TRASHFUTURE - Wes World ft. Sasha Baker

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

Journalist and professional Wes Streeting Watcher Sasha Baker joins us to discuss all things Streeting, as he seems to be more and more likely to be inflicted on us as the next Prime Minister of the UK. But first, May We Meet You?

I just wanted to ask you both a question. May I meet you? You absolutely may. Hussein, may I meet you? It did sort of depends on, like, can you send me a Google, like, calendar and I can I Google meet you? How do you respond to that? I don't know. Well, apparently by marrying Bill Ackman, if you're Neri Oxman.

Like, I don't just want to be someone who professionally follows the strange things that Bill Ackman says. Hey, Riley, you follow the strange things that lots of people say. It's not just Bill Ack. That's true. We got a Stuby update today as well. Oh, yeah, Stooby-Stuby-Doo. Yeah. Welcome to TF.

It is that podcast, again, that you're listening to now. it is Riley Milo Hussain, and we are going to be in the first half talking about a few bits of news items, a little startup that I actually wanted to talk about recently, but it got bumped because there was so much more AI stuff to talk about, unsurprisingly. But in the second half of the episode, we are going to be talking to a freelance journalist and I guess in the context of this show, professional West Streeting watcher. Oh, God, that's even worse than being a professional Bill Ackman watcher. At least Bill Ackman's oddness is entertaining. West Streetings is just off-putting. Yeah, yeah, there's something compelling about Ackman. Oh, yeah, I am fascinated by everything Ackman chooses to be and do. I don't like it, but I find it to be fascinating.

Whereas West Streeting just makes me feel like I want to take a shower every time he talks. Like, brush my teeth. It's horrible. I feel like I'm coated with a film every time I see him. Ugh, awful. Well, we're going to be talking to Sasha in the back half about the putative premiership of West Streeting, his engagement with, let's say, quote-unquote, parents' groups, like Bayswater, which we've talked

to about before on the show, the group itself, not his engagement with it, and then what a potential streeting regime might be like. The glorious streeting regime. Well, quite. But first, the other thing is, you know I have that Google alert on me. Okay. You know I have that Greg Stuby

Google alert on me. And it's interesting, I think, we're jumping over to the states now, because you know I got to talk about my boy. It's interesting the American lawmakers who are like disillusioned by Trump, because we're looking at like Marjorie Taylor Green and Craig Stuby are like the ones that hate him most now. I liked him until he sucked Clinton's dick. I don't even care

that he sucked a dick, but Bill Clinton, come on. Or even if Stuby doesn't hate him now, Stuby is definitely like becoming Trump skeptic because he's like, hey, I thought Trump was going to clean up all the corruption in Washington. And it looks like the bill to avert the government shutdown contains serious individual payouts for basically named Republican senators. This is not the fiscal probity I signed up to enforce. My emails are still going to spam. He's done nothing about it. So this is

like, you know, we all are probably familiar with the, uh, with the fell for it again award meme. And it's like, no one has ever fallen for it again, especially since he fell off a roof a couple years ago. Again, professional Stuby watcher over here. Absolutely. No one has ever fallen for it again like Greg Stuby. Uh, so yes, he

is, he voted a, he was one of the two Republicans to vote against the government shutdown bill, specifically. specifically because he called this a single provision in it, an absolutely atrocious and self-dealing designed to enrich eight particular senators, such as Lindsay Graham and Rick Scott, who had their phone records accessed during the Biden administration's special counsel investigation led by Jack Smith,

where any time they subpoenaed the phone records, they could sue the government for half a million dollars, at least. You know, this is also becoming very common with Trump himself and his family members being like, yeah, we're just going to keep suing. We're just going to keep, we realize we can get money out of the government and in lots of different ways into our own pockets. One of them is with frivolous lawsuits that we're just going to instruct them to roll over on.

And that's not a conflict of interest. No, it's pretty good. Because also, I don't fully understand this. So if they subpoenaed their phone records, but that is like a legal process. Accessed. Like if they went through with accessing the phone records during the investigation,

then they would be able to get a half a million dollar payout per occurrence. And Greg Stuby, the true believer, was flabbergasted by this. He was like, what? Are you saying that some of these people are cynical? Look, I don't know if I'd go that far. Lindsay Graham is a principled man. Well, certainly.

So I could not in good conscience support a resolution that creates a self-indulgent legal provision for certain senators to enrich themselves by suing the Justice Department using taxpayer dollars, said Stuby. So yeah, Stuby is, again, along with Marjorie Taylor Green, being like, hey, I thought I voted for, I was such a Trump supporter because I thought he was a white hat, pedophile. And it turns out he's just a normal pedophile. What the fuck? Yeah. I hate that. Greg Stuby is like, hey,

I supported Trump because I thought he was a businessman who was going to run the government like a business, as opposed to running the government like one of his businesses. I can't believe they're confronting me outside of McDonald's. Wow. Yeah, so, but yes, this is, many of you have sent me the Greg Stuby update as you do with every Greg Stuby update.

And I just want to say to all my Antifa Stuby soldiers out there, thank you very much. Please continue sending me Greg Stuby stuff. It's always a delight. A heartfelt thank you from all of us at the Stubi Brothers podcast. Where Greg Stubi and I are going to start a new podcast, wherever you listen to and live react to every Doobie Brothers album. That's right.

Yeah. The podcast called The Stub Job, maybe. That could be something like a boob job. Oh, right. So it's like, yeah, fine. You're getting surgery to look like Greg Stuby, maybe. I'm going to Turkey to get a stube job. They're going to stupefy me.

It's so cool. There's those, like, plain loads of guys flying back from Turkey. all of whom have had their heads elongated all of whom have had like sort of fake bad muscles put in underneath their skin yeah the sort of Darren Lyon style surgery yeah I just am so sick of like

every man is just realizing that the sexiest thing they can do is to Stubi Max that's right he's a buff guy he survived that fall off the roof there was a dent in the ground but I also wanted to I want to move on to a little bit of news to start up, and then we're going to go talk to Sasha.

