Farage’s riot act — How the right is exploiting Henry Nowak’s murder

Like the podcasts but not the adverts? No problem, just support us on Patreon. You'll get every episode without interruptions and you'll be helping independent podcasts like Oh God What Now to thrive. Follow the link in the show notes to find out more. Changes in sexual performance are more common than most people realise, and support doesn't need to feel awkward. With MedExpress, everything happens privately online. Start by completing a short consultation reviewed by UK-registered clinicians. If eligible, treatment is delivered discreetly to your home, with ongoing support whenever you need it. You're not alone in this. Visit medexpress.co.uk slash podcast to learn more. Hello and welcome to Oh God What Now, the politics podcast that promises consistency, even after two glasses of wine. I'm Zoe Grunewald. On today's show, the violence that erupted in Southampton on Tuesday, in the wake of revelations about how the police treated murder victim Henry Novak, has led to politicians agonising over the correct response, while Nigel Farage has been accused of provoking the violence by calling for pure, cold rage from the public. The far right is clearly weaponising the murder by a Sikh man, but how badly wrong did the police get the arrest? And how can we prevent another summer of racially charged violence? Plus, what would an Andy Burnham government actually look like? We take a look at the levers he can pull if he wins the Makerfield by-election, and if he can replace Keir Starmer, and whether Manchesterism can do something that Starmerism never quite managed. And in the extra bit for Patreon supporters, cuddly manosphere entrepreneur and optimism evangelist Stephen Bartlett claimed that two glasses of wine ruined his life for three whole days. Ruined? Our panel look at today's toxic obsession with peak performance, and the misery that comes from putting ourselves first. All that and more in Oh God, What Now? So, while the President of the United States was screaming down the phone at the Israeli Prime Minister, like a mobster who hasn't yet received his dry cleaning, perhaps what the world really needs right now is just a decent Evertonian to sort it all out. Or, at the very least, all of our wonderful panellists. Joining us today, we've got old school Oh God, What Now? panellist, author of The Future of Trust and presenter of More Jam Tomorrow, Ros Taylor. Hello, Ros. Hello. Old school. Thank you, Zoe. I don't know quite what that means, but I'll take it. It means that you're great. We've had you here for some time now, which is excellent. Journalist and historian who specialises in the history of private members clubs and the corruption. Nothing to see here. Seth Tovo. Welcome back, Seth. Hello, hello. I also specialise in the House of Lord, which of course straddles both divides. That's why we have you here. And we're delighted to welcome back, after way too long, award-winning stand-up comic, actor and HBO and Netflix star, Ahir Shah. Hello, Ahir. Hello. You've just announced a 2026 to 2027 tour, which, of course, optimistically assumes we're all still going to be here. Tell us about it. Yes. So I'm going to be back from August at the Edinburgh Fringe, doing the whole month there with a new show called Golden, and that's going to be touring. It's a long London run throughout the autumn and then all around the place in the first half of 2027. Police body cam footage of Henry Novak's last moments sent shockwaves around British politics, as the 18-year-old pleaded with officers while dying from stab wounds after being arrested following accusations of racist abuse, which turned out to be false. His killer, Vikram Digwar, who fatally stabbed Novak five times with an eight-inch Sikh ceremonial knife, was jailed for life. But accusations of two-tier policing and unrest swiftly followed. Nigel Farage has called for pure cold rage. Tommy Robinson launched an impromptu protest, which saw almost a dozen officers injured. And Keir Starmer said he felt sick watching the footage but called for calm. Ros, Henry Novak was stabbed five times, fatally wounded, and then handcuffed by officers who apparently didn't realise how serious his injuries were. His killer was jailed for life. Is this a story about two-tier policing, or is that framing being cynically imposed on a tragic incident when there were clearly serious mistakes made? So the first thing to say is that it is a terrible thing that the last thing Henry Novak probably heard after being stabbed was a police officer saying, I don't think you have, mate. It's terrible. I mean, that's the outrage which is driving the furore over this incident. He was disbelieved. And yes, it was dark. And yes, he was wearing thick, dark clothing. So it was hard for him to see if there was any blood. But to be handcuffed as you die, that is a terrible thing. And I think the police know that, and they acknowledge it. Did they mistrust him because they were more inclined to believe someone who was making an accusation of racism? Maybe. We don't know. I mean, it's worth noting that without the body-worn cameras the police were wearing, we'd probably never have known that Henry was handcuffed, let alone what the police actually said to him. I mean, the fact that we do is testament to the proper scrutiny the police come under nowadays. But the fact that these police responded in a callous way, in a cynical way, does not mean that we have two-tier policing in the UK. I mean, let's consider what's happened next. The police realised their mistake within a minute or so. They tried CPR to revive him. They arrested Digoir, and he's now going to be in jail for at least 21 years. And that is the right outcome. It's why Henry's parents didn't want his murder to be used for political purposes, and certainly not to incite violence. So while the police didn't act as they should have done for Farage to hijack this murder for his own cynical purposes, it is callous, it is reckless, it is absolutely typical of what we know about Farage, though I suspect even he thinks he may have overstepped a little bit this time after the writing last night. The National Police Chiefs Council are going to review language in the police anti-racism commitment. Do you think this is the right response to a legitimate question about how this incident was handled, or do you think this is capitulation? It wouldn't surprise me if a police officer, especially one wearing a body-worn camera, is reluctant to disbelieve someone from an ethnic minority who is making an accusation of racism. Because the police have often been racist in the past, we can all think of many examples, and many will be alive to the risk of appearing to ignore a claim like that. Do we