[Podcast] Knives out for Zelensky and the collapse of the British establishment

A major corruption scandal is rocking Ukraine. Cabinet ministers and one of Volodymyr Zelensky’s own business partners are implicated in a war profiteering scheme worth more than 100 million dollars. Meanwhile, on the front, the situation is getting even worse. Pokrovsk – a key defensive position in the Donbass – is falling to the Russians. Zelensky’s days are numbered.

But corruption and crisis are far from confined to Ukraine. In Britain, over the past month, every pillar of the established order has experienced some sort of disaster. From the stripping of Prince Andrew’s titles over his relations with Epstein, to the historic collapse of Labour in the polls, to the BBC being attacked by Donald Trump, the ‘old order’ is being discredited in the eyes of millions.  

What is behind this rot? And how can we as communists connect with the rising anger that it is producing? In this week’s episode of Against the Stream, Ben Curry and Hamid Alizadeh sit down to discuss all this and more. 

Against the Stream is the Marxist current affairs podcast of the Revolutionary Communist International. It airs weekly on YouTube on Thursdays at 6 p.m. GMT.

 Reading list

Inside the Wes Streeting plot - The Spectator

Britain: one prince isn’t enough – Abolish the monarchy! Clear out the parasites! - Jack Tye Wilson

The BBC ‘coup’: A ruling class at war with itself - Ben Gliniecki

Reeves must get whatever growth she can - Financial Times

The Ukrainian war: an internationalist class position – RCI Statement

Transcript

Hamid

Welcome to Against the Stream, the podcast that analyses world events in order to uncover the true class interests that lie behind them. While we aim for the highest objectivity, we do not claim to be impartial. We stand unapologetically on the side of the workers and the poor, the people who make this world go around.

This podcast is for them. Stacks of cash, a hundred million dollars, a golden toilet, wiretaps, and codenames. It sounds like something from a heist movie, but it's only the latest scandal involving the inner circle of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the Labour Party is descending further into chaos as the knives are out for Kier Starmer. We're supposed to live in a democracy, but the closer you look, the more you realise that the true decisions are made behind closed doors, far away from any ordinary person. Those are the topics that we will be dealing with in today's show.

My name is Hamid Alizadeh, and I'm here today for the first time with Ben Curry. Welcome, Ben.

Ben

Thank you,Hamid.

Hamid

Ben is an editor of the website, the international website of the Revolutionary Communist International, marxist.com, and he's also a member of the International Secretariat of the RCI. So Ben, yeah, it sounds like something from a heist movie, doesn't it?

Ben

Yeah, it certainly does. We have this golden toilet. What's his name?

Timur?

Hamid

I forgot the guy's name. Timur Mindich. Well, I mean, it could be a heist movie, because actually, the key person involved in this scandal that's now rocking Ukraine is Timur Mindich, one of his close friends, and possibly his closest business associate.

They both own a film production company, 50% each. Now, this is a scandal that's been unravelling in the last few days. It's been revealed by NABU and SAPO, which is the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, which, as you can guess from the name, anti-corruption organisations, they have done an investigation over the past 15 months involving more than a thousand hours of wiretaps.

And what they have uncovered, what they're revealing so far that they've uncovered, is a hundred million dollar embezzlement scheme, mainly around this guy, Timur Mindich, but involving a whole series of people. We saw there's been 70 raids just in the first days of this campaign. Two ministers have been involved, and this obviously sheds a little bit of light also onto why Zelensky tried to close down NABU and SAPO just a few months ago in July, but he forced to reinstate them because there were so many mass protests.

Ben

Yeah, I think it's becoming quite clear that Zelensky knew what was going on, probably back in July, that the noose was tightening around some of his inner circle, like you say, this Timur Mindich and Herman Halashenko, the former energy minister, I think now former justice minister.

Hamid

He was the justice minister, this is the law and order guy.

Ben

Yeah, this is the nature of the regime that exists, and some of the details of this scandal and this is only the latest corruption scandal. I mean, there's been so much corruption unearthed, bribes paid to recruitment officers, all sorts of corruption scandals we can maybe go into, but this one in particular I think will hurt for a lot of Ukrainians because the war's going extremely badly. We'll come on to that of course, but right now the Russians are absolutely pummeling the Ukrainian cities from the sky, and you're talking in some areas of 16-hour blackouts as we're approaching winter.

The energy sector is in disarray and a lot of these scandals actually surrounds precisely kickbacks in the energy sector. There's a hundred million dollars of kickbacks and all of this sort of stuff.

Hamid

Well, I mean this scheme, let's explain the scheme. The scheme has been, they had this thing called the barrier of entry for contractors who were working for the energy sector, and in particular what this is about, this is about contractors hired to build fortifications for energy facilities, so measures to protect them from Russian attacks. They've been demanding between 10 and 15 percent of any contract, so in order to get a contract with Energoatom, which is the main nuclear energy company, you've had to pay 10 or 15 percent of the contract you signed.

In fact, on the 10th of October, Vladimir Zelensky called a meeting to discuss the real, the extreme dire nature of the energy facilities and the energy grid, asking for measures to be taken. I read the report of that meeting and no one knew exactly what was going on. Oh yeah, we are building fortifications, we are building defences, we're not doing, you know, we're trying to take measures.

While that meeting was going on, or at least on the same day, I don't know if it was at the same time, but on the same day, the wire taps reveal a conversation between Mindich and his associates, where they agreed to up the kickback from 10 to 15 percent. So while the country is descending deeper into chaos and desperation, these guys are deciding to steal more money.

Ben

Yeah, exactly, and I mean, we talked about this air offensive over the course of the, well, the past few weeks that Russia has been absolutely bombarding Ukrainian cities. And when this happens, I mean, one of the, a couple, several of the bombs dropped in on the substations, on nuclear power facilities, and whenever this happens, you hear the Ukrainian government coming out with statements, oh, the the Russians are playing with nuclear catastrophe and so on and so forth. These people have been playing with nuclear catastrophe when they've basically turned the question of defending these nuclear sites into a racket, basically, to make enormous amounts of profit.

So yeah, the highest degree of cynicism.

Hamid

And just to say the people involved in this case, Timur Mindich is the co-owner of Kvartal 95, which is the, how do you say, the company, the production, movie production company that he owns with Zelensky. He owns a flat, a luxury flat, which has a golden toilet on it. This is where Zelensky had his 30th birthday, by the way, during COVID, where you weren't allowed to mingle.

And this place was called the shadow office of the president, because this is where you had all the major deals made. NABU and SAPO have not revealed all of their tapes, but it's believed that Zelensky is also on these tapes, because they believe that this flat was safe from wiretaps. Now, as it happens, there was an oligarch who lived upstairs.

Timur Mindich, by some accident, flooded his apartment, and as it was being repaired, NABU and SAPO installed their wiretaps in there. So that's where they got that. Anyway, he was kind of the handler.

He was the guy at the centre of everything. He was the guy with the connections into government and into business. But there were others.

There was the then minister of energy, now minister of justice, Herman Halouchtchenko. His code, oh, by the way, Mindich's code name was Carlson. That's what they called themselves.

Just goes to show, it doesn't matter if you use code names or not. People are going to figure you out anyway. Herman Halouchtchenko, the professor, and his, I'm not sure if it's his wife or what's it called, secret lover, Svitlana Hrynchuk, who is the energy minister, who was also involved in all of these conversations and who's now been suspended.

Although these two ministers, these are ministers of the cabinet, of the inner circle. They're not in prison. They've just been suspended pending investigations.

Igor Moronyuk, former deputy head of the state property fund and the advisor to the energy minister. His code name was Rocket. Dmitry Bazov, formerly a prosecutor, now Energoatom's security director.

The Zuckerman brothers, who seem to be businessmen, they, by the way, they are linked to this former casting company, which is now a big time weapons producer, Firepoint, which is also another scandal about Mindich and this company. They got a billion dollars worth of drone contracts. Oleksii Chernyshov, code name Che Guevara, the former vice prime minister.

Apparently he's now saying, well, if I'm going down, I'm going to take, he's under arrest. Mindich has escaped the country. No one knows where he is.

They just say he's left the country. Apparently by a tip from someone from NABU, the former vice prime minister, Chernyshov, who's been arrested, he's saying, well, if I'm going down, I'm going to take everyone down with me. He said he's going to turn everyone over.