And of course, today in cartoonish cruelty deployed by the state updates in Britain, or rather the nobody who participates in Labor Party politics does so for this reason, or at least very few of them do, the new depredations aimed at asylum seekers by Shabana Mahmood. So I think many people have seen this, but there are certain elements of the plans that are very eye-catching for their, I would say astonishing and arbitrary inhumanity. Other elements of the plans are what you might call large marginal changes that will just make life worse for asylum seekers in this country.

I guess that's necessary. Well, I think it's been too easy to be an asylum seeker in this country for too long. Yes. I mean, you know what? The gravy train had to end somewhere. I mean, basically, that's the argument that they're making albeit with like, not saying it directly,

but like the whole purpose of like asylum policy in general has largely been to kind of like, how do you sort of show people that you're making these other people's lives miserable? Because to actually solve the problem would require like, even if you wanted to solve the problem in like a really, really brutal way, right? Like that would require you to actually spend money to do that. Yeah?

Like if you wanted to like actually make the camps, you actually have to put the money in to like make the camps, right? But like, they don't want to do that. Say what you will about the Nazis. They were big public investors. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that you can take whatever I say as you will.

But I think what I'm going to get to is that like, Like, they're trying to sort of, like, initiate, they're trying to issue the cruelty, but, like, on the cheap. And so as a result, like, these things end up becoming, like, not only weirder, but also kind of, you know, you're also sort of still left asking, like, well, this isn't actually going to work anyway, right? So, like, the proposal, at least, like, the headline proposal at the moment was, like, the most egregious thing, I guess, was just like, oh, we're going to, like, seize the assets of, like, asylum seekers coming into the country, which is, like, number one, it's like, if they're seeking asylum, they probably don't have assets, right? So what you actually mean is, like, you're going to, like, take away their watches and, like, the jewelry that they have, you know, whatever's left of them because they've had to probably, like, sell quite a lot of their possessions to even make it over here in the first place. You're going to, like, take that away so you can kind of contribute to, like, their hotel stays. But, like, the point is that, like, you know, you don't, you want to, like, stop the hotel system, but you haven't really got a replacement. I think, I don't know, it keeps on, I keep on going back to this thing about, like, well, either you're trying to project to potential asylum seekers that, like,

Like, if you try to come here, you will have, like, the worst time. You'll have the worst time. We're going to mug you. We're going to have the worst time of your life. There's no point. Sadiq Khan's Londonistan. They're going to have all their jewelry taken off them at knife point immediately. I was just like, I was walking down the street and I was like on my phone texting my wife

about whether like we needed anything for home. And Shabana Mahoodless came on of a moped and like, you know. Snatching a refugee's wedding ring from an e-bike. Well, it's so funny, isn't it? Like the whole idea of like saving money on, on refugees. Because a big thing is that they don't allow asylum seekers to work, which is why they have to support them. And that's been like a subject of a lot of refugee charity campaigning. I know the refugee charity that I've worked with, that's quite a big campaign there is just allowing asylum seekers to work.

And then also like insisting on housing them in hotels, which is expensive. Like the government loves to like rip itself off by being like, oh, I would love to give like a small business landlord tyrant an inordinate amount of money to house refugees in like kind of barely legal conditions. rather than coming up with a solution that works. But no, instead of all that, what I'm going to do is just like steal people's wedding rings like a fucking Nazi would do. Like, yeah, like that's the solution. Thanks, guys, the Labor government.

Yeah, well, this is the thing, right? And I think we allude to this even in the discussion with Sasha, which is all of this, all of this performance, is a reaction to the only bit of the country that anyone seems to want to pretend matters, which is just going to further alienate the supermajority. And I'm not even talking about like, like staunch socialists or leftists. I'm talking about just basic wet liberals. Yeah, normals. People who are currently

voting for Ed Davy. Yeah, this is or people who just aren't going to vote at all because the choices as far as they're concerned seem to be between their, the plate, the people that they've sort of voted for kind of by default for the last several times. Because if you're sort of nice, that's what you do is you vote for the nicer party. And now, nicer party is like, we're going to rob refugees when they get here. Don't worry, we're going to take their most sentimental, precious possession. You know, everything that they could carry, they had to take on their backs. And so nothing you could bring really could be extra weight.

Anything that's valuable and easily saleable that they have borne from their home country that probably has enormous sentimental. We will be stealing that. Yeah. And if you're going to protest against it, you'll get charged under terror legislation. And then you'll be a refugee, simple as, Bush. Yeah. This is like, this is cartoonish.

evil. And the thing is, I've been thinking about this as well. Actually, in the context of Andresen Horowitz, our favorite pointy-headed, yes, that's right. Yeah, can you imagine a future where, like, people go to Turkey

to even look like Andresen Horowitz, Mark Andresen. They go to look like Andresen Horowitz. They go to look like both of them. That's right. Or like double-ended like a card, like a person on a playing card, you know? Well, guys who are going to Turkey

to even look like Mark Andrescent also looked like Greg Stuby, but like the guy, and then getting frustrated because they should have chosen the other one. Yeah. Give me the Stuby body for the Mark Andresen head. What do you want to be like a human drill? Yeah, like a huge buff guy, but with like a

pointy egg head. Like I want a head that looks like weble. You want to look like okay, sorry, if you got the Stuby body and the Andresen head, you would look like a super villain who specialises in ram rating banks. Yeah, you'd look like Humpty Dumpty had done steroids for like a

long time. But what I was thinking of in the context of Andresen Horowitz is the amount that they like to revel in the fact that like Mark Andresen being like responding sarcastically to the idea that hey, maybe when you develop AI you should like consider like if it's good for people, you know, responding sarcasticity, responding sarcastically to the idea that something should be good for someone even. Is it good for me to have a head this shape? No, but I do it anyway. Or even if you look at the, the, the lot of the companies they actually sponsor, It's like the cheat on everything, the infinite AI bot farm, the thing that like will swipe on dating apps for you while you code. These things are like, they've, they've so internalized the Andries and Orowitz people, they've so internalized the like oppositional defiant disorder of like fucking Twitter conservatives that this idea has leached its way into their head in their fund marketing because they're just doing this to get a rise out of people.

