Leadership tensions and the future outlook

The the government is spending more defense money, you'd think that's a good thing. there is a veritable circular firing squad somewhere between Kir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, John Heeeley, the defence chief, the defence industry. It has been a bitter and bloody process and it doesn't look like it's going to end particularly well Welcome to the State of it, the political podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times. I'm Stephven Swinford, the political eddor of the Times. I' La Burittt the deputy polical editor of the Sunday Times. And this week we're going to be getting into two main areas. The first, we're going to bring you some scoops on the extraordinary res inside the Defence invvestment planl. This should be a good thing. It's spending billions of pounds more on defence, but we can tell you Pretty much everyone is at logged heads over it and everyone is coming out worse from it in the end. And then we want to come on to the Makefield by election. It is coming and it is increasingly likely that we're going to see Addie Bernam win that from what we can see. So look, we'll get straight into it, Laara. Let's talk about the defefense invvestment plan. It doesn't sound sexy these things dip as it's being called in the Ministry of Defense Circles, but it is an almighty rout. So the latest that we have for you is we think they're going to settle on an additional thirteen point five billionars ps for the armed forces, but I can tell you that pretty much everyone is unhappy. Shall we start with unhappy person number one? Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor Lurry. you had some scoops on the other weekend? Yes. so we reported at the weekend that she was deeply frustrated. I think it's worth saying there's two things here. She's unhappy with the cuts themselves. You've got to find this money. Num ten have determined or determined towards the end of last week That actually the way that you should do that is to have a blanket one percent cut to the capital budgets of all departments and then have an additional set of cuts or tougher cuts for two departments, Transport and the Department of Energy, Security and that zero. Now Heidi Allen at Transport pushed back on some initial askks for those, saying they were way too big. But I think they ended up in a slightly better place, but there was mounting unease about the impact of those cuts on education and health, particular. You're talking about cuts of more than half a billion pounds to the NHS budget at a time when this is a government who is really proud of the fact that they have given a lot of money, a massive injection of cash in that budget from Rachel's initially to the NHS. And actually, know after we broke this story, the number of messages I got from I would say sort of treasury slash treury adjacent pointing to the fact that Rachel Reeves has before said to the House that actually other governments in the past have cut capital spending, that's not what this labour government does. And so these cuts in themselves are objectionable to Rachel Reeves, but also what is objectionable is the process by which the government I say the government number ten, in their view, really has gone about this, which is to say that the spending review process It was done essentially. And then there was this like belated effort to reopen thisrt torturous post to find some new money for defence, which made basically everybody unhappy. So I should also say that Racheles is determined to see a path through for this. you know She's being constructive, She wants to see this work out and she's working with everyone. but I think there's real frustration under the surface there from. It sounds like a complete mess. lookook in the wake of your scoop at the weekend, Laura, we were putting in calls this week. and what people kept saying to me is, this is a number ten thing, this whole thing about how it's to be funded. numberum ten is leading the process. Now what's extraordinary about that is this is money. This is the job of the treasury is to find money for things and communicate with departments. But everyveryone kept saying it's a number ten led process, which I think tells you all you need to know that this is StAarMa trying to drive this through, possibly in one of his last major acts as Prime Minister, but it also just talks to the bad blood. Now look, we should also talk about the number So let's start with where this began. The armed forces came in and said they needed an extra twenty eight billion. That is keep that figure in your head. And where we have ended up from what we are told is thirteen point five billion. So that's over the next four years. that will lead to arguments and the Armed Forces Chiefs I'mld are really up in arms about it, that it will actually lead to significant cuts to major projects over the next four years. So far from being a moment of celebration, we think this is being unveiled on Friday, but look I don't want to be a hostage of forortune here because this is now nine months delayed and every time someone writes that it's coming, it tends to get