Pod Save the World - Cocaine Hippos

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss the military coup in Sudan, how Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter is making waves in China, Israel’s designation of six Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations, Facebook’s global impact, Trump officials get kickbacks from the Saudis, Russia, climate change and cocaine hippos. Then British Member of Parliament David Lammy joins to discuss the recent murder of a British lawmaker and the danger of online hate speech.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, how are you feeling about these Virginia governors and down-ballot races? Did you pick up any intel on your visit to the swamp with Shifty Schiff? Not really. I talked to our former boss, Barack Obama, was going to campaign for it. Oh, that's right. He was out there on Saturday. Yeah, so he was out there. He looked like he was having fun. Yeah, he loves getting out there. I mean, I think he enjoys it. Yeah, these are always, I remember this, both of these, when Obama got elected the year after, it's this weird year. It sucks.

Never feels good. Feels like everybody's going to overread into the results, you know. Somehow we're all, everyone's arguing about Tony Morrison. That's the closing argument. I'm like, what's happening? I couldn't figure it out, frankly. Yeah. I was, you know.

Like, the Republicans want to make it about like books and schools, which is such an old, timeless right-wing issues. And Democrats are like, you want to talk about books and schools? We will engage you in that culture war rather than talk about the messages that work for us. Well, I don't know. I will offer my world though opinion on that, which is that it's in a lot of places, which we've seen in recent years is far right parties like to close on culture war issues because they know they lose all the other ones. And usually what works is it doesn't mean you don't take your stand on those issues and we should,

but you tend not to want to fight the last days of the election on the thing that the other guy wants to talk about. Yes. That's sort of like an iron rule of politics. Anyway, Terry MacAuliffe.com slash volunteer if you want to sign out to volunteer a couple days left here. Today we are going to cover the military coup in Sudan, how a Celtics basketball player is making waves in China, to put it mildly. Israel's designation of six Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations, Facebook's global impact, some kickback news from the Saudis, some news out of Russia, a roundup of climate change updates. and then the best story of the day, cocaine hippos. Yeah, look, I want to say, it's funny you read these lists of topics every week, and there's like the, we don't plan the through line of the, like,

Greek being authoritarianism around the world that just presents itself to us, you know? Like, you know, I, like, I wish that a book about global authoritarianism wasn't like in the zeitgeist, but the hippos on the other end is a whole different story. I feel like they should be living in Miami, but, you know, we'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. Ben, if you have not listened to John Favro's new series offline to the listeners, what is wrong with you? You're hurting yourself. That was so good.

Comes out on Sunday. Positive America Feed. This week is with Gia Tolentino. Who, you know what? So we have David Lamian today who is in the running for top five podcast guests, but she takes the crowd. Gia is so smart. She's so smart. She makes you think about things differently.

You want to like be her friend. Desperately want her approval. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like a genius. Like a joke and talk like her. Yeah, like an actual genius. It was really good. Great episode, great show for John.

We're excited for him to get cue-pilled by episode 10. It was good because you and I were a little hungover, I think, on Sunday after hanging out. A little Saturday. And the capacity you just throw on a podcast and hear a very erudite conversation about the Internet was very soon. Yeah, you took the dog for a walk. You listen to your friends talk. Also, we're celebrating the two-year anniversary of What a Day, our fantastic daily podcast. gives you the news you need in like 20 minutes or less, subscribe to what a day.

Huge congratulations to the entire team. Doing a daily show is very difficult. It takes a ton of work. The whole crew has worked their asses off for two years to build a really successful show to shout out to them. Yeah, I'm glad we don't have to do a daily show. And I've been on their show. They're wicked smart. And they cover what needs to be covered.

What needs to be covered. Yeah, we're more on the once a week. Once a week, we can crank it up, you know, wind it up. Put us out to pass your. And then, Ben, our guest today, as you mentioned, is David Lammy. What did you guys talk about? Well, as always a great discussion with David Lammy. We started with the story we led with last week, the killing of the British MP, David Amos, and how they're thinking about safety for politicians and lawmakers in the UK. We then talked about kind of hate speech, Facebook, all the associated problems that are contributing to the toxic political environment there.

so kind of around the types of Facebook issues, we've been discussing here. And then we got kind of the update on Brexit, which is spoiler. Not going good, huh? Going too great. Some gas shortages and stuff? You know, senior British correspondent, David Lambie, able to bring us up to speed on that. Excellent. We'll stick around for that.

Okay, let's start in Sudan. Unfortunately, it's not good news. We talked about this issue last week, but then on Monday, the Sudanese military took control of the country. They arrested the prime minister. They imposed a state of emergency. and violently started cracking down on protesters. So the autocrat playbook, General Abdel Fata al-Burnham,

the leader of the joint civilian military council that had been running the place since former president Omar al-Bashir was deposed in 2019. He was supposed to hand over control of this transitional council in a few weeks. He chose not to. It would have been the first time the country was under full civilian control since 1989, I believe.

But instead, the military staged this coup. Protester took to the streets to denounce the coup. the internet was cut off in most of the country. This all went down just a few hours after Biden's envoy for the Horn of Africa, left the country. He was there trying to stave off this exact outcome. So that sucks. Never a good sign. No, never a good sign.

On Monday, the White House suspended $700 million in economic aid that was intended to go to Sudan in support of this democratic transition. So, Ben, you sort of alluded to this. We've seen the story so many times now. Protests, calls for democracy, lead to these hopeful and fragile transitions. and then ultimately the guys with the guns take over because they have a monopoly on violence and all the leverage, and that's just how it ends up going. Do you think there are lessened from Egypt, Sudan,

like a lot of these different examples about what the international community can or cannot do differently to help give democratic transitions, like the one we were hoping would flourish in Sudan, a better chance of success? I mean, I alluded to this last time, and people may think I have a hobby horse about it, But, I mean, one of the lessons I took from Egypt is part of what happened is you had significant external encouragement from the Saudis and the Emirates and basically the kind of autocratic order in the Middle East to do a coup.

And, you know, when you're a military and you're trying to gauge whether or not to take that step, take that risk, if there's a risk, having external support like that. makes you feel better about doing it, especially if there's money attached to it or something. And that's what always worried me about Sudan. And this military leader is tight with the Saudis and the Emirates. So I do think one lesson is, you know, you've got to line up every external actor who has influence in the country to be sending the same message. And the message has to be, stick to the transition plan, get to the election, etc. I think another lesson is to kind of not just rely on the self-execution of, you know, the civilian leaders in the transitional council or whatever, but to be investing in the stakeholders in the society,

you know, that want to see democracy, the civil society, and Sudan is a powerful professional association, so that even when something like this happens, there's resistance and pushback, and it's less certain that it's the end of the story as it was in Egypt. And so that remains to be seen. I think some of that has happened in Sudan, but we'll have to see. And then look, you know, withholding the aid is obviously a necessary step. This was clearly done as kind of a fuck you to the U.S. I mean, you don't do it three hours after the envoy leaves unless you're kind of flexing a little bit.

