Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Nish Kumar.
And I'm Coco Khan. Keir Starmer is having a busy week as he tries to keep Trump from totally losing it over Greenland, as well as his new obsession, the Chagos Islands.
It would be nice for the UK's prime minister to have a bit of time to actually run the UK.
Chapter 2: What challenges does Keir Starmer face with Trump over Greenland?
So is the government's new warm homes plan the kind of policy to help Labour tackle the rise of reform? Nigel Farage is collecting disaffected Tory figures like Trump collects other people's peace prizes. Liam Thorpe from the Liverpool Echo will give us his insights.
Plus, Palestinian comedian Alar Shahada is with us to discuss his latest project, which shows the reality of trying to do a comedy tour in an occupied state.
And of course, we'll be dealing with all the news about Brown to Beckham.
Yes, all of life is truly here.
This is expressly against my wishes. Donald Trump rolls into the elite money club of Davos today, having had, even by his standards, an insane week. We have no idea what's going to come out of his mouth. Here he is addressing world leaders. So bear in mind, this is happening after we're recording. So I literally have no idea what the fuck I'm teeing up here.
We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be, frankly, unstoppable. But...
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Chapter 3: How is the UK government addressing fuel poverty with the Warm Homes plan?
I won't do that. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.
Now, a leaked letter revealed that he is blaming his threats to take total control of Greenland on the Norwegian government's decision to give the Nobel Peace Prize to someone other than him. A letter, which is full of the usual Trump inaccuracies bullshit, shows the leader of the free world has the self-control of a toddler who's got into the Jammie Dodgers once more.
He's managed to get it wrong not once, but twice, because not only is that an unfathomable excuse for threatening to invade a country, it's also an independent committee that decides where to award the prize, not the Norwegian prime minister.
Normally, when someone is that wrong, it doesn't really matter. You can kind of ignore it. But Trump's inability to understand basic facts is impacting us every day. Keir Starmer had to start the week dealing with the threat of massive tariffs on the UK and EU after a different Trump tantrum.
Listen, we are very repeatedly critical of Keir Starmer's leadership of the Labour Party and this country. The only time where I feel he's completely powerless to manage what's going on in front of him is when Donald Trump becomes involved. What I would say is that as soon as Trump came into office, he had started sabre rattling about Greenland.
So maybe actually we shouldn't have been as caught cold by this as we have been.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Liam Thorp provide about Labour's housing strategy?
Sky News' Mark Stone has reported that in a weekend call, Starmer managed to get Trump to calm down a little and admit that he might have been misinformed and jumped to the tariff threats too quickly. Now, obviously, that's an interesting development. It doesn't seem to have translated into any public pronouncements.
Trump continues to saber-rattle about tariffs on European countries that have sent troops into Greenland. There is this strange thing that Starmer said on Monday where he said that, you know, As part of his reasoning for not threatening retaliatory tariffs, he said that this thing needs to be done in a kind of reasonable, grown-up way.
But that's not taking into account who he's trying to negotiate with. You're not dealing with a reasonable person. It's like trying to explain string theory to a toddler.
Chapter 5: How does Alaa Shehada navigate comedy in an occupied state?
It's unfathomable what he's trying to do. I keep reading op-ed pieces written by, I think, well-intentioned journalists that are asking questions like, is this the end of the rules-based international order? Well, the fuck are you talking about? Rules-based international order. It's like somebody trying to give etiquette lessons to a man who's currently dunking his balls in the soup.
It doesn't make any sense. It just feels like there is a total fundamental disconnect between everything that Donald Trump is saying and the high-minded questions being asked by people who write op-eds and, to be honest, a lot of the front bench of the Labour Party at the moment.
I listened to an interview with Darren Jones yesterday and he was actually trying to talk about something else. But, you know, as is the case, just Donald Trump just takes over every single conversation when we want to talk about the news of the day. And he was trying to say, look, actually, Britain's really good at diplomacy. We're doing diplomacy behind closed doors.
That's what they keep saying. It's really hard to have confidence in that, though, isn't it? Yeah. That feels a little bit like, do you remember when Labour came to power, where they were like, we won't tell you what we're going to do, but we are going to do some cool things. Just trust us. This whole, like, just trust us thing, it's just not working. I've become very, very frustrated with it.
I do want to mention, though, that Nigel Farage is missing Prime Minister's questions. to possibly hang out with his MAGA friends at Davos, despite criticizing the meeting of these financial elites for years. Funny that Nigel Farage. He's always like, oh, these elites, they do things. But then as soon as he is invited, what is he doing?
Richard Tice says there's a chance for Farage to speak to Trump about the tariff threat in Greenland. I guess we'll really see how close they actually are.
He's repeatedly criticized Davos as a meeting of globalist elites or whatever insert phrase he's got from some bot on Twitter here. But he's there right now. And Nigel Farage has always been... You know, an insider within the establishment who's managed to sell himself as an insurgent. And in that way, he is very Trumpian.
You know, Trump is a sort of property dofam from the kind of New York elite who has sort of, again, sold himself as a kind of champion of the working man. It's unsurprising that Trump and Farage have bound themselves as kind of political bedfellows because there is so much alignment in the way that they present themselves publicly.