need to make it clear to the police nonetheless that someone who says they've been stabbed shouldn't be disbelieved, no matter what ethnicity they are? Yes, I think we do. Does that mean updating the commitment? Maybe. Commitments like this will not survive, will not have credibility, unless they have the public's confidence. They are, let's face it, unlikely to survive a reformed government. There's a case for looking at this. I don't know if the wording of the commitment is the most important thing here, or if it's more important to send a wider message about the compassion that police need to have in situations like this. The Sikh community has responded in exactly the way the far right pretty much always demands of minorities after an atrocity. So in a joint statement, Sikh community groups universally condemned what they called a moment of madness by this individual. Sikh leaders are now being harassed anyway. So Tan Desi, the Labour MP for Slough, the first ever turbaned Sikh MP, says Sikhs are now fearful because of the political climate that has been engulfing us, especially on social media. Does this prove that the far right demands are never actually about accountability? I don't think that any of these people who are, I think, trying to politicise this event in a way that they've been explicitly asked quite reasonably not to, are being entirely sincere and above board in what they truly expect or want. I think that one of the really bits of Prime Minister's questions where everyone was sort of shouting at Nigel Farage, like, can you just at least condemn that people were violent in the aftermath and he just wouldn't do it, was just going after his personal bugbear, was, I think, pretty upsetting. And an important thing to remember is that for the people who are doing the responding, if we want to talk about them, and I don't think that that is necessarily the right people to centre, the right person to centre is the person who this horrendous thing happened to. But I think that when people are approaching what happened, you know, reading about it in the newspaper or seeing it on TV, whether they are Sikh or whatever their background is, most will be coming from the position of, gosh, how would I have felt if I was the parent of that poor boy or if I had been in that position myself as that boy, right? So I think that, yeah, it's sort of right to keep him and what happened to him at the centre of this and realise that, you know, think and hope that the vast majority of people are coming at this from a position of profound sympathy. And the fact that the Tommy Robinsons of this world is fundamentally like, this wasn't the thing that made them go, I want to smash something up, right? It's like the desire was to smash something up regardless. And if it hadn't been this, it would have been something else. Seth, violence with a Sikh kirpan knife is vanishingly rare, really. Leaders of the Sikh community said the blade used by Digwell was not a kirpan, while the Sikh Press Association said plans were underway to ensure that every initiated Sikh in the UK will now be addressed directly regarding kirpan rules and responsibilities. Yet there is going to be an inquiry. Is this another example of legislation being made or preemptively made in haste to serve a culture war? Or do you think this is a serious problem that needs looking into? Legislation that's made in a hurry is invariably bad legislation. And legislation that's made in response to one particular case is usually not well thought through unless there's a much wider look at the issues involved. It's worth looking at the link between the Sikh community and violence because they are very obviously recipients of violence. There are some 535,000 Sikhs in the UK. In the last 12 months alone, there have been a recorded minimum 100,000 incidents of violence against that community. And that's just recorded incidents. They are hugely overrepresented in statistics as subjects of violence, as people who have this level of hatred against them. There is a reasonable question to ask in any case like this. Has an instance of violence been aggravated by a religious dimension to it? The people to ask that are not mobs. They are the criminal justice system. And for everything that we've seen in the court proceedings here, the answer to that question is no. I very much find myself agreeing with Stephen Bush's assessments of this, that this is a crime where you're dealing with somebody who's clearly insane. That's not a defense of the crime. That's just simply a very, very obvious statement that he's clearly unwell in that sense. But it's also the case that you have a police officer, may well have made a terrible misjudgment, and we can get into the horrible details of the crime. But he was confronted with a situation where two people were telling him, we've been attacked by the third person. And in most cases, a police officer in that situation, however rightly or wrongly, will probably go with the two people against the one person, even if it's only momentarily, even if they will later conclude. And in this case, because the first stab wound was fatal, I mean, it took a while to be fatal, but it was fatal, even if he had believed the victim in this case, still would probably not have made the difference. So, you know, I do think this is exactly the kind of case where you have to look at things as dispassionately as possible, as factually as possible, just let the criminal justice system play out. I think just to go back on something that you raised or go further on something that you raised, because I think that this is another example, which has happened sort of, sadly, quite a few times in relatively recent memory, where you've got someone who it seems that reports of their behaviour and propensity to violence and extreme violence and everything had been made, and that nothing was done about that at all. And therefore, we end up in a situation where the person is in the first place in a position to commit such a heinous act. I think that certainly that definitely, it would need looking into if this was the only time that that had happened, but it certainly needs looking into because this seems to be a pattern of how was this guy out doing this in the first place? Because it's also just like a super terrifying just as a regular person who is walking around all the time, right? Rupert Murdoch But as Zoe said, part of the framing of this is that it's supposed to be a Sikh kirpan. It's not. I mean, this is apparently the case. So just little facts like this, which are crucial to the whole argument of it being somehow two-tier justice, the favourite motto of Farage or the whole idea that this was religiously aggravated, racially aggravated. I don't think any of this is