Elon Musk Calls Zack A Scumbag | Nish Kumar

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0:59some facebook groups i won't name them because i don't want to kind of amplify them but they're satire groups yeah yeah and they kind of i'd say it's pretty much twice a day now make up a fake news story about me there was one a couple of days ago that said i wanted big ben to be called big non-binary or something like that like i wanted to change but just literally thousands and thousands of comments of people saying he's always coming up with these ideas etc etc and then maybe the odd comment every so often saying you do realize this is satire yeah and like my I actually have said that. I've always said, I think there should be non-binary Big Ben.

1:29I've been strongly behind that. I mean, now having a conversation would be quite cool. I hate it when people say, this person needs no introduction. We'll stop introducing them then and just start the thing. So here's Nish Kumar. This episode is sponsored by Crowdfunder. Bring your bold idea to life at crowdfunder.co.uk forward slash bold. Nish, welcome to Bold Politics. So in the past like half an hour, nothing to do with you, I should say, unless maybe, you know, otherwise, Elon Musk has called me a traitor and a scumbag. Well, you know, Zach, Elon and I are obviously old chums. We go back a long way and I've been giving him the inside track on what's been going on in British politics.

2:08I thought that was what was going on. So you just told him the truth about me, right? I just told him. I just gave it to him straight, Zach. What do you want from me? What's the context here? I mean, I don't, Elon Musk, it's not exactly outside of his wheelhouse, let's be honest. but give me the specific context of what's been going on. Well, before this happened as well, I thought, I've got a comedian on, this is amazing, but also it feels like a pretty dark time in politics, so we'll balance that. I posted this morning to say, ultimately, that Elon Musk was responsible, partly responsible for the incitement in terms of algorithm on X particularly, or Twitter still refused to call it X, that is pushing so hard.

2:44These narratives that are divisive and toxic. and I posted that and he just replied with that I'm a scumbag and a traitor. Right, okay. Scumbag and a traitor. I mean, I think sometimes how you receive an insult depends on your level of respect for the insulter. I think it's probably a badge of honour to be called that by Elon Musk. Someone in my team, so I've replied, kind of snapped back, said, oh, should you snap back or is this a moment to rise above it? And I said, no, it's definitely a moment to snap back. I think there is a broader point about everyone rising above this kind of thing. But I also think you need to meet that kind of language with a stern and robust response.

3:24Well, and also I think, you know, I think actually in some ways, some of this is not a particularly new problem. I think it's been a sort of bugbear of mine for, you know, the last 15 years that these companies are not regulated as publishers. However we feel about certain sections of the mainstream British press, the print press and the old newspapers, and certainly I have very strongly negative feelings about some of them. And the feeling is mutual, to be fair. They are regulated as publishers. And I think there's been such a problem that for so long social media companies have consistently turned around and said, we're not publishers, we're platforms.

4:03We have no editorial oversight. We have no control over these things. But at the same time, in terms of generating advertising revenue, they very much present themselves as publishers. And they've hollowed out our traditional media structures because they've essentially replaced those publishers. And we really grew up. Am I a bit older than you? I'm 40. I'm a bit older than you. Oh, is that really? Well, the skincare regime is strong. Or my skincare regime is bad. Somewhere in between. No, no. How old are you? 43. Yeah, right. So we really sort of grew up in a kind of era where British political discourse was really defined by Rupert Murdoch.

4:39Us and the generation 10, 15 years older than us really grew up in a generation defined by, you know, Murdoch and Rothermere and the Barclay brothers owning the Telegraph. So there was this, you know, there was this constant sort of feeling that, oh, it's very bad that these media barons control this much of the media. And we've sort of gone from 10 guys controlling it to five guys controlling it. So somehow we've managed to find a way for things to be worse. And the fact that, you know, the amount of our public discourse that is owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk particularly is really deeply alarming.

5:19And, you know, it's not just the things that Musk is actively saying himself. It's also the fact that the platform is so slow and unwilling to deal with misinformation, to deal with, you know, in some cases, especially in the last week or so, AI generated videos and AI generated photographs. They're so slow to deal with that. They should be regulated as publishers and they should be responsible for the things that are published on their platform. Because when it comes to monetization, they are not particularly very good at sharing the money out. They want all the financial benefit, but none of the actual legal responsibility.

5:54And so it's, yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons. Everybody's rightly blaming Musk for his rhetoric, but there is also a wider issue of the system that he's part of, the tech oligarchs that own so much of the means by which we communicate with each other. It's almost hard to know where to start. It's hard to know where to start because he is a bad actor, but he's also a bad actor within a system that's corrupted the means by which we can communicate with each other. That puts it so well how we've created Elon Musk, a bad system with a bad actor on top of it. It strikes like on Facebook, there's some Facebook groups.

6:33I won't name them because I don't want to kind of amplify them, but they're satire groups. I'd say it's pretty much twice a day now, make up a fake news story about me. There was one a couple of days ago that said, I wanted Big Ben to be called Big Non-Binary or something like that. Like I wanted to change. But just literally thousands and thousands of comments of people saying, he's always coming up with these ideas, et cetera, et cetera. And then maybe the odd comment every so often saying, you do realize this is satire. But those comments being maybe 1 % and then 99 % of the comments just getting really angry every single day.

7:02That's something that's so far away from anything I've said. And like my first response is that. I actually have said that. I've always said, I think there should be Non-Binary Big Ben. I've been strongly behind that I mean now having the conversation it would be quite cool from the beginning I've always said that I would like to rename the flag Union Jane and I think Big Ben is non-binary but I'm also not sure if it can be big I think that's that's the scrunchie against short people short people they should have kind of average height but happy non-binary clock tower and it's such a weird thing but as I'm saying this to you I realise that I've said it's labelled satire yeah and as someone who works in comedy This is a balance, right?