You want to cancel the visit. Yeah. Save the guy a trip. Yeah. Well, look, and the other reality here is that we had other leverage with Sudan, right? we had a whole net of sanctions on them that were lifted in the middle of the transition to bring them into the Abraham Accords right before Trump's election. That might have been a good piece of leverage to have.

True. If you know you have, I'm not a huge sanctions fan, as people know, but if you know you have them in place and you know there's a transition underway and you'd like to see the transition reached the end, and frankly, Sudan normalized relations with Israel is great, but it's not the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict. exactly. You know, that might have been helpful. Yeah, it probably doesn't do much for the Sudanese people. And you're right, though, we knew that, you know, this transition from the military leader of the transitional council to a civilian leader of the transitional council was written down in the calendar. They're supposed to

get to an election at the end of 2023. None of that is now happening because of this coup. Why not say that the sanctions will be lifted as soon as the transition process is over? I don't know. Yeah, that's one thought. Yeah, because that's fair for a point. There's been some reporting I read about, you know, questions around what the civilian leaders had planned for former President Bashir in terms of accountability, whether he be shipped off to the ICC, whether that may be spooked some of these generals who are running the transitional council because they're corrupt themselves. The economist pointed out that if the coup in Sudan is successful, it will be the fifth one this year. Chad, Guinea, Mali, Myanmar, Sudan between 2015 and 2020, there were three successful coups

in four failed attempts. So this is not a great trend. No, and I think here's how people need to think about that, which is that we are clearly in like an extended authoritarian moment around the world. And here in this country, it kind of felt like it reached some crescendo, you know, with Trump. But not only are we not out of the woods in this country, but there's like a tale to an autocratic trend. You know, like so these coups in some ways are reflective of what's been happening for the last decade, you know, where. there's been an increasing normalization of, you know, military is just saying, fuck it, you know, we'll take power. And I truly believe that what that means is you have to start by kind of fortifying, consolidating the foundation of the countries that are already democracies. You know, you kind of kind of hold the line where you are and then try to find ways to really make transitions succeed when there's an opportunity. And that may mean like the next time you get a chance like what happened in Sudan a couple years ago, much more aggressive U.S.

engagement than the Trump people did when the Sudan stuff happened. You know, more assistance on the, you know, like just you've got to make those transitions succeed. You've got to start really investing in the success of democratic transitions as aggressively as the autocrats invest in undermining democratic transitions. Right now there's an asymmetry there where autocratic, you know, the Russians, the Saudis, etc., etc. They are much more invested in seeing the success of autocracy than U.S. Europe and the world's democracies are invested in the success of transitions.

Yeah, I mean, look, and when you look regionally, I mean, the Horn of Africa, right, and Smalia is sort of historically had some problems. Ethiopia is in the civil war. Eritrea is involved. Sudan, South Sudan. We just talked about, Chad had the recent coup. Libya is unstable. I mean, there's a lot of challenges regionally that, you know, could use a little engagement. Yeah, the horn of Africa is just a mess right now. Yeah, Yemen across the way. Yeah.

You mentioned the Saudis. So two stories that caught my eye out of Saudi Arabia. First, 60 Minutes did a big interview on Sunday, the former Saudi intelligence official named Sad al-Jabri. Al-Jabri says he wants to, quote, sound the alarm about a psychopath killer in the Middle East with infinite resources who poses a threat to his people to the Americans and to the planet. This is Mohammed bin Salman or MBS, the Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince. Al Jabri also claims that MBS sent hit squad to Canada to try and murder him back in the day, and that MBS is imprisoned and tortured members of Al Jopri's family. The second story is one that

was predicted a thousand times on this show, Ben, which is that Trump officials are now cashing huge checks from Middle Eastern autocrats like the Saudis. The first example is Jared Kushner, or Resbutin in a skinny suit, who is reportedly in talks to get as much as $2 billion from the Saudi government's public investment fund, or PIF. The PIF is the sovereign wealth fund that Muhammad bin Salman uses to spray cash all over the planet and do stuff by the English Premier League team, Newcastle United. So Jared's new private equity fund is about to get $2 billion as a thank you for helping cover up the murder of a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi.

But he's not the only one Ben. Bloomberg News reported that former Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin just raised a huge amount of money, $2.5 billion, and that a bulk of a... It came from the Saudis and other Middle Eastern countries. So remember that Mnukin spent the final days of the Trump administration flying around to these Gulf countries at a cost of $300,000 to taxpayers. So there you go. We learned in this section who MBS is, total psychopath, and who he's paying off to allow him to act with impunity in the world. There we go.

Very clean. I mean, look, we don't usually do this. But like, go back and play the tape. I don't know how many times on this podcast. It's so obvious. We didn't say, well, no, but the thing is some people were trying to be like, you know, oh, or the Saudis or somebody else investing in Kushner real estate properties. No, the payoff, we always said, the payoff is always on the back end.

It is always on the back end. And this is billions of dollars that are being given to Jared Kushner for the service he provided in covering up for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in supporting like the war in Yemen full tilt, like an on and on down the list and looking the other way when his family members were being tortured or according to some reports, perhaps even helping him identify which family members might be of concern. So like this is utterly predictable and speaks to like a very deep corruption in American foreign policy because the reason they do the payoff on the back end isn't just to reward the Jared

Christians of the world and to come back to that. It's to send a message to everybody that like, hey, if you want like this kind of payoff, just do our bidding when you're in there, you know? that payoff can be, you know, putting money into your fund. It can be paying you. Come give a speech. Come give a speech. And we'll give you $50,000, $100,000, go on the board of a defense contractor, and we'll buy a lot of weapons from those people and make them rich. There is so much corruption in American farm policy. And Jared Kushner is the easiest mark. But like the reality is, it doesn't stop there. Now, on Jared Kushner, this is another reminder that this isn't over.

You know, like I think sometimes, like those of us with our political views are like, well, that Trump lost the election and Jared's a fool and all the rest of it. No, like, the Saudis probably think it's quite likely Jared Kush will be back in the White House in two years. Or at least he's a plugged in guy forever. Yeah, he plugged in guy forever. You know, Trump is back in there or whatever. And like, this is another reason why I don't get, you know, I mentioned last time like the coddling of the Emirates that we keep seeing. And we've talked about MBS, you know, obviously escaped any kind of sanction. Like, these people are not your friends. You know, like, and we, you know, there's an upcoming G20, for instance.