helpful or relevant. Neil Milliken And like, forgive me, this is a good and you guys might know more, but it certainly seems that in the aftermath of it, there have been also more charges for like the possession of a pretty large arsenal, right, like an armory of various things that various people were in possession of that they shouldn't have been in the first place. Rupert Murdoch Yeah, and forgive me for going in for an ad hominem attack, but Farage has form on saying that he very strongly supports revisiting the gun control laws in this country and the right to bear arms. I mean, these are not people who usually instinctively are on the side of those of us who would actually like to see fewer weapons in this country. Zoe Saldana And one of the arrests at the riot in Southampton was of someone who was carrying a weapon, a bladed weapon. The irony apparently lost on him or her. Zoe Saldana Seth, Farage declared white lives matter too. Robert Jenricks selectively quoted Kemi Badenock to make it look like she'd said, I don't want to hear about white lives matter. So he stripped out the full context of her quote. And it just feels like suddenly we're back in 2020 when white lives matter was this refrain being repeated by the same group to kind of draw a line under the black lives matter movement. What does it mean when a slogan like that, which was originally used as a response to systemic racism gets reverse engineered into the culture wars? Robert Jenricks I'd like to uncharacteristically for about 10 seconds defend Nigel Farage. Because historically, he has actually really distanced himself from Tommy Robinson and said, I'm not up for that kind of culture war stuff. And the kind of stuff he's been coming out with over the last few days has been right out of that. And it's come right out of the MAGA playbook. And it's, you know, gone for the lowest of the low. What does it tell us? Well, it tells us that we are looking to US politics in how we conduct ourselves in this country. That's a shift from Farage because he's been quite obsessed in previous years. I mean, Michael Crick talks about this extensively in his biography of Nigel Farage. He's been quite obsessed with Enoch Powell. And I mentioned that because Enoch Powell has always been the face of the respectable far right. It's, you know, people on the far right who, yes, they're very, very racist, but they want us to know that they still wear waistcoats and blazers and are very well mannered. And they don't want to be sort of thugs who, you know, might go to a football match and cause some trouble. He doesn't care anymore. He's just much more clear about this. And that's, that's what worries me. I would also with the selective misquoting of Kemi Bednok, and I went and watched the like, there's like a seven minute clip that you can watch, which is her being interviewed in the aftermath. And you can see that she's genuinely very emotional about the subject. And I think that even if that might not be where your political sort of things lie, it's worth, I genuinely think that it is worth watching to hear her talk about her perspective on it, because it is like, very clearly an informed perspective of someone who has had to develop an informed perspective over the course of her life. Right. And regardless of whether you agree with her on this, that or the other, I think that it was, yeah, I watched that interview and I thought that I was grateful to her for having sort of voiced her position clearly and well and emotionally and sincerely, I thought. And it's quite interesting that there does seem to be clear water emerging perhaps between Kemi Bednok's response to this and as you say, Nigel Farage, because for a while it felt like she was hesitant maybe to do that. I remember listening to her on LBC, being directly asked if she would call Tommy Robinson far right, and she was just refusing to answer the question. And I wonder if since then there has been a little bit of movement actually realising that it's wise for the Conservatives to distinguish themselves from that school of thought. Yeah, I don't think that in their heart of hearts, the Conservative Party fundamentally want it to all kick off. And I think that there are other people who do want it all to kick off. And that's really frightening. Henry Novak's family have specifically pleaded for no violence, as Roz pointed out. Farage has just ignored them. Do you think he's going to pay a price for this amongst wider voters, perhaps those who aren't already in the reform tent, or maybe those who are reform curious, but actually are looking at what's happening and the fire that Farage is stoking and thinking is rather obscene? Yeah, for sure. It's often quite difficult to know where sometimes cynical calculation ends and the sincerity of it begins, or what he genuinely thinks is best for him, his party, his position, everything. And I think that that's sort of why it's difficult to say, right? Because on the one hand, maybe this person has just made an internal fairly cynical calculation that this is the way and hence you get the position of him standing in the Commons and smirking while people are saying, will you condemn the violence and him refusing to do so? Or maybe he just really thinks all of that and either way isn't great. Roz, we're hearing a lot about two-tier policing at the moment. Parliament's Home Affairs Committee found no evidence to support the claims of two-tier policing during the summer 2024 riots. In fact, they call the accusations disgraceful. So why is this such a potent message when the evidence just doesn't support it? One thing to say is that the far right are latching onto this partly because migration is less of a salient issue and they are beginning to realise it's going to be less of a salient issue than it was as net migration is falling. And to start talking about two-tier policing, it taps into all sorts of narratives that have been established in the US and have been effectively exported here, as Seth was saying. It's part of the narrative that Woke, PC, DEI, etc. has all gone too far and that the criminal justice system discriminates against white people. It doesn't matter what the evidence says because those who believe this will say that the stats are untrustworthy and the truth is being hidden from them. It's conspiracy theory adjacent in that sense. But also the fact that the police are invoked is important because they are such an important part of the trust we place in the state. I mean, they exist on the sort of border between order and disorder. They are, strictly speaking, civilians, not military. We have a, say, different relationship and way of thinking about the police in this country compared to some European countries. And so naturally, when a society