In This Episode
The US President put the season of goodwill behind him with a New Year Venezuelan coup and the threat of further action across Central America and the Caribbean. Then there’s the little matter of his promise to seize control of Greenland.
Nish and Coco try to make sense of the senseless – and to assess the possibility that Donald Trump could end up destroying NATO – with Tommy Vietor from our sister podcasts Pod Save America and Pod Save the World.
Plus, comedian Cody Dahler gives us his take on how 2026 will shape up for politicians and satirists. How easy is it to make jokes while the world – literally and metaphorically – is on fire?
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Cody Dahler, Comedian and Presenter of The Truth (In My Opinion)
Tommy Vietor, Co-Host of Pod Save America and Pod Save the World
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TRANSCRIPT
Nish Kumar Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I’m Nish Kumar.
Coco Khan And I’m Coco Khan, happy new year, everyone. You know, Nish, I had quite the crestfallen moment earlier this year.
Nish Kumar Earlier this year. It’s the 7th of January as we record. Next week we’re going to do a review of the year podcast.
Coco Khan All I’m saying is at the beginning of the year, and it’s the hope that always kills you, and I had this feeling of hope, and I think partly I was hungover, so there’s that, and I’d been to this.
Nish Kumar You might be the first person to have feelings of hope on a hangover.
Coco Khan I don’t get hungover much these days. It’s very thrilling for me. And then I’m at home, I’m in my little bubble watching Stranger Things and see all those pictures of Zora and Mumdani.
Nish Kumar That was in the Stranger Things finale. That is confusing. No wonder people on the internet were baffled. They were two separate incidents in my life. I just thought like halfway through, they just suddenly cut in some pictures of Mamdani.
Coco Khan Anyway, look, I had hope, OK? I had it. I looked at my phone and then I saw the story about kidnapping. Yeah, sure. Of a president by Donald Trump. And in that moment, I was like, oh, here it is. Here’s my Joker moment.
Nish Kumar Never expect things to go well, kids. Listen, we’re gonna be discussing the latest Trump madness and Starmer’s lackluster response to it with Tommy Vietor from our sister podcasts, Pod Save America and Pod Save the World.
Coco Khan And on that terrifying note, what other political madness will the new year hold? Political satirist Cody Dahler is here to look ahead at what is going to be a pivotal year in British politics.
Nish Kumar Now, listen, this should not have been a shock. A US president taking military action to influence events in South America is nothing new. Venezuela has been a target for Donald Trump for months now as he dialed up political pressure, along with airstrikes on so-called drug smuggling boats and a significant increase of naval power in the region.
Coco Khan But somehow he still managed to stun the Prime Minister as he escalated to the kidnap of a president because all we’ve had from Keir Starmer so far is a pretty weak response to Nicolas Madura’s de facto removal from power.
Nish Kumar Now listen, we’re sort of obliged to make these comments, but this is not to celebrate Nicolas Maduro. 2018 Amnesty International report accused his government of committing some of the worst human rights violations in Venezuela’s history and his authoritarian rule has continued unabated since then. His most recent election victory is widely considered to have been a massive fraud.
Coco Khan The new Venezuelan government, which is essentially the old government with interim president and Maduro ally, Delci Rodriguez in charge, has put armed police and army on the streets to quash any protest.
Nish Kumar There’s been a huge amount of sort of moralizing in the press, but the tone of it is deeply strange. There is this element of the conversation where people are saying, this is not how we do things, okay? This is not you institute regime change if you’re the president of America. What you do is you embed the CIA in the country for several years and engage in a campaign of disinformation and destabilization that eventually leads to the leader being assassinated or… You make wild claims in a dossier that you take to the United Nations. That is how we do things. Not this. There’s been an element of people sort of deeming it a bit uncouth in the methodology, not the actual actions itself. I guess the question on everybody’s lips is what is going to happen next, because this isn’t obviously just about Venezuela, though what has happened in Venezuela is absolutely appalling. It’s about Greenland, which looks to be the next likely Trump takeover target, with the White House statement repeating that acquiring the country is a national security priority and that using the military is always an option. It’s also about Ukraine, where a peace deal seems closer than it’s ever been, and it’s about how the UK stands on the world stage at a time where three global superpowers are flexing their muscles and we absolutely are not one of those three powers.
Coco Khan No, we are not. So who better to try and make sense of the madness than our very own Tommy Vietor from Pod Save America and Pod Save the World. Due to the time difference between LA and London, we caught up with him remotely earlier.
Nish Kumar Tommy, lovely to see you. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK.
Tommy Vietor Thank you.
Nish Kumar What does Trump think he’s doing here? Just to sort of kick things off.
Tommy Vietor Look, I think that Trump genuinely believes that he is the emperor of the Western hemisphere. So he gets to decide who runs Central and South America as well as maybe Canada. Earlier iterations of that has involved Trump weighing in on elections in places like Argentina and Honduras and offering Argentina a $40 billion bank bailout out of nowhere to prop up Javier Malé. And now when it comes to Venezuela, Trump has just decided that we can send in Delta Force troops are most elite. Members of the military and extract Nicolas Maduro and then dictate who will be the next president of Venezuela and just kind of crack on as you might say. And so like he thinks he’s the emperor. He thinks that not only does the US get to determine who leads countries, but also we get to say we get dibs on your natural resources. And also we get to see if the Chinese or some other adversary is trying to lay claim to anything that he wants. He gets to take affirmative steps, including military action to deter them. So that is like, I think literally what he believes is his role.
Coco Khan He’s been quite upfront about this venture being about oil and in some bizarre way, a claim to be helping the Americans with affordability. How do you square that circle?
Tommy Vietor I guess on some level, the honesty about the oil is refreshing, you know, he’s not going through the motions and pretending it’s about democracy or values. He just doesn’t care. He says, I want the oil. Yes.
Coco Khan Didn’t buy us dinner, no sexed up dossier, no lies about weapons, it’s just rude, isn’t it?
