Pod Save the World - The newest new British PM, with David Lammy

Episode Date: October 26, 2022

Tommy and Ben cover the wild week in British politics, the push for diplomacy in Ukraine from progressive Democrats, why former Chinese President Hu Jintao was dragged off stage at China’s party conference meeting, the US-Saudi relationship, former Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu’s right-wing comeback bid, Brazil’s upcoming election and more. Then Ben is joined by British Labour MP David Lammy to talk about new British PM Rishi Sunak and the future of the Labour Party. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, I was thinking about this week. Since we recorded the last episode, we have a new prime minister in the UK and China elected, elected, appointed a president for life. That's got to be one of the bigger news weeks in our little block. I mean, the funny thing about, yeah, like China, too, is it, and boy, that's a bit,

like Xi Jinping becoming the kind of president for life may actually be the biggest story the week, but it's so not dramatic. Only the Hu Jintao piece, which we'll talk about. Well, they'll talk about that. Yeah, it's not like people had to like, you know, stay in lines past 7 o'clock. College towns are still out in Shanghai. The votes are still out. No, no, yeah.

So kind of the mail-in ballots of Beijing, you know. I could not be more excited about this episode, though, because, look, we're going to have a little fun talking about the mess that is British politics. You'll do much more on that in our interview later, which, why don't we just tell people are going to be excited. David Lammy. You just wrapped. What did you guys talk about? Just wrapped. I mean, you know, he is our correspondent for when a Tory prime minister's collapse. We talked about like, how did Rishi Sunak become prime minister? Why is the Tory party in such chaos? What are some of these Tory MPs say privately to Lamie? Because, you know, they're in parliament together.

How is labor drawing a distinction? What is the story they're telling? What are the chances of a general election before 2025. And what does it mean for Rishi Sunak to be the first person of color, to be prime minister? And David obviously has a unique perspective on that as a black Britain himself. So wide ranging, as always, awesome as always, to have David Limey. Cannot wait to hear that. So you and I have a little fun with the British politics. There's political fights in the U.S. that will cover over support for the war in Ukraine that got interesting today. There's lots of news out of the China Party Congress, Saudi Arabia in big money, becoming a theme or a runner, how former Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was trying to amount to come back.

Brazil's election is coming up, some quick updates from the Department of Justice, some Iran news, Ethiopia, and then we'll go to Lago. Boy, what a 31 flavors here today. Now, we got a big election here in the U.S. been coming first, but then the 2022 World Cup will be here. It is the biggest sporting event of the year. We think it's the Olympics. I think globally it's more likely to be the World Cup. It's like a little Super Bowl. a day for a couple of weeks. Thanks to a bottomless well of corruption over at FIFA, the governing body that controls global soccer.

The cup is going to be held in Qatar this year. That makes no sense. They had to switch the season of the games to winter because it's 120 degrees in the summer. Oopsies. That would be like having, you know, international baseball tournament in August. Or the Winter Olympics in the Black Sea Resort town of Sochum, as happened to 2014. Yeah. And another corrupt.

Totally corrupt. Up to end to the whole EPL system. the schedule I mean. The, you know, Qatar treats women terribly, LGBT people terribly, and they had no infrastructure when they were awarded the games in 2010, which means all of it was built by migrant laborers in horrible, dangerously unsafe conditions, and thousands of people have died since. So in my series, Roger Bennett, the charmingly accented, hilarious soccer fanatic in our series World Corrupt, we unpack how you deal with this as a sports fan when you have a game you love

and you watch it being perverted by big money and corrupt governments. We talked to human rights activists, soccer royalty like Megan Rapino, friend of the pod, Matt Miller. Remember Matt? Remember that worked for Eric Holder, the attorney general? So Joe Biden was supposed to go to the 2010, like final couple of days before they awarded the cup in Zurich. Biden had to go to a funeral, speak at a funeral or something. So Eric Holder went in his stead, and so Matt went with him. And so they all just witnessed all this corruption before they're very up.

Guys, yeah, don't do corruption in front of the attorney general. It's a great show. I hope you guys will check it out. It's on your podcast feed right now. The episodes are tight. It's like 35 minutes. You'll learn a ton. So please enjoy.

All right, Ben, want to talk a little British politics? Did you get enough out of Lime? No. Feeling burnt out? No, he's never enough. It's so much fun. It's so much more fun with his accent. Yeah.

Well, that's true, actually. Everything's a little more fun with the British accent. I just feel wrong doing this. But whatever. So not only since the last episode has Liz Trust's resists, designed after just 45 days on the job. She did not outlast the rotting head of lettuce, which made our title feel kind of, you know, prescient. For her distinguished service, did you see that she will be able to get paid up to $130,000 per year? I did. Yeah. For costs associated with

her, quote, special position in public life. Yeah. Well, five prime ministers in six years. So, like, I'm sure when they created this allowance for former prime ministers, they didn't envision this rate of turnover. Oh, God. So much money. Over the weekend, there was talk that Boris Johnson might try to mount a comeback. Boris and his cronies were telling people that he had lined up 100 members of parliament to back him. He ultimately bowed out. It didn't seem like he had 100 votes lined up. Yeah.

And his heart didn't seem that into it. I mean, because he probably knows, as we may get into, like, it's a shit show. Like the inflation is run away. They have no money. So Boris interrupted, I think, is like, what he's in the Caribbean? Like, he's on some vacation. Did you see the photos they put out of him? Yeah.

It was one of those photos where like the only reaction on Twitter was like, imagine the photo. They said, no, let's do this one instead. Like it was such a bad picture. It was, yeah. And so he lands, he spends about 24 hours saying he's being prime minister. And then he threw in the towel pretty quick. It threw in the towel. So instead, as you mentioned, Rishi Sunak is the new prime minister of the UK.

Rishi Sunak is the former chancellor of the exchequer. It's like our treasury secretary. He's 42 years old. That's so annoying. First person of color, first Hindu to lead the UK. And he's filthy rich. Yeah. Like, fuck you money.

Hundreds of millions. Yeah. Well, really billions. I mean, I, so, because he married his, his, his father-in-law, so his wife's father, who's Indian, is worth $4.5 billion. Oh, my God. That's got to be a pre-in up there, though. Well, there was some, there was some scandal in the UK about whether, because they weren't paying taxes.

Yeah, she wasn't paying foreign taxes. And by the way, like, I think the father-in-law is a big Modi supporter. Oh, good. So, but yeah, there's no, Rishi Sunak will not need. the 120,000 pound or whatever it is. Pension. Let's just put it that way. He's doing all right. You'll hear much more substance. Just the man of the times for a cost of living crisis, right? The man you need and when people can't pay their gas bills. So you'll hear more about this substantively in Ben's conversation with David Lemmy. Let's just have some fun. It is really hard to, I think,

fully capture how chaotic those last few weeks were for trust. Her economic plan fully collapsed. She fired her treasury and home secretary. She was jeered in parliament. There was like mass confusion about votes and about their policy towards, you know, a pension cost of living increase. You had these like genteel old conservative MPs like stumbling onto BBC sets and unloading like it was the first time they've been to therapy in 75 years or something. Here's my question for you, Ben. Did this ordeal make you more worried about our British friends and their system or or a little envious of the instant gratification of seeing trust and her 6% approval rating ushered out the door? It is more fun and it's less like grim than American politics.