This is the whole of the inner circle of the government, minister of energy, minister of justice. We know the minister of defence has been involved in several, the former ones at least have had several scandals around them as well. This goes right to the heart of the whole thing.

There's also other scandals that Mindich has been involved in. One, a company owned by Mindich and Zelensky has been, or I'm not sure if it's, it's kind of murky, but it's related to Zelensky. There is like a link to Zelensky as well.

Yeah. There's a kind of paper trail to Zelensky. Took on a huge amount of contracts for building fortifications, building fortifications, dragon teeth, anti-tank ditches to defend Ukrainian cities, which were never built.

So again, money has gone out. He's been involved to a scandal around this company, Firepoint, which was a casting agency before the war. Now it's the biggest drone and missile producer in Ukraine.

They're building the Flamingo missile, which apparently is not very good. Their drones are not very good compared to their competitors, but they got a billion dollars worth of contracts. And a whole series of other things in all the major scandals of the past few years.

Oh yes. Drone procurement, arms procurement, where people have been asked to pay 30% of an arms contract in order to get the contract for the state. So they're allowed to kind of say, give you an overpriced contract, but then they have to pay 30% of what they earn to people like Mindish and others as well.

Obviously this is nothing new, but now there's faces and names and proof to it. And it goes right all the way up to the top. And it happens in this context as you write, as you said.

Ben

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think to bear in mind is this is in many respects, not something new for Ukrainian politics. I mean, this is actually the second golden toilet I think in Ukrainian politics.

Hamid

The first one led to the Maidan movement.

Ben

Yeah. Which there was an anti-corruption, you know, the opponents of Yanukovych, I think was the president at that time, were very much used this question of hatred of the corruption and rottenness of that wing of the oligarchy, which Yanukovych represented.

And of course they use that to install themselves with the backing of the West, of course. And of course the West is also backing, I mean, NABU and SAPO, these agencies that have been carrying out these investigations. They're very much linked to the West and the Europeans in particular.

But yeah, through using this question of corruption and so forth, that was very much a part of the Maidan movements. And yeah, Yanukovych himself also had a golden toilet. So this isn't something new in many respects.

Hamid

In fact, Zelensky was elected in 2019 because people have had enough with the corruption of the Maidan regime. So first you had Yanukovych, who's corruption, obviously there was lots of corruption. Then you had, and this goes way back to the 90s, by the way.

There's always been this corruption at the top. Then you had the so-called Maidan revolution, which, or the Maidan so-called revolution. It was a movement.

Ben

And then people like Poroshenko in power.

Hamid

And then Poroshenko, who's now behind this, we'll get to that in a minute. And then Zelensky was elected against all of this crap. And he came up saying, I'm clean.

In fact, he played a role in a movie, which was about a comedian becoming a president. And going against corruption. And now he's right at the centre of it.

And what's clear in all of this is that Zelensky knew all of it. I mean, there's not yet... Zelensky's name has been mentioned in one of the things that's been made. But obviously this is not... I was reading Kyiv Independent, which is obviously a very, very staunch supporter of the regime.

And they were like, oh, Zelensky made a mistake about the people that he hangs out with. He was just inexperienced. He didn't know.

He's involved in all of this. Of course he is. And there's a lot of scandals, in fact, involving him and his wife and his companies.

This is his business partner. This is where he has his, and people call them Mindich, Zelensky's confidant. They were close friends.

Of course he knew. This was his cabinet. The core members of his cabinet.

People who have not been changed over the many, many waves of firing of ministers and so on. And obviously this happens at a time, as you say, where the Russian aerial offensive is really gaining ground. Russia's producing more drones than ever before.

And we see raids of up to a thousand drones and missiles. There's a, someone was saying in, I can't remember where I read this, but there's, it's more and more clear that there's actual engineers sitting, Russian engineers sitting, figuring out how to, how to strike the Ukrainian energy facilities to have the maximum effect. There's a general campaign of undermining the energy grid.

And then this is what they're doing. And as you say, 16 hours without heat, without electricity, that means death for some people. I can imagine a lot of people would be seething with anger, but there's another side to this, which is Pokrovsk.

I mean, we've reported this many, many times. The Russians have been advancing at an ever increasing rate and they're taking on bigger and bigger challenges. At the moment, they have taken almost all of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region.

They are storming or preparing to storm Lyman, a key city just east of Slavyansk. They are storming Siversk, another key city east of Slavyansk. They're storming Konstantinovka, which is one of the major cities of the Donetsk region.

And they have taken almost the entirety of Pokrovsk. They've surrounded the sister city of Pokrovsk, which is Mednograd. This is the biggest urban area that the Russians have taken on.

And by the way, they are also advancing very quickly in the Zaporizhzhya region. In the past two days or three days, they've advanced massively against the city of Ulyapulya. And there's now a panic because they're just wading through these villages and it feels more or less unopposed.

But last week, or perhaps it was two weeks ago, Zelensky came out with a statement saying that, oh no, nothing is going on in Pokrovsk. There's only 240 people there. And there's only 240 Russians there and only 60 Russians in Kupyansk.

And we're just mopping it up. We're just getting rid of them. And everyone who follows this war can see that's not true, that the Russians have taken the whole of Pokrovsk.

So what's behind this?

Ben

Yeah. I mean, well, what's behind this? I mean, first of all, I would say that the timing of this crisis that Zelensky is facing with the anti-corruption probe and the crisis on the battlefield, which is what's driving everything.

I think that the timing is not coincidental. I think it's quite clear that, I mean, as we say, this corruption, it goes back to 1991. It goes back to the restoration of capitalism in Ukraine, which has led to it being dominated by these oligarchs, different factions and so forth.

All that has happened is that the West, which has used Ukraine in this proxy war, has poured hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and so on. And that's like pouring petrol onto the fire of corruption. It's turned it into an enormous cash cow.

And huge amounts of careers are connected now. And not just careers, of course, huge amounts of money off the top is connected to the continuation of this war. If this war ends, if the money stops flowing from Europe, from the Americans, then yeah, even though Ukraine itself is going bankrupt, a lot of people within Ukraine, the oligarchy are making enormous amounts of money as this crisis is developing in the battlefield.

Splits, I think, are developing also within the regime. SAPO and NABU, these two anti-corruption agencies, they're not just acting on benevolence themselves. They themselves, like you say, they have the backing of a section of the oligarchy.

They have a section of the group of oligarchs, people like Poroshenko, the Klitschko brothers and so forth are very much connected. So this struggle is taking place now, precisely because the crisis is deepening. And it looks like Zelensky's days are probably numbered.

So the situation on the battlefield, I think, is the key thing. The fact of the matter is that the war is being lost and Zelensky is burying his head in the sand. Or is he burying his head in the sand?

He's telling a pack of lies about the whole thing.

Hamid

I mean, the question I think that needs to be answered is, why is he lying? Because it's an obvious lie. And most people in Ukraine would also see it as such.

And I think that it's clear. Zelensky has built his power and the whole of the Ukrainian regime today is built on this war and being a puppet of Western imperialism. It's built on being a proxy, in other words.

It's not just the military-industrial conflict. That is a big, by the way, a big incentive because we're talking hundreds of billions of dollars which are flowing into this country. But it's the whole of the regime, this whole reason for existence is this war.

And it's clear that they're losing. They are recruiting less people than they are losing. Amount of desertions are peaking.

In October, you had 20,000 cases of missing in action, in other words, basically desertions. They say that most people who come to the front, after their first kind of stint in some trench, just run away.

Ben

Also because there's no rotations because there's a lack of manpower. The only way you get a break is by going AWOL. And some people then re-enlist.

Actually, they just needed a bit of a reprieve from the front.

Hamid

But there are more and more people who just run away because it's a one-way ticket. And it's a war that's lost. So why do you keep fighting a war that's lost?

It's clear that there are other interests at stake because they know that once they take a step back, they are also gone. So they built their own whole reason for existence on this war. And therefore they needed to keep going.

It's not just about corruption. It's the whole system. It's the whole regime that needs the war and it needs to feed the West the idea that we're winning and we're fighting back.

That's the one thing. But there's another thing because they're doing that, they are refusing to withdraw from any position. Now in Pokrovsk and Mironograd, which is the two kind of sister cities that have now been encircled and partially taken, you've had thousands of people, thousands of soldiers, up to 10,000 soldiers to begin with probably, maybe even more.

And added to that a whole series of special forces that were added there as the Russians were getting closer. They were sent there to defend it. They were saying, we need to withdraw.

