Defense investment and government paralysis

Hello, good morning and welcome. It's Thursday june eleventh. So who does Labour, specifically Labour members think is to blame for Kiststama's many and disparate desperate woes and? Well, a focus group of Labour members in the Times this morning has the answer They believe responsibility isn't with the Prime Minister himself, o no, but with the media Our fault. Your fault. How do you plead, Anne? My name is Sam Coates of Sky News. I'll plead that it's not my fault, it's Sam Cates's fault But no this group thinks they have a solution for both of us. There needs to be a clampdown restrictions on the media, some labour members in that group saying that is overdue and it's all that can stop blatant lies being circulated. I think it's a bit like an up to date version of the Tony Blair feral beasts of the press speech for anyone, old enough to remember that The other headline conclusion of this group is that if it comes to a contest between Kistammer and Andy Burnham, for instance Burnham would be the next prrime Minister. Yeah, the fooccus group from public first, from Labour members all across the country made quite compelling reading. And I thought it was worth mentioning the stuff about the media because really does speak to this idea that better or for worse and frankly probably for worse. There are just signs that we're getting more American, more polarized. And specifically, we're importing from the US this trend that you see where audiences only want to hear what they want to hear And they're less interested in traditional outlets trying to give you their take on all sides of the story and instead just get irritated when you know they hit criticism of people that they like. And I don't think that's wonderful for any of us, for politicians, for the media, but it does seem to reflect something that maybe is a bit different to ten, fifteen years ago B this podcast, we're going to continue to tell it as we see it. Cabinet ministers insisting the work of government is continuing as it should, but that's an extremely optimistic. take This morning there are a couple of big examples of problems that the government is having just trying to get its work done So we're going to be talking about a couple of challenges Kistama is having sorting out the next phase of his big reset with the UK and the EU and ongoing problems getting the Defence invvestment plan over the line. That is a story that just comes back every week. Yeah, you've got a good scoop on the European stuff. But to be even handed, to please those Labour members, we also want to talk about the sort of teething troubles involving Andy Burnham and some stuff that's being talked about and circulated by labour opponents of the likely next prime minister. Do you want to take it away, Anne and tell us What's going on? Well, this is really about Andy's past life coming back to haunt him The first story being whatsapped around one of my labour opponents of Burnham was financial Times one where Burnham had backed the campaign for compensation for Wpie women. that's women who were born in the nineteen fifties their campaign claims they lost thousands of pounds each after not being properly informed of changes to the state pension age The StAarmer government, however, refused to pay compensation, partly making the case that this information had been publicly available and also the fact that the bill could run to north of ten billion if they were compensated But Andy Burnham, telling her Hustings on Wednesday, I stick by campaigners I support I stuck by the hills rare families. I'll stick by the waspie women because they deserve some recompense for the unfairness I think he ended up Sam in a position where he had to say that because he'd said it before, so either he the Wpie cause or he said he was going to continue it. But opponents pointing out that that is a lot of money if he went for the full ten billion package that he simply wouldn't have and that it's reckless unfunded spending suggestion could cause him big headaches if he got into Downing Street. I suppose we could note that he says some recompense that could water down the sum but then that is the problem as well, isn't it? When you've got a figure that's out there, then you say, well, I think you deserve somethingomet is the question moves to how big the number would be eyes popping at the treasury one way or the other over that one. Yeah. And even if we're talking about one, two, three, four billion, those are the kind of sums that are being argued over in the defeense investment plan, not easy for the Treasury to find that kind of money, not mind the whole billion So I got these WhatsApps last night from Labour figures hostile to Burnham And what happened next, I thought was pretty instructive. So after the story dropped, which is on page one of the FT, I reached out to the Berham campaign And you could feel the brakes screeching and the attempt by the team at least to sort of go into reverse gear or at least slow things down They were emphasizing that the remarks represented him only committing to look at helping Wosby women, nothing more And they absolutely said that this would to just come away with the idea that this wasn't a spending commitment Now if you go back and reread the words that you said before, the quotes from the Hustings, I'm not sure that Wpy women will be as sort