You know, there's this kind of weird energy around British politics. To be slightly serious for a second, the negative thing, of course, is that they keep having a system in which you can elect prime ministers with a very small number of people. Yeah. So like the like you would think that like at a certain point, maybe you get. Seems like a problem. Yeah, maybe you get one prime minister, you know, they're. can be chosen without an election, but like, I think maybe two is where you need someone. The positive sign, I'd say, for British politics is that Liz Truss, clearly a catastrophic

person and competent person to be prime minister, you know, her last approval writing I saw was 6%. That couldn't happen here, right? Like, I actually have admiration for the British Tories and the British people, as much as I have lots of criticisms of British Tories of like, there's a bottom that could fall out there, right? Like Donald Trump, as he, you know, could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. And, you know, 39 percent is probably about as low as approval it could go, right? Like, so the downside for them is they have a bizarre system with no written constitution where they can keep recycling

door of prime ministers coming. And the upside is, yeah, like the polarization is not so extreme that it's possible for support to just collapse. That's, yeah. I have the same exact feeling. A few other thoughts. I mean, I agree with you. I don't, I think, I don't think Boris had the votes. But I also think it's probably smart of him to push someone in front of them and say, hey, buddy, hey hedge fund guy, go have fun like raising, cutting public spending and raising taxes to pay for this economy. Hilariously, there's a book coming out about Liz Trust on December 8 called Out of the Blue. Can you imagine writing that really fast? Like, oh, you know, I'm going to get those poor authors. Yeah, biography the next prime minister. I saw this in a Wall Street Journal profile

at Breesie Suneck. Quote, the Star Wars fan once surprised a group of school children by telling them He has a, quote, Coke problem. He then went on a minute-long monologue about his favorite type of Coca-Cola, which is made from cane sugar in Mexico. So it seems like a weird dork. To be fair, actually, I buy the Mexican Coca-Cola, too. You know? It's better. But he does seem like a real dork.

But also, like, the guy you know who went to, like, you know, got like a Harvard MBA and went to Golden Sacks and something, you know. Super smart. But I do think, like, the, he'll be much smarter than Liz Trust, but, like, having the common touch is not going to be there. And Boris probably thought, like, let this guy, yeah, like cut spending and a cost of living crisis. Maybe Boris will somehow stand in the next election. I don't know, you know. Yeah.

Yeah, good luck with that. Good luck with those politics. I think that restaurants that offer you eight and a half ounce bottles of soda as opposed to, like, having a, you know, fountain Coca-Cola distributor thingy, you should go to jail. Yeah, no. I mean, if you're out, like, we keep, I keep this in the fridge for, like, it's good hangover potion, you know, a little Mexican coke. It's probably not what Rishi Sunak uses it for, though. No, no, no, no.

He's, he's, he sits it while he's watching, like, the Star Wars. Cricket. I mean, he's a real Star Wars, like, nerd. Yeah, he loves Star Wars, I guess. Which can get a little uncomfortable, you know, if it goes too far. Yeah, yeah, whatever it takes. Okay, let's turn to Ukraine. In a lot of ways, Ukraine is driving British politics anyway.

So the update in the ground is very similar, Ben, The Russian military is bombarding these Ukrainian cities. They're hitting civilian energy infrastructure with missiles. These Iranian-made drones. It's awful. The Russian defense minister, Sergei Shogu, made a series of phone calls to his counterparts in the U.S., UK, France, and Turkey to claim that Ukraine was preparing to use a dirty bomb on its own territory.

Everybody he called NATO, everybody else, they called BS. They said, it seems likely that Russia is trying to set up some sort of pretext or false flag operation. Ukrainian security services are also worried that the Russians will blow up a hydraulic dam to cover their retreat in the southeast of Ukraine. That dam could unleash a volume of water that Reuters said is equivalent to the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Yeah. It's a lot of water. It's also a major source of power production. Separately been a Russian court rejected WNBA star Britney Greiner's appeal of her nine-year sentence for possession of a vape cartridge, which is just awful and really actually maybe not separate from. Yeah.

the Ukraine news. But the main thing we wanted to talk about today was a letter to President Biden from 30 progressive Democrats in the House about Ukraine. So the main ask in this letter was that the U.S. Explore all diplomatic avenues to end the war, including direct negotiations with Russia. It was caveated all over. It had praise for the Biden policy, support for the Ukrainian government, talked about how you need to include them in negotiations, everything you'd want in there. There was no threat of voting against funding or anything like that. The timing was weird at best. apparently this letter was drafted and signed by members as far back as June. Don't really get why they waited to put it out two weeks before an election.

The substance, though, seemed fine to me. Unfortunately, like the timing created a little mini online shitstorm. The congressional progressive caucus withdrew the letter. So timing issues aside, Ben, I'm like, I'm sort of bummed by this because we've discussed this a couple times. It would be great to have a more public conversation about diplomacy and, I don't know, talks generally. like there's this sense the reaction to this letter was so over the top people acted like it was a gift to Putin other people on the other side act like Biden saying we won't have talks about Ukraine at the table is sort of shorthand for saying they have a veto over our policy it's obviously ridiculous since

we've kind of like metered out our support throughout but I don't know it's just a bummer that the whole thing imploded so quickly yeah everything about this was was kind of mishandled I mean, look, the things you spoke about, like speak to the concern of the war escalating in a potentially catastrophic way. I mean, the potential, like, biblical flood that you alluded to, what Zanzi been wanting about. Well, that might explain why the Russians were declaring martial law in these parts of Ukraine they control and telling people to leave. Because if you're going to then just destroy the land with this flow. So as soon as they saw those, you know, as it go, maybe this connects. or if they're going to set off some nuclear device and blame it on the Ukrainians,

maybe they want to clear the area? I don't know. I mean, but it just speaks to like there's a sense that this is about to escalate in a particularly, you know, dangerous way. And, and yeah, this letter, if you read it, like, it's literally just saying that we should be exploring diplomacy with Russia. There's nothing. It's like a restatement of policy.

There's literally nothing objectionable in the letter whatsoever. So the process of this all weird to do this. within two weeks of an election. Weird to do this months after you circulated the letter without telling the people who signed it. Really disappointing to see members to their staff under the bus. You know, Congressman Jaya Paul basically blamed the staff. Oh, I didn't see that. And that's not, you know, like, but to your point, also weird to see people be like, this letter is stabbing the Ukrainians in the back.

The reason it's so important to reject that is like it. I don't think it does the Ukrainians any favors to say that like any debate about this policy or discussion about it or discussion about diplomacy with Russia is inherently throwing them under the bus. I agree. As you just said, like it's just what does that suggest? That suggests that like we have this fixed policy that can't can't even adjust to events or, you know, like can't even suggest like, hey, we might want lines of, like, take the military.

