Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, this is Pod Safety UK. I'm Nish Kumar. And I'm Coco Karn. Happy New Year, everyone. You know, Nish, I had quite the crestfallen moment earlier this year. Right. 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. 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. You might be the first person to have feelings of hope on a hangover. I don't get hungover much these days. It's very thrilling for me. And then, you know, I'm at home. I'm in my little bubble watching Stranger Things and see all those pictures of Zora and Mamdani.
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. Oh, right, fine. I just thought, like, halfway through, they just suddenly cut in some pictures of Mamdani. Anyway, look, I had hope, OK? I had it. I looked at my phone and then I saw the story about the kidnapping of a president by Donald Trump.
And in that moment, I was like, oh, here it is. Here's my Joker moment. Never expect things to go well, kids. Listen, we're going to be discussing the latest Trump madness and Starmer's lacklustre response to it with Tommy Beetle from our sister podcast, Pod Save America and Pod Save the World. And on that terrifying note, what other political madness will the new year hold?
Political satirist Cody Darla is here to look ahead at what is going to be a pivotal year in British politics. 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. 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 Maduro's de facto removal from power. Now, listen, we're sort of obliged to make these comments, but this is not to celebrate Nicolas Maduro.
A 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.
The new Venezuelan government, which is essentially the old government with interim president and Maduro ally Delcy Rodriguez in charge, has put armed police and army on the streets to quash any protest. There's been a huge amount of sort of moralising in the press, but the tone of it is deeply strange.
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Chapter 2: What recent actions has Trump taken regarding Venezuela?
No, we are not. So who better to try and make sense of the madness than our very own Tommy Vitor 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. Tommy, lovely to see you. Welcome back to Pod Save the UK. Thank you. What does Trump think he's doing here? Just to sort of kick things off.
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, you know, 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 Malay.
And now when it comes to Venezuela, Trump has just decided that we can send in Delta Force troops, our 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 U.S.
get to determine who leads countries, but also we get to say we get dibs on your natural resources. And also we get to say 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.
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? 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 to buy us dinner.
No sexed up dossier. No lies about weapons. It's just rude, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Right. We're no yellow cake. Right. He's just like, no, no, no. I want the oil and we're going to 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 going to 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.
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.
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Chapter 3: How does Trump's approach impact NATO and international relations?
It 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 dominion over Europe and China has dominion 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 know, for him, it's the oil industry.
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? 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's a student of history.
That said, the White House released something called the National Security Strategy late last year. It was a lot of it. The Europe section was kind of copied and pasted from J.D. Vance's speech in Germany. I think it was in Munich several months back where he said the real issue 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 you know 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 uh recognition that the world is actually divided up into three spheres of influence like it seems like he's willing to seed um 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 U.S. hegemony is that we want to be dominant in every sphere. It does seem like a weaker vision of U.S. power if we are ceding Asia to the Chinese. But we'll see, I guess. So 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 to get an Orban to see your side. But do you think we could collectively stand up to Donald Trump and this fear of influence, ideology or approach that he's taking? 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. He announced Liberation Day on the Chinese, slapped a big tariff on them.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's interest in Greenland?
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. Elsewhere in the Koonsberg 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. Right. So Starmer's 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 think it will be enough to cut through to voters who are already disillusioned? 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 in the minimum wage, and the end of the two-child limit on welfare, and a 3.8% rise in benefits. And September is going to bring the expansion of free school meals to all families on universal credit.
That's all happening at the 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%, or almost twice the Bank of England's inflation target. It's weird when you hear numbers like that. One, the sort of percentages.
I understand there are improvements, but what does it really mean? The railfares one really stuck out to me. It was like, oh, they will be frozen where they are. So, okay, they will remain an arm and a leg. It will cost you your first child to go to Bristol. Yeah, that is slightly the problem, is that a freeze is bad. because the rail fares had already escalated out of control.
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 been shitter is like, it doesn't fly anymore. And also, it is going to become shit. More shit.
I mean, like, you know, just 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're saying we're holding it, not really. Not really when you dig into it.
What would you like to see the government be doing, Cody, in the face of all of these challenges? 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.
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Chapter 5: What is Keir Starmer's response to Trump's actions?
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Rules and restrictions may apply. 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, no, absolutely not.
It might move the dial, just not in a way that they... Exactly. The dial moving downwards is still a moving dial. 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.
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