We can't defend this, right? And we're just being destroyed. This is what happened in Bakhmut.

This is what happened in Vuhledar. This is what happened in so many places. And Zelensky's position, because this war is fought as a PR war, public relations war, which is something you sell to the West to get their support.

That is how this war is fought. The lives on the ground are expendable for these people. And so this is what they've been doing.

They've been defending an undefendable position, leading to thousands of deaths, unnecessary deaths. It's prolonging a war far beyond, well after it's clear that it's been lost in effect. They keep prolonging it. Why?

And then here people can see black on white what they've been doing in the meantime. You know, they talk about, Zelensky talks about bravery and sacrifice and defending the nation, but all the while they've just been enriching themselves. And I think this will, well, I'm sure it is having a huge impact.

If there wasn't demoralisation before, I mean, 20,000 for one month of people going AWOL, that's a lot. You have 300,000 cases this year alone, I think. And it's just increasing now.

People are sounding the alarm. This guy Tataragami, he's on Twitter, he's a Ukrainian, pro-Ukrainian officer. He's an officer in Ukraine.

He's saying, this is now, we now have a desperate situation and we need to take extremely harsh measures to stop the desertions. Essentially, you know, proper imprisonment and death sentence and these kind of things. But it's not going to help.

And then people see this.

Ben

Yeah, no, I think, yeah, it's quite clear that they know what's going on, but they have to spin a certain story for the, particularly for Western consumption. I think people in Ukraine know what's going on.

Hamid

It's cynical.

Ben

It's extremely cynical. It's extremely cynical. I mean, you talk about the collapse in morale.

At the outbreak of the war, 70% of people in Ukraine wanted to continue this up until victory over the Russians. Now it's down to 24%. The majority of people think it's necessary to negotiate that effectively they can see that the war is lost.

Every day there's websites that publish videos of people just being kidnapped off the streets, basically to fill the, to plug the hole of in recruitment and send them to their certain deaths at the front lines. And there was even one incident, I think like a week ago where one of these buses, they call it busification. People are literally kidnapped, thrown into buses.

One of them was overturned by an angry crowd, in Odessa. they know what's going on and the situation, the mood is turning and and what they're, yeah, what they're doing is they're basically just, they're running a PR war at the expense of just throwing people into a meat grinder. The, there was, there was a video, which is Zelensky or Sirsky, the, you know, chief of staff, they published this video of, it was very much like spy 007 style of a helicopter landing in Pokrovsk and, Ukrainian special agents getting out and they hailed this:

This is a real victory, real bravery on the part of the, the Russians then released the video. These men, 10 men got out of this helicopter that had landed in Pokrovsk, immediately shot dead or hit by drones, but it doesn't matter. It's just, it's just a piece of PR.

And, yeah, they've been selling this story. No, we're winning the battle of Pokrovsk and the Western media is repeating the same story. You read the Western media, they say, yeah, they just report what Zelensky says, what Sirsky says, what some other people in the Ukrainian military are saying.

Hamid

I have to say, I just, I'm just going to interject here because it's a funny story. I mean, tragic, but, but also comic. They, they talk about this.

Oh, there's only 240 people in Pokrovsk. And then a few days ago, Sirsky comes out. This is Sirsky is the commander in chief, the highest ranking officer.

And he says, Oh no, there's now 313. Then I was listening to the Telegraph. The Telegraph has a daily update on Ukraine, which is terrible by the way, but they give something, they say a few things and they said, Oh, happened was a fog came.

And then we have this video of, you know, of Russians, big columns, driving into Pokrovsk. But if it was just all... so now this is how they square the circle, how the 240 Russians became the occupation of the whole city. But in reality it was because they were, they, as you said, you know, they, they were just, there was just seeing those people as expendable. They were fighting a PR war and they just lying through their teeth.

Ben

Yes. And one of the consequences of that is that the situation is, I mean, they should have withdrawn weeks ago and they might have been able to withdraw their troops. They would have lost Pokrovsk.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

But now you have a situation where that's impossible. Even the most optimistic estimates are saying there's like a five kilometre, the Ukrainians themselves say there's a little five kilometre hole that they might be able to escape through. That's running over open fields with Russian drones overhead.

They're completely trapped now. Yeah. The Russians are saying 5,000 Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk, more in Kupyansk.

And yeah. So in actual fact, yeah, it's leading to greater disasters. I mean, they've, they've been pushing this in order to keep the war going in order to keep the West on side, particularly trying to put pressure on Trump.

And you have this, you have the, particularly in Europe, the media in the West is playing along with this game. They, they, they know what's happening. Yeah.

They, they, a few days later they have to say, Oh, suddenly there's a fog, but they knew what they were doing from the... in fact, Putin himself, but not Putin, the Russians invited Western journalists. None of them took up that opportunity because they, well, the way they see it is as a, they see that there's an existential threat to European imperialism by the, by the breakdown potentially of the transatlantic Alliance. They're very worried about Trump.

They want to apply this pressure. So they're reporting verbatim without any, you know, without any, caveats, exactly what the Ukrainians, our, you know, unbiased, objective Western press are relating this exactly in an uncritical way, what the Ukrainians are saying in order to continue drumming up public opinion for continuing this war indefinitely , for their own, for their own particular interests.

Hamid

So this was supposed to be the regime that fought for democracy on behalf of Europe. Here you see what the real situation is. As you say, the Europeans are equally cynical, because they also see the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian nation as expendable.

They're using Ukraine as a means to try to weaken Russia, and they're using Ukraine now in a cynical attempt to tie America down into Europe. Trump has said he's going to withdraw troops from Europe. In general, he's withdrawing, sucking out his economic interests in Europe, trying to move production and so on into Europe.

He's moving away from the old open market system of American and European collaboration. That's a major threat to the European capitalist class, the rich, the big businesses. Therefore, there is a campaign to tie America down.

Ben

They say, though, that they are in favour of peace. They're in favour of a ceasefire. This is what the Europeans say.

Whereas Trump wants peace on Russia's terms, we're in favour of a ceasefire. They're not in favour of peace whatsoever, the Europeans, liberal, democratic, wonderful Europeans. What they mean by an immediate ceasefire is they set a ceasefire.

Then we send NATO peacekeepers in. Eventually, that ceasefire inevitably breaks down without addressing any of the Russians' concerns. The Americans are forced increasingly into the action.

That's what they're actually arguing in favour of.

Hamid

But now Trump has, for all intents and purposes, withdrawn financially, at least. He's still supporting it. In fact, in some ways, he's been more implicated in the war since he started putting sanctions on Russia and people buying Russian oil.

But the Europeans are now stuck with the bill. The fact is that at least $120 billion is the shortfall in the Ukrainian budget for next year. I don't know how much that would be if there weren't any grafts, but it's a lot of money.

They are now stuck as to where this money should come from. The Americans have said, we're not going to pay it. I think Trump will have a hard time finding money for that.

I mean, he might do it, but he's going to become very unpopular. They said first, oh, we should take a loan in the frozen Russian assets in Belgium, which amounts to theft.

Ben

They've acknowledged this effectively. There's 140 billion euros of Russian assets frozen in a Belgian company, I believe. It's a thing called Euroclear.

Euroclear. Okay. Is it maybe a French-Belgian company?

It's a part of the ECB, as far as I understand. Is it? Okay.

All right. Well, they're now fighting like cats in a bag, basically, over the question of, they couldn't expropriate this directly because that is theft. That is too open.

Too open. They're not worried about seizing Russian assets as such, but they're worried about other countries. You're not going to invest in Europe.

As soon as they politically fall out with you, they seize your assets. They tried a legal workaround, basically, to make this technically not theft. They would basically give a 140 billion euro loan to the Ukrainians, which would never be paid back, of course.

But it'd be guaranteed by reparations that would be paid by Russia when we win this war, when we take back everything, including Crimea.

Hamid

That money is in Euroclear.

Ben

Yeah. And that money is in Euroclear. So it would be taking it, but on the assumption that they will beat Russia in this war and will get reparations, which is obviously never going to happen.

So it's de facto, it's theft. Then the Belgians objected, hang on a minute, we're kind of implicated. This money is sort of sat here.

If we seize this money, are you going to have joint liability with us if this comes up to legal challenge? And then the other European countries, no, no, no, hang on a minute, we're not going to accept this.

Hamid

They don't want to share this possibility. Because they know it's illegal. But they insist on saying that Belgians should take it.

