Happy New Year – is 2025 going to be the year of disinformation? Elon Musk started in attack mode with a flood of vitriolic and false tweets about UK grooming gangs. In Musk’s crosshairs: Keir Starmer and safeguarding minister Jess Phillips. He accused them both of cover ups. Can Nish and Coco survive a year of Musk madness – the man who already makes Nish want to “eat his own anus”?

We’re joined by political journalist Zoë Grünewald to discuss how to fight the disinformation invasion and what else might be in store in 2025 – from Reform eating the Tories to Labour delivering some much-needed change. And just when we thought we were done with billionaire BS – Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta is scrapping its fact-checking service and Andrew Tate launched a new political party.

And poor Nish is under fire from GB News for “unnecessary political swipes”on the BBC. A word to GB News – unnecessary political swipes is what Nish does! Brace yourselves – it’s a wild first show back.

Guests:
Zoë Grünewald

Audio credits: 
The Guardian
BBC
Sky News
Mark Zuckerberg

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TRANSCRIPT

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

Nish Kumar And I’m Nish Kumar. And we’re back.

Coco Khan *Air horn sound impression*

Nish Kumar What the hell was that?

Coco Khan It’s my air horn sound.

Nish Kumar It sounded like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It sounded like Da da da daaaaa

Coco Khan Da da da daaa a disco tune. I’m really showing my lack of cultural awareness.

Nish Kumar Da da da daaaaa.

Coco Khan Nish, it sounds like you’ve had a pretty eventful New Year. Let me read you a headline from GB News. Nish Kumar Sparks, BBC Hootenanny Switch off Threats with Unnecessary politics swipe. Hugely unfunny. What happened?

Nish Kumar I don’t really know what to say about these people anymore. I’ve no interest in engaging with them. There was just a section of the British press that enjoys soiling itself for attention.

Coco Khan Okay, well, let me fill the audience in on what GB News was so upset by. So Jools Holland asked you if there was anything you wanted to look back on and you said, Well, the Conservative Party lost the election and I was rock hard for a week, Jools. And at 39, that’s quite hard to come by.

Nish Kumar Am I lying? I’m 39. My erections are not what they once were. Anyway, straight into politics. This week, Elon Musk has turned his B.S. right up to 11 and aimed at squarely at Westminster. He spent his Christmas break making an escalating series of misleading claims against Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Government. But what else are you going to do over Christmas when none of your children will speak to you? The most incendiary of his claims is that members of grooming gangs who systematically raped girls were not prosecuted by Keir Starmer when he led the Crown Prosecution Service.

Coco Khan Now, like any good conspiracy theory, there is a kernel of truth in this. In 2009, the CPS dismissed some cases in Rotherham when CPS lawyers, in all their wisdom, decided that the victims would not be reliable or credible to a court.

Nish Kumar But in the five years that someone was head of the CPS, he actually made significant changes that led to cases not being dismissed in the future. And the 2009 dismissal of cases was overturned.

Coco Khan Also, we should say this is not a new story. These abuse cases, they go back to 1997. There have been several inquiries across the country, and there was a national inquiry led by Alexis Jay. The recommendations she made in 2022 were not implemented, however, by the conservative government.

Nish Kumar Here is Alexis Jay reacting to the mosque report on Radio Four’s Today program with Nick Robinson.

Clip I’ve heard very little in the public discourse that’s taken place in the last few days. If you could, if you could dignify with that description that have mentioned children and the appalling and lifelong effects that child sexual abuse can have on people. So those who are whipping this up are not focusing on what matters on the victims themselves. Mainly, that’s the case. And what I have heard of the debate.

Coco Khan I mean, that is the voice we need to hear more of actual experts on violence against women. The girls like committed champions of victims. Instead, all we get is men with their puffed out chests. They are just arguing like, no, I’m the protector of women, and girls know I’m the protector of women. Girls like women and girls are being let down across the board in this country and all across the world. It’s just it’s really, really upsets me. And she’s absolutely right. We should be hearing the victim’s voices much more in this.

Nish Kumar One of the survivors of the grooming gangs in Telford, who has since worked with the council to transform their approach to child exploitation, said this I feel like our voices, all of our hard work has been twisted and our experiences have been exploited for who knows what reason is it for politics or radical racist reasons? I feel really proud of what we’ve done. But for the first time today, I sat down and cried about not feeling we have done enough.

Coco Khan I mean, how chilling is that? How horrendous is that? I mean, surviving what they went through, that was already enough. That was already monumental. And now you hear the victims saying, did we not do enough? It’s ingrained, is endemic, the misogyny. And I would just say, because I’ve been thinking a lot about this, the problem with misogynistic culture is that the people that participate in it don’t ever think they’re a misogynist, even in like other parts of the world where it’s tremendously unsafe to be a woman, where you’re deprived of your rights in the public life, in education, in all sorts of places. The patriarchy that run that would never say I hate women. They would say, we love women. We protect women. We’re just allowing women to fulfill their whatever idea they have of womanhood is fundamentally the thing that unites those cultures. And some of the misogynists involved in this conversation here in Britain is this deep belief that they know better than women. They will speak on behalf of women. It just makes me so furious. And it honestly. Yeah.