Tommy Vietor Yeah, yeah, right. We’re in the yellow cake, right? Not a bullshit from before. He’s just like, no, no. I want the oil and we’re gonna get the oil. Now there’s also like some sub issues, right, they claim this is about drug trafficking, but no fentanyl is coming from Venezuela. There’s certainly cocaine coming from Venezuela, but most of it’s coming from Ecuador and Colombia, so that’s, you know, you don’t invade Venezuela to deal with cocaine in the U.S. It’s also that deals with supply, not demand. I think Trump’s trying to argue that in the long term, this is going to flood the U S with cheap oil and gas. And drop everyone’s prices at the pump and save us all money. In practice, that’s gonna be very hard to do. It’ll take years and billion dollars of investment to actually ramp up production in Venezuela. But yeah, I mean, that is their kind of like stated benefit for the US so far.
Nish Kumar Tommy, over here, obviously, everyone’s immediate pivot has been concern over what this might mean for Greenland, because Greenland has become part of the world that Trump believes he has dominion over, Central America, Southern America, and then stretching up to Canada and to Greenland. He’s been fairly clear about his intentions on this. How concerned should particularly, at the moment, the Danish government be?
Tommy Vietor I think we should take him seriously when he says things like, I want Greenland over and over and over again. In the beginning, this conversation felt like a bit of trolling, you know, like there’s a lot of people around Trump who like to get a rise out of lefty liberals like us, right, and make us mad on Twitter. And you saw that a bit over the weekend, you have Stephen Miller, the deputy, the chief of staff’s wife, Katie Miller, who is currently the host of the most boring podcast ever made. She tweeted like Greenland with an American flag on it. And I think, you know, that gotten a lot of attention, but the Europeans are taking this very seriously. Like I’m looking at a joint statement on, on Greenland from the president of France, chancellor of Germany, prime minister of Italy, like the list goes on and on, so I do think there’s a very real chance Trump decides I want Greenland and tries to take it somehow and implodes NATO in the process.
Coco Khan Someone who has a guilty pleasure of watching Amazon Prime action movies, and I feel like Trump’s watching the same ones and has decided that’s how he’s going to run the world. I nonetheless find myself trying to get inside of his head. Okay, so if it’s about military bases, well, I’m pretty sure the Danish have said you can open military bases. If it’s mining and resources, well I’m pretty sure the Danes have said, okay, we can have a conversation about that. Could it be that Donald Trump just wants to expand American territory.
Tommy Vietor I think it’s more like that. Yeah. I think this is like legacy items for him. He wants Greenland. He thinks claiming territory is, you know, your way to be in the history books. I mean, I do think there, I’m sure there are actual like arguments being made to him about the need for Arctic access as all the gas and oil companies that he’s propping up, uh, burn fossil fuels and slowly melt away all the ice caps so that it’s easier to mine mine for more oil and gas. I’m, sure there is a security argument being made about the Russians and the Chinese sending, you, know, their fleets up there. But yeah, I mean, I think part of it is just like ambition. You know, he wants big splashy headlines. He wants to take territory. He wants it to be in the history book.
Nish Kumar But that’s it for NATO, right? If he invades Greenland, that’s the end of that organization. What one would have met.
Tommy Vietor Imagine. I mean, so we invade Greenland. NATO invokes Article 5 against the United States. So then we are committed to attacking ourselves. So I guess the US just withdraws from NATO. I mean like, all we can do is laugh. It’s so comically insane. But yeah, like if I was in Greenland, I’d be worried if I were, you know, in Panama, I would be worried about the Panama Canal. I think that we are still in the midst of this major diplomatic and economic rupture. With Canada are very, very friendly neighbors to the North because Trump kept threatening to annex them and calling them the 51st state and slapping tariffs on them despite the fact that his administration had negotiated a trade deal with these guys. So like we are in, like we’re through the looking glass people. This is some crazy shit.
Coco Khan It is strange because Starmer’s got a bit of a reputation as being a Trump whisperer. I don’t really know how that works. I mean, I haven’t whispered a horse, but I think if you just do everything the horse says, you’re not a horse whisperer, I think that’s how that works and there’s been a lot of conversation here today about Starmer response and whether he should have been tougher on Trump, but he’s repeatedly ducked, giving a straight answer about whether Trump broke international law with this initiative. He said, well, it’s not up to us to decide. He’s been bit more forceful on Greenland though.
Clip The future of Greenland is for Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark, and for Green Land and the kingdom of Denmark alone.
Coco Khan I guess my question to you is, would it have made any difference if Keir Starmer, supposed Trump whisperer, did come out and say, well, actually, look, I’m a former human rights lawyer. I believe in the rule of law. No, this was not okay. And I’m happy to say that.
Tommy Vietor I think he should say that. I think it matters. I think there’s a collective action problem, which is, you know, none of these countries wanna be kind of in the eye of Sauron and Trump’s next target, because you know you saw Gustavo Petro, the president of Columbia, kind of lightly criticizing Trump over Gaza several months ago, and now Trump is threatening to bomb or invade Columbia as well. Now, I do think like we are long past. The time where like anyone can pretend to be the Trump whisperer where we like Emmanuel Macron taking another trip to the U S to try to like butter Trump up and get some concession for Ukraine. Like that strategy has failed. I think that, uh, Trump respects strength. None of these guys look particularly strong right now. And that’s why I saw some clip going around last night. Um, it was a sky news reporter. Pleading with a Labour MP whose name is escaping me. He’s like, can you please just say that it’s it’s not okay to invade Greenland And this this man just wouldn’t I was like that looks so pathetic. It looks so feckless
Nish Kumar Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn went on LBC and actually pointed out this kind of issue over the international law. We can actually hear that clip right now.
Clip What is preventing Sir Keir Starmer from saying something serious and informative about the breach of international law? After all, he is, as he often tells us, a human rights lawyer.
Nish Kumar So much of Starmer’s kind of political brand is built around this idea of him as the former lawyer and him as a person who respects the rule of law, having succeeded a conservative government that did not respect the rule. How are you briefing former human rights lawyer who’s kind-of only thing is he’s a judicious rule follower on how to deal with this particular situation?
