is run by fucking lunatic is not like a winning proposition, you know, for how to be British in the world in the twenty first century. I mean, you know, what you've outlined there in terms of where Britain needs to go , our changing position in the world, our changing friends, the fact that Reagan and Thatcher gutted all our industries, and now we don't even have our own abilities to manufacture or to rebuild ourselves. And so is Andy Burnham able to change directions on that? The reason I ask that is twofold. One, just in terms of him as a character, do you feel excited about him? Do you think he has the authenticity, the ability to communicate that people will give him the good grace and will give him the benefit of the doubt? When he says, Look, it's going to take time, but I've identified that we need to bring back this this,, this, this , and it will take time. Does he have that? And realistically, can Britain do it and how long ? One of the things that Trump did is he was so brutal with the Republicany P.art It was like was like it, oh, well if this guy's willing to like break his own party and remake it then maybe he will break other things that we don't like in the political system. I think Annie Burnham's got to come in pretty hot, you know, and like this is going to be a different kind of labor party. This is not working. It's not just like, oh, I'm taking the baton from Kir and like do things slightly differently and reshuffle the cabinet . No, like I think he needs to show everything he does out of the gate and he's going to have a chance in September at the Party Convention and has got to show like we get it. Like we are not meeting the moment. Like we're not meeting people where we are. I'm going to look different, I'm going to be different, I'm going to act different . I'm going to kind of name the things that people are frustrated with the Labor Party about . So one thing he can do and has an opportunity to do because of the, like I said, the way that he just went for it is show that like this we are showing up different and everything's going to be different. I'm not afraid to like piss some people off or hurt some people's feelings here because I mean that's what happened in the Democratic Party. Everybody is so afraid of hurting Joe Biden 's feelings that we stood around for a year . And even when he left, like the reason Calmaris lost the election, the number one reason they're a bunch, is that she wouldn't even say that she'd do anything differently than Joe Biden, like she looked more afraid of hurting Joe Biden 's feelings than of being where the voters are. So I think if he can kind of make the Labor Party look and feel different and not be so weted to like being polite that will matter. I'm sorry this is turning into Cocoa's anxiety hour, but my worry with Andy Burnham is because the problems that Britain face are so seismic and have been not just the last fifteen years but all the way back to Margaret Thatcher , can he actually make people's lives better? Well I think that one thing that I saw Starmer do is you know he was promising like growth, you know Biden made this mistake too like it's not just about like the metrics. It's about what is like the values proposition that is going to guide like your decis ions and your politics and your priorities, right? Because actually part of what Starmer did that was wrong is like he was promising things it's going to get better . You know, trust me, like you said , instead of it being framed on like, what are you fighting for? Like when you have to make a decision which direction you go in? Like I actually I'll give you one example , like the three percent GDP defense target that Starberg on what the fuck is the point of that? Like and I say this as a national security guy. Like don't spend three percent like the growth , three percent GDP, these are like buzzwords. It doesn't tell me anything what you actually care about . They sound like things that politicians talk about. You know what? If you came in and said , I'd like to spend more on defense, but we can't right now because I care more about making the NHS work. I think people would like that. And some people would be like, Oh my God, you know, what about Putin? You know, like, well, you know, we're going to invest in some defense capabilities that we need and we're going to stand with the Ukrainians, but like we got to make sure that Britons can continue to get their healthcare, you know , and pick industries that you're going to invest instead of just like some amorphous growth targets. And so I think all of these, you know, it's not going to be easy , but it is possible . And again, if people see that you're fighting for the right things, if people see that you're willing to make hard choices, if people see that you're willing to piss off some people, like the national security hawks on things like defense spending , then they'll give you more time. You know, on this show, we've been covering a lot of issues that Britain's facing. And certainly what',s become clear is that there's a generational problem and I always wondered why Labour didn't position itself as the party of the young. You know, that would allow it to address the housing crisis. We've got a youth unemployment crisis. We've got a youth mental health crisis. It's future facing. Everybody loves the children and we have to