Constitutional Legitimacy of Leadership

YouTube browsing history. adopt communism. Like a Scotch egg come flying past that window it was Sotch egg it was grim. It was really, really grim. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Welcome, welcome welcome on and all. Wlcome to win an election. I'm Hugo Rifkin, and I'm joined as ever by formerer Labor inssider, Sally Morgan Hello Sally. Hello. Hopefully you haven't our messages to disappear yet yet Not yet. Well you may regret that. come the tribunal. The How toin election Whats up group is where the magic really happens. You should know. Also joined by ye, yeah and it's policy Qeen Pauly Mackenie Good morning. Good morning. you' well? I am very well. In fact, I've just been this morning at the Family Business UK confonerence. Oh wow. Which was very exciting. That sounds really exciting. You can tell us the highlights later. Well last night I said later. A lot later. The chairman of Warburonons. How cool is that?? Quite cool. And also Torory Pier and Timesolist Danny Finkelstein, Danny we're recording in a studio with no windows this week so if there are any Scotchs flyging past, we're not even going to see them That's very great shame. I don't even remember what you were talking about. Just probabilities. Right. probabilities of Scotch checks. I mean, why not? Why wouldn't the Scotchck be your first p of call when discussing probabilities? Do keep sending your questions to how to win at theTimes. co d. UK. We've had a lot of them. of a few that we've had this week, Jude said on Spotify, Please do the podcast more than once a week. Thank you. We try some weeks, Jude, but I don' think we' got the stamina Craig says I'm not a live Dam voter, but I only listen to this podcast for Polly. She just thinks a little differently to the others. Polly, there you go Well, thank you. Yeah. And also after our episode with Michael Heseltinene, someone called Tftittle Chimes wrote It's well known that Michael Foot wasn't wearing a donkey jacket, but a winter coat he bought from Howarard's Strange didn't challenge Heseltne on this thirty five years later. Johnson rolled up at the Senate offff, so I'm going paraphrase here, so drunk that they had to replace the footage with a previous year. Now Sally did point out that the quQeen mother liked coat and yes, indeed it was from Harrardon. on Johnson In fact, the BBC accidentally played libraryictures of Johnson at the Senatathph, but it was a cock up rather than a conspiracy, we think. And look, if you missed our episode with Michel Hesselstein, looking back at Margaret Thatcher's nineteen eighty three victory, you can find it in all the usual places. Plus, one more correction from Noah. He says the recording we played of William Gladstone wasn't the real phonograph from eighteen eighty eight, but an imitation We had to listen to the original because Noah provided a link. Gladson's voice is very hard to hear, but it's still a bit much. Danny, it's nice we've got such a pantic audience, isn't it? It's good Yeahah. I'm looking forward to hearing that real version. I didn't realize it wasn't so there you go. Yeah no didn' I didn't realize that either. I mean I guess if they could send the corrections in advance before we've made the mistakes, would That'd be really helpful. Look, we're going to be talking this week about how Andy Burnham is or indeed isn't setting out his store as P prime Mister while he fights the by election. We're also going to talk about whether the welfare partarty label will stick to labour in the same way that the Tories were know as the Nasty Party. but first I want to talk about Kemmy Bedenoch who continues to get goodview reviews from the commentators even if the polls haven't quite followed Sally, in Bidenoock's response to Tony Blair's essay criticising Kir Starmer's Labour Party, she wrote, Everything you outlined is what've already made conservative policy over the last eighteen months. Is she right to say she is offering the closest thing to bllairism? Is Kemmy Bidenock the heir to Blair? No, no, I don't think she is. I mean I thought her piece was actually pretty nasty. Right. So I think she put herself back with a nasty party myself. I thought it was rather snide And it was actually a list of policies. It wasn't a joined up argument about where the country needs to go. And I think I mean, I had look, I had concerns about some of some of the way that Tony put his essay together, I think it was when he sort of had another go a few days later, it was rather better from my point of view. I thought what he always had was the ability to put together a really big argument that included policy. It was never just a list of policies. And I thought her response was a list of policies. and was also somewhat disingenuous. I mean, to say, oh, well, he's against all action on climate change effectively, repeating the act and the rest of it. I don't think it's true. I think he's making an argument about a fairly pragmatic argument about still fighting for clean energy, but there is there a better transition, for example? So so no, not for me, not at about at all because in a sense, as to say when I think he he had When he thought further, actually what he needed to do was have a new argument about what a version of new labor would be now And I don't think she I don't think she represents that. I don't think she represents the sort of the full the many, not the few argument, if you like, which was very core to what Danny is frowning. No she wouldn't, I think claim for it. So the answer the question is that It takes a long time for public opinions notice anything. and leadership does matter a lot. It's one of the few big things that matters. And there's no question that Kemmy Baynock's performances