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Donald Trump has taken another swipe at Europe’s “weak” leaders over Ukraine and immigration including a special mention for – surprise surprise – Sadiq Khan, who got a shout out for being a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor”. Honestly, why is he SO obsessed?!

But a Labour government trying to convince European allies to water down human rights law to deport people faster seems perfectly in line with Trump’s vision. Nish and Coco are joined by Sky’s Deputy Political Editor Sam Coates.

They also take a dive into the latest allegation swirling around Reform UK – this time the party’s election spending in Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency is under the spotlight.

And the scale of the homelessness crisis always seems more acute at this time of year – so the Minister for Local Government and Homelessness, Alison McGovern, joins PSUK to explain how their new plan will be the one to finally make a difference.

Finally – PSUK has watched the first episode of the Liz Truss Show, so you don’t have to. Nish and Coco give it a rating out of one to limp lettuce.

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GUESTS 

Sam Coates, Deputy Political Editor at Sky News

Alison McGovern MP, Minister of State for Local Government and Homelessness

USEFUL LINKS: 

Nish’s Carol Performance

CREDITS

Politico

The Liz Truss Show / YouTube

Keir Starmer MP / TikTok

Rishi Sunak MP / TikTok

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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. So the big man, Donald Trump, has hit out at all those weak European leaders who don’t tell him that he’s great all the time. He’s played the strong man before to great effect, but could it backfire this time? Plus, we asked the burning question: why is he so obsessed with London Mayor Sadiq Khan? Sky’s Sam Coates is here to help us make sense of the madness.

Nish Kumar I’m just gonna scooch straight over whatever that accent was. It sounded like Clint Eastwood. Back home, the UK is in crisis with one family made homeless or threatened with homelessness every five minutes. We speak about the government’s new strategy with Minister Alison McGovern.

Coco Khan And later Liz Truss is back to tell her story on YouTube. Are you excited? How many limp lettuces do you give it Nish on a scale of one to lettuce?

Nish Kumar Listen, Liz Truss is exactly the kind of raving lunatic that with love, a lot of people listening to this podcast are going to be dodging at their family Christmas this year. We’re really giving people a taste of what it’s gonna be like when your aunt or uncle starts wanging on about immigration while you’re trying to eat turkey. First up, Donald Trump got to use some of his favorite words this week weak and aimless. For a man who seems confused often by challenges like walking up the stairs and not destroying historic buildings, he’s also come out swinging this week saying that European leaders don’t know what they’re doing.

Clip I think they’re weak, but I also think that they want to be so politically correct that I think they don’t know what to do.

Coco Khan So far, so Trump. And in the interview with Politico, he also continued with one of his other favorite themes by attacking London Mayor Sadiq Khan, calling him a horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor. Honestly, why is this man so obsessed?

Nish Kumar The US has been increasingly critical of Europe in recent days, causing serious concern about whether a United Front can be found as work continues on a Ukraine peace deal. Joining us to help understand it all is Sky’s deputy political editor, Sam Coates. Sam, welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Sam Coates Hello there.

Sam, even by Trump’s standards, the interviews given with Politico this week feels I I don’t know how many times I can use the word unhinged. I had hoped that I’d left it behind in the twenty sixteen to twenty twenty period. But this is even for Trump quite the sort of intervention.

Sam Coates Oh, that and the entire forty-five minute video, which is up on the Politico website bears actually does bear bear some time watching because it’s quite the performance by the US president. Look, we’re used to his extreme language. It’s one of the things that got him elected. It’s one of the things that his detractors and supporters alike like about him and respond to. But there’s a line in this interview that he crosses that I think is quite important. He does two things in the interview. The first is to attack the concept of Europe, to call Europe a decaying continent and to come after, you know, the inability as he sees it of leaders to deal with the the subject of migration. If you strip out some of the language, it actually so far so normal. I I think if you were sitting in Downing Street, what you’d think about that is that you can draw a direct kind of line between Trump’s domestic policies on immigration and and how he talks about that and and sort of what he’s saying about about other countries. Where I think they will be worried in European capitals isn’t so much about the language about the European Union or or the comments about migration. It’s that he picks sides in some countries about which parties he wants to win. And and that’s where, even though he’s not talking in Britain about this, perhaps we’ll come to Sadiqan in a moment, but but at a national level, because he’s got a good relationship for now with Keir Starmer, you can kind of feel the stomach muscles all over the EU sort of tighten as he talks about liking Viktor Orban in in Hungary and the other parties that he might he might support. And it’s when he starts interfering in foreign government electoral races, I think that that European leaders really start to worry.

Nish Kumar He does specifically refer to his own intervention in the Argentinian election in favor of Javier Millet, and he sort of implies that it was his endorsement that that did for Malay. But actually, the reality is it wasn’t his endorsement, it was the specific tying of Malay’s electoral success to an American financial bailout. He he sort of heavily suggested that he might be more amenable to giving financial aid to Hungary because of his political and ideological affiliation with Viktor Orban. But also beyond that concern, the immediate concern must be about Ukraine, because he sort of heavily implied that the US could walk away from Ukraine. He he said that Moscow retains the upper hand and that Zelensky has to play ball and the peace deal that he’s put together, which undoubtedly f favors Russian interests in the region. Is there a concern that he might walk away from Ukraine? And perversely, might that actually drive European leaders to bind closer to each other and actually take more decisive action as a bloc in Ukraine? A hundred percent.