becomes more distrustful, which we have, they are the focus of it and how they behave can very quickly become the focus of it. And when you have a situation as demonstrations and riots and people are coming into direct conflict with the police, it's another reason for they can use to justify kicking off and being violent against them. It's a target and that target will come out if they demonstrate and they know it's like a provocation. Seth, this week's violence has obviously been directed straight at police officers themselves rather than as a barrier to mosques or asylum hotels in the way we saw during the Southport riots. Historically, what has that shift meant when far-right groups start attacking police officers? I mean, this never ends well, regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, if you're Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Green, even Reform UK, you should agree with the idea that attacking the police is a bad thing because that leads to a breakdown in law and order more generally. Now, that's not to say the police are above criticism. I mean, you know, sometimes there have been issues like they've been endemically corrupt. And there was a major cleanup of the Metropolitan Police in the 1970s, for instance, to deal with that. And we had the aftermath of the Lawrence Inquiry in the 1990s. Those were all about fixing specific problems. They weren't about just taking out a general sense of grievance. And the problem with that whole treatment is if you end up just attacking the police for being the police rather than having a vision of what you want them to do, who will do that job? I mean, you'll end up being like prison officers. Another classic group are made up of people who usually don't want to do the job. And you're stuck with people who are not only dreadful at it, but there's no money in it. And the terms are awful. And there's very little scope to actually do that job well. And that's not what we want to happen to our policing. Yeah, I think policing is probably one of the most difficult jobs I can possibly imagine on so many levels. I mean, it's extraordinary that people do come forward and do it. And of course, yeah, some of them do it badly. But the fact that some do is good. I don't think that we necessarily know at this stage in this particular case. But one of the things that has been characteristic of the last sort of decade and a half has been the hollowing out of experience in police forces and lots of people who are very new, finding themselves in very complicated situations that really, without a hell of a lot of experience, you would struggle to do the right thing. And so, yeah, there may also just be something in like the actual composition of the police force at the moment where you're like, oh, yeah, just like get anyone in, give them a few bits of training and a few PowerPoints and whatnot. And then like, well, off you go. You're in to do this now. And it's been the hollowing out of community policing that's been a real loss in this country. You know, far fewer bobbies on the beaten. There are strategic reasons to do with resourcing why that's not the case, why now they now assign them to specialist units. But the loss of that leads to a loss of trust. It leads to a loss of a much greater sense of engagement of let's work with the police rather than this kind of pitch war, which is the opposite of where we want to be. Seth, a lot of this is playing out in the dark corners of social media that politicians don't themselves go. And Elon Musk, of course, is amplifying it all. Do you think that is actually the real two-tier? You know, who controls the information environment and who doesn't? Yeah, I mean, I'm not trying to use the term two-tier, but the bottom line is that you have this extraordinary system where you see in very visible forums like literally online comments, forums, comment sections of newspaper websites, that kind of thing, stuff that originates on the dark web, stuff that originates hidden from view. I'm actually reminded of a lot of the stuff around misinformation that came out during the Cambridge Analytica scandal nearly a decade ago. And I remember an extraordinary recording of Alexander Nix, the CEO, who was unbeknownst to him, he was being recorded. And he explains how a lot of this stuff is done. He says, yes, we just introduce these things into the ecosystem on the fringes and then you watch it spread like wildfire. And unfortunately, that's exactly what continues to go on. Keir Starmer said he felt sick watching the footage and serious questions need to be answered. Shabana Mahmood has threatened the full force of the law against rioters and is reviewing police guidance. To all of you, do you think there is a version of this where the government gets the response right? And do you think this is likely to be a crisis that they can contain? I think Starmer has got the response right. He was very impressive at PMQs, very articulate and pointed out just how egregious Farage's words had been. And at the same time, he's acknowledging the statement that the police disbelieving someone in their dying moments is a very disturbing thing to watch. So I think he's got the response right. The question is how much, as ever nowadays, the government can influence how people respond, given what is going on on social media and given that it is Restore and Reform's aim to stir up as much hatred as possible. One thing that I want to note with respect to something that you mentioned, Starmer said that he felt sick watching the footage and it was much the same with Kemi Badenoch who said that she'd watched the footage and whatnot. And I think that it's a good thing that that exists, of course. And as you were saying earlier, had the body cams not been there, we may never have known that this is the situation that young Henry ended up in at the end and what his final moments were like. But I think that often with things like this, there becomes on social media is particularly bad at this because sometimes you can't even choose what, you know, something just starts autoplaying and you don't realise what it is until it's too late. But yeah, I basically just say, like, I understand why the Prime Minister watched the footage and the leader of the opposition watched the footage and why people may feel the need. I personally am not going to do that. And I don't think that it's something that the average person particularly will need to see. I don't think it's going to do anything. Yeah, I've not watched it. I read many descriptions. I personally can't bring myself to do it. I wouldn't necessarily advise people one way or the other. It's just I don't like watching that kind of stuff. And one of the problems that we have is that, you know, 15, 20 years