And it's the same thing with the fucking government where I genuinely think that they are just doubling down. on this idea that if they can piss off the 60% to 70% of the country that they think is just going to vote for them anyway because they have nowhere else to go, then they can get that 25%, you know, the extra percent are probably just like nonvoters, whatever, whatever. They can get that like reform demographic that fucking hates them anyway. There's no amount of mugging you can do to a refugee as a labor government that will make a reform voter like you. I feel like you've said this dozens of times, but it bears repeating. This is just just going to be the same top thing as every other time they do it because the reform voter

it's all he's been conditioned to just be like why are you only taking their wedding rings why don't you take like they have two kidneys do they need both i don't i don't know what it's from but you know you know the screenshot where it's a black guy in a nazi uniform he says hi i made a reservation under black hitler it feels like that's kind of the situation kissed arm is in because he's trying to win over the nazis and it's like no but the nazis don't care that you're hitler they just care that you're not like you're not going to win them over by being like because you're from the party they don't lie Yeah like everything you do

is soy and woke and you're at war with the people and civil war is inevitable and they're finally going to overthrow the wokes like the Starmer wokeocracy and the performative cruelty is never going to be enough because I think it goes back to something we said years ago that I think also bears repeating

it's not fun for that they're not living out a fun fantasy of revenge through you they are through Nigel Farage right but you're not you're not they're not their avatar of fun. And so your various, like, depredations that you're intending to visit on some of the most vulnerable people that you can possibly reach, it's not even having the intended

effect. Yeah, the missing point, one of the missing points is that, like, these people, the people who you're pandering to don't really care about, like, the technicalities of any policy, right? Like, they're not sort of on the streets, like, demanding that, oh, we want a policy that works in sustainable or whatever. It's like, no, the people who, like, the people who, like, you're placating to you are the ones who just want them out, right? And they want them out as violently as possible.

And, like, if you can't get them out, they want them out. they wanting to treat them as, like, horribly as possible. And, you know, I guess one way, I guess, like, they're sort of heading towards that direction, but it's still like, this only works if you're sort of having fun with it, which, like, none of them really are. And I guess, like, the third sort of thing I've been thinking about is just, like, well, the thing about reform and the reason why, like,

reform are basically, like, able to let the Labour Party, like, lay the groundwork for, like, what it wants to do in government. But even if it doesn't make it in government, like, basically still achieving whatever it wants, is because it's very, like, successfully captured the sort of cultural, like, or it's basically set the dominant, narrative of like the only type of immigration politics you're allowed to have. And the only way to really challenge that is to sort of just, well, you have to really challenge like the

infrastructure that purports that. You have to, you know, I guess like you sort of have to do something that at least the Greens are kind of trying to do and like the Lib Dems to an extent are trying to do. But I guess, I don't know, like it does, it does just sort of feel like you're not really sort of at the forefront of the cultural politics of anti-migration. You are very much just kind of like pandering to people who don't want to vote for you anyway. But also like, it's very clear that you're not having fun with it. And then by extension, like, even if you did all this, they're still going to say that, oh, like, these people, like, you know, these, these immigrants, like, they still kind of get, like, you know, a cushy life. It gets to live on the gravy train and

everything. It's like, no, like, you're taken, you've taken everything away from them and they live in these, like, tiny rooms where they're not allowed to do anything while they have to wait for, like, God knows how long before they're told that. More now, by the way, before they're told that, like, their kind of like, their sort of asylum application is going to be rejected. Well, they say, by the way, refugees will no longer receive automatic and definitely leave to remain after five years. The status will now be temporary and reviewed every two and a half years with those from countries deemed safe to return, required to return home. So it's no longer a route to settlement. People arriving illegally will face a 20 year period

before they can apply to settlement. By the way, there's no legal way to arrive. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's no legal way to arrive because, it just goes back to, you can't, if an airline thinks that you're going somewhere to claim asylum, then they won't fly you there because they're, because they would have to pay to fly you back if you get rejected. Yeah. Right. So there is no legal way to claim asylum. It doesn't work unless you're from like certain specific identified groups like Ukrainians, for example, or sort of Afghan translators, some of them, right? You cannot claim asylum if you're not, there's no legal way to claim asylum if you are not part of an identified, positively selected for program. But Alex Norris, the minister in charge of migration, said, it is right if those people have money in the bank, people have assets like cars and e-bikes,

then they should be contributing. We're not going to be taking people's precious heirlooms off them at the border. How are you bringing that car across the channel? I don't fucking know. It's like they're trying to make migration policy. They don't even understand what people are doing. Where, Alex Norris, are people getting cars and fucking e-bikes as asylum seekers? Did you bring the car on the dingy?

Yeah. Did you sneak the e-bike with you and the underside of the truck? How did you get it here? How did you get it while you're here? I'm the one like Syrian guy who was on the Syrian version of Scrap Heap Challenge. And I've built myself like an amphibious car, which I've used to cross the channel. And now it's being seized off me by Shabana Mahmood. Yeah.

Well, Mahmood said trailing these policies, hey, if you don't like it, you won't like what follows it. We have to do this. But again, it's just like imagining. I don't like it. I won't like what follows it. What do you mean? What follows it is still going to happen. You're going to lose to reform, you fucking idiot.

Yeah, it's like, you know, at this point, the campaign with labor seems to be accepting that they're going to lose the next election and being like, well, we did the best we could to do as much reform stuff, but because we're doing it, it's better as possible. So hopefully they don't have too much left to do. Their reforms transition team. Yes. Yes, they are reforms transition team. Fucking hell.