Sam Coates No. There has been a massive worry that Donald Trump would side too much with President Putin over the Ukraine war ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House. And look, we’ve we’ve watched it wax and wane. I mean, I was in the White House in August when Keir Starmer and other European leaders and Ursula von der Leyen all went scurrying to the White House to sort of be alongside Vladimir Zelensky when he met President Trump back then because it looked like after a meeting between Trump and Putin, Trump was going to take Putin’s side. And we did walk back from that outcome then. Nobody knows, is the bottom line. Nobody knows whether when Trump talks up his kind of sympathy for the Russian side, if we can put it like that, or talks up his willingness to walk away, or talks up the need for Zelensky to hold elections, which actually now, judging by the reports out of out of Kyiv, he might end up doing in the next few months. Nobody knows whether that is a part of a negotiating tactic in order to actually try and find some kind of as close to mutually acceptable solution as there that there is, or B simply he’s saying it because he believes it. And in the entire British foreign policy of of Keir Starmer over the last year and a bit has been hoping that the former rather than the latter is true and trying to get Trump on the right page. Through difficult moments. But we’re in a difficult moment. There’s no doubt about that.

Coco Khan Perhaps we still believe that an alliance with the US in in many, many areas of trade security is still in our best interest. But is there any temperature change at all? Perhaps, for example, a feeling of we will proceed as though the US is our friend, but secretly we know they are actually not any help and we may not rely on them to come to our rescue in any circumstance.

Sam Coates Well, I suppose the best way you can measure that is to not look just at our bilateral relations with the with America, but how we’re dealing with other countries and how much of a priority we give, for instance, trade to America compared to, say, the EU. And and there what you see is that I my sense is that there is still a real ceiling on our ambition of how close we want to get to the EU. And in part that’s because of our relations, wanting to have straight strong relations with countries like America. As it stands, there’s Downing Street, doesn’t want to, for instance, join the EU Customs Union once more. That’s an idea that has been floated by some people. Keir Starmer’s economic advisor is said to be in favor of that. There are allies of the Prime Minister pushing for that. It would mean that we had a tariff free arrangement with the EU, something like what what Turkey has at the moment. But what it would also mean is that we we would rip up the existing agreement with the US that isn’t great on things like steel, for instance, but we would we would have to rip that up and we would be in a much worse tariff position vis-a-vis the US and we would be in a much worse diplomatic position vis a vis the US, because Donald Trump, frankly, would go pretty nuts if we did that.

Nish Kumar How does Keir Starmer manage i i his relationship with Donald Trump whilst also managing concerns at home about some of Trump’s language? I I’m thinking specifically, so once again, Trump has gone back in on Sadiq Khan. He said, if you take a look at London, this is a I’m quoting directly from the political interview. You have a mayor named Khan, he’s a horrible mayor, he’s an incompetent mayor, he’s a horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job. London’s a different place. And then he says, I love London, I love London twice, which is sort of strange. You just sort of forget about the strange idioms that he saw.

Coco Khan Yeah.

Nish Kumar His his speech patterns don’t resemble anyone else’s. But he also in the interview suggests that the reason Khan has been a successful mayor is because people are pouring over here and voting for him. It’s kind of language that verges on the great replacement theory, this anti Semitic conspiracy theory that a sort of cabal of Jewish intellectuals is flooding the West in inverted commas with black and brown immigrants as a ploy to dilute the white race in continental Europe. How does Starmer manage his relationship with Trump whilst also reflecting presumably concerns that a lot of his Labor voting base will have about the language aimed at Labor’s sort of consistently most successful electoral politician over the last decade?

Sam Coates Well, listen, we’re recording this on Wednesday, just a couple of hours before Prime Minister’s questions, and I’m sure that’ll come up and you will watch Keirstarmer respond at that point. And and I I sort of know how everybody listening will feel when they hear him respond, which is probably by clinching quite a lot of muscles that you didn’t know you have, right? Because you sort of know what he’s going to do, right? He will go out of his way to try and achieve a number of things that that you can’t really do all of simultaneously. He will reject criticism of Sadiq Khan, but he will avoid kind of hurling back tit for tat abuse at Donald Trump in order to just about try and stay on the right side of him, despite defending his fellow Labor Party lawmaker. So it will be a carefully thought through, carefully managed, but in the end, not particularly bombastic response.

Coco Khan Can I just ask though, why is he so obsessed with Sadiq Khan? What is it? The r the reason I ask that is because I want to know if Starmer is playing this game of just sort of avoiding this confrontation. Presumably this confrontation is not going to go away. If we c if I can understand why Donald Trump has really has it in for Sadiq Khan, maybe I can understand how long this problem will persist.

