Listener Questions and Political Turmoil

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That's h eYg E n dot com slash p d We all know that he is leaving this mess to his successor. so can he confirm that the member of the Makerfield has agreed to fund the shortfall absolutely have the assurance that as Prime Minister Andy Berhen will make sure that we've got the investment coming into defence. This is a three hundred billion pound. Where's the money coming from? the three hundred billion pounds comes from the taxpayer, as you know. Where is the fifteen billion pounds We're seeing huge increase in defense spend in the last. Where's the money coming from, Mrter Barard? You' got hoggs and the question, whereere's he coming from I'm Karen Stacey and I'm Jessic Allgo And this is Politics Weekly for the. Hi, Jess. Hi Karen. kind of weird sense right now in Parliament Basically between administrations, civil servants have been told to not make any announcements on anything We can't really pin Andy Burnham down a much because he's done his one speech and then seems to have gone underground. And I bumped into a minister yesterday and I said, the first question I had is, what are you doing right now? They kind of shrug their shoulders reeled off a list of very minor things they were getting on and occupying their time with. but This a kind of bizarre political hiatus that's going on right now. It's so funny because we've kind of got two prime ministers And yet no Prime Minister. Yeah because we've got you know one track of the government kind of saying they're getting on with the job, one of Kirstara's favorite phrases And then Prime Minister in Waiting and Andy Berner, who's obviously trying rapidly to get together a plan, an administration, a staffing team. We're starting to see that take shape a little bit, but even in his speech on Monday, he made it very clear that he wasn't going to be making announcements or making the final decisions on lots of those key appointments like Chancellor until right at the end of this process. You know, every time you open the papers, you see more speculation about this stuff. But actually I think a lot of it only exists inside Andy Burnham's head And he hasn't made a lot of these very key decisions, you know and won't do until he needs to. Well, I was just speaking to somebody who I think would be potential senior staffer in number ten in Aenam administration. I said to them you? go in and work for him And they said, Potentially, the thing I'm concerned about is has he actually figured out what he wants to do? Has he got clarity over his agenda Or is this going to be Starmer Mark two And the specific thing they mentioned was the uncertainty over his chancellor pick. And they said lookook, if he hasn't decided who his Chancellor is going to be Why should we have confidence that he really knows what he wants to do in government? I just worry that that's a little bit of a risk. if he doesn't come out and clarify what he's going to do quite soon. I was thinking about this the other day about how so often comes to ime M minister in Waiting or a leader of the opposition. There's often been a kind of power behind the throne. There's often been this kind of strategist in the wings who is able to kind of explain things. And that very much doesn't seem to apply to Andy Burnham. It's all from him. And there was that moment wasn't there in the speech where he talks about political direction I said isn't going to be up for debate. And he makes it really clear that he's writing these speeches, everything that is coming from him And because we don't know what he thinks on a lot of really key issues and we don't know exactly who he's going to appoint, and he's making it very clear that whoever he does appoint, he's going to set the direction. He's going to be the one in charge. We haven't had a real leadership like that in quite a long time, and that makes it all the more uncertain where you're not one hundred percent what the protagonist thinks about these things. I also think it's an impossible model of leadership kind of modern number ten, you need people to be able to make decisions on your behalf. othertherwise it just becomes too overwhelming There's too much going on for one person to be able to handle the entire machinery of government just from inside their own head. One thing that people in the government keep asking me is When you quote Allies of Andy Berno. What do you mean? Who are you talking? I hate that word allies, but it's been impossible to avoid in this scenario. And I think it's important in this context because I think we started to realize is that around Benham there are kind of concentric circles of people. There's obiously Andy himself in the middle His closest ally for a long time has been Kevin Lee, his chief of staff up in Manchester Kevin Lee has not been so involved in the transition to Westminster. in that space has come threeree or four people and it's worth naming them, I think. Louise Hake who ran the campaign in Makefield alongside Alanies Midfley. Josh Simmons who stood aside for him in Makerfield and, you know, is now quite central to that team You've got his official spokesperson, Grace Pritchard. So if you want the official lion from Team Berham, that's who you go to. And then you've probably got a second layer of people around people who are feeding in ideas Miata Fanbulla is either in that first circle, maybe slightly in the second circle. Let's see what job she ends up with. Ed Miliband is probably there as well People like Jim O'Neill, someone who gets quoted quite a lot, very interesting economists, loads and loads of thoughts But you do wonder like all of these thoughts are firing around, how much he is actually landing with the person who's going to be prrime Minister And I think that you obviously