I'm curious whether Mohamed bin Salman goes to that. Like thus far, like rightly Joe Biden has not engaged Mohammed and Salman at all. I hope that continues to be the case even if he's in the same room with the guy. Because what he wants to do is normalize himself, you know, as like this kind of leader who's just accepted by everybody, wanting you to forget what this guy usefully reminds us of. Hey, he's a sociopath. Total sociopath. who tortures his family and chops people up in console. It's like, do you want, you know, even if Mohamed and Salman can put on a different public face,

do you want somebody who has revealed himself to be that character and who, as this guy points out, has infinite resources to feel totally empowered? And whether we're talking about buying the, you know, the Premier League club and Newcastle, all these things are of a piece with normalizing this guy. And we will live to regret it. Yep. And interesting, the 60 Minutes did this piece that was pretty brutal on MBS when they did that giant puff piece back in 2018 when everyone was trying to believe that he was a big reformer.

You know, good for them. Remember that interview? Yeah, it was not great. They didn't reference that, though. No, they, uh, they didn't remind the viewers. This is the, this is the, you know, when the, the ref misses a call and like you get one in like the third quarter or whatever. Yeah, this is that.

Ben, my Boston Celtics are back in the news, not just because they lost to your New York Knicks, yes, and your fans celebrated like it was the fucking Super Bowl. That's my Knicks fans. And is Cantor, who plays Center for the Celtics and has been a guest on this show. You did a fantastic interview with him back in... Very tall. I feel like I listened to it when I was in Iowa doing my series. That's exactly what happened.

He was here in the studio. He was in studio. God, the before times. He's so ripped, too. Yeah, he's ripped. Anyway, so Ennis has decided to go all in on denouncing the Chinese government. So first, he posted a video supporting Tibetan independence in response, Tencent, which is a massive Chinese technology company, cut the broadcast of the Celtics next game. And a Celtics fan account on Weibo, which is Chinese Twitter, said it would suspend coverage of the Celtics, I think, indefinitely.

Then on Monday, Cantor was like, fuck you. He doubled down by wearing shoes during a game that said modern day slavery and, quote, no more excuses, which are references to the Chinese government putting the Uighers and forced labor camps in China. And then he called out Nike for talking about social justice in the United States and Black Lives Matter while remaining silent about police brutality and oppression of minorities in China. And he said that Nike shoes are made with slave labor. So, and this is not pulling any punches here. Ben, a couple of years ago, we talked about when Darrell Mori, then the general manager of the Houston Rockets, tweeted something that was honestly pretty benign about Hong Kong. And there was this massive overreaction from the Chinese government.

They started pounding on him and threatening the league, et cetera, et cetera. Canter is going much harder at issues that have historically been far more sensitive for the Chinese government. What do you think happened here? Like, how do you think this plays out? Do you think the Chinese target their ire at Cantor, the Celtics, the league? I mean, this feels like it could be explosive. Well, I mean, the first thing is, and as Cantor, you know, he is increasingly been vocal and politically engaged as a voice on human rights issues.

And it started in Turkey, right? And but, you know, he's not limited his comment to that. And this is a sign that this guy, you know, clearly thinks of himself as an activist. Yep. And I got that sense when I talked to him on the show. And for him to start with, like, Tibetan independence is like, he knew, like. Is that the most sensitive? It's got to be.

It's got to be. It's, you know, it's because that's beyond even Taiwan or Hong Kong. Yeah. That's like the old school. That's like that. So I think he was clearly intending, you know, and I don't know this, I haven't talked to him, but like clearly intending to make the most aggressive point he could that he would not be silenced on these issues. You know, that was fairly obvious, right?

He's going to put out a little video, a giff of him dunking on Xi Jinping or something. Well, what he did do that was interesting, I saw us that like, because what the Chinese can do also is like cancel people's shoe contracts in China because a lot of these NBA guys have shoe contracts there. And he's like, you can buy my shoes that are like making fun of Xi Jinping or something. Like he's trolling the whole apparatus of authoritarianism, which is interesting. I think for what the Chinese will do, you know, what they try to do generally is take it out on. usually the parent company, right? Because that has the broadest chilling effect possible. Right.

And you can get the top down pressure on Ennis. But yeah, and the thing is Ennis, you know, like when he had the, Erdogan took his games off TV in Turkey, too, which is obviously a smaller market, but it's not a tiny market. And the NBA had his back in that case. I mean, look, I think when the NBA came down on the side of basic free speech after the whole more he does settled, you know, like. You always knew some other player could talk about China. You know, like this was looming out there, you know.

And so it'll be interesting to see how far the Chinese take it. Because basically, at the end of the day, if the NBA is not going to control the speech of all their players, like you're always going to be living with this possibility. And you're either going to have the NBA in China or you're not. And that's ultimately like a Chinese decision. Yeah, and a multi-billion dollar decision. And the Chinese people really like basketball. Yeah, I mean, so it's not without, it's not like an obscure sport there. It's like the most popular, by far, the most popular

American sport in China. There's some costs. You mentioned how Cantor has spoken against the Turkish government. I saw over the weekend a report that President Erdogan of Turkey declared 10 Western ambassadors, including the United States ambassador, the U.S. ambassador as persona on Grata. Normally that means they literally expel you from the country because those 10 countries called for the release of a prominent Turkish civil society activist named Osman Kavala. So that relationship is going well. Well, and again, like what all these guys want is it for to feel so pointless to challenge them. You know, like across the board, every autocrat, whether it's like a Trump in this country who wants to make people kind of turned off and cynical, or whether it's a Chinese government trying to bully companies or whether it's Erdogan trying to bully ambassadors, whatever it is, they're just trying to make it seem so tiresome and futile. Not worth it, you know, and once you succumb to that, you know, then you're toast.

Yeah. Speaking of exhausting fights, let's talk about Benny Gantz, the Israeli defense minister, signing an order last week that designated six well-known Palestinian human rights groups that are operating in the West Bank as terrorist organizations. So the defense ministry claim that these groups are linked to the popular front for the liberation of Palestine or PFLP, which is a left-wing organization that has sort of a political movement. and a military wing. It has carried out attacks against Israel. The PFLP has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, by Israel, and by the EU, so that there's sort of a known quantity. But the connection was new between these human rights groups and the PFLP. The announcement was quite controversial because these six groups are well known.