Nish Kumar And the inaction around this should be a source of national shame and deep national disgrace. The latest jobs report was published in 2022, but so far there’s been no actual implementation of any of its recommendations. Blame for that lies with, I’m afraid to say, the Conservative Party have been in charge for most of the period between 2022 and now, and this intervention seems to have spurred the government into action. So on Monday night, Home Secretary, a vet Cooper spoke in the Commons and said the victims and survivors panel is being set up. Musk’s interest in this seems solely focused on attacking members of the Labour Government. So he actually took aim at Labour MP and safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips and called her. This is a direct quote and I do apologize for the tone and tenor and content of this call to a rape genocide apologist and called for her to be jailed. Now Jess Phillips has already said that his vitriol has put her in danger.

Clip I think Keir said it yesterday that when you speak and if you have misinformation, you have to think about the consequences of what that does. And one of those consequences is a risk to members of parliament that you are talking about.

Nish Kumar It’s a clip from Sky News on Monday morning. Must also and I can’t believe I’m saying this posted a poll on Twitter that he pinned to the top of his profile that asked if America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government. That’s right. One of incoming President Donald Trump’s. Apartment of government efficiency coordinators casually suggested that the US should drop round to share some of their trademark freedom.

Coco Khan Some other casual UK centric musk misinformation shared on his ex page in just the last couple of days. Please stop. Please leave us alone. Includes a false claim that Bill Gates donated millions to the BBC. The Gates Foundation has donated to BBC Media Action, but that is a BBC charity. It provides training across the world. It’s not connected with the BBC’s editorial output. That was also a falsehood that George Soros is paying off The Guardian to post negative articles about him. I am no longer staff at The Guardian, but I’m still friends with many people that work there, and I can assure you no one needs to pay them to say negative things about you. You do it yourself. Elon Musk And there’s also a suggestion the UK civilization could end due to a fall in our birthright because there’s nothing like a self appointed champion of women and girls talking about how women should have babies they don’t really want. He’s also demanded that far right activist Tommy Robinson be released from jail, calling him a political prisoner. He is, in fact, in jail for contempt of court.

Nish Kumar All of this is reminiscent of one of Trump’s closest advisers, Steve Bannon, and his infamous 2016 comms tactic to flood the zone with shit. He argued that the media is the arch enemy of conservatives, and so what conservatives should do is overload them with disinformation. That way, the regulated media is forced to fact check in dispute, which actually then limits resources for reporting and holding power to account.

Coco Khan And of course, this shit, it just dominates the agenda. So when Keir Starmer really wanted to be talking about his big plans for the NHS on Monday, he had to put out the Musk fire.

Clip Those that are spreading lies and misinformation. As far and as wide as possible, they’re not interested in victims. They’re interested in themselves.

Nish Kumar This seems like there’s no doubt that Musk’s fascination with the UK is going to continue to sort of manifest itself throughout 2025. So I guess the question is how much do you fight back with this? How much do you engage with it? Case Starmer’s tactic is clearly to push back aggressively on the points that were made. Whilst we have we’ve selected that clip obviously out of longer remarks of Starmer made. But it’s important to note that at no point did he actually address Musk by name. German Chancellor Olav Scholz has declared Don’t feed the troll. So he’s sort of arguing that we shouldn’t engage with it. Obviously that is a hugely contentious conversation in terms of Musk’s influence on German politics because he’s been tweeting approvingly about the far right party, the AfD. There’s an election coming up in Germany that’s obviously a very, very significant intervention, is about to be made by Musk’s mother at House. Diane Abbott has suggested that Starmer shouldn’t have engaged with the comments at such length as it gives Musk unwanted credibility. But at the same time. To not engage with it at all and to allow these kind of lies to be propagated also gives the kind of force and power. It is a really difficult thing, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I have a clear answer on what the best way is to fight back on this. As we sort of continue with this show, there is going to need to be some engagement with it. And I think the important thing is to push back on the most hateful bits of the rhetoric whilst also moving on to actually talk about practical things. I mean, we’re proposing a section called Facts versus Fuckwits, which is an attempt to kind of push back factually on this kind of thing. But it’s it is a genuinely difficult thing.

Coco Khan It really is. It’s such a challenge. You know, I’m really torn about it as well. You know, I always think sunlight is the greatest disinfectant. You know, these these toxic ideas, Let’s let’s engage with them. Let’s defeat them, if you will, by showing that they’re false, that they’re made up. But at the same time, we do give them credence. And there is just a thick conversation about like. If we spend our time fighting them, then we don’t get to make the case for the progressive world that we want. We don’t have the breath to do it. And so those ideas, those really strong ideas about redistribution of wealth and actually tackling violence against women’s and girls and not just using women’s rights as a political football. Those things never actually get heard because we’re just in this sort of loop, this Whac-A-Mole loop with with the far right. So I don’t know what the answer is, but my concern is, is that these ideas are being disseminated far and wide and to not have some kind of some kind of counter to scare me just instinctively.