Yeah, despite this legal fiction. But look, first of all, it is theft. If you own a house and I come and go to the bank and say, I want to take a loan in his house and I'm not going to pay the money back, that is theft.

That is the definition of theft. Well, yeah, it's many, many crimes, I think. But then now they're concocting all sorts of other schemes of how to get this money.

They asked the Norwegian National Trust to guarantee this debt, which the Norwegians also said, no, thank you very much, no, thank you, no thank you. But they're actually now discussing taking up Eurobond, issuing loans on behalf of the EU itself, which is a continent mired in public debt.

Ben

Yes.

Hamid

That is now costing... we get to that in Britain.

Ben

Yes.

Hamid

It's a continent mired in debt, which is leading to severe attacks on the welfare state, severe attacks on social benefits, on the working class in general. We saw in France, they need to pass, what is it? 50 billion euros worth of cuts and it won't even cover the actual interest rate payment.

So this is a continent mired in debt and they want to take up 120, which would last Ukraine a year. Yes. Right.

Which is just extended for another year. Yes, extended. And the people who have to pay for this, the European workers.

Ben

Yes.

Hamid

So, I mean, that's the, look at the cynicism and the, if we lay this out, you have in Ukraine, a regime which is just sucking blood out of the backs of the Ukrainian people, using this war to enrich themselves and to support their own plans and schemes and so on. In Europe, you have the Europeans, again, extremely narrow and short-sighted for the, not the European people, the European rich, the European big businesses, the European capitalists and state bureaucracies and so on. In their desperate attempt to fight off Russia, which is now becoming the biggest, strongest force in Eastern Europe.

Yes. Military-wise, at least. And to tie down America in Europe, they're willing to drag out this war as well, killing off, making sure that the loads of Ukrainians that die, and the whole of the Ukrainian nation, by the way, being destroyed.

They say that the energy facilities, just until a few weeks ago, it would take 10 years to repair them back to normal standards. Obviously, it's only going to get worse. So the whole of the country is descending into a very desperate situation, and the Europeans are pushing for this, and they're putting the bill at the doorsteps of the European working class.

So it's the workers in Ukraine and in Europe who are paying for this. By the way, the workers in Europe are already paying for the end of the sanctions on Russian gas, the end of the gas deal with Russia, which means that we're paying extremely high prices for electricity, for heating. Inflation in general has gone up, food, ordinary consumer items.

It's the workers who are paying for this, for the extremely narrow and short-sighted schemes of the ruling class.

Ben

Yeah, and there's going to be a political price to pay, I think, for the ruling class of Europe, and they're already starting to pay for it. They split and divided about how they go ahead with this question of continuing this forever war in Ukraine, trying to push it further and further. How are they going to pay for it?

Well, like you say, this question of Eurobonds has come up. The French and the Italians are quite happy with that because Eurobonds means Germany pays for it. The Germans aren't necessarily that happy about that.

Belgium, of course, isn't very happy about taking on that liability. French budget deficit is about 5.5% of GDP, an enormous budget deficit, but Belgium is 4.5% of GDP. They had a general strike against the austerity measures that were being introduced by their government.

You look at the coalition of the willing, Macron, he's, I think, 11% approval rating, something like that. Certainly extremely low approval ratings and lurching from one crisis after another. The coalition of the willing, by the way, is a coalition of brave fighters for Ukraine.

Great war heroes. Churchillian...

Hamid

The brave people who are willing to let the Ukrainians fight and bleed for them and for the European working class to pay the price as well, pay the bill.

Ben

And yeah, they're all hated back home and precisely, you know, banging the drum of war and using that to remilitarise at the same time that they're carrying out massive austerity attacks upon the working class.

Hamid

Well, yeah, I mean, let's go to the heart of the coalition of the willing. Great Britannia, who used to rule the waves. We have a, I think, well, I mean, it ties in pretty neatly, actually, to the whole situation.

There's a, how do you say, a political bombshell was revealed a few days ago when we saw these claims that there's a leadership challenge inside of the Labour Party, Wes Streeting, who's the health secretary, was supposedly gunning for Keir Starmer, the prime minister of Britain. And there was a hashtag trending on Twitter, which is called number 10, the traitors. The traitors number 10 or something like that.

Ben

It's quite appropriate.

Hamid

If people don't know, the traitors is this TV show, which is all about backstabbing and lying and cheating. And so what's happening?

Ben

Well, it's a good question. I don't think anyone knows what's happening. I mean, you talked about at the start of this programme, the real decisions under capitalism are made behind closed doors.

Well, something weird is going on behind the closed doors of number 10, the prime minister's office in Britain, because it seems that this government brought this crisis on themselves. No one had been talking, at least in the public sphere, no one in the media had been talking about a leadership challenge to Starmer. It's clear that his approval ratings are, he's the most unpopular prime minister in British history, I think right now.

He's only 16 months into his, it's quite remarkable. So yeah, there were questions, but there was no direct candidate or anything like that. Anyone being posed as potentially there to sort of carry out a coup or a leadership challenge.

And then they came out with a briefing from someone inside number 10. If there's any, if there's any challenge to Starmer, he's willing to fight it out. And he's, he's, he's this, this fighting talk.

And suddenly now there is speculation. And of course, all of the, the attention was on Wes Streeting, the health secretary who came out quite cleverly. No doubt.

He probably undoubtedly has, you know, these, these intentions. I said, oh no, I'm not doing this. This is, and then starts pointing the finger at the, the, the atmosphere inside number 10.

Apparently, according to, there was one Spectator article.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

Even Starmer himself didn't. This came as a bolt from the blue. Someone inside number 10, however, has accused Wes Streeting openly and publicly of, or of, of conspiring against the government.

And the whole thing is extremely strange and just has this sense that there is a, there is an atmosphere of paranoia and crisis at the very top of the government. And undoubtedly the, the knives are out because yeah, the Labour party is, is, is staring down a disaster, a catastrophic situation. We can come on to maybe, yeah, I mean, their, their approval ratings and so forth.

Hamid

Well, yeah. I mean, as you said, I don't know if it's the most unpopular leader in history. Probably true.

I haven't seen that anyway, but it's a massive, one, one poll I saw, this is from last month. And it's gotten worse since then. 67% were unfavourable towards Starmer.

22% had a favourable view. So what's that? That's 45% in, in, in the dark, right?

In the red. And then there's the opinion polls. What's the latest?

Ben

It's quite remarkable. The, uh, right now there's one opinion poll from, uh, find out now, I think is the group which polled, I think 2000, maybe 2,500 people. And they found that 33% of people intend to vote for reform.

That is Nigel, Reform UK, Nigel Farage's party, uh, 18% in second is, the Green party. So the, we're looking at a Reform government with Green party opposition, which has shifted, obviously, lurched to the left under Zach Polanski. The new leader is on 18%.

And then the conservatives on 16% and labour in fourth place, uh, on 15%. So in six, 16 months, they've gone from, uh, what was hailed as a big landslide, a big majority to being a fourth, fourth place. And the two, the two main parties, uh, that have dominated British capitalism that have been the two main representatives of British capitalism in this duopoly for a century.

I've been absolutely devastated. Um, I've got the, I've got a figure here just shows, uh, how, how much of a landslide, how historic this is when you, if you take a step back, uh, how dominant the labour party and the Tory party have been in British politics. If you go back to 1951, they got 96.8% of the vote combined. Yeah. Um, last year was a record low in terms of their combined vote. It was 57.4% in the election last year. Um, 16 months later, it's down to 31%. And that's in, you know, that's in a tiny amount of time.

Hamid

Not only that 31% and Reform is now polling higher than both of the traditional parties of British capitalism combined.

Ben

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, uh, on top of this, um, now of course you have, uh, the budget is, is in preparation. Rachel Reeves is preparing the budget and there is a 30 billion pounds black hole has suddenly appeared in the British budget, uh, which means there's going to be, they're going to have to break all their electoral promises.

Um, all the promises about not raising taxes, um, all the promises about protecting services are going to go out the window. This is going to be a massive austerity budget and a massive attack on the working class. Um, so there's panic.

There's obviously there's panic in the upper echelons of the labour party. Um, yeah, I had quotes by ministers. I can't find any of them though, unfortunately.

Hamid

Well, yeah. I mean, what, what this really reveals is, is the same process we see everywhere. It's the same process we see in the U S for that sake with the total discreditation of the traditional political system.

