A bonfire of regulations & Kemi's iron dome

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0:36Hello, welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm James Heal and I'm delighted to be joined by an all-star panel today of Michael Simmons, Tim Shipman and Lara Brown. We're reporting live from the second day of Tory party conference. Michael, yesterday we had the big speech by Andrew Griffiths, the Shadow Chancellor. What did he say? Well, he was kind of laying down his response to the criticisms that Jeremy Clarkson, the celebrity appearance that this conference has made, and Jeremy Clarkson had said that why would anyone set up a business in Britain? There was kind of a bit of a shock in the hall because he said he was going to open a new pub and it wouldn't be in Britain.

1:11And that was interpreted to mean that he was going to leave the country and join the wealth excess. But he said, I'm not going to leave. We're just going to set up another pub abroad because why would you do it here? And then the Shadow Chancellor's speech was saying, we've got a lot of this wrong. Labour have made it 10 times worse, but in terms of taxation and regulations. So Andrew's speech was basically a bonfire of regulations. He committed to scrapping a tax at every single budget. If he is to become chancellor, he said, we're going to roll back the mansion tax straight away. We're going to stop that happening.

1:47And he said that we need to have the third runway at Heathrow before the 2040s. 40s and it was all kind of the you know trust us we're going to sort it he said to wealthy people stop leaving stay here this is still a great country we're going to sort it so I think the contents there was everything that would be wanted from a conservative shadow chancellor the delivery I'm afraid was slightly left a little bit to be desired I think the kind of lobby journalists in the room were all in hysterics because he said that if you elected a conservative MP than they were going to follow through. That got some giggles in the room.

2:27And there was a slightly kind of awkward end to the speech where he just kind of ended it like really flatly and then walked off the stage and they didn't realise it had ended. So then they tried to clap again. So not Andrew's finest speech, but the content was, you know, low tax, low regulation, we're the old style Tories that businesses and wealthy people would like. And talking of policy, Tim, today, Kemi Bay knocks me out talking about how she would keep the country safe. It's an Iron Dome, but it's not an Iron Dome. Tell us about the policy.

2:54James Heale: Well, it sort of is an Iron Dome because everyone doesn't understand what the Iron Dome is. Israel actually has a three-layered air defence system of which the Iron Dome is the bit at the bottom, the lower level stuff that stops short-range missiles and drones and that sort of thing. And that's exactly what the Tories are talking about. They slightly, I think, oversold it in their press release where they're talking about defending the whole of the United Kingdom. The idea is that you would defend the South East from missiles fired from elsewhere. They were not really expecting, despite a thousand years of relations with the French being a bit sticky, that often we're going to get missiles fired from France in the same way that Israel gets them fired from all the countries around it.

3:31James Heale: But it would defend critical infrastructure, probably defend airports, nuclear power stations, that kind of thing. But the strange thing is they put a 10 billion budget on it, but that's over 10 years. So we're not really talking about a vast sum of money here. And, you know, I've listened to other people this morning who've said that the Germans are buying a cheaper system off the shelf from the Israelis. So there's certainly questions to be asked about it. But, you know, as a statement of intent, it is important, I think, for the Conservative Party to stake out this position on defence because Andy Burnham barely mentioned it in his conference speech.

4:02James Heale: And the Times report something I picked up yesterday evening as well, that the spending review is probably going to be delayed to the autumn of next year. So we're not even going to get out of the Labour government any kind of idea of how they're going to get to 3 % of spending on defence by 2030. until the bog end of next year, and it's not impossible. There's a general election before that. So I think it's the right sort of signalling from the Tories. I think they perhaps oversold it to start with. But, you know, Mick's right. Griffith was saying the right things. He didn't say them very well, and there was a slight element of Andrew Griffith being, you know, he's a bit bald, he's a bit boggle-eyed, and there's an element of Ian Duncan Smith for ducks about the delivery.