postponed once again into the Magano distance. But look, we're told there's a kind of headline figure coming on Friday with a couple of the glitzy capital projects But we've got another scoop on it because what we're told is the defense chiefs haven't actually seen the thing. So this deffense investment plan is supposed to set out in kind of granular detail how the money, billions of extra pounds of funding will be spent over the next ten years. And the defefense chiefs themselves have not seen it. It's about to go to the press, presumably. We think we possibly get a two page summary on Friday with the headline figure and the main thing later in Cyber If the people that are expected to oversee the expenditure of this money have not seen the document I think that's a pretty big problem. Yeah And I think probably brings us ont to the second group of people who are unhappy, which are those in the defense industry, because even at the point at which Starm can stand up and say, I have found some extra money for defence, these are people who are going to be saying it's not enough. It's far short of what you said it was going to be. and actually they're completely liveered. And my colleague Domina Housechild had a story at the weekend, which was that a key pledge on military housing was going to be watered down is not going to be a triumphant moment for the defense industry in the way that had it been published on time, had it been published with perhaps more money, it would have been a genuine gesture from the Prime Minister and this government to say, actually we are making major major sacrifices to make this happen and we're going to meet the demands of the moment We have an unhappy chancellor We have an unhappy deffense chief. The defense industry is unhappy, which brings us on to John Healley, the defeense seecretary. So from what we are told and others have also heard this, he is very unhappy about the way this settlement is going. I'm sure that will be denied. John John Heley is very loyal foot soldier to Kist arma, but he is concerned because obviously Just look at the numbers twenty eight billion, thirteen point five billion. That is a hugely less than expected. And one of the points that's being made to me is a lot of this money is already kind of earmarked. It's going to be swallowed up by this new six generation jet fighter that they're working on, which is six billion over the next four years. So before you even start Lots of this money has been spent Effectively, defence will be kind of standing still is the concern. and that's the big worry. So John Heeeley, the defeence seecretary who hass been at the heart of this rle is not particularly happy either. I interviewed John Healy and he stressed in this interview and this was after the Makerfield by election had been announced, he stressed basically how loyal he was. He is not one to be known to make his displeasure publicly known in any sort of aggressive way. And know, I'm told there was a bit of unease at Cabinet last week when Kiss Arm was speaking about this. know His cabinet colleagues is going to be saying, well, sorry, you've cut my budgets significantly. And also let's just be clear. like when I was speaking to people about this over the weekend, they were saying, we haven't even done key stakeholder conversations about these things across government. I mean, there are going be people who are reading it in the Sundn Times forple, who'll be perhaps listening to this podcast who will be saying I wasn't aware that there'd be hundreds of millions cut in this particular area, for example, you know, take the NHS, for example. I mean You do have to ask yourself, from John Healley's perspective,'s I'm getting all this incoming from colleagues likely. And actually, this is a process that I was very transparent about from the beginning, that there was going to be a huge demand. The Prime Minister was going out day in day out saying, I'm you know going to fund the deffence investment plan. This is really important. We're going to get it done. and belatedly has come to the table with this kind of rear guard action to make this happen, which is making everybody unhappy. And then we come lastly to Kirara himself, who is in now the position This has been delayed for nine months, which is extraordinary in its own right. There iss this huge gulf between his rhetoric and the reality of this consistent delay. it just drags on his authority because you have eminent people day after day, very senior military people saying this is a joke kind of discrediting the entire industry. There's the gap between the PN's words and the reality. There were also suggestions of frustrations at various points with John Healy, the defeense secretary about it, that he kind of felt this should have been fully costed at an earlier stage. But that is disputed. but either way, you've got an unhappy prrime Minister, but we are in what should we call Is this legacy kear mode? We're in kind of the mode where he is trying to get things out the door to either onene bolster his premiership, so he has a chance of fighting Andy Burnham. Or two, we are in that bit that happened at the end of Theeresa