Sam Coates Presumably, and this I I can see no more easily into the mind of the US president than than the next. But my my best guess is that President Trump is highlighting and picking on Sadiq Khan for domestic political reasons, right? Whenever Donald Trump talks about Sadiq Khan, he leans in to his surname. And we saw that in the interview. That is a very clear signal to a slice of his electorate that he is determined to send. And then he talks about the kind of immigration situation in in in London, which of course you and I know is not something that Sadiq Khan has any political control over.

Nish Kumar Sam, almost at the same time as Trump was giving his politico interview, there was some movement from two European leaders on the issue of immigration. So Keir Starmer and the Dutch Prime Minister Meta Fredrickson have co-authored an opinion piece that’s in The Guardian, arguing that we need to curb human rights to make it easier to take tougher action on protecting borders. So they’re actually trying to get movement on the ECHR, the European Convention on Human Rights. How easy is it going to be for them to get any movement out of the EU and European nations on the ECHR?

Sam Coates I do worry, you know, that the government was running this argument pretty high up the flagpole. Keir Starmer is making out that he can help renegotiate the kind of fundamental post-World War II treaties that Britain has signed up to in order to ensure a little bit more latitude for asylum policy for the more rigorous implementation of asylum policy. But the problem is it’s very hard and it’s very slow. So we might get an agreement with a handful of countries that something needs to be done today. We might then, in the sort of spring of next year, get a political declaration by the Council of Europe, which is where all the actions are taking place in Strasbourg today. But really, I’m not even sure that 2026 will be the year that something materially changes in the the wording of ECHR and quite how that’s put into operation. We might be talking about 2027, but you know, I was here when David Cameron was trying this with with Ken Clarke along alongside him. This has been a decades-long effort and sort of hope and aspiration of successive British prime ministers. And in the end, the Council of Europe is a large body, and in order to get consensus and change, is hard. And even looking, there were some comments to Plisco yesterday by the sort of chair of the Council of Europe. And and my sense was they were they were pretty prickly about what was going on. So I I think it would be dangerous for the for the Prime Minister to to to to put too many eggs in this basket because sure, he’s got one other European leader, but that is not yet enough in order to to achieve what David Lamy is in Strasbourg trying to achieve today.

Coco Khan Sam, we can’t let you go without asking about the latest Farage story. So allegations about reform spending during the election. According to the telegraph, Richard Everett, a former reform counselor who was part of Farage’s campaign team, gave police documents showing the party breached spending limits in Clacton.

Sam Coates Should I just pull the camera out a little bit and explain what is alleged to have gone on and why people are looking at what’s happening at Clacton. When you fight in a in a election campaign, in a general election, you get a limit that you’re allowed to spend in that constituency. And it’s about from them, it’s about 21,000 pounds. And you spend that on posters and you spend that on an election agent and you spend that on mail outs. And and you can also spend that on campaigning. And, you know, there was a a notorious incident in 2015 where people were bust into a different constituency and and that wasn’t properly recorded, and the Tories faced some sanctions for that. What happened in Clacton is that a critic of Nigel Farage has got hold of his election return and discovered that that election return was just a few hundred pounds short of the limit. So the allegation by the whistleblowerslash critic is that some things were not entered onto that election return declaration that needs to go to the council of the returning officer, that should have been. And if they had been, that would have taken them over the limit. Right. So at the moment, as at time of speaking, there is not a police investigation. In other words, they haven’t sort of they haven’t formally launch launched a pro. What they’re doing is they’re kind of scoping whether or not to do that. So i we’re at the very early stages. Really, the police have not decided whether even it’s worth their time. Look looking at this. So there’s no judgment there made by the police. If we get in a situation where the police do launch a proper investigation, and they do find evidence that they think would stack up in court, and then they do take that and attempt a prosecution. The consequences of that would be kind of reasonably serious in terms of reputation for Nigel Farage, but there is precedent for the candidate themselves not facing sanction and that actually just being party officials, whatever the sort of the opprobrium that might be attached to that. And I think the evidential threshold is quite high. And just at the moment, as you would expect, and I am obliged to say this, Nigel Farage and Reform UK deny any wrongdoing at the moment. But it strikes me that this is potentially serious, but maybe not for Nigel Farage personally, and there’s quite a long way to go in terms of different people investigating before we see consequences.

Coco Khan Sam Coates, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Sam Coates Pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

Coco Khan Coming up after the break, we find out about the government’s new plan to tackle homelessness.

Nish Kumar [AD]

Coco Khan So look, the twin storms of cost of living and the housing shortage means an ever rising number of people are facing homelessness. It’s not just about those forced live on the streets, a record number of people are experiencing so called hidden homelessness, having to sofa surf or make do in temporary housing like B and B’s. The situation is so bad that last month the charity crisis started providing its own social housing in London and Newcastle, saying they were responding to a catastrophic scenario.

Nish Kumar In Scotland, the devolved government has declared a housing emergency, and in Wales, homelessness is currently at the highest level since twenty fifteen. Not having a home is more than a financial or social problem. It impacts health. And last year the number of people who died while homeless reached a record high at one thousand six hundred and eleven, a heartbreaking figure.

