King's Speech and Civil Service Reform

The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a cabinet. So said the Prime Minister at the start of an explosive week for the government. But what will come next for Keir Star mer? I'm Hannah White and this is Inside Briefing, the podcast from the Institute for Government. These are challenging times for the Prime Minister, but he is not at the time of recording on Wednesday afternoon yet facing a leadership challenge. That might change, or it might not. More than eighty Labour MPs have called for Keir Starmer to step down. Senior cabinet ministers have reportedly advised him to set out a timetable for his exit from number ten. Others, where Streeting to the Four, are rumoured to be set to launch their leadership bids. There's a lot going on. But to half-quote Howard Wilson, Kirstarmer is going on too. And with the ink still drawing on the King's speech, he is leading a government which has set out 35 new bills. So now what? Can the PM assert his authority? How could a rival for the crown emerge? What have the bust ups of the last few days revealed about the failings of Starmer's premiership? And what can he or someone else learn from these mistakes? And on a day of pomp and pageantry in Westminster, what stood out in the King's speech and how much of it will actually make it onto the statute book? So much to discuss. Joining me throughout, fresh from various broadcast studios, are the I FG duo of Kath Haddon and Tim Durant. I've lost track, Kath. How many Prime Ministers have served during your time at the IFG? Oh don't mean no, I'm not counting. Um hang on. Seven count. Well, one more than Cameron so uh I'll get back to you on that. Sorry, I'm just updating Twitter, just see more than Caff can count. And I am delighted that we are joined by Claire Ainsley, a former director of policy to Keirstarmer, and I am delighted to announce a new IFG senior fellow. Hi Claire and welcome to the IFG. Thank you very much for having me. Okay, let's get going, not least because everything we're about to say could be out of date rather soon. Tim, at the time of recording, no leadership contest has yet been triggered, but we've had letters, resignations, sort of half challenges by a backbencher, Catherine West. So what is the state of play? So currently the Prime Minister is saying you know he is sticking around number ten were bullish yesterday as they have been throughout all of this, saying you know there's been no formal challenge. The rumours are all around West Streeting he is saying well his allies are saying that he is planning to resign tomorrow and launch a contest then. It's a very I think quite a strange way of doing things, saying, I'm planning to resign. The PM then or number ten came out and said that they have full confidence in the health secretary again. Very strange way of doing things. So it's unclear really whether or not that's going to happen. Obviously this focus has been on streeting as seen as the sort of the most ready among the contenders and the one who is keen to go sooner rather than later. In the midst of all of this, the King made his speech setting out the government's legislative programme. And currently, as we are recording now, the government is introducing that in the House of Commons and uh setting out the first of several days of debate on that. So it all feels very it's a bit through the looking glass. You know, there's sort of on the one hand, government is trying to, you know, be bold and ambitious and set out the big picture. And on the other hand, everyone is thinking, well, does this government last beyond the end of the week? Aaron Powell And if he does set out a timetable, if he does uh face a challenge, how would a contest actually work? So we know that we need twenty percent of the parliamentary party to nominate a challenger, uh that's eighty-one MPs. That then kickstarts the process. The party rule book has pages and pages on this, but basically any contenders would need 20% of the parliamentary party, so that sets a limit on how many there can be. That then goes out to a vote of party members. They have to have been a member for at least six months before they can vote. And it's a um a sort of alternative vote type system so it winnows down to the final one. Star mer or the incumbent leader is by default on the ballot paper. So he doesn't need to get nominations. He could fight that contest without needing to do that. And I think it's not beyond the realms of possibility that we see a contest and then Sama comes back as Prime Minister after all. Claire, you worked closely with Keir Star mer. Give us a sense of of how you think he will be responding in this sort of circumstance. Well, he's been pretty resilient so far and I thought we saw that when we had that briefing, you know, as the cabinet meeting was was barely underway on Tuesday morning, and we got that statement basically saying the cabinet's behind the Prime Minister, we carry on, we're getting on with the job, and basically saying there's been no formal challenge, and therefore he he's cracking on. So he's certainly not buckled under the pressure. I think the question now is what happens next, and the getting on with the job accompanied by the visuals that were sent out of Starmer out there with apprentices and kind of launching this new programme were clearly intended to give the message that look, I was elected by the people and in the form of a general election, which is how you elect prime ministers and you get manifestos, and that is what I'm standing on. So it was pretty defiant, but he also will need to do a big job enlisting to the Parliamentary Labour Party because there are so many people that are just very discontented that it's inconceivable that it can kind of be a business as usual. This whole challenge is a sort of challenge, non-challenge, is a representation of the disc ontent that's been there for a while. So however it's resolved, he's going to need to do something different with the Parliamentary Labour Party. Yeah, and me, I'm