7:41People need to be able to make jokes, and satire is a really, really important part. But how do we make it clear what's satire and what's actual politics? Because understandably, the lines get blurred. I think there is kind of an issue, the kind of breakdown of the demarcation of where you're getting your information. And this is going to sound like I'm sort of harking back positively to the print media era. But the one thing I would say is there was at least sections to a newspaper. And so the news was very clearly demarcated from the opinion, for example. And the sketch writers or the comedy elements to the newspaper were pretty clearly demarcated.

8:26When I used to read Charlie Brooker's TV Go Home column in The Guardian, it wasn't next to a story about what was going on in Bosnia. Some of that demarcation is a bit of a problem. And also, I'm sort of slightly haunted by something that Hussain Kesvani, who's a really brilliant writer and has written really brilliantly on tech. And he, a few years ago, said something to the effect of when we were growing up, the biggest joke degree you could do was media studies. It was a sort of trope. When I first started going to watch stand-up comedy in the late 90s, early 2000s, you know, the joke degree was media studies.

9:10You know, people would just say, oh, what do you, you know, media studies, media. It was a way of sort of saying you're doing a rubbish degree. They literally call it a Mickey Mouse degree. Mickey Mouse degree, yeah. And now our lack of media literacy is a massive problem. Absolutely. And actually that has come back to kind of bite us in the arse. We're not engaging critically enough with the information that comes to us via the internet. And, you know, we'll all have had experiences of this where you're having an argument with somebody. I'm not even exclusively, I'm not even trying to paint this as a problem of one side of the political spectrum or the other.

9:39It is a societal problem. And we've all had conversations with people where they'll say, I don't believe anything I read in the mainstream media. And you think, OK, that's good. It's good that you're engaging critically with that. But then they will present as gospel something they have been passed on the internet. and you think, my God, you have to use the same critical faculties for whatever the information is that's coming at you. Engage critically with traditional media. Look at the source. Examine where it's come from. But when something comes to you through WhatsApp, when something comes to you via it being shared on Facebook, you have to use those same critical appraisal skills.

10:16You know, when we were kids and we were studying, you know, I did history to A-level and to half of my degree, but we were constantly told if you're reading something engage critically with who the source is if you're reading something from the period that you're studying who is that person? What were their biases? Try and think about why they might be presenting the information in this way to you and I think we've got a dual problem where there isn't enough where there is insufficient regulation and also there is an insufficient mistrust of tech platforms there's such a massive insufficient mistrust of tech platforms and it's causing really serious problems.

10:53Listen, I've talked about this to every single person. I'm sure this is something that is not unfamiliar to you, but I would really urge everybody to read Doppelganger by Naomi Klein because I think that that book, more than any that I've read in the last few years, is really grappling with the information crisis and it's doing it in a really relatable way because it starts with her getting obsessed with Naomi Wolf's sort of radicalisation. And there's bits in the book where her husband keeps saying, can you stop going on about what that everyone has done and it's very relatable to have your partner say to you can you stop telling me about something you've read on the internet and it's a really good way in but it is really important I thought you were going to say you have a doppelganger that's bothering you I was like who's that who's your right wing nemesis I don't think I have a right wing doppelganger I've got a I have sort of doppelgangers there was a period and I will say I come off pretty well from this where people were confusing who went Mohamed Salah's first season back at Liverpool.

11:53Every time he scored a goal, people on Twitter would congratulate me on the goal. And I have to say, there is a superficial similarity, right? Hair, beard. It's changed now that he's sort of cut his hair. But you have to say physically, I'm doing well at that comparison. Like you have to say, me and Mo Salah are not quite on the same level. And then there's sort of Jason Manzoukas, who is an American actor and comedian, a good friend of mine, wonderful man. He's ethnically Greek and somehow he came out Indian. It's not really clear how that happened. I suppose my like, I mean, the thing is when you look at some of the South Asian conservatives, you're not a million miles away from me background wise.

12:39Okay. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, because Sunak was so, because he went to Winchester like it feels like he sort of was he at Winchester? Yeah, I think that's right. It feels a bit sort of outside of the realms of my experience. He's also not doing stand-up either, right? Yeah. I mean, it would be terrible. But listen, Winchester the Moraine was quite funny. I mean, that was funny. When he was Prime Minister and in that kind of era it's basically like a post-Cameron the South Asian Conservative intake is a kind of post-David Cameron initiative and I have always maintained I don't know if it's the same now, but certainly five years ago, I was saying I am at any given moment 15 tweets away from a Tory safe seat.

13:24If I renounce every single thing that I've ever said and claim it was the result of being brainwashed by the leftist elite, I would be the Conservative MP for Maidenhead. There's a plot for a film coming here where you do that to play a double agent. You wait till your Prime Minister and then you just fix everything. it's got elements of there's elements of the producers to it to see if I could like me accidentally becoming a Tory MP whilst trying to make a point about how easy that would be to do but yeah I guess there are a few some of the like prominent South Asian conservatives you're like oh I'm not a million miles away from some of those people and coming back to X I didn't realise this was going to feel like therapy but it does I feel like I'm getting things off my chest listen you want to talk about you want to talk about Twitter based nightmares I'm your man, Zach.

14:14I've been getting abused on that platform since 2016, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You really kind of front-lined a lot of that, too. I'm the Roger Federer of being abused on the internet. I did it for a period of time no one could even comprehend, and I took it to a level no one had previously imagined. I love that. We need to find the Alcaraz of Twitter now as well to take the new title. Like, I hate being on there, and the amount of people who say to me, why are you still on there? And I identify with that so much. Yeah. But it also feels like until the government leave and until like the journalists who are reporting on the government leave, it feels like a space we need to be in.

14:49But I don't know if that represents how you feel too. And if I'm asking myself, what is the line? And it feels like if there is a line, it went a long time ago. Yeah, I agree with you. I would say I'm still on it. I don't really post on it. I hardly post on it anymore. But I still have an account. And having a Twitter account, eating meat and watching men's professional football are the three least ethical things I do. I think those are the three things I do that I know on some level are sort of ethically indefensible. But Naomi Klein tried to persuade everybody to not leave for a long time because she said we shouldn't cede.

