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Three thousand riot police were put on standby after Friday was dubbed “anti-asylum day” by far-right organisers, with 14 protests scheduled nationwide outside of suspected asylum hotels.

Tensions are high but with Keir Starmer constantly boasting about cracking down on “illegal” migrants – is the Government simply fanning the flames of unrest?

The New Statesman’s Britain Editor Anoosh Chakelian has been speaking to locals and asylum seekers at asylum hotels. She joins Nish and Coco to discuss why they’ve become such a lightning rod and what else the Government could be doing.

And Labour Minister Chris Bryant has had an unorthodox path into politics – from growing up in Franco’s Spain to being ordained as an Anglican priest. He answers some tricky questions on the Palestine Action arrests and landlord MPs.

And digging into the mailbag, Nish gets an education on audio porn.

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USEFUL LINKS 

See us Live in London! 

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Chris Bryant – A Life and A Half: The Unexpected Making of a Politician

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/life-and-a-half-9781526680914/

National Youth Theatre Statement

https://www.nyt.org.uk/news/nyt-statement-3-august-2025

Girl On The Net – blog 

https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/age-verification-whats-the-harm/

GUESTS

Anoosh Chakelian

Chris Bryant MP

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan. You’re performing at the Edinburgh Fringe at the moment and it sounds like it’s been eventful. Last week there were storms, this week Arthur seats on fire. So I’m guessing next week we’re going, what, plague of locusts, a red smear upon your door. What’s going to happen?

Nish Kumar Yeah, I think it’s full on sacrifice your oldest kid stuff. It’s feeling apocalyptic. It’s actually incredibly warm here, which is not normally… Part of the reason I think Edinburgh has become such a successful festival is because in August, it’s possible to sit in a poorly ventilated room and not burn to death and climate change has reached the Edinburgh Fringe because let me tell you, I am sweating my way through some gigs in shipping containers. Um, but otherwise the vibe is great, um, it’s very funny today because I, while I’m here, I’m staying with my partner, Amy Annette, and our friend David O’Doherty and our friend Celia Rabee and Celia and Amy have both gone to the beach and David and I are both in separate rooms recording our podcast. Men will podcast. You cannot stop men from podcasting.

Coco Khan I want that situation to be a sitcom. David O’Doherty and Nish Kumar live in the Edinburgh Fringe House with their partners. Who knew what could happen? Anyway, this week, anti-immigration protests targeting asylum hotels have spread across the UK. But rather than soothing tensions, it’s the government’s response simply inflaming them.

Nish Kumar We’re going to speak to Labour Minister Sir Chris Bryant, former guest of the show. We’re gonna talk to him about the rest of 532 people over the weekend in support of Palestine Action, landlord MPs and the governments in action over the Supreme Court ruling. Ever since the Southport riots last summer, the temperature around immigration has been rising in the UK. Over the last month, anti-immigration protests outside asylum hotels have spread across the country. Latest wave began with a series of protests in Epping, Essex, following on from the sexual assault of a teenage girl allegedly by a recently arrived Ethiopian migrant.

Coco Khan And, like the protests that eventually became riots last year, the flames of anti-immigration rhetoric have been fanned by far-right agitators. Last weekend was no exception, 3,000 riot officers were put on standby due to fears of violence and disorder as Friday was dubbed Abolish Asylum Day by far right organizers with 14 protests scheduled nationwide outside of suspected asylum hotels.

Nish Kumar Rather than try and relax tensions around immigration, the government appears to be agitating them. Over the last few weeks we’ve seen a bizarre publicity blitz from Keir Starmer and his top team. Look at this clip from the Prime Minister. So for listeners who can’t see the clip, we’re looking at migrants with their faces blurred out being detained and processed under the government’s one-in-one-out deal with France.

Clip I’m just looking for a chance

Nish Kumar Now, at the end of the video, the text reads, I said that if you enter this country on a small boat, you will face detention and return. I meant it. That music underneath is a sort of a Michael Bay action movie soundtrack. Like it sounds like transformers or the rock or something. It’s a deeply, deeply strange piece of video content from the government.

Coco Khan You don’t expect a former human rights lawyer to be behind this. Everything about it is so dehumanizing. I mean, Labour aren’t the only ones using social media to showcase their hard line on immigration. Donald Trump’s government over in the US has gone down a much more, I mean like it’s grotesque route to make his point, so here’s a clip from the White House.

Clip Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday.

Nish Kumar So again, for listeners, what we’re looking at is a White House video released by the official White House social media channels that shows people being handcuffed and escorted onto a deportation flight with the viral Jet 2 holidays meme over the top of it. The caption reads, when ICE books you a one-way jet to holiday to deportation, nothing beats it.

Coco Khan You know, treating it like it’s a sport, like it is a movie experience, like it’s joke when these are human beings, there’s real lives at stake. So, you know it’s quite terrifying to be honest.

Nish Kumar I think that there is a particular thing that’s worth considering from the perspective of the Labour Party, which is we sort of return to this point that the offering Labour are making to the country currently is relatively minimal apart from the grownups are back in charge after years of unserious conservative policy making. So again, I think it’s really worth considering how serious are these people when they are making kind of action movie inspired short videos. To put on the internet. What are Labour standing for at this particular moment in time?

Coco Khan I mean, actually now we’re talking about it in a way, the esthetics reveal something, right? So the jet two holiday one, it’s got like the Pepe the Frog, kind of like edge lords of the internet trying to appeal to them. And then with this Michael Bay take, you really get the sense of like, okay, so your male voters that you’ve lost, because, and we know from the demographics that, you know, particularly reform is much more popular amongst men. The action movie-ness of it. And when you see that, you really get a sense that the It’s a small demographic of voters that have so much control that the messaging is being targeted to. Yeah, the dog is being wagged by the tail, certainly there. It’s really terrifying.