just uh interested in in your take on how the parliamentary party is playing this because it seems to be curiously protracted. There's been lots of you know, large numbers of people a few ministers resigning, junior ministers, large numbers of people expressing dissatisfaction if he does go on in that context isn't that quite a sort of big act of self-harm by the party? Yeah and it's clear that there hasn't been a grand strategy behind it. Not to say there haven't been lots of uh plotting or goings on, but it isn't a clear strategy for an alternative to Keir Starmer. You could see that from the way that it emerged over the weekend and the fact that the MPs that got behind the idea of coming out publicly with no confidence in Keir Star mer were from different kind of wings of the party. And of course, the kind of crucial question from a lot of the PLP's point of view is that several of them back a candidate who isn't in parliament right now and doesn't have an immediate route in. So that is one of the dilemmas that they have presented themselves with: is that if there is a leadership challenge from within Parliament, the Parliamentary party in the next, you know, two days, then by that fact it will exclude Andy Burnham and many people in the party don't want us to enter into a contest, but if there is a contest, want to see him at least as one of the candidates who's able to stand. So yeah, no grand strategy, I'm afraid. And I mean I was just trying to think through the hypothetical scenarios here, but presumably there's also a scenario in which there is some kind of delayed leadership contest, which as you say some people would welcome if they if they think that that Andy Burnham is the best candidate. But there is no guarantee that he would win a by election. And so you might wait for the possibility of Andy Burnham being part of the process and then discover that actually that's not an option either. Yeah, exactly. And uh I've I've been out in the media arguing that I, you know, I really don't think Labour should be going for this very sort of public fallout in response to the elections, but that largely because I think that from the as far as public's concerned, this is not how we should be responding to local election results. And the permutations of all the different possibilities are out of anybody's control because you could end up with a contest, which, as you've just said, as Tim's just said, you could end up with it being kind of the Prime Minister versus a sort of internal party candidate, and people then being forced to choose between the two. Um, I think that the chances of there being a sort of orderly timetable feel like that is slipping away really and I don't see how that that can be agreed because of like you say the sort of factional dynamics around who's backing who. So yes, I rather wish that whoever had started all this had sort of thought through where what the end game might have been, but um we are well beyond that point. I think I mean there's two things going on that I think are really fascinating and worth talking about. One, it shows up the difference between the sort of plotting in, you know, the on the parliamentary estate and for you know potential leadership candidates, they need to be able to say, I have not been plotting. So a lot of it is done by proxies. You know, it's not quite cloak and dagger, but obviously WhatsApp comes into it. There's probably dinners, there's probably and everything looks quite achievable when you're discussing with your mates, your plan of how this is going to play out, and then it hits reality and you hit the road and what we're seeing is multiple different people's versions of what they thought it would play out as hitting each other and it's not playing out like that at all. And so an awful lot of people are going to end up burned from this. You've got all the people who resigned probably on behalf of another candidate and may find themselves just out of a job and nothing to show for it. And then you've got the instability and the mess that Claire's talked about. The other thing is you've got two things going on. You've got both the critique that Starmer is not the right person, that they need another leader, but you've also got this battle that's been going on since well before the election between what is the right vision for this Labour government, you know, the classic sort of soft-left, centre-right perspective that was all bound up in everyone's view of Morgan McSwe eney. And I'm not sure even that the leadership contest would solve that, because probably whoever is on the losing side to it would continue to make their argument. And the irony is the local elections have made it so much clearer because the two potential ways this Labour government could face are typified by reform on the one hand, Green Party on the other hand. So it's really crystallized that policy divide within the Labour Party, which isn't necessarily going to be solved by one leader being the person, the candidate that is chosen. Tim, I mean, for most people in the country who are not members of the Labour Party, presumably what's interesting here is is what is going to happen in government. And this debate, there's a risk Labour Party that it looks looks introspective, not least because and the way the media reports it, it's all focused around personalities and people, not who they are and what they would do. And because this is a sort of as Claire and Kath have both said, a sort of shadow boxing behind the scenes plotting people sort of trying to think how this will come out, nobody is setting out a or hasn't been until it started to happen this week with various pamphlets and so on and just seen that Al Collins has come out and and sort of made a statement about what he thinks you know the Labour Party should be doing and is that seen as a leadership bid. But there isn't a lot of substance for people to s to to think this isn't just people who want to be in charge, this is people who want specific things that will look different. Yeah, totally. And