15:28This is a kind of public square. That would also make a lot of sense because, you know, you don't want to see that platform to the kind of the nutcases. Or if they're going to be slow to intervene on fake headlines that are inciting violence or videos of women being undressed without their consent, then I don't know where I actually don't know where the line is. I really don't know where the line is. And, yeah, I do think every time I go on it, I think I've got to leave this. Right. I've got to leave this. And I suppose I feel like, not to underestimate our own importance, but if I left or we left, that would bring it down.

16:08I would leave in seconds. Yeah. But I feel what would actually happen is there would just be less voices on there saying anything. Yeah, that's true. That's always the sort of, that's been the debate of the last 10 years that I've had with anyone sort of vaguely left of centre is basically what is the correct level of engagement. You know, because people like Grace Blakely and Ash Sarkar, I don't know how they feel about this now, but they've certainly both said to me in the past, they like going into those slightly hostile spaces, like, for example, Question Time or, you know, a Piers Morgan show or something like that.

16:46Like, Aaron Jones often does it. And they like doing that because these are just expressing that viewpoint or those viewpoints in that space is so foreign to what's normally allowed to be. It's a perspective that's so foreign to what's normally allowed to be expressed in those spaces that even if it reaches one person who wouldn't otherwise have heard it, it's a worthwhile activity. I agree entirely. Yeah. And you've always been quite happy to step into any of those spaces that are willing to have you, basically. And I think that I do think for a politician, that's very important. I think for a politician, I think that's extremely important.

17:25I sort of go back and forth on it because I sometimes feel like I'm going in there to sort of my sort of presence is there just to rile up the angriest people. Like the fact that I, you know, if I'm on a question time panel, it's almost designed to upset people who are, you know, disinclined to listen to me. And I worry sometimes that that puts people off from listening to what I might actually be saying, which they might actually agree with. You know, ultimately, all I'm ever talking, all I'm ever trying to advocate for on these things is just a better quality of life for low income people and human rights to be afforded for women and minorities.

18:00You know, that is when you actually poll. It's the thing we've all been saying for years, which is when you actually poll a lot of these things, the public is sort of broadly behind all of these things in the on an issue by issue basis but yeah so i sometimes worry that i've kind of gone and um that by going into those spaces it's actually an unhelpful thing for the causes that i am really passionate about but at the same time i think for you you you're the leader of political party like you've got to go into those spaces and And I think that it is really important that people who might not encounter your perspective actually hear views like that.

18:44And, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that you guys have had these really positive election results, because actually during election periods, there are still legal guardrails in place to actually ensure a certain amount of broadcast coverage for all the political parties. And it is interesting because when people actually get to hear a lot of what you're actually saying rather than what you're portrayed as saying in elements of the mainstream right-wing press and by people like Elon Musk, it's actually pretty uncontroversial to a lot of people. Absolutely. I think there's two other things there too.

19:19So we're talking about print press. If someone's just written opinion, they can pretty much say what they want, which I don't think that's tenable or sustainable in the long term that something can be printed. and as long as it says opinion, it can be blatantly untrue. When I was doing comedy shows about the news on the BBC, we were sort of pretty rigorously fact-checked. And if I was saying something outlandish, it would have to be very clear that it was a joke. So we never actually got told that something that was clearly a joke couldn't go on the TV. But I couldn't go on there and make something up about Boris Johnson.

19:58You couldn't go on there and make something up about Nigel Farage. There's quite a lot of guardrails put in place. And I raised Stuart Lee because he has specifically talked about this exact issue where he feels that he's fact-checked in a way that Boris Johnson never was. It's so mad. It's so odd that there's a standard that comedians are expected to be held to. But at the same time, some columnists and some politicians have not been held to that standard. And it feels like until we have Leveson too, until we have some kind of... And obviously you've got to balance this with the free press. I've been at pains to say recently that, you know, journalism is a really important profession.

20:36There's people dying around the world reporting on war zones. And they're like, it's incredibly... We never want to turn, or I never want to turn into a Farage or a Trump that's always going, oh, the press are all bad. Everything they print is rubbish. You know, burn the system down. It can't be that. But they've got away with so much for so long. Sure. And not been challenged. but the problem is I think libel law is so kind of loose that it means they know they can get away with a lot it's yeah it is tricky that has been the sort of that is the quandary for progressive people is kind of making sure that you absolutely at all points defend a free press but then also balancing that out with not allowing a media ecosystem that is controlled by oligarchs to essentially just pump out misinformation.

21:24You know, I mean, you're seeing things are getting even worse in the States. You know, I think the potential Ellison land grab in America of the media ecosystem is absolutely terrifying. You know, the control of CBS News that might now extend to CNN and then add to that the fact that Bezos was just sort of able to buy the Washington Post. You know, that is really, really deeply alarming. and yeah I think but I still believe as much as it's I think I still believe that the two principles are fundamentally not contradictory that there should be a free press but also some regulation to prevent people from just pumping out lies into the ecosystem I have to believe that there is a legislative framework that can steer a course between those two ideas I think PodSaver UK is probably a good example of that right where you clearly have views and opinions and they clearly Oh we've got views for days Yeah exactly but also you do kind of you report things even when they're inconvenient to report or I've seen you kind of both you and Coco kind of test your presuppositions or test kind of the ideas in a way that feels like that's both free speech and it's funny and you're genuinely informing and entertaining well listen Coco is a journalist Coco's properly come through the system she was staff at the Guardian when she came to do the show and our producers are journalists and they have that rigorous journalistic background.

22:51I cannot tell you the amount of stuff that is removed from that show that would get me sued. It's like an outtakes version at some point, which is just an hour of you saying suitable things. The outtakes of Pod Save the UK is just a long list of... It is just a list of people that would rightly be able to sue me for things that I've said. So they're always protecting me by their journalistic rigor. But also, yeah, it is a really important principle. If I say something outlandish on the show, again, we do try and keep it in the realms of it's pretty clear that I'm making a joke. So there's stuff that I've said on the show.