May's premership where she announced a load of massive bonking things in the final days of her preremiership got stuff out the door. I mean the machine is being pushed very hard, but there is a real risk with this Defense investment planl that for all the blood, all the sweat, all the tears, all the political capital, all the anger burning aroundound White haauling in defence that it doesn't deliver what the Prime Minister says it will deliver. Yeah. can I just say the great irony of this, of course, and something that we've mentioned many times in this podcast might be tired of hearing it. But will I think agree with the truth of it, which is that many people inside government say the chief flaw of cast armorour is that he cannot make difficult decisions. When Push comes to shove, he just does not want make those big calls. And actually here he is trying to make quite a big call, basically saying people are going to have to tighten their belts here. And yet, because it's happened so late and because it's actually not really to a degree that it would need to be to fund defense properly, he's going to get absolutely no thanks for it whatsoever Whereas if he had said months and months and months ago, I'm going to take a proactive leadership on this issue, and actually I'm going to make it a big fight and I'm going to say We are going to make difficult decisions on this. We want to prioritize defence for X, Y, Zed reasons. I think know we're all very well aware of what those are. and polling does show that voters are feeling more perceptive of threats At this point, I just think it's going to look again pretty weak from the prrime Minister, not least because he doesn't have his main cabinet colleagues behind him on it. I mean, that's going to be a really, really difficult thing. Say he does go into an existential fight with Andy Burnnhen for the leadership of this country and he doesn't have those cabinet colleagues around him because they've just had this massive fight over defense spending It's going to be really difficult. There's also there is a fundamental legitimacy question, which needs to be asked. It's a brutal question to ask, but If ir Starmer's premisership is coming to an end, which looks likely if Andy Burnham is on the horizon. That entire cast of characters we just talked about is likely to change. You willll have a new prime Mister. you'll most likely have a new Chancellor, you'll probably have a new defence secretary. and who's to say that any of these decisions remainers decisions. It's not clear, right? And that is one of the challenges. And what particularly struck me, if we're right on this and I think we are Is this two phased announcements. So what we are told is on Friday somewhere in Swinden, some kind of drone factory, we think the PM and John Healley will stand up and announce this summary of what the defefense investment plan is, which will have the overall figure plus a couple of the Chinese projects with the granular detail of the plan itself to come later on That in itself carries inherent risks. it's another delay. And if you're a prime mininister, by that stage, Andy Berham will be an MP and he will have views on defense spending. He will have views on capital spending. and he'll probably by that stage be gunning for the leadership. So it's a problem. What Trom's doing is trying to get things out the door, but at the same time, his authority as we get closer and closer to next week's by election, that is ebbing away and that's the challenge that he faces. Where's interesting The question like, what does Andy Bynam do about the defefense Investment plan? Because if you look at where the cuts are likely to fall, Transport doesos. I mean, his chief ally, Ed Milliband, is obviously at the helm of that and great an ideological champion of that industry, right? And then in transport again, you, this is something that Andny Burndam for those of us who are paid to listen to every single day is talking about D in, day out Is he going to buy these cuts? But if he doesn't, where is he going to find the money? I mean, I think this is one of the big problems and one of the things I came back to over the weekend in conversations with people were, you know, we have the story reported by Gabriel Pogand some months ago that they'd ruled out a further cut to foreign aid to fund the defefense invvestment plan. We know they'd ruled out a cut to welfare as well. So the treasury was having to go around in this kind of salami slicing way Finding things that they could cut. and it just it just does to all of those who are frustrated about this seem like a genuinely abysmal way to have gone through this process. But I mean, what is Andy Bernam going to cut to fund the defeense investment plan?er good question. And if Andy Bham doesn't want to fund defenceense investment plan, I mean, he has said previously, I mean he's clarified his position on this, but there was a point where he'd suggested that he might be open to boring more fund for defence. We're not in that place anymore, but he's not a future labour leader who doesn't think that we should be spending money on defence by any stretch. And I think if