I think you know if we do have a proper contest that has to be the focus. You have to hope that the Labour Party does use that contest to dive into policy and ideas and vision and how people will turn those visions into reality rather than focusing on the personality and the factionalism and the the different wings of the party that different people want to see represented. I think you know if it if it moves quickly, then that's potentially less likely to happen. But going to what Kath was saying, you know, as well as uh if Andy Burnham can't enter the the contest. People are talking about well, is Ed Miliband going to stand to sort of represent that kind of soft left faction? What was Angela Rayner going to do? And it again, it's as you say it's all focused on people. It's all focused on sort of who is the flagbearer rather than what are they the flagbearer for? And just as you know, is it's really brought to the full by the King's speech today, as we've said, the the uh Star man government setting out its legislative programme, the things that it wants to do with the next parliamentary year. And Kath, the question we've been getting a lot from the media is how does that square with the idea potentially, and we say again there's there's no leadership challenge currently underway, but potentially a new leader coming in with a maybe a new set of policies, not things that were in the manifesto. Yeah. Does that matter? What's our what's our take on that? Constitutionally, no. So I'm going to be very bold on that, but then talk about how politically, yes, of course it matter s. Constitutionally, the person who is most likely to be able to command confidence, and if a party in government wants to change its leader, that's because somebody else is more able to command confidences. There's absolutely nothing in our system that stops parties changing leaders. There is also nothing that stops you moving away from the manifesto upon which you were elected. We have representative democracy, not direct. So you elect on the basis of this is what they've said, but then you are trusting them to go off and and make decisions as conditions change and they always do, and the option then is to, you know, get rid of or not at the next election. So that's the sort of democratic constitutional thinking behind it. And I am quite wary of the idea that always crops up around these times that you need to have a general election every time there's a change of Prime Minister. I prefer the old idea that we used to have, which was if somebody's made a minister they have to have a by-election. That would be fun. But I'm not endorsing that. But obviously, politically and in the public's mind, it does matter. And you know, the concept of the mandates pre date manifestos. You know, you go back to the nineteenth century, there's all sorts of resignations because you don't think you've got the mandate anymore, you haven't got the numbers anymore, you know, you need to go to the country to check on this policy, corn laws, whatever it might have been. So that is there's long, long history in our politics about the idea that you need to have some kind of mandate, and if the mandate changes too far, should you go to the country? But probably not in the circumstances of a single change. After a while, multiple changes, yes, it puts pressure on. And if you then get Prime Minister coming in and they're feeling like they can't make significant bold policy choices that they want to, that is, yes, the point at which you you get to we have to go to the people who let them choose. And of course easier to get stuff through Parliament if it's been in a manifesto. Claire, the argument for number ten has been that changing a Prime Minister would create chaos. It's not what the voters want, it's not what the markets want, it's not good for government and for getting on with what Labour has said it will do in government. What do you make of that argument? Well, I hate to depress people just before the weekend, but I think things can get worse from here and plunging the country into a Labour Party leadership contest which is like most members of the Labour Party, I I don't even like it when we have them, let alone having to play them out uh uh in in kind of full glare, I think just has really serious ramifications and you've already seen the response yesterday and the bond markets and the increase in government borrowing. Now that could be short term, but it won't be if this is allowed to continue. And I think there's a really profound point which builds on what Catherine said about the kind of the democratic mandate, is not literal in some ways, but I think the Labour Party in particular can sometimes indulge in fantasy economics about what uh the country actually really wants. And whenever we've put a manifesto or a candidate to them that has not reassured the public that we will treat their taxpayers' money with the highest regard, that they think we might overspend and we might increase costs on them, we have fallen for short. And Keir Starmer is only one of two Labour leaders in the last nearly 50 years who've taken us from opposition into government, and a key reason was that he and Rachel Reeves worked extremely hard to restore our credibility on the economy. So I think it would be unforgivable in the eyes of the public if a Labour Party leadership contest tipped it into that sort of situation. So that is, I think, how serious things are. So I think we can pull back from from where from where it is, but I don't think we should underestimate what the consequences are, particularly at this moment of big global instability. And we have not even seen yet the sort of food price inflation which has been predicted for later in this year. So I I I totally get that argument and the the risk of instability and the the reaction of the markets and you know, we have painful experience in this of country of of how that that can go with the with the trust government and so on. But to play devil's advocate, is there an equally strong case to be made