Yeah, that's the only transition that the Labor Party will be helping with. So I want to talk about one company before we go on. The company is called Objector. Amazing. It's British. Yeah. That's what? It's called Objector.

It's British. No, it's not. And it allows you to object to planning applications. Oh, I was hoping it's going to be weddings, base. No. It's an AI program that allows you to organize mass objections to planning applications. Amazing. They should do.

that for weddings. So it could be like just like the sort of like the computerized voice from the back going, she had sex with the best man four weeks ago. It's like, who's doing this? So this is objector, object to the planning applications of AI. And basically they like, look, you can just drop in like the consultation document. And then again, as they say, their AI tool will automatically create a series of documents for you that you can then submit to the council to make sure we can continue in the great

British tradition of nobody ever doing anything ever. Chat NMB Is that anything? Yes, quite. So they say, we will identify valid objection grounds for the application and rank them by impact so you can prioritize the issues most likely to get your rejection. Created AI powered planning objection letter

in minutes tailored to your key grounds, allow with national and local rules. You can even AI generate a video of you lobbying a counselor. What? How is that way? Like a video to send to a counselor so you can lobby them. amazing perfect you can get a structured ready to deliver speech

tailored to the permitted time limit for your council command attention at planning committee meetings and present your case with confidence and clarity can you imagine the fucking shit that this is spewing out though like what the speeches are like I can't imagine it being like very Ciceronian a lot of delve being used yeah let's uh we do not want

we do not want to allow anyone to delve into the ground to dig the foundations for this awful housing that we hate absolutely not I'm reminded of the Humphrey Smith the uh oh from yes minister no uh that's humphrey appley no humphrey smith the heir to the sam smith brewing club yeah yeah yeah yeah mr tadcaster yeah who just he know he did he did artisan individual planning objections

to like someone building something two towns over in case he ever had to drive past it yeah well he tried to gaslight a whole town literally by making the street labs gas again yeah he was sort of doing the opposite of this where he was putting an insane planning requests and then like making no one else objection he's like you all work in this town again if you object to my plan to turn it into a Victorian workhouse. Yeah, the guy who loves closing pubs. I don't remember which episode that is, but that's a, go revisit that one. I had fun. Yeah, that was a good one. So, but this is, they're taking, they're basically

automating Humphrey Smith. However, I noticed the registered address is in Kent. Always a good sign. Yeah. So, this is from the About Us section of the company. Objector exists because we lived the problem and felt your pain. We spent more than two years fighting a planning application for an unsuitable change of use for a neighboring property. Late nights pouring over planning policy,

writing letters, and trying to be heard in a system that felt like it favored applicants with consultants and money. Save our swingers club. And again, this is true, right? The UK planning system does favor applicants with lots of consultants and money. That's largely because the UK planning system

is hugely underfunded and understaffed. Obviously, planning is largely reactive. The issue isn't fewer rules. The issue is, like so many things, it needs more people who are actually actively engaged in the doing of the thing. Also, let's be clear, everything in Britain favors people with lots of consultants and money. Yeah, true. If there's one thing we believe in strongly in this country, it's that lots of consultants and money should get you success. So we built Objector, this is Hannah and Paul George of Kent.

We built Objector to empower you to have your voice heard quickly, easily, and effectively. It's the first AI toolkit made specifically for residents and communities who want to object to UK planning applications and then get on with your lives. We're not anti-development. We're just pro-fairness. Now, all of this is leading to, what do the two of you think was the planning application that they were fighting for two years that led them to build objector?

I want you both to try and warg into some middle-aged Kent people. I mean, I definitely know what it is, but just for the sake of playing around a bit, I'm going to say, I don't know what else they would object to. I mean, it's definitely like a mosque, isn't it? Milo?

I have also read what it is in the notes. I didn't even see it in the notes. It's just that it's very evident what these people would have object to. Amazingly. You were just immediately there. That's so good. So this is from a Guardian article about the company. Kent residents Hannah and Paul George designed the system

after estimating they spent hundreds of hours attempting to navigate the planning process when they opposed plans to converting a building near their home into a mosque. Perfect. Cool. Yeah. What is the stuff. This is what happens when you give like Kent people

the access to a chat bot they're like, how can I be Islamophobic with this? Yeah, but also like in an incredibly annoying way, which is just like, yeah, just kind of being like pedantic and being like really just sort of like curtain twitchy and like to be honest, like I would also sort of feel like they would kind of do the same thing

to like anyone trying to build like an extension or another car parking space or just like I'm going to grab one thing like a spa complex. Yeah. I've noticed I've noticed your conservatories facing Mecca why is that

don't fobbe me off that's the way the back of the house faces what have you chosen I noticed there's an alcove in your case is that a kibbler a park for children

probably might be another one that would come up so actually like my neighbour's building a big black cube in his back garden yeah

is that up to regs it's over 10 feet yeah yeah it seems that people he's invited his he's invited his friends round to walk around it a few times

I thought they were building a car park but I've actually, I realize I miss her, they're actually building a car bar. I'm not happy about it. Yeah, it's got, it's got a pillar. It's throwing a stone. It says it's a devil.

That's weird. Anyway, anyway, look, I think it's about time for us to go into part two where we're going to talk to Sasha a little bit about the coming streeting regime. So, see you there in just a moment. Bye. Hello everyone from part one.