Nish Kumar Now, to help us understand why asylum hotels have become such a point of tension and what else the government could be doing, we’re joined by Anoosh Chakelian, Britain editor, The New Statesman. Anoosh, welcome back to Pod Save the UK.

Anoosh Chakelian It’s so good to be back. Thanks for having me.

Nish Kumar You’re joining us from a cupboard at the New Statesman office.

Anoosh Chakelian Yeah, it’s very glamorous here. We actually do have a studio here. It is unfortunately in use, so I have been relegated to the cell.

Coco Khan So Anoosh, you’ve been speaking to people at these protests. First of all, I respect you very much for going to them. You would not catch me at one of these protests.

Anoosh Chakelian I thought I saw you there, Coco.

Coco Khan In my full top to toe union black suit. I mean, genuinely, did you feel safe? Did you feel unsafe? How was the experience of just being there physically?

Anoosh Chakelian A lot of people have asked me this, actually. I went to one of the protests in Epping and on my way, I did feel quite apprehensive because I’d seen a lot of the coverage of when one of the protests there turned violent. And so, you know, going on my own, I did feel a little bit vulnerable. But actually, when I got there, I suppose it’s just you’re doing your job, you know, people were willing to speak to me. I did at one point get a camera shoved in my face and someone asking me, you know, what’s your take on it? What’s your take on that? Like on the migrant issue, I suppose he meant, and I didn’t know, you know, where that footage was going to be streamed. There’s a lot of people with cameras at these things who call themselves citizen journalists, and they’re kind of narrating what’s going on. And so I didn’t enjoy that moment for sure. But generally, people wanted to have their voices heard. So I didn’t in the end find it intimidating. But what I really would like to say is that I have interviewed asylum seekers, both staying at this hotel and in other parts of the country, staying in asylum accommodation, and I’ve never once felt intimidated by them.

Coco Khan Well, I think that’s a really important point to make and very much an antidote to some of the poisonous rhetoric that we’re hearing. But I do just want to stick with the protesters for a moment. You said they were happy to speak to you. What were they actually saying? I really want to understand why particularly asylum hotels have become this enormous lightning rod.

Anoosh Chakelian Well, in a situation like Epping, there’s been a specific allegation against one of the asylum seekers staying there. So that was very much the sort of top line, if you like, of what people saying. They felt that their children were unsafe and they wanted the hotel closed down. It was a matter of sort of safety in the community, first and foremost for them. But in general, the conversation usually is, why are they getting to stay in a hotel? Know, a lot of people who live in these communities have been to these hotels for functions like, you know, wedding receptions and birthday parties. I went to Dis in Norfolk where there’s been protests against one of the hotels and lots of people said, oh, we used to go as a family for Christmas dinner there. So these places are kind of beloved, you know, venues and function venues in the communities that have been commandeered by the Home Office at short notice. Events have been canceled in many cases and people obviously hear the word hotel and they think that the asylum seekers staying in them are getting that hotel experience, you know, like a spa and a mini bar and fresh sheets every morning. That’s not the case. And we can go more into what it’s actually like to live in these hotels, maybe later in the podcast. But I think there’s an assumption of you know we’re working hard, we you know our children can’t afford to live In the places where they grew up, there’s not enough housing. You know, our wages haven’t gone up, our town centers aren’t being you know well Love. And yet, you know, people are coming from abroad and getting something for nothing. You know, that’s a phrase that I’ve often heard. They’re getting something from nothing. They’re not giving anything back. And yet they’re, they’re getting this kind of, you know, luxury treatment. There’s almost like a competition for resources under the surface there. So I think that’s probably the main, the main objection to having asylum seekers accommodated in these hotels that I have heard.

Nish Kumar Why are asylum seekers being accommodated in hotels in the first place? Because this isn’t a long-standing phenomenon, really, is it? But before 2020, it was a practice that hardly ever happened. By its peak, there were more than 55,000 people in hotels, in 2023. What’s the reasoning behind this? Is it just the asylum backlog at the home office became overwhelming and there was no other option.

Anoosh Chakelian There’s always been a few cases of asylum seekers having to be moved into hotel rooms when there hasn’t been enough accommodation for them. But in 2020, this is when it became a sort of policy, if you like, Chris Philp, the immigration minister, then now the Shadow Home Secretary, who’s railing against the use of these hotels, he was the one who said, you know, we need to use hotels now in 2020 when the you know the pandemic meant that there were rules in terms of, you Know, mixing and keeping people off the street. Know, in terms of trying to prevent the spread of disease and for hygiene reasons, we’re going to have to use hotels to house asylum seekers. And since then, you know, it’s always meant to be a temporary policy. But since then it’s grown and grown to its peak of about 400 hotels, housing asylum seekers in 2023. That’s come down since then. Now, I think it’s around 210. But it’s really because the processing of asylum claims massively slowed down. In fact, A Treasury Minister told me the government basically stopped doing the processing. So a backlog built up there. More people have come over on small boats via that sort of channel crossing route as well and there’s just not enough housing to put asylum seekers into and so they’re having to put them up in these hotels which weren’t remember being used in the pandemic as well, so they were almost like spare accommodation then.

Coco Khan Of course, now they are being used, so is there a plan to taper this off?

