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Noah & Sean are on a mission to push political imagination. Since becoming best friends at university they've both taken unconventional paths and supported various political movements behind the scenes. Watch weekly as they break down about hot political topics using their knowledge and lived experiences.
Good morning. Good evening. Good afternoon. Welcome to North Star Politics, a weekly show hosted by myself, Noah, and my cohost, Sean, who will be discussing everything from pressing politics to the odd and peculiar, from the halls of Westminster to the roads that we walk on. If anything like us, you probably found political media slightly boring and totally pointless.
Noah:From bleary eyed bureaucrats bleating about their boring phrases to ivory tower talk shows with no idea what's going on in the street. And even politicians starting sentences with, let me be clear before proceeding to give no clarity. We're here to do politics slightly differently and a lot more ideologically. We think that hope and spirit has been lost from politics and from political discussion, and we're here to restore that. If it's not something that is interesting for you, then join us.
Noah:Buy stocks low. We're starting in East London, but we're heading to the moon. Come along with the journey and keep all eyes on the North Star. Let's get into it. So welcome, guys.
Noah:Welcome to North Star Politics.
Sean:Welcome. Welcome.
Noah:With myself, Noah, who you might not have seen, and maybe the most famous TikToker in London.
Sean:Maybe I might take second most perhaps.
Noah:But it sure remains everyone.
Sean:Wow. I'm bro, I can't believe we've actually got here. It's taken a journey. It's taken so many people on the one hand actually asking me for a podcast directly. And then two, me trying to force you to actually come on camera for once in your life.
Noah:I know. I know. It's been a it's been a journey for me to end up in front of camera. A lot of asking from this guy, but here we are. Yeah.
Noah:But why are we here?
Sean:So I think the important thing to do is start from the beginning of when we met. And for me, I was a confused and lost soul in this palace of Oxford University trying to make my way state school educated. Obviously, cool. East London based here, but North London through and through for myself. And then I met you at was the Oxford Union Chamber?
Noah:Oxford Union itself. Yeah.
Sean:Okay. Nice. And what what I'm reflecting on is basically our journey since then and also the sort of expectations that were imposed on us at university versus really the kind of past that we went down.
Noah:Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Like Sean says, we literally met first week of university, both of us coming from state school backgrounds and then bumping into each other in week one at the Oxford Union where we're attending a debate just trying to get involved. And over the course of our, like, time at Oxford, obviously, became closer as friends, but also closer in terms of our political interest and our thinking about the world.
Sean:Definitely. I like. So I've always been a public sort of face talking about politics, Islam, etcetera. Noah's always been behind the scenes helping me.
Noah:Holding the camera sometimes?
Sean:Oh, yeah. Holding the camera. We've done some crazy stuff.
Noah:You know?
Sean:The far right protests, Zionist protests. He was behind the camera at both times. And the main thing that made us come together to create this idea of North Star was post October 7. Yeah. With the commencement of this genocide in Gaza, that was probably the critical juncture where we we both became completely or formalized our kind of alienation with the current kind of political sphere.
Noah:Yeah. So we're currently sat in a boat e three and we were sat down the road at my mom's house on the couch. We're just discussing like how disenamored we've become with like the state of politics. And naturally, you grow up as young politically minded people from the ages of like 11 onwards and you're thinking, you know, maybe becoming an MP is the way to make change and maybe, like, advocating for political change is the way to make change. And you see characters who are at the the the top of politics in The UK right now, who when we were growing up, some of them were were heroes to us, and we thought they're gonna make the changes.
Noah:And they get into power, and you see them turn coat and turn their back on the people that put them there and turn their back on the ideology that put them there, which is where we developed this idea that we really need to center ideological thinking in politics. So even if, you know, power interest might change, someone might have have something over on you, you still keep your eyes on the North Star and stay true to your values.
Sean:100. And I think one of the most interesting things about being at a place like Oxford, but also coming from communities that are so ingrained in your identity, is the sort of incentives and the structural kind of reasons why people sort of, I guess, betray their own backgrounds and their own upbringings. So the very tangible thing was that there was October 7 happens. Yeah. We're already alienated by the Labour Party because they've sort of started shifting further to the to the rights.
Sean:Yeah. Not kind of backing or representing those material class interests that was built off once upon a time.
Noah:Jeremy Corbyn under the bus?
Sean:No. Precisely. We decided to come together because we were absolutely shocked by the fact that these politicians who have built the whole platforms and identities of liberal democracy and human rights and freedoms just blindly started supporting a genocide. Cleo Starman Yeah. West Street in West Street.
Sean:David Labby. David Labby, you gotta get a session.
Noah:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sean:We decided to come together to actually create a sort of or put our minds together and help in any way possible with the independent movements.
Noah:The independent movement and now with the different left wing movements you're seeing, we're doing all we can to transport that. And we sort of thought, there's different channels by which you could support a change in politics, and one of them is putting boots on the ground like we have been doing. Another one is leading discourse, which is why we're here today on our new podcast. What we're gonna aim to do is largely center around the politics of the day and our reactions to that, discussions of that. Towards the end of the podcast, which hopefully will make it there, we're gonna get a bit more esoteric with it.
Noah:We're gonna hear some things from the deep, dark crevices of Sean's mind and my own, and we're gonna set up in a nice few sections to center the mainstream politics of the day, but then also get a bit tangential with it. We're gonna have guests. We're gonna have some famous guests that you might have heard of before, some more obscure guests that lean into our own interests. They should be fun. And for you guys, I want you to be involved, everyone at home.
Noah:There's gonna be a broad and interesting discussion that that includes loads of different perspectives. So if you wanna follow us along, please. And I I never thought I'd say this being someone that's not on camera. Like, share, subscribe. You can find us on all the platforms.
Noah:Sean's handling all of that on Vivo, Bebo, all the other ones. These are
Sean:Those guys dating themselves.
Noah:Radio. I don't know. Terry, our producer shaking his head. We're not on the radio, but we're here on YouTube.
Sean:And I think the key thing is that we are trying to produce content that's gonna push the political imagination.