You know, Shoygu calling Austin Mosin L'Lawkward. Awesome, pick up the phone. And Georgi was like, let me tell you about this false flag operation. That said, though, wouldn't you want a open line of communication with the Russian military? All the time. That may be in the chain of command for the insane nuclear order from Putin, right? And so some of the stuff that's in this letter about just like, because diplomacy is not, it's being equated with like sitting down over the heads of the Ukrainians and carving things up and, you know, giving Crimea away. Yeah, it's like Yalta or something.

No, diplomacy is just talking. Diplomacy could be trying to reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear escalation or frankly trying to have lines into the Russian military who may not want to keep carrying out these orders. And so I get why, you know, the timing of the letter landed with a bit of a thud, not just before the election, but right after Kevin McCarthy, you know, last week's threatened to cut off funding. So it sounded like the left was collapsing at the right.

Right. But I think it is important, the point you made, we need to present. some space to be able to say, like, hey, like, let's debate and discuss what are the different ways that we can support Ukraine and, you know, try to avoid worst-case outcomes here. Yeah. And, like, again, saying that we're not going to have talks with the Russians without Ukraine at the table or Ukraine a part of them is not saying they have a veto over our policy. If they were controlling our policy, then we would have been doing like Haimar systems from day one.

We would have had a no-fly zone. Yeah. Yeah, no-fly zone. Remember, closed the sky. He's the sky. So we've been metering out like assistance along the way based on U.S. interests. And I think, you know, I just think like voters are smart. They understand that a potential war with Russia is complicated. It's okay to talk about this stuff in a way that is like a little less binary. Well, and here's the other really important point about this, right? Because, well, you make the right point that what Biden's saying is I won't negotiate around the settlement that Ukraine has to accept without them. That doesn't mean we don't have things to talk to the Russians. It just means Biden's not going to sit there and say, well, maybe you can keep this.

part of Ukraine and not that part of Ukraine. That's not going to happen. But to your point, if you don't create any space for kind of debate in the center here around this policy, you know where all the concerns about the war are going to go. They're going to go to where Kevin McCarthy took it, right? Which is it like, hey, I'm getting uncomfortable here. There's nuclear threats. Let's cut off the Ukrainians, right? It's a lot of money. So, you know, to some of you, like, some of the Ukraine stands on Twitter or whatever who like just, you know, pile on this stuff, you may might be creating the outcome you don't. want because by punishing anybody who says let's have diplomacy, the only alternative to your

position, you know, is where Kevin McCarthy is going, which is like, hey, let's cut these, where Tucker Carlson is. Or, yeah, or Elon Musk. I mean, there's clearly a void of people. There's a void of discussion. Elon Musk is filling it. Or like David Sachs, some idiot tech investor right-wing Goober is filling it. You know, it's like, why don't we have the CPC, the progressive in the house fill it?

Or at least try. Well, that would be a very healthy place to fill it. Yeah, that would be a better place to fill it. Hopefully the next iteration of the next letter is better. Did you see there's a Washington Post report about how J.D. Vance is facing some backlash for his, like, hardcore anti-war stance. Why do we care about Ukraine? Yeah.

We'll see if that actually, you know, plays out in the election. Well, because like you said, I think most Americans probably have semi-n nuanced views about this. They intuitively support Ukraine. They're okay with giving a bunch of assistance. They don't want there to be nuclear war. those are all reasonable positions, by the way. Yeah. You know, like the public opinion on foreign policy is sometimes, you know, more

consensical than the debates in Washington are about it, you know. Absolutely. And I think Obama, when he was talking about this sort of articulated all that. He articulated all that, yeah. Okay, so as you mentioned, it's out like the biggest story of the maybe the year, maybe the decade or the next five years was Chinese President Xi Jinping, formally secured a third term. He further tightened his grip on power in the process, and he took another step,

towards cementing his legacy in Chinese history as being basically as historic a figure as Chairman Mao. Normally, the Chinese president is very powerful, but shares some power with the group of seven men called the Paula Burrough Standing Committee. This year, she has stacked the committee full of his, you know, the cronies and then a bunch of guys who are too old to be viewed as a threat to him. Sort of savvy move there. In response, U.S. listed Chinese stocks cratered after the news, as did markets in Hong Kong. I think because companies are worried that she is going to continue the zero COVID policies and just lock down cities.

Also probably worried about him. She just taking over more tech companies and running people out of town. The Chinese government finally released the delayed economic data that we mentioned last week. It showed that their GDP growth fell well short of their targets. But the weirdest moment of the whole thing, the whole event, was when former Chinese president Hu Jintao was basically physically dragged off of the stage. He's sitting next to Xi Jinping with no explanation. The theories about why range from who having some sort of medical issue, I don't know, COVID, anything like that, or she basically just wanting to publicly humiliate his predecessor, who, by the way, you know, backed a different guy to become president over Xi Jinping. Did you have any takeaways from the event or sort of like theories, what was happening to poor Hu Jintao?

Yeah, I mean, like to start with Hu Jintou, it's an interesting contrast, right? Because we overlapped with Hu Jentai in the Obama years. And, you know, what's interesting about Hu Jintao is he was a very consensus-oriented figure. He felt like the front man for a party, not the strong man sitting on top of a party. And it's interesting, like we used to have this joke, Obama and I, because Hujentau would read his talking points. And then the translator would read the English language version. The point being that Hujentau never deviated from the talking points is so Obama would always be like, maybe the translator could just read it. Swab them.

But then Xi Jinping came in and that was not the case anymore. Like this was the guy's own. Now, I make that point to just illustrate whose leadership style as being very different than Xi's. He was consensus-oriented. There was some degree of openness on the internet. You know, I don't want to overstate it. But China was not an open society, but relative to where it is now, was different under

who. So that moment to me crystallized how much China's changed in the decades since Xi Jinping came in, in terms of what happened to Hu Jintao, I think this is a really important question. Like some people, you know, on Twitter were saying, well, maybe he's just sick. It's not that big a deal. They waited. This is an incredibly staged managed event. Yeah. Like nothing is more staged managed in big Chinese Communist Party conferences. They waited to drag him out until after the cameras were brought in. Right. So like, there's a closed door like off camera meeting. He wasn't dragged out until the cameras were on. The international

press was there. And the best case version is this guy was sick. Like, first of all, they didn't say anything about him being sick. Second of all, if you watched the video, which everybody should, Chez Jinping doesn't even look at the guy. He won't even look at him. He's not concerned. Yeah, if he's sick, you'd think he'd be like, oh, you know, like, let me help this guy get out. And you see who reached for like a folder with papers and this guy, some other guy wouldn't let him open it. Yeah. So I saw some people being, oh, no big deal. Like, this people get escorted out all the time. Like, well, this guy was like the most powerful man in China for decade, you know, like this is one of them, at least this is fucking weird, you know? And she's been systematically erasing him from history.

And criticizing him, right? Criticizing him for what the different kind of leadership. And that leads to kind of what does this all mean? Like I think all the most hardline guys got elevated. The rhetoric shifted. You know, all the rhetoric used to be about this opportunity for China. Now the rhetoric is about like, you know, the gathering storm. There was like QAnon shit.