4:47James Heale: But people don't necessarily need the Chancellor to be a big figure. That was true with George Osborne and with Gordon Brown. But I think someone who sounds reassuring, and right now the important thing is that business and the markets take you seriously. It's not that everybody wants to invite you into their front room for a cup of tea. They do seem to like Emmy Baden-Ock, even though that's a bit like inviting an angry aunt to come round and have tea with you. But Griffith, I think, has already made more of an impression with what he said than Mel Stride did before him. And that's, I think most Tories will take that as a sort of a 3-2 win on yesterday's game, as it were.

5:26James Heale: Lara, what struck you from the first couple of days at Tory party conference? It feels like a very different conference to last year. There was a sort of downbeat, panicked sense that it was all over last year. The fun of having an leadership election had passed, but they hadn't really bedded in. And this year does feel very different, I would say. Members particularly are much more enthusiastic They might be missing the sort of wood for the trees and thinking, oh, we'll have a great conference. They're celebrating the fact that Reform is doing slightly less well in the polls as a big win for Kemi.

5:56There seems to be a much more coherent shadow team that is excited about what they're doing. Andrew Griffith, obviously replacing Mel Stride, is really, really keen to get out there. He's doing stuff throughout the conference. Maybe he's had some mess-ups like the thank you and run off stage yesterday and his slightly bizarre you-can-have-the-eggs-not-the-or-goose comment. but he's enthusiastic and he wants to do stuff. And I would say in a bubble, the Tories are pretty optimistic about their future.

6:22James Heale: And my phone groans every morning with messages from Andrew Griffith. Anything that is vaguely economic, he has been in my inbox for the better part of a year telling me what he thinks about it in a way that Maelstride never was. So he's a very energetic, kind of semi-aggressive character. He's got that sort of tone of relentlessness, which is kind of the thing that Baden-Ock is trying to get across. You know, there is a slight element where everybody was perhaps too downbeat last year and is perhaps slightly too overconfident that the bounce back is coming this year. But, you know, it's generally more pleasant to spend time with people who aren't contemplating throwing themselves off the top of the conference hotel as the week goes on.

6:59It's worth saying as well that although I don't think it quite landed in the hall, in the evening he then toured, you know, all the sort of finance institutions and banks and stuff that have drinks on and gave a different speech at every one, which is quite impressive because usually shadow ministers just repeat the exact same speech.

7:16James Heale: And we can think of a few of those. Well, indeed. Mentioning no names, the shadow home secretary. But he gave the speeches and he seemed to impress people in that community. So, you know, he was kind of getting a more receptive audience there. Yeah, I certainly think that that's going to be something the conservatives want and need to do better on, which is business. And actually having a former FTSE 100 boss going around the scene, looking the guys in the eye, that is something which gets a bit of credibility. I mean, yesterday was the economy day. does seem that that's going to be something the Tories are keen to talk about, Tim, in terms of that two-party traditional battleground.

7:46And I think almost Burnham talking about the 70s has given this sort of sense of relief among the Tories thinking, at last, we can cut the Tories reform out of the conversation and we can have much more traditional two-party politics.

7:55James Heale: Exactly. Just have a good old-fashioned ding-dong on how you raise money and where you spend it. I mean, that's what politics traditionally is all about. We've had a lot of culture war issues sort of raising their heads over the last decade. Kemi Badenok's actually pretty comfortable doing culture war stuff, but I don't think it's worked terribly well for the Tories, because reform have tended to be the more obvious kind of team to back in that kind of world on the right. And I think that the more that they can keep things on the economy, the more chance they have of achieving the revival that some of them think they already have achieved.