Anoosh Chakelian Yeah, so every government basically has said that they want to close the asylum hotels and stop their use. But it’s not as simple as that. You can’t just not house asylum seekers because that means that they’ll end up in destitution on the streets and there’s laws against making people destitute. What the government wants to do is try and disperse them into houses. And so now you get Serco, who is contracted by the government, is asking landlords to house asylum seekers in their houses to try and people out of hotels, which are far more visible, of course, than… Just residential houses into HMOs.

Coco Khan I wanted to ask, because you will hear certain voices on the right saying, we will close down asylum hotels and it’s good to have it laid out how unfeasible that actually is with the backlog. Also, you said the word circle and that gave me chills. You know, when there’s circles involved, it’s something horrible is happening.

Nish Kumar And nothing good’s going on with Circo.

Coco Khan I do want to just ask about the ban on asylum seekers working. What if that was changed? I think it’s also worth mentioning, just in case our listeners are not aware, that the ban was introduced by Tony Blair’s government. The aim of it was to deter new arrivals so we could have a conversation about whether that worked or not. But do you think that in particular is feeding this perception of asylum seekers as a drain.

Anoosh Chakelian Absolutely. Yeah, I think this is a really, really big problem and misconception as well. When I was in Norfolk, I was having conversations with people near the asylum hotel and someone pointed to a Turkish takeaway on the high street and said, I respect them. They’ve been there years. They came here and built a business and they give back to the community and they pay their taxes and they’re part of the economy. And asylum seekers can’t do that. They’re not allowed to work. So that has two consequences. One, that there’s this feeling that they’re a drain on society and that they are sort of scrounging in some way. But two, they might end up in the black economy working illegally. And people seem to have a big problem with that as well. You’ve seen the way that some couriers like Deliveroo, Uber Eats riders have been intimidated who have just been near some of these protests because people feel that their asylum seekers working illegally for these apps. And so it just creates like a very poisonous perception. And actually when I’ve interviewed these people every time, I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview with an asylum seeker who hasn’t said, I really want to work, just let me work.

Nish Kumar That’s a really important point they want to work. I did a project during the pandemic where I had a long interview with a person who was living in an asylum seeking hotel at that exact moment. All he was saying to me was, I am desperate to work, the logic of it doesn’t make any sense because they risked their lives to get halfway across the world and now people are calling them lazy. Like that’s an insane piece of cognitive dissonance there. But it’s, and it’s sort of feeding, it’s. Feeding into this resentment. It seems like such an absurd law now that’s completely out of date.

Anoosh Chakelian Yeah, it’s so frustrating for them as well, because often they’ve been working or studying in their countries of origin. So I’ve interviewed people who’ve been been working as police officers, people who have been doing computer science degrees, and they come here and they want to carry on, you know, working there. It’s not that they’re lazy, they’re not allowed. And I think that’s that kind of, I think knowledge of that just is very low among, among the general population. I don’t think people realize that they are not allowed to work.

Coco Khan So let’s talk about some of the fears that these anti-immigration protesters have around sexual assaults. This was the same spark for the recent protests in Epping. Riots in Southport and Balamina had the same trigger. It’s a really difficult subject. Obviously, it’s a very emotive subject. Let’s start with that. What have the protests has been telling you about this feeling.

Anoosh Chakelian Okay, so the feeling that the protesters have is, first of all, we don’t know who these people are. They’ve come illegally and therefore, they haven’t come by an official channel. So we haven’t been able to vet them. We don’t who they are. I mean, I suppose in a way, you can see what they mean in the sense that these asylum seekers, they don’t have access to safe and legal routes to the UK and so they’ve made a journey across the channel and when they arrive, know, we don’t know much about them and their backgrounds. So their argument is we could be letting criminals in. So that’s one of the main things. The second thing is more racially tinged, which is they come from societies that have different values from us in terms of approaches to women. There’s a lot of Islamophobia in the comments that are made to me from this angle. There is also that memory of the grooming gangs and this idea that mainly Pakistani heritage men were grooming white girls and is the same thing happening now with men who are coming from certain countries and staying in these hotels. I think there’s a fear that this is happening again in terms of it being ignored or covered up. The problem is that these are isolated cases. You never get big headlines when it’s a white man who has, you know, been accused of. Of rape or sexual assault against a girl in the same way that you have with these stories that are suddenly being blown up so much everywhere around the country. And so what happens is people tar all of these men with the same brush, you know, that they’re all demonized as criminals or sexual sex offenders. And that’s just not the case. And they’re actually very saddened by it. So some of the men who I spoke to in Epping staying in the hotel said things were really good before that allegation was made. And you community have been quite accepting, but since then… Women were sort of pulling their children closer to them or behind them when they walk past them on the street. And one of the men told me, that’s really painful to see. I’m not here to do anything to you, to take anything from you.

Coco Khan The clear double standard that when a white man is the perpetrator, there just isn’t this amount of outcry. It just doesn’t exist. So I think it’s worth mentioning as well that some of the rioters in the Southport situation, they already had previous convictions for domestic violence. So we want, you know, this idea of being the flag bearer for safety of women, it just doesn’ really stand up to scrutiny. Some years ago, looking into some of the security briefings around the threat of far-right terrorism and how domestic violence was a recurring pattern in these perpetrators. It can be quite easy when you hear that these are real allegations and they have gone to the police and they are under investigation. It can be quiet emotive and you think, Oh God, well, maybe you start to sort of fall into it. And I think it’s just important to have that moment for us to say, well hang on a minute. Where is the outrage for the other side? How is this motivated?