They've gotten funding from the United Nations, from EU member states. Leaders of the groups say that the designation was just an effort to silence them to cut off their funding. the State Department said that they didn't have any advance notice about this action, that they wanted more information. Liberal Israeli cabinet members and members of the Knesset were pissed because they too didn't get any advance notice. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released a joint statement that said, quote, this decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine's most prominent civil society organizations, end quote. So, Ben, I'm just wondering what the State Department should do here. Obviously, if there is evidence that an organization is supporting terrorism and

some way or hiring terrorist members. Like, that is a big deal. That's relevant. Of course, you'd want to know that. But none of that has been made public. And I'm not sure I've heard a process through which it would ever be made public. So we're kind of relying on hearsay at the moment. But I don't know. What do you think state's going to do here? So, I mean, this feels like complete fucking bullshit to me. These are very prominent organizations. You know, they're not like kind of weird, you know, you just heard of them for the first time. these are like the prominent Palestinian civil society human rights organizations that by the way report not just on the Israeli government but also on like the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and they work with international organizations and you know so and look on the intelligence side you know with the Israelis saying they have this information if they if there was one organization right you might think okay I wonder what you know is there something happened in there like is there some money trail the fact that there's six of them you know feels much more like an effort to just shut down Palestinian civil society than some very precise intelligence-based case about like, you know,

somebody who works at one of these NGOs has some ties that are troubling, you know? So, so I, it just feels to me like what part of what these organizations do is reveal the injustice of what's happening on the West Bank and, you know, you want to eliminate Palestinian civil society. The State Department, you know, part of what bothers me about this is like the State Department statement, I think noticeably pointed out that they had no advance notice of this. To revisit something we've talked about on the show. Like the case made by the Biden administration is that a quiet approach in which you never have any public differences with the Israeli government is the one that's going to yield the results on all this stuff that we care about.

But that doesn't work if they don't tell you. If it's one side of it. If it's one side, if they don't tell you that they're like, I saw a few. I saw a few. days ago, we launched a process to renegotiate or reopen our consulate to the Palestinian people with the Israeli government, not with the Palestinians. So we're saying that we will consult with you not only quietly, but publicly, about the representation that we're going to have to these Palestinians. So I wanted to talk about that. Yes, this is a really, really important point, because it used to be the case that there were two separate diplomatic offices in Jerusalem, right? There was one, an embassy that focused on U.S. Israeli and there's a consulate in East Jerusalem

that was the point of contact for the Palestinians. The Trump folks closed down the Palestinian consulate, what, two years ago or something like that? I think Biden had said he planned to reopen it, but now has this working group going. So this is controversial among... What's so complicated about it? Right. Just open it. Well, so it's kind of like these, the, some in the Israeli government don't want this consulate

reopened because they don't believe that the Palestinian state should include any part of East Jerusalem instead of fighting it. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. did an interview with the biggest free tabloid in Israel about how to be. prevent this consulate from being reopened by the U.S. And here is part of what he said, Ben. This is a quote. Theoretically, one could stop providing electricity and water to the building.

And it is possible to do other things that we shouldn't talk about right now. It's insane. I'm just trying to imagine what would happen. It's completely and utterly insane. If you went out and said, we should cut off electricity and water to Israeli diplomats living in the U.S. and less settlement construction halted. That's what we're, that's the equivalent.

And this is someone who's treated like very sober and serious. Is it like the guy. This is a guy who, like, wrote some insane piece a few years ago about how, like, Barack Obama is, you know, because he's black, he doesn't like Israel or something. Yeah, it was really Islamophobic. The dregs of racist, Islamophobic garbage. And this guy's constantly, like, treated like some, you know, sober commentator. Look, the point is that, like, quiet, intense diplomacy has to be a two-way street, you know. And if they're surprising us about announcements like this that are going to.

to be very detrimental to what the U.S. says it stands for in terms of democracy and civil society. Remember the Gaza reconstruction? How's that going? Like what have we, where's that? Like, what's the update on that? Like, uh, because it's certainly not happening, right? I mean, that was what was going to happen, right? We, we thought like, you get a ceasefire and then you can address the underlying humanitarian situation. And so, so to me, if you know, just think about it in your interpersonal relationships. If you have someone who will indulge any, manner of your behavior and will declare as a matter of personal like policy that they would never ever criticize you and you can do whatever you want and there'll never be any consequences

for it because we'll never consider conditioning assistance or anything. Why would that, why would you change your behavior? Yeah. You know, like I, so that's where we are. Like if there's going to be no, never going to be any negative consequences for anything that the Israeli government does. And to me, part of what's notable here is that, We've seen this new government kind of continue things that we didn't like the BB did, put a bit of a better front on some things. But this is the first kind of real escalation of their own. You know, this is a new thing that they've done. Like, I just, if there are no guardrails around it, it's just going to keep happening.

Yeah, to me, I mean, these stories aren't totally related. The designation of the human rights groups and Michael Orrin's comments, but they kind of are because to me they suggest how far even these sort of conservative intellectual class that are conservative in Israel feel like they can go to punish critics, like literally cutting off electricity and water to American diplomats? Because they're advancing the policy that we believe in? Yeah, Michael Orton was the ambassador to the United States. I mean, this guy was a diplomat, you know, not just some bomb throw in Israeli politics. So you're right.

It just shows you that there's a sense of we can say and do whatever we want and there'll never be any consequences. And again, like I say this, like, I, I, I, I, I say this. Like, I wish it was different. Like, I wish we had, like, but you can't simultaneously say that you support civil society around the world and then kind of just be okay with this. Yeah. I mean, let's just, let's just not threaten to cut off the water to diplomats or call groups terrorists without any evidence. Yeah, well, that's the thing.

Maybe start that. Okay. And like, look, if they have evidence, like, well, what is it? You know, let's see it, right? Like, release it. Or like I'd like to hear the Biden team say that they're persuaded by the evidence. At least then we like have something to go on. Right now we have very little.

Yeah. Ben, you may have noticed that Facebook has been in the news a bit. Just a touch. Just a touch. So I just want to do a quick round of some of the international angles. Then we can just talk about whatever part we want. I think the key point to understanding Facebook's approach to its expansion globally is this. Only 13% of Facebook's moderation staff hours are dedicated to users outside.

the United States, despite the fact that 90% of Facebook's users are outside the United States. So it's totally under-resourced. There was a story about how Facebook bowed to pressure from the Vietnamese government to censor dissidents. They chose to stay in Vietnam and take down these dissident accounts. There was a story about how Facebook was used to spread hate speech in India and how Facebook didn't penalize Hindu nationalist groups that were spreading violent inflammatory content because they had ties to the ruling political party. That sounds familiar to me as an American.

There are reports of Facebook being used for human trafficking of domestic workers to Gulf countries in evidence that Facebook only took steps to stop it after bad media coverage and threats from Apple and Google to remove them from their app stores. 2020 Facebook report found that only 6% of Arabic language hate content was detected during, I think, a month-long period in Afghanistan. Only 0.23% of hate speech was taken down. So that's like I don't think I came close to getting all of it. But the key takeaway to me was that Facebook is not even close to sufficiently resource to moderate content and all these places where it operates. And that basically they don't seem to care that much. I know the volume of this stuff has been enormous.