Noah:Precisely.
Sean:For so long, people just think it's either label or conservative, and you have to fit yourself into this box and you're hiding behind labels of socialist or far right, all these sorts of things. We wanna go a bit deeper than that and actually make content that connects with people in a way that understands them, their experiences, and their communities.
Noah:And I'm sure Sean's about to start rolling his eyes, but please indulge me. I'm a bit of a fanatic for classics. And etymologically, the word politics derives from the police, which is the Greek city state, the citizens of the Greek city state. At the end of the day, we've lost sight of that, especially in The UK, especially in The UK with our glitz and glamour political media. We wanna recenter people's ideas and people's behaviors.
Noah:The people.
Sean:So our first segment is gonna be the state of play where we're gonna tackle news and cultural headlines this week. And the first thing I wanna bring up is this idea of cracking down on protests in The UK. Now, as we know and as the viewers have probably seen, week on week far right protests, anti immigration protests, people threatening to burn down, you know, hotels that migrants are staying.
Noah:Also some good protests.
Sean:Okay. Yeah. Don't worry. Don't worry. We're gonna get into that.
Sean:Then, obviously, the pro Palestine protest as well. Right? Which week on week, a lot of, you know, communities across The UK are protesting against the ongoing genocide. And the interesting thing is that the British state has recently said it will bring in measures to usher in further crackdowns on repeated protests. So what does this mean?
Sean:Well, I'm quoting from the government now. It says, police forces will be authorized to consider cumulative impact of protests assessing previous activity when deciding to impose limits on protesters. And the context of this as well is that it's come straight after the news of the very tragic incident of an attack on a synagogue where two Jewish men died at the hands of a, well, Islamic extremist.
Sean:I want to make explicit in the law that those types of protests with cumulative disruption for communities can attract the same conditions and restrictions that apply to other types of protests so that the police have absolute clarity that they can use cumulative disruption as a reason for restricting those protests.
Sean:So it raises interesting questions. Right? Who actually decides when a protest is disruptive? And also, the thing I really want to hone in on is this false equivalence between actual pro Palestine movements, I think are being, you know, even further scrutinized than the far right protests. And given that, you know, these far right protests are actually genuinely violent.
Sean:So, Noah, let me get your thoughts.
Noah:I think it's concerning. Funnily enough, me and Sean bumped into each other randomly at a protest in Oxford. Jeremy Corbyn was in Oxford. You don't remember? Jeremy Corbyn was in Oxford to lead a pro Palestine protest in what would have been 2020.
Noah:So before October 7, although some might have it that the troubles in Palestine started on October 7, but me and Sean were there. He was one man up. I was one man up, and we bumped into each other there. And I think it's I think it's a massive shame that there has been a, how do we say, a co option of these pro Palestine protests as antisemitic. And we've seen this tactic from a lot of mainstream media and certain political parties for years now to try and pit different groups against one another.
Noah:So that those who are advocating for an end to a material genocide, slaughter, a cultural genocide, the expulsion of people from their native land are being framed as though they have anything against Jewish people.
Sean:Yeah. And do you know what it is? It's it's like they don't even see the irony of their own logic. Mhmm. Because on so this this Islamic extremist, whoever this guy was, I haven't read I don't know if he did the manifesto or anything like that.
Sean:I haven't I don't know anything really about him. But people are assuming and people are saying that obviously this attack is motivated by his reasoning about not being able to differentiate Jewish people and the state of Israel. And so he's doing this as part of the pro Palestinian movement or something like that. And this idea of literally generalizing, right, is a tale as, you know, it's a tale as old as time. And it's it's just that the the sort of conversation around it, it feels like you can't even be on the same page.
Noah:And I think what's concerning is it is working. I don't know what you saw, but David David Lamy was speaking outside the synagogue, I believe the day after trying to offer reassurance to the Jewish community in Manchester. And he was being heckled when he was discussing what the government would do to support Jewish people in The UK's safety. He was being heckled by members of the Jewish community who were saying, stop the marches. You support it every Saturday.
Noah:And, unfortunately, what that shows me is that just like on the one side, perhaps certain members of the pro Palestine community have bought into this idea that, you know, there's there's an equivalency between Israel and Judaism. Similarly, those members of the Jewish community have unfortunately been sipping the Kool Aid in understanding pro Palestine protest as inherently anti Semitic. And what this has allowed for Shabana the home secretary, to do is to justify this curbing or curtailing of protests by buying into this or by buying a mandate from this fear.
Sean:And, obviously, for the viewers at home, the ironic thing about this lady called Shabana Mahmoud, who's our current home secretary, is that she is a practicing British Muslim. I believe she's Pakistani. And also in 2014, she was literally photographed at a march for Gaza somewhere in London. And so
Noah:On record criticizing Israel.
Sean:Yeah. I know. And it's the fact that this is the woman who is now policing the crackdown on Palestinian protest where, may I add, they're literally centenarians. Like, do you know how old these people are at these Palestine protests? I'm seeing 83 year old white English
Noah:Yeah.
Sean:Ladies getting arrested. And even if you wanna get I I mean, I don't wanna digress on this, but even if you wanna get on the topic of where political capital is actually being spent and resources, what hundreds of police protesters for these old people holding Palestine flags with a with a placard saying, I support Palestine Action, which is the recently prescribed terrorist group terrorist in quotation marks. Honestly, I don't know how anyone can still support or even have faith in labor after this.
Noah:And I think I think what you're the idea that I wanna reinforce is that members of the Jewish community, people that are pro Palestine are in no way your enemy. There are people that are antisemitic that support that that are anti Zionist as well, but the two don't make a pair.
Sean:100%.
Noah:Okay? And similarly, members of the pro Palestine community, as much as there is a lot of antisemitism in the air, don't let that coerce your mind into thinking that there's a a strict adherence between the Jewish community and Zionism. And if I can if you allow me to get a little bit theoretical here when we talk about the the real nature.
Sean:That's okay. Because I wanna get esoteric
Noah:as well.
Sean:So you go first. You go first.
