A trigger warning for progressives: this episode contains explicit Trump content.

 

Nish and Coco’s nightmare begins with inauguration Trump meme coins, grinning tech bros and disputed Nazi salutes. Then comes the blizzard of executive orders targeting migrants and freeing rioters.  But this is not just a bad dream for our liberal hosts. This is the reality of Trump world. The groundwork of MAGA 2.0 has been laid.

 

How should Britain react? The UK’s very own “basket of deplorables” including Farage, Truss and Braverman donned their MAGA caps and descended on the US. But they didn’t even scrape an invitation to the main event. Back home Keir Starmer and David Lammy opted for love-bombing the new President. But there is an alternative to a sucking up strategy. Pod Save the UK has spotted some green shoots of resistance.

 

While Trump has thrown the Paris Climate Agreement out the window – again – the UK has an opportunity to lead the way on the environment. Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer joins the pod to explain how clever cross party collaboration and campaigning could push through the new Climate and Nature Bill.

 

And Jon Favreau, host of ‘Pod Save America’ and ‘Offline’, joins Nish and Coco from across the pond to find out what’s in store for the US, UK and the world.

 

Useful Links

Write to your MP about the Climate and Nature Bill

https://action.zerohour.uk/

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/

 

Guests

Jon Favreau

Carla Denyer MP

 

Audio Credits

X / Lawrence Fox

Channel 4 News

Sky News

BBC

 

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

Contact us via email: PSUK@reducedlistening.co.uk

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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PodSavetheUK

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD]

 

Coco Khan Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Coco Khan.

 

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar. And Trump is back in the white house and the next four years are going to be a nightmare.

 

Coco Khan My God, did you watch the inauguration?

 

Nish Kumar Yes, I did. But I don’t know why I did. What possible benefit could that have had?

 

Coco Khan It was. I’m going to use the word nightmarish. And I mean that genuinely, literally. As someone who’s a vivid dreamer myself, it felt like figures from my subconscious coming back. You had all the thin skinned bully boys who are now the most powerful men in the world. The Hamburglar was there. Melania Trump. You have to have these like, strange cartoon characters from your past. It just needed someone to have, I don’t know, an extra large foot or like very long nipples. And that would have been a 100% Coco Khan moment.

 

Nish Kumar Too early in the show for nipples, Coco. It’s too early in the show for nipple chat. But anyway, to find out what it all means. We’ll be joined by Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau.

 

Coco Khan And later, we’ll be speaking to Green Party leader Carla Denyer about what the new Trump presidency might mean for the climate emergency.

 

Clip We will be strong and we will win like never before. We will not be conquered. We will not be intimidated. We will not be broken. And we will not fail. From this day on, the United States of America will be a free, sovereign and independent nation. We will stand bravely. We will live proudly. We will dream boldly and nothing will stand in our way because we are Americans. The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun. Thank you. God bless America. Thank you all. Thank you.

 

Nish Kumar Well, the next four years are going to clearly be one hell of a ride. So joining us now to find out what’s in store for America, the UK, and indeed the rest of the world is Jon Favreau, host of Pod Save America and Offline. And I guess my boss, it’s never really been fully made clear to me. I guess one of my bosses.

 

Jon Favreau I don’t. I’m not. Management is not my strong suit.

 

Nish Kumar One of the three wise man that governs my destiny.

 

Jon Favreau Yes, definitely. Three men.

 

Nish Kumar One of the three men. Okay. Yes. Jon, how are you?

 

Jon Favreau I’m good. How are you doing?

 

Nish Kumar I’m good. I’m coming to the US to do a bunch of tour dates in February. So I guess my first question from a selfish perspective is what’s going to be left?

 

Jon Favreau Look, I will say things are happening fast here. We’ve already got a bunch of people convicted of assaulting cops. They’re out of jail now, People who are conspiring to try to overthrow the government, they’re out of jail now. So Trump’s got his. All of his favorite people. If you’re if you commit violence, but you do it in Trump’s name, you’re okay. That’s the message that he’s started off sending to everyone. There’s a bunch of other executive orders. He’s been signing this this first week. Some are for show, some don’t matter much. Some do matter much. So I think everyone’s trying to, here, everyone’s trying to work through what what’s going to have the biggest impact. I think the immigration actions that he’s taking are all you know, the presidents here always have wide latitude to direct immigration policy. So I think he’s sending troops to the southern border. I just saw that he canceled all the refugees who are on their way here to be resettled from Afghanistan, from other countries. Just canceled all those. They’re trying to end birthright citizenship here, but there’s already lawsuits there. I don’t know if the courts will uphold that.

 

Nish Kumar That’s it. That’s a constitutional right. The president doesn’t have the power to overturn that, right?

 

Jon Favreau No, I don’t think that will go very far. But it does it speaks to what their agenda is, which is to, you know, they want to decide who’s a real American who gets to benefit from living in America. And for them, it’s people who agree with them and people who don’t oppose them.

 

Nish Kumar And also presumably people willing to invest in their crypto currency. Because I think just in terms of from a British perspective, obviously our media is sort of drowning in a deluge of executive orders. And there are elements in there that have very specific concerns for the day to day lives of British people, particularly obviously pulling out of the Paris climate agreement. I want to go back to that, but I do think a story that has slightly passed us by is this sort of inauguration grift that he’s that he’s got into. Do I have this right? He’s launched Trump and Melania meme coins.