Coco Khan So it’s good to hear that this week the government is publishing a new long-term strategy that aims to firmly put the wheels back on a failing system. Here to tell us more about it is Minister for Local Government and Homelessness, Alison McGovern. Alison, welcome to Pod Save the UK.

Alison McGovern Hi there, how are you doing?

Coco Khan It’s good to have you back. So tell us, what’s this big strategy?

Alison McGovern We will shortly be announcing our big plan to end homelessness. Lots of people will be thinking about heading home for Christmas, and they’ll also be worrying about the rough sleeping that people can see on the streets in lots of towns and cities in Britain at the moment. And I think they’re right to be worried because we know that rough sleeping has gone up an awful lot over the past decade and a half or so. But our strategy is also about that hidden homelessness, particularly children in temporary accommodation, that has gone up and up in recent years. And that has got to be tackled.

Nish Kumar What kind of money is the government putting behind this and how is that money going to be allocated?

Alison McGovern So I’ll be announcing the specifics to Parliament very shortly. It’s but we are making a significant investment. So the way that that works is that my department provides money to local authorities so that they can do a number of things. The first thing that they need to do is help support people who go to their council and say, I can’t fulfill my tenancy. I am at risk of being made homeless. Then they also work with community and voluntary organizations to provide the kind of drop-in centers for people who’ve experienced rough sleeping or those community support operations that can really help people get advice on how to get somewhere to live and also get other things that they need, like help with emergency health conditions and things like that, both to stop families becoming homeless in the first place and also to help put an arm around the shoulder of people who’ve experienced rough sleeping or homelessness at all.

Coco Khan You’ve rightly highlighted families and hidden homelessness. Children account for 50% of all people experiencing homelessness in England, which is absolutely horrifying. So of course it’s welcome to see the the ending of placing families in B in B and B’s beyond six weeks. But I guess my question is, how is this going to work? B and Bs are used by local councils as an emergency measure. So where are the people going to go? What accommodation is there?

Alison McGovern As I’m sat here talking to you, there’s more than 2,000 families in that situation. The way that we can stop that happening is if we can help councils be able to buy properties that they can use for temporary accommodation that are better quality, then they won’t have to use B and B’s so much. And that is at the heart of our strategy. Can we make sure that councils have got the ability, both with the cash and also with the people to do the work, to have better quality temporary accommodations so they’re not relying on B and Bs. So we want to bear down on the worst kinds of temporary accommodation, support councils to have better quality. At the same time, as obviously across the long term, the answer to homelessness is to build more homes and make sure people can afford them. So my colleague Matthew Pennycock, who’s the housing minister, has set out a way forward to spend the 39 billion to build social housing. And in the end, that’s the big solution.

Nish Kumar Yeah, let’s come back to social housing because that’s really, really important. Just it is just before we move on off off that subject, the obviously this is an urgent issue. So since twenty nineteen, unsuitable and substandard temporary accommodation has been listed as a contributing factor in the deaths of seventy-four children, including fifty-eight babies. In terms of timeline, how long will it take us to provide quality and suitable alternatives?

Alison McGovern That statistic about the children and babies who’ve died, and it’s been found that temporary accommodation was a contributory factor, that is the absolute inspiration for trying to stop the worst kinds of temporary accommodation. By the end of the parliament, we shouldn’t be having any children, B and Bs, apart from, you know, the most extreme and urgent circumstances. The way to do that is to make sure we’ve got better quality temporary accommodation and that overall we are building the social housing that we need. And crucially, this strategy that we’re publishing today connects very closely to the child poverty strategy that we published last week, because that plan is all about increasing family incomes and bearing down on the costs. And making that change will make it much less likely that families find themselves homeless at all.

Coco Khan So you mentioned social housing. I just want to rattle through some figures here. So there’s currently a 200-year waiting list for family-sized social homes in some parts of England. Shelter and the National Housing Federation have calculated that 90,000 social homes a year are needed in England. But of the affordable homes completed last year, just 10,153 were for social rent. And we’ve seen affordable housing targets in new London developments slashed from 35% to 20%. So as to speed up construction. So we I think we all agree that social housing is what we need, and that’s how this is going to work. Without that building at scale, can we be honest about actually fixing this situation? It’s just going to be firefighting, isn’t it? It’s going to be around the edges. We’re not going to be able to get all these families out of temporary accommodation.

Alison McGovern We have to do both things at the one time. So we have to deal with the urgent crisis that we’ve got at the moment because children only get one chance at their childhood. And we have to make progress on the long-term goal of having more social homes. And I mentioned before the commitment of 39 billion pounds worth of investment. And I think that is a big deal. Just to come to your point, Coco, that you that you make about London, the problem that we have had in London is that building had really stalled. And 20% of something is more than 35% of nothing. So the change was an attempt to get building going. You know, what we need is London to have more homes and for families to be able to stay together. So we’ll be watching that really closely to make sure that that shift works. In other parts of the country, we’ve still got big areas of dereliction. And if we can use the funding available to deal with those sites where they’ve been an absolute blot on the landscape for a long time, that will mean that people want to move to those areas again, will be able to build the social housing that we need and also crowd in more investment into those places that frankly haven’t seen enough.