Welcome to the classic part two. Everyone knows that famous number that comes after one. And what a fun part one it was. It was very good. Enjoyed it. I'm certain it will be great when we recorded eventually. One for the history books. Well,

one for the future history books, you know, referencing a certain movie that you love. But here in part two, we are going to be talking to Sasha Baker, who's making their return to the show, who you may remember from their work with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, reporting on the practices of the Bayswater Group, which is a, let's say, gender-critical organization that lobbies MPs. And we figured, since West Streeting is sort of constantly in the news being pipped as the likely next primary. minister, when Kier Starmor inevitably resigns in disgrace, despite his gigantic majority,

that it would be worth talking about his links with the Bayswater Group in particular. So, without further ado, Sasha, welcome back to the show. Hello, thank you for having me back. Yeah, it is very interesting to see West Streeting being promoted as our probable next prime minister when you are one of the two people who has sort of already exposed the thing that will presumably eventually bring him down when someone decides to notice. We're going to talk a little bit about that, but I think it's worth setting for some context, especially again for American listeners, it might not be so plugged into this,

but right now, we know how elections in this country work, right? Which is you get elected with a gigantic majority off the back of the press, joking sort of fear and panic or sort of rotter contempt for your rival. You win a huge majority that you're unable to do anything with. This has been the case now for years. And then once the national press decides that you are too embarrassing to be allowed to continue, they begin noticing all of the shitty things about you about why you can't govern. And then they begin talking about how statesmen like the person they think will be better in the role is.

And in this case, we can see it happening live with West Streeting, who is being portrayed as moving to the left a little bit by people like Jessica Elgot who could be thought of as like his court journalist, right? Yeah, absolutely. She's really kind of pushing this idea that he's. trying to make amends with all of the people he's annoyed, be that trans children whose suicides he is indifferent to, or Palestinian people who, yes, he is in part of a government that is actively facilitating a genocide, but he did say that Isaac Herzog should answer questions about that. So he's an ally? Quite. He seems to be, look, I have almost less than no interest in the palace politics, the court politics of 10 Downing Street and Westminster between these people as frankly, which one of them is in charge is uninteresting to me. But what they might do with power when they have it is interesting. How they might lie to get it is interesting. And the sort of, I say, enormous contempt that they show for everybody in the country, in the whole process is interesting if, well, frankly, regrettable.

So Jessica Elgot writing on Streeting has said, Streeting's communication skills are often remarked upon, but it was thought he faced a substantial hurdle in winning the votes of the membership, coming from the traditional Blairite wing of the party. He once told a shadow cabinet meeting, quote, every day we should drag a sacred cow of our party, the town marketplace, and slaughter it. He's been outspoken about the need for partnerships to private providers

to help clear the NHS backlog. Elgot didn't, of course, not mention that he's taken hundreds of thousands of pounds from private health care companies and lobbyists. I say he was a fierce and outspoken critic of Jeremy Corbyn's leadership regarding allegations of anti-Semitism, and he infuriated many trans-right supporters in the party for his decision to ban puberty blockers for under 18s. But, and this is the but.

Streeting has been making deliberate efforts in recent months to attack to the left, especially on issues such as Palestine, as you mentioned, Sasha, and on anti-racism, two issues which he feels very strongly about and can speak authentically. So basically, Jessica Elgod is saying, remember what we tried to do with this guy? What if we did it with this guy? The second guy?

What if we pretended that he was going to take seriously all of the things that this government is doing that supermajorities of this people in this country hate and was going to do something different, only for him to then, of course, double down on all of it? Yeah, what if we trick the Labor membership into doing the exact same thing we tricked them into doing five years ago?

Yeah, quite. And so this is the table that we're setting here, right? Which is West Streeting is being, basically agreed upon that he's going to be the next leader of the Labor Party and therefore the next prime minister of the country should everyone's plans get carried off. I mean, we've seen these people fuck up before, but that seems to be the House favorite, despite the fact that MPs hate him, the membership hates him. He's being talked about is the only option, you know, therefore limiting what can be thought of. But I think, now let's do this, because

we're focusing primarily on his relationship with the Bayeswater group. Let's remind everybody what the Bayeswater group is and does. And then let's talk about Streetings, links with it, how he's met with them, and maybe why he chooses to promote them. Yeah. So I think last time I talked about this, I had to be very legaled. Since then, I've tweeted this dozens of times and no one's come for me. So the Bayeswater is a conversion therapy advocacy group that actively engages in child abuse

against their trans children. They are all parents of trans children. since I last came on, Valeria, who I came on with, and I have uncovered and exposed not only that Miriam Kate's a right-wing conservative MP, who was at the center of our original reporting on Bayswater, has this close connection to them, but that in fact the group also has ties to West Streeting, who is, you know, in many ways labors Merriam Kate, but also is in a far greater position of power that Miriam Cates ever was, arguably. So Bayswater have done things like preventing their children from accessing rape crisis services

because the child would be called by the name and pronouns they won't use and that's unacceptable to these parents. They've taken their kids out of school, generally tried to cut them off from sources of support, prevented them from accessing child line, you know, all the kinds of things that loving parents do. But West Streeting has lots of sympathy for them, as he expressed in a interview with some weird gender critical activist ahead of last year's election, and he has in government continued to offer them a platform, both a meeting with them and a bunch of other transphobic groups collectively last July, and allowing them to participate in the consultation on the ban on puberty blockers ahead of the ban last December, or ahead of

of making the ban permanent, I should say. The ban actually was started by the previous Conservative Health Secretary. And, you know, I've tried to speak to him, or not speak to him, but I've tried to ask for comment in articles about the sort of child abuse that he is supporting several times say, will you distance yourself from these people? And he doesn't consider that worth commenting upon, which I think speaks to the fact that he is just completely indifferent to trans children suffering. We know this anyway, because there's a group called trans kids deserve better,

unlike Bayswater, not involved in that consultation, who've been trying to meet with him for a long time, he will not meet with them, who leave tiny little coffins, or for a year, I think, left tiny little paper coffins outside his office as part of a campaign that they called Kids Are Dying West, and his constituency office just repeatedly threw those away and continued to not meet with them. He is truly, truly indifferent to the deaths of trans children as far as I can see.