there is something to be said in sympathy for the Prime Minister, it is that. One thing that is worth noting just before we move on to the Makefield B election This is arguably what the Prime Minister should have been trying to do all along is pushing the system really hard now try to get some form of announcement on defefense investment plan. We we talk about the pitfalls that, but nonetheless After all the delays, it appears to be something is in the offering and we'll judge that on its merits when it comes out. but he's also pushing it on the social media ban on the under sixt s. He's been on a journey, as they call it, having been opposed to banning social media from the sixteen s to now probably having looked at the polling, realized how popular it is. and he is very much on board with that. I think he used to tell Other MPs that his children benefited from using social media like TikTok and Snapchat And he saw benefits too it from what we hear, he's now taking a maximalist approach and we're going to get some kind of Australian style ban announced. Then you've got Brexit after all you know they are trying to get all these legacy announcements out And there is an argument that if they'd had done all this a lot earlier in his premiership, we might be in a very different position. we might not, right? But Well, I think in Europe, we definitely would. I mean, I did a story a few weeks ago about you know some diplomats who had raised concerns with the UK about the fact that actually They're feeling a bit wary about negotiating and putting lots of weight into it in circumstances where Kis Aama's leadership is up in the air. I mean, from their perspective You know I think the slightly more optimistic view from some of them might be, well, let's wait until a more pro European prime Mister comes in. I think they werere also suggesting that because West Streeting had said that he would want to see the EU rejoin that that might unsettle things. But I think everybody knows that that's not an immediate prospect at all. But I do think that is a classic illustration of why you cannot leave these big decisions until the end of your preremiership in circumstances where the people that you're negotiating with and dealing with can see this. And if you do have to have a negotiation, as it is in the European Union, it just weakens your hand massively. Yeah. And at the end of the day, you get in this really surreal situation where the Pime Mister telling his cabinet to deliver. They're all looking over his shoulder getting on the train to make And they're going to kiss the ring of Andy Burnham, hoping to ensure their jobs in the next administration. is a pretty surreal situation. So look We're going to head to the interval now. and when we come back from the break, we're going to be talking about teeam Burnham and how they are increasingly confident There's a swagger to it. They think they've got they're going to win makeakerfield. They're not taking for granted but they think they're going to win Welcome back to the State of it, the political podcast from the Times and the Sunday Times. We are going to be talking about the Makeerfield Bia election now and Team Burnham. And when you talk to them They're pretty confident they're going to win now. you know, and that wasn't a given. When this all started, everyone was saying it's a really hard fight for him, but where they're sitting now, they think partarticularly that the rice is dividing and we think they may be right in that. that Restore is picking up a lot more votes than people thought it would. so that divides the vote on the right. And they also think that his broad message is getting through. I was listening to one of those kind of radiohone in debates between the different candidates the other day. and he was just he was pretty dominant in it. He was like, I agree with you on this, Rob, I agree with you on this, Michael, but don't agree on that. But it was all the energy was his energy as the front runner And he feels pretty confident, I think I think that's definitely a fair representation of where they are. I mean we did a focus group with Moo in Common last week where a woman who was undecided said that she had a conversation with Andy Burnham through her ring doorbell. She was in Wales at the time and he promised to come back this week. She was genuinely undcided, had voted for him as mayor, had not otherwise voted Labour, and was looking forward to the Question time debate to try and make up her mind. reservation which again, is something that we've heard multiple times in these focus groups is just this worry that he's using it as a stepping stone, that he's not going to be their MP Also a real sense of, o you know, he was aexa's mayor, shouldhould he see that out, et cetera. I think they're very, very sensitive to those arguments. and you heard on Quion T timee, you know Andy Burnham's response to that many times over as you have in countless interviews too. But this woman interestingly was relatively undecided. And know our friends at More and Comon called her after the Quion T timee debate and said, Have you made up your mind? She was like, No, I'm in turmoil. I