got here people who come from lots of different political traditions, Louis Hagig from the Soft leftft, Annelise Midley, used to be a Unight organiser, briefly worked for Kia Starmer as well when he was leader of the opposition before she became an MP And then you've got Josh Simons who started off with Labour Together, has certainly been on a bit of a political journey over the course of the last year. And then you've got Andy Burnham as one of his closest friends James Pennell, a Blairright you former minister who's coming in to be his chief of staff, is obviously extremely close to Andy, someone whose political vision he really trusts, but has not been part of Operation Andy, as we've kind of seen it happen over the course of the last year So again, I think when you quote allies of Andy Burnham and especially when you read them el It's very unclear whether these are MPs who are just supportive of Burnham and say he agrees with them on various things or whether they're actually speaking on behalf of him. And I think it' been you over the past year, particularly, it has been very easy to get the ear of Andy Burnham, maybe over the last two or three years it has been to go up to Manchester to talk to him about your ideas. And he's one of these politicians who sort of he engages with you so deeply when you speak to him, He looks you straight in the eye, he nods along, he asks kind of probing questions. He's interested in ideas. and I think it's a very key political skill to do that. But I think people leave his presence thinking, well, he agrees with me on that Do you know who that reminds me of when you say that, that sounds very much like Boris Johnson? Yeah, absolutely. And it is a key political skill, don't get me wrong. I that the best MPs are very good at this skill. But it does often leave people with the impression that they are closer to the machinery of Andy Burnham, that he agrees with their ideas maybe more than he actually does. Yeah. Well there has been a parade of MPs into sement. Everybody I speak to at the moment Have you'veen Andy Burnham in recent days? Oh, yes, yes, he gave me quite a lot of his time. I don't know how much time that man has, but he does seem to be seeing people for a lengthy period of time and most of the PLP seems to have gone and seen him at some point in the last week. One of them was stoking they call it the doleue when you go. Anyway. And I think we were talking about how he gets very engaged on the issues. and lots of MPs have been ass se him and their thing is transport or devolution or local government or housing. He seems very engaged in those issues. they say that he often knows more about those issues than Kir Strmer ever did when they talk to him. But there are obviously MPs who have other interests and on those interests, I think it feels clear that Andy Benham has not really worked out what he thinks. The two that people have brought up to me has been justice. particularly when it comes to women and viol against women. he's supportive, but is not a big developed part of his thinking. and the other is defence. Okay. Well, defence is going to be one of his first big tests in government because this week we have had Kir Starmer announce his long awaited defence investment plan Let's just run through some of the numbers on this, and I'll try not to get too technical, but they are huge numbers. and this is a big chunk of government spending The Defense Inestment planl is the plan about how we're going to spend our money on weapons over the next four years. In total, this country is going to spend two hundred ninety eight billion pounds on weapons systems Over the next years That is fifteen billion more than had previously been planned And of that money, a huge chunk is actually going to nuclear weapons. sixixty four billion of that is designed to strengthen the UK's nuclear deterrent, which includes buying new submarines and for the first time, American fighter jets to carry nuclear missiles on. We've got a big chunk going to air and missile defense. We've got some going to protecting undersea cables I think quite interestingly and one of the things that there was a bit of government inighting over five billion pounds now going on drones which lots of ministers think is the future of warfare. The bigger issue is not, I think, on how we spend it, but where we get the money from. and this is the question that Benham's going to have to answer when he comes in because extra fifteen billion that has been announced this week. is funded in some quite creative ways, I would say One way is to take one percent of capital budgets across Whitehall. That generates about four billion pounds over four years And there's going to be extra coming from the Trport department and the energy department adding an extra nearly three billion pounds. That's seven billion pounds of cuts to white haall budgets, capital budgets And we don't know where they're coming from In fact, we're told The Energy Department hasn't even decided where they're coming from. We have a few ideas which we can talk about. There are a couple of road projects that have been delayed, but again, DFT has to make some big decisions here Plus on top of that seven billion. There is four point seven billion So we're now up to eleven point seven billion that has not been accounted for at all And in fact, in the Treasury's working out, it said that four point seven billion pounds is to be allocated at the next budget Now, this is Really significant. notot because the idea of making an announcement, some of the money for which has to be found at the next budget, that does happen because They're leaving it to a different administration And having spent the best part of ten eleven months trying to figure out how to pay for this package They obviously just couldn't get