Nish Kumar Last week, a YouGov poll found that almost half of Britain’s, 47%, think that there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally rather than legally, and this view is behind so much support for hardline immigration policies, and it’s held by 72% of those who want to see mass removals. However, according to YouGove, the key issue here is that these perceptions are wide of the mark. Estimates for illegal migrants range from 120,000 to 1.3. Million, which obviously doesn’t come close to the 10.7 million migrants living and working legally in the UK. How much of these protests are being fuelled by a total lack of accurate information in the British media.

Anoosh Chakelian I think they are, because often when I’ve interviewed people who have been protesting against the asylum hotels, they will say, well, we have no problem with people coming here legally. These people are pushing them to the back of the queue. These people are bullies. They’re playing the system. They are not coming by the official channels. And I think that lack of control, this is why the small boats is such a visceral issue for people. It’s a symbol of a sort of lack of control. I think the idea of people coming through more official channels is much more palatable to people, even the most immigration skeptic people, unless you’re really extreme, except that we do have to have some people coming into the country to work for the NHS, etc. These are things that people have told me at the protests. So I think it’s a really big deal that people assume that there’s more illegal migrants coming to the UK than legal. And, of course, government doesn’t do anything to dispel that idea. In fact, it’s almost like a rhetorical device, isn’t it? Let’s concentrate on asylum seekers and demonize them to distract from the fact that we’re actually letting loads of people in via legal routes, which might be controversial. It’s not really new for Labour. This is what they did under Tony Blair as well. I mean, if you look at all of the measures taken to make asylum seekers’ lives harder in the UK, most of them came in under new Labour. And at the same time, sort of the other hand was opening the door for EU migrants to come and work here. So I think it’s a similar thing that’s happened, you know, in successive conservative governments that we’ve had and is happening now as well to kind of elide the two in a way to try and sort of distract the public from the fact that our economy, you know, is deeply reliant on legal migration.

Nish Kumar More than 200 refugee groups, charities, and unions have signed a letter calling for the government to end the pernicious currents of hatred fueling anti-migrant protests. Anoosh, just to finish up on some sort of vague note of hope here, what could the government be doing in lieu of making, you know, cod Michael Bay action films, like sort of montages of police deporting people? What could the government be doing to actually defuse these tensions around immigration instead of seemingly using rhetoric that whips them up further.

Anoosh Chakelian So I was past some research for my cover story on the asylum hotels that has been read, I’ve heard widely in number 10. So this was research into the areas that got hit by the riots last year, following the Southport murders. It wasn’t immigration to these areas. That was a common factor in the places where these kinds of riots blew up. It was a feeling of disconnection. That can have all sorts of meanings, so it can mean that there’s not enough know, communal places that you can meet for free with people around you anymore in your community, mainly because of austerity degrading the public realm and public services. Or it could mean that different ethnic groups aren’t integrated in your communities and you feel disconnected from your neighbors. So it’s more about integration and connection than levels of migration and I think the government could do a lot more to be promoting integration and also making people’s neighborhoods feel better places to live in. I think if town centers and high streets and places to meet were nurtured more by the government and integration was more of a focus, then you wouldn’t necessarily have this feeling of disconnection that has led to some of the things that we’ve seen lately. That’s not to excuse racism because racism is a big part of this and the far-right have know, often in some cases organized some of these protests, but certainly exploited, you know, the feelings around them. So there is, there is a racial element to it. But there is that deeper feeling of disconnection that is driving some of these actions. And I think that’s something the government needs to be very aware of.

Nish Kumar Anoosh Chakelian, thank you so much for joining us on Pods over the UK. Do check out Anoosh’s cover story about the Asylum Hotels.

Coco Khan After the break, we speak to Labour Minister Chris Bryant about the arrest of 532 people over the weekend in support of Palestine Action and Landlord MP.

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Anoosh Chakelian I’m Anoosh Chakelian, host of the New Statesman podcast. Join me, my colleagues and special guests every weekday as we bring you the inside track on what’s really going on in UK politics, world affairs and culture. We also gather once a week to answer listener questions. Search for the New statesman podcast in your podcast app or on YouTube and send your questions in at newstatesman.com forward slash you ask us.

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Nish Kumar We’re now joined by Sir Chris Bryant, MP for Rhonda and Ogmore and Minister of State in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. What a portfolio. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK, Chris.

Chris Bryant MP Hey, thanks very much for having me, though you weren’t here the last time I did this.

Nish Kumar That’s right, yeah, that’s right. I had absolutely no interest in science, innovation or technology.

Chris Bryant MP Yeah, well, and to be fair, I’m not here in that capacity at all. I mean, I have many capacities. I have many hats. And in fact, because of my skin cancer, I always have to wear a hat these days. But I’m not here in that capacity. I’m here, as you know, because I’ve written a book.

Coco Khan Yes, you have. You’re releasing a political memoir that details your life right up to the point of entering parliament, which I thought was a bit of a choice. Why? Is that a part two, two Chris, two Brian? Why did you end it there? Is it when life got rubbish? What happened?

Chris Bryant MP Happened? No, so as you said, you called it a political memoir. And in a way, it’s not a political memoir at all, because it’s about my time in parliament. It’s about everything that kind of ran up to it. And I suppose that’s because I wanted to show that actually, politicians are human beings. And before we get into politics, normally, we’ve done other things, just like normal human beings, and also because I suppose I wanted to explore a bit why I ended up being the kind of person that I am today, or why, Not just know, why am I a politician, but what is it that really kind of motivates me? But I was talking about this with my agent, not my political agent, my literary agent, and with the publishers. They said, Blimey, though, you’ve done, before you became an MP, it’s like you lived a life and a half, which, funny enough, is the name of the book.