still haven't decided. But Burnham's going to be knocking on her door this week to have a conversation with her and it'll be interesting to see whether or not he can change her mind. I think you know those around him do feel that when people are face to face with him, he has an impact. But equally, you know I'm not picking up a great deal of unhappiness or concern from reform. I don't think they feel like this is going I was in the office in the campaign HQ on last Thursday. They were editing a TikTok rap video. Everyone was in genuinely high spirits, like they were very relaxed. They've got their ground game, they know what they're doing. and they are confident on Restore that they can squeeze that vote slightly. But I thought you know our colleague, Oliver Wright wrote a fantastic read with public F first I mean, loads of conversations with people more than a hundred conversations. Yeah where restore really were still a very potent threat to them. And it's the reach of restored that's really interesting. There is a whole parallel universe which We're not really people don't tap into as much, but Rupert Loe is very big on Facebook and people are getting a lot of their news on Facebook So you have conversations with people and my colleague had a conversation with a pensioner And she had been hearing all about Rupert Low on Facebook and his persona on Facebook is actually very different. on other social media outlets. It's a more reasoned one. It's slightly less hardline. and it was having an impact. Now look, we're not saying that Rore have any shot of winning this. The question is, can they take enough of the vote fromr reform to split the right and therefore Andy Burnnam walks through the middle. Yeah, I mean, they're well resourced. I did a piece for David Collins the weekend where he had been looking we'd been looking together at the impact the digital war in Makeerfield basically. And what was very interesting was that Restore are spending significant money online. They are targeting basasically exclusively women which is really fascinating, and you wouldn't necessarily think. my initial instinct was You know, is this to do with Robert Kenyan, the reform candidates's previous comments about women, you know, self reffer sexis, etcetera. But it was really interesting' seeing just how present they were And Makerfield has so many of these community Facebook groups where people are engaging with each other all the time. And these candidates, Andy Burnham is posting in them, you, reformer posting in these community groups. and they're different from your usual, you just see a post promoted on Facebook. These are actually you know organic posts where they're trying to really embed into the local community, but online, which is really interesting. And that I think is just kind of aspect of the selection that we hadn't been thinking about that much before. Can can I just talk briefly because it was so not nice. So I enjoyed the whole thing in a way, but on Friday there was the most cra it was There was announcement from My Burnham Which was essentially, we were in the middle of a by election on local issues. And Andy Burnham went to a pub and announced three hundred fifty million pounds worth of cuts in business rates for pubs, for music venues, et cetera. And we got this press release through. And the press release, I think I'm right saying, came from a labour press officer who's resconded to the campaign. It looked like a kind of nationwide press release It was basically saying, this is what I will do if I'm Prime Minister. It included some very aggressive criticism from Kiia Stahmer and Rachel Reeves who had undervalued pubs in local communities. And I remember just looking at it and just thinking, this is extraordinary. This is a by election campaign where we're getting a major kind of national spending pledge. And that is what you have here weird parallel campaign where Andy Burnham is at once fighting to be the local MP, but also fighting to be Prime Minister. and he nods to the Pime Minister thing when it suits him. But what he also does is when people ask him tricky questions about the fiscal rules or this policy or that policy, he says This is an insult to the voters of Bakerfield. You are here to talk to, you know, I'm here to talk to them. So he's doing both things kind of when it suits him Well, we should talk about what comes next and the big question of what comes next is When does Andy Berham make a move? And to address that question, we need to start with the personalities. We need to start with the people involved Be let's put this by. Kirst Amer and Andy Burnham do not like each other very much. Is that Is that a fair assessment? It's an entity which goes back years here. It goes back, doesn't it to Kirst Aarmer trying to get Andy Andy Berham's endorsement for Labour leadership, making the journey to Manchester to get it and coming back empty handed And the kind of briefings I'm sure you'll be getting the same thing, Laura Ststammer's allies say that Andy Burnham is behaving unforgivably that this you know what he's doing is fundamentally destabilizing and will make it much harder for Labor to