Tommy Vietor Yeah, look, just with the stipulation that I’m doing this from the cheap seats, which is podcasting. I mean, I think you’re making the core point, which is this is not just like a random issue. It’s like, what do you think about Nagorno-Karabakh? You know, this is like, this core to your identity. This is who you are, Keir Starmer. This is what you did. This is why you are here. This is how anybody knows about you. If you’re willing to fold in such a fundamental way on this issue and not speak up about what is an obvious breach of international law. Which is obviously just the wrong thing to do, given the very recent history with Iraq and Libya, which was my boss, by the way, Barack Obama, right? Like Libya, when Gaddafi went down, it looked good. And there was a lot of triumphalism in Washington and decades later, it is still a slow rolling disaster across North Africa and parts of the Middle East. Um, and so I think, you know, Starmer needs to speak up and he also needs to coordinate with other European leaders like Friedrich Mertz and others and say, look, look we have to speak with one voice here. We got to toughen up a bit because Bullies can spot and smell weakness. And I just think Trump is gonna keep gobbling up and gobbled up what he wants unless he gets some pushback. And you look at Claudia Shane Bob in Mexico, she has been tougher on Trump and he seems like he respects her for that. And I do think maybe there’s a lesson there.
Coco Khan I also always wondered why Starmer didn’t do it, even just for domestic pursuits, you know, on our podcast, we’ve discussed how, particularly JD Vance, he likes to bash London because domestically that looks good. And part of me is like, well, Donald Trump is enormously unpopular in the UK. Keir Starmer also enormously unpopular in the U K. Would that not work even just on a domestic level?
Tommy Vietor Uh, yeah, this is kind of the thing that confuses me. If I were, uh, the prime minister Starmer’s pollster, I would say, sir, look at this chart. Um, it can’t get much worse. We’re down to like, you know, relatives and close friends here that did prove of you, so throw a punch, right? Like what about some good old fashioned nationalism and nativism, a good old fashion, you don’t fuck you, you know, Hugh Grant style to the asshole American president. Like, wouldn’t that be good politics? Wouldn’t that play well or, or telling Nigel Farage, like Are you on the side of the British people or are you on Donald Trump’s side? This seems like bad politics and bad policy to me.
Nish Kumar There’s been a lot of phrases used like the Don Rowe doctrine, and this is, we’re seeing like an expression of Trump’s kind of foreign policy vision, and I’ve always thought ascribing any sort of doctrine to Trump is like diagnosing a dog with an anxiety disorder. It’s like, I’m not completely sure that this man is capable of mounting a doctrine, but there does seem to be this idea emerging from various foreign policy analysts that Trump. Sees the world as being ruled by three global powers and that the US has dominion over this kind of Atlantic side, Russia has dominions over Europe and China has dominio over the Pacific. And as long as the three superpowers don’t interfere in each other’s sphere of influence, then it’s all gravy, right? Is that just us trying to ascribe some kind of order onto what’s happened? And this is just Trump, you know, following whatever his latest whim is, you for him, it’s the oil industry. Bye. Or actually, do you think this is a real thing? This is the way he sees the world, and this is the vision and foreign policy thing that he’s trying to execute here.
Tommy Vietor Yeah, I tend to agree with you that this is not, you know, Winston Churchill here. He’s not a big thinker with big ideas and, you know, he studied a student of history. That said, um, the white house released something called the national security strategy, uh, late last year. It was a lot of it. The Europe section was kind of copied and pasted from JD Vance’s speech in Germany. I think it was in Munich several months back where he was said the real issue in, in the, in, uh in Europe was, you know, censorship of tech companies or whatever. But then there was a very like kind of meaty section about the Western hemisphere that outlined this, Trump addendum to the Monroe Doctrine, which basically says like the Western Hemisphere is ours. And I think the question I have is whether that is a tacit recognition that the world is actually divided up into three spheres of influence. Like it seems like he’s willing to cede Ukraine or at least a big chunk of it to the Russians. We’ll see if that includes Baltic States or other NATO countries. I think it’s an open question about whether Trump is willing to cede Asia to the Chinese. That might include Taiwan, but also there are disputed island chains between the Chinese and the Japanese, for example. And if there’s a conflict there, it’s like, does the United States defend our treaty ally? Or are we just saying, you know what, dominant power, Chinese, our hands are off. I mean, the current setup of US hegemony is that we want to be dominant in every sphere. It does seem like a weaker vision of US power if we are ceding Asia to the Chinese. But we’ll see, I guess.
Coco Khan Hypothetically, Europe, quite big, if you put all the states together. Now, I know you’re not going to get everyone, you’re not going get an Orban to see your side, but do you think we could collectively stand up to Donald Trump and this sphere of influence ideology or approach that he’s taking?
Tommy Vietor I mean, I think there’s a lot of economic power there, right? If you think of the EU as a block, and even if Orban’s gone, it’s like, okay, best of luck, pal. Clearly, if Donald Trump decides to completely withdraw from NATO, I mean that just guts the organization in terms of its capabilities as a fighting force or a military. But I do think Trump respects strength. Look at the tariffs fight, for example, right. He announced Liberation Day on the Chinese, slapped a big tariff on them. The Chinese responded with a really, really hard series of punches, and he basically backed down. He pretends now that we have a trade agreement with the Chinese where they are gonna buy a bunch of soybeans and we’re gonna give them the most advanced AI chips that one can buy all of a sudden for no reason. But in reality, there really is no deal. He kind of lost that fight and he just didn’t want the smoke that would come to the U.S. Economy. I think the Chinese are a bigger economic player, but there’s a version of that that you can imagine. With the EU, where there’s a hard punch back that gets him to, you know, buckle a little bit. Now, I think the problem comes like what happens if right wing parties win in elections in 2026 in the UK? And then you know the national rally and you know Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella, the little her little number two wins in France and then the AFD could start winning a bunch of elections in Germany, then you have like a scary far right EU to contend with and I don’t know how that goes. But I do think, like… Probably now is the moment to toughen up a little bit and start trying to right size these relationships.