 

Jon Favreau Yes.

 

Nish Kumar Which by some estimates have made the president more money in 24 hours than the entirety of the rest of his career. The market cap on the coin at the time of recording is $7.5 billion, and Trump owns over 80% of the holdings. Certainly that seems to be a key part of Donald Trump’s personal agenda, which is constantly trying to think of new ways to enrich himself. I mean, it looks like corruption. It smells like corruption.

 

Jon Favreau Yeah. That’s that’s pretty safe to say corruption. And look, I think it was funny watching a lot of the crypto supporters, Donald Trump, you know, a lot of people who are fans of crypto and the crypto industry, they all got behind Donald Trump and Republicans because Trump said we’re going to make America, you know, safe for crypto and all that kind of stuff. They are a lot of them, some of them who are Trump supporters, even voted for Trump, are now criticizing him for this because they were like, I thought he was just going to I thought he was just going to put some good guardrails on the industry and let it and, you know, let us because, you know, there’s some legitimate arguments for cryptocurrency, but that’s not what he’s doing. He’s just launching a couple of bitcoins, which is just a Ponzi scheme. Legalized gambling and speculation, you know. And also there’s the potential for foreign actors, adversaries, governments that want to curry favor with Donald Trump to just, you know, invest in in these coins. And so there’s the the avenues for corruption, grift influence, both from people in the US and all over the world. Are infinite under this new administration.

 

Nish Kumar It’s very important to understand that, like, this is the. This is what Trump is all about, really, isn’t it? Like, forget all of the agendas and all of the promises about. You know, improving America. Forget all of the. Incredibly a speech so boring even he looked bored reading it that he gave at the inauguration. This is really what it’s about. And this is what he’s always been about fundamentally.

 

Jon Favreau Well, yeah. And you know, he always said on the campaign trail and he said for the last eight years, you know, I could be doing I could be just even richer right now and I could be taking a break. But I’m doing this for all of you. I think he really believes that because he has sacrificed so much for this country and is going to be president for four years, that he should be rich and his friends should be rich and his family should be rich. And that’s just America, you know, and people like him because he’s rich. And I think that viewing the entire presidency through the prism of like Trump cares about himself, he cares about money. He also cares about and this is why he wants to rename me and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. And he wants people years from now to look at a map and be like, look, we Donald Trump got America this territory, right? Like, he just all he can think about is his own legacy, his own power and his own wealth. And for a long time, I think he was supported by some people. So, yeah, he does care about himself. He does care about enriching himself. But in the process, he will also make me richer. And so therefore I’m going to give him a pass. I think the question now is, does he actually improve people’s lives? Does he fulfill any of the promises he made? And if he doesn’t, which I don’t think he will, then will people say not only have you not fulfill those promises, but now you’re making all this money, you’re getting richer. So maybe this was never about us in the first place.

 

Nish Kumar *Laughs*

 

Jon Favreau It’s the hope. That’s what we’re going to try to make sure that people understand it.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. The Harris campaign was criticized a lot for not speaking to the concerns of ordinary Americans. Who knew that those concerns were renaming the Gulf of Mexico?

 

Jon Favreau That’s what they wanted. Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar In terms of the international front, so mercifully, we have seen a cease fire in Gaza. We’ve heard over the weekend. Obviously, the Trump team has been very keen to take a huge amount of credit. Trump essentially took credit for it in several of his very sad occupation speeches. Trump said he’s not confident the cease fire will hold. Echoing Netanyahu’s language that this is a temporary cease fire, he’s also declared a rollback on sanctions on settlers in the West Bank. And since the cease fire was announced, Israel has embarked on an extensive military operation of the West Bank. There’s also PA pressure on the UK government to overturn suspensions of arms licenses. Just looking specifically at the situation in Gaza. It’s no coincidence that Benjamin Netanyahu has been a fairly over supporter of Donald Trump and an agitator for him. The cease fire is something that is going to bring relief to people, but there could be something worse coming.

 

Jon Favreau Well, remember what Trump’s first reaction to the war in Gaza was, which is Israel should be able to do whatever they want, but just don’t do it so publicly. Just get it done fast. Trump doesn’t like a mess. Right. And he doesn’t like that a mess is going to somehow reflects poorly on him. So he just want he wanted the deal because he doesn’t want to come into office and have this this war in the Middle East that he’s now involved in that may affect his popularity. So he wants a deal. I think what Trump believes and what I’m sure Bibi believes is that now that we’ve had this cease fire, you know, if the cease fire doesn’t hold, if if Bibi gets to, you know, annex the West Bank or whatever else, then Trump’s thinking, yeah, maybe we just won’t pay that much attention. Maybe. Maybe that’ll be their problem to solve. But there was never any indication that he wasn’t going to let Bibi Netanyahu do whatever he wanted. And I think Netanyahu knew that. And I do think that’s why I mean, I think Trump gets some credit for the cease fire deal, because I don’t think it would have happened if Kamala had won, because I think Bibi wanted to give Trump this win so that, conversely, Trump can then Trump can let Bibi do whatever he wants from here on out.