Noah:We talk about the real nature protest. There was an MP a long time ago, about two hundred years ago called Edmund Burke, who's seen as the the father of modern conservatism. And he wrote a text called Reflections on the Troubles in Paris or in France, pardon me, discussing the French Revolution. And he really laid out the handbook for how modern conservatism and sort of preservation of the status quo can be put in place. And to put it briefly, the idea is that you resist any change to the status quo to the the current power structure for as long as possible until the protest itself threatens the power structure at its core, at which point you institutionalize that form of protest so that it becomes a further sort of pillar to strengthen the status quo.
Noah:And what does this look like? This looks like efforts over the past two hundred years to institutionalize protesting practices, applying for licenses to protest. When in fact, the real purpose of protest is deviance.
Sean:Deviance protests, the siren
Noah:in the back. As you can tell, maybe they're on their way to lock up a Palestine action, 80 year old pensioner.
Sean:Sorry. I think it's more 90 year old.
Noah:90 year old even. Who knows? The older the for the protest crackdown. But yeah, the idea from Edinburgh that governs a lot of modern conservatism and is that we should reject protest until it threatens the status quo itself, at which point we should institutionalize it. And what we're seeing here is an effort to do that, that you can only protest in a certain way, otherwise, you're gonna threaten the status quo.
Noah:And if you adhere to it, that's a tacit that's a tacit consent to this expression of power.
Sean:Yeah. And I I mean, to be honest, we could get into another digression or rabbit hole about how the fact that modern conservatism is nowhere near actual theoretical conservatism that the likes of Burke and other thinkers actually sort of wrote about. I want to also move on to this.
Noah:Could I ask you a question?
Sean:Go ahead.
Noah:How do you feel as someone who attends protests, has attended protests, sees them as somewhat meaningful way to express your political dissent?
Sean:Mhmm.
Noah:How that's gonna impact your life as a political agent?
Sean:I think it's incredibly depressing. I myself can be quite pessimistic sometimes.
Noah:Mhmm.
Sean:And honestly, from a personal perspective, because I'm Muslim, that's the thing that kind of gives me hope. The idea that in the face of oppression and struggle, that this is just the kind of story that is what is demanded of people who believe in good in the world. So again, I said I didn't want to get esoteric, but we need to take it there. Like if you look at the story of the Abrahamic prophets and the kind of spiritual sages beyond the Abrahamic tradition, there is that current, undercurrent thematic meta narrative or like narrative about being willing to suffer for the pursuit of truth. And I think even if people don't have that in the back of their minds while they're protesting, people naturally embody it, Because again, my sort of human nature views that people are good people naturally.
Sean:And so they will do the right thing. I think on the kind of esoteric point as well, the thing, just to kind of circle back to that earlier conversation around this pitting of Jewish people against Muslims, Again, it's incredibly depressing because for most of human history, Jews and Muslims got along just fine. And the principal scapegoat in late modern Europe for just any political problem were Jewish people. And now it seems like those kind of same stereotypes and those same same type of explanations around around why things are going badly is being pin pinned on Muslim people now. And I think that's another thing we kinda wanna do with this podcast as well, is hopefully try and expand our understanding of history and political knowledge in that sense as well.
Sean:But I could throw that question right back to
Noah:you though. Yeah. I mean, on my end, maybe I can offer a hopeful tone. Because this fear that the labor elite and the political elite are showing for what, as we've said, a very much peace minded protest, literally begging for peace on the streets of London and around the world, clearly are threatening them. Because they're working.
Noah:They're effective. When we see the commitment people have to get themselves out of bed every Saturday morning to attend these protests all around the world, I don't know if you saw in Barcelona recently, there was a mass protest of 250,000 people demanding an end to the genocide. I think this shows that it's working. And the fact they're responding in such draconian in such draconian form confirms this. And when we talk about this crackdown on protest that's trying to be put in place by the Labour Party, one thing that was gonna be a theme of our discussions on this is we need to really be aware of murder on the margins.
Noah:People are always looking for the clear blow that killed killed the person. But in fact, what we're gonna see in modern politics, especially increasingly technical and complex society we live in, is murder on the margins. That piecemeal, piece by piece way in which things are constrained, things are censored, things are killed off. The marginal worsening in air pollution in the air in poorer boroughs that over time goes on to kill people at a much harder rate. And we need to be animated by that as political agents.
Noah:We can't just turn up every four years and cast our vote or spoil our ballot. We need to actually respond to this forceful crackdown with an equally forceful level of protest.
Sean:And this kind of moves me on to my next sort of topic that I wanted to talk about in this idea of the state of play. And it's this idea of, is it really the case that there is increasing political violence in The UK? Because the assumptions that people are going into in this conversation is that, well, you know, if I like to, you know, lean over and punch you, right, that's violence. Right? Violence is a very direct first order thing that happens in a very physical manner.
Sean:But I think you have some interesting ideas perhaps around how that might not always be the case.
Noah:Yes. I think I think, you know, this summer, especially with what's happened in Manchester and what even recently happened, I believe, a mosque with a mosque being
Sean:Yeah.
Noah:Suffering an arson attack.
Sean:So so two things even happened. Before that, two weeks ago, Imam got stabbed Okay. At mosque. And well, again, you don't really hear about that. But, yeah, carry on.
Noah:But I I think we're always it seems like since I came to, like, political consciousness, we're always at a point in time where people talk about it's getting worse, a political violence on the rise, whether it be Lee Rigby or Joe Cox, the labor MP who unfortunately part unfortunately was killed. And I don't actually know, and statistically, maybe I could be wrong here, but it doesn't feel like there is actually a change. We're always at a point where political violence on the rise. The difference now, and it's something I think is a big shame for Britain, it's one of the things I used to pride myself on being British, is that the language of political violence is on the rise. And it's being much more normalized in political discourse and in public discourse.