ago, this would have been just short clip six o'clock news. That wouldn't be much at all because it wouldn't have been considered suitable. It would have been on the nine o'clock or ten o'clock news and then it would be gone and you wouldn't see it again. And now you can watch it if you feel so inclined and feel so outraged about it. You can watch it over and over again. And naturally, that's going to make people feel angrier. Now, a Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite are all trying to win a seat in Makefield. If Andy Burnham's calculations are right and the good people of Makefield oblige, and if the so-called king in the north can beat Keir Starmer in a leadership election, then by the end of the summer, there will be an Everton duvet on the bed in number 10 and quite possibly a new order on the stereo too. But what would his government actually do? Who makes the cabinet? Will Rachel Reeves get the boot? Will Angela Rayner make a return? What happens on the economy, transport, education, foreign policy and the third rail of politics, immigration? And most importantly, how can he show British voters that their lives really are changing? Can he cure the country of Starmerism? And is Manchesterism the antidote? Ros, you wrote this definitive piece on Manchesterism for Politics Home. So let's start there. Manchesterism, is it a governing philosophy or just what happens when Andy Burnham walks into a room? Well, it's handy for him that the term is all his and that it scans pretty well as well, because Birminghamism, Leedsism, it doesn't quite have the trip off the tongue in the same way. But it is a nascent way of thinking. It only really emerged last year. It is pretty much his own invention. And yeah, the piece I wrote and it was written a couple of months ago. So already we've seen developments. But the things that stand out in Manchesterism so far are big focus on devolution, as you would expect, wanting to devolve power to regions. That is obviously a challenge when you become Prime Minister because you want to control what's going on. So we can talk about that later. Another one is the public control of utilities. That doesn't necessarily mean nationalisation, but it means giving the state many more powers to intervene and control how things like water run. And the other is industrial strategy. So having a big focus on industry, manufacturing, trying to crowd in as much of that as possible, which Burnham has been pretty successful at in Manchester. And there's been some tension about just how left wing is Andy Burnham. He was asked recently if he was closer to the Manchester of Friedrich Engels, Marxist, or whether he was closer to the free trader Richard Cobden. And he said Cobden, which kind of he would because he probably wouldn't want to be identified with Engels. But it shows that he does consider working with the private sector is something that labour can do in a productive way. And so if you're looking for an ideology, it is that the state and business have to work together to create wealth, which is pretty uncontroversial in modern society. But that does beg the question, where is the accountability ultimately? And, of course, he's not had much to say on foreign policy or defence, apart from that he'd like to rejoin the EU, but it ain't going to happen anytime soon. When anyone talks about Burnham on delivery, they tend to mention the B network or the buses. But his record on skills and education in Greater Manchester has been a bit patchier. So there's limited powers, of course, and limited results. Is we sort out the buses really a national political offer? And what does he do about schools, for example? Buses are very easy to visualise and therefore that makes them potentially quite a strong national offer. People are also very much in favour of nationalisation generally in this country. They don't really want to think about how you do it and how much it would cost, but they are in favour of it. So, yes, it isn't that original because London's buses are pretty similar to Manchester's. They are all usually red, but they're operated by different companies and they all run under the auspices of TfL. So it's quite similar to the B network in that way. And it's been around for a while. But the message of the B network is it's a strong regional identity that can build local pride. So not immediately obvious how you translate that to the national stage. And also that privatisation often creates inefficiencies. And that is something people feel quite strongly when they think about sewage and water especially. His record on things like housing in Manchester is not great, but how much could he really do there? And the answer is not a lot. He didn't have that many powers. And of course, as I was saying earlier, one of his big arguments is we need to devolve more power and therefore more money to the regions. I'm sorry to keep trotting out this joke, but it just fits very well in this segment. So obviously Burnham, the joke goes, Burnham is simultaneously a Blairite, a Brownite, a Corbynite, a soft left insurgent, a man who loves buses and football. And the punchline is there's no actual political identity there. Is that fair? Is that true? Or is part of the appeal of Burnham actually that everyone can just kind of reflect what they think is missing from the Labour Party in its current form onto him? So on the specific question of the actual political identity of Andy Burnham and sort of what is Burnhamism and Manchesterism, if there is such a thing, I would recommend a piece in the Manchester Mill written by Yoshi Herman recently, who is somebody who's actually sort of on the ground there and says far more informed things than I would be able to off the back of that. I think that part of the issue, as far as I can say, of what's got us into the position that we now are in is I think that Starmer, etc., and that sort of project believed perhaps that the thing that was wrong with the country or going wrong with the country, and this was particularly evident under Boris Johnson because his character was so obviously ill-suited to the job of being Prime Minister, was that basically if once again the capital G, the grown-ups are back in the room, the right sort of people who would take this seriously and are in charge, like then we'll get back on the right track. And it transpired that a change of personnel wasn't enough and you needed to really have a worked out system of what you wanted to do with the power once you acquired it, which seemingly wasn't developed over 14 years. You had a while to think about it, but maybe because that was the strategy that they were like, all right, what needs to change within the Labour Party is change this thing at the top and then the Labour Party can