Coco Khan Tommy, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. I’d love to say it’s lovely to see you.
Tommy Vietor Wonderful.
Coco Khan But it’s on the worst circumstances. Now, if you want to hear more from Tommy, head to Pod Save The World where he unpacks the latest with co-host Ben Rhodes. New episodes drop on Wednesday. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss a beat.
Nish Kumar After the break, what else might be in store for us in 2026? We’ll be freaking out over the undoubtedly terrifying possibilities with political satirist Cody Dahler.
[AD]
Coco Khan 2026 is set to be a pivotal year in British politics. The next 12 months are make or break for the government. Will Keir Starmer stage a fight back or will reform come out on top?
Nish Kumar We had big plans to dust off Coco’s giant crystal ball and make some predictions for what political madness lies ahead. But then three days in, Donald Trump blindsided us. So with Venezuela and Greenland firmly added to the ever growing list of things about which we should be shitting our pants. What will the big defining political issues be in the year ahead? Here to give us a helping hand is Cody Dahler, who I hate to say this is yet another political comedian and podcaster. Cody, welcome to Pod Save the UK. I’ve always said we need more unfounded opinion on this show.
Cody Dahler I’m so glad you brought this up because I have been living in your shadow for the last five years. Is Cody Nish Kumar? No, he’s not. My career has just been struggling. I’ve been waiting for a horrible accident to get rid of you, but here we are in the same room.
Coco Khan Now’s your time to step out.
Nish Kumar This is it.
Coco Khan Kumar’s shadow.
Cody Dahler This is my job interview. For your position.
Coco Khan So Cody, you’ve written for BBC Radio 4’s most popular comedy shows, including Dead Ringers. Please use Other Door and News Jack and of course you host your own podcast, The Truth in My Opinion. That’s brackets in my opinion. But you’re probably most famous for your online videos. I’ve seen them. I’m a follower like this excellent impersonation of the British establishment reacting to Trump’s attacked on Venezuela.
Cody Dahler Well, first of all, big congratulations to all of us. I think we’ve been dealing with this Trump-Venezuela situation very well. Yeah, nothing screams we’re not panicking like the noise Darren Jones made on Sunday. Uh, this for the Americans to set out the legal basis. I always go, ah, when I feel in control. Me too, ah.
Coco Khan So this is a question I often have about comedians, because I work very closely with Nish, and I find comedians a specific person, quite a specific people, aren’t they? And I often wonder if you’re doing politics as comedy, does it make it harder to do your job? When the world has gone to shit or easier. What is the relationship there? Do you feel more galvanized to do this work because you need people to engage with politics? Genuinely, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and increasingly, and I hope you’re ready for Coco’s thought of the year, maybe. Oh, no. And the first.
Cody Dahler Five days in.
Coco Khan I had this little moment where I was lying in my bed thinking about Donald Trump and Greenland and Keir Starmer and I had a moment where no one is going to save us. No leader, no institution is going save us, all we have is each other and we have to learn to connect with each other. And how do we do that? Comedy, laughter, empathy. So anyway, hate to break it to you, you’re saving the world.
Nish Kumar Yeah, don’t worry, guys. Don’t worry. People of Greenland, don’t worry. We’re on the case. The American troops are on the ground. Don’t worry, we will be satirizing the hell out of your imminent occupation. Everybody in Greenland relax.
Cody Dahler Yeah, the one-liners are taken care of. Yeah, you’ve got to start to worry when we start wearing hard hats in our videos.
Coco Khan But Trump is particularly like an unusual character, right?
Cody Dahler Yeah, having a clown in the White House does make it easier to make people laugh, because people love, like it sort of rights itself in a way, but it’s getting to the point where we’re etching closer and closer to destruction. How do you like make fun of the end of the world? But equally, how do you make fun of them in terms of like challenging their power or challenging their views? Because now, for example, just this week, you make of what Donald Trump’s doing. Like, lots of people will laugh and find it funny, but there’ll be lots of people being like, I can’t laugh at this. And then equally they’ll be like, you know, you’ll make fun of reform and you’ll find you’ll go through your comments and you’ll find the people who already agree with you being like oh, that’s great. And then the people who don’t agree with, you being like I either don’t believe you or I don’t find this funny. And I’m now going to vote for them even more. There’s this sort of zone where you’re like satire is kind of blunted. I still feel like it’s sort of blundered.
Coco Khan There’s so much to unpack there, also just in terms of humor being human and we live in an age of algorithms, but let’s try and get into some politics in the year ahead. So it’s been a really tough start for the government with YouGov polling for Sky and the Times putting Labour in third place behind the Tories and Reform. This is a huge deal. It’s the first time they’ve dropped behind the Torys since the general election.
Nish Kumar And not only this, according to a stats for lefties analysis of YouGov polling, Keir Starmer is less popular than Venezuelan president Maduro. Look, the PM has come out fighting in a long New Year’s interview with the BBC’s Laura Koonsberg. Let’s take a look.
Clip Well I will be sitting in this seat by 2027 and if this long form interview works we can try it again in January of next year as well.
Nish Kumar Cody, are you convinced? That was a zinger. He didn’t look convinced by the words that were coming out of his own mouth.
Cody Dahler He never does, he never does. I actually, I know all of the opinions that he’s going to be ousted. I’m actually going to put my neck on the line and say I think he’s gonna still be around.
Nish Kumar Oh, I love it when people put their neck on the line with a big, I think he’s going to be…
Cody Dahler So I think he’s still going to be around because there aren’t any other people who look more attractive than Keir Starmer, like the kind of front runner, and I think this says a lot about Labour, is Wes Streeting, who looks like the sort of illegitimate child of Lumiere He just looks like a candle. And then there’s Angela Rayner, who I just don’t think also will command the sort of respect of the general public. And then, there’s Andy Burnham, who’s not an MP. So I think logistically, it’s going to be quite hard for someone to unseat him. And there’s the other side of things, which is, because Labour have such an absence of any policies, their strongest suit is literally looking stable, looking sane. Like, they are mediocre and stable. If they get rid of their leader. Then they don’t look stable and they’re mediocre and that’s disastrous. I just think that’s going to be their strategy. That’s the only strategy that could possibly work for Labour.