Nish Kumar But are we doing enough to make sure that those homes, particularly in London and sort of big cities, especially places like Manchester, remain affordable for the people from those actual areas? I was involved in a kind of fundraising thing for a protest movement in Peckham where the developers had lowered the proportion of affordable homes from thirty-five percent to twelve percent. It’s in Peckham, it’s covered by Southwark Council. That’s the minimum that South Council demands of it. But do we have enough means governmentally to hold them to account to make sure that they meet their targets?

Alison McGovern Yeah, I mean, this might sound silly, but one of the most important things that we do is make sure we’ve got enough planning officers. Because Southern Council, like councils up and down the country, have been very constrained in terms of money under the Tories. Part of my other role is to make sure that local government moves to a more sustainable financial situation. And we just reconnected council funding with deprivation to make sure that those town halls that were most targeted with austerity actually are better supported. Because if you can’t meet your statutory duties as a council, then you can’t afford to expand your planning department to make sure that you can bring forward development in the first place and then have the kind of conversations that mean that you get the social housing built out. So I think what we’re missing is sort of the nuts and bolts of the system, because I think that that was run down during the years of austerity.

Coco Khan Listen, I couldn’t agree more. I say this myself as someone who grew up in a council house. Secure housing is the foundation of everything. You know, it it it allows you to reach your potential to go further. And it breaks my heart to hear of so many children who are not gonna get the same opportunities I did. Right, exactly, exactly.

Alison McGovern That is a big disaster for any kid.

Coco Khan But the thing is, poor children are poor children because they’re in poor families. They are the children of parents who don’t have a lot of money. And actually, the conversation about poor families, about welfare, appears to be something that has gone quite a few steps backward, I feel like. So, you know, there are concerns about the benefit cap. The freezing of housing benefit is often cited as a key driver in homelessness. How do we square this circle of a Labor government that is saying, okay, we want to end child poverty and we want to end child homelessness? But we’re we’re still hearing murmurs about welfare reform. You know, there’s there’s concerns that even getting housing benefit impact your ability to get social housing if you’re deemed too risky. What’s happening here? How is this going to work with with the welfare plans?

Alison McGovern That’s exactly why I mentioned the child poverty strategy before, because in order to really end homelessness, you’ve got to have the houses that you need, and people have got to be able to afford them. On making sure that people have got better incomes, child poverty has changed from when I was growing up. It used to be about people being out of work. Now we know that three-quarters of families growing up in where the kids are growing up in poverty have somebody in work in the household. The problem is the jobs that they’re doing are often poor quality and don’t pay them enough. We’ve also had the problem of the two-child limit, so larger families being particularly at risk, which is why Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer took the decision to remove that, which will lift 450,000 children out of poverty, but the overall strategy even more. But I just want to say something, if I may, Coco, about the narrative, because when I heard the leader of the opposition talk about it being a budget for Benefit Street in the House of Commons, I felt so angry. She is talking about places where poverty is concentrated. And I think people hear it when the Tories look down their noses at people and places like that. And I think it’s a mistake of the Conservative Party to think that they are somehow better than others and entitled to use disparaging language about people who. Frankly deserve a better chance in life.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I i it was it was ugly rhetoric that sort of reminded me of, you know, being growing up in the like late nineties and the two thousands and a and actually a a lot of the early years of austerity when, you know, the word chav was sort of thrown around and this kind of demonization of the working class in this country became quite normalized. The only good thing about that is with respect to the leader of the opposition, she is a political irrelevance who I suspect will not be in the job for particularly long. But in terms of act

Alison McGovern I guess my point is like people hear it though.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Alison McGovern My community, certainly. We know who they’re talking about.

Nish Kumar Yeah, it’s contempt. I mean, in terms of what can be done in the short term, so crisis, I mean it it’s something that should bring national shame to all of us, you know, because it feels like evidence of a failed state that a charity is out to step in and essentially provide social housing for people. Crisis has said that welfare benefits need to be brought in line with the real cost of rent and essentials and has called on the government to adopt a Scottish system where housing associations are legally obliged to rehouse homeless households. I mean, this is obviously stepping outside of your ministerial remit, Alison, but is there will within the government to start acting on some of those recommendations from crisis in a kind of wider economic sense? Because benefit freezes and welfare freezes affect people’s housing. Is there a movement within the party that is looking at the wider causes that connect to this and maybe looking at things like bringing welfare benefits actually in line to a kind of spiraling cost of living?

Alison McGovern I think it’s perhaps gone a little bit unnoticed, given all of the discussion about welfare reform, that the bill that was passed in the House of Commons represented the first real increase in the standard allowance of universal credit that anyone can remember for such a long time. Universal credit was designed by the Tories. It was supposed to move people into work, and it actually did the opposite. It locked many people out of work. You know, rates that were paid in the standard bit of the universal credit system have been extremely low, and that’s why that increase was put there. Those twin goals in the child poverty strategy of reducing the standard measure of relative poverty after housing costs, and also this new measure of deep poverty connected to what it takes to actually have the basic necessities of life. I think will be the that will be the direction for this government.