8:26And Lara, in terms of today, I think we're going to hear different speeches, things like, you know, defence as a theme with James Cartlidge speaking, and we're hearing some of the new shadow cabinet, I believe, speaking as well. Are there any of the sort of team, given how much Kerry Bainaut wants to make it about not just her, but the team, she keeps saying, you look at the front of the brochure, it's about the team are there any sign that they're cutting through yet or is it still very much dominated by the Kemi show I do really enjoy Kemi's determination that this is not about her as leader she did this last year as well you know the big picture of the whole team she went as far

8:53James Heale: on one radio broadcast this morning to describe James Cartlidge as a genius which I don't think even James Cartlidge's close family would have put forward as an idea she's starting to have a stronger team Andrew Griffith I do think is one of the best examples of this Chris Philip is relatively good on the media. But fundamentally, I mean, Kemi's secret weapon is that she polls better than any other party leader. And no one knows, I mean, no one knows, a lot of people don't know who she is. No one knows who any of the rest of them are. I reckon in any sort of polling situation, name identification of people like Andrew Griffith, people like Chris, people like Katie Lam, might be really high in Birmingham right now, but it is zero across the country.

9:32So I think this team strategy is quite difficult. And obviously what happens ultimately is that she ends up having to do the legwork for her policies. It's not Helen Waite, you do the big welfare announcement. It's Kemi. It's Kemi this morning talking about the Britannia Shield, I think it is, which I think is wonderfully named if it's not going to have funding to run.

9:49James Heale: Jo Menge would have been a much better name. I mean, tomorrow she'll be, if there is this long-awaited inheritance tax cut, it'll be her announcing it, not the Shadow Chancellor, which I think obviously leads to progress. Well, that's true, and also, a slight mistake there. They let it run riot that they were going to scrap the whole thing. And they're obviously not going to scrap the whole thing. They haven't found the money to scrap the whole thing. It costs quite a lot to scrap the whole thing. So instead, you're going to get an announcement that is perhaps less exciting than the one that people in Westminster were predicting two months ago.

10:17Well, I think that's been an interesting feature of this conference. They really trailed stuff they were going to be announcing to the point there haven't been many rabbits. Normally, with a speech like Andrew's yesterday, you expect for one big new thing that journalists weren't told in advance, and there was nothing that major... There was one. There was one tiny thing that wasn't trailed on my account, which was scrapping the duty on producers that their packaging has to be green or whatever. He said he's going to scrap that. I can see the headlines now.

10:44James Heale: I'm amazed that one passed you by, Lara. Exactly, right? That was my mistake. And actually, that's a seriously good policy and something businesses were welcome. But around the bar, everyone was like, what the hell is this? But this is true. Politics is not just about winning over the public. Often winning over the public is the last thing you do. So in the economic sphere, you have to win over businesses and the markets. And Griffith is making strides in that. In terms of whether you have a credible team, I do think winning over Westminster and the sort of pack of people who pay attention is actually quite important.

11:16James Heale: Because if we start to say Nick Timothy's credible, Katie Lamb's credible, then that will gradually percolate its way through to people at large. And I think, you know, I think part of the problem reformers had is that Farage is wildly popular, particularly, you know, with his own base, but slightly wider than that. But almost all the other people around him have gradually begun to obtain a stench of slight incompetence or slight dubiousness. And that does cut through. People don't really understand what it's all about. They're not following the details of the latest revelation about money or where it came from or where it went.

11:50James Heale: But what they do pick up is a general sense of this doesn't smell quite right. And if you can get you can persuade the Westminster village, you get you gradually get the sort of sweet fragrance of actually there's an OK team here. There's some credible, serious people. And that eventually sort of works its way through to the public. If the markets and Westminster are convinced by something, you do get the public pick up that sort of sense of that as they go on without really paying a great deal of attention. And the classic question to end the podcast is what parties are we going to tonight? Other, of course, than the Great Spectator one, where I suspect we'll see our beloved colleague Patsy manning the door like Michael Caine at Rourke's Drift.

12:28James Heale: Frankly, if she hasn't RSVP'd, Patsy will be saying, can we batter what? No, your name's not down, you're not coming in. She is magnificent and anyone who has not begged for an invite and received confirmation should be well advised not to storm the door because Patsy and her redcoats will be there with bayonets fixed. I often think the spectator is quite well-spoken men as a sort of velvet glove covering only the iron fist of the strong women who run the office here. Thank you, Milara. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Tim, and thank you for listening to Coffeehouse Shots.

13:24This is the story of The One. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Grainger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Grainger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by Grainger. For the ones who get it done.