Noah:When I was younger, I used to be feel really happy knowing that, like, in The UK, whereas, like, the the people in The US, free speech, I can say what I want. In The UK, well, no, you can't incite violence. And it felt like we'd come together as, like, a society. It's like, well, that's just that's just off the cards. But now when we see these sort of implicit connotations with the the flag hanging and the arrival outside asylum seeker hotels and calls to arson bomb asylum seeker hotels last summer, which people have totally fallen out of the mainstream news cycle And even with the unite the unite the union or whatever that nonsense was called in London, you're seeing videos of people literally inciting violence.
Noah:I'm more concerned about that. Because what that allows is for the government to feel they have a mandate to crack down more violently on people like Palestine Action.
Sean:And I think that's also why politics now feels so careerist and so lackluster principles. And as of literally because the violence that people care about is only validated if it's linked to some sort of political calculus. So the reason why so much violence has been normalized or rhetoric has been normalized around migrants, immigration, and Muslims as well is because reform is on the rise. There is a clear contingent that believes in these ideas, believes in these narratives that the likes of the grifters like Farage and GB News, etcetera, are posing. It means that our political leaders, because the thing that they really care about, right, is their jobs, being a politician, etcetera.
Sean:It means that they don't take the principal stance that they might even deep down believe that yeah. They might even deep down believe to actually actually uphold the values that like you're talking about those lost British values.
Noah:No. I agree. When we talk about values, I mean, I call this the Jekyll and Hyde generation of labor. 2014, Shabanam of Mood on the streets alongside people like me and yourself protesting Palestine. Fast forward eleven years, and she is cracking down on Palestine protests.
Noah:Kear Starman running for the labor party leadership on a Corbyn like platform.
Sean:And may I add, sorry, a human rights barrister.
Noah:A human rights barrister and now not even able to call the genocide in in Gaza a genocide.
Sean:Despite the fact that his Labour Party members just voted, it was a genocide.
Noah:Precisely. Yeah. I mean, David Ami, where do we start? Literally calling Donald Trump a neo Nazi fascist and someone that he should should be barred from entering The UK. Fast forward, he's not shaking hands with him.
Noah:And we talk about the North Star. We talk about ideology. And this shows a dearth, a a lack of ideology, a total deficit of ideology. And it's pretty depressing. But we think about what what can we do about it, not just myself and Sean, but anyone listening, anyone who might just see themselves as a normal person, is don't allow this to become normal.
Noah:Like, we we shouldn't let politicians talk past. I know there was a brilliant interview by Beth Rigby the other day interviewing Kear Starman where she talked about she talked about Donald Trump talking about London voting for Sharia law because it had a a Muslim mayor.
Sean:Don't tempt me with a good time.
Noah:There we go. But he said, better if we ask him, is this racist? And he said, oh, no. It's silly or it's daft or one of these words. He said, no.
Noah:But is it racist? And he just couldn't answer it. And we shouldn't allow him to just walk walk past that. This is what we talk about. In so much political discourse, it's people just offering off the cuff responses because they understand that people will not push it further than that.
Noah:They won't be held to account. And we talk a lot about accountability. But accountability, there's two sides to that. Someone's being held to account as someone who needs to do the accounting. And if it's not gonna be the average person, it's not gonna be done to the average person's standards.
Sean:And hence why you push the political imagination beyond the left and right dichotomy and actually look to actual alternatives. Right? If the right can do it with reform, then so can we.
Noah:And one of the things the reform is getting very well is Nigel Farage comes across as very plain speaking. Sure. Very direct speaking. People are sick to death of the umming and ahhing on daytime talk shows or politics shows where nothing gets sent. There's no informational there's no informational nutrition to this.
Noah:He's he's a hollow calories. And also, I
Sean:just think he's very authentic as well. As in, I don't believe he's an authentic person, but he comes across as very authentic.
Noah:Yeah.
Sean:Right? And
Noah:then Comes across as very ideological.
Sean:Yeah. But even in that this sort of age of social media, right, what has he done? He's become his greatest political tactic was going on. I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. Right?
Sean:To normalize the fact that he's just another person just like us and doesn't really have some harmful ideas.
Noah:And I think, know, on the one hand we have this this supervillain from our perspective, maybe. I say that in jest, Nigel. In Nigel Farage, who has this ideology, who has this character, but, you know, myself as well. But you become quite fond of perhaps a superhero on the left, a rising star.
Sean:Listen. Yeah. Don't put words in my mouth just yet, but I do think and I am very impressed with mister Zach Polansky. So that's the other thing I wanted to bring up. Right?
Noah:Guy. Celebrant at home. If you haven't heard yet about the great Zach Polansky, Sean's gonna give you the appraisal.
Sean:Listen. He's he's making me such a such a fanboy right now. Listen, you can't be exposing my secretive text to you.
Noah:We're all fans. We're all fans.
Sean:No. So look, on the on on the one hand, you have the right. They have the alternative. And now the left are trying to scramble together to find it. Right?
Sean:So you have two things. You have the green party, you have your party as well. So let's talk about the green party.
Noah:Look at the state can I say, look at the state of the world? On the left, have green party, your party, not even a mention of labor. That's how far right they've swung. Keir Hardy is turning in his grave.
Sean:Yeah. Well, I mean, there you go. So I wanted to move this conversation on to a different topic around alternatives that we have. Right? So the green party, your party, my party, this party.
Sean:I'm joking. Right? So the green party. I know you have some hot takes on the green party. Right?
Sean:So I'm gonna let you land. Right? This is the section where we put out our hot takes. No. No.
Noah:No. I need to let you need to land first. Tell them tell them your feelings about Zach Polansky.
Sean:No. So what I believe is that Zach Polansky is probably going to be or is our only option for there to be a Zoran Mundani in The UK. Now who are these people? Well, Zoran Mundani recently basically won the the New York mayoral election. The proper mayoral election's coming up, but in New York, Democrats always win.
Sean:He's the Democratic candidate. The reason why he's cool is because he's young, progressive, a good looking guy. May I say so myself? A Muslim as well. And he's been able to galvanize a new political movement around a new type of politics that's moving away from the Democratic Party.
Sean:And in particular, he's being hated by the likes of Trump, etcetera, because again, like I said, this is a Indo Kenyan who's who's a practicing Muslim.