win the next election Burnham' side, I mean Burnham is saying the quite a bit out loud, he's campaigning on a pitch to change labour and change the country, . e, change the prrime Minister and change the way they do business. He you know they are it's all out there in the open, but it's pretty pretty ugly Yeah. I mean, I think from the Burnham side, there's a sense that you know, number ten are sort of laboring under delusions, basically, there's a level of political unreality in the world in which they're existing, which is essentially to say Kiss armour is historically unpopular and there is not a way through for labour in the current iteration that kiss armour is leading. Obviously from the number ten perspective, they would say you know, Andy Burnham has been an open adversary of Sarma really since you, Labour conference last year, that it was clear from that that this was somebody who thought the Labour Party should be run differently and that that expression was not necessarily helpful in that point. I think I mean For number ten, of course, I think there'll be a private sense of If Andnie Burnham loses the selection, it's good for us, full stop. I think there's also a sense of understanding that if Annie Burnham loses the selection Labour's most popular politician in his own backyard more or less, has lost an election against reform. What is the path through for Labour at that point? I mean On what grounds can you make a case that Labour is capable of reviving its fortunes and winning the next election? So I think the strategy that Starmer is employing now is basically a rerun of the strategy that he employed during that testy week where whereest Streeting was mulling perhaps what his next moves were, which we'd reported was a Morgan McSweeney back strategy which was essentially you a rerun of the Cordon Brown, David Millibbrown strategy, i. e. force your opponents to say what they want explicitly. Because in politics, as we know, and particularly in the Labour tradition, moving against a leader is not necessarily a popular thing, generally speaking and to make somebody do this makes them less popular. And I think they're feeling much more confident having seen what' happen to W Streeting, saying actually, know this is essentially left him as a more denuded political force. and actually they want to make Andy Burnham look like be explicit about the fact that he's trying to take the job of someone who's won an election with a big majority, right? that if he wants that, he's going to have to come and get it basically. I think for those who say, oh, this is this is ridiculous. Kizan would never fight an election. Why is he saying this now You know, there's politics to this, which is essentially even if he doesn't want to fight this contest and we can talk about what his actual motives are It is a good thing for somebody who feels that they're about to have their job taken from them in quite a humiliating way to make that as embarrassing an exercise as possible for the person who's going to come and do it, I think Let's talk about what comes next then when does Andy Burnham move? If you talk to people in Team Burnham I was talking to a cabinet minister last week and they were suggesting that actually he's not ready. If he goes straight for number ten and goes for the coronation approach, it's going to be a problem because he doesn't have the detailed plan drawn up, he doesn't have the policy agenda. We repeat the mistakes of Starmer. So they were hoping there would be an orderly transition But at the same time, all of this bad blood between the two men, I suspect, makes an orderly transition impmpossible So you you end up with a position others around Burnham say he's Scott he lost out on the leadership twice, but his view is You've got to go for it, You've got to seize it. You've got to use the momentum of this and get straight to number ten, which carries huge risk in its own right But it means that this could all come to a head very quickly in the wake of Makerfield. The watchword of Burnham's skeptics at the moment is scrutiny, which is to say, you they think that there should be a contest, they think that actually it's a really good thing to force Burnham to think through all of these factors You have to ask yourself whether the motivation for that is actually that they want to undermine Burnham as much as possible. I think from Burnham's perspective, you know, he would probably say, well, look, like I am the one that's likely going to win this contest And do we want to have a massive fight amongst ourselves about all of these issues and allow ourselves to be dragged through the mud, only to leave me as a slightly more denuded political force when the inevitable happens and I end up in Downing Street anyway I mean, the other thing the other big question we need to ask is what does Starma do So if you listen to the briefing, Starmart is very actively telling lots of friends that I've seen dozens of these reports and MPs that you've spoken to which say he wants to fight on. He is insisting that if Andy Burnham comes him, because he automatically gets to fight that contest. so he will fight, they say, he