 

Nish Kumar In Ukraine, Trump is almost just before we recorded put out an ultimatum on truth sociale demanding an end to the war in Ukraine. And he’s issued an ultimatum to Putin saying, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. And the easy way is always by just proving once again that he speaks in dialog that would be removed from a 1980s action film for being too poorly written. Like you sort of forget and be like, Yeah, it’s like stuff that they would excise from a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie for being clumsy and on the nose. But in terms of the European focus, this has been so heavily on Ukraine and what comes next. Do you have any sense of Trump’s short term agenda?

 

Jon Favreau What is the hard way with two nuclear? Hours. The scariest thing that happened, I think, in the whole Biden administration and you know, we found this out later, is that how close we were to Putin potentially, or how the Biden administration thought that Putin really might use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine? And they were pretty concerned about that. And for like Trump just getting up and being like, yeah, I know I’m going to be tough, I’m going to be tough, and that’s going to do it. And that’s going to I’m that’s going to bring Putin to his knees. Now, I do think that to my prior point about Gaza, like Trump doesn’t like a mess and he also doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine. And so if he can broker some kind of a cease fire agreement that ends the war that, you know, leads to Ukraine losing a bunch of territory, he’s not going to care. I don’t think that he really wants Russia to win either. I think he just doesn’t want to have to deal with it doesn’t matter who wins, who loses, what side gets more. He just wants it over.

 

Nish Kumar I want to ask you from a UK specific perspective on this. So Keir Starmer, our Prime Minister and our Foreign secretary, David Lammy, have sent their congratulations to Trump. David Lammy previously called him evil and a neo-Nazi sympathizer, but has said that we need to embrace progressive realism. I have two questions for you. The first one is, in spite of this friendly language, do you think that Trump is going to buy it?

 

Jon Favreau The thing that would worry me if I were you guys is it’s just Elon Musk sort of training his oats on your prime minister. And so, you know, the way Trump is, it’s he doesn’t pay attention to anything unless it’s in front of his face. And so if Ellen talks to him and is like, this is it, we’re trying to get rid of this guy and he’s bad. That is how, you know, Keir Starmer could pop up to Donald Trump and then, you know, he’ll do his thing where if if they have some interaction he doesn’t like, he’ll, he’ll post about him, say bad things and then, you know, maybe he’ll then maybe he’ll make a state visit to the UK or, or Starmer will come here and then they’ll talk and maybe then Trump will be like, he’s not so bad. He’s not so bad. You know, it’s just all transactional. It’s all fleeting. But I do think that just watching Ellen post these this last month, like Elon is sort of dead set on, you know, Europe is next in his eyes.

 

Nish Kumar You’re an adviser to a progressive political leader in office. What advice would you be giving Keir Starmer at the moment? Labor is a progressive political party. Prominent members of that party have said incredibly critical things about Trump in the past. What advice are you giving Keir Starmer now? Because all kind of economic growth plan could be very directly affected if Trump starts slapping tariffs on left, right and center.

 

Jon Favreau I don’t think that you kissed Donald Trump’s ass, and I also don’t think that you make him the villain. Yeah, like the most important thing for any center left, left, non autocratic leader, whatever you want to call it in the world.

 

Nish Kumar The bar has got lower and lower through the course of that.

 

Jon Favreau So everyone is not the first person and everyone who’s left. The most important thing to do is to build trust with your people. And I think that’s what we’re seeing is that trust between governments and their people has frayed in your country, in our country, in countries all across the world. And I think that when there is such low trust in leaders, it opens the door for demagogues and authoritarians to come in and say, Yeah, everyone’s corrupt. I’m corrupt, too. But you know what? I’m going to fix it all and I’m going to restore order. And I think that we have not figured out partly because in this information, age makes it very difficult. I think, you know, rising inequality around the world makes it very difficult. But I think the leaders need to earn the trust and hold the trust of the people they govern. And the way you do that is by taking action that’s going to tangibly improve people’s lives, telling them about it, talking to them. I think more leaders need to overcommunicate with people. And when you couldn’t do something that you said you were going to do, you you’re honest about it. You just you’re in their face all the time. So they get to know you. They trust you. And, you know, maybe you’ll commit more gaffes that way by talking all the time and being in their face. Maybe you’ll say things that piss people off. You definitely will. But I do think that people in this information age have come to expect that their leaders are going to communicate to them constantly.

 

Nish Kumar And how do you manage that communication when the means of communication are owned by people supportive of demagogues and authoritarians? We can talk all we want about what that mask gesture meant on stage, but ultimately we’re adults. We watched the footage. You know what you saw. I know what I saw. But how when you have someone like Musk essentially inserting himself in the middle of the means by which you communicate, but political leaders communicate with their populace, how do you manage that?

 

Jon Favreau Yeah. I mean, the reality is that space is owned by right leaning billionaires or just, you know, dominated by right leaning political figures. We just got to go into those spaces and talk like we have no other choice. I. Think it’s also important as as we’re doing to build up center left left media to build our own. And I think there’s a there’s there’s incredible value in that. But I also think we have to be cognizant of the fact that people get their where people get their information from. Right. And if there’s a whole bunch of people who aren’t getting their information from us and also maybe aren’t getting their information from, you know, right leaning media, we have to figure out where they are getting their information from and go to those places and communicate. And that’s like the best we can do. And I think we shouldn’t be afraid of debate either. Right. And talking to people who whose views we may find odious or people we may find odious. But if they’re in power and they have been influential following, then I think it’s important to go in and debate and and actually and talk to people and communicate that way.