get the young back on side . But there's this wisdom, this political wisdom that fundamentally you must always appeal to the boomers because the boomers come out and vote. What do you think about that? Well , if the vote is for the boomer if the competition for the is for the boomers, the right will win. I mean, that's what I think about that. If you're just constantly fighting a battle for people over sixty five or seventy, like you're playing on the opponent's ground you know, yeah, you gotta try to get some of the votes, but you know, you got to mobilize young people and you got to get young people to , you know, we did this with Obama in a way, like get the young people to talk to their grandparents and parents, right? One way that you can do that is tell young people like don't again , instead of being scared of them, be like, I understand why you're pissed off. I understand why you don't trust politicians. Like, you don't trust politicians for these reasons and tell them why. It's because you don't see any vision for your future and what politicians are talking about or you see your friend s being locked up for holding a sign that says free palestine. Like name it, you know , what young people want to see from politicians is that they get it , not that they're like packaging talking points about policy issues that young people even care about. Like the starting point is I mean I thought a lot about what makes political speech work. And one is it like is this person just telling me the truth they understand like why I don't trust polit icians? Is that the most important thing then? The sense that you're coming across as truthful. Political communication was your bread and butter for so many years. Now you've written this book studying history of speeches and whilst they might not all have been made by politicians, they are all by definition political speech. Is a sense that the person speaking is being truthful, the most important thing , the key component to a great political speech. Yeah , there's a couple of things. Like one is the speech that is being delivered , you have to be the only person on Earth who can deliver that speech. Yeah. Like it has to be authentically you. Like your starmer's speeches, anyone, like anyone could read those speeches. Like, because they have to tell you not just what the person wants to do, but like why does this person want to do this, you know? You know, I have the Obama speech in the book, the speech on race in two thousand eight . And the way that he gets into the racial divide in the United States is by talking about people in his own life, right? So his pastor, Jeremy Wright, who'd said all these things had that caused all this uproar. He'd said things had actually aged pretty well like America's a racist nation and our foreign policy comes back home, you know, put that aside. But he's basically saying like in the famous passage in that speech like, I can no more Reverend Wright did wonderful things in my community. He did wonderful things for me and my family. And he said a bunch of things I disagree with. My white grandmother who raised me, who loved me, who I love , said racist things that made me cringe. Like these people are a part of me and I choose to see the better in them. And then he takes that and projects it out to black inequality and the grievances of the white working class and said if we allow ourselves to be divided by race , we're never going to make progress in healthcare and education . But if we choose to see the things that we have in common and we choose to see the better in each other, we can actually build a coalition to do things. Now the reason he could get to that second part is because he personally in an authentic way showed like, yeah, like these these are the people in my own life who are like this and I can project that forward. And so he was the only person who could deliver that message. And so people like actually listen to it, whereas if he just skipped ahead to the second part of that message, it wouldn't have resonated in the same way. I think the second thing that I find in going back in history is, again, like the most powerful speeches are when people tell you something that they haven't heard from a politician before that they intuitively know to be true. Like it's a hard truth. Like it's not going well here in the UK, you know? Like I'm not gonna tell you that brighter days or tomorrow, like it's probably the day after tomorrow. You know, it's going to take some time to get out of this hole. Like just level with people, you know, and those two things , like that authenticity of why you want to do something because of something in your own background. Like any Bernard has a good, you know, you guys know this country better than me, but like coming out of Manchester , like I think he's got a better capacity to kind of speak to what people are pissed off about and why they feel let down by London politics than probably Kurestarmer did, you know ? But then the second point is can he like deliver hard truths to labor and to the country at large? But how is he going to do that in sixty seconds, which is how now all political communication must be delivered? So here I'm going to be a bit of a luddite in defense speeches because you know, I thought a lot about this and like Cooker, you said the point about algorithms and that's exactly