Noah:I don't think that's why he's hated by Trump. I think he's hated by a lot of these these wealthy elite because he actually cares about material interests.
Sean:Yeah. Well, I think there's a like a sort of well, yeah. I mean, we could we could there's there's two there's two
Noah:Kash Patel. Trump's right hand man.
Sean:I mean, sure. But then I think there is Kash Patel is not a practicing Muslim. Right? So there's a different sort of
Noah:Far be it from me to say. As in he's not even a Muslim at all.
Sean:Oh, fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. So as in there's, of course, the material aspect of all of these things, but I think you can't discount the kind of racial element as well. So anyways, now comes along this kind of discourse of the lefts in The UK.
Sean:Right? People are searching for a political figure that can actually take us to actual political electoral success. Someone to to sort of challenge the likes of Nigel Farage. Right? We all thought in our heads couple months back, it was gonna be Jeremy Corbyn.
Sean:There was a lot of
Noah:And Zaros Altana.
Sean:Well, I mean, some people thought was Zaros Altana, but we could get into that as well. We thought that, yeah, these two figures, right, they already have their own they're already MPs. One went independent, one was independent, would come together to create a new political movement called your party. Right? And we'll talk about the different, like, sort of ups and downs of that.
Sean:But the main thing to know is that coming out of nowhere was Zach Polansky for the Green Party.
Noah:The Green Party Renaissance.
Sean:Yeah. Precisely. Right? And Zach Polansky has come along and really shaken things up in a way that no one really expected because he wasn't an MP before. He was actually just a deputy leader that was part of the London Assembly.
Sean:So I think his job was probably just, I don't know, harassing or something like that on a day to day. But honestly, his messaging and his just political charisma is refreshing, right? You're having someone in The UK actually arguing for wealth tax. It's actually arguing to hold billionaires to account
Noah:And end to landlordism.
Sean:Yeah, end to landlordism, which is like a huge thing this week, right? Because in the your party that Jeremy Corbyn and Zaras Sultana have, there are literally landlords who are the MPs, right? So they wouldn't even pass something like that. And I think on top of it all, it's about being able to have an excellent communicator, which Zach Polansky is to put forward a progressive vision for Britain. And I think, I mean, you're giving me some Daily Mail headlines trying to make me sound like some fanboy over here, right?
Sean:So don't put words in my mouth, but I do think people are buying into the vision, right? And so I think, yeah, the Green Party didn't think it before, but could be a good progressive vehicle for the future.
Noah:Yeah. I think to be perfectly candid, I think that's important. You know, if we say there's certain things we don't like about a certain party or political actor, that doesn't mean, you know, we can never work with them or we totally hate them. I have at some points in my life been skeptical of the Green Party. I voted for the Green Party before.
Noah:I voted for other parties before. But what I think the Green Party is really captured right now is something that Zoram Mamdani did, which is material interests. You hear every single politician, every election cycle get up there and say, we're gonna help the working person. We're gonna put an extra pound in the working person's pocket. Kirsty Starman growth and all these sorts of things.
Noah:But they don't really talk about the mechanism by how that will happen. And what I think what what I think Zacplansky's captured is explicating the mechanism by which we will improve the state of play in The UK economy and therefore in UK society. He's correctly, in my view, addressed some of the most pervasive problems that are suffocating The UK economy, landlordism, a rentier economy, drastic inequality, wealth inequality. And he's also correctly addressed some of the most pressing issues for the political political environment of The UK to address. The genocide in Gaza, our culpability for that, are providing weapons parts for f 35 f 35 drones.
Noah:Jets.
Sean:Yeah.
Noah:So I'm very I'm I'm very hopeful for Zach Polansky. And in fact, the political communication that he has developed At the start, when he first took the leadership of the Green Party, I was slightly worried. He didn't come across the the most effective communicator, but he really has captured something beautiful, both in terms of how he comes across and the type of politics he's trying to engender.
Sean:No. Definitely. And I think that the interesting thing that he's done that others couldn't, actually before I even say that, I think people are just on their knees for the bare minimum as well and basic standards of politics where with the your party splits and the kind of infighting that was even more tiring for people and the fact that they have actually like, you know, a long standing political structure and then now you have a good leader in front of it, that's very refreshing. But then on top of that, they've been able to actually build an effective coalition. And that's shown through the actual deputy leaders.
Sean:So you have Mothin Ali who's a practicing Muslim, and you have Richard Millward who is known for being quite like a prominent feminist in the area of very progressive as well. So the three of them together, right? It's actually kind of like the poster for a progressive movement in Britain. I think that them being able to iron out that conversation, which maybe we can do a bit now, right? Around the tensions between, you know, perhaps more personally conservative views.
Noah:I mean, I've got a hot take. We're gonna get into a section. I've a hot take on that.
Sean:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the more progressive views and things like that, I think they've done really well to actually come out fighting really. So we'll we won't cast judgment just yet. We're gonna wait to We're
Noah:hopeful, but we are hopeful.
Sean:Yeah. Definitely. I think
Noah:Zach Polansky, come and sit here. Come and grab a cuppa.
Sean:But then I think like if they got their act together, hopefully that inspires the others to get their act together as well because I don't think it's actually with this particular movement, a zero sum game. Right? It's a rising tide that can lift all boats.
Noah:The final question I wanna ask before we head to our next section on that is he's he's playing in tricky waters now. When you start to threaten the material interest of the ultra wealthy, of the elite, who and we and we've seen what happened Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party. When you start to threaten the financial interests of the 1%, They leverage everything they can to neutralize that threat. He's just the Green Party conferences was last week and they just laid out motions to bring it into a land landlordism and a rentier economy, a wealth tax and such and so forth. How do you think this plays out for him?
Sean:Well, I think, you know, you can look at history and be worried about the fact that political leaders have been derailed. And once establishment interests feel threatened, they are going to attack. But to be honest, I actually still am hopeful and optimistic because now the game's on social media. It's not the game's not on the tabloid press and the newspapers, and access to information is so vast that any sort of propaganda that's imposed by the powers that be won't cut through in the same way anymore. I mean, we've seen that with Israel and Palestine.
