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Coco Khan Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Coco Khan. And I'm Sophie Duker. So, attentive listeners and watchers will notice that Sophie is not, in fact, Nish Kumar.
Sophie Duker No, but I am still a black slash brown person that makes bigots angry.
Coco Khan We didn't want to lower the diversity count, you see.
Sophie Duker Oh, no, of course, yeah.
Coco Khan No. Curly hair, big thoughts. (.) Sophie is stepping in the hot seat this week while Nish is off having a break, which is good because he doesn't take breaks, an aside. Sophie is a comedian and writer. She's performed at the likes of Live at the Apollo Mock the Week, and she's actually won both Taskmaster and Celebrity Mastermind. Here's a taster of Sophie at work.
Sophie Duker I know some people don't like it when you talk about identities. They don't like it when gay comedians talk about gay stuff or women comics talk about girl stuff or Croatian comedians bang on about Croatia. (...) If I don't talk about my pain on stage, how else will I make my therapy tax deductible?
Sanam A little cutie, monetise the trauma. (.)
Coco Khan Right, so Sophie, brace yourself. It is not a light week to be cutting your teeth on a politics podcast. On the show today, we're asking, genuinely asking, is this World War III as conflict escalates across the Middle East?
Sophie Duker Yes, it's bleak. And as oil prices surge because of this conflict, inflation will too, which is bad news for a chancellor who has just delivered her spring statement on the economy.
Coco Khan Okay, so first up, the small task of catching you all up on World War III. So on Saturday, all eyes turned to Iran after the United States and Israel launched a full-blown attack on the country. The Ayatollah hominy, that's Iran's supreme leader for the last 37 years, was killed along with senior figures from the regime.
Sophie Duker And before the world had time to absorb that shock, Iran retaliated, launching a barrage of strikes targeting Israeli and American bases across the Gulf, including Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, the UAE and Bahrain, as well as some civilian locations like hotels.
Coco Khan So far, the Iranian Red Crescent Society has estimated that more than 1,000 people have been killed in Iran since the conflict began. Among them were 165 schoolgirls and staff after a primary school was bombed, the worst mass casualty so far. Meanwhile, influencers in Doha and Dubai turned war correspondents, capturing bombs raining down over luxury skylines.
Sophie Duker This situation is moving extremely quickly. As we record on Wednesday, there are overnight reports of explosions across Iran and Lebanon from Israeli strikes, and Iran has continued to carry out drone attacks. An emergency evacuation flight is due to leave from Amman tonight, but thousands of Britons are thought to be stuck in the region. And, as we'll discuss later, the economic consequences of this war are already being felt globally.
Coco Khan So, initially, Keir Starmer had refused to let the US use British bases to bomb Iran, but on Sunday, the Prime Minister changed tack, posting this recorded statement saying that there would be some support, but only in a limited way.
Speaker (clip) The United States has requested permission to use British bases for that specific and limited defensive purpose. We have taken the decision to accept this request.
Coco Khan My God, I mean, it's like describing specific, defensive, limited, I was like, are you talking about how you speak? You speak to us, the public?
Sophie Duker Specific and very precisely.
Coco Khan And extremely defensive, because you know this is very bad, what you're doing?
Sophie Duker I mean, it's him doing a U-turn and being like, yeah, well, we will, actually. Yeah, well, yeah, now they've asked twice, we'll just allow them to use British bases. (.) I mean, obviously, this is something that pleases no one, but he's just, he's not managing to stand strong against Trump. He's not fulfilling, like, Trump's disappointed with him because he's not, you know, out for, out to destroy all of the Middle East and giving him carte blanche and everything. It just feels like a sort of tail between his legs admission that he's essentially being pressured into something that is abhorrent.
Coco Khan Oh, goodness me. And, you know, like, he cannot pretend that he wasn't to know how controversial this would be. He's being hammered in pretty much all directions. So the Greens, Lib Dems and some Labour backbenchers have been saying quite vocally, quite publicly, that all of this should have been put to a vote in Parliament. Donald Trump slammed him for not moving fast enough, though. And it sort of seems that despite those plethora of voices versus the single voice of Donald Trump, we sort of get the sense about which was more powerful. So in an interview with The Sun, Trump lamented the fact that the special relationship was not like it used to be. And he later said, this is not Winston Churchill we're dealing with.
Sophie Duker Starmer is feeling the pressure, however, as Trump threatened to cut all trade in Spain after, unlike the UK, their PM, Pedro Sanchez, refused to let the US use its air bases. In response to the president's catty comments, Starmer had this to say at PMQs.
Speaker (clip) What I was not prepared to do on Saturday was for the UK to join a war unless I was satisfied there was a lawful basis and a viable thought-through plan. That remains my position.
Coco Khan Now, Starmer has been at pains to insist that the UK involvement in US strikes on Iran is defensive. Now, this is obviously an extremely blurry line. What is clear, though, is that, like it or not, Britain is now very much involved in this chaos. So on Sunday, a British RAF base on Cyprus was struck by a drone. And on Tuesday, the government confirmed it is sending a Navy warship to defend it.