Coco Khan Well, you certainly had an eventful life. So you were born in Cardiff. You spent some time growing up in Franco’s Spain. You dabbled with acting as a teenager. You eventually became ordained as an Anglican priest. So I think it’s fair to say that if your mission was, I want to show that normal people have normal lives become politicians. It’s not that normal a life, Chris.

Chris Bryant MP Dabbling. Hang on, hang on, dabbling with acting. I’ll have you know, I was in the National Youth Theater. That’s not dabblin’. This is like, I mean, whether I was any good is another matter. But I mean. Yeah, so some of the stories are about my time in the national youth theater, both for good and ill because I tell some pretty tough stories about the guy who ran the National youth theater and so on. But but also, I love acting and it was a It was a complete release for me because my family life at home, alcoholic mum, was just a terrible mess. So and I went to a public school and then I was in the National Youth Theater and I think I was the only public school boy in the national youth theater. So, again, it was like a complete release, that whole experience. And I was on a tour around Europe of Richard II with some people who have gone on to do remarkably well as actors, whereas I entered a different profession.

Nish Kumar This idea of a kind of route, uh, professionalized politicians. You sort of, you know, you go to Oxford, you do PPE, you work as a sort of consultant or communications person and you move towards the, there are very few of those routes involve actor, priest, politician.

Chris Bryant MP Quite and running the barricades in Latin America in 1986 as part of my training to be a priest and oh and then there’s a fair amount of well I don’t know what is the best word shenanigans in the book

Nish Kumar I think shenanigans is as much as we want to say without giving spoilers.

Chris Bryant MP To say that my husband, my present husband, who isn’t in the book because the book stops in 2001 and I didn’t meet Jared until several years later, he’s been allowed to editing rights. So he’s been allowed allowed to take out any of the shenanigans he thinks nobody should read. There was one story about I get into terrible trouble in as it happens in Peru. I go home with a young lad, and this involves three different bus journeys, and I’ve never met him before, and he tells me, look, just as we’re on the third bus to the farthest place outside Arrowkeeper, he says, look I actually live with my brother and his wife and they don’t know that I’m gay, but it’s all right because I kind of live in the kind of outhouse so they won’t know, but unfortunately just as were getting down to it. There’s- there’s- There’s an earthquake. So, literally…

Nish Kumar Jesus Christ

Chris Bryant MP We have to leave the property and go out into the street where suddenly of course I have to be introduced. I’m the only gringo in town. I am the only ginger that they’ve ever met and suddenly I’m being introduced to his family and he’s explaining to them quite what I’m doing there. So anyway, my husband had editing rights on the book and he got to decide which of those boys were funny enough and others which were just gently shifted to the right.

Nish Kumar How do you feel that some of those experiences have shaped the kind of politician that you, you are now? Cause I think it’s really important this idea that you want to share a story about somebody who has had a few different interesting lives before they went into politics. Do you feel the presence of your autobiography in the way that you sort of conduct your life now as a politician?

Chris Bryant MP Yeah, I think so. Two things really. One, I say in the introduction to the book, one of my favorite words is a Spanish word. As you say, I was partly brought up in Spain under Franco. And so I speak fluent Spanish and I did part of my training, as I was saying, for the priesthood in Latin America. And one of my favorite songs is by a guy called Silvia Rodriguez. It’s called Ojalá. And it’s a Spanish word, Ojalà. It sort of comes from Arabic, actually, and it kind of means If only would that I wish that and and I suppose that’s a really strong feeling in me I wish the world was better. I want to change the world I would that was a better person and there’s so many things Not that I regret but I just wish we could construct in a different way in the world So that’s really important part of my politics and I and I supposed the the other thing is That sense that burning sense of injustice Um, which sprang from so many different elements, whether it was, you know, the way we’ve never managed to have a proper way of dealing with alcoholism, you know, we, we’ve, we chucked lots of money at alcohol, but we’d chuck remarkably little money at researching how to save people from alcoholism and addictive personalities. And, um, that was a really important part of my upbringing. Sued the Metropolitan Police over the phone hacking saga at the News of the World. I’ve had rows with the Russians, I’m probably the longest standing critic of Putin in Parliament and why is that? It’s because everything in my early life made me care passionately about other people being powerless because Sometimes I felt utterly powerless.

Coco Khan We touched on the National Youth Theater. I hope it’s okay to just say upfront that in the book you reveal that you were abused by the then boss of the National youth theater. There’s obviously no 16 year old should go through that. That experience, do you think that is what’s giving you your voice in a way?

Chris Bryant MP So it’s really complicated and I try just to tell the story in the book about this is Michael Croft who was the founder of the National Youth Theater, died a long time ago and I tell the story of how he essentially I suppose groomed me and then required me to have sex with him when I was 16. And I am denied about telling this story partly because I hadn’t told anybody. I remember when I first told my husband, I was in floods of tears, because I feel such utter shame about it. And since I’ve told the story and it’s been reported and it is in the book, some people have been very, very critical of me and they said, well, why have you never told this story before? Maybe it’s not true and all this kind of stuff.

Coco Khan Oh, wow!