Sean:My favorite quote from that is the fact that the Palestinians are showing us what's happening versus the Israel are trying to tell us what's happening. Right? And I think that because he also has a good social media as well, that could be fucked. Like, I'm not really worried about the fact that he's not gonna be able to get his messaging out. And also, I mean, they can't really do the anti Semitic smears against him because he's literally Jewish.
Noah:They might try.
Sean:Yeah. They might try. You never know with these guys. They might still try. I think also something that
Noah:you said about, hopefully, there's an opportune moment where the political elite and wealthy elite who might try to sabotage the aims of Zach Polansky have run out of cultural capital. They've lost their credibility because they've stretched it in one way and the other too many times that people just don't believe it anymore.
Sean:100%.
Noah:And you can see that in terms of whether they're right or not. People are not even listening to David Lamby when he calls Nigel Farage a racist and these sorts of things. Whether that's right or wrong, people on the right are no longer even swayed by that. In the same way that us on the left should not be swayed by the predictable attempts to disparage Zach Polanski and the Green Party and other members of the left wing movements.
Sean:Well, I think people are so impoverished that any sort of elite trying to sell them a narrative is simply just not going to work anymore. And so the thing if if there was something I'm worried about is this idea of like cutting across the political divide to actually get the support where you need to get it to actually have real electoral success. That remains to be seen.
Noah:Okay. We're about to get into a section where although we've been kind of in accord right now, we're gonna create some Discord. We think that it's a useful way to engender some political debate and also work out our ideas. We call this section, let me land. For those of us not from London, what let me land really means is you've got an idea.
Noah:It's under a bit of pressure from your collocutor, from the person you're speaking to. But you said, let me land. Let me try and land this plane even if it might be in choppy winds. So one of us each week will come with a hot take, bring a hot take to the table, and the other will do the best to chisel away it till we find something in the middle. Okay.
Noah:Let's get into let me land. There's the part of the show where I prepared a homemade hot take for Sean to examine, put under pressure, and you guys in the comments can work after, did I land it? Did I land it? Nine times out of 10 against this guy, I will land it. Impossible.
Noah:Absolutely impossible. So I've got today Go on then. Is the the clearest day statement. No matter how much we praise Zach Polansky, the Green Party cannot save us.
Sean:Alright. So you're gonna have to expand on what you meant by cannot save.
Noah:No. I won't. And what I mean by that is, yes, the Green Party doing great things. I hope they continue to do great things. Since Zach Polanski has become leader, I think they've added maybe a 10% membership vote share.
Noah:I think there's problems with the Green Party historically in terms of how they're perceived and in terms of who they can get on board even down to the name, which means that they will struggle to be the main party of the left or a totalizing party in the British in British parliament and form a government. I also think there's big problems that have plagued a lot of left wing movements over the past years in terms of although we might have all have the same material interests, we're all part of the working class, the lump in proletariat, we might not have the same social convictions. And when those are weighed equally, that can cause a lot of contention. And what I mean by this is to cast a broad swathe. We might have people that are both materially have similar interests economically, but socially, we might have someone who could be seen as quite conservative in terms of their feelings towards women, reproductive rights, LGBTQ community, and just general cultural progression.
Noah:And on the other hand, someone is very progressive and sees that as perhaps a cornerstone of their political commitments, very pro reproductive rights, very pro LGBTQ community, And that can provide a big cause for contention among the left wing.
Sean:So just because of the existence of this tension, are you somehow suggesting that that's going to be the sticking point for why the Green Party can't save us in the future?
Noah:No. So what I think is that the Green Party is gonna take up one of those slots. And what it looks at taking up is everyone's agreed on the material interest. We're economically progressive. Okay.
Noah:Or economically, let's say, egalitarian. Okay. Okay. We prioritize equality. Yeah.
Noah:But the Green Party is taking up the section of socially progressive. Progressive. Okay. Okay. Okay?
Noah:That's very much a core it has been a core theme of their politics for the past twenty years. But there's gonna be elements of the left wing, the economically left wing, the economically egalitarian, perhaps religious people who don't have those same social convictions. Mhmm. And a big thing I always think about is primary political personalities. Although someone might be poor, they might see themselves first as a Christian.
Noah:They might see themselves first as a Muslim. So although their economic interests are aligned with other members of the working class, they vote based on their primary political personality. And we live in a we we we live in a first by the post first past the post system, and we need to get together enough enough constituencies to form a government, we need to be able to curry favor with both the socially conservative, but also socially progressive members of the working class.
Sean:Yeah. So I think that's fine. That makes sense. But then that's not particular to the Green Party. That's that's just the problem with the left in general.
Sean:And as opposed to sort of, like, starting the premise and saying, oh, they can't save us. Well, maybe they can, maybe they can't, but at least they're trying to. Right? So sure, there's that sticking point. That tension exists.
Sean:However, the deputy leader is literally a practicing Muslim, prays five times a day. And he literally got elected despite actually not giving in to many of the rhetoric that the party members wanted him to, talking about on things like gender. He refused to basically, you know, define if he thinks trans women are women, that type of stuff. Right? And so whilst I do appreciate that this tension exists, they've actually made some pretty good first steps towards resolving it, Not necessarily long term, but just in terms of their brand and identity.
Sean:Now the thing that I find the most convincing about what you said about the Green Party in particular is this idea of branding and then what image do they have in people's heads currently in voters. For that, I think the jury's out. Messaging is built by action. That the idea that even the brand Spotify, what is Spotify? What does those words mean?
Sean:It means the things that people know it for, its values. And so if these leaders are really, really good. Right? So my thing is, if these leaders, the people leading it, right, Zach Polansky, Mothin Ali, Rachel Millwood, if they're able to actually impose that vision top down in a way that's convincing to people, I think, like, there there's a lot of chance, like, they they could quote unquote save us.