Sophie Duker Now, if like me, you need just a moment to figure out how we got here in the first place, our special guest, Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, is here to help.
Coco Khan Sanam is a peace strategist, founder and CEO of the International Civil Society Action Network, or ICANN. She's Iranian-British. She's a commentator on Iran and has spent nearly three decades working on global conflicts and peacebuilding. She was awarded an MBE for her services to international peacebuilding and women's rights and was an architect of the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. She also has a podcast, by the way. It's called If You Were In Charge. So she's basically your classic woman underachiever. Welcome to Pod Save the UK, Sanam. Thank you very much. I really wish we had you on this show in better circumstances. There's clearly so much you could talk about. I do just want to ask you, how are you? How are your family? I know you still have family in Iran. This must be scary.
Sanam Thank you very much for having me. We have a little meme going around in Farsi that says, I'm okay, but don't ask me how I am because I will cry. And I think that that's really the state that we're all in. You wake up in the morning and, you know, you go on your social media and you hear that B-52 bombers, which are these gigantic monsters of planes that drop. I don't really understand the military, you know, 170,000 tons, you know, like these things that it's all the military gizmo stuff. But it's these gigantic planes dropping gigantic bombs that are now, they have shockwaves in a city of 15 million people. They've bombed 10 hospitals already, neonatal units, schools. 181 kids under the age of 10 have already been documented as having died. Over 1,000 civilians have already died. We don't know how many soldiers. And in Iran, you know, Iran has the old-fashioned draft. So it's just, you know, if you're 18, 19 years old as a boy, you get sent off to the barracks. And we don't know how many of them have been killed. So this morning I woke up and I was like, I wish it was yesterday morning and the day before and the day before. So that's how it is for us right now.
Coco Khan We have the comfort in the UK of not having necessarily felt war directly. But what you've described there is that essentially every single citizen will know someone affected by this.
Sanam Absolutely, because this is an illegal war, whatever that means. You know, no war is ever good. But we've had situations where the Security Council gets together and they make some determination that, you know, we have to go to war. Often very circumspect and dodgy. But in this particular case, there is no agreement. It was a preemptive strike. There was no reason for it. All of the rationale that they gave of nuclear weapons, it's all false. And everybody's coming out and saying it was false. And there were in the middle of negotiations between the United States and Iran with the Omani foreign minister. And the night before the bombing started, in a very unprecedented way, he came out on American television to say, we're very close to a deal. They have made concessions. You know, we're just ironing out the details. And then the next morning the bombing started. So that's one side of the story. And then the other side of it has been that the Israelis have been working with the Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, who lives in America. He's 66. He's actually never had a job. But, you know, what's that? Yeah. Who needs qualifications to run a country? But he has been almost like a pied piper for Iranians to say, you know, we're going to have freedom. We need the West to come and help us. We need this military attack because we're going to have freedom. (.) And so, you know, lots of people who are desperate and, you know, both in Iran and outside are like, yes, yes, we rally around. We want the military attacks. Assuming that they would be sort of targeted at the heads of the regime, you know, a little bit like kind of Venezuela-style kind of decapitation, as they call it. (.) Completely a misunderstanding the nature of the Iranian state, which is much more complex. But even more so, completely being hoodwinked by what the Israeli agenda was and has been for many, many years in the region, which is expansionist. And so, four days into the war, we're now seeing that they are targeting things like police stations and the infrastructure of governance of the state. So, you know, banks are closed. People can't get their money out. Passport offices are closed. People are trying to leave. You know, yesterday we heard from someone saying they've hit the police station, so the policemen are out in the streets. You know, so you're creating a sense of statelessness, right, of absolute chaos, because they want the country to be fragmented. And this is just four days in. So that's one side. And then the Iranian regime has been retaliating, and they are fighting the might of the American military power. And so their strategy from the beginning, and they said, if you come at us, we will come at your bases. So they've been targeting the American military bases, some economic infrastructure, like the Americans moved their soldiers from bases to hotels. And so they targeted the hotels, right? So they're trying to inflict both economic pain and militarily kind of cause some damage. And then our government suddenly gets involved. And this is where I'm, like, what are we doing? This is an illegal war. There are war crimes being committed in Iran by the Israelis and the Americans. We are putting our own troops at risk. For what? That, why? Why, you know, why are we signing up to this nonsense and this travesty? Because this is, this is, this is just, as I say, four days in, and this is the situation we're in.
Coco Khan Israel and the U.S. have said that the strikes were preventative, meaning that they were to prevent Iran from developing a capacity to be a threat. There used to be claims about the country's nuclear capabilities. But what is the actual truth about these threats from Iran?
Sanam I am no fan of the Iranian regime. I live in, I mean, I came to England because, because they were persecuting my family. So it's not that I have a, you know, I have an affinity at all with this, with the state. I just think that when you go to war against a country of 93 million people, you need to understand, first of all, what is the nature of the state and why and what is it that you're doing and what are the consequences of that? And the question of the nuclear weapons was, they didn't have it, they haven't had it, the IAEA, the UN body that deals with atomic energy and weapons, has again categorically come out and said that they didn't have anything. And frankly, if you remember, in June, the Israelis and the Americans bombed Iran and they said it's, you know, whatever capacity for enriching uranium, et cetera, et cetera, has been disabled. So that's the basic, there's a lie that is being floated around and it's very similar to Iraq, 2003.