I don't really know how to process all the shit that came up this week. But any big takeaways for you or thoughts on like, okay, we write all this stuff. Now what do we do about it? Because that always seems to be the hardest part. I think there's a few takeaways I have with the preface being that like like Jared. Cushers back in payment. We've been talking about this stuff for years, which doesn't make us geniuses. Everybody could see Facebook kind of tearing things apart. A few things stand that to me. One, if you look at the like the modis of the world, right, there's a lot on Indian here

and how like turbocharged the hate environment was towards Muslims and stuff in India, part of what the kind of autocratic movements or nationalist movements or ethnocentric movements have done is they've just figured out the algorithm, right? So, so in here, part of what they figured out is, like, if you accuse them of liberal bias, they'll come out with their hands up and let you do whatever you want. But what they've done internationally is realize that if you just flood the zone, right, with your content, you can basically take over Facebook and turn it into the perfect dissemination vehicle of propaganda and conspiracy theory and hate and just overwhelming force. And oh, by the way, you can also threaten Facebook that if you, you know, try to do anything about that,

we'll kick you out of the country and they'll come out with their hands up, right? That leads to the second point, which is like, why do they do this, apart from being craven, profit, mad, megalomaniacal, sociopathic lunatics? In addition to that, why do they do this? When I looked at Myanmar and the question of why they basically, you know, helped disseminate a hate campaign that led to an ethnic cleansing with no content moderators in the country, One of the questions I asked the activist there was like, well, why is Facebook even here? Why do they even care?

Like, it's not that big a market. Like, why do they have to get their app into this country and destroy it just to be there? And what I was told is that Facebook doesn't care about the Myanmar market on its own. It's not like part of their profit model. They believe that they need to be the dominant information platform everywhere because if they're not somewhere, a competitor might emerge, right? So if they're not in Myanmar, someone could create a different kind of Facebook there that then spreads elsewhere. And the evidence for that is the fact that they basically subsidize Internet usage for people in places like Burma. Just so they can get hooked and addicted to Facebook.

And so they don't have to worry about a competitor emerging from some of the part of the world. Right. Think about how insane and megalomaniacal that is. And think about what that says about the antitrust case against them. They need this global monopoly just for the sake of having the global monopoly, just so there could never, ever be a competitor to. them. That is against every ethos of what antitrust is supposed to be. We need to break these people up into component parts and regulate them. Like, that's the answer. We all know what the answer is. That's the answer. And the only other thing that jumped out to me from the last couple of weeks is that we have focused a lot on this podcast about the danger to democracy, the danger to physical

safety in other countries. One other thing that has come out in this whistleblower stuff, though, because not everybody cares about that as much as you and I do. One of the sad things we've learned in this country, a bunch of people in America, they don't care about to much. They're good with it. The stuff about, like, women,

like girls getting bullied and shamed on, like, Instagram and stuff, that hits, like, I have daughters. Like,

I'm thinking about how are they going to grow up and what are they going to be subjected to on Facebook's, you know, apps. Like, that, I think,

has a capacity to enlarge the number of people who are pissed about this. Yeah, protecting kids is a thing that should unite people. I mean, for God's sake, the QAnonon people,

ostensibly think that they're protecting kids, you know, you'd think they'd want to protect them from being bullied or trafficked. Yeah, for real. Yeah. Truly. Yeah. But they also support like Matt Gates. Yeah. I mean, just going on to lend. Maybe the Q and non-people are not motivated by sincere desire to deal with the human trafficking. Yeah. I mean, look, there's definitely a sort of a culty, partisan piece of it. But I think do think there's like some moms who got, you know, pulled into the wrong Facebook group and probably think all this stuff is happening and real. And, you know, you read about Jeffrey Epstein and, okay, sure, maybe it all makes sense. I don't know.

Yeah, well, and that gets, again, like, there are people, right, who have sincere concerns about these issues and human trafficking, bullying to the point of suicide, like these kinds of things that are happening, I think can enlarge the number of people that are concerned about Facebook and want to see action beyond the people who just are concerned that it's destroying democracy and leading ethnic cleansing around the world. Yeah. Well, look, no, the flip side of this debate is what's happening in Russia. right now that we're going to talk about, which is a story about internet censorship.

The Times reported that Russia has been implementing a new system to censor the internet. The Russian government literally forced telecom companies to install hardware in their offices, these black boxes that allow a command center in Moscow to block, filter, and slow down websites and content they found objectionable. The Times had one example where an image the government objected to would now take basically like 10 times as long to low, sort of rendering Twitter or whatever, like unusable. On previous shows, we've talked about how the Russian government threatened to arrest local Google and Apple employees if they didn't remove an app run by supporters of Russian opposition leader

Alexi Navalny around the election. So, you know, what's interesting about this, I think, is that Russia's internet was kind of relatively free, relatively open, or at least usable. You get around stuff with VPNs. That seems to be changing. And now the internet freedom in Russia that was. leftover is getting crushed. So what's interesting about this to me, Ben, is it's a Russians story, but also a global one, because cutting off the internet is autocrat 101, right? We just

talked about the Sudanese coup. The first thing they did was cut off the internet, same in Burma. Is there, do you think there's like a flip side of this Facebook debate? Like, some way the international community could come up with a process, a technology, the coalition to counter this kind of censorship, because it's pervasive, it's growing. I'm sure we'll see more. more of it when Russia and China start exporting all that they've learned. Yeah, I worry that, you know, we are moving inexorably to a circumstance where there's just kind of different internets and different technology supply chains and different information ecosystems between kind of the autocratic world and the rest of the world, you know.

I wish that wasn't the case, you know, so when people say, like, you know, you shouldn't be for kind of decoupling of these. tech ecosystem systems or you know you want at least the capacity for people in Russia to see what's on YouTube you know even if it comes with like the autocratic strings attached but the reality is it's not the US making these decisions it's the Chinese and the Russians and the autocrats who are basically getting much more aggressive and forthright and just saying hey we know we're going to have our own version of the internet and and you know if you're a US based tech company, you either have to completely play by our rules or, you know, that's it. And I think

that's going to become untenable for U.S. platforms, unfortunately. And so I think part of what's going to happen is going to have to be managing this kind of evolution to a new reality in which there's not kind of one internet, but there are these different national spaces. And then I think part of it's also like, is there any way to make certain information like available in places like? Yeah, VPNs. blocking or VPNs because like that's just where we're headed so we might as well prepare for it even if it's not our preferred outcome. Right, right, right. Okay, a couple more things.

So let's talk climate change because the big summit's coming up at the end of this month, early next month. So a couple of pieces of news here. First, the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, finally pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. However, he did not commit to any target for emissions cuts by 2030, which is the goal of this upcoming summit and has no plan to limit fossil fuel use, so a lot of people are quite skeptical of the pooper and chief over there in Australia. Was that McDonald's? Yeah, is it a McDonald's.

Yeah, good for him. Second, the UN release a report Tuesday that says the updated climate change plans that have been presented and discussed so far don't even come close to producing the cuts that are needed. The UN says the new pledge would collectively produce one-seventh of the additional emissions cuts required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. That's the key limit we need to stay under, to prevent more catastrophic weather events. We are at the end of a deluge of rain here in California reminding us how everything's extreme in different directions, like five-year drought, two years worth of rain in 48 hours, not good. Third, the AP reported that the White House is working on a package of clean energy strategies that could meet our emissions reduction goals and get the OK of Prime Minister Joe Manchin. So good news, a bit of a mixed bag there, Ben. How are you feeling about this as you prepared ahead to Scotland?