So, yeah, this is a horrible, horrible man. And I think that this alone should be disqualifying for him to be prime minister. But because we have a media environment that is completely indifferent to trans people, if not actively hostile, mostly actively hostile, to be honest, it doesn't matter. Well, if we want to talk about things not mattering, because again, this is not, what Streeting's engagement with this group is not new. This is something he's done for a while. He's also been a front runner to replace the leadership of the Starmer's leadership for a while

because Starmer's been embattled for so fucking long. He's also been health secretary for a while. We also had the same body shape as well. Have you seen photos of them together? Like they have the same type of like, someone pointed this out and I like every time I hear them both now, I just kind of think, but yeah, they have the same like shapelessness. What do you think he's a clone? You know those dolls that you can knock over and then they'll sort of stab.

hand up on their own again. Like a boxing trainer doll? No, like a little wooden one. Okay, see. But what I was going to say is, there is the reporting on Streetings links with Bayswater, which, again, is, I think,

should be actively concerning if you are at all concerned with the welfare of trans and gender non-conforming people. It's limited to TBIJ, Pink News, and then a... Puref and Trans Safety Network. Yes.

It is impossible. It is not less. what you might call like sort of particular specialist news sources by and for queer people. It is not made it into The Guardian, obviously, because they'd support it. It's not made it into the BBC even, right? If you look like the most recent mention on the BBC of Bayswater and West Streeting is an article from 2024, and they're not mentioned as having any association with one another, rather a woman who is part of the Bayswater group, which is described as a collection of parents with children who are questioning their gender, who say they're wary

of medical solutions to gender dysphoria, welcomed the ban on puberty blockers. Yes, I complained to the BBC about that article, and I was told that my reporting on, you know, the extents of child abuse these people do, you know, as I said, things like not allowing their children to access, like rape crisis center or childline. The idea that that would be abusive was my opinion,

though not one that for the sake of balance, they felt the need to reflect in the article. no of course you have to understand you're an activist and so your opinion is not in the balance equation your opinion is always unbalanced correct yeah absolutely

any case any case so there has been I would say deafening silence all of the great and the good of the British media on Streeting's relationship with Bayeswater but now let's talk a little bit more about what that relationship actually is we've said what Bayeswater are we set the table as to where

Streeting is on the chessboard and we know they have our relationship, but let's get into some details. I mean, there's not that much detail beyond, you know, we know that they have met at least twice. We know that West Streeting is deeply sympathetic to the trauma that he thinks some of them have experienced. He said that in an interview. And we know that they were consulted as part of the ban on puberty blockers. Beyond that, it's hard to say that much. But I think even just that alone kind of paints a picture of, you know, these people have a degree of influence. Certainly they, like, also have had an influence on education policy.

It's not only streeting. But I would say, and I don't think this would be particularly controversial, he within the cabinet is the most kind of virulently anti-trans person among a group of pretty virulently anti-trans people. I think what it really says that he just doesn't feel the need to deign to comment upon it, is that he knows that the media isn't going to, or the mainstream media is not going to ask him questions about that. Or the only question they might ask is, why didn't you let them do more?

Why didn't you just let them write the policy? I mean, I think that is what they're asking. I think if you ask Bayswater about their view on streeting, they would say they're absolutely outraged that he is allowing the study on puberty blockers to go ahead. They think it shouldn't happen at all. That's the opinion that Bayswater is representing in. in the article that you mentioned, that BBC article. And so I have a, I actually have your words right here for the Queer AF article.

So what do West Streeting actually say about the Bayswater Group? So in response to a question about ensuring relatives are not held accountable for their actions by labors proposed banning conversion therapy, the health secretary states that families have often, quote, felt cut out of the conversation about children's health care. Despite committing to the party to an inclusive convergent therapy therapy ban in the interview, he added, having met with the Bayswater parents, I think I go so far as to say this has been a traumatic experience for some of these families and that's really stuck with me. So yeah, the people who must be protected, of course, are the scared and angry parents of trans children who want to like

joke with it around with one another about like putting Tabasco sauce in makeup if they don't believe that their child should be engaging in makeup, uh, wearing, for example. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if you look at the way that these children are treated when they do try to like stand up to their parents, like, Valeria and I have now spoken to, like, 17-year-olds who really are extremely disempowered by the fact that everyone is on their transphobic parents' side in who has a position of power, you know, one person we spoke to wanted to be taken out of the family home, but like children, after enduring horrific abuse, including sexual abuse from their parents, But children's services said that because it's all of a sort of transphobic bent or of a bent where they're trying to get the child not to be trans.

That's a matter of opinion for the parents. Everything's always a matter of opinion, which allows people to not do anything about it. Yeah. And I think you don't even need to read so many tea, as you've alluded to, you don't need to read so many tea leaves to conclude that West Streeting premiership, no matter what he says now, right? because you can even see him trying to walk back some of this stuff. No matter what he says now would be utterly disastrous because he, if anything, seems more committed to active transphobia than Starmer and the people around him.

I think it is correct. I also question if he's actually trying to walk it back. I think Elgot's trying to make it look like he's walking it back. Yeah, I think that's right. Where she says, like, in an olive branch to trans people, he said that, you know, I just want you to see that this is all for your own good or whatever. Like, that's what he's always said.

He's always said I'm doing this because I care about everyone having safe health care and I don't want trans people to be killing themselves or whatever. But, like, that is sort of belied by his actions. Like, I think, as you said, he's trying to walk some of it back. You know, he's taking kind of easy hits when he can get them in terms of, like, seeing something anti-racist. I mean, the anti-racist thing he said is that you shouldn't complain about there being, like people of color in adverts, which

I mean, it's true, but I wouldn't say it's particularly radical. It always goes back to fucking adverts, I swear to God. Well, he was responding to Sarah Pochin, is that the reform MP? Yes. Yes, he was she made a big hue and cry about the fact that she didn't like the

adverts because she's like, I'm, I deserve to be advertised to. All the advertising should be for me because that's the only thing we really have is a culture. Right. And then he, you know, courageously said that was racist. and now he's like a woke king, apparently. You know, meanwhile, he'll still say things like,

oh, but you know, you have to be sensitive to people's legitimate concerns about immigration. I mean, in an act of self-harm, I watched him on LBC with Nick Ferrari ahead of this. And, you know, he's trying to say like, oh, yeah, no, there is like a tide of racism in this country, which I'm sure, you know, we all feel there definitely is. But you can't really say that while also being like, well, you know, people are right to have concerns about immigration and using the phrase illegal immigration for asylum seekers. Like, you know, he's kind of, he's saying he's doing anti-racism and at the same time playing into the dominant current of racism that is at issue right now. And I mean, it is quite galling just to see the Starmer playbook being run again, but stupider and lower effort. At least Starmer pretended to have pledges.