It was like the storm is gathering. you know, it kind of suggested a more hostile world and a more aggressive China in response. The kind of anti-market economic policies that have slowed growth were kind of, you know, fortified. I'm sure that's part of the market reaction. Zero COVID. No sense that that's going away anytime soon. So like it felt really consequential and really pretty fucking dark. I mean, to be honest.

And I wish that wasn't the case. Like I really wish that we could have like a more constructive relationship with China. but she does not seem particularly interested in that. Yeah, and look, I mean, she got here by, like, brutally locking up and taking out all his rivals. Yeah. It was the guy's name Boishe Lai. Bojili, yeah. Yeah, who was just sort of the, you know, seen by some as the biggest competitor to she who just got worked.

Yeah. I think he's probably sitting in a jail somewhere. Yeah. A lot of those guys are sitting in jail. So this is, yeah, this is kind of like the, and Kevin Rudd called this, you know, when he was on a couple weeks ago. But like, this is like the dark version of, you know, the Chinese Communist Party being ratified. Yeah. Yeah.

Another dark strongman. We've been talking about a lot in Saudi Arabia. Back on the show, a couple developments worth mentioning here. So, Ben, first there was the, the Wall Street Journal had this long piece about the U.S. Saudi relationship. It said in it, no surprise, that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or MBS privately mocks President Biden and preferred Trump. Yeah, we noticed. The story is full of, like, whining. Saudi sources that Biden wasn't warm and cuddled during the infamous like fist bump trip to Jeddah.

The story was most notable to me in that the Saudi leadership in that relationship is still covered like it's normal. And it hasn't really adapted to the fact that MBS is more Saddam Hussein than King Abdullah. A lot more. Yeah. Yes. Second, the annual Saudi investment conference, the Davos in the desert thingy is happening as we pod. There are hundreds of business executives, including the CEOs of J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Blackstone, hedge fund guys like Ray Dalio, and of course, Jared Kushner and Steve Manukin there. There are no Biden administration officials there. Many of these same business leaders did not attend this conference in 2018 after the Saudis executed a journalist named Jamal Khashoggi. But predictably, depressingly, they went back for the money. The good news been is that there was a little note in the journal story that Biden apparently wants to

review the U.S. Saudi relationship and see if it's really benefiting us. So, like, maybe there's some hope here that things will change. I mean, to your point, like, what drives me insane is, you know, we always dealt with these stories like, you know, you somehow hurt the Saudi feelings, and so that's why they're human rights abusers, you know? And, like, it is such utter, complete bullshit. You know, by the way, like, nobody, like, could be rooted than the Saudis. like when the protocol snubs and making people weigh insulting people like so this kind of like oh we have to violate the human rights of our people and side with the Russians in a war because someone wasn't like polite enough in a meeting if you are a professional journalist and you are writing

this fucking garbage like shame on you like go home and look in the mirror and ask yourself why you are getting spun by sociopathic trillionaires staff that his feelings were hurt, a man who butchered someone alive in a fucking consulate that he controlled. And you're actually swallowing the idea that if only the Biden administration was a little more polite in the meeting, they wouldn't have to butcher the people. So like, cut that out. And then like, let's just like accept the reality that these people are all in with Trump. And we don't need a review to know that. They gave Jared Kushner two billion dollars. Two billion.

Like, you need a review to understand that these people don't share your interests. Like, we know where the review ends. They don't share our interests. They don't share our values. They want Donald Trump to be the next president. If it's not Donald Trump, they run Ronda Santis or whatever, like, semi-fascist. Whoever cares less about human rights, yeah. Yeah.

And so, like, I just, to me, it's like this absurdity of constantly evaluating this as if it's like, like you said, like this, we're evaluating society relationship under King Abdullah a decade ago. Like, we know where this is. So you see that the Saudi-owned live golf tour is playing its tournament finale at where else, Trump's course in Miami. And so in response, this group called 9-11 Justice, who's been really pushing Trump on this, and Trump just has not cared, is running the following advertisement on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and ESPN. Let's give it a listen.

Who can afford to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for exhibition golf? Let's follow the money. Live golf is funded by Saudi Arabia's wealth fund. Saudi Arabia gets its money from all. Oil, they sell to Americans. And now, they're driving gas prices even higher. The Saudis are using oil profits to fund exhibition golf, hoping to distract you from their policies of oppressing women,

murdering journalists, and supporting the 9-11 terrorists. So I feel like they're trying to do a lot there in 30 seconds. They didn't pick one message. Yeah, yeah, you had to make choices. Yeah, like read a Dan Pfeiffer message box. Like, make some choices. Yeah, but look, I respect the tent. I respect that they're going after it.

I think the live golf thing, again, as we talked about, is like just a capacity to rub our face, and their capacity to have so much money they can, like, own us, right? Sports watching. You want to watch Phil Bickleson play golf? Like, you've got to, like, you know, validate the Saudi regime. But, like, people should stay on this, you know. Is it really, like, by the way, like, is, like, B grade golf, like,

that important to watch? Like, I don't, there's a PJ tour. Like, you know, watch the masters and, you know, do you really need to watch the live golf event, you know? fun. I heard that you can wear shorts. I don't care. I don't watch golf. I don't watch golf. I don't watch golf. I don't watch golf. Phil Mickelson is like a fat asshole. Well, his bigger problem is he has huge gambling debts. Yeah, like he's just clearly, you know, like just some guy, some dickish guy who happens to be a lefty. I've never quite understood the thing about him, you know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. But Ben, speaking of Middle Eastern autocrats, BB Nintyahu. It's trying to make a comeback, buddy. You excited? Don't call out a comeback. He's been here for years.

He's been around. He never left. He's trying to forge this far-right coalition. Missed my Al-Ocool-J references. I like that. No, I liked it very much. So Bibi's trying to get together, forge a coalition with the guy named Etamar Ben Gavir, who is this right, right, right, right-wing politician who, according to the New York Times,

until very recently had hanging on his wall a portrait of a man who massacred 29 Palestinian civilians at a mosque in 1994. So terrorists. terrorists on his wall. This guy's a politician now. So Israelis go to the polls again, Netanyahu is hoping that the sufficient number of parties wins that he can forge this super right-wing coalition, including with Ben-Givir, and displace the current government. Here's another graph from this same New York Times story, which said, quote, if Mr. Ben-Gavir helps return Mr. Netanyahu to power, the government will be dependent on a lawmaker who hopes to upend Israel's judicial system, grant legal immunity to Israeli soldiers who shoot at Palestinians, and

deport rival lawmakers he accuses of terrorism. A couple weeks ago, we talked about this a little bit about how Bob Menendez, Senator, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, even warned B.B., against forging this coalition. But, you know, I just thought it was worth kind of, again, mentioning that it's happening and for people to understand just how much these far right-wing parties are ascendant in Israel. Meanwhile, Dorgio Maloney was sworn in his prime minister in Italy on Saturday. So these people are just everywhere.