have finally begun to make a difference to her opinion ratings. and it also comes up in focus groups. But at the same time, it's obvious that it hasn't affected where the Tories are, which ought to be, and I think is a matter of substantial concern to the Conservative partarty because it means even that, which is a big part of your political positioning isn't affecting their positioning. I think what she's done is put the Conservative Party in a position whereby if Nigel Farage were to fumble the situation, for example, the right begins to split more profoundly between restore and reform as well as the consonservatives Nigel Farage makes mistakes which I think he has a little bit this week and people begin to notice those things. She's put them in a position where the Conservative partarty could profit, but it's very noticeable it hasn't. On the issue of Blair, it's an interesting strategic question. Tony Blair has You know the question is whether he's the heir to Blair, In other words, were the things that he's saying in his own political tradition? I think he has moved substantially. and it was difficult for a mainstream center right conservative to disagree with most of the things that he said. and she therefore didn't. But then she had a problem with tone, which is, do you welcome him in or do you, as she's somewhat prone to do, push them away because she's not an endorsement of the sort that she'd like. You my view, I think is that the Conservative partarty doesn't is not in a position make push those things away, people away. but on the other hand, I do see the strategic calculation Which is that she wants to be seen as the main party of the right. And you know if she were to accidentally get labeled the heir to Blair even in the most unmmerited way, it would probably not be that helpful for her in that task. So it's a difficult strategic issue for her. But in the end, she's quite authentic as you know, I think that's one of her strengths as a politician. So she can only express herself as she wishes to, and she did answer there There were like eight column ideas in there. mean I can see why yours are so good. I want to focus particularly on that bit about whether Whether Kemmy Baetenk is poised to kind of pick up the ball if Nigel Farage fumbles if her improved position has led her to there. Be I mean Polly, the position that she's adopted this week over the police treatment of the murdered student Henry Novak, for example, she's been very critical of diversity initiatives, but she's also tried to strike a very different tone to Niel Farraage, and indeed has drawn a distinction herself and Nigel Farge has that fel meaningful the difference she's drawing I think she has certainly come across as more prime mininisterial than Nigel Farage has you know, to disrespect the wishes of a grieving family. U in order to potentially provoke violence against the police on our streets. It it's not sort of a grade prime minial behaviour. No, I take the point. Yeah, exactly. And whereas Baynock has behaved like a person who is angry about the behaviour of the police, but also imagines herself being in charge of them at some point and also having that responsibility for holding and absorbing some of the emotional reality that victims and their families will express nevertheless, she still you know expressed the opinion that this is akin to the The Stephen Lawrence murder which I think is just profoundly an inacurate assessment of what has happened, which is horrendous and it's very clear that the police made some very serious mistakes. but also The core of it is that this murderer has been brought to justice, found guilty and sent to prison, as is absolutely right. and that is precisely what the police were incapable of. to a large part in the context of Stephen Lawrenson. So I think there is still a lack of thoughtoughtfulness really. I think Danni's right, you know, she is a very instinctive politician and and I think for her to get to that next level, she's definitely improved, but is too pause and reflect on her own instincts because sometimes they will be right. but sometimes actually they're wrong Okay. I mean, the the position u the position that Farage has adopted over this story this week over this huge issue this week to a degree Probably, he's responding to restore Britain. which said that the Novak killer would have been put to death by a government run by Rupert Low. But also to a degree, It doesn't seem necessarily that Nigel Farage would believe it works against him that he's being criticised by Kir Starmer and Kemy Bdenoch and Ed Davy, and frankly, the likes of us on a podcast, everyone all together Putting aside the morality of that position I'm interested in the electability of that position. has well. He has some advantages, right He has authenticity on his side. In other words, it often comes up in focus groups that he has held for a long time the view, know we've overadjusted on racism in institutions. We've had too much mass migration. All these things that come to the surface with an incident like this, he associated is not positioning himself politically but expressing his view. and therefore, some people will give him credit for just sort of saying the rage that he feels. I think, however, why I said earlier I thought it was a mistake is that quite rarely for him, I think he just got the tone wrong. he always spots the opportunity to expand on why he's right about this particular area, when there's an opportunity to say it, he spots it and says it quite early. But he usually gets the words right and I think problem with rage is that it encourages someone like Tommy Robinson whom Farage has in the past been very careful to distance himself from. And indeed that's the basis of