Richard Tice has talked up the idea that Farage might have Trump's ear in these particular conversations. I think any time I hear somebody... say that they have a kind of ear with Trump or they have a Trump whisperer thing. I always think you're about to get sold some fucking magic beans. Like you're naive beyond belief.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of Trump's tariffs on the UK and EU?
Again, it sometimes feels like we're wasting our time when we point out that Trump has been hypocritical because it's sort of, suggests that we've set a standard that he has shown no interest in meeting whatsoever. You know, I remember in the kind of 2000s, there was a real vogue of trying to point out when politicians were being hypocritical. Trump lies moment to moment.
Yeah, yeah.
So it does feel a bit redundant to say, well, actually, I'll think you'll find you said that you were in favour of this. He doesn't give a fuck.
Yeah.
He will literally say... whatever is going through his head at that moment, he has no problem in contradicting himself.
I mean, I think that there is a really serious conversation to be had about how the kind of international community reshapes itself around a US presidency that has no interest in engaging directly with it and is in certain instances going to be a hostile actor in those kind of international conversations. And
Organizations like the European Union, a country like ours needs to start having conversations about what this looks like. We're just a year into this presidency. There are still three more to go. Maybe more. We currently don't know.
Again, if we're operating on a policy that we believe things when they're said directly to us, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, Steve Bannon was talking about Trump. This is not a problem that we can just sort of wish away. We need to have difficult conversations, I think.
Yeah, I think it's also worth mentioning that he's using what he has now decided is this Chagos deal, which is stupid, as another one of his reasons for why they must own Greenland. I mean, that word own. Because apparently they're saying, you know, you can't trust the UK. They make terrible decisions. Look what they're doing.
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Chapter 7: Why is the Hillsborough Law significant for public accountability?
It's an honour and a privilege. That is a huge claim, Liam. I mean it. I don't think anyone's ever been honoured to be in my presence before, whether in real life or on Zoom.
Nish, ever since I saw you attempting to be a local journalist, I've been inspired.
I'm a huge inspiration to local journalists everywhere. Liam is referring to a show called Hold the Front Page, which is available on Sky TV and Now TV, where me and Josh Winnicombe attempted to be local journalists And I think it's fair to say, showed how difficult the job of journalism really is.
Everyone tells us that they could do this job better than us. And I think you proved that that's not true.
Yeah, I think that was sort of the aim of it. Because Josh actually did a qualification in journalism. And I think he was sort of trying to make a kind of satirical point about how you could learn all the theory, but it's very different in practice.
So Liam, let's talk about this Warm Homes plan. What stands out for you?
You know, this has been, I think most people would have to say, a government of disappointment so far. I think anyone who was hoping to see real radical change from the Labour Party has been met with not that and a lot of screeching U-turns and frustrations really. So on something like this, And obviously, we're just getting the detail this morning, so I will need to see more and more of it.
But it feels positive that there is some big decisions being made on this and some big numbers behind them. So, you know, £15 billion over five years is not to be sniffed at. We all know that this kind of issue, these green issues need to be tackled. Well, we don't all know that. Most reform-led councils don't believe in it at all.
But I think what this is doing is it's putting the green agenda, it's combining it with the cost of living agenda. And if you ask anyone in any part of the country really what the big issue is, I think cost of living is the top one.
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Chapter 8: What is the current state of humanitarian conditions in Gaza?
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Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com. Terms and conditions apply. So next up, let's talk about reform. So the Reform Defection Party, which let's call it that for now, apparently it's come to an end. They had trailed a move by a Labour figure. They were really banging on about it. We're going to get a big name from the Labour Party. It failed to happen.
Yeah, Nigel Farage had been talking it up, but we understand, or certainly the public pronouncements they're making about it currently are... that it's been delayed until further notice while the party focuses on the threats from Trump to impose tariffs over Greenland.
I mean, again, in terms of the stories we're seeing from across the country, I'm pretty sure a lot of the people living in reform-led councils would rather they were focused on things like bin collection and not increasing council taxes rather than what Trump is doing about Greenland. But anyway, let's not get too far in the weeds with that.
Also, this, oh, we're delaying it until we can focus on this. Well, I thought you were best friends with Donald Trump, Nigel Farage. Why don't you pick up the phone? Anyway, over the weekend, there was a move by Tory backbencher Andrew Rosendale to the Reform Party who are not really the Conservative Party, they promise.
So is this more evidence of surging support for reform or is the party just becoming a target for, to use what a Liberal Democrat source said, a career politician worried about getting a P45?
Liam, what do you make of these, this sort of spate of defections? Obviously the most high profile so far being Robert Jenrick.
I actually think it's becoming a big problem for Nigel Farage. At one point you are the insurgent kind of, you know, you're outside of the noise. I mean, I don't agree with this because actually I don't think Nigel Farage is in any way that what he tries to portray himself as and what he quite often successfully does do as being kind of outside of the kind of elite environment.
But that's the image that they want. And that's the image that they're finding successful at the moment in terms of this insurgency into the kind of traditional two-party situation. But if you're just bringing on all the Tories from the last 14 years, from the establishment that you apparently are here to disrupt, then that's a bit of a mixed message, really, isn't it?
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