23:29I mean, I guess the most memorable example is that we've managed to get to, and I did do stand-up about this in the end, we got to a point where I was able to use the phrase paedophile adjacent to describe the King's brother because we were able to legally say that there was sufficient photographing evidence of him adjacent to a known paedophile that we were able to get away with it. I'm just going to chat with our producer. Paedophile adjacent has been legaled on a number of platforms. Are we getting the thumbs up from the control room? Yeah, as far as I know, I have not been paedophile adjacent.

24:07I will say I am a person who works in the comedy industry and therefore we know I have been 100 % adjacent to a sex offender. We know that I've been stood next to, we know that I've been stood next to sex offenders. Allegedly. Allegedly. Definitely, guys, it's going to be allegedly. Allegedly. I think Russell Brand is still allegedly. Really? Yeah, I believe so. That clip of Russell Brand with the Bible, just with Piers Morgan, that was a clip of the year. You know, it's, I mean, I mean, it's about a year before, because we'd all heard these rumours and you can sort of see there's a point at which, if you look on his IMDb page, you can see the point at which people decided to stop working with him because you don't really have any power because you can't really go to the police.

24:59The only power you have is to withdraw your labour. And so you can see that comedians and people who work in comedy in the UK stopped wanting to work with Russell Brand from his fucking IMDb page. And that's really the only power we had. But I remember at the time my partner saying to me, listen, he's going to come back out. When this stuff comes out, here's what he's going to say. And she literally went through the five points that he brought up in that video initially. And then when he... She didn't write it for him, did she, on the side? I don't know. I can't check it, actually. I don't believe she's freelancing.

25:36Apologies for creeps. but it would when he got baptised in the Thames by Bear Grylls I do remember thinking yeah here we go here we go, the thing about Russell Brand is he's so stupid that he doesn't even know how to run away from sexual misconduct allegations the last thing you want to do if you're trying to avoid allegations of industrialised sexual misconduct is to affiliate yourself with organised religion what kind of manoeuvre are you pulling here, man. But yeah, he's a very unpleasant man. Brand is still alleged. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. We're stronger when we're together.

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27:58But at one point during the local election, it looked like there was going to be a leadership question time. And so straight in there, been trying to debate Farage and it sounded like Farage was going to do it. So we got to a point where I was preparing for this debate for Farage and reform just weren't confirming who was going to be on there. So we got into a position where I said, I'll do it if Farage does it. And you're kind of all playing chess with each other. And then in the end, they ended up putting up Zia Yusuf. And if I'd gone on question time, I've been on Question Time twice now. Both times I've been with Zia Yusuf.

28:24I was like, I'm not going on for a third time with Zia Yusuf when it's very blatant that Reformer trying to raise his profile by getting him into a fight with me. And it's always that kind of judging of like, when do you fight people? When do you just let them be? And it's just telling that like I've challenged Faraj to a debate four or five times now. Where the fuck is he? It just absolutely disappeared. Where is he? Where is he? Enjoying his five million pounds, I think. Well, this is the thing. Allegedly. There's the issue of the£5 million. There's a£5 million question. And then there's also, I mean, I would say, if I'd made an allegation that a foreign power had hacked my phone, I'd have some more follow-up questions rather than just dropping that and running.

29:06But he's made a very serious allegation that the information about the£5 million was obtained due to information procured by the Russian government hacking his phone. We've had, as far as I know, and I'm happy to be corrected, But as far as I know, we've had no further information about that. We don't know where the five million quids come from. And listen, maybe he's like on a spiritual retreat. Maybe he's going to be baptised at the Thames by Bearcalls. We don't know. But what I do know is it looks like he's turned chicken shit and it looks like he's sort of fleeing scrutiny. And I will say that is, there is an element of the Trumpian playbook and how you handle the media, which is where possible, do a runner.

29:47avoid difficult questions I remember in the 2019 election that was the election that Johnson at one point hid in a fridge took a journalist's phone off them when they were trying to show him images of people who were waiting in the corridors at A &E, obviously there was fridge gate and then on top of that he just didn't show up to he was supposed to be interviewed by Andrew Neal and he just didn't show up. I'm still thinking that debate might not happen we were waiting for it for quite a while I'm starting to think it's not going to happen. Andrew Neil's still in the studio. That's what people don't realise.

30:19Andrew Neil never left the studio. That is, unfortunately, a really common tactic that we're seeing from a lot of these kind of hard right leaders around the world. And I suppose it's even more sinister, because not only has he disappeared, he released that video on the morning of a... Pure Carl Graves. Yeah, exactly. Where he didn't even have the kind of courage or clarity to then answer questions on this statement he's released. And I would say he knew exactly what he was doing. Yeah, of course. Yeah, Farage is... The thing about Farage is that I do think he's the most consequential politician of my lifetime.

30:56I really do. I think in terms of the impact of what he's been able to do in politics and in terms of the reshaping of the British... Essentially, the operations of the British government. I mean, leaving the European Union is a really significant reshaping of the British government. He has always understood his place in the political ecosystem of this country. And his place a lot of the time has been to, without actually, I mean, pre 2024, without actually holding a ministerial position. he was an MEP, but without actually holding a ministerial position, he has essentially been able to conduct the Conservative Party's business for most of the 21st century.

31:42And the electoral threat posed by Farage, I mean, I keep talking about this. It's really, really important in terms of understanding what's happened to this country in the last 15 years. David Cameron comes to power in 2010, having said that the Conservative Party needs to end its obsession with Europe and describing Eurosceptic Conservatives as a basket of loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists, I think is the Cameron phrase. And then Cameron is essentially eaten by those Eurosceptic MPs because Farage has been able to essentially call the shots for how the Conservative Party is going to operate because of their fear of losing ground to him.

32:20Now the position that Farage is in is interesting because he is an MP. And so now he has to answer questions like, Like, what are you doing? What are you actually productively doing? You represent the people of Clacton in the Houses of Parliament. What are you doing for their local concerns? Also, he's the leader of a political party that's currently leading in the polls. So it is really important that he answers questions like, where did that£5 million come from? Did it come from Christopher Harbour? What are the conditions upon which that£5 million was given to you? And it does matter that he's used the phrase pure cold rage.