Nish Kumar We should also be very clear about. Elon Musk’s interest in the UK. Yeah. The reality is he does not give a shit about the UK. He cares about one thing and one thing only, and that is money. Yes, he stands to gain by disempowering the Labour Party. He hates Labour laws that cost him money. He also hates our proposed online safety bill, which would stand to limit the power that he wields through Twitter. There are also some proposals in that law that would enable the British government to find companies that actually are involved in the spread of misinformation. And in the longer term, he absolutely has an interest in getting assent left government deposed and replaced by something that resembles the US Republican Party. Because he needs a political party in charge that will not regulate or tax him in any meaningful way. Elon Musk is a man without fixed political philosophy. His principle philosophy is the advancement of the interest of Elon Musk. He certainly does not care about young women and girls being victimized at all. If he did, I strongly suspect he would not be working with Donald Trump or he would not have strongly supported a political party that at one time housed Matt Gaetz. If he was genuinely interested in protecting women and young girls, he would not affiliate himself with those two men. His interests are purely based on his own personal financial gain. That is all this is about.

Coco Khan Absolutely. There’s not enough conversation about the money that’s at stake, and that is the basis of journalism and the basis of every good true detective show. You know, when you want to know what’s going on, follow the money. And the money at stake is huge. The online safety bill that we’ve been talking about that the Labour government are hoping to push through. We talked about the fining mechanism. The fining mechanism can demand up to 10% of global turnover, not just the money that he makes in the UK. Global. That is huge sums. And I’m not surprised. Therefore he’s fighting tooth and claw and using every dirty trick in the book to just essentially get into bed with people who he knows will never seek to regulate him.

Nish Kumar As always, we want to hear from you. We’re interested in your opinions on how much we should be engaging with this stuff. Do you think Facts versus Fuckwits is a good idea or do you think actually we should leave this subject alone and not continue to give these people the oxygen of publicity and attention that they seem to crave? Whatever it is, we want to hear from you. Email us at PSUK@reducedlistening.co.uk.

Coco Khan So one thing we haven’t spoken about is the thing that is wrapped up in all of this and ultimately the the toxic undercurrent that that divide is like masks thrive on, and that’s racism. So traditionally must favorite party has been reform. But in a surprise turn on Sunday, most said that Nigel Farage is unfit to lead the party. Following Farage’s failure to endorse Musk’s suggestions of release releasing Tommy Robinson.

Nish Kumar Yes, so Tommy Robinson, obviously a very contentious figure on the British far right within the British far right. I should say he’s not particularly contentious outside of it. Everyone thinks he’s a dick, but within the far right he is quite a contentious figure. And I think as part of the rise, his attempts to sort of launder the reputation of reform after an election campaign in which there were various racist comments made by reform candidates, I think in an attempt to sort of detoxify the brand of reform. Viraj, whilst lavishly praising Elon Musk, did stop short of supporting his comments on Tommy Robinson. And that seems to have led Elon Musk to demand that Farage be removed as the leader of the Reform Party, which were he capable of feeling shame? I imagine, would be deeply embarrassing for Nigel Farage, given Musk’s turn against Farage. The Sharks have sensed blood in the water and are vying for attention. Conservative Robert Jenrick, the former Tory leadership hopeful and now shadow secretary of state for justice, jumped on an opportunity to sow racist division. Here he is speaking to Radio Fauci Today program. But think Robinson.

Clip Some of these people hold backwards attitudes to women. We know from the Jay report that British-Pakistani men were overrepresented as members of these rape gangs. And we know that many selected their victims because they were white and viewed them as worthless. As a result, it is important that we are honest about that. Do we need to stop migration? I like stories. I think that it is very difficult to successfully integrate the very large numbers of people who we have had coming into our country in recent years.

Nish Kumar So Denmark has doubled down on the anti-immigration rhetoric there and goes on to regurgitates well above a line from last year that not all cultures are equal. We should also point out that Nic Robertson later in that interview did bring to Jenrick the fact that he didn’t once raised the issue of grooming gangs as a minister. And so all of this feels sort of calculated and an active sort of cynical political calculation now.

Coco Khan Absolutely. And I think it is worth saying that sexual abuse and exploitation is not confined to Pakistani men. Obviously, there has been numerous cases involving Pakistani men. There have also been other cases involving other men. But, you know, a 2020 home office report covering England, Scotland and Wales found that the majority of child sexual abuse gangs are made up of white men under 30. But these high profile cases in Rotherham, Rochdale, Telford and more have fueled the perception that this is a particularly Asian problem.