of open to reinterpretation of those words as as his team felt like they wanted to be last night. but u It speaks to me to a couple of things. First of all, that Andy Burnham does shoot from the hip and sometimes in quite an expensive way. And I think we have seen that already. And secondly, that we're now in a phase because we are seven days away from the Makerfield by election every single thing he does will be reinterpreted and thrown back at him by hostile elements within labour, right? And there are people from the cabinet downwards who do not have Andy Berner's best interests at heart. and it's going to it just emphasizes that even if we have no contest a week today And Andy Burnham just takes over. it's not going to be without rancor and bitterness and bloody. Another aspect of Burnhamism that is coming under a bit of pressure Sam is he's had a habit in the past of calling for early general elections. In fact, he did so in july twenty twenty two that has been unearthed saying the Tories are about to scrap their core mission on which they were elected. in twenty nineteen, that is leveling up and that is why an election is needed. Well, that is another kind of call or Burnham Carion cry that is coming back to haunt him because there are those who would like to see an election or at least the path to a general election if there's a change of Prime Minister so soon into a labour government more cautious heads, including a minister who's worked with Berham in the past saying look, he just wouldn't have enough to run on right now. he ends up point number ten, he needs to sort out what his priorities are in an early election could really be disastrous. but it just shows these old statements kind of bubbling up from the political drainage system. so he does have to deal with them And again, this is red on red. This is, you know, labor opponents digging up his old tweets and throwing them back at him And the word is pretty clear. you know, I've been reading the old the tweets because they were you know, whatsApp to me, you know, he was making the the the transition from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss, he felt that that required a general election. So you're going to have he's going to have to work quite hard to nuance what the difference would be between him, the Blair Brown transition and the Boris Johnson to Liz Trus transition in order to argue that there shouldn't be an election None of this is easy Transitionions aren't easy, campaigning isn't easy, governing isn't easy. So Let's just hop over to some of the struggles that Kiss Starmer is having We know that next month we were meant to be getting the next reset summit with the EU. So that's another moment where Commission President Esa von den and the person heading negotiations on bealf of the European Commission, Maris Cchhefkovich, we are going to come over and sort of ink in, shake hands on the next phase of Britain's reset with the EU We talk about it sporadically because it's incredibly important to our national interests. You've been looking in some detail about what may or may not happen and What have he found out? Well, basicallyam, this is an agreement with a kind of trio at the heart of it, It's an agreement on electricity at carbon trading seems to be pretty much nearly across the line, not a big problem there, but not very dramatic either as a symbol of reconnection, something on agriculture and food staffs, which is useful to have, but it is also pretty partial when you look at it. But the centerpiece of this has always been this youth mobility Same Now rebrand it as an experience for some reason to make it not sound sort of water down the promise. But the aim to facilitate that so that young people can go to and from un us young people being up to thirty So nearly as old as us could go to the continent to and fro much more easily as a siming bullet reconnection, the prrime Minister very keen on N Thomas Simmons, close ally, the Prime Minister is in charge of negotiating that And as you say aim was to get this done the date first Penciled was the end of June. But that then moved to about the thirteenth of july, But now there are doubts about whether that date can be met for a very specific reason, which just happened to come into my airspace. so I took a look at it for politico. And that is jeopardy about how many member state countries could object to granting British applicants for this scheme that would be in the tens of thousandousands of them Visas under this youth experience a schema and it's quite interesting here because actually though we negotiate with the EU. It's the Mmember States who then grant or withhold the visas the EU can give them a framework and say, we'd really like you to do this But if they come back and say Domarro Slevkovich trade negotiator here. We don't really want to do this or we would like to take some sectors out, which I think is the more Lly objection. because our own youth market, domestic youth employment market is not looking so rosy at the moment and we're under pressure from populists as are as countries in Europe in some way that can really hold things up And I think they are now in another round of just trying to find any way to get these chestnuts out of the fire. to get the deal across the line in July That's really interesting on the detail I'm I just an altogether more, you know, skeptical take of