32:55The thing with Farage now is for the first time, I don't think he understands fully what his place is in the ecosystem because he isn't the tail wagging the dog. He now is the dog. And he's now being wagged by the Elon Musk-backed restore party led by Rupert Lowe. And I think that for the first time in a long, for the first time in a long, long time, Farage doesn't look like he knows his role. And I think he has known his role for a lot of the 21st century. I think that's really observant. And I think my other perception is that he brought Nadeem Zahawi into the party and at the same time there was lots of conversation in the media that were looking to be kind of fiscally responsible to start looking like a government to kind of tone down some of the communications to just kind of moderate themselves.

33:39And then it feels like in the past month there's been a very deliberate decision because they started to dip in the polls to not do that. And then as you say, we've now got Restore and I don't know how they're going to deal with that threat to their right if they're just going to get more and more extreme and also I worry about what that does to Starmer or frankly the new Labour Prime Minister, whoever that might be. Yeah, yeah, whoever that is going to be. By the time we've released this. I know, it's so, I just, I have no relish for that psychodrama. You know, I'm sure there's some people that enjoy the, you know, sort of cut and thrust of Westminster, but, you know, man, I would really like somebody to be in the job and do the job.

34:24You know, the British state has been struggling to function properly since 2010. You know, the reality is we talk about sort of economic growth, but in real terms, in terms of people's day to day, the average person's day to day life in this country, it has not recovered from 2008. And not only is it not recovered, things have actually backslid further from the early 2010. and there's been no, I think part of the thing that the Starmer government has failed to really grasp is the fact that people, that turning back the clock to 2015 is not really enough. People were really struggling in 2015. What Cameron Osborne did in those first years of that government has done so much damage to this country.

35:21So much damage. The politically motivated decision to remedy the deficit created by a bank bailout by hacking public spending is something that we're still counting the cost of. And ripples of that decision take in an issue like Brexit. It takes in an issue like the pandemic response. You know, this... And I know that people don't want to... People are trying to not talk about Brexit. People try not to talk about the pandemic. But, like, we kind of have to. They're kind of the two biggest things that have happened to us in the last decade. And I understand that there's very little political will to revisit either of those two things.

36:02The economic impact of Brexit has been disastrous for this country. On top of that, the specific cuts to our state left us in a position of extreme vulnerability at the time that COVID hit. You know, it created serious, serious problems. Also, the cuts to social care and the invitation of private equity money into the retirement sector is another factor in why the pandemic was so catastrophic in this country. I just read, we just interviewed Hetty O 'Brien, who wrote The Asset Class. And it's a book about private equity. And it's sort of terrifying how much of our state we've just kind of allowed to be bought up.

36:50It's really worrying. As I was listening to you, I was thinking, something I don't say enough, and I probably need to say in every interview, is that we had a private debt crisis, not a public debt crisis. And all of this conversation about bond markets and borrowing actually often doesn't focus on the fact that this came from the banks. in the financial markets. In terms of, obviously, you're not a politician, but in terms of your, I say, obviously, maybe you are. I don't know. Maybe that's the same story. See, it's coming. I shouldn't rule you out. There's an old John Mulaney joke from Comeback Kid from one of his stand-up specials where he says, there's a long story about him meeting Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton went to university with his parents.

37:27And there's a bit in it where he said, when he was a child, he said, I'm going to be president like Bill Clinton. And then he says, and I know now that I'll never be president, not unless people get real cool with a bunch of stuff. And you're like, I think I have no ambitions to be in politics. Right. And I always just wanted to be a comedian. And the comedy that I do is not particularly unusual in the history of stand-up comedy or television comedy. You know, there's like a pretty long lineage of people that I grew up. You know, when I was a kid, I watched Bill Hicks do stand up. I grew up watching Hicks.

38:09I grew up watching George Carlin. I grew up watching Richard Pryor. I grew up on TV shows like Brass Iron, The Day Today. You know, I watched a lot of I Got News For You when I was a kid. I love Jon Stewart. You know, I don't see anything particularly. I don't see myself as like an outrider in comedy. is there's quite a sort of well-trodden path that I've gone down in comedy, in stand-up comedy and television comedy. People just can't be arsed doing it anymore. People just don't want the grief. And so now I end up in this position where you're like, people are like, well, you must be interested in politics because that's the logical end point of what you're doing.

38:48And you think, no, no, there is a logical end point of what I'm doing. You know, people like Carlin, Jon Stewart, these are the people that I sort of grew up admiring. so I don't really have any ambition to get out of that sphere and also I'll be frank with you Zach it looks pretty stressful it looks pretty stressful I mean you always have a way of you've always in the last particularly in the last you know we interviewed you a few times in the run up to the leadership contest I've seen you a few times since you have a way of making it look like you're enjoying yourself I don't know whether that's the actor in you I'm having a great time That's what I mean.

39:26Like, I think it was maybe Simon Hattleston's piece about you in The Guardian. The sort of thesis of it was, he seems to be enjoying this. I don't know why. I do feel that if it's somebody who's done so much comedy about politics and politicians, I think this sort of this assumption that I must have some deep contempt for politicians, but it could not be further from the truth. You know, I want our political system to function properly. I really, really want us to have a, I want things to be good for people in this country. And I still believe in representative democracy. You know, members of my family have been people that have financed Maoist militias in Kerala.

40:12Like my family in Kerala is like, it's proper, they're proper, you know, academic Marxists. That's the linear democracy. I always have to explain to people when I've been painted as a sort of extreme leftist, I always have to explain in the grand political sort of arc of my family. You want that safe Tory seat? Yeah, I'm David Cameron, baby. I'm basically David Cameron. My family are, you know, they are proper dyed-in-the-wall Marxists. My grandparents are on both sides of my family. But I still have a strong belief that representative democracy is still the best way. I believe it's the best system available to us.