 

Nish Kumar That’s been the key debate and question, hasn’t it, is how progressive people engage, because there’s been an argument that actually non-engagement is better because if you go into their spaces, they control the terms of things like the edit. And also there’s there’s been this argument that if you spend too much time engaging with something like Access formerly Twitter, you actually legitimize a platform owned by a guy who’s, you know, I don’t know, doing one long held wave. Is that what would you call it?

 

Jon Favreau That we’re blaming on Aspergers? Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar I, I cannot tell you. Neurodivergent does not make you do hit list notes. I’m so sorry to.

 

Jon Favreau But it’s a slope. It’s a slippery slope. No, I think that is the key question. But look, the platforms are legitimized. They are, you know, Donald Trump is normalized. It’s all here. It’s all happening. It’s the reality we live in. Wish it weren’t. But if you just put yourself in the shoes of someone who does not follow politics as closely as you and I do, and someone who does not follow like right wing politics as closely as a lot of Trump fans do, or a lot of, you know, right wing folks in your country. Those folks, their view, their impression of politics is going to be based on who they’re hearing from and where they are hearing them. Right. And if we are not in those places, they can’t ever hear our side of the story. And then filling the vacuum will be the Donald Trumps of the world. Right. And so we have to be in those spaces. To me, that’s the only solution, because otherwise no one’s ever going to hear us.

 

Nish Kumar Jon Favreau, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Thank you. If you want to get more ongoing coverage and political analysis of Trump’s second term, tune in to Pod Save America every Tuesday and Friday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, with the Trump inauguration, the climate emergency has never felt more urgent. After the break, Coco and I will be speaking to the Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer.

 

Jon Favreau [AD]

 

[AD]

 

Nish Kumar Things are not looking good for planet Earth. And that was probably the wrong time to voice to say that particular sentence and say we kicked off the new year with wildfires in L.A., major flooding in great Manchester and landslides in Indonesia. Meanwhile, Trump wasted no time at his inauguration in withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time.

 

Coco Khan The UK government has sought to restore its status as a climate leader on the world stage. But many environmental groups have argued that their plans are too narrow. Instead, they have been campaigning for a climate and nature bill, claiming it would have monumental implications for Britain’s chances of slashing emissions and doing our part to help with the climate crisis.

 

Nish Kumar It’s a private member’s bill introduced by LibDem MP Ross Savage, and it’s attracted cross-party support and the backing of many campaign groups. Its second reading is later this week and the Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer is one of the bill’s co-sponsors and she is our guest in the studio. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK Carla.

 

Carla Denyer MP Thanks for having me on again.

 

Nish Kumar The inauguration of Trump. It has a sort of seismic impact on any number of fields, but particularly with the environment and also the sort of signing away of LGBTQ rights as part of his first wave of executive orders. How do you feel watching that happen almost in real time?

 

Carla Denyer MP It was pretty grim watching the speeches at the various inauguration ceremonies. I’m not surprised we knew this was coming. He told us that he was going to do all this stuff. I think this is a really pivotal moment for the UK government. The UK government has to decide which way it wants to face. I will be really worried if we see anything more from number ten that looks like cozying up to Trump’s government. When I in the Green Party are really clear that we would do a lot better if we tend towards Europe and towards governments that are far from perfect, but for the most part have, I would say, more shared values with the UK. I do understand that when you are in government you are responsible for diplomacy that goes beyond just your personal views and your political party. But one can be polite without cozying up. It was concerning yesterday to see Number ten refusing to comment on Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement. Like that’s. Even if they don’t want to comment on Trump or Musk as people, surely they can comment on policy decisions that their government disagrees with.

 

Coco Khan I think most people can agree that the 4th of July election was a good election for progressives, and obviously you were part of that tide. So if you had to guess what consequences there might be for the Labor government with its progressive base for not being a bit more polite but unfriendly or whatever language we want to use, what do you think consequences could be?

 

Carla Denyer MP Probably some of those consequences are going to come down the track anyway because of the decisions, various decisions that have been made over the first six months of this Labor government on everything from being very slow and partial on their decisions on suspending arms sales to Israel to shell benefit cap. An almost endless list of things where I’ve seen people in my constituency and more broadly, basically saying this isn’t what I expected. Labor.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s try and focus on the more hopeful elements of this. The climate nature bill feels like a first step in fighting back on the global stage. So tell us what the key headlines in the bill are.