I mean, in the U S we saw Donald Trump. Why did he win? Because he wasn't really seen as a Republican.

Ben

Yeah.

Hamid

I mean, now he's back into the fold, so to say, is a joining ranks being pulled into the ranks again. But, um, but he wasn't really seen as a Republican. He wasn't seen as an outsider.

He was, he, he openly attacked. In fact, the Republican party. And then you have people like Zorhan Mamdani in New York who won a big reason of his victory was that he wasn't seen as a traditional Democrat.

In fact, the, his whole campaign in the run up, uh, in the, uh, primaries and also in the run up for the mayoral election itself, he was presenting himself as being opposed to the traditional Democratic party establishment. So that's something we see everywhere. We see in, in France, you have Le Pen rising on one side and, uh, Melenchon on the other.

And what this really represents is there's a mood of rebellion, isn't it? It's not as people say, Oh, Trump was elected as fascism. No, no, no.

There's a mood of rebellion and people are looking for a radical way out. And the labour party during Corbyn, it was actually seen for, for a split second. It was seen as an alternative.

When Corbyn took over the leadership of the party, you know, he, um, criticised the ruling class. He calls for nationalisation of the utilities, uh, so on and so forth. Nationalisation of transports.

Um, he had a huge echo and his, the, the labour party grew to 600,000 members, the biggest party in Europe at the time. And, um, but after these guys took over, obviously the main reason for the coup against Corbyn Corbyn was for the ruling class to reestablish control over the party. This is a party that's seen by the working class as traditionally theirs, but that's whose leadership has for decades, at least, well, forever, almost been controlled by the ruling class.

Uh, it was a safe set. They needed a safe set of hands in the form of Kirstame. But at the same time, the policies that a safe pair of hands can guarantee are not very popular because what is it that the system needs?

The system needs to balance the books. I've, I've been reading a financial times, uh, reading, they've been writing a lot about this question of the budget deficit. They're putting a lot of pressure that labour must break their election promises.

What, what, which was not to raise taxes. Right. Um, and, uh, I think it was Martin Wolf who wrote an editorial saying British, uh, productivity is tanking.

Ben

Yeah.

Hamid

It's been stagnant for decades basically. And in order to raise it, labour needs to break their promises. What does that mean to you?

How does, how do you hear that?

Ben

Yeah. Well, I think it means first of all, that there's, uh, whatever West treating might or might not be doing. I don't think the ruling class are very happy because the public might not like Stama, but from the point of view of the ruling class, he's the, well, he's the closest thing they've got.

He's more reliable than, than they don't want any left populism, right? They, they see that he's, uh, he's, he's got, uh, he's the best, he's the best pair of hands they've got basically, but he's in a, he's in a very difficult position. He's in an impossible position basically, because like you say, um, this is, this is the policy, the ruling class are demanding, but if you demand that you're committing political suicide.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

And, uh, we've, we've seen this, this now, actually they've tried to actually carry out some of the policy that the ruling class are demanding when they attacked personal independence payments for the, uh, the disabled last, um, yeah. At the, um, was it last, uh, spring spring. Yeah.

And then there was the, uh, the winter fuel cuts attacking pensioners, pensioners, the disabled, there was a massive backlash, huge anger. And that was reflected in the parliamentary labour party because these people, they got careers to defend, you know, they're not thinking just about the interests of the ruling class.

Hamid

The FT is saying, look, this is, these are necessary, necessary measures. Labour will have to go back. And, you know, disability is a lot of, uh, it's a lot of money.

And, uh, what we need to give is to give incentives for people to work. Now, I know from friends and comrades who deal with this system that there's, is, it's not a question of not wanting to work. In fact, it is incredibly difficult to get disability benefits in this country.

You have to jump through so many hoops that most people who are disabled, if they don't have a lot of people, very, very well-resourced people helping them, it would be very, almost impossible for them to get it. So to say that that's, that's what the bourgeois are saying, basically put the squeeze in. While what?

While at the same time, they go to Ukraine and offer undying support. A hundred years, a hundred years of support is the, is the, uh, the deal they made with the Ukrainians. For a hundred years, they're going to give them, what is it?

3 billion, 3 billion a year or something like that. I'm not sure if those two are related, but they are giving them 3 billion a year and they've, they've, they proposed to support them for, they give them a lot more than that actually. While they attack the pensioners and, and, and the disabled here.

And then they say, oh, the problem is productivity, which is true in the sense that they haven't made any investments. Britain is the, the country in the OECD, as far as I understand, with the lowest amount of investments in the real economy. So productivity is declining.

That's true. If you don't invest in machinery and technology and upgrading your systems and upgrading the infrastructure, upgrading, you know, modernising society and everyone who comes here from a third world country for the first time will be pretty shocked that this is not too far from that situation in many, in some areas at least. Um, and then they say, oh yeah, instead of actually investing in, in productive kind of measures, means and measures, people should just work harder.

Ordinary people should pay more in taxes. Yeah. Disabled people and pensioners should give up something.

These are the, these are the two big, how do you say the big, um, posts in the budget, but we can't touch the businesses, none of that because then obviously they're not going to have an incentive to stay. Incentive to invest. Yeah.

Ben

No, absolutely. And when, uh, I think, uh, we can come onto some of this when, when, um, the, the government is asking, oh, well we should, we, we, we're going to be the government of, uh, you know, people that work hard and so forth. And we shouldn't have scrounging and this sort of thing.

And, uh, if people can pay, we need to incentivise, sorry, if people can work, then we need to incentivise them to work. Um, yeah. And that translates into cutting benefits for, for personal independent independence payments for people that can't wash themselves below the waist.

You know, it's the most cruel and the most, um, egregious like attacks on the poorest, the most vulnerable and on the working class. And then what do they look, what do they see when they see the representatives of this government? And this is something that we see all over the world is they see that these people, as soon as, I think within weeks of Starmer getting elected, he accepted VIP football tickets to his favourite football club.

You know, the pettiest levels of corruption and graft. Um, Angela Rayner is the latest one, I think to fall into one of these crises. Um, no, she's not the latest one.

Actually, Rachel Reeves is, she, she didn't get the proper licence for renting out her flat or her, her family home, which she's taken in 3,500 pounds a month. Now it's 3,500 pounds a month. It's not that much on the scale of some of the corruption scandals, but for an ordinary person, that's a huge amount of money.

And she broke the law. Uh, what would happen to an ordinary person if they, if they didn't fill in the correct, uh, form for their benefits, like you say, personal independence payment, they haven't got the support to tick the right boxes. You're getting sanctioned and, uh, well, you can't turn on the heating.

Well, that's your problem. You can't eat. We'll go to a food bank.

That's what ordinary people are told. And then someone like Rachel Reeves can get away with this. Angela Rayner just had to resign recently over the question of the fact that she, her second house and, uh, uh, didn't pay tax on her second house, second house, ordinary people, most people don't have, you know, they'll be lucky to have a first house, let alone a second house.

Yeah. So, uh, sometimes it, it may seem a little bit strange. How can it's like, uh, of all of the crimes that they commit and all of the egregious things that they carry out.

Then it's something like this that brings down, you know, Angela Rayner or, or the thrust the government into crisis, you know, these scandals, which have been coming thick and fast. Um, you can add onto that the resignation of Peter Mandelson, you know, over his connections to Epstein, Peter Mandelson, sorry. Yeah.

He was the U S uh, the ambassador to the U S. Yes.

Hamid

Which is supposed to be the fixer. The one who's gonna fix the British government. He was the trusted.

Ben

Yeah.

Hamid

He was a trusted set of hands to fix, uh, Britain's, uh, relationship with, with Trump because he's well-connected to the rich and powerful over in America.

Ben

Clearly too well-connected in the end. But yeah, people, what sticks in people's throats most sometimes is actually the small scandals that the, the little, the sense of impunity that they can get away with these things. Yeah.

That, that can be the thing that provokes disgust and, and the greatest disgust and anger. Um, there's also Prince Andrew. Well, yeah.

Talking about not so such small scandals, but actually an enormous scandal here. Uh, it's like every, every pillar of the British establishment is, is in crisis at the moment, you know, from the, the labour party with this low level sleaze and corruption and rottenness, uh, the monarchy will come on to the BBC is now the director general has had to resign and, you know, crisis there in the police, the, the, the racism and misogyny and these sorts of things that are coming out.