40:55I believe it's a good system. I believe that it has been compromised by interests more vested than Bruce Willis in Die Hard. Like, I believe that's my issue with it. My issue with it is that the proliferation of lobbying and also the fear that politicians have had, particularly in the last 25 years, to act against capital in the interests of the majority of the people living in their country is the kind of core sin that we're all living the consequences of. And I'm not sort of angry with politicians per se. I'm sort of, I just want them to do better. We live in a country where there's so many demonstrable examples of how politics can improve people's lives.

41:48Because, you know, if you look at something like the National Health Service, when people talk about things that you want to be patriotic about, you know, I never understand why your patriotism can only manifest itself in hanging a fucking flag off a lamppost. There are things in this country, you know, that are always, you know, it is really complicated and it did take a lot of horse training. It was really, really hard to do. But the simple bare fact is that one day people in this country woke up with an ability to access health care regardless of their economic circumstances. That is only because of politics.

42:28And politics still has an, I have to believe, the politics still has an ability to change people's lives. And I think it's more difficult because the sort of tentacles of capital now so, so enmeshed in all of our politics, you know. And I think it's really important that we consider people like Bezos and Musk as not a new type of obstacle to democracy. You know, ultimately, Bezos and Musk are just Rockefeller and Murdoch in T-shirts. Right. You know, they don't have the decency to dress well. But that is essentially all it is. You know, they have the same basic aims and their basic aims are no regulation, no taxation.

43:14But I really believe in, I still really believe in politics's ability to change people's lives. But there needs to be more of a willingness. And I think that also there needs to be an acknowledgement of what's actually going wrong in the country. I remember speaking to Tom, interviewing Tom McTague for Pods Over the UK, who is the new Statesman editor, who did a long profile of Keir Starmer. And I think McTague likes Starmer personally. And I think he likes the, maybe he likes the platform that he ran on, but I certainly think personally he likes Starmer. But he said part of the problem that Starmer is having is that he does not believe there's anything wrong with the institutions that run Britain at the moment.

44:00He just thinks they've been badly managed. And that, I think, is a catastrophic miscalculation of what's going on. There are serious institutional problems, in some cases, because those institutions have been massively underfunded for a decade or not. In some cases, it's because the institutions themselves need wholesale reform because they're not fit for the challenges posed by the 21st century. I don't think the Home Office as an institution right now is ready to meet the challenges that it's facing, right? I think it's got too big a remit. I think there's structural things that we need to start looking at in the operations of the British state.

44:34But I think, you know, I think the tech sector as a whole, that is a challenge. That is a challenge for democratically elected governments, you know, because there needs to be international cooperation because we need to be taxing these companies properly. They are, there's so much money pissing out of our country because we can't get control of these kind of enormous monolithic corporations. And it is a real issue, you know. And the thing that worries me sometimes is, when it comes to the tech sector, have we acted too late? You know, monopolies and mergers should definitely have stopped some of these things happening.

45:15Those companies need to be broken up. Even purely from a capitalist perspective, it's an impediment to pure capitalist competition if a company can just buy up innovators. That's actually, you're disincentivising innovation because you know that eventually, if you become a publicly listed company, you will essentially just be eaten by one of the larger companies. You know, Facebook starts, it's an upstart company, it's a disruptor. Then Instagram and WhatsApp start eating its fight. It buys both of them. Even outside of the realms of a progressive or left-wing critique of capitalism, by its own terms, deregulated capitalism is not delivering on what it promises.

46:00Trickle down economics, fueling innovation. These are not things that are happening right now. And so, yeah, I think it's like it's about we have to start rethinking a lot of these things. And I think that's a big problem with the Labour government is that they haven't grasped the scale of the challenge. So how are you going to propose solutions if you aren't even confronting the problems? Yeah, it reminds me a lot of during the election in America where the United States, where Kamala Harris was asked, how was she going to change their economic plan or their industrial strategy? And she's like, oh, it's going to be the same.

46:31Because in her head, everything that the Democrats were doing was just fine. And she kind of missed the point that people were so frustrated and angry with Joe Biden and really, really suffering. And I feel like you see a lot of that from the Labour government, the kind of sense that everything's okay if we just don't have Nigel Farage and if we just don't have the right. And I think it misses that, well, it's exactly what you said. People don't want things to go back to 2015 or 2010. I would argue all the way back to Thatcher and the 70s. It can't be just about going back. We should look forward as well.

46:59Yeah, yeah. But things have been eroding for such a long time that just going back a few years also isn't going to cut it. Yeah, I could completely agree with that. I also just think, I mean, yeah, maybe you have mixed feelings about this because actually it's a big part of why I think you guys are doing so well at the moment right now. But don't tell your natural voting coalition to go fuck itself. Right. Like, don't do that. Yeah. Don't do, like, you know, the Gaza policy is a humanitarian catastrophe. Biden's Gaza policy. Stalin was saying that, you know, Israel had the right to shut off pan water to Gaza.

47:39That is a humanitarian catastrophe. It's also very, very stupid politically. Yeah. Because you're fragmenting your own electoral coalition. You know, the progressive people, and, you know, people keep talking about it as young progressive people. You've seen the protests. You see the people that are on the front page being physically dragged away. These are pensioners. But I spoke to somebody, you know, we make a podcast for Crooked Media who have their own slightly fractious relationship with the Democratic Party now. And Katie Long, who's our executive producer, said to me, Jesus, did they not see what happened to us in 2024?

48:22Did the Labour Party not watch what happened in 2024? Don't depress your own base. You know, in trying to win over this very small section of voters that I understand can be electorally significant because of our sort of screwed up electoral system. You know, he delivered an electoral victory, but he has no base to lean on when immediately, 10 seconds after that election, the Murdoch press turns on him. You know, it's so sort of naive. And for somebody, for a party that's talked so much about grown up politics and, you know, this isn't, we're not, we're not, this is not student politics. This is not naive.