 

Carla Denyer MP It’s a cross-party project really, so proposed by a Lib Dem MP. We’ve cosignatories from Greens Plaid Cumbria, SNP, Labor conservatives. It’s not often that you find people from all of these parties ready to work together and agree. And although there’s been various versions of this bill, the main three principles that have been consistent throughout them are, firstly, the law must keep pace with the science. The climate science, especially the Climate Change Act. 2008 was groundbreaking in its time, but it’s really out of date now. It was written in a time when we thought that keeping climate change within two degrees was enough. The climate science is now super clear that that is not the case. We need to keep within 1.5 if we possibly can. That door is closing fast, but if we possibly can, or at least as close to it as possible, and that requires a different set of policies. The second fundamental principle in the bill is that climate and nature are so interrelated that we have to tackle them as one. Having completely separate bits of legislation that don’t interact at all puts the government at risk of making decisions that will be good for climate, that bad for nature and or vice versa. And the third is democracy, basically, that people should have a voice in solutions. And so there’s a section in the bill around using a climate assembly or a climate advisory council so that the government can be advised by what the public has an appetite for, which I think is really important, because the fastest way to decarbonize is to bring people along with you. And actually loads of polling shows that the public have got much more of an appetite for for urgent action on climate than I think most politicians realize. But you have to make sure that you do it in a way that puts the responsibility for paying for it on those with the broader shoulders. And you don’t accidentally design a policy that means that those on the lowest incomes are put in a more difficult situation, of course. And so that’s why the climate assembly comes in.

 

Coco Khan You’ll need Labor support for this bill, right? Yeah.

 

Carla Denyer MP And the less sunny part, the story, let’s say, is that we’re still only a couple of days to go until we debate and hopefully vote on this bill. We still don’t know if we have labor support.

 

Coco Khan Right. I see.

 

Nish Kumar But do you have the support of individual labor?

 

Carla Denyer MP We have the support of individual Labor MP, including some co-sponsors. We have the support of nearly 200 employees in principle. Nearly 200 MPs signed a pledge before or since the election saying that they would support this. So the big question is whether all those people that in the run up to an election said that they would support it are actually going to put their bum on a seat and support it when when the moment matters.

 

Nish Kumar In terms of the specifics of it. I mean, the target of 1.5 degrees, that threshold was already surpassed last year. Is that an argument that the bill doesn’t go far enough or is that an argument you’re trying to make to show the urgency of passing something like this?

 

Carla Denyer MP The climate science isn’t going to budge for politics. Yes, the climate science is that we must stay within 1.5 to have a good chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Carla Denyer MP But also that every fraction of a degree matters. Yeah. So very depressingly, we found out that 2024 exceeded 1.5 degrees, but because of the intricacies of the atmosphere and the climate and how it works, that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve permanently passed it.

 

Coco Khan Right.

 

Carla Denyer MP And even if we have, we should have policies that aim to haul it back as much as possible. So I still think it is a good idea to be ambitious. We still need policies that are in line with 1.5 and we need it in legislation if we possibly can. Why do MPs always reach for legislation when it could just be regulation? Yeah. You may have noticed that ministers don’t tend to go, yes, wasn’t co-leader. The Green Party helped me to do it. So what will you do with it? So. So trying to get cross-party support through a bit of legislation that is hopefully non-controversial to a very large number of people is just one of the stronger levers that we have available. Private members bills often don’t make it onto the statute book, but occasionally they do. This could and I think now’s the time.

 

Nish Kumar Last week it was reported that the government set to back expansion at three London airports, Heathrow and Gatwick, as part of the efforts to spur economic growth. The environmental charity the WWF said this would cancel out the carbon savings of the government’s Clean Power Action Plan in just five years. And that there is an argument that the growth benefits don’t stack up. If this bill passes, would the climate and nature bill be able to prevent decisions like that from being taken on the basis of the environmental impact?

 

Carla Denyer MP I think it probably would, because one of the important clauses in the Climate and nature Bill is that the UK government would have a responsibility to reduce emissions associated with aviation and shipping. So one of the big problems with current climate legislation is that aviation and shipping a dealt with separately through international agreements, but ones that are pretty ineffective. And so every country is able to go, yeah, yeah, we’ve got loads of airports with loads of planes setting off from them, but that’s not our problem because aviation shipping is excluded. It’s like still your citizens taking off in planes owned by British companies from British airports emitting carbon dioxide in British airspace. Think it might be your problem? A little bit. And the climate nature bill does have a line saying shalt not expand airports. Yeah, but it would make it very, very difficult to meet the legal requirements while doing so. Worth noting as well that the Climate Change Committee, which is the government’s official independent adviser on climate, has said there should be no net airport expansion and that the government won’t be able to meet its targets if it does that. And of course, people need to travel. But the thing to be to have at the top of your mind when thinking about airport expansion is airport expansion benefits. The superrich, the wealthiest 1%, are responsible for 50% of global aviation emissions. And so airport expansion overwhelmingly benefits those people. Meanwhile, the people living under the flight path dealing with the the noise pollution and the air pollution locally, as well as those at the sharp end of climate change are overwhelmingly those at the the other end of the spectrum.

 

Coco Khan So if I was a Labor spokesperson was something else, but this is what I might say. I might say. Thing is, though, Carla, the people, what they really want in the minute is the cost of living to go down and they want a better quality of life. And the only way we’re going to do that is to grow the economy. And we need these runways to grow the economy. So we’ve got no choice. What do you say?

 

Carla Denyer MP The benefits for the economy are probably overstated. The New Economics Foundation did a really helpful analysis of this years ago when my local airport home and in my constituency, Bristol, was proposing to expand. And it may do that again, it looks like, or try to. They found that the majority of the new jobs that would be created were low quality jobs. You know, yes, of course, if you’ve got an increased number of passengers going through an airport, you do need more people to serve you sandwiches and coffee. But if instead the government invested in expanding rail in the UK and better international rail connections and so on, then guess what? More people would need to buy sandwiches and coffee in the rail stations. So though it doesn’t generate very good quality jobs and those jobs aren’t inherently attached to aviation. They could go to wherever else you invested that money.