Nish Kumar Elsewhere in the Kuhnsberg interview, when he was asked about the real changes the public should feel in the coming year, Starmer repeatedly pointed to bearing down on child poverty. And in his first cabinet meeting, he reiterated that his focus remains on tackling the cost of living. Potentially he’s been taking a leaf out of Mamdani’s playbook and focusing on affordability.
Coco Khan Right. So Starmers chief advisor Morgan McSweeney also called this year the year of proof. It’s the year when they hope public services would begin to improve, bills start to fall. So, you know, is this the year do you think when we start to feel an improvement in those living standards? And do you you think it will be enough to cut through to voters who are already disillusioned?
Nish Kumar Yeah, we should substantiate this, I should say, by saying that there is some good news coming for the people living in this country. So railfares in England will be frozen for the first time in 30 years until March 2027. April is going to see a 4.8% rise in the state pension, a 4,1% rise the minimum wage and the end of the two-child limit on welfare and a 3.8 percent rise in benefits. And September is going bring the expansion of free school meals to all families on Universal Credit. That’s all happening at same time though as food prices. Seemingly refusing to fall with the British retail consortium cautioning that they will remain sticky in 2026 after rising 3.3% in December. Fresh food costs are rising at 3.8%, almost twice the Bank of England’s inflation target.
Coco Khan It’s weird when you hear numbers like that. One, the sort of percentages, I understand their improvements, but what does it really mean? Yeah. The railfares one really stuck out to me when it was like, oh, they will be frozen where they are. So, okay, they will remain an arm and a leg. Yeah, I think this is, I think that’s the problem. It will cost you your first child to go to Bristol.
Nish Kumar A freeze is bad because the railfair has already escalated out of control.
Cody Dahler Yeah, that is like the problem of the government, isn’t it? Where they’re like, okay, we’ll do something, and everyone’s like, yeah, but it’s still shit, isn’t it? Yeah, right. Yeah, it is still shit. But it could have been shitter. But saying things are shit, but they could have shitter is like…
Coco Khan And also it is going to become shit, more shit. I mean, like, you know, just really rattling some shit incoming, higher water bills in April, higher council tax in April. Unemployment, by the way, everyone’s talking about that. They’re looking at unemployment being as high as it was during COVID. You know, there’s stagnant real wages. So even if they say we’re holding it, not really, not really when you dig into it.
Nish Kumar What would you like to see the government be doing, Cody, in the face of all of these challenges?
Cody Dahler God, I think it’s an impossible position they’ve gotten themselves in, basically where I think we’re at a political moment where people at large are becoming awakened to a more radical alternative.
Speaker 7 Mmm.
Cody Dahler Lots of people are now, in the last year, thanks to Zach Polanski in the Greens, talking about taxing the rich. That is previously quite a radical thought. More people are like, oh, we need to get rid of the immigrants. And it’s those sorts of extremes that are rising to the fore. And so, Labour are finding themselves in a position where they’re ultimately trying to defend a status quo which everybody hates. So they have to be more radical. They have to nationalize our water. They have nationalize energy. They’ve got the big green energy program. Which is like going to cost loads, right? But is a kind of step in the right direction because it’s nationalized. And it’s like, the good thing about that is that it’s using taxpayers’ money, our money, to benefit the population. And it is like, they’re constantly banging on about that. That sentiment needs to be applied to everything. Keir Starmer’s thing is saying, we’re going to be making a difference in people’s lives. We’re going be alleviating poverty, whatever, you have more money in your pocket. I think we’re weirdly in a space where we want to see the people with loads of money be punished. Like, we want the companies not giving millions of pounds to their shareholders. We want to the billionaires not flying around in private jets. And that’s the kind of dichotomy I feel like.
Coco Khan I did a show yesterday, or remain nameless, that we had some callers from the general public. Some of those callers I would describe politically quite right wing. I would say maybe very right wing, and we were talking, many were just shouting abuse at me, which is I guess my job as a left-wing person.
Nish Kumar I’m on a call-in show. Right wing. I’m never near of it.
Coco Khan Anyway, there was this phrase that kept coming up from various callers about Donald Trump and what he’s done in Venezuela where they’re like, well, at least he’s doing something. Yeah. Maybe it’s not right, but at least she’s doing something. We’re so critical. And obviously I’m like, what do you mean he’s doing something? He’s saying terrible. However, that feeling of doing something, there’s something in that, isn’t there? And I think that that feeling that Keir Starmer is not doing something it’s just a tinker that I will say, I think.
Nish Kumar I will say I think Trump may have found the worst, the only worst alternative to doing nothing.
Coco Khan Listen, for clarity, this is in no way a condonement of Donald Trump, but I found it fascinating that something that was so clearly wrong on every level to me was getting favor from people purely because it was noteworthy.
Nish Kumar I can’t believe that we’re not talking about nationalization of the water companies because the water company’s actions in the last decade have been absolutely criminal. If you think about how much money has been extracted out of the network and into shareholders’ pockets, that isn’t something that the government should be allowing. I also think, I’m not convinced that Labour can deliver meaningful change under the current fiscal rules that they have boxed themselves into and this idea of no increases on taxes on working people is something that I think people would go along with if it ever happened, but in reality the freezing of the tax thresholds is a real terms tax increase for working people. I genuinely think people will accept that if they believe that that burden was being spread, not even just evenly across society, but the burden was being spread more heavily on people who could bear it a bit more. If those tax threshold being frozen. Came alongside changes to the capital gains tax system, an attempt to equalize the tax on wealth and the tax on work, which has become imbalanced in our economics framework. I think that people would be more willing to swallow that stuff. But in reality, we are seeing just more taxes on middle class, lower middle class and working class people in this country and there isn’t rebalancing and part of it is because of fiscal rules that they’ve boxed themselves into. So look, the big test for Labour is going to be the May elections, with Scottish and Welsh parliaments up for grabs, as well as 32 London boroughs and 100 other English councils. Scottish Labour’s polling has plummeted since the election and they fear third place behind the SNP and reform. Meanwhile in Wales, polling predicts that Welsh Labour could be a junior partner in a coalition with the left-wing nationalist Plaid Cymru. And in London, the Greens threaten Labour from the left.