49:01You're the most naive, magic bean buying motherfuckers I've ever seen in my life. What are you doing? I'm putting that on a post-it, by the way. Next election, Nish Kumar says you're. It's so crazy. Naive bean buying motherfuckers. It's so naive to think you can govern without your base. That's basic politics. You know, that is something that the political right in this country have understood the entire time. You don't alienate your base. They know who their core voters are. I think maybe now the Conservative Party doesn't really anymore. I think the Conservative Party is experiencing a bit of an identity crisis.

49:44but in the kind of 2010s the conservative party knew who its base was and it acted in the interests of that base and we bleeped out by the way when i said motherfuckers you can say it but i can't motherfuckers is a bad one right you can't bbc rules you can after the watershed you can swear but you can't MF and C off the table. Oh, wow. That was, you know, when we were working, that's the like last vestige, like BBC rules. And if you talk to a comedian who's done stuff on British TV, they know what BBC rules means. So it's like, if it's after 10, you can say what you want. Apart from C and MF, those are off the table.

50:28I feel like they're in different categories. Like I feel like C is definitely, like I just would not say that. C is definitely, that's the, that's the. You just don't do it. That's the big red button. I mean, I do it so often. But in doing stand-up, I think it's for people to expect some fruity language in a stand-up show. But obviously on the BBC, they don't. The producer was just waving a sign at the window that said, have you seen the document of banned words? I have not seen the document of banned words. The only words I was told I wasn't allowed to use were CNMF. Whose document is this? like just there's some some there's like a can you hear me yeah there's like an off-con booklet essentially with all the slurs that you can't say and the reasons why you can't say that the rudest thing oh really oh yeah i don't think oh yeah obviously all slurs were off the tape but i don't think we were looking for we weren't looking to use any slurs slurs were never a problem for us but yeah it is i yeah so i guess yes i think slurs we assumed were off the table but everything else was pretty much on the table apart from season mfs do you think we're going to see a resurgence political comedy i'm thinking very specifically about snl uk which you know yeah hands up i've absolutely loved i just think it's been great and they've taken hits at me too so this isn't me like enjoying them from a political perspective i just think it's genuinely funny and exciting and feels live well it is live there's a lot of political comedy now being done on kind of social media as well you know there's there's a lot of people online who are doing really funny stuff cody darler cody darler very funny a frequent co-host of pod save the uk um i think with snl it's just we just needed somebody to put some money into british comedy on tv because the the talent has been there the whole time yes it's never been an issue and I was really pleased to see it because I feel like the last generation of comedians that were sort of blooded into TV was my era of comedians.

52:29Like, you know, in the kind of mid-2010s, you know, there was an ecosystem by which you'd do Edinburgh again and again and again and then you would do Mock the Week, Have I Got News for You, Live at the Apollo and then you were sort of thrust into an ecosystem and then when we started The Mass Report, which is a satirical show that I hosted on the BBC, It was a bunch of comedians that were sort of, some of whom were making their first television appearances. It was a way of blooding like a whole new generation of comics and they all came through in that kind of gang. And then there kind of hasn't been anything.

53:02And that's not to say that there aren't brilliant comedians that have just kept doing stuff. There are so many really great stand-ups and character acts and sketch acts and, yeah, that have come through in that intervening decade. but there hasn't necessarily been the money behind them to kind of push something out in a kind of broader way. And everybody sort of had to cultivate their own siloed fan bases. And that works for some people. And also it's nice to see sketch. It's nice to see sketch on British TV. What I love about the sketch is too, and I've said this to the writers, so I'm not just gossiping behind their back, but some of them just really haven't worked.

53:39And I think that's great. Like you watch it and some of them are amazing and there's others that don't work. And you're like, I'm really glad they were brave enough to kind of do something that either landed really well or sometimes you're like, no, it didn't really work, but great that you had a go. When you do a weekly show, part of the Zen-like acceptance you have to reach is it's not all going to work. And also it's definitely not all going to work if you keep trying to take risks. There is a way of doing it where everything can kind of be fine. But if you're trying to do something interesting, you are going to you know YouTube has been very kind to SNL US I think YouTube is brilliant for SNL US and I think part of the reason is that you know like I watch I watch US SNL every week but I watch it like much of the day you know like there's various listing websites that will say these are the five brilliant sketches from last week's SNL but also you know people who worked on that show for years and years in the States will tell you you only get the good stuff by you know it's an omelette egg situation like there's going to be a few things where you go oh yeah that just did not work yeah and you know listen i'm the patron saint of comedy that doesn't work my god i've tried some stuff where you're like oh that was that did that was bad but he said to me i look like i'm enjoying myself as a politician i have to say the scariest thing i've done in my time as a politician was stand-up you probably know Ava Vidal that she ran a fundraiser and it was me and Beverly Knight and a few comedians and she was like will you come and do a speech about climate crisis and I was like a fundraiser like a comedy fundraiser that's not going to work I was like should I do stand up and she looked at me and was like are you sure I was like I will give it a go I have never been more terrified like each time people laughed I just remember being like oh my god thank god thank god and I got off stage you did The Last Leg as well right yeah I really enjoyed that twice yeah right and that's fun right it was so because also they had you doing some comedy stuff in there it wasn't They didn't just have you on, you know, they didn't have you on because they can have politicians on where they kind of do the comedy and then they turn to the politicians.

55:45They definitely have me doing the comedy. Yeah, they wanted you to sort of be incorporated in. I have to say, Judy Love could not have been lovelier. I just felt like she picked me up and carried me through that first episode. Judy Love is like a national treasure. I was about to say national treasure in waiting. I think that's actually no longer accurate. I think Judy Love is now like a full blown national treasure. I mean, you talk about somebody that just, it sort of, it just pours out of her. Like she's so in control of how she's funny that she almost just can't, she almost can't stop being funny.