 

Nish Kumar I can’t drive. So when I started doing stand up 15 years ago, I was completely reliant on the train network and the I also slowly watched. The prices just take up as the quality of service has gone down. This I’m not going to get off my high horse as I announce an extension of my U.S. tour. I’m not going to get my high horse about people flying, right. But in a country the size of ours. We shouldn’t need to fly internally. But I am also aware when I look at train tickets as I bought them to go from London to Manchester, that if you were not able to spend that money, of course you would fly. Of course.

 

Carla Denyer MP Which is why this has to be be about government changing policy and changing legislation to make the green thing the most convenient and the most affordable thing, rather than having to go individuals for choices that sometimes they don’t have complete freedom to make. Thank goodness rail is going to be brought back into public hands now. That’s been a Green Party policy since forever. As long as the investment comes with it. Yeah, but there’s no tax on aviation fuel. There’s no VAT on plane tickets. There’s additional direct subsidies connected to domestic aviation. On top of that, the tax regime for private jets is a bit too generous. Yeah, there are lots of political choices that successive governments have made. That have created this unfair situation we’re in now. And so important for us to remember that the economy is not this naturally occurring phenomenon. Yeah. Yeah. We just have to live in the economy. It’s created by humans. And if it’s not working for us, we can change it.

 

Nish Kumar Absolutely. 100%. The concern that I have at the moment, or one of the many concerns over the moment is how specifically we combat a wave of disinformation now that has like consequences across all of politics, but particularly on the climate.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It is so important that we are having a US scientific and fact based conversation. I don’t want to be like that guy, but like I get people just don’t give a fuck about black or brown people. I get that now. I’ve been that that has been made very clear to me over and over again. So I don’t expect people to be sympathetic to people in like Pacific Islands or people in Asia. I just I’ve given up trying to make the case for our basic humanity because they it does seem like there is an immovable and very voluble minority that just doesn’t acknowledge us to be human beings. But the people crazy.

 

Carla Denyer MP Let’s just say you have.

 

Nish Kumar The right to register the people being relocated in California. A lot of them are white people. Australia is routinely on fire. These are places where white people live. I would have thought that.

 

Carla Denyer MP Surely the penny is dropping.

 

Nish Kumar Dropping. Yeah, yeah. Surely the penny is dropping that this idea that like catastrophic climate change is something that’s coming in the pipeline. You can’t look at the scenes of like people’s houses that they’ve lived in for decades with all of their entire, like possessions burning to the ground, belching kind of toxic clouds into the air to the people that are still in the area. As that was happening, I would have thought we’d stop. We’d be able to move on from this idea that catastrophe is impending when catastrophe is now like the.

 

Carla Denyer MP Conspiracy theories about what caused the.

 

Nish Kumar My God. No, I haven’t watched. My God.

 

Coco Khan What is it? What caused it? I mean, these people, were.

 

Nish Kumar They somehow managed to blame on homeless people? Some people have managed to blame it on immigrants. Some some people are blaming it on Diddy. Now, listen, there are a lot of things that can be blamed on Diddy. Okay. There are a lot of things that can be blamed on Diddy. That legal case is ongoing. Okay. But like the amount of conspiracy theories that just being wild about the L.A. fires. And so you have this like incredible sort of dissident image of California burning to the ground. At the same time, Trump is inaugurated and immediately pulls the US out of Paris. Where is. Where’s the reason here?

 

Coco Khan And also with the California fires as well. The thing that I was really struck by is all those very expensive houses proves you cannot inoculate yourself. Why does it matter how rich you are? It doesn’t matter. It’s coming for you. Yeah.

 

Carla Denyer MP The thing that I and the Greens and why the environmental movement has been saying for decades is that, you know, those on the lowest incomes, those in the global South who’ve done the least to contribute to climate change will be at the sharp end of it. But no one can escape it. We are getting to the point where that is happening.

 

Coco Khan NASA’s going to go to Mars. Well, maybe that’ll be great, actually.

 

Nish Kumar Let’s close with a more optimistic conversation. A kernel of real optimism in this is this cross-party support and this idea that, you know, everybody breathes air like ultimate apart from Rupert Murdoch. But that’s maybe a separate issue. But like the rest of us are mammals that breathe there. So, like in terms of your dealings on this specific bill, have you had some grounds for optimism in terms of the cross-party cooperation on it?

 

Carla Denyer MP Yeah, I have. So there are two conservative co proposals to the Climate and nature bill. And actually they’ve been some of the more proactive, I would say, in terms of lobbying their peers and on making the case and they’re being part of the team, even though there are vast swathes of policy where we don’t agree they’re being part of the team has added a richness and a greater understanding of how we can persuade more MPs. So our overlap is is slimmer certainly with between Greens and conservatives. There are some areas we can work together. I don’t know overall how many Conservative MP will back this bill. I suspect it won’t be high, but there are some people in pretty much every party that get it and we have to work cross-party if we’re going to tackle this crisis.

 

Coco Khan Will it get rid of the fish in the sea?