West streeting is I don't know give him some fucking sound bites I don't care I'm going to be Prime Minister regardless because I'm willing to like you know

just absolutely slit everybody's throat in front of me in order to like be in charge of a failing state for three months before Nigel Farage comes into power you know the low effortness

is very galling yeah I mean I think because he's in the cabinet he's more constrained in what he can actually pretend to believe because he can't pretend to believe anything

that would go against the current government. Of course. You know, and I mean, this is, he's got sort of months and months of sort of fine form in this regard. I mean, you know, and he was, he has as recently as April been saying, oh, yeah, trans people are not the gender they say they are like fully flat out. No, like, oh, we're waiting for the guidance.

He's like, no, absolutely not. I remember even, um, a couple of years ago, he went on LBC and just, and he was asked the sort of the classic stupid fucking question that I think anyone with half a brain to just say, this is a dumb question I'm not answering it, is the old can women have a penis question. And he, the big fucking little grin on his face, just like, no, that's ridiculous. And, uh, yeah, I can not that question is ridiculous, but no, I agree with the premise of the question and no, they cannot. You know, as again, just being like, okay, you are now just doing what a legion of failed politicians in the states have done, I think. And you are allowing the internet and what you,

and stuff you read on the internet and wanting to have good posts to dictate what it is that you say and you're just entirely reactive to what you think people already want to hear in a very, let's say already tilted to the right media ecosystem. And it's disheartening beyond the fact that West Streeting in any position of power is harmful for the vast majority of people. It's especially harmful for trans people. And it seems, I don't want to say it seems inevitable because he also is widely disliked. He's just being pipped by the press is the next obvious choice. But that, you know, you can see that he's just going to follow the same road as every other

politician who just decides, I'm going to do what seems to be popular on Twitter. I'm going to do, which is like, I'm just going to be grandstandingly anti-progressive in whatever culture war, the Murdoch Press decides to toss my way. And not only is it going to fail as a political project, but it's going to, it's the 90th time they've done this experiment and it's experimenting with the lives and well-being of other people who are vulnerable in some way. And it's just going to be the same thing again. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, you know, even in the last kind of few weeks, he's been, like, he felt the need to comment that some trans activists who, like, vandalized a conference center in Brighton that was holding like a, like an anti-trans conference, like, he felt the need to comment on that and be like, this is unacceptable, like, you have to, you know, you can't do this to women. I'm standing up for women's rights. Meanwhile, you know, in his actual job as health secretary, he has canceled, like, a women's health

hub pilot. He's, like, been, like, just basically constantly briefing against NHS staff who are 76% women. I mean, his attitude to the BMA is crazy. He's basically trying, he seems like he's trying to bait them into striking again right now at the time of recording. I mean, he's called them a cartel and he gets really. really worked up as well. And he lies. You know, he said they don't represent their members.

And even on the DSHC website, there's a bit where they sort of do some math and say, well, actually, under half of FY1 doctors, the group who have been balloted for strike action, voted to strike. Except that figure includes all FY1 doctors. And if you look at the figure of FY1 doctors in the union, of the people who were balloted, I think two thirds voted and 97% of those voted for strike action. So to say that they don't represent their members is just untrue. I think what he means is they do not represent the people who have given me huge amounts of money over the last 10 years or so.

So the thing is also, this is this is a guy who is more than happy to be the face of that, right? And I think you have to understand any modicum of popularity he enjoys as something that is being done. to you. West Streeting, it cannot be said often enough, is being inflicted upon you. Nobody is choosing him, basically. Absolutely. Back to what he said about that conference just before we wrap up here. He also is such a very strange way of talking where he said this kind of violent direct action is disgraceful. It is designed to intimidate people, in this case, women, into silence. And the people, in this case, women, is such a very strange sentence construction. He needs to remind himself that women are people.

He doesn't really instinctively get there. Yeah, so people, a subcategor of which is women, by the way, all have you know. I feel like it's so fascinating to kind of like present him as being like Fierra parent because he lacks so much charisma. And I feel like any sort of ordinary person would sort of look at him and be like, okay, this is the guy that you want to like lead your party that is like polling at like God knows like what percentage at the moment is deeply, deeply unpopular. and at the stage, at this current stage, like, it's probably not going to come back in, like, any sort of recoverable way. And it's likely to lose his seat at the next election.

Yeah, well, and in that way, it's kind of like, okay, fine, do it. And then at least, like, you know, there'll be some kind of, like, fun bits in the horrors. Yeah, I don't know. I just kind of, I mean, like, I keep going back to just the thing, like,

he's always been very deeply cynical in terms of his kind of, like, ambition to, like, kind of just lead the past, or, like, sort of, like, sort of, like, be prime minister and not really kind of, like, again, it's very much just like, oh, you want to have the thing, but you don't really have an idea of, like, what you want to do with it. And it's why, like, you know, when, um, he, he, like, said on, even on one of the TV shows or, like,

maybe online when, um, when, um, Mdani won in New York, he was like, oh, we have, like, a lot to learn from him. But he didn't actually, like, say, like, what it was, right? Because, like, my thing was like, oh, well, yeah, you had a lot to learn from him in the sense of like, okay, well, if you, like, actually believe the stuff that you say and, you know, you sort of build a movement that doesn't rely on, like, donations or big money. And, like, you know, you actually sort of show that you. care about people, then yeah, you can probably, like, achieve something politically, right? Like, those sort of seem to be the main kind of, like, takeaways from that election.