there. The government couldn't find the full amount of money. So Burnham's team are now going to have to find out First of all, where to get the four point seven billion pounds from, and second of all, where that extra seven nearly seven billion pounds of cuts is going to come from Th are going to be some quite difficult decisions for a man who likes to please people Yeah, and you found out as well, Karing that he's, you know, Andy Burnham's team were briefed on this, but in fact We're not told directly, although perhaps they one could argue they should have anticipated it, that they would have to find this four point seven billion pounds at the next budget and we will obviously have to find it over the next couple of months in these departmental spending cuts that are coming down the track. Do you think that this was you know, a kind of deliberate unexploded bomb, or is it just the reality of having this in between administrations It's a really good question and one I haven't figured out yet, there are some people in Benham's camp who think that they have been deliberately For wantce for a better phrase screwed over here that Rachel Rason his Stara knew this was going to be a problem for the incoming administration and decided or just left it unsolved because frankly, they're unlikely to be the ones pickking up. the bill further down the road. The only reason I think that might not be true at least in Rachel Reeves's case is because until very recently, I am told, She was very much thinking that she had a good chance of being the next Chancellor. So in her mind And I would caveat this by saying it from what I' told this is very unlikely. but in her mind during this process, she was expecting to be the one to have to find that money eventually. One reason that It may or may not be a big deal is because what the Prime Minister and what Reeves's team have been saying privately is that it can be taken from the headroom. Yeah. So the headroom is the amount of money you have left over before you run into your debt limits Which would be fine if you had twenty four billion pounds of headroom. The problem is you no longer have to exactlyroom because the Iran warar has taken a big chunk out of that. Now How much exactly we don't yet know The consequences of the Iran war seem to have been more mild economically than we were expecting. So it may not be as big a hit as it first seemed But I think it will now be inevitable that Andy Bern will have to borrow more than originally planned to get that money. Now It might be that Rachel Res was always willing to do that if she stayed in power and this was not intended to be a deliberate problem for the incoming Bment addministration. But what I suspect is Certainly if Kir Starmer thought he was going to stay on as Prime Minister, he'd have done a little bit more thinking about how that money was going to be found And of course, we know from Burnham's speech on Monday that there are new projects new policies that he wants to fund, whether that you that's housing, whether that's further devolution. know we know that he whether that's you know transport investment, we know that those are the things that he's passionate about and he will have to find the money for. And we know as well how conscious they are about a kind of bond market wobble, a kind of Liz Trus moment and the run up to his first budget, if it looks like he's heading towards significantly increasing the debt and borrowing. So you know these markets they don't really care about whether he does tax rises or not is basically about whether he balances the budget sheet. And so that might mean that he starts to look potentially towards some tax rises or whether that's something might be rebalancing around something to do with housing or property taxes, but he's committed to that tax pledge of not raising income tax VAT or national insurance. Again, like Rachel Reeves, whoever his chancellor is is going to have you can have very relatively few options You're talking about things Andy Berhen wants to spend money on. Can I flag something to you There's a really good and interesting piece written by our colleague Richard Partington today in the Guardian, and we will link to that in the show notes is from some research carried out by Persuasion UK which shows that if labor ran on a platform of easing the cost of living for people could win many more seats at the next election than if it did not, which sounds vague, but there were some specific policies that they tested in this poll They included An emergency break on landlords raising rents while the state builds and buys more social homes. So essentially, he rent frees an affordable energy guarantee probably means taking levies off bills Bus fares. an expansion in free school meals to all primary school agge children. and raising the rate of tax on investors' profits at the same time as wages One of the reasons I flagged this is because I mean, I've written pieces where I've said that these kind of suggestions are very much in the mix Somebody texted me with this piece this morning to highlight it And I said, Ohh, that's very interesting. whyy you're highlighting that And they said they'd been working on some policy work around this. And I said, Well, have you been working with Team Andy on this? And they said, Yes So I think that There is going to be a big cost of living package announced quite soon after Burnham comes to office all of which is going to cost money And at the moment, the idea is They can raise money from raising capital gains tax to pay for that The problem is the treasury tells us that if you put capital gains tax up even by a penny, you'll end up losing money because people will change their behaviourors or sell assets when move abroad. So there's going to be a real tension there between here are the things we