Chris Bryant MP Oh, I tell you. And then some vile stuff that people have come up with. And I suppose that’s why lots of people never tell these stories, because they’re frightened that they end up becoming the person who gets, for want of a better term, slagged off. Now, I ask the question myself in the book, did I feel, you know, destroyed by that or no, I didn’t. And in fact, I, Michael never did it again. Oddly, he died just a couple of days before I was ordained as a priest, and I then did his funeral. And the National Youth Theater, I know today, is a completely different organization from way back then. I know, I’ve talked to them, and I’ve been through all the safeguarding stuff that they do today. So this is all a very different world, but I tell other stories too about Michael Gierentos. When I went to my interview at Oxford, he required me to sit on the toilet and read out an essay whilst he soaked himself in the bath. Now, I didn’t tell anybody that story way back when because I thought that I’d be the person who was looked at as being weird and so on and I felt terrible shame about it and I got into a different college, but of course he was abusing his power.

Coco Khan Mmmm

Chris Bryant MP Part of the thing that’s so terrible about all of this. So I think it’s important that somebody like me is able to tell some of these stories, and for that matter, the stories about mum and her alcohol, which was really, really tough, because others have subsequently been in touch with me, others from the National Youth Theater have been in touched with me now to say, look, I’ve never told my story, but this happened to me as well. And so sometimes it’s just releasing to know that there are other people who went through the same I’ll see you in the next one. And it wasn’t your fault in any sense.

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Nish Kumar Chris, you’ve mentioned a couple of times you’re a very proud member of the LGBT community and you’re sort of very passionate and vocal about your support of rights of representation. I wonder how you feel at the moment just in terms of the ongoing conversation about the transgender community in the United Kingdom. Last time you were on the podcast you told us you’re 100% trans supportive. But there is this concern. We talked to Freddie McConnell last week on the show, and Freddy’s was expressing a kind of concern that a lot of his friends in the trans community are considering emigrating. This is clearly a really sorry state of affairs, and we wanted to know if you could give us any insight into… Labour allies can do at the moment to help protect the trans community from this feeling that they’re no longer welcome in their own country.

Chris Bryant MP I’m still 100% trans supportive and I’ve always thought that human rights are a seamless garment. You can’t say, I’m going to defend the rights of one group if you’re not going to defend the right of all humans. And that is the right to live the best life for you that is possible for you. And that should be enshrined in law, it should be what all politicians are trying to achieve. One of the reasons for me that this is so important on a personal level is that, I mean, I think some people will find it shocking. In my lifetime, it was illegal to be gay, completely, even when in 1967 it was partially criminalized. When I went to university, it was still illegal to have gay sex under the age of 21. So all of my university time, I could father a child, but I couldn’t have sex with another man. So I feel that sense of passionate. Desire to protect everybody’s human rights equally. And I, and I think of myself as a feminist and a passionate feminist. I tell some stories about how women were treated in the church, which, you know, I think were terrible and I’ve thought always, but I think it’s both, it’s, both and not either or in this debate.

Coco Khan Do you enjoy writing Chris? Just because the first time I met you obviously was about Code of Conduct, your other book, which is tonally quite different. But you felt when you were reading that one that you could tell the author enjoyed it, which was nice because as a reader you want to feel like we’re having a nice time. This memoir is totally different but it’s very much you. You can hear you in it. Is there going to be a next part to it?

Chris Bryant MP Oh, I don’t know. I mean, I do love writing, but I’m, I’m very busy being a minister in two departments at the moment, as Nish referred to earlier.

Coco Khan I mean, I’m sort of being a bit cheeky because basically I was thinking about code of conduct before this interview and I was thinking, oh, I think we need some more updates on that because there is some bad conduct going on.

Chris Bryant MP Oh my lord.

Coco Khan I’m just going to come out and ask you, if you’ve been following this story about Roshanar Ali as the homelessness minister and the tenants who they say they had their lease finished, you know, they were put into a difficult situation because of it, this big question now about MPs and landlords. What do you think, Chris?

Chris Bryant MP I hate to tell you this. I was on holiday last week. I think this all broke last week, didn’t it? So I’ve not looked at any of the details at all. You know, I mean, it seems like Rush did what she had to do in the end, you know, in terms of resigning. But look, I mean, It doesn’t feel as if this parliament is any better than the last one, does it? And I wrote a book all about how we had to change. There are things that we have changed since, since last summer, we’ve changed the rules on what you can and what you can’t do as an MP in terms of second jobs. I remember you asking me last time, hang on, what kind of second jobs, because you’re right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfectly legitimate question.

Coco Khan But I mean, being a landlord’s a job, that’s a passive income, isn’t it? Well, well, putting the income aside, like if you’re doing it properly, you should treat it like a job. You’re a housing provider, right?

Chris Bryant MP Well, funnily enough, I mean, over the years, the House of Commons has dealt with earned income much more than unearned income. You could argue that managing a share portfolio is a job as well. Some of this is is difficult territory to to, you know, I think navigate through is the honest truth.

Nish Kumar And part of the reason we value you as a politician is your openness around so much and the processes and the decisions that have led you to where you are. And I worry sometimes that we’re not seeing enough openness from the Saber government. And, I know that it’s something that we want to see more of. I’m thinking specifically this week of Yvette Cooper saying that the public don’t know the full nature of Palestine action and the government has for terrorism that it won’t release. Isn’t that an example of something that we should be seeing more openness around?

Chris Bryant MP We should always be as open as we possibly can. Somebody asked me the other day, am I a pragmatist? And I know some people think pragmatism is a bad thing because they think it just means you don’t believe in anything, but actually I’m far more interested in getting things done than I am in having a row about the purity of this or other policy. Now, the other thing is just sometimes you cannot be open about everything. I have no idea what Ibet is referring to in relation to Palestine action. But I know There’s stuff where I see confidential and national security related stuff, which and I get asked about it sometimes on interviews and I just have to go. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you.