Coco Khan But even if that was true, am I right in thinking that waging war to prevent something happening, that's not allowed?
Sanam That's not allowed, no. It's getting a bit minority report that, isn't it?
Coco Khan Like, oh, you might commit a crime, so now we will inflict harm on you and all your services.
Sanam That's right, you might come and rob me blind, so I'm going to come and kill you first. I mean, it doesn't, that's not really how it works. The other thing from a UK standpoint, which really upsets me, is that we sit on this UN Security Council as a permanent member. You know, there are five permanent members and ten that roll in every two years. It's the UK, the US, China, Russia and France. The United Nations was created at the end of World War II with the premise of keeping, giving us some international infrastructure for international law, prevention of war. It's to prevent the scourge of war for future generations. That's what the essence is. The Security Council is the body that's meant to do it. Like, we sit with the greatest responsibility for the prevention of war and upholding international law. We're meant to be the firemen, not the arsonists. (.) And what are we doing kind of enabling all of this? And, you know, the UN didn't come out of just, oh, somebody had a good idea at the end of World War II. It was 500 years of human history of thinking about how do you, you know, put guardrails around how we treat each other and nations and powerful nations and war, you know, sort of might versus law. 500 years, millions and millions of people dying, two world wars, to finally get to this international system that we've all benefited from. The level of irresponsibility is just extraordinary. And we have to ask, why? Why are we doing this? Who's benefiting? What's the end game? What are the risks? And, you know, let's talk about it before we just make the decision to join in. (.....)
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Coco Khan That's shopify.co.uk slash podsave the UK. (.........) I had the misfortune yesterday of having to, I don't know why I do this, I'm clearly a masochist, but sometimes I go into right-wing spaces to, like, talk about the news. (...) And, you know, I'm there talking about international law, you know. Good, isn't it? Isn't it good that we have it? We should try and stick to it. And people talking to you like you're a hippie idiot who doesn't understand the way the world is. And actually, by the time you go to the Security Council, bad people could have come. (.) Anyway, and it's really made me feel that we've lost sense about the sort of world that we want to live in. Like, I don't want to live in a world where might is right. I mean, we're a small nation. It's not a good look for us to live in that world because we will be kicked around. You could argue that we are being kicked around at the moment anyway. It's the same with the situation with Gaza, you know. I had the, I went to go see a talk by the writer, the political thinker, Eche Temokur, and she talked about Gaza being a rehearsal. They want to see what they can get away with. And it's sort of coming true, isn't it? Like, they got away with that. They're going to get away with this. What do we do about it?
Sanam It's interesting. Yeah, Eche is a good friend of mine. And so we talk about all these things and it's true, you know. So what we saw in Gaza is now being played out in Iran. So day one, they targeted a girl's school, an elementary school, you know, little girls. 108 little girls were killed. (.) Immediately they said, oh, it wasn't us. It was a failed, you know, Iranian missile, right? And the journalists and all the, you know, investigative folks are now clued in. So immediately people were doing geospatial things and saying, no, that missile that you're showing is thousands of miles away. It's got nothing to do with the geography of this place, essentially disproving them. So then they said, oh, it's somebody else. And these stories get circulated, that it was themselves. They did it deliberately. It wasn't us, but it was them. And then they did 10 hospitals. And at some point you're like, either you have targeted, sophisticated targeted weapons that can target. You can, you know, you can explode whatever beepers in the pockets of Hezbollah guys, right? Either you have that sophistication or you don't. We suspect that you do. And therefore you are targeting these sites. They targeted a heritage site. We have the Golestan Palace in Tehran. It's got this hall of mirrors. It's from the 18th century. You know, it's been destroyed largely, right? So they do this deliberately. They did it in Gaza. And the other thing that we saw in Gaza, which is now being practiced in Iran, is that they will hit a civilian site. People will come out to help people. And then they'll drop, as people come to help, they drop another bomb. And it's got a name. It's called Double Tap. So this is what is going on. The reason why Gaza is so important is that we fell for the propaganda. And it's drawn us into being aiding and abetting and enabling genocide. And I don't want to be that. I don't want to sort of say, I came to the UK. I had to become a, whatever, refugee when I was a kid from a revolution. And I've gone from having been a refugee to now enabling and aiding genocide with my taxes or, you know, here in America or wherever it is. I think we should, at least let's have a vote. Let's have a referendum or something to say, do we want to or not? You know, something like that. Because these are also all of our resources that are going.
Coco Khan Yeah. And it's not just the moral repugnance of genocide, obviously. You know, they trot out this line that, oh, you know, Iran's a hotbed of terrorism. So it's like, you bombed a little girl's school. You just made a load of terrorists, you know.