Nish Kumar What Jenrick has said, I think is so straightforwardly racist. I really do. I think that what he said is. Pretty uncomplicated racism. I think it’s embarrassing in so many ways, not least because at its core there is a kind of jostling for position amongst sections of the hard right of British politics for the approval of Elon Musk. And that’s all this feels like. It feels like Jenrick is dancing for the king. And there are a lot of people in politics. And also, if I’m being completely frank in comedy, then the last few years have been dancing for the richest man in the world and dressing up as either an act of political analysis or cultural subversion. And all they are is court jesters. Capering for a baron. That’s all it is. And if. Yeah. I mean, there is no depth to my contempt for Robert Jenrick. There is absolutely no depth through.

Coco Khan Absolutely. I mean, the goal of this man to be like, the Labour government aren’t doing enough. You were you were part of a party that was in government. You had a ministerial role in the Home Office, You did nothing. You did absolutely nothing whatsoever. And it really breaks my heart because at the end of the day, the people that are going to suffer are going to be women and girls. Right. And I’m sorry to say that whether it’s grooming in churches or schools or football teams or in gangs like this is access and knowing you’ll bloody get away with it. So we also need to talk about rape conviction rates being astronomically low. But these aren’t the conversations they want to have. Instead, they just want to play on just old school, horrible, racist, xenophobic tropes.

Nish Kumar Look, I know this has been a heavyweight to get back in after the new year, but if there is one kind of optimism in all of this, this is important to know for people living in the United Kingdom and also for people, friends and listeners in the United States, at the core of what seems like an undefeatable alliance between deregulated capitalists and socially conservative hard right wingers. There are some incredibly large egos that are prone to volatile outbursts and may well defeat each other in their quest to be the kind of top dogs I like Farage and Musk. That alliance seemed incredibly strong one week ago, and it has now blown up. Musk is now going into a system where he’s going have to work with Donald Trump. They’re both so sensitive. So I wonder if there is an inherent combust ability in a lot of these relationships that are driving these kind of joint forces to political and social power. And if there is one thing we can hold on to is that there is some very, very volatile, combustible, sensitive men at the core of this who might well turn on each other at the first opportunity. And that seems to have happened with Musk. And that is the one thing we can all hang on to at the moment to keep us hopeful.

Coco Khan I just hope to God that everyone saw what happened in America, because these tactics they’re using on the UK, they’ve already done them, they’ve already tried them. So I really hope. Sorry to our American listeners that your pain we can learn from you and yet find a way around this. So after the break, we’re joined by friend of the show, Zoë Grünewald, to talk about the political implications of Musk’s interventions.

Nish Kumar And on the other plus side, Jean-Marie Le Pen died, which is great.

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Nish Kumar Now, joining us to look ahead to the big moments of 2025 and make some predictions, we will be forcing her to be accountable to it. Is Zoë Grünewald. Welcome back, Zoë.

Zoë Grünewald Hello. Happy New Year.

Coco Khan Welcome back. We’re only eight days into 2025 and everything’s on fire.

Zoë Grünewald It is, yeah.

Coco Khan Feeling hopeful?

Zoë Grünewald Feeling hopeful? No, no.

Coco Khan *laughs*

Zoë Grünewald Are you? Are you feeling hopeful?

Coco Khan Hopeful isn’t the word I would go for.

Zoë Grünewald No.

Coco Khan You know, look, here’s here’s a positive spin I’m feeling motivated. There’s a lot to do.

Zoë Grünewald Yes.

Coco Khan You know?

Zoë Grünewald We’ve certainly got our work cut out for us.

Nish Kumar I would say the turkey’s worn off.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah.

Nish Kumar The magic of the season has already worn off.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah.

Nish Kumar So, look, Nigel Farage and Elon Musk have already managed to clog up our news feeds like hair and fecal matter in a drain.

Coco Khan Fecal matter in a drain, Nish?

Nish Kumar Toilet drain.

Coco Khan Okay. Just wanted to check.

Nish Kumar Yeah. I’m not shitting in the shower. With this in mind. Do you. Do you have any further insight into why Musk is attacking Keir Starmer over the grooming scandal now? What’s really going on here?

Zoë Grünewald So I think Musk has developed an unhealthy obsession with UK politics, and he’s really focused a lot of his attacks on Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer is a lightning rod for this because I think he has a legal background. You know, he was director of the CPS in the 20 tens. So there are lots of things that conspiracy theory accounts can link to. Keir Starmer We’ve seen that most recently with the grooming gangs. I saw an interesting statistic earlier, I think from Tortoise Media that said that over the past week, Elon Musk has posted more than 200 times on grooming gang scandal in less than two weeks. So that just shows you, you know, considering this man owns Tesla, he’s the richest man in the world. That is a lot of tweeting about a, you know, a incident in British politics that doesn’t concern him.

Nish Kumar Yeah.

Coco Khan But he’s not going to stop. I mean, like you said, he’s developed not far off an obsession with Keir Starmer in particular. Yeah, He calls himself the great troll or troll in chief or something like that. You know, he’s got a bit between the teeth. I mean, what is I’m going to do about it?