Hamid

Um, but yeah, the, uh, I mean, um, the, it's funny about the BBC because, um, what's happened with the BBC is that, uh, there's been an article in, no, sorry. Yes. There's been an article by one of the, by one of the, like, I'm not sure if it was now editor, a former editor of the telegraph who is also on the board of the BBC, who has written a long list of areas where the BBC is misrepresenting or under, under reporting.

He's a right winger, by the way, he thinks that it's too left wing. Yeah. The BBC is too left wing.

Uh, but one of the, the clips that he highlights is a panorama documentary where they had clearly doctored Trump's speeches to appear like he was calling for the, for the January 6th insurrection or so, you know, the so-called insurrection. Yeah. Um, and that the proud boys, this white supremacist organisation that were heeding his, his call, and he was directly calling for this.

Whereas the statements were wildly apart from each other in time and space and in totally different context, um, so it's clear that they doctored it. It was absolutely clear. And I think for a lot of people is, this is, I mean, if they didn't really realise it, but it's completely undermined the trust in this so-called public service TV station, but a broadcaster, but this is not something that this is just one part of the population who's perhaps waking up to this, but if you look at the way that they've covered the Ukraine war, for example.

Yeah. I don't have the latest, but I'm sure that they've been saying that Parkrovs has not fallen. They've just been echoing propaganda.

You know, the Russian missiles, all the Russians are running out of missiles. They've been running out of missiles for.

Ben

Yeah. Three years.

Hamid

Three years now, any minute it's going to come. Um, the, the lie that we have a democratic regime and completely ignoring the fact that the, the, the, the, obviously involvement of far right nationalists and the whole Nazi semi-Nazi ideology, which runs through big parts of the Ukrainian state. Um, the reasons for the war, which is, you know, the fact that the, the, the, it was the West that provoked this war.

Uh, all of this, obviously they've been lying about, about Gaza. There was a report over the summer, investigating 32,000 pieces, news clips, uh, how do you articles and video clips and, uh, analysing how they've, how they view things, which is completely skewed from every point of view, the way that they talked about it, you know, always, uh, sowing doubt about the Palestinian figures, presenting the Israeli figures and statements as, as, as pure fact. Uh, they said, you'd look at, you had 32 times more than 64,000 people dying on the Palestinian side and 2000 people dying in, um, in, on, on the Israeli side, but they were presented equally.

They were given equal time. So as to present the two sides as equal, completely ignoring the fact that this was a one-sided civil war, it's not a war. Yeah, genocide against, against the, the, the people of Gaza.

Um, so, but all of this just adds to the general picture that, that people don't trust the politicians, don't, people don't trust the media. People don't trust the, the establishment as a whole. Um, you know, we've seen this corruption has been a big element.

It's been a big thing in these Gen Z revolutions in Indonesia, in Nepal, in Madagascar. There's been a lot of anti-corruption movements and there's this rage against this, yeah, as you say, this sense of impunity, the arrogance of the rich, the arrogance of the politicians and how they, how they carry themselves and just, just walk around like no one can hurt them. Like they're untouchables and doing whatever they please.

Um, what are your thoughts about this?

Ben

Yeah, I mean yeah, there is this enormous distrust and anger towards every pillar of the establishment, I think, I mean, this BBC thing that there are, there is a right wing in Britain and it's very similar to the United States that sees themselves as you know, they, they're outsiders from the establishment and they see this, this establishment, this liberal ruling class is very exclusive and they want in on it. You know, people like Farage, they, they, they want to you know, push them.

And, but in, in doing so in pushing themselves forward, they're prepared to rest upon that enormous anger, which is genuine anti-establishment anger and a feeling in working class communities that they're left behind, that their industries have been allowed to collapse, that their services are collapsing that they have no future, that they can't afford to eat or to turn on the... and that there's an elite. It might not be able to put a clear name on it.

They might not call it the capitalist class. They might not be able to see that, but there's an elite and they're not part of it and they're not welcoming it. And, and of course these demagogues are able to rest upon that.

And the, the Labour Party and the Tories you know, the, the, the establishment, they feel bewildered that, that people like Farage can come out of nowhere. Well, he, he's not coming out of nowhere. He's an expression of this enormous anger.

And then they attack, attack the BBC. Um, and they, they, they tap into this sense that, yeah, they do lie to us, you know, they're attacking it for their own reason. They see it as this bureaucracy, this blob as they refer to it.

Um, but yeah, it's very liberal and so forth. They see that, you know, having that very outsider mentality and that, but they, they certainly don't represent the interests of the the British working class. They want to privatise all of this stuff, sell it off, break it up.

Um, but they're resting upon this, this real sense of mistrust and anger that exists.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

I think the, the Prince Andrew one is the really really should be the one right at the... the Prince Andrew one I think is the, is one of the most incredible scandals. I mean this, this has been going on for years now. Um, this has been going on since the, the, the whole Epstein scandal blew up.

It was well known that he was friends with with Jeffrey Epstein. And then this, this photograph appears of a Virginia Giuffre who I believe was 17 at the time. Um, this is one of the victims who accused Prince Andrew of being one of her abusers.

She was one of the victims in this disgusting sex ring of the Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell had put together. You're taking poor working class girls from the area around their mansion and then bringing them in and offering them a bit of money and then, and then sexually abusing them. And Prince Andrew was implicated in that and accused. Uh, he denied it.

Um, and then he, and then he settled out of court with Virginia Jeffrey. He claimed he'd never even met this woman, even though there's photographic evidence. Yeah.

And then he settles out of court for 12 million pounds with this woman that he's never met, apparently. And throughout all of this, he was allowed to step back from public life in terms of he didn't carry out Royal duties, but he was still a Prince and so on. And Buckingham palace, you know, the monarchy, they stood fully 100% behind him the whole time.

Well, now it's come out that this has become... Virginia Jeffrey herself tragically committed suicide this year. And her biography, her autobiography has, has come out, Nobody's Girl. And it details that not one, but multiple allegations against Andrew on at least three occasions, including an orgy with Epstein, like the most disgusting stuff. But not only that, that, that's for example, he, he has accused himself, Andrew, she, she she alleges gave Giuffre's... it involved like a troll campaign against Virginia Giuffre.

Um, you had a situation where other accusations have come out against Andrew that he basically gave social security number of Virginia Giuffre to his, his bodyguard paid by the taxpayer, paid by the royal household, you know and was even getting in touch with the Met police to try and get dirt on Virginia Jeffrey, you know, any, or any information, personal information they could provide.

These are the allegations that are coming out now. So in other words, like um, the abuse of this, this, this working class woman and these, these, these poor, you know, defenceless individuals by the most powerful institutions of the British state at the very heart of the British state and the monarchy. Um, and now finally the King, King Charles, has taken away his title. Not without first of all saying that he could stay at the Royal Lodge and continue living there.

He had to then backtrack on that.

Hamid

The Royal Lodge, by the way, it's not just a little hut.

Ben

Yeah. It's a little lodge on the side of it. No, it's it's a 30 bedroom palace.

Uh, but he's been, he's not going to be able to live there.

Hamid

Poor guy.

Ben

He's going to have to move to this mansion in Sandringham. And yeah, he's, he will continue to live off the wealth that he's accumulated and that he gets off his brother.

Hamid

I think one of the processes that we see here is that in ordinary times, there is this idea that those in power, they know what they're doing, right? Ordinary people just, they look down and they kind of assume that there are people out there who know better than, than us and they're running our society. But with the rise of these scandals in and of themselves, they don't, they're not how do you say, it's not a question of what this particular scandal, that particular scandal, but what it does, it reveals the true nature of the ruling class, right?

And this idea that there's actually no one in charge. There's no adults, adults in charge, right? Adults in the room, so to say.

Um, not only that, but that the people in charge are criminals and they don't have, they have the opposite of our interests at heart.

Ben

And they feel like they have every right to be criminals and do what they want.

Hamid

Yeah. And that there is this, I think this, this question of corruption needs to be answered because you know, there's a lot of people who've been talking about the Gen Z revolutions and saying, oh, corruption, oh, it's just about corruption. It's not about the capitalist system, but we have to explain that corruption is a, is a natural part of the capitalist system.

It's not true. Like some people say that capitalism is just a corruption scheme. It's just like people paying each other money under the table and doing these shady deals.