Yeah. And look, you got worn, but it's like the amb-s-ing. Like, does anybody think Bibi Nanyahu wouldn't team up with this guy? That's what getting in power of course. You're going to appeal to his responsibility gene here. I think the challenges, like the Israeli elector is worn down by like, you know, however many elections they've had in the last few years, there's some apathy. And yet, if Bibi Nanyahu with this crowd gets 61 votes in that majority in the Knesset,

like, could be like a permanent transformation. of Israel, or at least for the foreseeable future, into like a very dark right-wing place, right? Yeah. And the other thing I want to say is that part of what you used to hear from BB for years and all the Israeli government supporters in this country, they would try to deflect criticism from the settlements and brutality in Gaza and the rest of it, is they'd always point to, like, incitement, you know, like the Palestinians authority needs to get, you know,

like any Semitism or any, you know, incitement to violence out of the communities or textbooks. True, right? Like, that's a good point. Well, what the fuck is this guy? Like, this guy is the mirror image of the very incitement that they say that they're so upset about, right? Like, like, he's inciting people, like just his politics. He goes to neighborhoods in East Jerusalem when Palestinians are being evicted. He brings his gun and he calls on the cops to shoot at people throwing rocks. Exactly. And you've had this growth in settler violence, right? Kind of this vigilante attacks on Palestinians where the Israeli police or security forces kind of don't stop it, right? This guy is like the representation of that incitement being mainstreamed

into Israeli politics. And if you don't think that will lead to volatile outcomes, I mean, or unjust outcomes, you're just bearing your head and saying. Yeah. And remember that underpinning all of this is Netanyahu at great legal risk in trying to get back in power so he can get a get out of jail free card. Yeah. Yeah. And the Israeli justice system seems to move pretty slow. I mean, as we see with Trump, ours moves pretty slow, too. Yeah, kind of a Merrick Garland vibe over there. It's a Merrick Garland vibe over there. Speaking of electorates worn down by too many elections, Ben,

so Brazilians go to the polls again on Sunday. This is the runoff election between right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, and leftist former president, Lula de Silva. Bolsonaro has now spent years attacking the credibility of Brazil's elections. And there's, again, concern that if he loses, there will be violence and that Bolsonaro might just refuse to leave. Bernie Sanders has been talking about. of this a lot, including with you on the show. This is all exacerbated by the fact that in the first

round of voting about a month ago, the polling was just way, way, way off, like way, way, way off. They pollsters drastically undercounted the right-wing vote. And Bolsonaro has argued that releasing polls that far off was like de facto voter suppression. Now there are some Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil's House of Representatives that are trying to pass a bill that would criminalize publishing a poll that is later shown to fall outside of its margin of errors. So criminalizing inaccurate polls. It's a real shot across the bow, 538. All the Nates out there.

The Nate's out there. Harry Yenton. The G, whatever that dude's name. Trafalgar. Yeah, yeah. Come for you. Yeah. So the stakes couldn't be higher in this one for pollsters and then the planet,

given how they're, you know, defourcing the Amazon. I wish we had to vote save America, Brazil. I don't hate the polling. I'm just kidding. I do hate the polling law. Yeah. But one to watch on Sunday. Yeah, hate the polling, not the pollsters.

It's definitely one to watch. And, I mean, what you see suggests Lula has, like, a slight lead. Fingers crossed. It's way too close to comfort. As you say, like, Bolsonaro winning both validates a, you know, if you think another Bolsonaro term won't result in a pretty right-wing autocratic Brazil. Like, you have not listened to what this guy said. And, but also, like, we don't have time, like, they are cutting down, like, the Amazon

could become, go from being, like, one of the. the biggest, you know, carbon capture rainforests in the world to, like, a net negative. You know, like they're torching the Amazon at that rate. So you have a stake in this if you're listening, even if you, you know, on something more concrete than even the survivability of democracy, the survivability of the planet is on the ballot in Brazil. It's a real problem. A couple of quicker things, Ben. So the Department of Justice announced charges against six Chinese citizens accused of working as spies and trying to recruit U.S. citizens to undermine a prosecution against Huawei.

It's a giant Chinese telecom technology company that we haven't talked about in a while, but is a big player. In Iran, Iranian teachers held a two-day strike to protest a brutal crackdown by Iranian security services on student protesters. This week will mark the 40th day since Masa Amini was murdered by the Iranian morality of police. And then we have not talked about the civil war in Ethiopia in a while. The fighting's been picking up a lot lately.

government forces have been attacking these former leaders in the northern Tigray province. There were some secret U.S.-led peace talks led by our old friend and colleague, NSC co-worker Mike Hammer, that didn't succeed, but they happened in the past month. The good news is it does sound like there are some more talks between Ethiopian and Tigray and reps happening this week in South Africa. So fingers crossed, that works because, you know, the UN is still saying that I think like something like five million people in Tigray are in pretty dire need. of food aid. Yeah. If you

want to go deeper on this, people should read John the Anderson, who's just an extraordinary writer for the New Yorker, been around forever, interviewed every flavor of dictator there is. He had an article recently in Yorker that's a profile of Abi Ahmed, the

Ethiopian Prime Minister. And by the way, it's like insane. Like, he's just hanging out with him for days. And he's like driving him around in the car, and he's showing him all these like pet projects. He had time with Buckely recently too. Dude, he's very chill. Like, you know, I guess like you just want to hang out with him, right?

And, but what you come away with is this guy is totally out of touch, totally megalomaniacal, total narcissist. And also got into bed with some real thuggish people, including the Eritrians. And like, so there's kind of momentum to this war that he has a hard time stopping, like the ethnic politics kind of are driving it. And, you know, and he's kind of not, he's in such a bubble that he's not kind of absorbing the, the totality of what's happened. It didn't leave me particularly optimistic about this. But like it does feel like the U.S. and other countries in the African Union are just going to have to stay all over this because they're not going to make peace on their own. So unless there's like some external actors and probably a lot of them pushing in this direction,

this thing will continue to drift sideways and it's people who will suffer. I noticed a lot of messaging under the White House about Kenya's role, you know, a lot of praise for the new president of Kenya, President Ruto, which suggests to me, reading between the lines that that means that they want Kenya to play like a pretty key role here and Rudo personally. But I think this is one of the situations where a lot of diplomatic engagement may not solve it, but may be necessary to keep it from getting worse and to get, keep things like humanitarian assistance getting in. I think John Lee Anderson makes them soup? He might make soup. And if you did, I bet it's really good soup. That's, you know, I think we picked luck here. Last thing before the interview with David Lammy that you've all been waiting for.

There were a couple quick updates on the Mar-a-Lago documents story that swept the nation and sort of since gone away. The Washington Post reported that... Not on MSNBC, my friend. They reported that this was more detail about what documents were taken. Apparently, they included some highly sensitive Iran and China intelligence, some stuff about Iran's missile. program. And they said that these documents are the most sensitive recover to date. I guess they're still going through them. There was also information about foreign militaries. There was something

about some nuclear capabilities. None of this surprises me. Like, you could see Trump wanting to brag about, like, the Iran missile stuff, maybe some sort of covert action to spoil it. You could see him having some, you know, China intel that talked about how they felt about him or something. I don't know. All of it makes sense to me. Yeah. It doesn't make it okay. Well, yeah, I mean, it is like the most sensitive stuff. But like I think to allow yourself to go to like more worst case scenarios, you know, the stuff about the Iranian ballistic missile program, first of all, it's really bad that he has this stuff because the sources and methods that helped us gather this information, like I wonder if they're already dragging up, right? Like let's say you were the person passing this intel on China. and you know, by the way, that in the past, China, when they found leaks have, like, killed people to the U.S., right?