Zoë Grünewald So I think that thus far Labour’s response has been actually quite broadly, which has been to mainly ignore him. And that’s because, you know, you might say these are the rantings of a madman. In which case it probably makes sense to ignore him. But I think there’s also now increasingly a sense of actually, even though he is in Donald Trump’s administration, how long is that going to last? Because the already people around Donald Trump are saying to him. This man can’t be trusted. You know, the way he turned on Nigel Farage after previously throwing around this idea of $100 million donation supporting reform turned on him very, very quickly. You know, just over comments that Nigel Farage had made. So I think what Labour wants to do is, as far as possible, ignore mask. Obviously they have to wait. And when Musk is directly putting their own ministers in danger and what Elon Musk did to Jess Phillips I think was something that could not be ignored by any government. And I think Keir Starmer was quite strong on how Elon Musk could put her in danger.

Nish Kumar So let’s talk about the actual problems the country’s facing and the practical things the government is trying to do to get us out of them. So the reason that Starmer was speaking in public this week was talking about the Labour Party’s plan to end the NHS backlog, setting out how it aims to hit the target of treating 65% of patients within 18 weeks by March next year, which is a stepping stone towards the election pledge of hitting 92% by the end of Parliament. How realistic and viable are those two deadlines, though?

Zoë Grünewald Well, I think the fact that they have set them quite clearly shows that they do think they are realistic and viable. The problem is that they’re staking a lot on reducing NHS waiting times because a because it is a lift thing. It’s one of those things that people either have personal experience of or they have family members who have experience off. And we know the NHS is a huge part of our sort of political fabric and therefore progress on the NHS is is fundamental to whether people believe Labour is doing its job. But also because the NHS links to their wider economic plan. So we have 9 million economically inactive people in the UK. A big portion of those are out of work. Sick Labour need to get through waiting lists in order to get those people back to work and rejuvenate the economy. The problem is there’s lots of things going on in the economy that are out of Labour’s control. Yes, they while all this was going on with Elon Musk, Rachel Reeves was forced to service government borrowing, which has gone up massively. So we’ve got the spiraling cost of government debt. This is taking Rachel Reeves within a whisker of breaking her fiscal rule about UK long term borrowing. And people are saying when it comes to the spring budget, this might mean that they either have to put up taxes, slashed public spending or break fiscal rules. The Treasury are ruling out breaking our fiscal rules. So there’s lots and lots of concern that if Rachel Reeves wants to meet her long term growth ambitions, we’re going to see more cuts to public spending. And of course, this has a knock on effect with things like the NHS. This is a knock on effect with other public services that get people back to work. All of this is a holistic circle. And as much as Labour might want to say that they’re making progress on the NHS, you simply can’t do that without all the other things being in place as well.

Coco Khan I’m so glad you brought that up because I think if you were watching closely, you could have easily missed that story. And that story is is huge. And like you say, has has enormous impacts. Just return to mass, though. He is filling the news agenda. How are Labour going to stabilize their kind of their comms in this chaos?

Zoë Grünewald It’s really hard because you’re absolutely right. Elon Musk is setting the news agenda. And part of this is because we have this obsession in the media with personalities. But part of it also is that he has been given legitimacy by being extremely wealthy and putting the idea of a donation to reform out there, but also because he’s in Donald Trump’s administration now. So it’s really hard for them to keep their messaging on track with policy. I think that there are sort of three ways that Labour hope they can defeat the rising throughout the far right. The influence of Elon Musk, the influence of Donald Trump. There’s a really good piece by Ross Taylor in the New European about what Labour internally think they should be doing and is broadly split into kind of three categories. So you have the people who want to see Labour really hone in on its messaging, refine its messaging. No more doom and gloom optimism. What will Britain look like? What’s the future we’re building? Get people excited about, you know, spades in the ground, new towns, new houses, planning, reform, that kind of thing. There’s those in Labour who think they just need to deliver. And then there’s those in Labour who say, actually, this is all a symptom of long term decline. What we need are deep rooted constitutional changes. So voting reform, electoral reform, abolishing the House of Lords, talking about our relationship with the EU. You know, these much bigger things which Labour aren’t quite frankly, going to commit to, at least not in their first term or probably even their second term. But there is some argument in Labour about what do we do? Do we just focus on delivery and ignore the noise? Do we actually start to, you know, get a grip on messaging above reform? Because reform are very good at diagnosing a problem. Talking about discontent is very easy to do when you’re in opposition, disharmony, to take them head on, you know, and say, actually, this is what we’re going to do, this is how it’s going to improve the country. Or is actually all of this irrelevant if Labour aren’t tackling the real deep rooted, fundamental problems in this country? So we’re going to see lots that I think ultimately Morgan McSweeney, who basically is Chris Thomas, chief of staff, runs Labour Party. He’s all about delivery. We’ll probably see Labour trying to keep themselves away from the noise and just proceed with those measurable targets like NHS waiting lists.