come back and everything will be all right, and then that ended up working. Try and do the same thing for the country and you're like, oh no, there are actually sort of far deeper issues that need addressing and problems that need addressing. And one wonders if as a consequence we're working out the same sort of situation now where, all right, the issue is the front man. We'll change the front man to this new guy who is much more popular, everyone is definitely a better communicator, etc, etc. But I think that the issue is what if the problem isn't one of personnel or managerial competence or a desire to be doing it particularly well or being a grown-up who takes the job seriously, if the crises run considerably deeper than that, one wonders whether this is just going to be another thing six months from now. Well, I mean, he says the word change a lot and we have heard that before, quite recently in fact. Keir Starmer loved to say change a lot as well and I think people would kind of argue there hasn't been enough of that. Do you think there is a version of this where he wins and within six months, as you say, he is just the next Keir Starmer? Or do you think there are things he can do and that he may well do to make people's lives feel better? My one that Starmer keeps saying is he keeps saying, like, I get it, I get it. I'm listening and I get it, right? And it's every time something really profoundly terrible happens to him personally. But after he has done something visibly wrong, like if I sort of took all of my washing out and I'd left red socks in with everything and everything came out pink and my wife's like, what the hell is going on? And I'm like, I get it. I get it. And then I just do exactly the same thing again the following week. In terms of making people's lives feel better, I think that there probably is something about the communications thing where in the aftermath of the election, obviously, the Labour Party, understandably, wanted to be like, listen, things for 14 years were pretty bad. It's pretty fucked up. This is going to take a bit. But the fact that the general mood from particularly Starmer and Reeves was the sort of plumber's intake of breath going like, oh, you've had some, I don't know who you had around here before. And it's like, there's only so long you can do that before we internalise the misery. It's actually, this is just to get to me, but it's simultaneously on the vibes thing of when people were like, oh, why wasn't there almost immediately a recession after Brexit? And that would be things that the Bank of England did. But part of it would also be like, well, if more than half of the people who voted thought this was a good idea, they're not immediately going to change their behaviour as though they've just made the worst decision of their lives. They're going to keep on doing the things that they were doing. So perhaps he would be able to do more on that, maybe a bit more positive and optimistic and just be a better communicator. But we are still in the situation where the amount of playing space available to anyone leading the country at this particular point is probably a lot narrower than they would have people believe. And I'd just like to say briefly something that my old professor Helen Thompson said on a podcast I listened to a few months ago where she was asked if there was anything that she felt optimistic about in Britain. And she said, I think that we've now got to a point where the crisis is so undeniable that the moment of crisis will come and we can't ignore it for much longer. And so that's her point of optimism, that eventually you've got to accept the world that we actually live in. I think we can string it out a little while longer. Seth, let's talk about who's in and who's out. What do we know so far about what Burnham's cabinet could look like? I mean, could Angela Rayner make a return? And foreign policy is one of the most crucial areas at the moment for the government. Do you think Burnham has a credible foreign secretary in waiting? I'm not sure. I mean, I think bringing back Angela Rayner would be very shrewd, not only because it appeals to the Labour Party base, and it does show a change of direction from Keir Starmer, but in terms of his personal position, for all her considerable talent and ability, she has damaged goods after the tax scandal. And so she's not likely to be running a viable leadership challenge against him. So I think she'd owe him her allegiance. She'd very much be under control and safe in that way. I slightly recall from the question, because I do hate these who's in, who's out questions about people, a lot of it does come down to the policies. And we've got a pretty clear idea of where his policies are on the domestic front. You know, a lot of it is, to be fair, quite technocratic stuff. You know, things like procurement in local government, of which, to be fair, he has a lot of experience of doing that and doing that well. He has flip-flopped on some things like immigration. He seems to, especially during the by-election, he's trying to appeal to potential reform voters whilst also being socially liberal. But the message, I think, would be that he taxed the left of Keir Starmer. But you know what? So does the entire Labour Party, pretty much. And it's a way of, I can see this pitch being, we are going to deliver stuff that people expected Labour to do back in 2024. Foreign policies, you say, is a bit more of a wild card. I mean, even on something like the EU, where he said, oh, I'd love to join the EU in my lifetime. You know, this isn't exactly firm leadership showing us a clear direction. And on something like Iran, we genuinely have very little idea of where he'd go. I wouldn't be surprised if in an area like defence, he went for continuity. Someone like John Healey is very much shaping up to be the Ben Wallace of the Labour Party as being somebody who generally agreed to be doing a very competent job in that area. The one thing I would say in all of this, and when we're regarding who he's promoting, is don't forget, yes, he's done terrific things as mayor of Manchester, by and large, but he's still very much a career politician. He is a spad, turned MP for a safe seat, turned cabinet minister. And you could argue that most of the potential contenders are, but he's somebody who plays it safe. So if you're expecting to suddenly see the onset of the revolution, I think we might be quite disappointed. One does wonder sometimes how much some of the issues that Keir Starmer has encountered, the fact that he is not a career professional politician, and maybe that that's not a bad thing. As in, maybe it's not a bad thing to be a career politician, to do the things he was like, like loads of backbenchers, be like, oh, well, he's