I mean, I think everybody's known that this was going to underperform kind of the 1.5 target, which you need to kind of keep alive as a possibility. You know, I think that the U.S. piece, it's welcome if they can get this through. But what's missing, which is not at all Joe Biden's fault, is we talked about this, the punitive side. You know, investing in clean energy is great, and everybody can agree to that. But, like, at a certain point, you need to be shutting shit down, right? You can be shutting down coal plants and fossil fuels. That's how you get from one-seventh to seven-seventh.

You know, like, it's not just by building new clean energy. It's by shutting down the old energy faster. And Australia has a ton of CO2 emissions. Yeah. They have a lot of coal. They have a lot of fossil fuels. I think they might be the dirtiest country per capita in terms of CO2 emissions. reporting CO2. Yeah. And so, so and the other thing is that, you know, you've basically seen, I think, depressingly, the geopolitics work against action. You know, like Xi Jinping's not going to this summit. You know, Putin's not going to summit. Now it seems like-

Why isn't Putin going? What's what he have to do? It makes me wonder whether or not part of what's happening is people like Xi and Putin saying, we're just going to stop going to your summit's liberal international order. You know, like, and that's pretty dangerous because they've already rendered the UN Security Council kind of pointless on a lot of things by blocking anything, right? Whether it's Tigray or Sudan or Syria or whatever, Myanmar, they're just slowing down the gears of these. institutions, and you should think of Glasgow as part of an institution. It's part of the UN process that implements Paris Agreement. And, you know, it's not great. And so I think what you have to do at Glasgow is try to get everything done you can. And if governments are going to kind of

underwhelm, then, you know, can you get private sector commitments? Can you get kind of creative solutions and financing? Can you get whatever you can to just, you know, creak up that ambition closer to what you need for 1.5 degrees Celsius. Fingers crossed. Hopefully that Joe Biden gets something big over the finish line before he takes off tomorrow, Wednesday? Wednesday, Thursday. He's going to.

Yeah, that should help. I mean. Italy first, maybe. Excuse the Pope. The G20. The Pope and G20. It should help. If the U.S. can get something done, that will be a big positive news story,

even if it's not as good as it could have been with the clean energy standard. And then if, who knows, like, does India come with size? Modi's apparently going, right? That's good. Like, for all the criticism we have of Modi, you know, maybe there's some upside surprises. I don't know. But what everybody should know is it's not going to be, Glasgow's not going to be enough. And it was never going to be enough. But like, you want to advance the ball as far as you can around these summits and then just going to have to keep the pressure on. Unfortunately, the weather is going to give us a lot of reasons to do that. Yeah. Last story. Here's a headline from the Washington Post. Pablo Escobar's cocaine hippos are legally people, the U.S. court rules. I think we maybe should just stop there because you're not going to be better than that headline. You really aren't. Cocaine hippo. I have to say that the underlying story is pretty interesting.

Okay. Well, here's the backstory. Yeah. So the long-deceased Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar apparently smuggled a bunch of hippos to his estate in Colombia in the 1980s. Because when you're having cocaine parties in the 80s, got to have a hippo. Got to have a hippo. These hippos did what animals do. And now their wild offspring live in the wetlands in the region and have become the,

the largest invasive species on the planet, literally. Crazy. That's like a really interesting, I didn't know that. Yeah. There's basically all these hippos in Columbus. Just chilling. Just chilling. And the Cleveland government considered killing some of them because you really don't want

to piss off a hippo. They can mean animals. Especially a coked up hippo. I mean, the males get really aggressive. They weigh a couple tons. They have 20 inch long teeth. I went down a little rabbit hole in this. Yeah.

Read a story about a guy who got swallowed by hippo, survived. You don't want that. No, new. But an animal rights lawyer filed. a lawsuit to prevent the culling of the herd. So now the Colombian government is trying to figure out a different path, maybe a humane way to sterilize these bad boys so that they don't procreate and spread. There's like 120 fucking wild hippos cruising around.

Yeah, it's kind of a fair. You don't want that. So the Animal Legal Defense Fund says that this interested person's designation for the cocaine hippos is actually a critical milestone in its larger effort to create legal rights for animals in the U.S. in the U.S. legal system. So fascinating stuff. I don't know. I don't know what to do these guys.

That seemed pretty interesting to me that like basically you're trying to prevent these animals from being killed by giving them some status. Like I just found that fascinating from a legal perspective. It wasn't clear to me

that the Colombians are going to abide by this. Yeah, that part didn't make sense. You would like to think that there's a way to control the hippo population without killing the hippos. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, you know,

snip, snip, right? Snip, snip and, you know, hippo reserve or something? I mean, I don't know. What else? Yeah. Like really bore them? Maybe they could move them to Miami. Like a lot of the 80s cocaine did.

So I don't know where hippos are indigenous. I mean, I know Africa, but I don't know what parts. So do you just, like, fly them over? Maybe you could give them a Florida key, you know? Yeah, they can just sort of own that. They just kind of own a key, like a hippo colony. Yeah, I kind of. We may have to solve them.

Should we get a hippo? I know where you're going to put it in this office is. You guys have expanded a little bit here, but I know it's a little empty without. Actually, you know, like I work from home environment. Do you know how much of the workforce is going to come back? Because maybe there is room for hippo. Well, maybe we should think about it. These guys who are here probably don't like it.

I'm sure like hippo shit is not like a pleasant atmospheric issue. Yeah, that's a good point. I wonder how coped up Escobar was when he decided to import the hippos. You can kind of see it happening, right? can completely see it happen. Like get me a plane. We're going to get a hippo. Not that I know anything about that.

But I would just, you know, these guys are sitting around doing Coke, listening to 80s music. And, you know, they've definitely. Miami Vice is on. Well, that's Miami Vice is on. They've definitely up the ante in a lot of different ways. I'm sure they, you know, brought in a bunch of animals from indigenous, you know. And then it's like, you know what we fucking need, man? We need a fucking hippo, man.

Like, have you seen what hippos do? And then the other guy's like, no, what doos do? Well, I don't know, man. That's why we need to get a hippo. Yeah, yeah. You've seen the video of the hippo chasing the boat and it speeds off and the thing goes after them and then like pops out of the water. Well, actually, here's, scary. Here's what happened.

Now I know what happened. I know what happened. Did you ever when you were like in, you know, high school, college doing whatever, you know, not that we did any of that. Did you ever just like watch those nature shows? All the time. So Pablo Escobar is sitting there. It's maybe not a party. He's probably just cooked out of his brain with like two or three other guys watching.