 

Carla Denyer MP So maybe the nature part of it worked. But I think what is more likely to help with that is bringing the water companies into public ownership.

 

Coco Khan Well, I think you summed up that I like you know, this bill will do a lot, but it’s not the only one we need. Yeah. Also, I paid the best part of 300 pounds when I turned 30 to learn how to swim because I didn’t really know how to do it. As an adult, you have any idea how humiliating it is to be 30 years old in a primary school swimming pool for a 16 year old? How to swim? I’m. Coming in the C some day and I need to make sure I’m not going to get E.coli. So I’m saying this is a personal mission for me. I don’t know.

 

I don’t want to have wasted that 300 quid.

 

Coco Khan Coco the eel. It’s my moment. My time is coming.

 

Nish Kumar So what can listeners do in terms of helping this further along? Obviously, it’s quite a short turnaround because the vote, if it happens, is going to be on Friday.

 

Carla Denyer MP The campaigns zero hour that are pushing the climate and nature bill. They have a template on their website. So you can just go on their website and email your MP or you can just send them a one liner saying climate change bill, please be there and vote for it on Friday. That’s the key message that they need to see that a lot of their constituents care about this and are watching what they do. There are a lot of MPs that need a gentle kick up the bum and the electorate, other people in the position to do that.

 

Coco Khan Carla Denyer, thank you for joining Pod Save the UK. We will be watching in a non creepy way. After the break, we’ll be taking a look at the parade of horrors who made the trip across the pond for Trump’s inauguration.

 

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Nish Kumar So with Trump’s inauguration, inevitably there’s been a deluge of fake moments. So we’ve collected the best of the worst for you.

 

Coco Khan Buckle up. Right. So the UK’s very own basket of deplorables descended on Washington, D.C. to watch the ceremony. On the guest list of horrors was Sowell, a private man who was filmed by Channel four News, wearing a MAGA hat and boarding the same flight as hard right activist Laurence Fox.

 

Clip It’s an honor to be here, and I’m very grateful for the invitation to the inauguration. You got a direct invitation from Mr. Trump. And I’m very much for attending the rally. Okay? But I knew Laurence Fox as well. We have to you, sir. Did fly together?

 

Nish Kumar Not actually confirming that she was invited. Yeah. It’s got real. I never thought I’d see a comparison between Vince Vaughn and so well above him. But it has Real Wedding Crashers energy. It has real wedding.

 

Coco Khan It’s funny that that was the film we went to because the film I went to was Snakes on a Plane.

 

Nish Kumar The president said that her and her husband happened to be on the same flight as Fox, but later Fox livestreamed them walking through Washington, D.C. together. So like, it’s a very interesting claim to be like, no, no, we’re not here together. We just happened to coincidentally be walking down the same street together while he livestreams.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, but it might be one of those, you know, those awkward things where you walk along with someone that you work with and then, it turns out you’re on the same train, and now you have to chat.

 

Nish Kumar That happens to us literally every week. That is the worst possible anecdote for myself, for my self-esteem that you could have released that happened to us this morning on our way in. I didn’t. We ran into each other on the tube.

 

Coco Khan It came out a lot happier than I meant it. I just meant as a novel. I’m trying to defend them or anything like that.

 

Nish Kumar But also moving swiftly and moving on from our awkward conversations with our irritated coworkers.

 

Coco Khan So if I start calling you my coworker, my coworker, and then also part of the UK’s right wing exodus to D.C. was Nigel Farage, Priti Patel and Liz Truss. Truss posted a photo of herself on X wearing a MAGA hat with the caption in DC. The new Donald Trump term can’t come soon enough. The West needs it.

 

Nish Kumar For like our American listeners. If you’re looking for kernels of hope, Liz Truss being supportive of political project feels like a curse.

 

Coco Khan Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. Thanks.

 

Nish Kumar The literal sides to get 100% behind tend to collapse quite quickly in our experience.

 

Coco Khan I’m still hoping that Tesla were going to hire Liz Truss just to have her. Liz Truss The. I just want that to happen.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah. Nigel Farage obviously the, the far right hand man of many of the crowd is involved. And also, you know, Priti Patel. Listen, if you’re going to have a Tory MP turn up to be with a foreign government, why not make it one who actually lost their job for doing that?

 

Coco Khan And on a lighter note, despite traveling thousands of miles, none of this motley crew made it into the actual capital building itself to watch the ceremony firsthand. Boris Jonson was the only politician to make the cut from the UK. It must have left Trump whisperer Nigel Farage feeling pretty salty.

 

Nish Kumar Also not in the room. Laurence Fox. But he was forced to watch the inauguration from. I sort of can’t quite believe I’m about to say this. Kid Rock’s hotel room alongside his buddy, the right wing priest, Calvin Robbins, said, I guess the incredibly selective Bible reading priest Calvin Robinson, who previously left the UK for the US in protest at what he called the Satanic. Keir Starmer.

 

Clip Congratulations, Mr..

 

Coco Khan My God. It’s sad, isn’t it?

 

Nish Kumar I don’t even know what to say. Like it’s a failed act. A failed vicar at a failed rock star in a hotel room, which feels like the set up lead to an awful joke.

 

Coco Khan I know, but the punch line is us. Because this is the world we live in.

 

Nish Kumar Yeah, that’s right.