will stand up his mandate and he will fight. And at the back of my head, I've just got this voice which is going, this sounds very familiar. It sounds extraordinarily familiar. And I kind of rewind to Boris Johnson in the dying days of his premiership, insisting that he would fight on until denly he didn' Liz Truss the day before insisting I a fight not quitter, David Cameron back in the day, insisting he wouldn't walk away and then doing literally that walking away whistling back into number ten and he was gone into the middle distance somewhere. So there is you have to take these things with a bit of a pinch of salt because There is an argument that ifstama fights this, it would be, as someone put it to me, an extraordinary form of masochism. because He will lose Haaveier is that someone suggested that actually the whole of Kirst Arm's preremership has been a kind of exercise in masochism. I mean It is never a good look for a Prime Minister in their dying days to accept Because I mean, you look at the things that StAarm is doing, defenceense investment plans, social media. when you say it's gone, it goes, right? Yeah. And these are not unc controversial things. These are things that you need some semblance of political authority to push through and to champion. And so I think that is one of the reasons why to the very very end you do have to maintain this insistence that actually you're going nowhere. But I think you're compainly right to say that actually there is something in Starma which has constantly wanted to kind of fight on, you know, people that are close to him say will say to me, you know, he's never failed or anything before. You know, his life has just been one long you know, conventional success. conventional success. And people used to say that. These are not people who are accustomed to losing. and you can imagine him in the depths of despair and number ten at the moment in, you know, incoming from all these cabinet ministers about the defefense Investment plan, thinking. Andy Burnham doesn't have to face up to this yet. Like he doesn't have to speak to the fact that there is you know essentially insanely difficult fiscal decisions to make if you want to have a big injection for something like deffense. And he doesn't have to do that yet. So actually, I am going to make him spell that all out and I'm going to make him spell that all out in a way that actually forces him to reckon with the fact that there are a lot of really difficult circumstances he'll come into and we'll have to find solutions to you. Let's just stand back briefly from the politics of it because If you remove yourself from what's you know, the Westminster discussion about a leadership contest Surely, it will look insane to people to have a leadership a long hot summer with a bitter leadership contest, ideological divides. It might be a battle of ideas, as they call it, right? As West Streeton calls it, people get really nasty brief things, a very bitter row. all the time as the country is sailing towards a massive cost of living crisis this winter caused by the Iran war. So that is one of the challenges that it would be a problem for the Labour Party more broadly because of how difficult the winter iss going to be. I mean I think one of the things that some of those who are worried within labor have said to me in recent days is They just worry there's too much diagnosis at the moment that actually Labour absolutely loves to diagnose the problems, to talk about where we went wrong, to try and talk about big ideas and solutions. I mean, One of the things that people in number ten will say to you is like it's just not the world that we're living in inside number ten. Like the essays are lovely. The essays are great. I think in Blair's defense you there were you know he was making difficult decisions. The triple loock is unsustainable, for example. That is a difficult decision. Welfare is something that has been, I think is going to rear its head in a massive way when we see the defeense investment plan because many people will be saying you've left this massive pot of money completely untouched and you're cutting other ports of money that the Chancellor has previously said are important for growth.. I mean, I just think that's going to be a big part of the conversation over the coming weeks. But I do think you're right about this kind of you, this period of ideas, as refreshing as it is to some in labour who have felt that the SMmer project has been lacking in intellectual curiosity You know, I do think there is a case that these decisions are really difficult and that some of it is couched in a level of slight on reality And look, we are duty bound to list the full candidates standing in Makerfield. So we will do that now. They are Jake Austin of the Liberal Democrats, Count Binface of the Count Binface Party, Andy Burnham of the Labour and Cooporative Party, Dan Clark of the Libertarian Party John Dyer, who's an independent Gemel of the Climate Party Paul Gould, who's an independent, howling Lord Hope, the official monster Raving looononey partarty, Rob Kenyan, of reform UK. Hel an independent Rebecca Shepard of Restore Britain