never even like said hello and doesn't know my name and everything. It's like, yeah, he's a lawyer, he doesn't care. Whereas Andy Burnham would 100% be buying a pint for every backbencher. And that probably would be a useful thing. I know you don't want to indulge in any more who's in, who's out, but I'm not going to... Hit me. Hit me, guys. I'll admit it. I'll admit it. You've twisted my arm. I'm going to be the foreign secretary. That's what I get from the Lords. Lordshire. You joke, but anything could happen. But I am going to press you on because I'm never going to miss an opportunity to ask you to talk about where streeting. So surely without exclusives deleted, whatever, however, you would like to play it. Surely he's going to be a trusted and treasured confidant for Burnham in Downing Street. Do you think he'd keep him in the tent pissing out? I'm not sure, because for the last few years, we've been hearing that West Streeting is the coming man of the Labour Party, mainly according to West Streeting. But actually, one of the reasons why West Streeting is very, very keen to sort of delay this leadership election as much as possible is he's sort of woken up to all this polling showing how unpopular he is in the Labour Party. And usually, if you're trying to bring people on side, it's because you think that they would benefit you. And I'm not sure actually Wes commands a particularly large body of opinion within the Labour Party. I think those people who are his fans are a sort of personality cult. I do ask myself also whether their positions were reversed, whether Wes would include him. And I suspect he wouldn't either. You know, Burnham, if he doesn't get the leadership this time, will have blown it at least twice in 2015 and in 2026. Let's not forget the reason why we had Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader for five years is that Andy Burnham was so bad and was so uninspiringly by the numbers of, okay, I'm just going to play the game of being slightly to the left of the other candidates while still being very much in the center of politics. And that's how he approached this. And to be honest, that's the sort of approach that won the Labour leadership for Ed Miliband in 2010. But things have moved on by 2015. And Andy Burnham wasn't able to read the room. Fun fact, although Andy Burnham is a career politician, absolutely. He does not like most career politicians have a degree in PPE or law or something adjacent to that, or even geography, like Theresa May, he would be the first PM in Britain to have an English degree if he becomes PM. That fact wasn't fun at all. It is to me because I also have an English degree here. And I just, you know, it would be nice to see someone with an English degree, making it in a genuine way. I don't know, maybe. Genuinely the first. I'm actually surprised by that. Yeah, I liked the fact. I thought it was good. Thank you, Zoe. From English to economics, though, Roz, we know that Burnham and Blair have got into a little bit of a head to head this week about the underlying root drivers of populism. So Burnham is insisting it's mostly economics. He talks about being driven by inequality. Blair has been reminding his party not to forget the culture wars. What do we actually know about Burnham's economic policy? Is there anything in there that you think is consequential enough to fight off the far right? I don't know about that. So at the moment, he's saying he wouldn't have any big rises in personal taxes or that in this parliament, which is the current line. He wants a council tax reform. Again, probably wouldn't happen in this parliament, maybe some sort of land tax instead. That's all a bit vague. Another interesting idea he's mentioned is scrapping inheritance tax and having a social care levy instead, which is interesting because IHT is, of course, a very progressive tax. It hits rich people. Social care levy presumably would be levied on almost everyone to some degree. So that would be an interesting one to get by the left of the Labour Party. It would be an interesting sell, put it that way. He's also wrote back a bit from some of the earlier comments he made about being in hock to the bond markets because he wanted to borrow more. Now he talks much more about fiscal discipline now. Seth, briefly, Burnham wants a Senate of the Regions. He's talked about abolishing the Lords, proportional representation and, as Ros said, proper devolution. Any chance of any of that actually happening or is it the kind of thing you just kind of promised before you actually had to speak to the Treasury? I'm pretty sceptical because it's a matter of priorities. When would he do it? He's already said he wouldn't introduce PR without a manifesto pledge in a general election. That wouldn't even happen for at least four or five years minimum. I can't see him taking on the House of Lords now in the second half of the Parliament. The reason why I'm a little sceptical even about that is you look at how Tony Blair approached the issue, for instance, where he was very, very keen on devolution in areas where it was unimaginable for Labour to ever lose an election. So they rolled it out in Scotland, they rolled it out in Wales, they rolled it out in London. And when did they stop? Well, they tried to reduce it in the North East and they were told no in a referendum. But they weren't rolling it out in places like the West Midlands that were electorally competitive or places like the West Country where the Labour Party just didn't feature in all of this. And even if you look at this government, there were four Metro Mayor elections due to be introduced for the first time this year. They've been delayed another two years. And if you look at the areas involved from Essex to Hampshire, none of these are places the Labour Party could win in. So I don't think he's going to be expending political capital on any of these things. That brings us to the end of the show, which means the traditional finale, Escape Routes, where our panel and guests reveal the books, films, TV, music or miscellaneous cultural pursuits that got them through the headache of politics this week. Ahir? So I think like a lot of people, because the television programme The Boys recently ended, and I had never watched The Boys, but everyone was talking about The Boys. I've never heard of The Boys. The Boys, I'm just really, I'm just enjoying. What I do is I watch an episode of The Boys. Why do you say it like that? And then I listened to Charlie XCX's song, Boys. No, I've been watching The Boys, and I read all of the, I read all the comics, because it turns out, and this is actually like a good note, I don't know, because I'm a member of my local library, because I'm cool. Your local library can get you access