There were news reports that they rolled up our entire intelligence network in China in the last, like, five to ten years. So who's to say that's not happening right now or that the people that cooperated either in getting information or setting up technical forms of collection are looking at this and be like, I'm going to, like, move to, you know, the Canadian Rockies. I'd be in Geneva so fast. I'd be to get the fuck out of wherever I was, right? So this may already have a problem. The other thing is like, we can speculate here because why not. Saudis would be very interested in some information about the Iranian ballistic missile program. If you wanted to sell it.

UAE. You just mentioned the Huawei story. Like, there's a lot of economic espionage. There's a lot of money tied up in what's happening with, like, you know, what do we know about, you know, Chinese markets? And, I mean, the point is that Trump could profit extraordinarily off this information if he, if that was his motive. I mean, we, like, maybe he just wanted. this stuff around, but like, why, why is he making these choices about the stuff he wanted around? And we should just bear in mind, like, there's a huge price tag on what this stuff is worth.

I'm not saying that's what it was for sure, but, like, we shouldn't just assume that, you know, it was for nostalgia purposes or that you like to sit around and read about the Iranian Bill's dismissal program. There are worse scenarios where, like, he might have wanted to profit off this stuff. I mean, his greed is bottomless. Yeah. Did he read the story about how he launched truth social with some investor, goobers. Trump got 90% of the equity. They got 10. They spend months trying to line up investors

and some SPAC to take it public, blah, blah, blah. And then Trump kept calling them and demanding they give up all their equity and give it to Melania. And then like Don Jr. and Eric would like storm into a meeting and demand that they get shares, even though they've done nothing. Like it is bottomless greed. The other thing I saw was that Trump's valet, like the guy who brings him Diet Coke might be talking to the FBI. I guess the first time they interviewed him, he said, no, we didn't move any boxes. And then they were like, are you sure? Your second time you said Trump told me to move boxes from that basement to his office. So that'd be bad. Well, the other guy I saw, uh, Bristron, Truth Social.

Um, I always laugh because I always forget until I see those articles that Devin Nunes is the CEO of Truth Social, right? And then that ties into what I was going to say, which is Cash Patel, friend of the pod. Um, I saw got hauled in front of the grand jury, too. He was a designated rep, uh, for Trump on these documents. Um, recently wrote a children's book comparing Donald Trump to a king and the Russian investigation is a children's book about the hoax of the Russian investigation. I don't think he was a very reliable witness in that grand jury. The reports are that he took the Fifth Amendment a lot of times, but it does feel like he committed a crime and nothing anybody can say is going to

disprove that. And Merrick Garland, at some point, we'll just have to decide, like, do you get away with crimes or do you get charged with committing crimes? Because there's, like, the These were not things he could have, he literally could not have declassified these things either. Because, like, it's not just those pieces of paper. It's like our entire intelligence collection apparatus about the Iranian ballistic missile program. You're telling me that's not declassified. Yeah. Come on.

Yeah. Mentally, yeah. Mentally, yeah. Like I dream. To Sean Hannity. Yeah. Okay. We are going to take a quick break.

When we come back, you will hear Ben's conversation with the right, honorable, David Lammy, member of parliament from the Labor party, talking about Liz Truss, conservatives, future of labor, all of it, all the British politics news you need. Very right, very honorable. Okay, we are very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the World, member of parliament from the Labor Party, shadow foreign secretary, and someone who's become our correspondent for failed Tory prime ministers, David Lammy. David, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks a lot, Ben. Good to be back with you. I didn't expect to have you this soon, but Liz Trust, obviously, setting records over. there. Not much to reflect on there in that utter catastrophe. I guess I just want to start this conversation by asking you to explain as best you can. Why is Rishi Sunak prime minister? How did that happen so fast? And what are you expecting from him that contrast from LIS Trust? Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister because Liz Trust turned out to be the shortest serving Prime Minister in British history. Her prime ministerhip was a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe for her personally. It was a catastrophe for our economy.

And it may turn out to be a huge catastrophe for the Conservative Party. Now, some of your listeners will recall that she was in a pretty heated race with Rishi Sunat back in the early summer. And in that, what we would call a selectorate, i.e., this was the race amongst just members of the Conservative Party, which amounted to, you know, 140,000, 160,000 to 160,000 people. tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of the overall general population here in the UK. In that race, Liz Truss tacked very far to the sort of classic Thatcherite, right-wing, low-tax, cut tax, trickle-down economics position. And Rishi Sunat took a more responsible position in that race, warning about the inflationary impact of that and what the markets, how the markets would react.

Now, he did take up some really, I think, some awful positions on things like immigration, the culture war battle. He, towards the end of the campaign, he took some very, very right-wing positions on that to try and get those members back. And this is to also explain that, you know, Since Brexit, the classic Conservative Party under Boris Johnson lost a lot of what we would describe as one nation Tories. These are middle of the ground, old style, compassionate conservatives. Boris Johnson kicked a lot of them out of the party, certainly the ones that were in Parliament.

They sort of left the Conservative Party. And so, look, this is a very similar story to what I know has happened in the Republican Party. But anyway, after the catastrophe that was Liz Truss, the party finally turned back to Rishi Sunaki was the only man standing, if you like, at the right time. So I want to get back to the Tory part in a second here, but I did want to ask you, I noticed, you know, we, a week ago when we lost taped, which feels like forever in the context of British politics, you know, we were talking about this seems unsustainable. it feels like there should actually be an election to choose a prime minister when you're heading into your fifth prime minister in six years. I saw Kier Starmer and you out very forcefully on the day she resigned, kind of calling for a general election. Is there any way to compel a general election? Do you see a scenario in which there's an election sooner rather than later or an election sooner

than the beginning of 2025, which feels like forever from now in the context of five prime ministers in years, most of whom were not chosen by voters? Well, I think it's hard to see how this government rumbles on for two years. So I would say that in theory, they've got two years till the next general election, but in practice, I can't see how it works. And the reason for that is inflation is now running at higher than 10% here in the UK. our interest rates are up significantly and going upwards, which means that mortgages are rising.