the dangers of not changing leader if things aren't working? You know, inac tion is is is inaction in this case and could there be a missed opportunity for Labour of putting itself in a a different and better situation and delivering better outcomes for the country ahead of the next election. Yeah, and I think there is a difference between arguing as I am, which is that a leadership contest now in this very messy, unplanned way, with no certainty of the outcome and not even one of, frankly, one of the main contenders on the pitch is going to be destabilizing and damaging compared to saying actually we will want a change of leader before the next election, but democratically, Keir Starmer has had the mandate from the public and deserves a chance to be able to implement that. But at the right time, there will be an orderly contest. That feels something that you couldn't say explicitly if you're leader now, because as soon as you do, everybody starts their campaign websites going. But you could um you could certainly sort of arrive at a different at a different position than this sort of messy uh situation that we've got. So yes, I think it is the responsible thing to do to ask questions of leadership, but I also think if the test that we're applying to all our leaders is you have to remain popular in the opinion polls or the party will turf you out, I'm afraid I think we are heading for even more turbul ence. So I I think we're probably a bit far gone now to be able to completely pull back from where we are, but I think there needs to be some really sort of serious thoughts about it because this is not a situation that is good for the country, let alone you, know, whatever the interests of the party are, uh, they are absolutely secondary to what's in the interests of uh the people who voted in the first place. And Catherine, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to think that there is no Prime Minister who has ever got more popular after having been elected than they were at the start immediately after the election? No. Thatcher. Yeah. Is our politics completely broken, can any prime minister govern? Almost every prime minister has gone through some kind of stage where everyone's like, they're they're wrong, they're they need to go, whatever. And Thatcher's uh particular Nidia was nineteen eighty one and, you know, everyone talks about the Falklands War and what that did for her reputation, but also the economy picking up. So yes, so she went on to much greater strength, definitely within her party, but I think also in terms of the polling. But I was just reflecting, I feel like we should obviously, because we are, as you say, recording this Wednesday afternoon. And it could be that by the time people are listening to this, we have a leadership contest. So I feel we should touch on that a bit on can the country continue. I am struck by I remember when Angela Rayner had to resign and there was talk about having a l deputy leadership contest and everyone saying this is can't do this while in government, you know, it'd be so destabilizing. Ted that it was sort of fine. You know, there was lots of debates that one of the candidates happened to be a government minister and but they still some sort of managed it. This would be a completely different ballgame, but assuming it was one that the prime minister was standing in, we've seen the Conservatives do this a lot of time. Thatcher faced it towards the end of the year. Recent ones where Thatcher did it towards the end of her premiership. John Major had a very successful challenge that he headed off. So I'm not saying that it's kind of I'm getting into the lancing the wound point that I think building off of what Claire was saying. Like I was pondering to myself at one point yesterday that perhaps the Conservatives approach of a confidence motion in the leader being the first stage isn't a terrible idea in as much as it at least you know, it can give the leader an opportunity to say properly, back me or back me.. Yeah And if Starmer through other mechanisms, you know, these letters or people resigning or not resigning from governments, it does think he's got the numbers overall, because again it's you know, four hundred and three or so MPs at the moment I think with suspensions since the election, then that's one way of showing it if the other candidates don't exist. But the sort of halfway house of you've got these voices off is you know that's got it I but I think it's got to resolve itself one way or another, and that is probably going to be with West reating resigning or not by this time tomorrow. Let's look a bit more at what this or another Prime Minister might need to do differently. I think we've established there is discontent within the party. Some people are saying what they heard on the doorstep uh when campaigning for the local elections was a lot of dissatisfaction with the Prime Minister specifically? Tim, tell us about Starmer's approach to governing and where we think mistakes have been made, but where he has actually done well. So I think the big criticism that he gets is about vision, about uh, you know, what is the kind of big objectives that he set himself that he wanted to be Prime Minister for, you know, at the the start of government we had the five missions. That was seen as the kind of guiding thread for this government, but those have sort of faded into the background. The Prime Minister then says, Well, the cost of living is really important. He says growth is really important, but then he focuses on other things or pulls one policy lever that actually works against some of those stated objectives. So I think that kind of unifying, clear sense of vision is really important. And that matters for politics. It matters for people being able to sort of set out uh their stall uh as a party, but it also matters inside government. So I remember when I was a civil servant at the Treasury, I was working under the coalition government and the the focus on balancing the books and dealing with the deficit, that was, you