Coco Khan Oh absolutely. It’s a it’s a scarring effect and w we’ll be dealing with the repercussions for many years. I suppose look, we see a lot of Labor policies which it feels like tinkering around the edges. Can I just ask you final question, are you happy with this plan? Is there more you wanted to do but you couldn’t do? Is it is it big enough, do you think, to really impact people’s lives?

Alison McGovern My dad, who was a trade union official, always used to say that when you go in and talk to the boss, never say they’ve done nothing, say that they’ve not done enough.

Nish Kumar Mm-hmm.

Alison McGovern So I think it will be, I think it will be always the case that I feel anxious that we’ve not done enough. The truth is about this homelessness strategy, alongside the 39 billion for social housing, it represents a big, big, big change. But we need to make progress quickly. So there’s been a group of ministers who’ve met to design this strategy and we will keep meeting to identify every possible opportunity to prevent people becoming homeless and to help them if they do.

Nish Kumar Alison, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Now, listeners, a quick reminder that next week is our Christmas special where we will be handing out some awards to celebrate the best and worst in British politics.

Coco Khan That’s right. A massive thank you to everyone who sent in ideas for nominations. So far they’ve been excellent and truly reflective of the insane times we find ourselves in.

Nish Kumar One of my favorites so far has been from at Pyroclastic DJ, who suggested first of all, fantastic name, fantastic username, who suggested the Coco Khan Award for most heavily chat GPT written parliamentary speech.

Coco Khan Okay. So I’ve been reflecting on this ongoing

Nish Kumar The face of chat GPT, Coco Khan.

Coco Khan Ongoing low key bullying that you and the listeners are taking part in about my occasional use of chat GPT. And I think what I need to do is do like Steve Bannon and flood the zone. I need to drown shit. Well, actually I was thinking maybe flood the zone with like niceness or something.

Nish Kumar That’s not what Steve Banner was encouraged.

Coco Khan I just mean I need to bury this story. So I would just like to take a moment to remind the listeners of other happier times on PodSave the UK, such as that time youGov did a poll about how we sit, hard or soft. Or Pod Shack the UK. Or give me k what are some other nice, harmless ideas?

Nish Kumar Why do you ask chat GPT about things that we’ve done on this podcast?

Coco Khan Anyway, please let us know what awards should be up for grabs and who’s worth a nomination. Email us at psuk at reduce listening.co.uk or drop a note in the comments and we’ll reveal all next week. Now after the break, this Now I’m back.

Nish Kumar Well if that didn’t scare you, stay with us for the launch of Trust T V.

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Coco Khan So we will talk about Liz Truss, but first another WTF moment from the fight for trans rights. The Labor Party has said that trans women will not be able to take part in the main session at the Labor Women’s Conference next year. Entrance to the main hall where speeches take place and voting rights are to be denied. Instead, trans women will be allowed to attend fringe events, which are open to everyone regardless of their sex. How generous.

Nish Kumar So this decision by Labor follows a comprehensive legal review of the rules around women’s conference following the Supreme Court ruling in April this year. Now, for anybody who hasn’t been following, here is a quick summary of the BS that the trans community has been put through this year.

Coco Khan The Supreme Court ruled that sex is binary, and legally the term woman means biological woman, and man means biological man. And organizations across the country are still awaiting updated code from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the EHRC, on what this means for the provision of single sex spaces like toilets and changing rooms.

Nish Kumar It’s widely thought that this will mean that transgender people will not be allowed to use single sex spaces belonging to the gender that they live as. Instead, it says that trans people should use their powers of advocacy to campaign for third spaces such as unisex toilets.

Coco Khan The guidance is awaiting ministerial sign off, but in the meantime, a Labor spokesperson said the decision to exclude trans women from their women’s conference, quote, reflects our commitment to addressing the under representation of women in the party and compliance with the law.

Nish Kumar I mean, look, all of this reflects the difficulty of the Supreme Court ruling and the EHRC’s interpretation of that Supreme Court ruling. There are people who have been attending that conference, I imagine for years and years, going back decades, that are now not going to be allowed to go. And the problem with all of this is that it’s been presented as something that has and this is a direct quote from Keir Starmer, real clarity in the ruling. But in practice, what’s followed has not been clear at all. It’s actually been incredibly complicated and incredibly confusing for the trans community who essentially are at risk of being excluded from public life completely. It’s such a strange state of affairs. Not just the kind of transphobia that’s become kind of socially permissible, but also just the practical difficulties that are following this ruling. I am getting real Brexit flashbacks. When you ask about how Brexit’s supposed to be applied, they just say Brexit means Brexit. Now, when you ask people, well, what are the trans community supposed to do? What are people that have been living in the trans community as women for years and years and years supposed to do all of a sudden? They say the ruling is clear. And when you ask for any follow-up, there’s no follow-up whatsoever. The way that this has been handled feels very Brexity.

Coco Khan Yeah. And I mean, there’s something particularly chilling about it being part of this democratic process. You know, at this Labor women’s conference, are they going to be talking about issues that affect trans women, for example? Well, actually, trans women aren’t allowed to be in that room. That’s a worry. And I, you know, I keep coming back to that phrase about, well, the trans community just has to use their power of advocacy. Well, there’s been an active silencing of the trans community and even supporters of of the trans community. So how does that actually work? I just don’t get how it’s gonna be policed either. I mean, putting aside the ethical, moral, emotionally compassionate elements of this story, are they going to ask for birth certificates at the the door? How does this work?