56:23She's so, so good. And also that show has been running for so long that whenever you go in and do it, you sort of feel like you're in a kind of safe environment because everybody knows what they're doing on that show. Although the second time I did it, I'd been up all night at Gorton and Denton. And I had just won. I'd done, I think, three or four hours of serious media interviews. Yeah. And then went live on the last leg. And Alex Brooker came out in like a huge kind of hallucinatory like outfit. And I just remember being like, what's going on? And he turned to me and he went, you're the one who wants to legalize drugs, mate.

56:57And I did have a moment where like, what am I doing? Who am I? What's going on? There's definitely been moments when I've done that show, having had a full night's sleep, that I felt like I was hallucinating. I definitely at one point remember being at a go-kart. I can't fully remember why. But there's definitely points on that show where you're like, Josh comes out dressed as a tree and you're like, what? Also, because I've known Josh for 20 years, it is a bit like a dream because it's like when one of your friends turns up in your dream doing something weird. So there are times where I've looked across at Josh dressed like a frog and thought, right, just pinch yourself to make sure you're not.

57:29I need to spin the top like DiCaprio with Inception. I think stand-up comedians have done an amazing job at our own PR of talking about how fucking difficult our job is. And it's not as difficult as we've made it out to be. And also now there's this whole ecosystem of comedy podcasts where people are saying, yeah, it's just, man, it's just like, it's just true art. It's like, shut the fuck up, lads. Nobody is curing cancer here, okay, as far as I know. So let's all just calm down. But yeah, we've made it look very difficult. I feel like I want to be nicer to stand up comedians than you are, but we don't have enough time for me to do reverse therapy.

58:06I suppose the final thing I want to ask about is, you know, we open with this, that it has been a grim week. And you're someone who's been an amazing voice, both as a comedian, also a commentator and a journalist, but also you've been on rallies. I think we spoke together on a Stop Trump rally and you spoke really powerfully about migration and the benefits of migration. And we're just in a period where it really feels like that if there was a consensus, feels like it's really breaking down and the kind of ties that bind our communities together feel like they're at risk of fraying. What role does comedy have in this?

58:38What do you think we all need to be doing moving forward and how do we work to bring people together in such a moment of division? You have 30 seconds. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what role comedy has beyond so much of the strength of our comedy scene has been the kind of diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints that people have bought. It's sort of the country's sort of comedy, the country's cultural life, I think, has been so sort of enriched by its immigrant communities in general. I think that that's a really important thing to say. I think often also there is this kind of, there are still spaces within comedy that I think are actually apolitical, but create a kind of shared community.

59:23You know, I think of a show like Taskmaster, Like, in a sense, Taskmaster might be one of the only things keeping this country together. You know, because regardless of your background, you can watch that show and... Think Alex Horne is Zach Polanski. Yeah.

59:40I had to talk about that. Yeah. It's like someone stretched you and watched because Horne is cartoonishly massive. I don't think people realise that because he's normally sat next to Greg, who is a full-blown giant. Right. But Horne is really tall. But yeah, anyway, I think comedy can still provide sort of shared spaces like that, that sort of transcend backgrounds and political beliefs and all that kind of stuff. I think in terms of community cohesion, it's sort of incumbent on all of us to fight for our communities. You know, it's really important that we don't allow mistrust and division to be sewn into our societies.

1:00:19And that's on all of us. That's in all of us kind of participating in protests, counter protests. It's also in a lot of us participating in, you know, showing up within your community spaces. I think that stuff is really, really important. But also we need strong political leadership at this point. And we need what we don't need is politicians kind of indulging in the politics of division. And also we need to actually be telling an accurate story about what's going on. You know, it just happens again and again through history that the far right really can only thrive in, it's a bacteria, right?

1:01:01And it needs conditions in which it can thrive. And economic hardship and spiralling inflation tends to be a gateway that the far right walks into, right? And that's happened over and over again. It's so interesting. People in this country only always want to talk about World War II until you actually want to have a conversation about World War II. You know, like we want to talk about like tanks and the D-Day landing. But you're like, let's also talk about Nazi ideology. Let's talk about, you know, fascism. Yeah, I saw you having that, you know, getting into it a bit with Zia Yusuf. Using that, Zia Yusuf saying that some cultures are superior to others.

1:01:42Come on, what are we doing here? What's going on? Why are we learning from the lessons from history? We talked about this on the podcast. I looked at some of the cartoons of you the week of the last by-election and I thought, we're not learning anything here.

1:01:59That is the one thing, the dehumanising anti-Semitism of those cartoons. I saw the ghosts of it in stuff that was being drawn, pertaining directly to you. about a month ago. I was shocked. I was really, really shocked. We want to talk about World War II in terms of types of tanks or RAF planes. Let's talk about the actual conditions through which extremism took hold in a Western European country. And when we say never again, we mean never again, right? That's what I mean. And increasingly, I'm starting to feel like a lot of the... It seems to me like there's a lot of sections of our political class and our media class whose only problem with the Nazis was that they were German.

1:02:48That's the one problem that they have with them. I'm saying let's really talk about how we prevent something like that from happening again. Let's really talk about how we don't foster extremism. And a big factor in all of this is fixing the economics. And the only way we can do that is if we start actually identifying that the problems in this country are not to do with immigrants, right? And you can keep deporting us and keep deporting us and it ain't going to help you. You deport us until there's none of us left. And I promise you, I promise you, Elon Musk is still going to have a disproportionate control of the capital in your country.

1:03:27You're not fixing the real cause. It's scapegoating and it distracts you from actually making improvements to people's lives in Britain right now. That's so powerful. I'm not convinced you're doing stand-up right, that that was good. What a dish came up. Listen, I don't give that shit away for free. You want to see that? You've got to come and see me on tour. On tour, I dress it up with a joke. On the podcast, it's... No, I mean, yeah, it's... You made me think I do have another question, though. How can someone come see you on tour? Is there dates coming up? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm on tour from September all over the UK and Ireland and the tickets are available at nishkamar.co.uk.

1:04:05Nish, thank you so much. It's been so good. Thank you, Zach. Thanks for having me. Nice to see you. This episode was brought to you by Crowdfunder. What's your bold idea? Start it at crowdfunder.co.uk forward slash bold.

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