This is hitting working people, but a lot of middle-class families are remorgeting and just being hit between the teeth really at a time when energy costs and cost of living is rising anyway here in the UK. So whoever is Prime Minister, needs a mandate to deal with that. And the medicine that Rishi Sunak is offering is serious cuts to public services. This is cuts to school budgets, cuts to NHS budgets at a time when there are really long waiting lists. You know, if you need an operation, you're waiting months and months and

months, even just to get an appointment in our national health service. And of course, it also means cuts to police and other things. Now, there is no mandate for cuts. No one, after years of austerity under David Cameron and George Osmond, no one in Britain wants to see cuts to public services. And it may mean higher taxation. So a reverse of the lease transportation, but also further tax rises. as a consequence of the mess that this trust created. All of that has not got a political mandate. And so I think he's going to find it incredibly difficult to affect the change he's going to need to in a very bumpy economic time

without the political mandate. The mandate that was given back in 2019 when there was a general election was a mandate to Boris Johnson in very difficult times. This was pre-pandemic and pre-the-cost-living energy crisis that we're living through here in Europe. And, you know, we saw, like everybody else around the world who's kind of riveted to this drama in those very final days and hours of Liz Truss's tenure, some very emotional interviews from some Tory MPs, just doing what I frankly wish the Republican members of Congress would do,

just venting their frustration at how chaotic, incompetent, extreme things had gotten inside the party. I wanted to ask you, do those folks talk to you privately? What are your conversations like with conservative party members in parliament, backbenchers maybe, like any sense that some of the, some of those people were even saying that they might have to break and move over to labor or that they might support a general election? Like, what do you hear from your, your colleagues across the aisles we'd say here in the U.S.? They do talk privately. So I think it's really important to understand. Let's just go back a bit. And let's just be frank here, Ben.

you will know that my party, the Labor Party, did have some serious issues a few years ago under the Jeremy Corbyn period of leadership. We appeared to the voters because it was true, a very divided party. There was a lot of acrimony amongst MPs, a lot of disagreement. It was very public. The public do not like divided parties. They like united parties. The truth is there was a hell of a lot of focus on. us under Kirstama, we've cleaned up that mess.

Things have changed. The Jeremy Corbyn period is over. The Republicans, not the Republicans. It feels that way. The conservatives are horribly, horribly divided. There are about four or five parties in one party. They, something called the ERG, which is the super Uber, Brexiteer right-wingers in that party

have a lot of sway. They're a bit like the kind of Tea Party group were in the Republican Party, and there's a lot of grief. And Rishi Sunat, by the way, has got to handle this grief. And I'm not sure I think he's going to find that incredibly tough. So the divisions that erupted,

and they erupted in part because Liz Trust just took this very libertarian position. Yeah. And there was quite a lot of incompetence in her position. They just derrupted onto the front pages of the media because the media finally looked in hard at the Conservative Party, finally, and recognised those divisions. I don't think those divisions are going to go away.

I think that they're still very much there. And I think for the big decisions facing our economy and how you fix that economy, I think that they will come back. So it's going to be very, very hard, I think, to see how. The position will recover a bit because I don't think the questions of incompetence will come to Rishi Sunak in the same way as Liz Truss. So the position for them in the polls will recover a bit.

But in the tough times ahead, will they remain united? Who side are they on? Are they on the side of working people, or will they be on the side of special interests within their movement? I think they will. And I'm afraid those rows will erupt once again. Yeah, I mean, one more question on this before we get to labor. You know, because you kind of answered one question I had, which is kind of what is the conservative party? And I think you put it aptly.

There's several parties kind of in one. I did want to ask, like, how much of this is just they've never been able to climb back from their own dishonesty with themselves and with the public about Brexit. You know, I know I know you guys have moved on from Brexit. You know, you're in a post-Brexit, Britain. I know you guys aren't campaigning on and returned to the EU. But it does feel like, you know, they told all these lies to pass the referendum. They've now tried multiple versions of a post-Brexit UK. You know, each prime minister has had a very different version of that and the Tory party. Is this just kind of like they, they the dog that caught the car, as we'd say in the U.S. with Brexit, and they just don't, they don't, having

done this massive, world-changing thing, like, if they just not come to terms with that? I mean, how key is Brexit to understand where we are? Ben, you're right, but it's bigger than that. It's bigger than that. So the last big major, I think conservative period in government was the Thatcher major years in government. Once Margaret Thatcher left as leader in the Conservative Party, they were horribly torn over the issues of Europe. Yeah. That reached culmination with Brexit.

But there's a bigger story to tell. It's important to remember that the David Cameron period was largely, he was in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives could not win. on their own, they had to govern with the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives only really got a period on their own under Boris Johnson, and that only came about as a result of landing on this Brexit issue. The Leave Remain debate, but that really became a culture war.

And that period in British history put to one side the old story in in politics, which is basically that all politics is about the economy, stupid. I can't now remember which famous American president said that. Quentin, yeah. But I'm borrowing that phrase. And so Brexit, the culture war became the big story. Now, once Brexit has happened and it happened, what's the story you then tell? We then have the pandemic, and we're now into the big splits. So, look, you can run an argument that the big, the big centre-right story, the big centre-right moment, has not arrived, which is actually why there's such open ground for the British Labour Party, as long as it's prepared to govern from the centre, as well as obviously those who are traditionally on the left of the British spectrum. So I think there's a big, big problem for the Conservatives. That problem is presenting itself in the infighting that you're seeing.

We've now had three prime ministers less than two months. We've had four finance secretaries in less than four months. And by the way, we may see even another change before we get to the next general election because of the divides that I've indicated. And because in the end, we now have a billionaire leader at a time when people are really finding it hard. And it's not completely clear that the slick Rishi Sunak is the answer that the British people want because he was not put there by the British people. Yeah. He was put there by the Conservative Party.

Yeah. Yeah. Former Goldman Sachs guy married into a billion dollar fortune. Well, that does the Tories. So with the Labor Party, I want to ask you about what your story is. Your post-Brexit, post-collapse of the Tory story, you know, you have this huge lead in the polls. As you said, it's going to narrow a bit. But, you know, you're clearly the more mainstream party now in a lot of ways.

I do want as people listen to this podcast know we're fans of yours, friends of yours. But I think objectively what I've heard from people, too, is that after, after that disruption of the Corbyn years and Kier Starrmer kind of getting his legs under him, that last party conference you guys recently had, people are like, okay, wait a second, something is happening here. This is kind of beginning to click in. But you have a party that runs a gamut from, you know, a Kier-Starmer tacked pretty closer to the center, you know, an Angela Rainer, right, who's out to the left.

I think a guy like you's somewhere in between the two. Like, what is the center to the left story that Labor will tell from now until the next general election? And what do you want the British people to think about when they think about the Labor Party? Well, they have to trust us once again. And, you know, they haven't been able to put their faith in us for now 12 years. They have to be sure that we're not just preoccupied with ourselves, that we're looking at the country. I think the bounce that we've got in the polls are not just as a result of the mess that the conservatives have found themselves in. and they're also as a result of a very successful party conference season.

And the September conference season is significant here in the British cycle. And I think they did look in and they saw Kirstama presenting himself to the country at large. Now, what we told was a story of a build-up economy rather than a trickle-down economy. We centered that economic message on a green prosperity plan, a plan around energy, and a story around jobs. That seems to have landed incredibly well in the red wall, those seats that we lost, where people are beginning to understand that that green revolution can be about jobs for them, jobs that have left their community many years ago and not come back. And they do trust labour on things like the National Health Service, where there are significant problems at the moment, and on education, where we've been traditionally very strong. It's been important to gain ground once again on the economy. It's when Labor's out of power.