this row between him and restore the core of Nigel Far, the biggest moment in Nigel Farage's decion, I think a career in which I've said this before was when as leader of UKIip, he defeated an attempt by Buster Motram, the tennis player to get BNP and UKIip to have an electoral power, which at that point would have been good for UKIip rather than for the BNP. He rejected it, then he expelled everybody who voted for it. That was a key moment. So he has always built reform and all the political movements on the back of that rejection. Now he's being challenged seriously in a way, I suppose the BNP did at the same time. He's got to keep his nerve. This was the first time where I thought to myself, I wonder whether you are keeping your nerve under pressure from wh whoom you've previously seen, it's politically important to distinguish yourself from. I mean, I wonder how he would how he would have behaved if there wasn't a by election going on. I mean I think he feels my impression is he feels under real pressure from restore and therefore felt he had to do this. I think where he really slipped up and perhaps there was something he could do about it, he doesn't perform well in the commons. he's got to be out there, you know, being being anti prop with the bple kind of thing. And actually the fact that Kemmy Baynock and hisars home calmly dealt with the situation in the commons and also we werere very respectful of the family I think Mitt was made Farage look toxic.? In the Cons yester, you mean he's in a difficult position. There's only what five of them or six or four or whatever And everyone wass shouting at him when he sort of but also he didn't I guess because he's not that familiar with the comments, he didn't seem to have quite anticipated the dynamic of whatever he says, the Prime Minister iss going to have the last word. And it's not like he gets to come back afterwards, which I thought was sort of stult. Well you've got one question. I do remember once talking to David Cameron about When he was gl with the opposition about one of his speeches and I said, you do realize you were shouting? And he said I was I was shouting because you can't be heard otherwise and then it comes across badly. know donon't forget, Nigel Farge is expressing the view that is held by a portion of the electorate. and some of those will not even regard what happened subsequent to his stamed about ure rage as being actually you know a bad thing. S of them will but will still understand why he said it. So it's not we shouldn't mistake the idea that there's no body of support for it. There's also the question is but I think it does restrict his appeal in a way that he's previously in a way that he's previously avoided doing. But There's also the question, Polly, is there a trap for the left here as well because Labour MPs certainly lib de MPs up to a point They're really, really, really uncomfortable joining an argument against things like DEI initiatives wherever they think about. They're really, really, really uncomfortable saying that the changing tone on race in Britain over the last ten years has taken a wrong turn and is now too progressive, aren't they? I think rightly though, it is interesting that we've started saying DEI when In the UK, we've always said EDI. DI is an Americanism. And just as sometimes the left starts saying bipPOC, Black indigenous and people of colour, which doesn't make any sense in the UK because who do you mean by indigenous in this context? But they just absorb American discourse. is actually there's something about this anti DEI, which is just totally taken from Trumpism from nagaism and imported here. and it's not thoughtful in the same way This two tier policing thing is perceived by both left And write as true with obviously the inverse experience, right? Like I think it's still nine times more likely for a black man to be stop and searched than a white man. Now if you are a young black man, that is experienced as two tier policing. For sure And the reason why the police did make choices, for example, to go on pride parades. is partly because there had been cases in which murder and assault of gay men had been, for example, had been treated as not seriously or disappearances of gay men because the assumption was, well, they're just gay people, they sort of live like that. If they've disappeared, that's because you know they're flaky, right? plenty of evidence of from bllack, minoritised and women being treated badly by the police. There is also evidence of Let's call it EDO, whatever of police making wrong judgment calls as they did in this case with Henry Novak around not wanting to be perceived as racist, wanting to take accusations and racism seriously. Again, because in the past sometimes they didn't But you have to remember, especially if you are aspiring to be the prrime Minister The core of policing is you know that foundational principle, which is the police are the people and the people are the police Trust is the foundation of good policing. The police will always be catastrophically outnumbered by people who are not the police. And you see that when riots happen because suddenly that outnumbering of the police means that they cannot act Oder is maintained through common consent for the law and cooperation with the police. And so if the police are starting to lose trust with any community, whether that be white working class people, gay people, young women, it doesn't matter. ationally problematic. If you want to be the Prime Minter youve got to think about how do you counter the beliefs as well as the practice of two tier policing for all of us so that that aspiration which everybody's saying, but nobody's very thoughtful about We should all be treated equally before the law