Coco Khan I mean, it’s so galling hearing about reforming as the main threat, which I know is true, but it’s just so frustrating, you know, especially now with they’re talking about themselves as champions of of women and, you know, violence against women of girls. But they’re being they’re concerned when they have an MP who is a woman beater.

Nish Kumar I just want to before you make another useful and valid and interesting point, I just want to say something stupid and irrelevant.

Coco Khan Great.

Nish Kumar As is my want. It is also galling when ever you hear of Musk described as like a personality iveness, like the man is thunderously uncharismatic. He is an absolute void if you actually watch him be interviewed. I’ve never come across such a dull, uninspiring and uncharismatic man. He is not interesting. He’s so thundering and funny when he attempts to make a joke. A part of me wishes I could eat my own anus. Yeah, that’s true.

Zoë Grünewald I just like to know.

Nish Kumar I think that variable.

Zoë Grünewald Is a very fair point, and I think it tells you a lot about how not just boring average man, but you. Right? Like repulsive men seem to get so far in politics.

Nish Kumar Let’s talk just briefly before we go back to Labour and the local election. Specifically, let’s just briefly talk about the Tory Party and reform in terms of Kemi Badenoch. Do you think I mean, my feeling about her was always she was essentially set up as a patsy, if for no other reason other than that tends to be what the Conservatives do with their minority and female leaders. But equally, anyone taking the Conservative Party at this particular moment was always going to be left with a difficult situation, was probably likely to lead the party to the next election. Do you think she’s already toast and is jenrick in terms of pushing himself forward, setting himself up to take over from the person who beat him in the last leadership contest?

Zoë Grünewald I think Jenrick thinks he is doing that. Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I think everybody knock is toast. There was a great quote in a piece I write about this where a Tory MP had basically said, I think the party needs to get the madness out of its system. You know, they need to try shifting to the right to see just how fundamentally it will not work because you can’t out for George Barrage, The last time the Tories suffered a similar loss was in 1997 and it took 13 years of four different leaders to return to power. Now, historical comparisons aren’t always useful, but it does take a long time to rebuild, especially when the Conservatives had such a trouncing. And they have such a poor economic record. You know, the economy was the Tories strength. They trashed that. So you have to really ask why anyone would return to the Conservatives. I think they’d knock will eventually be out. I don’t think she’ll lead the Conservatives into the next election. I think the Conservative Party would have a better chance with James cleverly, and I think that was the fear in Labour circles, was actually he would win the leadership election and they would have a much tighter race. The idea that Badenoch, who is just known for being divisive, you know, she could start a fight in an empty room, is the person to unite the Conservative Party and bring the public. But it’s just I don’t know what the party was thinking. But then again, they weren’t really thinking that because out of 121, Tory MP was only 42. But you know, that wasn’t a majority. Yeah. So I don’t think she’ll last. I don’t know why she hasn’t suggested any substantial policy yet. I think that’s a mistake because she’s letting Nigel Farage outflank her on the right. And they’re not even acknowledging the fact that they lost a lot of votes to the Lib-Dems. You know, there’s still a huge caucus of voters who left the Tories to go to the Lib Dems and Labour because they missed the kind of center right sort of more moderate conservatism that was basically purged from the party during the Brexit year. So I don’t think she’s going to take them to the next election. But I don’t know how many leaders they’re going to have until they see something like electoral victory again.

Coco Khan And so just thinking about the story where Musk criticized Farage and said, you know, reform needs a new leader, do you think that could actually happen?

Zoë Grünewald No. Because the Reform Party is Nigel Farage. I mean, you only have to see how they massively excelled in sort of the polls and popularity and profile after they managed to get Nigel Farage to come and actually stand for them. I mean, who do you have when you take Farage out? Richard Tice? I mean, you know, who cares about him? And who else is there? Rupert Lowes getting a lot.

Coco Khan Of attention, though, isn’t he? He’s been tweeting a lot of Musk talking points.

Zoë Grünewald But again, I think, you know, Nigel Farage is such a divisive personality. A lot of reform voters love him. They don’t love him in the same way they like Richard Tice. And I think a lot of people just listen to Farage or just care about. Seeing Farage rather than actually taking in the substance of what he’s saying. That’s why reforms policies haven’t had the scrutiny that they should have, because it is just about Farage. Once you take them away, they just become a protest party with, you know, completely incongruent policy positions. I actually think Musk and Farage might make up. I think there might be some thawing of relations. I mean, Nigel Farage apparently said that Musk has already retweeted him twice. So who knows, maybe they’ll make up, which just has such a touch of the of teenage crush about it, doesn’t it? So it’s so pathetic.

Coco Khan So pathetic.

Zoë Grünewald But I think what it does tell us is this whole unholy trinity of right wing men is fractious and can chop and change at any minute. So is.

Nish Kumar This so that they’re so thin skinned.

Zoë Grünewald That ego driven.

Nish Kumar This they’re so like vulnerable to even the vaguest hint of criticism.