Noah:And I hope they do, but my thing is that we need to address on the left this tension between socially conservative members of the left and socially progressive members of left. And the longer we go go about avoiding that, the more chance there is that this tension is gonna blow up on our face as it kind of has done recently. And I think what we need to be more comfortable with is agreeing on the fact there's gonna need to be a coalition of left wing identities, a coalition of left wing parties. They represent perhaps slightly different positions socially, but are aligned on their economic incentives. So as much as I hope the Green Party can save us, at present time, I think we're gonna be looking towards a coalition of left wing parties rather than just a green party.
Sean:Well, I think we're definitely moving towards a multi party system. However, I don't think this again is like a particular problem that the Green Party has to deal with, but it's more just a people problem that it's up to the people who want to help articulate and make a cohesive vehicle for change, I. E. The parties and the politicians. It's up to them to kind of resolve it.
Sean:And so even though, yeah, this is a problem that we have to solve, I think the green party is actually the ones who are actually making the steps to do it in the way that other politicians probably aren't.
Noah:I hear it. And, yeah, as I say, hopefully, I landed that. If not Yeah.
Sean:He hears it though.
Noah:No. I do I do hear it. But this isn't just about me bouncing ideas off Sean and vice versa. We wanna hear what you guys are saying. So get commenting.
Noah:You're as political as we are. You're not just viewers, participants. I'll read all the comments. Sean, his brain's a bit fried, a lot of brain rot. He's more on scrolling, but I will read the comments.
Sean:That's how you know I want it because he's getting he's he's hitting me with that.
Noah:So let us know. Let us know.
Sean:Now this part of the segment is called the echo chamber where myself and Noah, we do agree on a of things and we kind of wanna just bounce off each other and bring our WhatsApp convos to real life. Maybe not all of it to real life. Please not all of it. About things we deeply agree on and we're deeply passionate about. And so the first thing I kind of wanted to bring up and let me give some context as well.
Sean:But this is the essay question we have to solve. How much coalition building can really be done with people who are seen as bigoted? So what do I mean by this? Gary Stevenson has recently supposedly alienated a lot of ethnic minority people and people from our communities by recently coming out saying that you have to appeal to those disaffected reform voters and traditionally English people who might have some racist, or kind of harmful ideas around minorities, on a class basis. Right?
Sean:Because to build a real political movement, we need to focus on common needs.
Noah:I think there is a risk that the left gets very, very angry and starts to be really, really aggressive and accusatory towards people who might be voting for reform.
Sean:The reason this has absolutely infuriated some people is because the suggestion is that for the greater good, you actually have to tolerate this anti immigrant sentiment and accept these differences for the purpose of unity. That's problematic because it's like asking us black and brown bodies to just accept hate against us again and build a coalition with people who literally think our cultures are basically inferior when shouldn't it be the opposite way around? Shouldn't it be the case that we set the tone and we set the kind of political rhetoric that we set the standard that people need to meet. It's a it's a difficult one. I'm a bit conflicted on it, but your clarity is always welcome, of course.
Noah:No. I think that's interesting. And I appreciate you for bringing that out of the echo chamber. I have thought about this a little bit because as you know, I've been a big fan of Gary Stevenson for many years. I actually emailed him back in the day trying to work with him.
Sean:I got you the trading game book.
Noah:Yeah. He got you literally with the trading game book as a present. So Gary respond to my email and come on the podcast. But, yeah, I think it is a it's there's a lot of tension there because the first thing I wanna say is like, Gary is a single issue guy. He's really about the wealth tax.
Noah:And he's quite clear on the fact that he's a single issue guy and this is one goal is to get together enough support from the people that the Labour Party or the party in power can't ignore him. Basically, to co opt a voter base to then act as sort of the the the the captain steering that ship. So I think we need to recognize that with Gary. He's not a he's not a plural or pluralist or multifaceted politician. He's a single issue guy.
Noah:But I think he is moving into dangerous rhetoric here because he is losing sight of the lived reality of people, which is multifaceted. Although I we might experience from material impoverishment, people like ourselves also experience experience the material impacts of racism, the material impacts of a rise of fascism, the material impacts of a rise in violent language towards ethnic minorities. And Gary himself, obviously, white man is not particularly exposed to that, but I think it's dangerous to lose sight of that. And I think for Gary himself, you know, finance background, economics background, I can never quite work out what university he went to. I wish you had mentioned it.
Noah:But I think perhaps he is getting too fixated on his single issue material goal and forgetting that the material reality of black and brown people, ethnic minorities, is impacted by this fascist language. And we don't wanna normalize it even if it's at the cost of delaying this wealth tax, delaying the wealth redistribution because we don't wanna unless you don't wanna throw the baby out with the bathwater, you don't wanna bring something bad in with the good.
Sean:No. I agree. And I think, honestly, personally, it's actually really conflicting for me because I think that much of the racist rhetoric that is galvanizing the far right is obviously against Muslims. And so on the one hand, the actual Islamic way to kind of combat this is kind of the Gary Stevenson way, which is a shock horror. You Like, actually kinda need to invite these people into your house, invite them to the masjid, tell them to come and experience your community and change their their sort of views in that very kinda human way, appeal to what you have in common, which to be fair, I think that's kinda what Gary's talking about, even though, of course, he is a single issue person.
Sean:At the same time, it's sorry, I'll you land. Don't worry. But at the same time, it really is an absolute injustice to accept the normalization of these attitudes. And so I think on a personal level, that's what I sort of approach. But then on the wide
Noah:It's interesting what you say because I think just digging down to what you said is a brilliant example. Because I guess the difference is, is Gary didn't recognize that these people are fascist in their rhetoric and are racist in their rhetoric. And nevertheless, we should invite them into our progressive movement so that they can ameliorate their opinions and we can progress together and collaborate, which I think the example you gave about how a Muslim would behave. Even if someone is hates Islam Yeah. We should invite them into the masjid.
Noah:Should invite them to our home so they can see the benefit of the way we live and they've become they can warm together. What Gary did is actually say, he's not gonna call them fascist. He's not gonna call them racist. I think now I'm realizing that is the dangerous part. Yeah.