Sanam No, and also, who is the terrorist? //S01: Yeah.// I mean, what is terrorism, right? If it's about invoking terror, what are we doing? And it all goes back, you know, literally it all goes back to the question of Palestine. because while all this is happening, in the West Bank, they have been terrorizing people to, you know, and the settlers are there and they're trying to take that land and they're trying to annex it. So making us chase over here and seeing this sort of horror show, meanwhile, they're doing something else over there. And it's been framed as anti-Semitism if we criticize it. This has got nothing to do with Judaism. This is about a political ideology of what I call extreme Zionism, of an expansionist state political ideology. It's not, it's got nothing to do with faith. We have, we have Jews living in Iran, 50 synagogues that have been always active. You know, it's got nothing to do with that. But, but they framed it like that so that, so that they scare us into being silent. And, and at some point you just, you just can't be, you have to speak up. We have a responsibility to say, what is going on? And how, why are we getting dragged into this?
Sophie Duker What you said about, um, terror and who is the terrorist and also about international law, it feels like the strategy has no end game other than to cause that sort of destruction and chaos. It feels like, um, it's almost desirable to kind of like bypass the formalities and exercise that strength. And here in the UK, when we're being like, why is our government involved with this? It doesn't feel like there's any sort of resistance to that ideology. It feels that Starmer's put up a pretense of not going along with it for a while. And then now it's just kind of like, okay, as long as there's the flimsiest, convenient lie for why we should be associated, we'll go along with it.
Coco Khan If I put aside my, put aside my ethics, love saying that, put those aside for a second. (.) Britain not standing up to America and saying, we don't want to be dragged into another illegal war. We've already done this before. It played very, very badly for us. In fact, it kept our government, kept our party out of office for nearly 14 years. And we're in a really bad place. We're not going to do that again. But there's this idea that we have to do it so that we get special treatment. But then you look at the tariffs and we didn't get special treatment. And then you look at big tech and how it's destroying our country. And we don't get any treatment where we can try and legislate or regulate against them because we're told that we can't do that and we should sit down and behave. Is this just Iraq all over again? Is this just a repeat of history?
Sanam It's a combination of things. So from the Middle Eastern standpoint, it is absolutely Iraq all over again. And I wrote about this in 2019 because, you know, every once in a while, there's like the drums of war, of going to war with Iran. And we would, you know, I lived in America and it was like, you know, lots of voices pulling it back and saying diplomacy, et cetera. But imagine this. Imagine that Iraq had turned into a viable democracy governance. They had the oil. They had, there would be a rich country. They had educated people. You know, it could be a pretty, it could be a powerhouse in the region, legitimate political powerhouse. What would they do on the question of Palestine? Would they turn a blind eye and say, oh, we don't mind what Israel is doing? Or would they actually stand up and stand as a kind of bulwark against what Israel was doing? So it's to their benefit that Iraq turned into a mess. Same playbook in Syria, same playbook in Libya. And it's, in a way, it's been three countries that have benefited. So Israel, because it can do whatever it wants, UAE, which became the economic powerhouse. And then, and then also militarily, they started to sort of, you know, trying to push their weight around in places like Yemen. And then Saudi Arabia has been interesting because Saudi Arabia for a number of years was (.) exporting really extreme jihadi sort of Wahhabism, basically. The Saudis then have decided, have realized that this kind of extremism isn't to their benefit. So now they're trying to sort of reform and go in a different direction. And being in the region, they understand that for them to benefit, to prosper, the neighborhood has to be prosperous as well. So there is an alignment between the, you know, Iran and Saudi and the Gulf states and so forth. I also worry about the fact that we are in debt right now economically. And we have housing problems, education problems, healthcare problems, all sorts of things that are related to our human security as a nation, right? And instead, we are borrowing from the future 60 billion pounds to build up weapons, most of which are only genuinely useful if they remain useless. Because if we start, you know, 40 new nuclear warheads, how many of them do we need to use before we're all obliterated, right? So we're putting our money there. It's in private hands. We don't really know. Public money is going into private weapons companies. And we're just being told, you know, this is national security. (.) But nothing is being done for climate resilience, for environmental resilience, as I say, for healthcare, for kids that are coming out of COVID with mental health issues and, you know, insecurity in our communities. But we're just being told to, you know, stick with it, basically. And that bothers me because who's going to pay the cost of that in the future? And global military budget this year is around $3 trillion. (.) That's how much we're spending on weaponry. But the cost of violence, the actual, like, all this devastation that's happened in Ukraine and Gaza and now Iran, it is something like $19 trillion just last year.
Sophie Duker $19 trillion of destruction, the kind of psychological landscape of people, both in the Middle East and in diaspora, has completely decimated. The infrastructure is in tatters. And the real cost and the real wins are so minuscule compared to, yeah, the overarching devastation.
Coco Khan Yeah, but it's the people who devastate rarely feel the repercussions, isn't it? Exactly.
Sanam I mean, somebody said today on, I don't know, I was reading something and they say, you know, the cost, you know, it's going to be a high cost for this. And I'm like, what cost are you paying? The first people that paid are the 108 little girls who died and their families. Like, you make a decision over here and people are dying over there and generations are impacted. And we move on, you know. Maybe this war will last 10 days. Maybe it's two weeks. The new cycle will change. And, yeah, so it's, these are the kinds of things that I, that keep me up at night and make me really upset, yeah.