Zoë Grünewald And that’s the problem, you know, and I think that’s where Labour are really hoping if they just plow ahead and continue with their boring, sensible, you know, policy making, that the public will get bored of the psychodrama and hopefully see some change.

Nish Kumar So going into the local elections, given Keir Starmer’s abysmal approval ratings, that would be something that I would’ve thought would fill the Labour Party would concern at the moment. But given the current condition of the Conservative Party, given the fact that reform, despite having a very successful general election run and now sort of slightly infighting with the person that they thought were going to give them 100 million pounds, do you think actually the Labour Party must be looking at these local elections and thinking, not as bad as we thought it was going to be?

Zoë Grünewald I’m not sure. I think there’s still a sense that reform will potentially damage Labour in some working class areas. I think the Tories are preparing themselves for another chance, saying and I think campaigning will be very worried because once you know, the party has a taste for regicide, it likes removing its leaders was they see a paucity of election results, especially in comparison to reform. I think they might get nervous. So she’ll have her work out for. But I do think it will be interesting because reformists here really big game at the minute. They’re talking about their membership kind of spiraling, but there isn’t necessarily a link between membership and doing well electorally and actually the sort of people that are joining reform. Their members are old, they’re very online. They don’t actually go out and leaflet. So in the 2024 election, 34% of full members delivered party leaflets, compared to 47% of Tory members, 50% of Labour members and 59% of Liberal Democrats. They don’t organize around elections in the way that you would want them to. And also the other thing is once you have lots of highly engaged ideological members who join a political party, this can actually make the party more out of step with public opinion. So we saw this, you know, during Liz Truss when there were lots of Tory members who wanted her to be leader. It actually dragged the party to the right in a way that made it actually less in touch with the electorate. And we know that reform have had problems before with members saying racist things or anti-Semitic things or Islamophobic things and then needing to be kicked out. So just because they have an explosion of members doesn’t mean that’s going to help reform electorally.

Nish Kumar Well, look, the influence of Trumpism, whether it’s in reform or in the Conservative Party, is clearly been washing across the United Kingdom. And it’s been four years since the infamous insurrection and just a few months since the United States reelected. The man behind it now feels like a perfect moment to examine the scope of American presidential power, its reach and hopefully its limits. We hope there are limits.

Coco Khan [AD]

Nish Kumar After the break, we’ll be discussing more billionaire bullshit, which just keeps coming with Zoe. So stay tuned.

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Clip So we built a lot of complex systems to moderate content. But the problem with complex systems is they make mistakes even if they accidentally censor just 1% of posts. That’s millions of people. And we’ve reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech so we can get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

Nish Kumar Another terrifyingly uncharismatic man, again, like completely not the point, but just having to listen to him speak is absolutely.

Coco Khan Cult leader at the minute, isn’t it?

Zoë Grünewald What’s with the chain?

Coco Khan Right. It’s weird. It’s that bothered.

Zoë Grünewald By the cult vibe.

Nish Kumar I don’t enjoy publicizing the work of Ronnie Chang because I have nothing but animosity towards him as a man and a comedian. But his new Netflix special is great and has a long routine about how Mark Zuckerberg has built algorithms and then Bill been radicalized by the algorithms that he has built and has essentially become a sort of like low level MMA fighter based on reading things generated by algorithms that he helped design. Again, I cannot endorse writing Chang as a man or comedian, but his new Netflix specialist. Great. And he has a fantastic retweet about this. But yeah, it’s good to remind ourselves every so often that Facebook originally started as a way for him to compare women to farm animals at university. It’s just it’s always worth keeping that in mind when you consider Mark Zuckerberg. So he seems to have gone for Elon Musk deciding to follow X and lay off Matter’s third party moderation team instead uses on sites like Facebook and Instagram and will now highlight posts that could be misleading instead of leaving it to organizations or experts. Zuckerberg also committed to retooling the matter algorithms to deliver more political content to counter claims of censorship from the social media giant and trust and safety workers. People responsible for forcing policies around hate speech and disinformation will be relocated from California to Texas to help remove concerns that biased employees are overly censoring content. So, Zoe, just give us your expert opinion on this. A more political content, less fact checking.

Zoë Grünewald Sounds great.

Nish Kumar Sounds great, doesn’t it? More bike and less exercise.

Zoë Grünewald Yeah, it’s it’s crazy. I mean, it’s. It was obvious this was going to happen. You know, all these tech bosses going cap in hand to Donald Trump. Essentially, they are trying to bend his ear. They see how Elon Musk has played him and they want a piece of the pie. Donald Trump also threatened Zuckerberg with jail time, essentially if he moderated posts to do with the 2024 election. And it’s going to be extremely messy because Donald Trump’s economic policies, I think, eventually will come into conflict with what these tech pros want. You know, they want a very, very globalized system. And Donald Trump was America’s be very isolationist. And eventually these two schools of thought must, Yeah. Crash into each other.