But, and so I'm so confused about, like, what did he see in Matt and was just like, yeah, like, does he just, does he see himself as, like, the white zoran? Because, like, I think it's just online video. I think he's like, we need to get good at online video and then that'll fix everything. Yeah, and I think, and I think there is this element of like, oh, he's like younger and so therefore he'll be more dimensig. Yeah, he's younger, but he's still like a fucking loser, right? He's still like, he's still like kind of unable to be friends with anyone.

And I think, and this is it. It's like, it's not really about him. It's about the Labour Party in and of itself. And it's about how it's structured. And it's about like the, like what it became after it purged, what was left of the left. Built this, you know, the sort of party that was left was kind of like one that was apparently primed for office. But again, as we've sort of spoken out on the show before, primarily like, due to kind of like dissatisfaction with the other, you know, with the Tory party,

but also just like the sense of they had done enough kind of like, at the time, they had done enough placating of the press to sort of be like, okay, we'll give you a shot. And then within like a few months of them coming into office, it's just like, nope, actually we're going to continue bullying you.

We're going to continue calling you like Marxist, communist, etc. And we're going to like just continue making you do the stuff that like we, not even are telling you, but we're sort of pushing you towards, right? And like, I don't know. I just, it does just kind of feel as if like this is a, a problem that is more to do with the Labor Party in and of itself, and it doesn't really

matter who you replace it with, because like the reason why they can sort of like come in with these promises and then sort of once they kind of assume the position to be like, oh, actually we can't do any of those, but we are going to like make things worse and we are going to make things more authoritarian and we are going to like relinquish more of like state control to tech companies and stuff like that. I mean, speaking of state control to tech companies, this is probably an insane question to ask anyone in the world except Riley, but have you read the NHS 10 year plan. I actually have not read the NHS 10 year plan yet. Okay, well, I have. It is, oh my God. So basically, it's like they want to take hospital care and put that in secondary care and they want to put secondary care and primary care and they want to make primary care mostly a chat bot. Oh, yes. Yes. So my engagement with this comes from streetings discussions of his trips to Singapore, where he goes and is like, wow, there's an iPad doctor here. We should have that in the UK, basically. and the idea, oh, we want it to be more proactive

and want to do preventative medicine, which is all well and good. But as far as I'm aware, Sashabby, you've read this more than I have, they want to do that without spending any money. Yeah, they don't want to spend any money. I mean, they're laying off 18,000 NHS administrators now, which they're going to, I assume the plan is replace with AI.

They want to replace a lot of things with AI. They think they can solve the problems with the ambulance service by using AI. They want to make healthcare, basically, an app on your phone, which is AI. But also, I mean, this is maybe a little bit conspiratorial, but a lot of the stuff they want to do around centralizing data collection, you know, it's not so much so they can save money, but it is so they can profit off of our data as patients.

Like, it's so valuable. Yeah, this is something that they discussed overtly, which is, oh, yeah, the NHS is this wonderful resource that we can sell that we're not using, which is probably the single largest potential database of rich medical information ever created in history. Right. And yeah, it's like, hey, we could sell, as opposed to, hey, we could use that for, you know, preventative medicine. It's like, we could sell that to Palantir. Pretty good.

Yeah, sell it to Palantir for 300 and something million pounds when it will apparently take over 20 billion to digitize the whole NHS. Sounds like a good deal. Yeah. No, not even so much that they would sell it to Palantir, but they would use Palantir to plumb it altogether to then sell it to pharmaceutical companies. And of course, Palantir being an apolitical company headed up by not a sort of evil vampire person,

would definitely never capitalize on that for political purposes, ever. No. I mean, you know, don't look at who the grandfather of the current UK head of Palantir is. And if you don't know who Sachs is referring to, of course, it is Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascist grandson. So pretty good, pretty good. West Streeting, can't wait for you to be Prime Minister to, if anything, amplify, as we've discussed today, I think, amplify some of the specific and general awfulness of the thousand-year Starmer regime. All hail. Yes, that's right.

Sasha, I want to thank you very much for coming and chatting to us today. Where can people find more of your work on the internet? So I am a freelancer, so I work across a bunch of places. you can follow me at Sasha 98 at B-sky.com. Social. I'm regrettably still on X, Sasha Baker 98, and yeah, that's probably where you can find me. If I put out any articles, I will post them on there. Well, thank you very much.

And anyway, back to us for the final sign-off and little ending errata. See you in a moment. And what a part two it was. A charming part two. Sorry, I didn't say much. No, that's all right. You know, you were just, you were enraptured. Yeah, yeah.

That's where I was. So thank you again to Sasha for coming on and talking to us. Thank you for listening. There was a course of Patreon. There will be a second episode. This week, it's going to be five bucks a month to get it. You know the deal. Also.

You can, should and must. New limited series on the Patreon The Boney Island Whitefish is back And it includes the third whitefish So it is now me, Andrew Law And Devon Who will be watching every episode of season Six of the show Bones, the only season of the show Bones ever made

Now that's what I call whitebait What About Season 5, which you also talked about I have no idea of what you're talking about The Men in Black, the Bones laser has been flashed into your eye Bones, forget these bones in bone storage So, yes, there is also the Boney Island Whitefish has returned. I think we've done four episodes.

It's been a great time. So, Myel, you have a list of cities to read out. I absolutely do. I'm doing a work in progress in London on the 30th of November. That's quite a big room. So if you're in London, please come to that. I'm also doing tour dates in Bath and Bristol. That's Harrowseing, sorry to offend those on the 2nd and 3rd of December.

And then in 2026, I'm doing a little European tour. January 28th. I'm in Luxembourg, 29th, Paris, Rotterdam, 31st, Brussels, 1st of Feb, Amsterdam. And then early February, I'm also doing some dates all over Ireland. I'm not sure which of those are on sale yet. I think Dublin is. But yeah, so, yeah, check those out. Mylovers.com.

UK slash live show. All right. Well, in that case, we will see you in a couple of days on the bonus. Bye, everyone. Bye. Stop taking up.