Coco Khan Oh, I know, I know. I've been feeling really raging recently. I also just like, this is a slight sidebar, but I've really had enough of just men who think about geopolitics like it's football. //S08: Stop wargaming.// Just stop sitting around being like, well, actually, I think this. Stop it. It's not you who's going to get shot, is it? Anyway. Unfortunately. (..)
Sanam It's also, it's also, it's also really sort of extraordinary that, that, that, you know, leadership is kind of, you know, it's as if, if you go and bomb, you're a leader. But if you sit down and talk, oh, you're, you know, you're weak. And I'm like, you're sitting behind your desk ordering a bunch of kids to go and kill and be killed and maim and be maimed. You know, how, how strong is that? Like, what kind of strength is that?
Sophie Duker It's like Trump was saying that it's not exactly Winston Churchill we're dealing with. And it's like, why would you want to be like Winston Churchill? Like, why, why, why is this the, like, the icon? Like, I mean, not, not luckily, like, Keir Starmer is not a Winston Churchill, but like, you want to be like this sort of like, oh, like, callous, arguably white supremacist man, like, just known for his, like, it, yeah.
Coco Khan I mean, I can't even begin to start scratching the surface of the, the white supremacy that is involved in this. But before we let you go, there is this, these war gaming men, they trot out this line, which is that, like, fundamentally, it is America that keeps us safe. So to stay safe, we must follow America, which I find very depressing. thought, and also feels a little bit almost like defeatist in many respects. (.) I understand there are actually a number of routes that could be taken to deescalate this, and the government are choosing not to. I wonder if you could just outline some of those so that the next time we are confronted with this argument, we can say, well, actually, no, you could do this, this, this, this.
Sanam So first of all, the question of America leading, and again, like, is America leading for its own interests, or is it being dragged in by various other interests? That's, that's important. But, but let me give you an example. So they went into Iran, either the Americans or the Israelis, that they're, they're now arguing about who did it, but they, they go and they assassinate Khamenei, the, the Supreme leader in his compound. He sat in his compound and knew that this was going to happen. This is a man who didn't have much of a, genuinely much of a stature and aura in life. 86 years old, has cancer, would have eventually dropped off somehow, you know, like you do. (.) By assassinating him, they sort of elevated his status to imamhood, to martyrdom. What happened there? In Iraq, in, and I'm in, in the network of the, I work with women peace builders in all these places. So as the men are going rah-rah with their guns, I'm dealing with the women who are actually dealing with the consequences and trying to mitigate these. immediately we heard in Iraq, in Pakistan, in Kashmir, in Lebanon, that people are rallying because he was, you know, a figurehead for them. He was kind of some, some kind of spiritual leader. And because he was assassinated, it's almost a sense of revenge. So you have all these people now who are, it's a new generation who is anti-American. If we join in, they're going to be anti-British. They have, in, in Pakistan, they've already gone and raided, you know, sort of, um, the American embassy in, in, in, in Iraq as well. And the, and the ripple effect of that, right? That's already happening in one, but it's, it's, it spreads. So the consequences of our actions aren't being considered. The second thing is, if you are worried about a country having nuclear weapons, we have the systems in place to monitor. We have something called the NP, non-proliferation treaty. Iran is actually a signatory to that. Israel is not, by the way, right? So we have that. They had an agreement, the, the, the, the original nuclear deal that was signed in, in 2015, they had inspections on a regular basis. It was, it, the whole thing was under surveillance. They had cameras, they had people going in to, to observe and so forth. So we were actually using the rule of law to contain, and it was much cheaper than, than, than going and bombing. Iran is a country of 93 million people. You do this, you don't think that we're going to have refugee flows coming out. (.) You don't think that the remnants, whatever the regime is, as they fight, like the Taliban did for 20 years. You don't think that they're going to, I don't know, start producing opium that's going to hit our markets here and, and cause also another opiate crisis. I mean, it's not a vacuum that, that we go into. And I think one of the things that, that really gets me is that there is always a perception, I think it's laced with deep racism in some ways, that we look at these countries over there and we just think that they're stupid brown people or stupid mullahs, whatever, whatever the tropes are that they use. We seem to sort of lurch from war to war. And as I say, each time this happens, there's an uptick in the profits of weapons and of the weapons industry. And, and that, and it's like, how much is that tied with our politicians these days? I don't, you know, I don't know. But I do know that the lobbying that the weapons industry is doing here and in Europe and in America.
Coco Khan Do you think it could spread to, people are saying World War Three. Do you think that's a reasonable?