online to loads of magazines, there's various like subscriptions and things. Comic books are on the local library thing. I wasn't going to buy loads of comic books, but then I was able to read it online. I was like, yeah, I'll do that. It was great. But you've still not explained what The Boys is. I couldn't be clearer. No, it's a series on Amazon Prime, and it was a comic book, and it's basically what if there were superheroes, but they were bad. Roz. I started watching two weeks in August, the BBC drama, which is not groundbreaking in any way. I mean, you do not expect anything to rock your world, but it's very well done. It's very well acted, and the satire is clever. And there's a priceless scene that's set in a holiday in Greece, and some middle class people getting together in a villa, and bad stuff happens. And at one point, they decide to take a boat trip, and they sit around, you know, saying things like, oh, I did have second thoughts about having a boat trip, because you know, in Greece here, you know, there's small boats, and people are dying on small boats. And then one of them says, do you know the charity I work for, World Up? It increases awareness of inequality. And it's very good. I haven't done Get Given Away, but it's much funnier than I make it sound. Seth? I went to the cinema, the Prince Charles Cinema in Soho shows old film classics, and there was a fantastic use of a Saturday afternoon watching Lawrence of Arabia. Yes, I know it's a really, really long film. I have a strong sentimental attachment to it, because it's actually the second film I ever saw on a big screen back in 1989. It had recently been restored. And it's a terrific, not just a good movie, it's a really good explanation of a time and a place and cultures, and some very thorny personal politics, and great movie, honestly, worth it. I read Yesteryear by Caro Clare Burke, which is a fairly new book, I think it came out in April, essentially about a trad wife, Instagram influencer, who wakes up one day and she's actually living seemingly in the pioneer times as a trad wife. And she kind of gets a taste of what it really would be like if, you know, all the things that she pretends to do for her followers actually happened to her. It's fantastic. It's so gripping. There's an excellent twist. It's really good. It's funny. It's dark. It's a really good take on influencer culture and sort of the rise of the Christian right. You know, there's an adjacent sort of political story that goes on in the background that feels very Magarey. I'd highly recommend it. I thought it was fantastic. I literally blitzed it all by the pool on holiday and it was fantastic. I love antibiotics so much. I would hate to live in the past. If you go on the Wikipedia page for John Stuart Mill, he died of a thing that you just like, it's fine. It's fine now. It's terribly sad. So much to be grateful for. Take your antibiotics and watch the movie. That is the end of the show. Thank you, Ahir Shah. Remind us about that stand-up tour. I am going on tour with a new show called Golden that will be playing at the Pleasance Courtyard every night during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August and then in London in the autumn and nationally and internationally in 2027. Fantastic. We'll obviously put a link in the show notes to that. Thank you, Ros Taylor. Thank you. And thank you, Seth Taytho. Thank you very much. Listeners, thank you for joining us. Everything we do on this podcast is down to the generosity of backers on Patreon, the crowd funder where you can support the projects you love. Monthly pledges from listeners like you funded our studios, they help pay our team, and they mean we can punch above our weight among the well-funded big brands. If you've ever thought about supporting us on Patreon, now is the time to do it. From just three pounds a month, you will get every episode early and ad-free, plus extended episodes and merch and a shout out on the podcast. Hold tight for the latest ones at the end of the show, but most importantly, you'll get the delightful satisfaction of supporting independent podcasting. Follow the link in the show notes to find out more. We'll be back on Tuesday. See you then. Hello and welcome aboard to these brand new backers, Alan Walker, Anna and Leah with an A. Many thanks for your support and welcome aboard to Bon Aureo, sorry, Bon Oreo, I think, Luz M and Kelly. Hello from me to these returning Patreons. Thanks for coming back to the pod just like I have. Jack Arnold, Angela Pert, Donna Marie Newman. And welcome from me to these brand new supporters, freshly signed up, thank you, Katie Thorne, Daniel Tsai and Nick. Oh, God, what now? We've written and presented by Zoë Grunewald, with Ros Taylor, Seth Tebow and Ahir Shah. The producer was James Liddell with audio production by Tom Taylor, music by Simon Williams and Tom Taylor and artwork by Jim Parrott. The managing editor is Jacob Jarvis. The group editor is Andrew Harrison and Oh, God, what now? is a Podmasters production. Hello and welcome to The Extra Bit, the exclusive elite velvet roped Davos green room for our esteemed Patreon people. This time, spare a thought for Stephen Bartlett, a man so constitutionally delicate that two classes of wine over dinner ruined his life for three full days. His words, not ours. The diary of a CEO, podcaster and LinkedIn tyrant described the experience as a hidden domino effect. He told his audience, I had a year of not drinking, decided to have a drink again. It ruined three days of my life. I had a couple of glasses of wine. It meant that I got worse sleep that night and then I podcasted worse. Blokes hit the perimenopause. Does Bartlett, though, have a point? Is it time to put an end to the tyranny of personal optimisation and get back to old fashioned slob behaviour? Has our obsession with quantification and self optimisation started to destroy our ability to just have fun, connect with others and enjoy the simple pleasures of life? Perhaps some of us would rather podcast worse and live better. Obviously, Bartlett is an extreme case. But do you recognise his viewpoint as more widespread now? I mean, more and more Gen Zers are said to be ditching the pub for Pilates, hospitality, as we know, is struggling and every second wrist has a Fitbit. Yeah, well, I don't think it's just Gen Zers. And that was a teaser for the bonus extra bit of this week's podcast. If you'd like to hear the whole thing every week, plus every episode without ads and a day early, then sign up to back us on Patreon for as little as three pounds a month. You'll also get access to live Zooms, our exclusive merchandise and most importantly, the warm glow of supporting independent podcasting. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.