Nish Kumar But it’s really important that we know the context that this weekend, 532 people were arrested at a demonstration. Surely we have a right to know.

Chris Bryant MP Well, obviously there’ll be due process for each individual and I don’t know, you know, what they may or may not be charged with and how that plays out. All I know is that, well, I trust Yvette, to be honest, on the issue of how much she can and cannot say publicly. Um, I, of course, in an ideal world, we’d be able to be open about absolutely everything, but there are sometimes cases where you simply cannot because you will be revealing the source of your information. And I should say, on Gaza everything we’ve seen is despicable, utterly, completely and utterly despicable. And sometimes I feel that sense of powerlessness about it that everybody does and you just want to do something, anything or call on somebody to do something, and the only person who can really make a dramatic difference in that space is Benjamin Netanyahu himself. But we could be doing more to pressure him, surely? I don’t know. As we overstate what Britain can achieve without, without allies. Anyway, um, you know, I still feel exactly that sense of passionate demand for justice and for food for heaven’s sake, um and for medical supplies in relation to Gaza as I would when I was on the barricades in, I wasn’t on the Barricades, but you know what I mean in, in Latin America, I always use this phrase on the Barracades because And I don’t mean to be flippant about this, but I remember going to the first night of Les Mis in 1985, I think the second of October, 1985 at the Barbican and I was just so transfixed by the, that sense of demand for justice and so on. Now, I mean, the novel collapses into romanticism and so does the musical of course, but, I still feel that. Sense of a desire to man the barricades all the time.

Nish Kumar I obviously can’t speak for those people, but the people that are arrested this weekend, I think would see themselves as being on the barricades of this conversation. And do you not find it personally kind of heartbreaking that that same burning sense of injustice has resulted in them being arrested over the weekend?

Chris Bryant MP But I think Palestine Action is a prescribed, well, I don’t think it is a prescribed organization, so you’re going it some way if you want to go and support them, I think that’s where the law has to take its course.

Coco Khan Am I right in thinking that on the vote for it though, you’ve got no vote recorded? Were you abstaining?

Chris Bryant MP No, no, no. No, I wasn’t abstaining. One of the strange things about our parliamentary system is there’s no such thing as abstaining, there’s just I or no or not there. And on this occasion, I was not there, but I would have voted with the government. I’m a member of the government. And look, I’m a member the government, I mean, I am a member of the team. And I believe in, in teamwork, as I said, in code of conduct quite often, actually, and I know there’s a version of what people would like about politics, which is that all politicians should be independent, you know, there shouldn’t be a whip and things like that. But actually, I think we mostly want a government that acts as a team, rather than the government that is all over the shop.

Coco Khan I think hearing you say that we overstate our influence and the only person that can do anything meaningful in terms of justice for the Ghazan people is Binyamin Netanyahu. I think that’s a really painful thing to hear from a minister and I suppose I wonder, do you still think our current political system is a change for good? And I suppose a secondary question for that, you talked about your burning desire for justice, making the world a better place. You talk about anger and guilt being driving forces. Would you get into politics now knowing what you know about how much power we do or don’t have?

Chris Bryant MP So I’ll answer the second one first. Yes, I would. I love being able to make a difference, even if the difference you’re making is only between two and four, rather than two and 10. It’s a difference that you’re making. And I think that that is good. And so for instance, I’m really proud of the fact that I think we’re the first country to sanction any of the announced sanctions for any of Israeli ministers who’ve been at the cutting edge of the worst sort of arguments that have been made in Israel. I think we’ve faced quite a lot of condemnation as a British government. Keir Starmer has personally and David Lammy for the position that we’ve adopted, both from Israeli leaders and from some of the press in the UK and for that matter from the Conservative Party. So I’m proud that we have adopted a different position from I think that which would have been adopted by the Conservative Party if they were still in power. Um, but it’s, we, we live in an imperfect world and sometimes I think that’s what it feels like in politics. Um, you know, and sometimes it wasn’t you that made the original bad decision. It was made by a previous government. I don’t know how many years ago previously. Um, and you’re simply trying to go, right. Well, in this given situation, what’s the best outcome I can achieve. Even if it’s not perfect. So, you know, we’ve always argued for… Trying to get medical aid into Gaza, we’ve always kept on the argument in favor of a two-state solution, even though many Israeli politicians now seem to be completely opposed to the idea of it, two-states solution. We’ve always wanted to get people around the table. We’ve wanted to take other countries with us, as many countries as possible. And that of course has to include the United States of America. I can’t argue that we’re perfect.

Nish Kumar Chris Bryant, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. The book is called Life and a Half, The Unexpected Making of a Politician. It’s available for pre-order right now and it comes out on 21st August 2025.

Chris Bryant MP Thanks so much for having me.

Coco Khan Now last week we tried to have an adult discussion about the government’s online safety act and whether restricting harmful and inappropriate content for young people is in fact a vehicle for clamping down on free speech and democracy. Technology journalist Chris Stoker Walker had some great insights please do go back and have a listen but inevitably this conversation descended into a grubby little corner of the internet.

Nish Kumar That’s right, Coco Khan, the only millennial who doesn’t watch porn, confessed it’s the Mandalorian from Star Wars that does it for her.