Sanam I, so, so your, your question about de-escalation, I think, so I think that, you know, we're, we're at this bizarre crossroads because the Israeli agenda is to cause, to cause kind of chaos and, and, and the, you know, the fragmentation of Iran and, and to be able to expand regionally. They're, they're also about to send something like a hundred thousand troops into Lebanon at the, at the, at the moment, right? So that's their interest. The American interest, it keeps changing. The Iranian logic, it's asymmetrical warfare and asymmetrical warfare. You know, they're fighting the regime. They're fighting an existential fight. So for them, so long as they survive and so long as they're doing some, some harm, they are winning, right? So they might escalate. The Iranian people want a different government altogether. But in the meantime, as the war started, it's been hardened. So Khamenei gets killed. The assembly of whatever clerics get together to vote in the new supreme leader. And guess who they bring? His son. His son. He is the most despised person in Iran. And he would never have gotten this position if things had gone, you know, the natural political course, because he had many adversaries inside the system. (.) But they've just voted him to be, to be the guy. At the moment, we're in this fervor of like the fever rising. And that, the consequences are really, really profound. Salam, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Save the UK.
Coco Khan So if you want more on what is going on and what the hell are the US and Israel up to, head over to our sister podcast, Pod Save the World, where Tommy and Ben break down the latest. After the break, has the Middle East conflict made Rachel Reeve's spring statement even more obsolete? (......)
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Speaker How long have you learned about Andrew and Ed's thing?
Coco Khan Now, chancellors don't tend to be a very cheery lot. Even when the news is good, there's never quite enough money to do everything the country needs. But Rachel Reeves must have been feeling quite chipper while preparing for her spring statement over the past few weeks.
Sophie Duker Borrowing was down, fiscal headroom was up, and there was generally less fuss and bother about its content compared to last year's autumn budget, which was, if we're being totally honest, a complete mess from beginning to end.
Coco Khan So as she stood up in the Commons, she must have been absolutely cursing Trump, who managed to ruin all her nicely prepared facts and figures with his ego war in the Middle East.
Sophie Duker It all happened too late to include in her statement there just wasn't enough time to rip it up and start again. So she still had to go through with it and in true Chancellor style, delivered her speech with all the energy of a deflated balloon.
Sophie Duker Did you feel moved? I felt stirred. I felt shaken and stirred by her saying absolutely nothing.
Coco Khan Is it time for the news klaxon? (..) Sound of our life leaving our bodies.
Sophie Duker It's just sort of conveniently ignoring the reality of what's happening. Not only does it not take into account the biggest news story of the week, but also she's just sort of edited it to be like, oh, unemployment is on the run. But we're just not going to talk about that.
Coco Khan Yeah.
Sophie Duker There's nothing to pick her up on because she doesn't talk about anything that's actually currently important to people.
Coco Khan Yeah, exactly. I mean, there were no policies for us to even really dissect. It almost felt like she was just essentially verbalizing a graph. And what she wanted us to take from the graph was that things were getting better. But I think that it forgets the fact that things are really, really bad. So yes, okay. The analysis says that the families will be better off to the tune of £1,000 a year. Which don't get me wrong, £1,000 a year is a lot. But also families are really struggling by significantly more than that. Even when she talks about inflation rates and it's not rising as fast as people think. I mean, you know, the average person doesn't want to see any inflation at all. Economists are happy with 2% because they're like, oh, that won't spook the markets. But fundamentally, like, you know, I don't want to see anything go up. I expect that the Labour Party will feel positive about this speech because it's the first time in a while they've been able to say anything. That's, like, vaguely good. But I did wonder if actually, even us as journalists, like, tuning in for it was pointless because the whole speech was actually just about her talking to her backbenchers saying, stick with us. We're not so bad. She made a couple of digs at reform, which you would expect. There's a lot of, like, unrest within the Labour Party. And I wonder if actually, probably wasn't for the public, probably wasn't for journalists, there wasn't much to say. But saying to other Labour people, stick with us, kid. //S04: Yeah, we're okay.// It's going in the right direction. And then, of course, we have this background note of doom because of gas and oil prices. So everything she said and all the plans could be turned completely on their head because of what's going on. So here's a lovely question for you for your debut on a politics podcast. Why are oil and gas prices surging, Sophie? (..)
Sophie Duker Why are oil and gas prices surging? Are you familiar with the Strait of Hormuz? Oh! Because I was not, prized coming on this podcast, but it is where 20% of the world's oil and gas passes through. So it's a key route for this. And Iran controls the land on the north of the Narrow Sea Passage, has already attached ships in the area. So, yeah, this entire oil and gas route has immediately become incredibly spicy. ships in the area were told that the Strait was closed after the first Israeli attacks. (.) And this didn't count as a legal formal notice, but the risk of attack means that all ships have just stopped where they are. So that's at least 150 tankers at anchor in the Strait of Hormuz area. (.)
Coco Khan I, like you, did not know that much about the Strait of Hormuz. I was joking with Nish in a couple of episodes ago where I, like, because we live in such political times and obviously doing this job, I see politics everywhere. I went past a wine bar that said, like, free Prosecco on the chalkboard and I thought, who's in prison? Is Prosecco a political prisoner? There was a time in my life someone would have said Strait of Hormuz and I would have been like, great drag name. But now, sadly, I know it's the centre of a political crisis that could draw us all into World War 3. I miss the innocent times. I miss it. (.)
Sophie Duker That's so beautiful. I'm just thinking about Strait of Hormuz and, like, they're at. Sashay away. (..) Sashay down the Strait.