know, that cut through everything. Everybody knew this is what the Chancellor will think, this is what the Prime Minister will think, because they had that kind of clear single thread that cut through everything. And this government doesn't have that. So that 's one thing. I think you talk about things that they have done well. I mean, with the King's Beech today, we've had one parliamentary session which has been quite long and they have passed some very important significant pieces of legislation. They have they've done stuff on workers' rights, they've done stuff on renters' rights, they've done, you know, some of these sort of labor values focused things that they really wanted to do, I think the challenge has been they haven't really been able to sell that. They haven't told the story well. And that has that failure of communication has cut across on other things as well. So, you know, the early decisions on winter fuel on benefits last year, they haven't sort of been able to create the narrative to bring people with them. And the final thing I would say is I think it's cliched, but to govern is to choose. And I think this government and this prime minister have struggled with making trade-offs. I remember one Labour special advisor early on, sort of six months after the election, saying to me he hadn't realized quite how much of his job would just be making decisions between two bad options. And I think that sort of is is something that this whole government has struggled with. You know, they came in with a very difficult inheritance. The world has only got more complicated and more uncertain since the election two years ago. And there is no way to please everyone all of the time and you are always choosing between bad options. And I don't think Star mer has shown that he is sort of willing to force decisions or indeed make decisions when other departments won't make their own decisions. Claire, what do you make of that that critique that the government on the one hand hasn't been good enough at at making those trade-offs? And then I guess the other point is and sticking by them that we have seen, I mean, I get a bit tired of the media obsession with U-turns and you know often think well sometimes if you discover that things weren't what you thought they were when you made a decision you should change your mind. But what what what do you think about this this trade-offs critique? I think it's really central and I think it's going to be an issue whoever is in government, in office of any party actually . And it's that the things that I think the country need, I think the country needs, like let's take economic growth as the big one. The things that would get the economy going are not what the Labour Party wants to hear. And that shouldn't really be relevant if you are a strong government who is saying country first, but it becomes relevant if you're in a leadership contest, which is one of the reasons why I think it's dangerous. And I think broader than the Labour Party, I don't think we're having an open enough conversation in amongst the general public and this is not to take the you know the blame off of the sort of Labour leadership, but I don't think we're having an open enough conversation in this country about what some of those trade-offs are. And I think until we do, it's going to be very difficult for any party to really hold together a governing coalition because if you take distribution of wealth, intergener ational distribution of wealth. It could take you to perhaps looking again at the pensions triple lock, but which politician wants to be the one that does that? You know, I could name lots of them. I think one of the biggest issues has been I think, the employers's national insurance increase, which has clearly had an impact. It's just not helped uh employers at a time when we needed to send out a different signal on growth. And those are the sorts of things I think that you know, politicians need to be upfront about saying, but I just don't think we're very good at it. So I think there is definitely a criticism to be made of the current leadership around that. But I also think to be fair to Rachel Reeves, she did try and do some of those things and they went down poorly. Now you could read me argue you've got to lay the ground for things like welfare reform or winter fuel and so on and so forth, but we're just not we're not prepared as a party or a country yet. And I hope that changes because we're not going to move substantially forward until we can have that conversation. Yeah, I completely agree. And what did you make of the Prime Minister's speech at the start of the week? It was b it was very much sort of build as mate make or break for him. Did you detect changes of direction, reflection from him of a of a need to take a different approach, or did you see it largely as continuity starmer? Well, I really like the argument that he made actually, and I thought there were some things that were new that I hadn't heard before about learning a lot and there being a bigger response than anticipated in 2024. And I thought my my expectations were raised momentarily because I thought, oh, are we going to get some more of that cut type of candor that I think we need ? But then the policies that he then referred to, and albeit they were just examples, didn't really tell me about how they were going to then reform the status quo, um, which I thought so I thought the argument was right. And I think actually Keir Starmer has been at his best when he's been the outsider from the establishment actually taking on vested interests. I think he's got a good story to tell about that. But I didn't think that the examples they used really told me about taking on the status quo. And I don't think they'd have told the public that either. Okay, well let's turn to the King's speech for our final uh segment of this podcast today. Tim, give us the rundown how many bills did we get and what did you notice? So I am going to steal shamelessly from our colleague Rebecca McKee, who has done a lot