Coco Khan It’s been a big year for Reform UK, who began to top the polls, but YouGov’s December polling showed a drop in its vote share to 26%. That would be the lowest since April. So Cody, what do you think? Have we reached peak for ours? They are top of the polls. But it’s a weird system, isn’t it? Because everyone’s hated, so top of the polls is still not hugely popular. Anyway.
Cody Dahler Yeah, I think there probably is a finite number of lunatics in the country. And I think there’s actually… You hope. We hope. But I think this actually this kind of the forgotten grouping in society who often decide elections, which are like this sort of slightly pissed 50 year olds, you know, and I think I would like to think anyway, that there is a limit to like what that quite important middle grouping would vote for. And, you know, the stuff about. Nigel Farage, you know, being racist and anti-semitic at school. I mean, he’s like turned around and said, that’s just bolstering my base. Well, you don’t have to worry about his base. We know his base will vote for him no matter what. But I think those things do chip away at quite an important section of the electorate who aren’t maybe so forthcoming about their views or they’re not just dyed in the wool reform heads, but they would consider voting for them. I think those things make a difference.
Coco Khan And you’re talking about fake.
Nish Kumar Maybe Myspace Gen X’s.
Coco Khan That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the more elastic route. Oh, I see. Sorry. Okay.
Cody Dahler Exactly, that’s a good word. And I think there’s an elastic group. I think reform will get to a level. I don’t think they’ll ever get enough to win a majority. Beyond deport them.
Nish Kumar Beyond get them the fuck out of my country. Faraj actually really lacks a cohesive policy platform. You know, the speeches that we’ve seen in the last kind of six months have been a kind of odd combination of calling for the abolition of the two child benefit cap and weirdly stewed in there, a bit of sort of Christian nationalism. So it’s a sort of, it’s an odd gumbo he’s brewing. And the other issue I think that they have is that. Reform does run some bits of this country. Reform runs some councils of this country, and it’s not going well for them. Kent County Council was won on a mandate to slash government spending. But according to the BBC, it’s currently overspending by 3%, with adult social care running 7% above its overall budget. There are various stories of reform-run councils already in chaos. And I do wonder if… That is going to be something that actually has cut through and people do genuinely worry. I mean, there’s little to no evidence that Doge offered any meaningful savings in what Elon Musk did in the White House. And there is a huge amount of evidence that it’s actually damaged America’s standing around the world. And if its agenda is allowed to be carried out over the term of the next four years, it will lead to people dying. The specific cuts to USID are actually going to. Right? And so I just wonder if some of this Farage rhetoric, like the Trump rhetoric, on contact with reality is just evaporating. I’m interested to know how much meaningful cut through that she has.
Coco Khan Clearly the reformulate councils, that this approach is not going to work. There was a report from the Guardian saying that they want to raise tax by the maximum allowed. This is going to be a sore point for them when they’re facing the upcoming elections in spring. So what are they going to do about it? They’ll probably release some horribly. Xenophobic, racist policy that will get us all distracted about that, although do something that will make the average person of color or migrant feel less safe on the street to distract from the conversation about council spending. That is a fear of mine.
Cody Dahler They’ll invade Colombia. The local councils. But I think there’s a weird loop when it comes to reform. Because what I’m going to say now is maybe slightly contradicts what I said before, but the reason reform do quite well, and this is what the Labour government are resting on, is the cost of living. So people feel worse off, they vote for reform. But the problem is a lot of politics is delivered at a local level. So you need to have like quite competent people in your local council to actually make your immediate life feel better, you know, it’s like to fill in potholes, you need someone who knows where the pothols are. So the problem is, people vote for Reform UK because they’re like, my life’s shit. And then all the councilors that come in are just like people like, do you know what we need, you don’t want to fix this, get rid of the LGBTQ flag outside the building. So they get rid that, then life gets worse because they are incompetent. And then their voter base is like… This fucking Labour government, man. This Labour government is so, we need to get more reform in. So it’s like this doom loop of shit where they just elect incompetent people who actually don’t ever take the blame for things. So I think, in a way, I would hope that we’re in the slightly logical position where them doing poorly and local government will have an impact. But equally the flip side, I can also see people being like, Well yeah, life’s still shit, so we need more reform.
Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah, so…
Nish Kumar Farage struggles when he is put under any kind of meaningful scrutiny and I think it’s very incumbent on the British media, and obviously I include us in that, to keep talking about the chaos that’s happening under reform-led councils because that is a kind of dry run of what it would look like if they were allowed to run the country. And I do think Farage has been sort of uniquely celebrated by too many sections of the British press in the last 25 years. Now, after the break, we’re going to look at some other issues that are coming for us in the year ahead, including, obviously, migration, AI, and the climate. And we hear an update on the remaining Palestine action hunger strike.
Coco Khan [AD]
Nish Kumar So look, migration was once again the dominant issue in British politics in 2025, and I think we can safely predict it will continue to be the dominant conversation in British politics in 2026. Labour promised some tough immigration reforms in November. It’s actually got to deliver them. We kicked off January with new powers to seize phones from migrants coming into force, which I think we can all agree fills us with a deep sense of national pride. There’s nothing that makes me feel more proud to be British than taking mobile phones from vulnerable people. Cody, is this going to move the dial for the Labour Party, this kind of hard tack to the right? No.
Cody Dahler Absolutely not. It might move the die.
Nish Kumar It’s not in a way that they can… It will move the dial away from them. The dial moving downwards is still a moving dial.