 

Coco Khan Did you ever read that profile of Kid Rock in Rolling Stone?

 

Nish Kumar No, I where possible. Try to avoid any mentions of Kid Rock.

 

Coco Khan Well, if any of our listeners are interested in, like, a 3000 word interview profile about Kid Rock, it’s really good. It’s a really good piece of journalism. But in that, you get a portrayal of a man who is quite sad, quite lonely and is just desperate for approval, is kind of getting it from the Mac a lot. And there’s a moment where he’s trying to impress this Rolling Stone journalist for reasons we don’t understand. At the same time, he’s also trolling this Rolling Stone Age editor and he says, I’ve got Trump’s number and he phones the number and Trump doesn’t answer. You could just imagine him. Just like he’s going to answer. He’s going to answer. He does not answer. And that is the vibe I got there. Like, why are you in this room, my friend?

 

Nish Kumar It’s just nice sometimes to see a person whose politics are as awful as their music. Just a good just a good double whammy for you that he did make it onto BBC News. That’s Kid Rock. I mean, whilst puffing on a cigar, he used the airtime to make creepy, sexist remarks to the BBC’s chief presenter Katrina Perry.

 

Clip I mean, I can’t see you right now, so I don’t know what you look like. Well, I look like I’m ready to hit the slopes. I can tell you I’m in full on ski gear here with my half gloves, the whole thing. Ready to rock? Because he got to be wrapped up against the elements. I love to go skiing. I love to go skiing. You sound sexy. You wanna go with me? Yeah.

 

Coco Khan Well, we won’t get into that right here. So we didn’t go skiing today. We’ve got a day of broadcasting to do. My God. That was painful viewing.

 

Nish Kumar The MAGA movement is spearheaded by a man seemingly contemptuous of women. Its agenda. So it’s maybe not surprising that like, one of his sort of, in inverted commas, celebrity supporters just feels that, you know, he gives off casually.

 

Coco Khan Yes, totally emboldened to do that. Yes, That’s part of the celebration.

 

Nish Kumar Unbelievably, this isn’t the first time this has happened to this specific journalist. She was actually hit on live on air by Donald Trump himself. Here he is singling out Perry, a press event in the Oval Office seven years ago in this clip from the BBC.

 

Clip We have all of this beautiful Irish press where. I’m from, to even use this history of firing her. Katrina Perry. She has a nice smile on her face. So I bet you treat you well.

 

Coco Khan My God. I really recognize that. Ha, ha. Walk away. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, like, just. Just smile so they don’t, you know, hurt you and then walk away. It’s really that kind of chills down my. Down my spine. I just hope obviously, Katrina, Brady’s consummate professional, knows exactly what to do. And I’m just waiting for that moment when she’s no longer as a representative of the press and can just let loose.

 

Nish Kumar This is who they are. You have a political movement spearheaded by a guy that does not respect women. This is exactly who they are. I feel incredibly sorry for Perry and all of these female journalists that kind of doing their job are going to have to sort of be confronted by these men. It’s gross.

 

Coco Khan Yeah, it really is. And it sort of, you know, immediately raises questions about like women’s safety in even covering this sort of stuff and covering these sort of mess that no woman should be sexually harassed in the workplace. And that’s sort of what we’re witnessing, isn’t it? Yeah. In front of us, it’s just very dispiriting thing to see.

 

Nish Kumar I think this political movement, the important thing is to not ignore all of the signs that it’s showing you. The political movement is sort of infected with sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism like that is a huge part of. Who are the kind of leaders of this movement are. You know, Musk stood on stage and essentially did a Nazi salute to a crowd. Let’s not overthink it. Let’s believe who they’re telling us they are and start to articulate an opposition to it, because you can’t push back against something. You’re not acknowledging the existence of and that that I’m not being particularly coded in that I am talking directly to the Labor Party. I appreciate the difficult position that a Labor government has been put into by this election result. I absolutely appreciate that. But at the same time there has to be a better balance struck between maintaining the relationships between the US and the UK government and a supposedly progressive party not cosigning, you know, white nationalist, misogynist, homophobic Christie Nationalism like there has to be a way. There has to be a way for us to navigate all of this stuff.

 

Coco Khan Yeah.

 

Nish Kumar It’s not the most fun, though, to know stuff. No. It was funny when you were biking. Positive past digs at me. We’ve got to go get the tube together. How is that going to make me feel on that walk back?

 

Coco Khan It was honestly just a coincidence.

 

Nish Kumar You could have faked a phone call.

 

Coco Khan Was the coincidence that the. The example I went to happened to be one from at live.

 

Nish Kumar From this morning?

 

Coco Khan This morning?

 

Nish Kumar Yeah.

 

Coco Khan It’s just a coincidence.

 

Nish Kumar That’s it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. As always, we want to hear your thoughts. Email us at PSUK@ReducedListening.co.UK.

 

Coco Khan And don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, Tik Tok and Twitter. If you want more of us, you have to subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can see our faces and everything.

 

Nish Kumar Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.

 

Coco Khan Thanks to senior producer James Tindale and assistant producer Mae Robson.

 

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

 

Coco Khan Thanks to our engineer Jeet Vasami.

 

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Anoushka Sharma, Madeleine Herringer 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.

 

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