can actually be be delivered and experienced on the ground. We've got to move on from this very shortly, but before we do, Sally fairly deafening silence on this story from Andy Burnham And I wonder if that's just linked to Poulll andand was just talking about that he just simply doesn't know what to say Um O what he should say or what's useual to say? I think what's interesting with Andy is I I think it's an area he'd be quite comfortable talking about in fact, because I think he does genuinely think that the way that you have to run things is to build a majority view and pull people together. and I also think his appointment of the chief Cable in Greater Manchester was quiteal he's quite a traditional guy because actually Andy does think working class communities need good policing and rely on good policing. So I don't know I don't know what mean maybe it's one of those things where he thinks it's inaropriate to keep jumping in on national issues. Yeah fair enough. Well coming up, we'll talk a bit more about how Andy Berham is setitting out his store as prrime mininister as he tries to win this by election. as we come back with a bit more how to win an election o how to win an election with Sally, Polly, Danny, and me, the one who's speaking, shouldhn't worry. I'm probably AI. Polly, PMQs this week Kemy Bidenok accused K Starmer of giving up on welfare reform. She's right, isn't he? Isn't? They have given up on anything anything radical or I'm not Sure. So they're doing a really interesting program that I have been tangentially involved in around health and work, so they're trying to use clever contracting mechanism called outcomes payments to try and drive some innovation basically in that market of exactly how you get people who are out of work back to work partly by treating their health conditions, but also kind of supporting skills hybrid program. I think that is quite good. It is not very high octane But it's good policy and it's clear that you, DWP and the Department of Health are cooperating really well around that but they're not They're not doing what, of course everybody sort of calls for, including Tony Blair in his essay, which is somehow to magically make all the money disappear from welfare reform I think a huge amount of the assumption is that what we just need to do is sort of beat people harder and they'll get back to work. There's no evidence to suggest that that works. And actually so much of the well The first call on why the welfare budget iss going up so much, of course, is pensions and our aging society, but no one wants to do anything about that. Beyond that, it is pressure on housing costs because we don't build enough housing. you've got to fix that. It is pressure on youth unemployment, over fifty five s, poor health, all stuff that should be fixed with something other than just welfare cuts. Policy question This week, the Tories discussed a new welfare policy. Criminals serving community or suspended sentences wouldn't get their benefit payments in cash on a car that couldn't be used for gambling or to buy alcohol or cigarettes. Good policy or bad policy Well, soree. What often happens I feel we can maybe sort turn that noise into something I can get whenever I press a button. Okay. So what tends to happen when you give people a restricted card is that basically they will then get hold of cash if they want cash by sort negotiating with somebody so I might go to Sally and say, lookook, you can have twenty quid to spend on your groceries if you give me fifteen. Exactly st I do think, however, payment cards are very interesting when it comes to actually giving people choice. There're loads of people who struggle with budgeting, for example, who might struggle with a gambling addiction or like me, struggle with buying too many Maltesas And if you can empower people to create kind of much more sophisticated payment cards that you know kids use as as people, adults with learning disabilities, adults with mental health conditions look at use that help them control their budget. I think that's a really exciting welfare intervention And at the moment, we do the exact opposite, which is we give the poorest and most vulnerable people the most basic bank accounts, which offer them none of that sophisticated It almost goes back way back in history, doesn't it? with the beginning of child benefit that was to mums to spend on their children rather than making sure the money went directly to children. Sadly there's a guy that the rest of us used to know called Peter Mandelson. I doubt you've come across him. But in his messages that were published this week, many people thought the most damaging thing to emerge was Pat McFadden complaining about labour MPs saying every meeting I whoo can we tax in order to pay benefits to others? Is that a fair reflection of what Labour MPs think at the moment? I think it's a fair reflection probably of where they were. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen now. and I think Polly said something really important, you just talked about. I the difference between welfare cuts and welfare reform is very fundamental, I think. And know what Polly's describing is welfare reform. And I think the Alan Milburn report was about welfare reform. It wasn't about cuts, it was about how do you use welfare to do something, i. e. get people back to work. And I think what happened in the early stage of so called welfare reform that this government did. They start I think I think Liz Kenll and her team set out to do a program of welfare reform actually that was about work and how do we incentivise work and get people back to work? And overnight almost it became a sign a very, very major cuts program that was largely forced on them, I think. And I think that's what Labour MPs hated and then therefore then got into the pattern of assuming it was all going to be about that. I do think they've been really engaged in the Milburn review. That you know was put together by Pat McFadden. That's what's so sad about those early messages. To be fair to Pat, it was before he had the brief and he now seriously is seeing if there's a way of taking welfare reforms forward, I think. Danny, don't cuts have to be part of this conversation. It can't just be about reform. Yeah I mean of course, and Polly was completely right the word reform actually being used as a euphemism for reducing the overall bill. But I think it's a recognition that in order to reduce the overall bill, you have to reduce the number of people who are claiming. And that probably requires you to restructure it and at the same time find other ways of dealing with the complex needs of those people who are claiming and try to return those people to the workforce all at the time when there's a strong headwind economically that's leading in the other direction. So it's a problem that we've got to grapple with. and I think this statement of Pat McFunddns is a real political problem, a bit like the letter that you know, there's no money left. Liam Bern's number a letter. That was something that could be used consistently. The only advantages they've got is This is actually not a good message for reform. It's for the touries it is, but reform is a party for people a lot of whom are not in good health. There was a very strong correlation, for example, between Brexit voting and not being in good health. and the therefore, it's hard for them to make getting people back into work. You're saying if Labour is branded the welfare party, that could in a fight against reform actually be quite good for them? Well, don't forget lots of people claim welfare, so therefore you know the whole point is that a lot of people are on welfare. so removing money from those people, each none of whom thinks They shouldn't be on it or or they don't deserve it or none of whom absolutely, none of whom don't you wouldn't miss it. So there' therefore a lot of votes in it always. And there are a lot of people who claim it you might vote labor or reform compared to the people who would be paying the taxes so in certain ways. Yes, it' a it's a message that works for labour and and reform, but doesn't work you know doesn't work for the Tories all the other way around. What do you think about that label, Sally? Because I mean, you know, the idea that the Tories were the nasty partarty, that came from Theresa May when the Tories were in opposition in two thousand two. you used that phrase twenty minutes ago, Th these labels hang around.our Do labour want to be the welfare of generation? Im I'm sure Labour doesn't want to be Of course it's damaging because you know I remember a long time ago there was a perception that labour was on the side of the scroungers or it was on the side of People who didn't want to work properly or it was on the side of people getting benefits. It wasn't on the side of us. and it's very dangerous if labour in some way returns to those days. I do think though probably Kemy Baynock need to be a little bit careful because as Danny said, welfare, welfare covers a lot of things. And if one was able to explain to people that welfare also included, for example, pensions benefits for for seriously disabled people who really need it, then she could very quickly flip into just being nasty again. So think I think actually she needs to be a bit careful. Okay let's talk a bit about Andy Burnham. He's hoping to win the Makefield by election, of course, and then he's widely expected to succeed Kiss Starmer as the Labour leadader and indeed Prime Minister. We've heard remarkably little from him really so far.ough He iss due to take part in a question time debate with some of the other candidates imminently Danny, do we know? Can we guess? canan we imagine what a Burnham preremiership would look like and how it' be different from what we have at the moment twelve of you At the moment, his message is being skewed by fighting a byi elect in a particular place. And the big challenge for anybody is how do you reach out beyond your demographic base while retaining your demographic base. So he will be, by the way impacted by the fact that he's chosen to fight this particular type of seat I Don't forget the um, you know, u Case Stom up is the MP for Camden and therefore he had Handland and pancras. Yes, but I mean Camden Borough. and he there you know, therefore actually he's got a little bit he's now comered under attack, but he's got the balance e would have been aes. he's got a balance. differentiffere problem. So there's a demographic issue for him. Yes, we're getting a bit of a clearer idea because Andy Berham has said two things, one of which I think It does have a lot of juice in it actually, which is this whole idea of Manchesterism. I do think there is quite a lot to be said and we've discussed it before about how you get local mayors and bigger areas outside London to have more control, possibly more resources and you build your infrastructure policy around making places other than London more productive. that does it's sort of levelling up really. and I think there's always been both politics and also policy in that And then the one of which I'm less impressed by, which is this idea that he marks a break with forty years ofty years is a long time. Yes. And what he's suggesting is we made a mistake around the time that we abandoned incomomees policies, right and where we've begun to introduce trade union laws and face down Arthur Scargill And I simply don't agree with him. By the way, there's one other thing which is