Cody Dahler Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think when it comes to the Labour Party migration, there is nothing they can do. I don’t know if you caught this back in October. There was a BBC article about Buxton in Derbyshire, and there was a local government plan to expand the River Wye in the area. And the first comment on their Facebook post about this was to make more room for dinghies. Oh my god. Oh my God! This is, Buxton is 250 miles away from Dover. There are, according to the latest government figures, zero asylum seekers in Buxton. So this is a part of the country that has no interaction whatsoever with asylum seekers, yet they are furious about it. And actually, I should say, to be fair to the people of Buxton, they were extremely welcoming to some asylum seekers but they were Ukrainian. So they have housed 150 Ukrainians, which they welcome with open arms. I wonder what feature they enjoy about them. I think when it comes to migration and actual policy, I think it’s quite a pessimistic view, but we are so far beyond policy when it come to this topic. People hate migration even when they don’t know any migrants. So it’s incredibly difficult for the Labour government to turn the dial on it by bringing in policies, I
Coco Khan That story has really bummed me out.
Cody Dahler It’s mental, isn’t it? I heard about it because my friend’s mum lived in Buxton. She was like, we’ve fucking got out of there. And she was like we’ve moved to Ramsgate. Not much of an improvement, but at least I think…
Nish Kumar Closer to the boats, those pesky boats. One thing to watch is going to be the future of the European Convention on Human Rights, which is going reach a crunch point in mid-May when member states will meet to agree on a political declaration on how the ECHR is applied. Now, Britain wants to reshape the application of Article 3 on inhumane or degrading treatment so it blocks fewer deportations. I think this is going be a very, very sticky… Thing for Starmer. I think this is going to be very, very difficult for him to move on with the ECHR. His whole thing is I respect institutions. He doesn’t offer much else. And so his whole thing, is I respected institutions and I respect international law. But changing international law in order to improve your ability to deport people. I mean, I think that is going be a hard sell to Labour’s base. And also, crucially, I don’t, I actually, and this is a very controversial view. I don’t believe this is going to get people’s energy bills down. I don’t believe that deporting more people is actually going to do anything meaningful for people’s bills. The conversation around the ECHR is going get very depressing very quickly.
Coco Khan Yeah. And we should also mention that in this unmitigated chaos, let’s call it, which has unfolded over the last year, you might have missed the stories about climate doom.
Nish Kumar Yeah, it’s really worrying stuff. Across Europe, there have been horror stories. The wildfires last year in Spain and Portugal were reportedly 40 times more likely because of the climate crisis. Who knows what extreme temperatures and weather 2026 will bring.
Coco Khan But we do want to give credit where it’s due. The UK has made some positive steps since 1990 greenhouse gas emissions have more than halved in Britain and the government did just set an ambitious target to reduce emissions by at least 81% by 2035, but the picture around the world is less rosy.
Nish Kumar That’s right. Last October, the UN Secretary General said it was now inevitable that humanity would overshoot the 1.5 degree target with devastating consequences. Cody, is the plan just give up and watch the world burn, flood and freeze at the same time?
Cody Dahler Yeah, it seems so, doesn’t it? That’s my plan anyway.
Nish Kumar I mean, while Extinction Rebellion just stopped poiling into late Britain were doing much more kind of public facing stunts and large scale protests, it felt like it had kept the climate conversation at the forefront of the news agenda. Then everybody said, this is annoying. You’re annoying people. So they’ve kind of scaled back a lot of their operations in terms of direct action. And now we never talk about the climate and all we talk about is immigrants and immigration. So, I mean, it does feel like we need a bit of old school XR just up oil tactics to force the conversation back to the top of the political agenda.
Cody Dahler I mean, nothing encapsulates this more than the Green Party, right? The Green Party only talk about the cost of living crisis. Their argument, of course, is that you tackle the climate crisis by, you know, having renewables, which brings people’s bills down. And it’s, I think it speaks to the perilous political position we’re in, which is you can’t talk about the environment anymore, because people are like, I don’t care. I can’t feed my kids. I think that’s what the Greens are doing very well in that sense, but it means immediately we’re not talking about that kind of old school, everything’s burning, we’re all going to die, there’s going to be floods and everything. We’re instead talking about energy, energy security, renewables, which is part of the same discussion as the environment, but it feels I guess less pressing and immediate.
Coco Khan Quite maddening. I mean, even this conversation that we’ve been having about Maduro and Trump, I mean that is about oil. Oil is a fossil fuel. Imagine if we just all moved off of that. Maybe there could even be less war. But as soon as you mentioned that there is a national switch off. It must be really frustrating.
Cody Dahler I saw a really good thing where, whether it was a meme or a tweet, I forget, but someone was like, no one would invade another country for renewables.
Nish Kumar Yeah, yeah, no one’s invading Venezuela to get this staff of solar panels. So look, a report from the Climate Change Committee says the UK can hit its upcoming emissions reductions targets and remain on target for net zero, but only with further policy action. If sanity were to prevail, this would be the main thing that we talk about and not immigration, for fuck’s sake. But, let’s move on before-
Coco Khan So finally, there’s one thing we can all bet on, which is that the AI insanity will continue into 2026. So last week, a trend took off on X as users began asking Grok, the platform’s AI chatbot, to generate sexualised images of people on the platform. Users began tagging the AI, asking it to do things like remove her clothes or put him in a jockstrap. The chatbot happily complied. Thousands of images of partially naked people were created, all without the victim’s knowledge or consent.
Nish Kumar Yes, and look, this story somehow is even grislier than that. There are reports that Grok even created sexualized images of minors depicted wearing minimal clothing. In a supposedly AI-created apology, Grok itself admitted that it had generated and shared an AI image of two young girls, the estimated ages are between 12 and 16, in sexualized attire.
Coco Khan So despite the growing outcry and the platform’s commitment to suspend users who generate these images, so far nothing has changed. It appears that Grok can still be used to generate these kinds of images.
Nish Kumar I mean, nothing about this is surprising particularly, right, Cody?