what's going on You know, but let's pan the camera back. This is just the consequence of government not really working, I think. Kase Amor has basically reach for the idea of a closer reset with the EU, prettyty much a lot of the times that he's been in trouble. He's gotone aroundound this. This is a priority after the local elections, you know, he was talking about the vital need to come back in. But I'm starting tory to wonder, well I'm not starting to wonder, I am being told by people inside governments. theies a sense that actually this government, the Stalmer government is simply not serious Labour loves to go on about you know the sort what they would say was the childish way the Tories went on about the negotiations. But you know the UK is engaging in wishful thinking in the eyes of the EU, according to even some UK government figures, not changing their redlines, wanting sort of fantasy policies, but not having the political strength to get stuff over the line. So the challenge is today is the eleventh of June You know, parliamentary term ends on the pretty much the seventeenth of July, we don't yet have a date. That is extraordinarily close for a summit that is meant to be of this scope and importance and nature. And you know, the UK government officially sort of say, well, we'll get a date maybe in the next few days. I don't think we're going to get on this side of Makerfield, frankly. I think and I am told the rest of the EU, you know, yes, I'm sure they are quibbling over visa numbers, but as part of a go slow because they're just waiting like the whole of the rest of the country to see what leader Labour decides to have this week. in the full knowledge that priorities might change in the event that Kistob was no longer no longer prrime Minister Um, you know, people following this say, you know, that that really the EU side of being polite but making sure that they don't give in to any hostagage of fortune because they can see the turmil like everybody else So my sense, Anne is, you know, there's just question mark about how serious we are because you know, Chen is the prrime minister, the EU isn't sure who they're negotiating with. Yeah, you see, I'm not sure it really matters who the prrime Mister is. radical thing to say on. I'm going to keep that phrase for a long time I know. I love to give you ammunition. some coats. but let me tell you why. because if this gets kicked into the long grass, and I agree, it very well could. the UK side is also remember we have this folue memory of difficult negotiations with the EU. We say, well, we'll pretty much do anything get this done on the thirteenth of july, then you take away your last bit. of negotiating collateral. And remember that it's still a very strong German ask in these negotiations? Yes, it's only a memember state, but it's a pretty big one. It's also supported Britain on the push for the youth mobility scheme much more than other big countries, I don't think Frenchhip that upm bit about it, to be honest. I mean welcome having it, but they're not going to help us very much. but Germany would still like to see this kind of aim together get tuition fees to get some large S and a concession for EU students UK universities, which the government you could say it's not serious, but it's kind of serious about what it doesn't want to give and it really does not want to give concessions on that at this point. But does it matter who's the prrime Minister Not if the next Prime Minister is broadly pro European and would welcome this deal as a building block of further dealings with Europe and that would be yourandy Burnam, wouldn't it? It's not like you're going to sort suddenly have a big change on that on the labor side. So the difficulty if you're a UK negotiator, why don't we just give them a little bit of a moment of empathy is yet you've got an unstable prime minister. You want to get to this date you've got this it's quite a considerable wrinkle on these visas, but it can I think you can get over that bump. you might have to make some concession that some place doesn't want building workers and another country doesn't want baristas. But you know this is in tens of thousands. It's not in the kind of hundreds of thousands. It should be doable The question is just have we now got the pushing power to get it across the line? And then the next Prime Minister could pick it up It shouldn't be as hard as it's being made, but one must say it's being made quite hard on both sides. But my perspective, and I bet you anything, the EU's perspective is Well, Andy Benham, if he does take over, is probably pro European, but we don't know the nuance of his view on migration because actually On the UK side, the block is a discussion around how many more students will allow in the country. And there are mixed signals from Andy Berham about quite what his attitude is to that whole question, know socially conservative in the last few days, it would seem as he backed most, but not all of the Shibana Mahud proposals. So I think it isn't a given that we know what he thinks. Interestingly, I've been talking to a cabinet minister in the last twenty four hours who isn't in the inner circle of Andy Burnham's kind of team He said that there isn't to reach a reach out from Team Burnham to find out what's going on in their portfolio, what tricky issues need to be managed You know, it's not like there are