want to do Here are the ways we want to pay for it and the treasury is saying, actuallyct none of that's going to raise you the money you need And I think that's always been one of the with capital gains, it's one of those things we hear time and time again. We even heard it during Torory administrations of things that they were considering doing it. You know Chancellors often just do not end up going there because the sums show that it doesn't raise the amount of money that it's predicted to raise. It's been a bit was a big part of where streetings very supported an a fleeting leadership campaign that he was talking about. And again all of the analysis of the proposals that he was making suggested, actually, it doesn't raise anything like the amount that you suggest. But we'll see. I mean, people said that about the non DOMs rate. and in fact that ended up raising more than the treasury thought it would. Yeah, and there's always a feeling that the treasury plays just quite how difficult it is to raise money from unusual taxes I don't think it's worth flaging just to bring it back to that question about defense. All of the things that I've listed just there that he wants to spend money on are essentially about domestic policy As you say, Jess, he doesn't really have fully fledged opinions about defence or international policy It wouldd be interesting to know whether when he comes into government he is able to maintain that. focus on the domestic, given how volatile the geopolitical situation is. Obviously Kistama got sucked into a lot international politics. and there was always a question of Is that because he's not very good at the domestic politics and so he's finding his happy space here? O is that just the way of the world? and that is also going to happen Ty Berham? I think there were certainly choices made and it would be hard to disagree with some of these choices that Kir Dahmer made which was to play a very leading role that. e. in Ukraine, in resolving the Iran conflict, in trying to be this kind of bridge between Trump and NATO. You can't criticise him for those things, but it is a choice to make to be a big part of that on the international stage. I suspect Phaps Andy Beron won't make those kind of choices That doesn't mean he's less supportive of Ukraine, but it might be something you end up hiving off to a more experienced foreign secretary, someone like David Miliband. That's what Rishi tried to do when he decided in the run up to the election, if he was constantly being drawn into international affairs, he just wasn't able to focus where he needed to, which was domestically I that might be a similar decision that Andy Burnnam comes to. Yeah. All right, well look, let's pause here for a minute When we come back, we're going to be answering some of your questions thirty three days, thirty three episodes, no off switch. From the goals and the glories to the politics and the problems of the World Cup, if you want football analysis from a podcast that's been overanalyysing the game for more than twenty years, this is it. Join me, Max Rushton and our expert team of football journists every day of the tournament. Can England end sixty years have hurt? Probably not, Or will this be another year of falling just short Probably Wor Cp daily, listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch the full episodes on YouTube. This episode is sponsored by Heygen. Heygen turns a script, photo or presentation into a polished video ofiew. In minutes, no camera or crew required. It's how real estate agents, financial advisors, attorneys, and creators show up consistently on every feed and build a brand that brings in clients without spending their whole week making content. Rated the number one AI video platform for small businesses on G two One of the most realistic AI avatars in the industry, trusted by a community of over thirty million people and eighty five percent of the Fortune one hundred, and built to work in over one hundred seventy five languages, so you can reach your audience in theirs. Here's the wild part. Record yourself for just fifteen seconds, and HeyGen builds an AI avatar that makes professional videos for you on demand, so you can post everywhere your audience is As yourself, without filming every time. Your first three videos are free at hen dot com slash pod. That's HEYg E n dot com slash p d Welcome back. In in this half of the episode, Jess and I are going to try and answer some of your questions and do keep them coming in. We do these episodes every so often and we read every question you send, so please do keep them coming in. The first one is from Fletcher. If nothing else, moving some of numberum ten's operations to Manchester will highlight to London centric journals, civil servants and politicians the vital need for better links to the North Well I could't carry more fl. Yeah, but the problem is, Jess, you think of better links to the north and the northeast. Links from here to Manchester are pretty good. Yeah, they are, they're very fast. In fact, there was a very funny tweet that I saw where someone was like, well we can get finally get a sleeper train from London to Manester. I wass like, well well you you can get the train ten PM and get there at midnight. It's not quite that far away. As you and I both know the thing that really needs doing is links ross the North. Absolutely. Me with family in Sheffield, you coming from Leeds Andy coming from Manchester Let's see if we can get that train line finally built. Honestly, if we could get in between those three places in less than three hours, that would be extraordinary. is absolutely extraordinary. And of course, rather than links to London, one of the other things that is really important to do is build transort infrastructure within cities. I mean there are so many of