It's usually because we become to not be trusted on the economy. We have a very, very good economic spokesperson under Rachel Reeves. and she's guided us back to the centre ground and to be trusted back on the issue of the economy. So I think there's more to do. We now have to set out more of a reform agenda. It's not just how we would spend the money, but the way we would run the system slightly differently

or differently to the Conservatives. So they do want to hear a reform message, and I think that we'll be ramping those messages up over the coming months and years. let me give an example in my area of policy, foreign policy, which I'm responsible for. When I came into the job in November, in much of the developed world, there was a lot of discussion. This is last November about the failure of the global South, a lot of countries in Africa to vaccinate their population, even with one COVID vaccine, never mind the two or

three jabs that most of us were getting in developed economies. Look, the big message, you a party like mine is not just the question of how do we help developing economies vaccinate their population. The bigger question ought to be, how are we using the science capacity of a country like the United Kingdom to help our brothers and sisters in the global south in parts of Africa with their own manufacturing capacity to have their own vaccines? That's the reform agenda that I think populations want to hear in an area like development and aid. A different message, that meets the 21st century, both domestic needs and international needs, and right across public services, we're going to be being stronger on our reform message.

And I think that that does prepare the ground very definitely for a general election that could come, it could come as early as next year, but it may well go the way to 2024. Obviously, we want the election today, but as you indicated earlier, it's not in our gift to deliver that because we would need conservative MPs to vote with us in parliament, a vote of no confidence to bring about that general election. And I wanted to ask you, given your portfolio as shadow foreign secretary for British kind of foreign policy, one of the interesting things about the last couple weeks is it was both very bad for the UK's image in the world, but also a reminder that the people care about

what happens in the UK. You know, the silver lining is that, you know, yes, it's embarrassing your political, you know, dirty laundries visible to everybody, people making jokes about lettuce around the world. But, you know, it's people still care who the prime minister of the UK is. If, you know, clearly between Brexit and all the prime ministers the last few years, there has been a hit to Britain's global standing. And you don't have the, you know, the cloud of the EU to amplify what you're doing around the world. but you do get to define what is the UK in the world. If you, let's say there was an election and you got in there and you were basically in charge of going out and telling a new story to the world about how they should see the UK,

how do you begin to kind of repair the damage the last few years? And what is that message of what are the priorities of a Starm or Lammy foreign policy if you guys get in there? Well, look, let me be very clear. The United Kingdom is a member of the G7. We have a seat on the Security Council and we're the sixth richest economy in the world with an outsize reputation globally. And I think that the global community, when I speak to them,

want to see Britain back at the table trusted, reliant, a good multilateral partner in forums of many, many different kinds across the globe, standing up for human rights, reliable on the rule of law. And unfortunately, under this government, we see Britain being very inward-looking, not reliable and not a reliable partner in a number of ways, withdrawing from different multilateral forum across the world, reducing our aid budget, not reliable on areas like human rights, undermining human rights domestically, and the Northern Ireland Protocol, which is an attempt to, it undermines the Good Friday Agreement

and causes an unnecessary row with our European partners, if you like, it continues the Brexit divides. I'm afraid it's terribly undermined our reputation. I'm not sure we led very well when we were leaders of COP 26 on issues of climate and the environment. So I'm afraid the world is, many of our European partners hold their hands in their hand on matters of the UK. And I'm afraid, you know, you can read the newspapers to see that there have been wrinkles between our relationship with the United States of America and as well, the Northern Ireland Protocol coming up in a bipartisan way whenever I'm in Washington. So I think that this is a reset moment. And let me just make a broader point.

And the broader point is, and this is a very, very serious point. The United States and the UK at our best selves have been probably the key global partnership in the 20th century. At our best, we've done some really, really great things. to stand up for democracy, for freedom, for fair trade, across the planet, when we've got things right. And I do think that the last decade, we saw a period where the United States left the global stage and became a very unreliable partner with much of the world holding its head and its hands during the Donald Trump period.

And the truth is, Ben, in this recent time, the UK has found itself in the same position. This doesn't just damage our own countries. It causes tremendous problems in the wider global community. And I think people are just waiting and praying for the United Kingdom to come back to the table in a reliable way. And that is what a Labour government, That is what our foreign policy mission is. It's why I'm spending a lot of time on the road globally, all continents of the world,

and people are relieved to see me and get an indication of what it would mean to have Labor back at the table. And I know that when Joe Biden came into the White House, the mood was, this is a reset, and the world opened their arms to the United States and welcomed the United States being back at the table. Yeah. No, it does. I mean, it's a great note to end on. And I just kept thinking when I was watching that, not just because I know and admire you guys, but like if you had a labor government elected with a big mandate, you know, in a clear running room for five years, boy, I think there'd be a lot of size of relief. And I just think people want to see us succeed as democracies and frankly, increasingly multiracial democracies, right? And you have Rishi Sunak embodies the complexity of that, right? Because he's the first person of color. But, you know, he always.

also just appointed a really hardline home secretary in Zwillamprevenman, who is also a opinion. Let me just say, actually. I should just say at that point, because I think it is important just to dwell on this. I think it is significant that Rishi Sunak is a man of color, the first ethnic minority, um, visible minority, if you like, to assume, um, this role. And no doubt about it, my father when he arrived in the UK in 1956 and Rishi Sunat's grandparents would never have dreamed that we would be at this point.

That is of huge significance. And it's a tribute to the way in which multiculturalism and modern Britain is about our multi-ethnicity. We saw that in the way that we delivered the Olympics back in 20. And of course it's a work in progress. And of course, someone like me has strong critiques of how we can do that even better. But it is right to say that it's a huge achievement that Rishi Sunak has got this role. And I pay tribute to the Conservative Party under David Cameron, where he was determined to modernise the party and bring on a generation of ethnic minority MPs from a range of different backgrounds. Yeah, well now we just have to get to the place where we're both multiracial democracies who have our stuff together at home and can be reliable abroad.

So that's the moment we keep working for, my friend. Thanks so much for shedding a lot of light on this and for all the work you're doing out there. Really appreciate it. Always good. Always good to speak to you. Thanks so much. Thanks again to David Laney for joining the show. So wait, did Patriots play the Jets next week?

They do, yeah. Who wants to watch that? Five and two Jets. Crap. Yeah, five and two Jets. We suck. We got worked by the Bears. I mean, we just, like, typical jets, like we're on the Ascent, we're PowerBets,

incredible rookie running back. He breaks, like, a 70-yard touchdown run, and then he tears his ACL. How he tears his ACL? You know, like, basically, like, not that many plays after he broke this run. So it's not great. But, you know, I'll, uh... My team's always collapses. I'll match you a quarterback controversy.

Because we had, we had Mac Jones starting... You were, like, platooning quarterbacks? Second guy got hurt, and then we put in Bailey Zappy, and then Mac came back. back and then he got benched after like two series. Then Bailey went in and then we play terrible. We got crushed. So now it's going to be like a real debate. Well, Tom Brady sucks now too, so at least you don't feel bad about that. Hey, by the way, listener, we did this at the end for you. We know you don't want to hear this crap. The Knicks are off to a solid two and one start. So all my hope is now going over to the Knicks. There you go. Long season. All right, well, talk to you

guys next week. See it. Potsie of the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Saul Rubin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth to upload our episodes and videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.