Coco Khan It could have been so good. It could have been so good. (..) R.I.P.
Sophie Duker One of the big questions hanging over these forecasts and financial planning is, with an ageing population, how many people will actually be working and paying tax? Because we're told that the recent fall in net migration and the decrease we are expecting this year could derail all of the Chancellor's nice little sums.
Coco Khan Net migration is the level once everyone coming to the UK and everyone leaving the UK is tallied up. So, we will get the numbers for 2025 in May, but experts are predicting that it could be well short of the level that fed into the economic forecast that the Chancellor was talking about this week.
Sophie Duker And what this essentially means is we don't have enough working age people. If people want to have a richer country, then we need to have an active workforce. And unless all the boomers start working into their 80s, that means migrants.
Coco Khan I can't believe you crushed your fingers at boomers working into their 80s.
Sophie Duker I want to see some boomers earning their pay.
Coco Khan Yeah, that's what you really want.
Sophie Duker Hey, I love a boomer in the workplace. They've never been responsible for any complications whatsoever. (..)
Coco Khan It would be very challenging for me because obviously, you know, being of South Nation heritage, there'd just be this really uncomfortable moment where I go to a coffee shop and I ask this pensioner to make me a coffee and then they make it wrong. And then I'll be like, sit down, auntie. I'll make the coffee and I'll go back there. It's just, it's not going to work. Let them retire. //S04: Let them rest.// Let them rest. Let them rest. So what makes it even more infuriating is that the Home Secretary, Siobhanah Mahmood, seems to have decided that the only good migration figure is zero. Maybe even negative zero. She could get away with it. She's pushing on with her crackdown, this time announcing new measures to the asylum system, which kicked in on Monday.
Sophie Duker Basically, the length of leave to remain for successful asylum seekers has been cut in half from five years to two and a half. It sounds straightforward, but as friend of the pod, the immigration expert Zoe Gardner explained on Instagram, it really, really isn't.
Speaker (clip) Its actual impact is going to be disastrous and stupid because when a country is dangerous, dangerous enough that you have to escape it and you would qualify as a refugee, that means it's probably going to be dangerous for a while. That's usually just how things are. Give it 2.5 years or calm down.
Coco Khan God. I just, I find myself, you know that meme of the woman doing maths?
Sophie Duker Oh, yeah.
Coco Khan The confused woman doing maths. //S04: Yeah.// I'm the confused woman doing maths all the time. And I think also part of it is, you must forgive me because I do sound like I've been smoking something, but like, it's all connected, man. It's all connected. You know, in this show, we're talking about Iran and obviously there's going to be a influx of Iranian refugees and they're doing all these political theatre of saying, like, we're trying to liberate the people of Iran, but you haven't given them refugee status. So, what happened then?
Sophie Duker Yeah, you've given permission to destabilise thousands of people, a conservative guess, and then you're not going to let them in. And it sounds good to be like, we've cut it in half or a wonderful 50%, but it doesn't take into account any of the logistics of actually living or settling or recovering from fleeing a country.
Coco Khan Yeah, absolutely. And obviously, part of us all accepting that other human beings live in a way that none of us would find acceptable is because we essentially have to swallow this idea that certain groups, certain races deserve less, are barbaric. They are from chaotic places. They can't run themselves. Anyway, it's been stressing me out, mate.
Sophie Duker Mahmoud is also this month going to stop all student visas from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cameroon and Sudan this month due to what she calls widespread abuse.
Coco Khan I wasn't aware that there was widespread abuse of student visas from students from Myanmar. That feels like, that's just, anyway. (.) Let's try and remember that sometimes good things do happen. Feels like a long time ago. But last week, Hannah Spencer's Green Party. //S05: I know.// That feels like ages ago, doesn't it? Hannah Spencer's Green Party victory. They had victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election. So that's great. We love to see a progressive win here on Pod Save the UK. And Hannah really does seem to offer something distinct from the usual run of politicians. So please do make sure you check out her interview. We interviewed her on this show. It was amazing. It was so great to speak to someone who's clearly authentic and so passionate about the local area. We hope she can bring her energy and enthusiasm for making life better for her constituents.
Sophie Duker Accompanied by two Green MPs, she was sworn in as an MP in the Commons on Monday. And this bit is not important at all. But her coloured suit was amazing.
Coco Khan So recent Sky News and YouGov polling carried out after last week's by-election put the Greens in second place after reform ahead of Labour, who sadly had dropped to third. I mean, obviously, it's amazing that the Greens are proving themselves to be a challenge to Labour because those of us who have felt very disappointed by Labour might start to see Labour hopefully changing a bit of tack. Although very devastating to see reform at the top of that poll. I think that is not making me feel great that bit.