these huge cities like Leeds, where I come from where the best way to get across the city is still by car. When's that Leeds tram coming? Never. Right o upposedly twenty thirty five. Okay I look forward to that one. David emails to say Hello from a long time listener. Now hello. Thankk you for listening. Labour seems to be allowing themselves to slide into the delusion that Berham will solve all their problems and the UK's problems and that he will be Labour's saviour Why did the Labour Party do so badly in the local elections and why did they get slaughtered in Wales? Then he lists some reasons, including Kistama and the fact that they're no longer seen as the partarty of working people, but the partarty of welfare. I think here the point that David is making is that Andy Burnham won't necessarily correct all of the long term structural problems that labour is facing, which is something I think a lot of people here are talking about as well. Yeah, absolutely. And I think look, I wrote a long read about Andy Burnham's kind of twelve months in the run up to this and the reasons why Labour MPs had come to the conclusion, mean pretty much unanimously actually, about as unanimously as you get, is that he is the person who is able to number one unite Labour's progressive base, to bring people back from the greens, back from Labal Democrats and bring them back to voting to labour and sort of reset that And he's able to reach across and bring over probably those labour voters who voted Labor in twenty twenty four are flirting now with reform. bring them back to labor again. And you actually saw that in Makeerfield. There's about five percent of them. Early statistics show that they're the people that he brought back They had voted labour, they voted reform in the local elections, they voted labour again because of Anti Burnham. And so the big question, the one neither of us know the answer to, is can you keep up that momentum? It's very difficult when you have to make very difficult decisions. Well, exactly. And the person that I was mentioning earlier who was worried that Burnham's premership could be starmer two point zero gets to exactly that point Can he make decisions Can he set a direction and can he make choices that are going to involve creating losers as well as winners? We will link to Jess's brilliant piece, by the way, in the show notes. So again, please do click on that. And if you want to email us like David did, you can our email is politics Weekly, UK theguardian. com Katie messages now to say it is no coincidence that there have been all these PM changes in a post Brexit world It's difficult to produce a strong consistent leader in such polarizing times And then she also mentions access to social media has exacerbated that. It feels like anyPM is set up for failure. Now Piippper and I have talked about whether Britain is ungovernable I guess we're going to get a test of that now. We're about to get our seventh prrime Minister ten years. Yeah. and I started working in the loobby in twenty sixteen and so I feel like it's only ever been turmoiled over the course of the time that I've been here Look, I'm sympathetic to that argument that we sort of want instant gratification from our Prime Minister's instant change And then I also come back to the idea that the British people over the course you know since the Cameron government had been asked to sort of bear this idea of there are tough times ahead. We're all in it together and you're going to have to go through harsh times. And I think people are sick of that messaging, frankly and they never see the light at the end of the tunnels. And I think that's one of the reasons why Kir Stama went wrong And I also do think that all of those seven PMs that we've had Premierships came to an end actually because of quite specific policy failings and personality failings that were mistakes. You could go through all of them and I won't bore you with it, but know, David Cameron had to resign because he lost a referendum. Theereresa May couldn't deliver the one thing that she was in office to deliver, which was a Brexit deal. You know You could say Ki A Stama didn't deliver lots of the things that people expected him to deliver fell out with almost all of his MPs. Yeah. So you know there are specifics as well, I think, rather than just as being unovernable, I't know what your view is, Karen. Yeah, I agree. there are specifics and each one of them has failed in a slightly different way, I think of those kiss armors that in a way the most Interesting in that there was no obvious one brought him down. There was no scandal There was no unraveveling of one signature policy. It was just a kind of series of events that showed to of reform, I think is of the Yeah and a lack of and a lack of vision, frankly and it does get said about him a lot, but I think it is problematic and In the end, the party just decided we can't have somebody who doesn't seem to be up to the job And just talk you about Brexit, I think it is worth we are now ten years on from that We recently made an episode an oral history, in fact of Brexit. and You interviewed some people for this. I did a bunch of us at the Guardian did And we've it into a kind of forty five minute episode, which is really, really worth listening to again because it includes stories that I'd never heard before from all kinds of key figures at the time, including you know, where people were when David Cameron promised the referendum, what they were doing on the referendum night itself where they were when they found out Boris Johnson was going to come out for leave and what that meant to them. Let's just play one now from Will Walden, who is one of Boris Johnson's closest advisors. He talks about the moment Boris Johnson nearly quit the leave campaign. So the breaking point poster