But corruption is a part of the system. As soon as you have, as long as you have a capitalist society where some people are capitalist, they live off, that means that they control big businesses, the private, you know, the big corporations and so on, and they live off of the exploitation of the working class. Other people, working class people don't own anything and have to sell their labour power in order to survive. You will have inequality and you will have a hunt for profit, a hunt.

The capital is trying to go places where it can make the most amount of profits. Now, obviously you can make a lot of profit owning a major corporation and making billions of dollars every year in revenue, but you can also find other ways. The state today, that's always been the case, by the way, but the state is a major source of profits.

Huge amounts of contracts in the healthcare system and the, just the running of the system, any contract you want to dole out the IT system, which I remember a few years ago, there was the question of who's going to, which cloud servers were the American state going to use? And the contract was $10 billion. I think Microsoft won that one.

I'm not sure about that. But there's billions and billions of, that's the most legalised form of corruption. But behind those contracts, who gets those contracts?

Obviously, as long as you have those, that kind of money is swirling around, there's going to be business interests. There's going to be individual interests coming in. And as a consequence of the system, as a by-product of the system, you're going to see graft.

I mean, the American military, for example, I was reading about it. There's such open, open kind of corruption about where the military industrial complex places their production lines because, and they will be paying different, I'd say, congressmen, different districts and so on. And there's a whole back and forth of money moving hands and interests at heart, where this money is going to come from, who's going to pay for these contracts, who's going to get the, get the contracts and so on and so forth.

So corruption is a natural derivative of this system. And it is also a natural part of, I would say, part of the revolutionary reawakening of the peoples. You know, the people who they're angry at, the people who are doing the corruption are the ruling class or important representatives of them.

And our task is not to denounce or just to, just to scoff it off. Oh, it's just corruption. It has nothing.

No, no. We have to say, yes, this is, this is what these people are. This is the nature of the people in charge.

This is what they're about. And no matter how many times... you can remove them. Look at Ukraine.

They've had one corruption scandal after. In fact, the people who are behind this corruption scandal themselves were booted out for corruption. People like Poroshenko, who's now supporting the investigation...

He's one of the, he's one of the oligarchs who's a former president who is supporting this investigation. He's clearly made an alliance with this NABU and SAPO. He's corrupt himself.

Why? It's a, it's a by-product of the system itself. And it's not going anywhere.

Um, the war in Ukraine is not about corruption, but the corruption shows the true nature of it. Or rather the, the true class nature of it. It's a capitalist war fought by Western imperialism against Russia.

That's what the war in Ukraine is. Yeah.

A lot of people are making a lot of money out of it and they have an interest in keeping it going. But it's also the, the main thing is it's a war of US imperialism and a big chunk, if not the dominant chunk of the American and Western ruling class trying to drag Russia down, trying to subjugate Russia for their own narrow reasons, of course. And of course this, they represent a highly corrupt and decrepit system.

And the way, one of the ways they keep it going is through corruption.

Ben

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think sometimes yeah, sometimes in the advanced capitalist countries, the picture is portrayed that corruption is something that happens in the third world. It happens in poor countries.

Of course, corruption is rife in poor countries, but it's also rife in rich countries. Um, it's it's rife in countries like Britain. I had a friend who was a... who shall not be named, who worked in HS2.

HS2 is the high speed rail development, tens of billions were involved in that. And construction companies would, you know, they would offer to do it for a certain amount. Uh, they would take that contract.

And then they would subcontract it for a smaller amount until it gets to the actual person who does the work. Um, they would just be taking a cut basically. And it was, it was a huge, it was, it was widely regarded as a, is widely regarded as a, as a huge milch cow for the, for yeah, what is corruption basically.

And that, that happens in all, in all sectors, in all parts of the economy. Um, and then there are less obvious forms of corruption. I mean, this guy, this director general of the BBC who resigned, you know, he used to be, I think the, the vice chair or something of a conservative association, you know, very close to the conservative party, then worked for an American corporation, then works for a public broadcaster, you know, I mean, that there's a revolving door.

And many of these, many, many of these ministers now they're taking gifts. Is that direct corruption? If you take a football ticket from as a well-done congratulations on getting elected... You know, there's, there's nods and winks with the expectation that if you do the right thing now, later, you'll be appointed on the board of some big company.

If you as the health secretary help our private pharmaceutical company out, then yeah, you will show the skills necessary to work for our private pharmaceutical company when you get out the other side of your political career.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

So it's yeah, it's an intrinsic part of the capitalist system. And I would say it's one of the most obvious forms of the, the, the, the rottenness of this system as well. The more rotten, the more.... it's one of the most overt and hated forms of just whilst we're... It's the injustice of it as well.

So we told this fairy story about capitalism. If you work hard, you will do well.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

Ordinary people are working so hard just to get by. And then they see these people that are just skimming it off the top or taking gifts or whatever else. And that anger, I think is, is progressive and that anger is correct.

It's just that what we need to do is connect it to the capitalist system.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

And the point is that, we see in these Gen Z revolutions in Bangladesh right now, the political force, which is developing and growing. It's Jamaat-e-Islami, the Islamists because they railed against the corruption of the old regime. They were somewhat persecuted by the old regime. But they say, yeah, we're against corruption.

We're against this. The problem is a lack of piety. It's a lack of morality and so on.

So they bring in their answers. Farage comes in and brings in his: it's this closed club of people that you know, scratch each other's backs. And it's a, it's a liberal elite, you know?

So the point is that, yeah, in the absence of a clear alternative, other forces will jump into that vacuum, the Trumps, the Farage's and so forth, and they'll make hay out of this question of corruption.

Hamid

Let's outline then, here at the end, what our alternative is. I think I would, I would say it like this. In order to combat corruption, you need to go to the root of corruption.

First of all, that comes from private property, private property, from the basis of capitalism. As long as there is private property of the means of production - we're not talking about the small houses and little shops here and there and little workshops and small companies, but the major banks, the major conglomerates, the major industries the commanding heights of the economy - they are the primary source of all corruption. That is where all the wealth and profit hunting and profit motives come from.

So they need to be nationalised. That's number one. They need to take, be taken under public, into public ownership.

But then there's a question of, you know, rightfully, a lot of people say, well, nationally owned companies are just as corrupt. In fact, in Ukraine, they're talking about corruption increasing as the state has increased its ownership and control over the energy grid. So obviously we need to answer that as well.

Number one, you need to have transparency in the bookkeeping. That means all of the books of the major companies is to be open and transparent for everyone. None of this secret business deals.

So everyone can see where the, where the money is going. And the number two in the state apparatus, first of all, you need to have the same, same transparency. You need to have, not like today, where you have a state where you elect a tiny group of people, but the 99% of the state, all of the main kind of key positions within state apparatus is not elected by anyone, this so-called sham of the division of powers: the executive and the legislative.

No, we say all of the main positions of, of power in the state should be elected and, and be held accountable. And then you would also say that no one within the state or nationalised companies would receive a wage higher than the average worker's wage. Therefore, their incentive with the people in the state and the companies, would be to raise the wages of everyone, not of themselves.

And also a fusion of the education system with the state in the sense that everyone should be trained up to be able to perform the basic duties of the state bookkeeping and normal overseeing. And through that, creating some sort of a rotation where, where ordinary people participate in the state. And you don't have the rise of a crusted state, state bureaucracy, which can develop its own interests.

In other words, open the doors, take control over the mean, the main levers of power in society, the economy, of the state, take control of that into the control of the majority of the population, and then open the doors and open the books for everyone to see what's going on and lower the income of the top layers of the state to be that of an average worker's wage. Of course, that should be an average worker's wage should be a good wage so that their interests are not different from the rest of, from the rest of society, because as it is now, obviously living the high life, it automatically gives you a different type of outlook to life.

That's how I would put it. What do you think you have any, any final, final words?

Ben

Um, no, I don't have anything else to add to that. No, I think that that the point is that we need to connect with that. That mood in society, which is extremely progressive but can take a reactionary form if it's not, if it's not channelled, if it's not connected.

I mean looking at the figures, I won't, I won't give these figures because I don't know if there's time for that sort of stuff, but if you look at the average Reform voter they're in favour... they're not free marketeer, extreme right-wing capitalists. They're on average more in favour of nationalisation than the average British voter. I don't actually have all of the figures, but I don't, I don't have the figures specifically for Reform voters, but I can say that if you look at the figures of the general population. Um, I actually gave these on the Spectre of Communism podcast.