of the detailed work here. It is a big King's speech. Normally speaking, the first session of a parliament tends to be longer. Governments introduce lots of new legislation to put in place, big manifesto commitments. The second session, which is what we are in now, tends to be a bit shorter and less ambitious in terms of um legislation. But they have put thirty-seven bills in the speech, which is a higher number than most second sessions uh we've seen recently. Rebecca reckons it's quite unlikely that all of those will get onto the statute book. Part of the reason for that is because some of these are very big public service related bills, which we've seen sort of trailed already. So Shawana Mahmood announced police reform in the last session, that's coming through in the bill, Bridget Phillips and send plans, health restructuring the NHS England abolition that Starman Streeting announced together um a few months ago, that that is going to be legislated for now along with some other health reforms. So there's a lot of big, chunky public service reform bills that people will really want to get into the detail of and uh I'm sure backbenchers will care a lot about. There are other things that are sort of thinking about okay we need to work out the detail of this. So we had uh Matthew Pennycook talking about leaseholder reform here at the IFG recently. The bill for that is is coming in in this session. It's very complicated. They want to get it right. A couple of other interesting bills I think is worth flagging. One that is being carried over is the uh the representation of the people bill, so changing how our electoral system works, setting up votes for sixteen, changing registration, changing how some election rules are enforced. We should say we've got a very interesting event at the RFG. Yes, well remember next week come along to that with John Pullinger from the electoral commission, and then a much more specific one, but uh looking at how one aspect of parliament works the power to strip peers of their peerages after the Mandelson saga. So some very, very big ones, some very, very focused ones, but a lot. And I should think that last one you mentioned, even though a much narrower piece of legislation might still quite take quite a lot of time to get through that goals that one. I feel I need to highlight one particularly important bit of the King's speech, which we heard about, which caused uh uh celebrations here at IFG Towers. I will quote that the King said his government would bring forward proposals that strengthen the delivery, accountability, innovation, and productivity of the civil service. These proposals will also seek to safeguard its impartiality and core values to enhance trust and confidence in the institutions of government. Kath, why is this so important? Well it's important partly because the constitutional status of the civil service is actually quite murky. We have Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, which is one of the sort of key pieces of legislation, but it's about the civil service, but it actually doesn't really cover a huge amount at all. It's a lot focused on appointment practices. But there isn't anything that sort of says there must be a civil service or enshrines its values or indeed makes clear the accountability in the system. So one of the things, Hannah, you will know, that we have been calling for is for the cabinet secretary to be referenced in legislation as to what their role is, particularly accountability of permanent secret aries, but also in terms of the management of the civil service to just slightly sharpen up the practices which often are there in real ity, but which is so easy to end up getting into a very sort of murky territory, and also obviously, you know, for future governments to change. So they have talked about yeah, enshrining the impartiality, which I think is important, but also it was good to see that as our report on this talks about, they're focusing on this as being a driver for improved performance because that's at the heart of this. This is not just making sure that an institution that has existed for as 160 years or however long it is continues to exist. There's no point of it unless it is effective in doing its job. So this is about making it more effective. And obviously future governments can change the legislation, but it's just making sure that you know there's something there and a bit more teeth to what the civil service should be doing. And Tim, we do see this as a major win, and we have campaigned for this for a long time really haven't we that we think that the accountabilities at the centre of government are often seen by the people at the centre of government as helpfully ambiguous, but actually that ambiguity often means that the levers don't work. Yeah. The politicians at the center. And one of the reasons we welcome this so much is that there is a debate out there, a real political debate about the civil service, its impartiality, and whether it is in service of delivering for the country. And so serious thought about this in government is is well overdue. Yeah, totally. I think I completely agree with that. I think the the real well, two things stand out. One is obviously the Ollie Robbins events recently, you know, that was a sort of symptom of the breakdown of the relationship. And not saying that any legislation would have sort of resolved that situation, but to try and avoid such situ ations coming up in the future is really important. And also looking ahead to the next election and and you know potential future governments reform, for example, have been very outspoken that they would want more political appointees in the civil service, uh the hope has to be that this legislation, I mean, you know, again, no no parliament can kind of bind its successors, but you know, that this legislation tackles those questions and sort of sets out what it is that the civil service is for in a way that works for all political parties rather than this current government trying to embed their way of doing