danger of being missed that he also said, which is that he doesn't really believe in strong whipping He's going to rely on the sense of the Labour Party. Well, not believing in strong whipping is a really, really challenging thing for a prime Mister not to believe in. I can't believe he' end up being able to stay in on that. And the only way that he'll balance that with being leader of the Labour Party is by giving in to the party all the time, which does basically mean yielding to the party on things like welfare. Polly, what do you think of the whipping idea? No don't need to say a word. Okay. I fell for that. So I don't really care about the whipping thing. Danny's probably right. I defer to Danny on it. What I am troubled by is First thing he said about house builduilding. He doesn't believe in house buildilding on fields Even though in fact, house buildilding on fields in Macafield is part of Manchester's plan and planning policy, which he as the mayor is responsible for, that's disappointing to me as a build baby build accolyte He's also, I think suggested that he would tear up the contracts with asylum hotels. And I mean that's one of the least popular policies in the world, right? Like putting asylum seekers in hotels. So I can understand why he wants to do change there. But there's something about that sort of tearing up the contracts. I mean, if you tear up contracts, you just end up in court paying out compensation to private contractors whilst they don't actually deliver you any services. There's a lack of prime ministerialness about that really. and I've written an essay this week about how you might differently about building the provision that this country needs For things like asylum hotels or children's homes where we're just we end up locked into this nightmare of these impossibly expensive, hugely unpopular private provisions. But I think the thing that baffles me most is He refuses to say he's running to be the prime Minister He's sort of talking about that he's doing it because he cares about the people of Mcfield. No he's not Mfield Oh sry, fine great I was thought I very close to them. I thought it was, but I've been I've been misdirected I'm very glad. Well, if you've learned nothing else on this part I say he's already their mayor. If if he cares about them, stay the mayor. Sally It's maybe sort of a bit of a fear with Andy Bunham that he says a lot of stuff and you don't know which bits of it he means. Look, I think the first thing is to remember he's running in a by election. So I take Polly's point about contracts and things, but actually it seems to me what he said about asylum hotels was him essentially saying, I hear what you're saying about small boats and immigration and this shows that I that I hear you. So I mean, I think you have to recognise some of that always happens in elections. I thought the stuff about whipping which we were just talking about was actually is actually quite interesting because I didn't take it completely at face value, but I did think it demonstrated that he thinks you need to do politics rather differently, which to be fair, I think he has done in Manchester And partly because of the electoral system, you can't just if you're not on first person the post and he hasn't been as mayor, you've got to talk to people and you've got to persuade them and you've got to see where you can build consensus and can you get a a second preference and so on I think good whipping is talking with people not at them. and I think the problem has been I think the problem has been with the current parliamentary Labour Party that they've been talking at them, not with them. So I would think that it's more about he would change the nuance of how whipping is done rather than say wouldn't whip people. One firm position we've had My Burnham this week post by election is the question, Danny of whether he'd hold a snap election? shouldhould he become Prime Minister? He said he definitely won't. Your view, Danny has been long term, that's ridiculous. Well, I'm just on a constitutional basis. So let me just start with this. I previously my position was Parliament is sovereign If you are the leader of a party in Parliament, you deserve to be Prime Minister and we don't elect presidents. The historical precedent for it is reasonably solid behind that position. you can find alternatives to it because other people like Eden did call elections, but generally speaking people didn't feel required to do that. But I've changed my mind because of two things. The first is the large number of times we've changed Prime Minister in recent times are not giing people the choice. and secondly, because leaders are no longer elected by members of Parliament. that second one is absolutely critical to my position. mean On that basis, before you go on, let me read out a question then we've had. This is a sent in from Justin Says Dear how to win T team, thank you for the pods consistently insightful and thought provoking debates from Polly Sally and Danny, beautifully marsalled by Hugo. Oh that's my name. Following on from your emergency pod, and Danny's comments about the potentially unconstitutional nature of party members effectively electing a prrime Minister mid Parliament again Is it democratically sustainable that a small and unelected party membership can effectively determine the next Prime Mister without a general election. Would a more constitutionally coherent system be one where once a party is in government, leadership succession is determined either solely by MPs who actually hold the deemocratic mandate or even through an explicit commons confidence vote on the incoming Prime minister? As in Canad do we have to sort of incorporate leadership elections into the deemocratic system