Cody Dahler It’s not surprising, no. Why are people in their thousands prompting this AI bot to even do that? I mean, it really is a story that I think highlights perfectly the really poisonous element of the internet and social media. And, you know, but Grok has been in trouble and Elon Musk has been trouble for AI generating, like I think when he launched it, it got in trouble for a AI generating celebrities, Taylor Swift, was it? I think he’s just like an edgelord. That’s all he is. And it’s like, he’s so rich and powerful that I think he’s enjoying this. There’s no way he’s going to change Grok. Like, because I think all of the other AI machines now, whatever you call them, learning models, you can’t, if you put those things in, if you get them to undress people, they won’t do it. But Grok is the only one that’s still doing it, right? Because he’s not interested in changing it.
Nish Kumar Yeah, and I think it’s really important that this gets brought up all the time, because Elon Musk is consistently on Twitter talking about how we need to protect women and girls from the threats of black and brown people and transgender people. Meanwhile, his AI has become a kind of facilitation engine for sex crimes, you know, and it’s really important, this kind of stuff. Keeps getting brought up. Ofcom has said it would undertake a swift assessment to determine whether there are potential compliance issues that warrant investigation. I’d say there’s some pretty big fucking compliance issues. Based on what Grok itself has acknowledged has happened, I think you can knock that out before lunch lads.
Cody Dahler Yeah, I think we can solve that now.
Nish Kumar Yeah, I don’t think that would take very long. I mean, how is AI use going to change in 2026? I mean we were told that this technology was supposed to be this kind of thing that would unlock various mysteries of science and be of use to, you know, be of use to doctors, which it may well be, but I don t see how creating paedophilic art is part of that process.
Cody Dahler Slightly optimistic element to this story, I think it will be that, you know, there’s all this talk when it comes to AI about the superintelligence and replacing us. It demonstrates no better this grok scenario that we are just animal monkey brained idiots. We have this like technology that could wipe us out. And instead, I read an article last year where it was like most AI generation and improvements are basically caused by people just typing into like chat GPT like tiger with boobs. And this is the dark side of that being, like, naked kids. Like, monkey-brained idiots.
Nish Kumar It’s so depressing. When people say it’s incredibly useful to doctors, all I think is, fine, give it to doctors. That’s fine. And weirdly, the comedian Sam Campbell, because he’s weirdly able to do some weird shit. I genuinely believe you should have a license to use AI, and the only people who should be granted that license are medical professionals and one deeply strange and disturbed Australian.
Coco Khan Not being funny though, I think that’s actually a really good idea about the license. We’ve got some great ideas on this.
Cody Dahler Yeah. You know, there’s big concern about fake AI stuff when it comes to politics. Yeah. I think there should be a test that we give to people in the UK that is like three pictures, two are real, one is like the worst AI generated picture. Like, you know, we’re talking like 19 fingers on a hand. Or the queen high-fiving Elvis Presley. Exactly. Not a proper face. And anyone who believes that that is a real picture should lose the vote. That’s my big policy program. Lose the vote, if you think that…
Nish Kumar Rail. On that slightly surprising note, Cody thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK. Thanks for being here. You can follow Cody on Instagram, that’s @MrCodyDahler and check out his podcast The Truth, brackets, in my opinion, close brackets.
Coco Khan Now, before we go, we want to draw your attention to a story that’s at risk of being drowned out by global events. Just before Christmas, we shared an appeal for the Palestine Action hunger strikers on our socials. Some had been in prison since November 2024, and at the time, there were eight prisoners on hunger strike with a doctor warning that they were on a, and I quote, trajectory that ended with death.
Nish Kumar Three weeks later and three of them are still on hunger strike, which for some has now lasted for over 60 days. One of them, Cameron Ahmed, has been hospitalized for the fifth time.
Coco Khan Currently the strikers have trial dates set from April 2026 at the earliest and for one protester all the way to January 2027.
Nish Kumar A close friend of one of the hunger strikers has been in contact with us. Nida Jafri went to school with Amir Gibb, one of activists accused of breaking into an air base and spray painting two RAF planes. To explain the latest, here is an update that Nida has sent in.
Nida Jafri Hi Coco and Nish, I’m Nida. I’m here to tell you about my best friend Ammu. Along with seven other prisoners, Ammu went on an open-ended hunger strike. All the hunger strikers are detained without trial. These are unusually long remand periods, legally disputed, cruel and unnecessary. By the time they stand before a jury, they will all already have been punished for more than a year. Five of the hunger-strikers have paused after doctors warned them about long-term organ and brain damage. I still remember having to call Jeremy Corbyn to get Amu a wheelchair because they needed a wheelchair to walk around the prison. Hiba, Cameron, and Louis are still on a hunger strike. When Hiba is on day 65, Cameron is on Day 58, and Louis is on the day 44. They want my friend to disappear. They want to punish and isolate them before their trials, to make an example of them, to call them terrorists for demanding to end war crimes. I mean, thank you.
Coco Khan So much for sending that in. I had chills, I had goosebumps listening to that. They want to make them disappear, they want to make dissent disappear. What it means for all protesters, what it means to anyone moved by this.
Nish Kumar What it means for your rights to a fair trial, you know, just holding people on remand for this amount of time, this is unusual, this deeply unusual.
Coco Khan If any listeners feel as passionate and chilled as I felt listening to that, you can write to your MP. Please do. We’ve posted the link before. We will post it again in our show notes. If these lives are lost, it will be a moral stain upon this country. If this whole episode isn’t already.
Nish Kumar Yeah, our aim is just to keep this conversation happening in the media and keep asking the questions why are these prisoners being reminded for so long for direct action and why are we repressing protest rights instead of calling for a full arms embargo on the Israeli government. That’s the show. Thank you as ever so much for listening to Pod Save the UK. Don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save UK on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and Blue Sky.
Coco Khan Pod Save the UK is a Reduced Listening production for Crooked Media.
Nish Kumar Thanks to lead producer May Robson and digital producer Jacob Liepenberg.
Coco Khan Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.
Nish Kumar Our engineer is Jeet Vasani and our social media producer is Narda Smiljanic.
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.