It's been prerecorded. Uh, there might be a bit of repetition here, but across the British population support for nationalisation of water is 82% now. In 2017, which was seen as the height of the leftward shift of British society with the rise of Corbyn, it was 59%. So a huge increase.

Um, today railway 76% of people are in favour of nationalising the railways. In 2017, it was 60%. Um, energy companies at 71% up from 53% and so on and so forth. And if you actually look at the average for Reform voters, cause you think Corbyn fell and Reform rose that they are on average more in favour of nationalisation by and large than the average British voter.

So there hasn't been a shift to the right. There's enormous anger. Um, at this corruption, at this rottenness, at this elite, as they see it.

I'll say one thing that I think is interesting where Reform voters are significantly less in favour of nationalisation is universities and the BBC, because they see them as these elite institutions, you know, that they see them as where the experts, the elite, they, they lie to us. Uh, so they're happy to see them destroyed, dissolve them, get rid of them. Um, that's, and that's precisely where people like Farage come in and say, yes, it's the, it's it's the liberal, you know, establishment and so forth, rather than the capitalist class.

Hamid

Yeah. What we need is nationalisation under workers control, not nationalisation over the, under the control of the representatives of the bourgeoisie.

Ben

Bureaucracy. No, that, that wouldn't go down well with, with Reform voters, but the programme that you outlined, it could actually connect with these people that are supposedly moving to the far right. As well as connecting, of course, because there's a polarisation in Britain, which we see everywhere.

Hamid

Yeah.

Ben

Um, well, yeah, I mean, with the Green voters and, and and others that are shifting sharply to the left.

Hamid

Uh, Zoran Mamdani won by calling himself a democratic socialist. He was attacked for being a communist by Donald Trump and he had millions of people, well, 1 million people voted for him. And in Britain as well.

Yeah. Zach Polanski.

Ben

Yeah.

Hamid

The, the leader of the Green party suddenly is talking about nationalising the utilities and you know, railing against the establishment and so on.

Ben

Yeah.

Hamid

Very skilful. And they, and they have 150,000 members now.

Ben

Yeah.

Hamid

Your Party, although they made a mess of it because of their own infighting, but, but by standing up on a left kind of platform, they get 800,000 people to sign up to joining them. Now Zarah Sultana was one of the leaders. Well, we'll have to see what happens with this party because the infighting and the manoeuvring and the backstabbing is still going on and it's it's obviously undermining them.

And the Greens are now have a headstart, but Zarah Sultana is making some very radical noises. She's saying that we should you know, capitalism at the problem is the problem that we need to nationalise the, the, the commanding heights of the industry, the whole system needs to go, the working class needs to take power. All that is, and I think she's, she's connecting.

I mean, if they hadn't done all this, this mess in the party itself, that would be the programme that would be connecting. And yes. And that would undermine someone like Farage because Farage could only exist as long as no one was giving a radical left alternative, a radical working class alternative.

Ben

And Farage is going to find himself probably in power in the, in the next period, and that's when it's going to be put to the test. So if the left could get its act together in terms of actually putting together a programme that can connect and uh, then enormous opportunities are going to come up because when Farage gets to power, what's he going to do? What is the answer he gives to all of this?

Hamid

Uh, there's all this debt. There's all the economy is going the way it is.

Ben

What is he going to do? It's a big mess. There's a productivity crisis.

And he's saying well, immigrants are the problem. Immigrants are to blame. Um, and but the point of the fact of the matter is, if we go back to those figures on the British economy, right?

The there's this 30 billion pounds hole in the budget you know, in the, and a lot of it is because there's been this downgrading of productivity because there's a lack of investment. Why, how are the capitalists solving this lack of investment by squeezing the working class harder by pushing downwards on wages? That's how they're boosting their profits to get out of this crisis.

And that means they need large supplies of cheap, cheap labour. And that's what migration is for. That's the function it solves for the capitalist class.

So he's going to get into power inheriting this enormous deficit, enormous debt, ballooning debt. Um, I think there's something like a hundred percent.

Hamid

It's 98% of GDP now.

Ben

Yeah. It's, it's we, we, we pay more, 111 billion pounds a year in Britain is spent on interest repayment.

Hamid

Only interest.

Ben

Yes. Which yeah, just interest, which is more than the education budget. So he's going to inherit this and he's going to have no solutions.

So what is the left going to do in that situation? Well, there's going to be enormous opportunities in, in, in a short period of time, the question is whether the left can actually capitalise on this. I mean, yes, you said Your Party has been something of a debacle, but I don't think that the key question is is this. They could recover in time if they had actually um if, if they actually want, if they actually had clear ideas. The problem is precisely that although Zahra Sultana says some very radical sounding things, I mean, the latest thing she came out with, she was quoting Marx, she was even quoting Lenin, I think. "Without revolutionary theory, we need, there can be no revolutionary movement."

I think I got that back to front, but I'm sure she quoted it better than I did. But the point is if she says, she says these very radical things, but it's very interesting just before coming in here, I listened to an interview with Nick Robinson from the BBC interviewed Zarah Sultana and he asked her about her position on NATO. And she said, it's an imperialist Alliance.

It's uh, what did she say? She said yeah, it's an imperialist Alliance. Uh and look at Libya, look at Afghanistan.

We need a welfare, not warfare, actually slogans that we're using. Yeah. We would agree with everything that she says.

We started using those slogans. Yeah.

Hamid

Maybe she took them from us. I don't know. Welfare, not warfare.

Ben

Yeah. Common property.

You want to use our slogans? Use our slogan. We would encourage you to use more of our slogans, but but then Nick Robinson pressed her on this question.

Okay. You want to leave NATO? Well how are we going to defend ourselves?

How are we going to defend our country? Are you just going to leave Ukraine in the situation? You're not going to defend against Russia and Russian fascism?

Um, and then she started to break down actually. What is the content? Uh, she says, well, what we need is we need a new internationalism working with our European neighbours. We need uh, to address and we will come together for security and, and we'll be driven by peace driven by addressing the climate crisis, driven by diplomacy rather than aggression and imperialism.

In other words, the British state with her at the head, presumably we'll, we'll just start to encourage and try to win over and convince the you know, the French imperialists, the German imperialists, the others to get together and try the diplomatic route to this Ukraine. I mean it shows that actually you scratched the surface of this revolutionary language. It's a, it's a reformist position that we can convince the ruling class to do better, you know, pacifist position that um, that imperialism is just a bad decision that is taken, but a nicer, more moral decision could be taken rather than actually getting to the root of it, which is in the, which is in precisely private property.

It's in the private ownership of the means of production and the interests of the capitalist class, which drive towards imperialist war. And that you can need to overthrow capitalism to achieve this programme. And that's, that's the problem is no matter how radical the language, if you don't break with capitalism, the logic of capitalism is what Starmer's government is, is trying to do, which is cuts attacks, tax increases for the poor increased military spending to defend imperialist interests abroad.

You can speak in the most left-wing language, but if you don't break with capitalism, you're going to end up carrying out the programme of the capitalist class and you're going to end up tying yourself in knots and even fluffing the whole opportunity as Corbyn did before even getting into power, because you show that weakness, you become exposed before, before actually getting there. So that's the, I think where I would.

Hamid

Yes. That's why that is our raison d'etre. That is our reason for being, which is precisely to unify the struggle against capitalism and, and bring it to its logical conclusion and, and realising that half measures don't solve anything.

The only solution to all of these problems, whether it's corruption, whether it's war, whether it's the cost of living crisis, is by uprooting the system as a whole, as I said, through expropriating the property of the richest people in this in this, in these countries, putting the commanding heights of the economy on the workers control and management so that they're democratically controlled and managed by the workers of those companies themselves, integrating them into a planned economy, which is again, democratically discussed, nationally voted for, and in introducing a new state apparatus, a new form of state, a new form of democracy, which is real democracy with full transparency at all levels. Uh, and all state officials to work on, to be recall, electable and recallable and to work on a worker's wage. I think that's how I would sum it up.

I think very well said. Should we, should we end it here?

Ben

I don't have anything else to add. Thank you for inviting me.

Hamid

Thank you for coming. We're going to see you a lot more in the next, in the next period.

And for all of you out there, thank you so much for tuning in, please. If you've gotten this far, it might mean that you agree and you support our ideas. If you do, please don't forget to press like, share our material, join our channels on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple music, wherever you wherever you see it and help us spread the ideas of, of communism.

And if not, then we'll still be here next week and you can tune in. Next Thursday, 6pm UK time.