not involve party membership and not just as a sort of party tradition because it's easier, but by law by constitution. I don't think we're going back to the old system, but we should remember that this new system came about as a deliberate attempt to undermine parliamentary democracy by the Benits. Tony Ben was uncomfortable with the idea that the only kind of democracy was this sort of Ralph Milliband, who was the theorist behind it, like idea of industrial workplaces and everyone voting for it. So he wanted some political sanction for what was going on not just sort of workplace votes. And he came up they all came up with the idea that if they had a party democracy in which the parliamentary partarty did have the vote, but it was mandated by the party then that would solve the problem. So they came up with the idea that the leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which is what the job was until the nineteen eighties, should be replaced by the leader of the Labour Party. And the leader of the Labour Party, which is what we now have, would lead the Parliamentary Party and the partarty and be voted on by members. So it was deliberate It was deliberately designed to undermine and then The Liberal partarty, as it was, went along with that idea partly because when Jeremy Thor was elected, it was like in a champagne et of six people or whatever it was, I think it was six people actually So that wasn't enough and they felt a broader mandate be required. And then eventually the Conservative partarty, of course got itself into that position too, and the SDP having done the same because of its history with the Labour Party. And we've now got all the parties. We're not going back So I think we've got to adjust to the fact that we're not going back And that means if we have a new leader elected by that method It's not a parliamentary election It's not been in. It's not the result of parliamentary deliberation the sort of confidence is being enforced onto Parliament and we ought to have a general election when this change happens. Polly, what do you think about that? Because I mean to sort of almost sort of parody what probably aren't even your views. I guess there's this sort of like There's this sort of traditional liibem sense that actually government should always be a coalition of multiple small parties and new ones rise and fall and you have a fixed term parliament, and who the Prime Minister is isn't really any of the electorate's business You know what I mean? I think that we actually do need to Jeie back in the bottle. Danny images and maybe he's right that we can't, but actually this idea that partarty democracy is at the foundation of our politics Profoundly wrong I think because it incentivized the parties to think about the interests of their members who are A tiny fraction of the voters. we are a long way from mass membership that there was in, say the fifties of the political parties. And so I wouldn't say it with the same contemptuous tone of the voters. But yeah, I think that the voters should send people to Parliament. I would go back to some of the experiments David Cameron ran around open primaries allowing the parties to to open up the opportunity to choose who the candidate is to a wider range of people within a place But then I just party democracy is internally it's delusional. Sy askness to you. I mean, actually I agree. I would attempt to put the genie back in. I'm more relaxed about a wider vote outside of you know when you're not actually sitting, butre we're not a presidential system. So we can't have Parliament across the piece saying, o, we'll choose that one next. We are a parliamentary system. And the closest we've got to democracy is that people send people to Parliament and therefore if you make a change It does feel to me that the majority MPs should be the people who are taking the decision. I know that would be deeply unpopular probably with a lot of my party. That is my view. The particular fights that Labour have had on this during that whole weird period where you could pay three pounds to vote for against Jeremy Corber as an associate member of whatever. I mean is that broadly regted across the past. Y I think so. I think so I think everybody you recognize that It's silly Yeah. O. So I mean I guess Danny, that means that you think if Annie Bern becomes Prime Minister, then we should have an election. I do. it doesn't I don't suppose that that. I explicitly do. The lab parties got elected on a manifesto that I You know, did describe at the time as a sort of masterpiece of blankness. but They were elected on that. and so for them to come in now with a whole host of new policies about capital gains tax, which you know K Aarmer explicitly said they weren't going to do, which he did in order to win an election. I just think it's fundamentally wrong and it's obviously wrong and people can see that it's wrong. so if they are going to do this. and you know, I should say I did I have shifted my position on this. I didn't used to think that because I But it was the fact that party elections are not really parliamentary ones that's shifted my view. I mean, the alarm bells, I guessgin began began ringing with, for example, well Miss Trus, when she had a policy that nobody had voted for.obody had a chance to vote for, a platform for government that nobody had a chance to vote for. was Exactly. Yeah. st Exactly. No. Well look, I think that's pretty much all we've got time for this week But thanks very much indeed for all your message, partularly Justin for that last one, which was very thought provoking. Do keep sending them in to how to win at theimes. co d. UK. Thank you to Sally. thank you to Polly. than you to Danny. I'm Huer Riffkin. We'll see you next time