Noah:So perhaps what would have been better for Gary to do that is say, you know, I recognize there is a rise of fascism. People are sprouting a lot of fascist rhetoric, a lot of racist rhetoric, and we should challenge that. But on my issue, I'm gonna want their support, not in terms of their political opinions, but in terms of their economic commitment to a wealth tax, which is my single issue. So we can collaborate. We don't have to throw you out because we're gonna have to live with you.
Noah:And I think we're moving, you know, we're moving past the era of cancel culture where we have to realize we have to live with these people even after we say they're terrible people. So fascist or not, I'm gonna wanna work with you towards this wealth tax. And if we get into a political discussion, I'll disagree with you on that point as well rather than rejecting or trying to cover up the fact that these are testable opinions that these people hold.
Sean:Precisely. And I have nothing more to add because this is quite literally the echo chamber and No.
Noah:Exactly. And I've you know, by week on the echo chamber, we might bring the weird and wonderful out of our brains or we might bring something a bit more topical such as that. I think it's important to think about the things that are just going on our mind, bring it to the table and see what comes of it.
Sean:Definitely.
Noah:Gary, that's our recommendation to you. As I say, still a big fan, Still would love to have you on the podcast. Still need you to
Sean:respond Just to that to educate him, he should actually be here right now.
Noah:Right.
Sean:She was sitting right between us and then we'll actually tell him
Noah:If you did that interview with us, we wouldn't have let you go down that rabbit hole. We would have saved you, Gary. But still. So our first podcast, how'd you feel?
Sean:No. You know what? I think there's a lot of space to grow, get ideas out there. I think the format is a bit weird even for us. We've never done this before,
Noah:I think
Sean:but I think like I'm no, I'm glad we're actually doing it for once.
Noah:You know, as much as we might be loud and braggadocious on camera, we'd love to get your feedback. So please No, don't we're here begging as I've seen everyone do on social media. I never thought I'd one of those people, but like subscribe, send to someone that might be interested, repost it, comment. That's the big one, think. So how do you wanna hear what people think?
Sean:Because I think what we want to do with this as well is build a community of like minded people. I suppose the echo chamber of our own if if we wanna get down the algorithmic kind of chat. But look, we we know how people are feeling. We're from so many different communities. Right?
Sean:We're both Caribbean boys Muslim community. You're basically from the Muslim community from East London. And I think we wanna galvanize all these sorts of different views and use the feedback to actually power this journey and this progress. And also we're doing this for the love of the game. Yeah.
Sean:This is out of our own pockets. We're not sponsored by anyone. We're not getting any
Noah:money. Sponsors.
Sean:Please, please do. Obviously, special shout out to Restless Beings, the charity who's given us this space because they do really amazing work. And actually, if we're paying anyone to to do this, I'd rather
Noah:it goes charity.
Sean:A good cause.
Noah:And I think bit by bit over the course of the episode, you'll get to know us a bit better.
Sean:People know me, man.
Noah:Come on. I mean, people know this guy, you know, you can't can't go anywhere in London without seeing this guy. But maybe you'll get to know me a little bit better. I'm I'm famously an open book. No.
Noah:No. I'm I'm classic Caribbean closed wall, bit by bit, I'll start to open up on camera. But at the end of the episode, I think it'd be great for us as much as there's a lot of brain rot going on to maybe offer some brain food. Definitely. And put people onto things we're reading, things we're looking forward to, things we're thinking about.
Noah:You got anything to bring to the table?
Sean:Well, there is quite literally something on the table at the bottom. I think it's quite controversial because I feel like throughout the whole shot, Muhammad's name, peace be upon him, has just been throughout. So this book is one of the greatest seerahs, so stories of the prophet peace be upon him. And it's done in a very detailed way written by a man called Martin Lings who was a convert to Islam from Britain. He's an Englishman, studied at Oxford University, think Cambridge as well.
Sean:And he's one of the most prolific writers in Islamic history. And I think the reason why I wanna bring that to the forefront today is because today we're obviously focusing on political violence and these sorts of things. And I think it's important, like, for anyone just to really understand who the founder of Islam really was and demystify it a lot. So that's a book that's brought a lot of clarity to me personally and many people across the world.
Noah:What about you, Noah? Nice. I mean, and also we'll leave links in the comments in in the description so that people can access these resources. And anything if you've heard us speak about something, you wanna recommend something to us, put it in the comments. Sure.
Noah:Knowledge seekers. We're trying to be knowledge seekers.
Sean:No. We're trying to knowledge givers as well.
Noah:Knowledge givers as well, but we we're still true to our knowledge seeking ways. For me, honestly, what have I been up to? I think something I wanna recommend is at the Royal Academy on in Green Park or near Green Park.
Sean:Really? You go to exhibitions and stuff. Yeah.
Noah:There's a brilliant exhibit there's a brilliant exhibition actually by an artist called Kerry James Marshall, which deals a lot with African Americans. And he paints black people in a very obscure way, which is something I love from some of my favorite artists, people like Singer Sampson, who paint black people in a very obscure way. Historically, black bodies have been something for interrogation by colonial or white supremacist minds to be picked apart quite literally and scientifically. So I find there's something quite protective, safe in the obscurity with which Kerry James Marshall portrays the black man and black black woman. So I thought it just a stunning, stunning exhibition.
Noah:Really loved it, And it's very much worth anyone's time if they get around to it.
Sean:Fair enough. We get it. You're a performative male.
Noah:Yeah. And you know what mean? Like, I I
Sean:Catch him at the coffee shops. This coffee shop, drink a little bit of coffee. Had reading a little book, exhibitions.
Noah:You know, I love the the finer things. Yeah. Think we'll leave it there for today. Thank you so much for joining us for the first, the inaugural. Sean didn't want me to use that word, but I think it's grandiose enough to to
Sean:words inaugural, grandiose. To fit
Noah:the moment. The inaugural episode of the North Star Politics Show. We'll be back again next week. Sure. And hopefully, week from then on.
Noah:Support us along the way. Get involved in the journey. We're very much just trying to ting, and we're gonna see where this goes.