Sophie Duker But I think if there is a silver lining to it, I think it's like the Greens in my lifetime have not really been considered a credible party, a credible alternative. And their rise is not narrativised the same way that reform is, as this kind of like juggernaut staggering drunkenly into British politics, absorbing people from parties as it goes. I think the Greens, by having like a slate of policies that people really respond to, are having these wins that will be much more concrete and much less, I'm hoping, less like a few years down the line, like subject to politicking and, you know, you know, the fact that so many career politicians are kind of joining reform. (.) I'm hoping that good people are actually moving into the Green Party who want to make the world a better place. And that's what I think we've seen with this election. //S01: Yeah.// And I hope to see more of it. So even though it's not as, it doesn't feel as, yeah, overblown as reform, I don't know how reform can sustain itself as a functioning party.
Coco Khan I know, I know. //S04: Into the future.// I mean, it's also, it's just nice to have a viable option that you don't feel bad about after, that you don't have to, like, say, I voted this way, but, and then, you know, explain the reasons. You know, you can just sort of fulsomely say, look, you know, they're authentic. They're trying to do something new. You know, people put a lot of stuff around this idea or they haven't had government before. I don't know. There is a civil service. There is, you know, people who understand our departments work. I'm feeling generally positive about it. Just on this subject, though, because I really have to unburden about this. After the vote, there was all this talk about family voting. (..) The democracy observers who were observing that election said that they saw the highest amounts of cases that they'd ever seen. That amount of cases was 32. And it should be worth mentioning that democracy observers have seen family voting in many.
Sophie Duker What exactly is family voting?
Coco Khan Family voting is where a family go into the polling booth.
Sophie Duker As you might expect, yeah. And so there's a concern that. Oh, to get together.
Coco Khan Yeah, so there's a concern that actually that's one person applying undue pressure on other family members to do that. And obviously, because we're dealing with Muslim communities, the assumption there that it's the patriarch telling the women what to do. The democracy observers didn't notify the police. I would love to see just a little bit more data and evidence about like, you know, other because they've seen them at many elections. I feel like essentially this observation has now snowballed and I'm having to turn on mainstream media and people essentially saying you can't trust the Muslims. They are distorting democracy. I just find it laughable that Matt Goodwin honestly believes that if these male patriarchs didn't tell these 32 women to vote for Greens, that they would vote reform. I just find that absolutely laughable. If they weren't told by their like stereotypical barbaric partners to vote for the woman who is in a party led by a gay Jewish man. Um, just, just, just Matt Goodwin, your Islamophobia doesn't make sense. Just be consistent. All right. That's all I'm saying. Just be consistent. Um, it's that time again, by the way, listeners, we're running a mailbag episode at the start of April. So we'd love to know your questions. Maybe you want to know about my, my conspiracies, or maybe you've got a burning question about actual politics, which is what we should be answering. Please do get your questions in. You can leave them in the comments or email us at PSUK at reducedlistening.co.uk. And that's it. Thanks for listening to Pod Save the UK. Sophie Duker, thank you again for being my co-host. And if our listeners want more of you, what shows do you have coming up?
Sophie Duker I've got my show Hot Beef Injection, which will be...
Coco Khan I'm still struggling to get over Hot Beef Injection.
Sophie Duker Yes, it's called Hot Beef Injection, which I do not regret in the slightest. (..) Hot Beef Injection. A show about sex and privilege, but funny, will be at the Edinburgh Fringe this year in 2026, Melbourne Comedy Festival, New York Comedy Festival. I'm taking it everywhere. And you can always find me online at sophiejukebots.
Coco Khan So Hot Beef Injection, are you talking about... Yeah, I'm talking about... (.) Not about big food. Not about big food. Not about like... Not about ultra-processed food. //S04: No, I'm not talking about stock.//
Sophie Duker I am talking about bat shots. I don't... It's... I'm talking about... Yeah, I'm talking about sex. //S01: Yeah. Okay.// I feel... You seem to be, like, quite existentially deserved by a Hot Beef Injection. (.)
Coco Khan I know I'm never going to forget it now. And now I have to...
Sophie Duker Not everyone experiences Hot Beef Injection. It could be, you know, a Luke Horn, Chipolata. However you like to make love. Okay.
Coco Khan We're very open here on this show. We're very sex positive. Hot Beef Injections. Hot Beef Injection has made it to Pod Save the UK. (...) Also, follow at Pod Save the UK on Instagram, TikTok, X, and Blue Sky. That way you won't miss any of us. And, yeah, Pod Save the UK. It's a reduced listing production for Crooked Media. Bet you didn't know that.
Sophie Duker I do, because I've listened to the pod before, as I'm sure most of the listeners have. And they will know that it is all thanks to lead producer May Robson and digital producer Jacob Liebenberg.
Coco Khan But would they really know that the theme music is by Vasilis Fotopoulos?
Sophie Duker They might not remember that, but they certainly do remember that the engineer, who is wonderful, is Jeet Bassani. And our social media producer is Nada Smiljanić.
Coco Khan Well, brownie points for anyone that remembers the executive producers, who are Kate Fitzsimons and Katie Long, with additional support from Ari Schwartz. And remember... A Hot Beef Injection for those who subscribe.
Sophie Duker A Hot Beef Injection for every subscriber. And you can also get, as well as that lovely, meaty insertion, new shows on Thursdays on Amazon, Spotify, or Apple, wherever you get your podcasts. We don't kink show.
Coco Khan We don't kink show. I do, yes.