Like the Nature Channel, and there's a hippo show, and he's like, that's a pretty cool animal. We should get some hippos here. Yeah. So they're native to sub-Saharan Africa. Seamus has just like chartered a plane and gotten some over. Look, I think if you're Pablo Escobar, circa circa, you can get just by anything that you want. Right. You were a billionaire.

Yeah. With connections. Then, like, the CIA kills you. Yeah. But not. Aren't they buddy-buddy first? Yeah. I mean, everybody should read a great book, Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden.

Oh, yeah. The guy wrote Black Hawk Down, and I love that guy. You should read all his books. He's just a great writer. But that's a really cool book. All right, I'll check that out. Maybe we'll, maybe we can have him on, and you can tell us about the origin story. He probably knows all about the hippos.

All right. We'll shoot him a note after this. Okay. That's enough about cocaine hippos. When we come back, we will have Ben's interview with a member of parliament, David Lammy. So stick around for that. I am very pleased to welcome back to the podcast, David Lammy, who, who is a Labour Party member of Parliament for Tottenham since the year 2000.

David, like me, right? You were once a young person in politics and now I've been around for a bit, which means that he's now the shadow secretary of state for justice and shadow Lord Chancellor in Kirstarmer's Shadow Cabinet. So, David, welcome back to the podcast. Thanks a lot, Ben, making me feel old 21 years I've done in public life. That's unbelievable. That's kind of insane.

When you and I met in 2007, we both were relatively new to this game. Here we are, right? And we solved all the problems. So there's nothing left to, yeah. Okay, so there's a few things that we've been talking about that we wanted to bring you into because you've been either at the middle of it, obviously on the ground there in the UK. The first, obviously, the last week we were talking about the tragic killing of Sir David Amos. And I know you've spoken a lot, you know, about.

the issue of security for politicians, the issue of how the current environment of extremism in politics has made lawmakers more vulnerable. You know, having had a little bit of time to deal with this episode, which obviously comes from the, apparently from an Islamic extremist attacker, whereas the Joe Cox killing five years ago is from a more right-wing extremist, what is your sense of what needs to be done to secure politicians and how how are you rethinking the way in which politicians make themselves accessible to voters while also ensuring we don't have these kinds of incidents every five years or at all really? Well, look, Ben, I can't emphasize enough how connected British members of Parliament are

to their constituents. I need to underline, particularly to an American audience, that we are fundamentally more on the ground visible than, say, a senator would be. What is just real quick? What is a surgery? Because that's what he was doing at the time. And I think that word was new to Americans. An advice surgery. Anyone can make an appointment to come and see their member of parliament, and they will be coming.

to see their member of parliament to fix a problem, to fix a problem with their housing, if they're in public housing, to fix a problem with their immigration status or benefit or welfare status or a problem with their kids' school or, you know, everyday things, health that people come and see politicians about that require the politician to make a representation to an arm of the state or the bureaucracy, and it can really make a difference. Or sometimes to lobby the member of Parliament on a massive issue of the day.

So, for example, as we head to COP 26, climate change activists come and see us and make it known that they are voting or not voting for us on the basis of what our party's position is on the climate emergency. So that accessibility is really, really fundamental. And we tend to do that advice surgery in a town hall, in a local church, or a, you know, a civic building of some kind. And many of us do open surgeries. You don't have to

make an appointment. You can just turn up and see your member of parliament. And that is, you know, and it's important to understand even the prime minister, Boris Johnson, is doing advice surgeries, just as Tony Blair did and Margaret Thatcher did. They won't be doing it quite as often as I would do mine, but they will be doing it once a month or so in their constituency, and for the Prime Minister, that's in the constituency of Uxbridge. And so this killing was obviously horrendous. David Amos had advertised on his Twitter feed that he was going to do a surgery. apparently, unfortunately, the individual under suspicion was apparently looking around and studying the pattern of him and other MPs over the course of, you know, some time. And he was killed in this way.

And I think it raises fundamental questions about how safe we are. And I do think that it's probably important to say that the truth is members of Parliament are not as safe. safe as they were 20 years ago. And it's unlikely that we will return to that kind of safety. We are figures in the public eye that living in a slightly more dangerous time. And yes, we require more security. And that will mean that there's a police presence, I suspect, at our advice surgeries and more plainclosed security in and around some of what we're doing that's advertised. But it's important to all of us to remain very, very accessible. You know, I, people sometimes can't oblige from abroad.

I travel to work on our tube, on our underground train network. People see me, they approach me, they say, hi, I'm on the buses. That is very important to me. I think that it also raises real issues around social media and the silos into which people are falling on social media, the extremism that's available on social media, the way it's polluting, particularly our youth, a lot of the individuals coming up with these profiles tend to be younger people.

And there's a really vigorous debate here in the UK around an online hard, legislation and bringing that forward. The Prime Minister said he expects it to be in Parliament by December, and we will have a very, very heated debate. And I suspect that online harms bill will now be a lot tougher than it was scheduled to be prior to this killing. Well, just on that, I mean, I know you yourself have been subjected to threats online. And what is the environment of kind of violence online, not physical violence, but the degree of hate speech and threats that someone like you might receive? How is that changed? And what would the online harm?

What would you like to see done from a legislative perspective or regulatory perspective to deal with that? Well, one of the problems is that the companies do not take down hate speech. are not supportive enough, I think, with the police and others when complaints are made. It takes time, it's lengthy. I think there are real debates in the UK about the extent to which you need to fine heavily these companies so that they take it seriously.

I think there's a healthy debate about anonymity and whether anonymity is a good thing or is a necessary thing. certainly you should be able to track down pretty swiftly who an individual is, why a company is not routinely asking for much more than just an email address, you know, should you be having to use a bank card to sort of at least get into the social, so that you can be tracked pretty damn quickly? And, you know, what is tolerable, what is acceptable,

where the balance lies with freedom of speech, and where the balance lies with hate. And also young people's access. This is wider, of course, than just the issues of violence. It's it also, there are big concerns about the porn industry and other aspects of the internet, but how we are restricting, particularly for young people, unhealthy, unhealthy behaviours that can develop

as they disappear into silos in their, bedrooms. I mean, here in the U.S., obviously, like Facebook is what's been getting the most attention recently with the whistleblower, who I know is also talked to the UK Parliament. But the question, you know, a lot of these companies you talk about, they're American-based, right? And obviously, the UK can pass its own regulations. But what would you like to see the United States doing in terms of massive platforms like Facebook and Twitter that obviously travel and shape the politics of other countries? I think this is. Yeah. Ben, I think this is really simple.

You know, it's staggering when we look back the debate that we had in the Western world about the dangers of tobacco and how long it took to properly regulate the tobacco industry to protect people's health and their safety and young people. It took years and years and years. And here we are with this huge expansion in technology and there are. huge benefits, but every single parent in the developed world knows that this has got to be properly regulated. And the regulation is poor. And the US has to lead because many of these companies are US-based. This actually needs international effort. I am absolutely sure as a legislator here in the UK that flush forward in 20 years time, this will be a far more regulated environment than it is today. And people will look back and they won't believe the Wild West

that we tolerated and encouraged. You know, this really struck me when I spent some time in Silicon Valley, and I realized that none of the execs working at this company, these companies allow their children to do what the rest of the population's doing. So, look, the US must lead, and I'm not seeing quite the leadership that we...