fiber optic cables from Team Berham on a policy side into different bits of the cabinet to understand how the nuance of big things is working. And this all feeds into another kind of worry that we've reflected all week on the podcast, which is Fine they've done the campaign pretty well, but is Andy Bernen ready for what happens next? and is he prepared for government? should that come fairly quickly? And the fact that people just don't know what he stands for on areas like migration in relation to an EU summit, when the Germans are negotiating in quite some detail, you that's a problem. area Wh we're stuck, that's the defefense investment plan. We that we talked about that a lot on Tuesday. It's still a gruesome mess We were saying back on Tuesday that the settlement could be in the order of thirteen odd billion way short of the twenty eight billion pound black hole. Now my colleague, colleague Debie Hes reporting overnight that the Chief of the Defense Staff has written to the PM it seems to be it's a big warning so we can't deliver stuff for that little amount of money and plan was to announce the defeense investment planl this week, but relations now seem to be so toxic. and the debate seems to be so toxic with the spectrum of tax rises on from the front page of the Times and unhappiness amongst the chiefs that we don't know where that is now. Again, a symptom of a government with decaying political power and an inability to get things over the line People know that they can fight without that much consequence because the PM doesn't have the authority that they normally have. And this is the same Prime Minister who told the Munich Security confference, We must build our hard power. That is the currency of the age. We must be able to deter aggression. I was actually in the room that speech clum and there was you, you couldn't doubt Kisama seemed to be saying then defence, security, not only Visivee Russia, but protecting the UK against Russia, but also everything that meant in terms of what he wanted the UK to stand for at this big moment in European history. And then somehow, here we are few months later He was still arguing about where the billions are going to come from. He then said something else about a line in the sand over the Iran crisis. You know, we'd had a wake up call over the straits of Hormuz. So onene of the recent former chiefs of the the biggest armed forces was texting me that he wondered if Kistama read his own speeches snarky, but you know you can see that point and remember that this thirteen billion which which now seems to be the number on the table that the chiefs are very unhappy about we've had Richard Nighten there Chief of Defense stff very clearly not happy with this as the offer because it gets dripped into the system over few years, I think it's three to four years Starmmer, I'm sure, would answer this is the right direction is serious to borrow your phrase because he's not making unfunded commitments But then Germany did in essence just borrow massively to fund its defense upgrade. And you could argue that this is one area where saying that you're not going to go towards your red lines, but you are going to do a different kind of borrowing. because the threat horizon is so close, which is what the chiefs are arguing, and they do mean Russia primarily but not only, that you need to do something out of the box. can Stay in the books. Borrowing in order to fund defefense was an idea put forward just a few months ago by Andy Burnham but walked back in the last few weeks by Andy Burnham, where does this leave us? It's not clear, but that might be one reason why this isn't quite getting over the line going in one direction and then quickly reversing. We had another example yesterday. We actually have started introducing protectionist tariffs into our economy. We did that in March where we introduced fifty percent import tariffs on steel. Well yesterday it turned out that we were partially reversing that as well because surprise, surprise is pushing up the cost of goods and lots of manufacturers are complaining. all of this stuff, whether it's the defense investment plan, steel tariffs, the EU summit, like I can't say this loud enough. Eat feels stark. Eat isn't sustainable. if you don't have. at number ten with the authority that it has and it needs to carry out the business of government, that everything's a mess and just look at the agenda for today's podcast. Nothing is working. so ase Don wanted to cling on, he's got to prove and get something over the line. There's the challenge We'll be there, monitoring that. Now tell us what you really think exam. Can somebody just govern this country properly, please thingsings are stuck partly because there's Makerfield a week today. The one thing that isn't stuck Harah is us. We will be back next Friday for a spepecial politics and Saminandans after the by election at the usual time Friday morning to pick through the results and try and work out where We all Andy Benham in particular goes next providing he wins that by election. So of course, he might not. Other candidates are available. you can see their names in the show notes terms and conditions probard in there, but now an extra edition next Friday, so we'll be operating at full speed unlike the government until then. see you then. Ill see you next week. Run up to Makefield in Daisy Fresh on Friday morning