right. But if you look at the history of speeches, like the medium always like enters into it, right ? You know, when I started book it's Ben Franklin, only people can hear the speech are in the room, but then it gets reprinted newspapers. People did like carefully worded arguments. Then throughout the nineteenth century, like performance matters, like speaker circuit, you're giving the same speech day after day . So like performance, like the ability to , you know, almost like stand up comics, by the way, the ability to like connect with an audience matters. Then radio comes along and kind of carefully worded explanation that sounds folksy matters, and that's like FDR in America. Television comes along and that's Martin Luther King and John Fennedy and Charisma matters. Well, with social media and the internet, nobody's listening to a whole speech . Nobody's listening to a whole argument. Nobody's like so our capacity to talk to one another and to listen to one another is replaced by the algorithm which takes a clip and packages it and fires it into your algorithm and again makes you really angry or really a ffirmed, right? And Trump is perfect for this age or Nigel Farage because they'll ran for however long and then the algorithms will do the work for them . However, I actually still think that the appropriate counterprogramming to that is not necess arily to mimic that. Like and Democrats are like, What's our social media strategy ? Or maybe I should go on this podcast If you don't know what your story is, all of those other commun ications will be bad . Like a speech is where you tell a story and you figure out what your message is. I think that's a really, really important message Pod save the UK is brought to you by BT . We talk a lot on this show about the big things shaping Britain the economy, public services, business, technology, for so much of what keeps the country moving is the infrastructure we barely even notice. Exactly. The systems quietly working in the background, keeping homes connected, businesses running, and services operating, they only really get attention when they stop working, which is why companies like BT matter. For one hundred and eighty years, BT has built a legacy of engineering excellence, helping power the connections that modern Britain depends on. BT's network is in many ways the silent engine of the UK, building and maintaining the resilient infrastructure that keeps communities connected and the country moving forward. And security is a big part of that. BT helps protect homes and businesses by shielding the UK from around four million cyber threats every day, providing a vit al layer of defense that most of us never even see. It's that combination of reliability, resilience, and specialist expertise that's made BT the most trusted network, supporting more homes and businesses than any other. BT behind Brilliant Things Search YBT to find out more Just before we let you go , we have to ask you what the fuck is going on with Iran . Like what's what's happened? What I can't keep I feel like I can't keep track of where we are with it. So we have fourteen point memorandum of understanding , but there are still ideas that the talks are still breaking down on a kind of date. As we record at ten thirty AM on Wednesday, the twenty fourth of June, what is the state of play here? I think one of the reasons this is disorienting is that America lost a war yet, right ? And the fourteen points weird World War one echo es are not like a negotiated deal. They're like the terms of surrender for the United States . And Trump is simultaneously trying to extricate himself from a that wor hed realizes has gone catastrophically wrong while spinning it as a victory . And so whenever the actual terms get out and people see them, he tries to do something he threatens to destroy Iran again or he lies about what's in the agreement . And then the Iranians say, well fuck you, like we're fine. We'll just keep the straight of hornmoon shut. And then we're scramble again. Because if you look at the terms of the agreement compared to what Trump was trying to do before the war, right? So before the war, we were in a negotiation , and the U. S. position was you can have absolutely no nuclear program . You have to end your ballistic missile program or at least beyond any geography that can reach Israel. You have to stop all your support for proxy groups across the Middle East. Then when he goes towards it's clearly a regime change war. Iranian people have to rise up to know who's in the beginning. This was a regime change. I was there. Like he used to make that case to Obama, you know, and he made it so often that by the end Obama be on the phone he'd like kind of start reading other documents, you know? Because it's like because we're not going to do this because it was a dumb fucking thing to do. Because you know what we did when we war gamed the war, the Iranians shut down the Strait of Hormouth. And you can't destroy a nuclear program with bombs because they can move it around on the ground, right? And so where Trump is that if you look at the terms of that agreement , Iran gets billions and billions of dollars selling oil without doing anything , right? Like without any nuclear concessions , they de facto control that straight. They're going to have a tolling system. They might call it like an insurance