Coco Khan But crucially only with the mask on and with some ignorance that it is Pedro Pascal playing the role. I think that’s important because into that vacuum of knowledge, beautiful fantasy arises. Nish was nonetheless surprised to find that audio porn exists. So we were delighted to hear from a PSUK listener, Alistair, who wrote in to tell us more about this. He said, it certainly is a thing and it provides a means for visually impaired adults to enjoy sexual content like everyone else. Interestingly, audio porn is covered by the Online Safety Act, while written erotic material is not. This has created the absurd situation where it can be legal to post a piece of written text online, but illegal to post an audio clip of the very same text being read aloud.

Nish Kumar I mean, it is crazy how many holes this thing seems to have in it, and that does feel like a fairly spectacular oversight. Also, yeah, it hadn’t even occurred to me for one second that this would be something that allows visually impaired adults to enjoy sexual content, that it makes total sense. And yeah, It is very funny to me that the Online Safety Act has led to a situation where something can be written, but never read aloud. Yeah. It’s like a horror movie with a cursed book.

Coco Khan I was quite surprised that you hadn’t heard of audio porn, not, not because, you know, you’re up to date with all the trends, but just because audio porn is like, we’re old, like, do you not remember one of the oldest types of our generation’s porn was like phoning those smutty phone lines? Do you know what they were like a pound a minute?

Nish Kumar I got too sidetracked by the visual element of it and I’d forgotten this huge market of audio porn. When I think about early porn on the internet, it’s just a slowly loading, buffering image That essentially came out looking like a magic eye picture.

Coco Khan Ha ha!

Nish Kumar Alistair goes on to say the pseudonymous sex blogger girl on the net who writes both erotic stories and reads them aloud has written about this, and she has now had to entirely block access to her audio content for UK visitors as she can’t afford the cost of implementing age verification, which is absolutely baffling. I guess a question we’ve got to ask now is our friend and organizer of the Sheffield podcast festival, Alice Levine. Obviously it became incredibly famous for co-hosting a podcast called My Dad Wrote a Porno and I guess we should get in touch with Alice and find out if all of the episodes of that podcast have now been put behind an age verification firewall.

Coco Khan It was also just, as an aside, it was great to hear girl on the net. I remember her content from the Tumblr days, which is really making me feel extremely old. What is going to happen to all that written porn of Tumblr? Where will it, where will it go? Does it still get to exist? I hope so, provided that no one reads it aloud, I guess.

Nish Kumar Well listen, if you want to read more, we’ve linked to Girl on the Net’s blog on the subject in the show notes.

Coco Khan Now, as flagged to us by a listener, Nick, the government recently opened up a review of parental leave and pay, and they’re trying to get comments from the public. So Nick wrote, I have a son who is now one and a half and was one of the few, so less than 2%, one of a few parents who actually use shared parental leave. I think it was amazing and wish more people would or could use it. My wife and I took six months each. It really took a lot of pressure off us to be able to support each other full time looking after a newborn. Many people, including a lot of HR staff, are ignorant of it and the flexible way it can be used. I think many are also put off for financial reasons driven by gender pay inequality. Unfortunately, this means that the few people actually using shared parental leave are mostly richer people. So I wanted to mention this because as a recent parent, it’s a topic really close to my heart. Although I have to say I was following a, I suppose it was quite a small political story that there was. Discussion about enhancing paternity leave to six weeks. It got to the Lords and then the Lords voted it down. They say, well, you know, I’m sure they all have their various reasons, but one of the main that came out was that they felt it was not really their purview to take a decision on it right now because the Labour Party, the government, had ordered a review. So let them do their review first. And I just felt my eyes rolling back into my head so. Fiercely and strongly that I might have started seeing things because another review, another review, we don’t need another review. Everybody knows that paternity leave is shit. It is the worst in Europe, some of the worst, in the developed world. I keep writing these articles about like, oh, the pressures on women and postnatal depression and breastfeeding stresses and you know, so many of it can just be drawn back to this problem that there’s no one at home to support that person. You know, these are like public health discussions. There’s a really easy piece that could be added, which is just allowing men to spend a bit more time with their actual children. But anyway, I found it all very, very infuriating. Nonetheless, if you’d like to send your comments to the government. Please do. I feel sad for everyone who is not going to benefit from the enhanced paternity leave. That will inevitably be granted because that is modern and this is what we need to be doing to bring us in line with other countries like ourselves and all those women who, in the meantime, are just sort of floundering at home without any support. I’ve been one myself. I know how that feels, so I’m just a bit furious. But nonetheless, please do write a helpful comment.

Nish Kumar My brother and sister-in-law have had a very recent experience of having a child and they live in Germany and they had a year’s worth of shared parental leave to split between the two of them, whichever way they saw fit and it’s a completely different world. The flexibility that that creates, it’s absolutely incredible. So yeah, the government’s call for evidence is open to the 25th of August. They’re looking for a broad range of responses from organizations as well as crucially parents. So again, if you want to contribute, the link is in our show notes.

Coco Khan And just another note, dear listeners that we absolutely love you sending in all of these great stories. So keep them coming. We read your comments across our social media platforms and YouTube. Yes, by the way, if you say insulting things, I do read them. And it does hurt my feelings, which I guess is what you wanted. But if you really want to get a story in front of us, please drop a line to our mailbox. It’s psuk@reducedlistening.co.uk.

Nish Kumar And there’s a way you can get this direct interaction in the flesh, come and see us live. We always have a spare bit of time for Q&As at the end of our live shows and we can’t get enough of you all. Come down and see at the London Podcast Festival on the 7th of September. Tickets are on sale now. Find the link in our show notes. And that’s it, thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save The UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and you can find us on Blue Sky too.

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

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

Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

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

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