Nish Kumar Labor’s not alone in this. So this is the third announcement we’ve had like this over the last week. The Women’s Institute has announced it would no longer offer membership to transgender women, and the UK’s Girl Guiding Organization has said that trans girls will no longer be allowed to join girl guide groups. They called it a difficult decision. Hundreds of girl guides have actually threatened to quit over this. It’s absolutely dreadful. What’s being done to the transgender community? It’s also baffling to me that given the problems that we face as a country, given the challenges to women’s rights that we’re talking about in this country right now, that we’ve been talking about a lot on the show in terms of, you know, foreign money and foreign influence coming in to try and foment a kind of anti-abortion movement in the United Kingdom. It is extraordinary to me that with all of those challenges being faced, we are focusing on about 0.1% of the population. And we have targeted so much legislative hostility at them. I I find it absolutely extraordinary.

Coco Khan No, absolutely. And it’s a step backness, you know, like the Women’s Institute have previously allowed transgender women, you know Has this been an enormous problem? Not really. So, you know, it’s not about necessarily even just halting progress. It’s it’s a reversal of of rights.

Nish Kumar And listen, if you are excited about this issue, I’m just issuing a small plug. If you live in London or are able to get to London on Tuesday, the sixteenth of December, twenty twenty five, there is a fundraiser at the Soho Theater in Walthamstow, where stand up comedians are going to be singing Christmas carols. And I am one of those stand up comedians. All of the money raised goes to organizations that are advocating for the trans community. I’m gonna be singing a Christmas song, okay?

Coco Khan Grandmaster Grinch over here is gonna be thinking which one? Don’t say the pogues. You can’t say the pogs. Mad World.

Nish Kumar I’m not at liberty to du I don’t think is Mad World a Christmas I guess it was a Christmas double one. It was a Christmas. It is a

Coco Khan Christmas song. Well, in addition to that good news, we’ve got another small glimmer of something. So former Prime Minister Tony Blair has been dropped as a possible member of Donald Trump’s Gaza Reconstruction Plan. This comes after Middle Eastern and Arab states were said to have objected to his involvement, the FT has reported.

Nish Kumar Now I’m gonna shock you here. Tony Blair does not have the best reputation in the Middle East. And that is slightly unfair because it’s only based on the things that he has done in his life. Okay. It’s just based on his role in the US and UK led invasion of Iraq in two thousand and three. There have also been more recently concerns expressed about the Tony Blair Institute’s involvement with Israeli business leaders to develop day after plans for Gaza, which included the notorious Trump Riviera project.

Coco Khan When Trump unveiled his peace plan to end Israel’s war on Gaza, Blair was the only person identified on the board, so if these reports are confirmed, this would be the latest chaotic episode in peace plans that have largely stalled since they were announced months ago.

Nish Kumar Yeah, I mean Tony Blair not being consulted on the Middle East makes a lot of sense to me. It’s the same reason I when my grandma’s ill, I don’t call Harold Shipman. Like I you know, what what are we talking about here? What are we talking about? Of course Tony Blair doesn’t have trust in the Middle East. Like of course.

Coco Khan Oh, what what did they think was going to happen? That there’s like a con collective amnesia?

Nish Kumar I know that people have been very excited about you know, early two thousands fashion coming back. I know that people are very excited about the return of like, you know, baggy jeans. I I know that people were very excited about the Oasis reunion. That doesn’t mean politically we also have to regress to the early two thousands. I I’m sorry, just because Liam and Noel Gallagher have reached a rapprochement in the interest of a huge amount of money that they’ve generated from their tour, that doesn’t also mean we have to get Tony Blair back into the Middle East. This is crazy.

Coco Khan Yeah, this is crazy. This is crazy.

Nish Kumar Just put on a Destiny’s Child C D. You know, have a nice time. But Tony Blair in the Middle East, let’s just leave him be.

Coco Khan So look, from one nightmarish ex prime minister to another, you might remember our shortest serving prime minister, yes, the one who tanked the economy and was out lasted by a lettuce. Can you believe it’s been three years because Liz Truss is back? Amazingly, her seven weeks in the top job didn’t satisfy her craving for attention.

Nish Kumar That’s right. And she’s been incredibly busy ever since. Last year she released her memoir, Ten Years to Save the West, a title that I can’t even say without laughing. And now she’s launched a new YouTube channel creatively titled The Liz Truss Show. In her first episode, she spoke to far-right conspiracy theorist Matt Goodwin, former Brexit Party MEP and GB News host Alex Phillips, and Peter McCormack, a Bitcoin podcaster. Yes. That’s a real boner shrinker and vagina dryer of a phrase. We got a new member of our team, Jacob. Welcome to Bot Safety UK. And the way that we’ve decided to integrate him into the team was by making him listen to all 46 minutes of Liz Truss’s YouTube show. So it’s horrible. It’s like we hazed him. It’s awful. Here’s a tiny sample of the hellscape that’s being offered to viewers.