There was a good, healthy debate during the general election campaign in the United States, but things seem to have got quiet, than they were. But this needs real international effort. There's some effort coming from the European Union that are concerned about this, who are acting a little bit more aggressively. Countries like Australia are acting unilaterally. And I think, as I say, we'll get this unilateral action from the UK. But this really needs proper, concerted international effort. This is the same debate that we had on tobacco 20, 30, 40 years ago.

Yeah, well, look, I couldn't agree more. It's for the single biggest thing we could do for public health and safety and also the health and safety of democracy itself, which is getting eviscerated by these platforms. I want to just shift pace because we've got you here, and there's a number of topics we've talked to you about over the years related to Brexit. And I think to listeners of this podcast, particularly American ones, who are kind of casual followers of UK politics, you start to see. reports on shortages of gasoline, there's petrol lines, and then there's shortages of truck drivers, and there's supply chain problems globally, but that are more acute in the UK. And what way are the kind of consequences of Brexit becoming apparent in day-to-day life more and more in Britain these days? Well, you will recall that the mantra of Boris Johnson that he won our general election on was get Brexit done. He got Brexit done. But what's becoming clear is that there was no plan.

He didn't have a Brexit plan. And because there is no Brexit plan, we're now dealing with a massive skill shortage. We've got problems with hauliers. We've got problems in agriculture. We've got problems in the construction and building industry. We've got significant issues. with people who were in the UK from the European Union, having gone back to the European Union

post-Brexit, but also, of course, because of the pandemic. And it's not clear how those school shortages are going to be filled. Costs are rising. The cost of living is rising here in the UK. And it's likely that people are going to have a far more expensive Christmas. And for that reason, I think that the decibel level on this issue is going up, but believe me, it's going to go up considerably further as we head into 2022. And if you put that alongside the inflation that seems to be coming into the UK economy,

we've got real big concerns. And this is all because there was no plan. Brexit was simply a slogan, banning around politically. and the nuts and bolts that you've got to make this thing work. Where are these trade deals, by the way? I remember, it was your old boss that said, look, I'm sorry to the UK. I think you might be at the back of the queue,

and here we are five years later, and we're clearly not at the front of the queue. So, you know, we're not even hugging the US as close as we need to in the wake of leaving the European Union. So it's a very cold winter of discontent that is emerging here in the UK. Well, so if you're obviously, you know, part of Kirstormer's team

in terms of the shadow cabinet, the leader of the Labor Party there, and how do you make a political argument that, on the one hand, you know, Brexit is done, right? And so you can't go back and relitigate that fight. How do you? you articulate what it means to what what a criticism of of the consequences of Brexit that doesn't just feel like you're trying to fight the last battle, but it's about offering a different vision

going forward? How do you how do you both make sure Boris Johnson is held accountable for the negative consequences of his Brexit while also being forward looking? Look, I think it comes back to the simple mantra that I think was first coined in America. it's the economy stupid when it comes back to cost of living when it comes back to not being able to get something in the supermarket because it's no longer there

or the price is soared we've got energy problems here now in the UK with rising gas utility bills as well look people blame the government of the day and I think they understand

Yes, it was one thing to leave the European Union, but on Boris Johnson's head is the deal that he struck with the European Union on leaving. And it is that flawed deal that we argued a lot about because the Labour Party would have struck a very different deal. But the deal that he struck that is now leading to the problems that we've got. By the way, we should say also these problems are not just domestic problems. We've got serious issues emerging in Northern Ireland as the UK government resiles from the deal that they struck with the European Union that's leading to further violence in Northern Ireland and real issues about how they get goods and services over this next period. So I think it comes back to the basic, the way that people perceive the economy. And in a sense, we've had here over the last five years a peculiar political time because, of course, it was dominated by Brexit for at least three years. And then more recently it's been dominated by the pandemic.

I think that we're now returning to politics as usual. We're not going to have one single issue dominating the whole political landscape. It goes back to the basics, which is the economy, law and order. health care, education. Those are the big issues of the time. And, you know, as we head into tougher economic times, it's not the opposition that people will blame. It's the government of the day. Yeah. And so your job is to offer that alternative to the negative consequences that people can see in front of their own eyes. It's to offer an alternative and it's to offer an alternative based on hope and credibility on things like the economy that the British people can get behind.

Look, what I would say about Kier Stama is he is a serious man for serious times. And I think it would be very hard to argue that Boris Johnson, the clown, I think, on the international leadership scene, makes people laugh. And let's remember that Mr. Bean is one of our biggest comments. exports. Look, I just think that in serious times, the sheen is coming off Boris Johnson. There's a lot still for the British Labour Party to do. And don't get me wrong, we have to transition successfully from being an effective opposition to being a government in waiting. And we have to make that transition over this next period to see an uptick in the polls and to see our prospects improve. But I

do think that what we are seeing is the sheen coming off Boris Johnson, as people feel that it's a bit like the emperor has no clothes. Yeah. Well, you know, David Axrod, you know, who you and I both know, used to say that American electorates often tend to look for the opposite of the last person. And he said this, by the way, long before Trump, you know, Clinton to George W. Bush, George W. Bush to Obama, then Obama to Trump, Trump to Biden. A serious person would definitely be the opposite of Boris Johnson. So we wish you the best, David, and always good to talk to. I'm sure we'll have a chance to talk to again. I hope to see you in Glasgow in a couple weeks time. Can't wait. Always good, Ben. Thank you. Thank you to David Lammy for doing the show. Thank you to Pablo

Escobar. Apparently the name hippopotamus comes from the ancient Greek for river horse. Makes sense. Kind of. More like a river cow. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if horse is what I would go with. Third largest type of land animal, mammal, sorry. the heaviest extant artiodactyl, whatever that means. They're huge. It is funny in like children's books because like my kids, you know, read all these books. Hippos are, you'd think they're like cuddly animals. So I think there's like a, I think it's not really the case.

Yeah, no, like hungry, hibos. They don't want to be cuddled. No, no, don't. They want to be loved alone. Don't cuddle a hippo. Actually, I read a story about a man who raised a hippo from infancy and you can guess what happened at the end of the day. Yeah, it didn't end well. And that's before the hippo did any lines. So I'm just saying like when you introduce cocaine in the mix. Sober hippo.

Like might be, might want to give the hippos something that chills them out and says something to amp's them up. Yeah. Well, just going out of limb. I don't know what Pablo Escobar did. I mean, I can't speak for it. Well, that's it for Animal Planet this week. But we will see you guys on on next one day. See you. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.