Coco Khan Absolutely. I mean, Elon Musk talking about migration as a massive threat. Famously, he was quite pro migration, particularly high skilled Indian tech workers.

Nish Kumar Well, he was saying that he was basically saying that over Christmas as well, like he was essentially arguing for more high skilled immigration, which presumably at some point will come into conflict with Trump’s. I don’t even want the people who are here. Yeah, Policy.

Zoë Grünewald And electric vehicles is another classic example. You know, this obviously Musk is very much in favor of electric vehicles. This comes into contrast with a lot of, you know, thought in the Republican Party about net zero being this scourge. And then, you know, the interests of the Rust Belt and all these things. You know, at some point they’re going to clash. And Elon Musk, as we can see, is a highly unpredictable character who seems to be extremely high on his own supply at the minute. And the question is, where do all these tech pros go? How do they fall in line when you get that division? You know, if Musk and Trump have a huge fall out, where does that koeberg go? You know, what side of the fence would you like to sit on? And you can bet that if the American election turned out differently and Harris became president, they would totally flip. They would do a 180 and totally flip the other way. That’s how self-interested they are, as much as it feels ideological. And I’m sure there is a lot of ideology to the selfishness of it. I don’t think they are. Riven in the same way Trump is by his. I think they just follow the money.

Coco Khan And someone that’s likely to be rejoicing about this diminished moderation policy is our least favorite right wing dickhead. I think it’s fair to say the least. Or at least certainly least at the moment. It’s just such a crowded field and we definitely really dislike Andrew Tate, who, like Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage, is keen to play up to his dude man, bro, child, shit of Musk and Co. He’s announced a new acronym to political party The Britain Restoring Underlying Values Party. Yep, that’s right. It’s rough for those playing at home.

Nish Kumar Yeah. Apparently this is not a joke, which I’m sort of struggling to believe. He’s even launched a charter replete with air generated imagery that lays out his plans for Britain, including restoring masculinity and strength, the foundation of a thriving nation.

Coco Khan And presumably, he’s continuing his narrative where he talks about how he’s the savior of Western values, which I would assume means the savior of Western women, which is maybe contradictory to the charges he’s currently facing, which include trafficking. But I suppose these days that’s just a string to your bow in the world of right wing angry men.

Zoë Grünewald This is so crazy. Yeah, but I’m sure it’s just another publicity stunt from Tate, isn’t it? I mean, there’s no. There’s no actual chance that he thinks he’s going to do anything significant politically. It’s just another way for him to involve himself in the current argument of the right.

Coco Khan But I don’t suppose it even really matters if he actually thinks he’s going to win a seat as long as he can be, as you say, part of the conversation, be an agitator. And look, Tommy Robinson is precisely.

Zoë Grünewald Apparently he’s going to introduce blockchain based voting and a national Bitcoin reserve in the UK.

Nish Kumar It’s going to be interesting to see how he’s able to do that whilst under house arrest. Just to polish off the sort of triumph of W.T. fuck moments this week. Elon Musk’s dad, Eric Musk, has suggested that his son is interested in buying Liverpool Football Club. The club is estimated value of around 4.3 billion, which is just over 1% of Musk’s total net worth, which is believed to be around 343 billion pounds. I’m not sure I could particularly see this happening. Liverpool is owned by the Fenway Group, who also are the Boston Red Sox. They’re not exactly sure of cash. They also have a very keen interest in the football club and in sports in general. So it’s not even something that they just looking to offload as a business interest.

Coco Khan I think the fanbase wouldn’t like it either.

Nish Kumar I’m not sure there’s many cities in the United Kingdom based on my quite extensive traveling, that would be less welcoming if it wasn’t me.

Coco Khan That when I did see this story I thought to me, Go on, try it. I just want to see the moment of Elon Musk entering Liverpool Town Center. City Center Club.

Nish Kumar  I just thought.

Coco Khan Please, please, please. But what it does speak to is, number one, this story was revealed by Elon Musk’s dad, Eric Musk, who apparently now is a legitimate force in politics that is sort of stomach churning.

Nish Kumar We turned Stanley Johnson into a celebrity. So like, I’m really not like none of this. None of it is surprising to me. Zoe, thank you so much, as always, for joining us on both sides, the UK. Thank you. As always, though, aggressively, back again.

Zoë Grünewald Always. Yeah. Yeah. No good news today.

Nish Kumar One day we’ll get you on to talk about something fun. But today was not bad.

Zoë Grünewald Don’t make promises you can’t take.

Coco Khan Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on Pod Save the UK.

Zoë Grünewald Thank you.

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

Coco Khan Don’t forget to follow Pod Save the UK on Instagram and Twitter. And if you want more of us, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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

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

Nish Kumar Our theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos.

Coco Khan Thanks to our engineer Jeep Vaswani, the head of production is Dan Jackson.

Nish Kumar The executive producers are Anouska Sharma, Louise Cotton and Madeleine Herringer. With additional support from Ari Schwartz.

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

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