Clip We are a socialist country. I mean this is this is what the whole sort of fake news media has failed to convey, which is that we spend forty five percent of GDP on the government. Right. You know, our taxes are now, I believe, at a record high after the budget. Most of industry is controlled in some way or other by the government, like the energy industry or the banking industry. In what way aren’t we a socialist country? What the fuck are you on about? What is she talking about?

Nish Kumar Also, I don’t know what filter they’ve put on the camera, but I’m afraid to say she looks dead. She looks like she died. She looks like she died and she’s been weekend at Burney’s. She looks gray.

Coco Khan Wow. So just to give you more of a flavor of it, so Truss and her guests, they rail against so called mass migration. They lament a decline in the state of free speech and they complain about being sabotaged by left wing deep state institutions like the Civil Service and the Bank of England. I love it when people talk about the deep state when they were in the state.

Nish Kumar She’s the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. That’s crazy. She doesn’t get deeper into the state than that.

Coco Khan I’m going to lift the lid on PodSaved the UK and just forget the fact that I had decision making powers and I was very much involved with every part of it.

Nish Kumar How is the banking industry an example of socialism working in Britain? Like it doesn’t make any sense.

Coco Khan I know, I know.

Nish Kumar Unless she’s being pointed about the banking bailout from two thousand and eight, but I don’t think that’s what she’s talking about.

Coco Khan Also the energy industry will you know, we sit on this show every week being like nationalizing utilities now. But it turns out they were what plot twist. So we sincerely hope this will be the last appearance of Liz Truss on the podcast. But she’s not the only politician expanding their brand on socials this week. Kirst Starmer has launched his own Substack, trying to find new ways to explain why we are doing what we are doing.

Nish Kumar That’s a direct quote from the Substack about its existence. They’re trying to find new ways to explain why we are doing what we are doing.

Coco Khan It’s pretty dry stuff. He’s also now on TikTok.

Clip What a boss fight.

Clip How you how did you know it’s coming down? Yeah.

Clip I I always know. Sitting there all night.

Clip Oh.

Nish Kumar So for listeners of the pod who could who were sort of I imagine listening in total bafflement to what we were playing. It’s sort of Starmer coming down from the residence at number 10 to his desk and sort of casually greeting the staff. But he sort of filmed like the thick of it or the office. Like he’s sort of got that sort of weird mockumentary air. I don’t know why that’s been put on the internet.

Coco Khan In a way I’m glad for it because the worst thing would be if Starmer attempts to become a TikTok influencer. I’m just imagine him him like lying on the sofa and downing street, fake eyelashes on, holding on one of those micro and be like, you know, I just w I’ve just really been thinking, just like looking at the camera real close to his face. So I suppose in that way, you know, it’s good that he’s doing something that is authentic and true to himself. And by that I mean boring and not really adding a huge amount to this conversation.

Nish Kumar Listen, Truss and Starmer are just following the grand tradition of British politicians who were trying to get down with the kids by going on the internet. Does anyone remember this little nugget?

Clip If you live in or around Blythe you’re gonna wanna hear this. We’re giving your town twenty million pounds to.

Nish Kumar Again for listeners. Rishi Sunak put his hand over the camera. That was the sort of thumping noise that you could hear. Now, the sort of purpose of that is you’re supposed to put your hand over the camera and then cut and it be a completely different like either you in a completely different outfit or you in a completely different location.

Coco Khan Yeah yeah, you’ve had a glow up.

Nish Kumar Broadly, I think it’s generally like you’ve had a glow up, like you look better. Yeah, yeah. But he just looks exactly the same. He just punched the camera. Looks like he’s become irate with whoever is filming him and just open palm slapped it because it just comes back to him in exactly the same situation. I don’t know who is advising these people. All of these people are playing for silver medal when it comes to British politicians on the internet making dum dumbs of themselves. I mean, one of the greatest sort of days on the internet, really, was when Ed Balls went on his Twitter account and just tweeted the words Ed Balls.

Coco Khan The National Day, Ed Ball’s Day.

Nish Kumar That’s still Ed Balls Day, yeah. When people were more on Twitter. The search bar was quite close to the actual panel where you type your s whatever you’re tweeting in. And clearly Ed Balls went to search his own name on Twitter, popped it in the wrong square, and then just tweeted Ed Balls.

Coco Khan God, those were such innocent days of the internet, you know, that was like, oh, you know, when otters held hands and things like that.

Nish Kumar I know and Twitter just had some Nazis on it rather than being completely full of Nazis.

Coco Khan Yeah, exactly.

Nish Kumar The good old days. And on that note, that’s it for the show. Remember to send in your award nominations for our Christmas special next week to psuk@reducedlistening.co.uk. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Don’t forget also to follow us on at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, and Blue Sky. Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.

Coco Khan Thanks to producer May Robson and our new digital producer Jacob Liebenberg.

Nish Kumar Sorry again. Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan The executive producers are Kate Fitzsimons and Katie Long, with additional support from Ari Schwartz.

Nish Kumar 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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