things. Yeah and I should s note that the some of the uh proposals coming out from the Labour Party, the Labour uh growth group uh document that came out earlier this week was also talking about the role of you know political operatives within the civil service and how that could work differently. It is a cross-party debate. Claire, to expand the horizon from this very core part of RFG interest to think about the speech more generally. At the start of the week, Starmer was saying, you know, incremental change won't cut it when it comes to demonstrating to the public that Labour is delivering for them. Do you think this programme of legislation delivers on that sort of sense of ambition that he was trying to say that he he felt was needed? I think it does include some quite big pieces in there, as you've mentioned, and obviously he did use that example of um bringing steel into national ownership, and there are some chunky pieces in there. But I don't think I agree with his sort of diagnosis that those are the sorts of things that people are like, oh well now we really mean business. I think experience is much more that it's people's day-to-day, fundamentally their economic experience, that really is when they talk about change to the status quo, it's what they mean. And therefore, the concentration they have to have on getting economic growth and on how you translate that change into people's everyday lives so that is about living standards but it's also about making the most of things like the Pride in Place scheme. So when you've actually got some visible symbols of where change is happening, how you are ensuring that they are something that the local community are engaged in, communicated with or involved with and feel part of? I just I just not sure that I think these big striking pieces are necessarily what people mean when they say we want change because I don't know that most people's lives are going to be affected by some of those examples in the way that um politicians sometimes imagine? Well certainly not quickly. A lot of those reforms that if you think about things like the SEND reforms are actually designed not to come into effect too soon because of the uh sort of um consequential effects on different cohorts of of people moving through the system . Tim, seeing we have you on the podcast, I want to just take the opportunity, there's a couple of ethics things that have come up this week and your ethics uh guru supremo. I think Jazak Plansky was probably quite quite lucky, given what was going on elsewhere, that uh attention to uh his whether or not he'd paid council tax on his uh houseboat uh was one thing which sort of flickered through the the news. Uh, we've heard today that Parliamentary Standards Commissioner has decided to begin uh an inquiry into the former UK leader, Nigel Farage. How significant is that? Those inquiries always have the potential to be quite significant. The um the Commissioner Daniel Greenberg has the ability to sort of recommend various sanctions for MPs who are found to have broken parliamentary rules. Obviously Farage and Reform UK have come out sort of quite strongly and said that it's no mistake here. This was a private matter. You know, we have to wait and see what that what that investigation says. I think what's interesting about both of them and critics or political opponents of Farage will will argue that he's sort of got off lightly uh in media coverage uh in recent years. But for both Polansky and Farage, you know, people are paying more attention to them because I think in part because of their raised profile, because of the success of their parties. For Zach Polansky in particular, you know, he's been criticised because of his council tax affairs. We had the Deputy Prime Minister who had to step down because of stamp duty and other tax related to her housing. So you assume all party leaders will be thinking about at the very least their housing tax situation and making sure that they are squeaky clean on that. And as Tim says there, Claire, I mean Labour had the similar experience really, didn't they, of actually suddenly there is a point in any party's journey when the media spotlight does turn on you and at that point it's really important to have your ethical ducks in a row. Yeah, and there was a huge amount of effort that went in on the Labour side in terms of the vetting of candidates and making sure the the way that the public would see a candidate or a party's actions were Were consider ed not just whether you have it's not just whether you've applied the rules, it's also the sort of public perception test of those things as well. And I might say, I wish we'd been a little better about that in government, as we seem to be in opposition, because there are some things that then have happened in government that you think actually the public just see this in a totally different way, even if you have abided by the rules, the um you know, the sort of freebie gate be ing the example of that. Um so yeah so I think you have to both um make sure you not just abide by the rules but you abide by the kind of norms of what the public expect to. And I think that lens coming on both those parties will continue to reveal things to us. I'm afraid that's all we've got time for today. It's the end of Inside Briefing for this week. Thank you to Kath, Tim, and Claire Ainsley. Kath, I just wonder if you've got the answer to that question I asked you at the start. Uh seven Prime Ministers since I've been working here. Thank you for making me feel old. Correlation or causation? Uh neither. Neither. Just pure happiness . Head to our website now for all our reac tion to the King's speech and a rundown of the bills for our latest data on how many people have quit the government and to read our civil service statute. We hope the government will be doing that too. There's a lot of uncertainty about, but rest assured that what you can be certain of is that inside briefing will be back next week to explain everything which has unfolded. We'll see you next week.