scheme. But they're going to be getting revenue from that too . And so they're going to get a three hundred billion dollars investment fund from the Gulf for I assume that maybe Jared Kushner and Steve Wookaff have a piece of the action on that one. That's how that kind of feels to me. But he's accepting that none of the things in any out told him were going to happen. The regime is more entrenched than it was before the war, right? They're stronger geopolitically because they've demonstrated they can control the straightforward moves . Like they know that they're holding the global economy hostage, so they have to get billions of dollars in oil revenues because that's the price of getting on the war, but also because they need that oil on the market to bring down gas prices in the United States. And so the other thing that's kind of interesting about the deal is, again, the nuclear concessions, as envisioned, they are like pushed into the future. There's going to be a negotiation for sixty days before we even get to that. The Iranians may never even do those things because they don't have to do that. They can get all this money anyway and kick the can down the road. And they know that the United States doesn't really want to restart this war because it's politically unpopular and because it's devastating the global economy. So they're not afraid that in sixty days Trump's going to like start bombing them again because is he really going to do that right for an election? So this is people in America don't want to come out and just say like we lost this war. This war was really stupid . But like that's clearly what's happened . Yeah, that phrase we lost the war, or America has lost this war has not been said and certainly not been made clear . I do wonder as well, you know, this MOU , why is it better it's not better than the JCPOA? No. Well, it's better for Iran. Yeah. Well, it's first of all , and this is most important point, we didn't have to fight a war to get the JCPOA . So we didn't have to kill people, including schoolgirls and lose American service members and spend tens of billions of dollars and fuck up the entire global econom y to get that deal. I think the other thing that connects if they get the best version MOU , the very best version , Iran gets more money and is in a stronger position for roughly the same concessions. Like they're still going to have nuclear programs going to some constraints and they're going to get rid of their stockpile. Like and they're going to be inspections like that was a JCPUA. So we went through this whole drama to hopefully get something that looks a bit like the J CPOA with Iran in a stronger position. I don't know why Democrats don't see the opportunity in front of them to just be the anti war party . Yeah, because consistently, the public show they don't like war. It's one thing that both parties agree on. There's not many things . There's a bipartisan consensus that they don't like wars in the United States and probably here too. Yeah, but not probably. I know here too . And so lean into that you don't need to kind of try to look tough or just meet people where they are on this. And where they are is that they don't want the United States or the United Kingdom to be in dumb wars in the Middle East anymore. We spent far too much money doing that. You know, by the way, if I say Andy Burnham, like, and he won't do this , but like, go after Tony Blair, you know, like the lingering distrust of the Labor Party is still tied , like like less they're so part of the system we don't like that they they did the Iraq war you know I mean like we're not doing that anymore. Listen is his signature not Barack Obama's and that's all that yeah all that matters at the end of the day. that's all that matters Yeah, that is that is why people don't trust politicians isn't it? It's the psychodrama and the yeah. Yeah and they're measuring everything against one another. Yes, not against the outcomes that people actually want. Ben we could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for joining us. All we say is available to buy right now, and of course, episodes of Pod Save the World are released weekly on Wednesdays. The latest episodes are wherever you get your podcasts or you can catch them on YouTube if you want to see Ben and Tommy in the flesh . Yes, in the flesh. Mama was breathing . There they are. Yeah. We breathe like mammals. Mammals who breathe there. Yeah , Ben. Thank you guys . And that's it. Thanks for listening to Podsave the UK. If the idea of seeing me do stand up comedy is appealing to you. Tickets for my tour are available now. I'm all over the UK and Ireland from September until the end of November. Go to nishkomad.co UK . Thank you very much for listening once again, this was Pods Over the UK. Pods over the UK is an intelligence squared production for crooked media. Thanks to senior producer Esme Ash, digital producer Chelsea Numpingza and Assistant producer Bodica. Ourusic theme m is by Vasily Petopolis. The executive producers are B. Duncan and Katie Long. And please do get in touch with us so you can email your questions or thoughts to Hodsave the UK at crooked. com. We'd love to do another mailbag episode soon , so please get in touch. If you have any questions, we'd like to answer them on the show. 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