Brand's conviction should make Westminster think

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1:02Noa Hoffman: Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. And a quick note just to say this is now our 10 year anniversary. The podcast has been going on for 10 years and I'm very excited to mark that occasion by discussing PMQs and all the politics latest today with Tim Shipman and Isabel Hardman. Right, let's get straight into it, Tim. I would say Kemi won that PMQs but what did you make of it? Yeah, I don't think it ranks very highly in the 10 years of us covering PMQs, to be honest. I think it was interesting for two reasons. I mean, Kemi Bade not used all her questions to bang on about energy. And she kept asking questions about Rose Bank and about drilling off Argentina and all this kind of thing.

1:50And Andy Burnham kept replying, saying, well, it's a quasi-judicial decision. And she kept saying, no, it isn't. It's a political decision. And it's kind of both. So he can hide behind the one if he wants, and she can attack him from the other side if she wants. But I think, I'm not sure she got very far. And I think while on balance, Burnham didn't answer really any of the questions and Badenot probably deserved it on points. I didn't think it was a political event. It got us very far. And I think it illustrates one thing about Kemi Badenot, which is that if Andy Burnham gives the answers she's expecting, she's quite good at this shtick now.

2:23But if he doesn't and takes a slightly different approach, which she's sort of more likely to do than Keir Starmer, then she's not terribly good at thinking on her feet and moving off her list of questions and going elsewhere. So I would say that is, you know, prosecuting a good argument and being tough and, you know, winning more often than not is Kerry Breeden's strength. It's also her weakness. And I would say, putting aside what happened in the main exchanges, we then had an exchange where Ed Davey came in to ask Andy Burnham whether he would support a private members bill to change the way the census is done.

2:58And the census at the minute only gives one option for white English is on there. And there are lots of different versions of British. Now, as listeners to the Spectator podcast will know, this has been a live debate recently with Suella Braverman and others saying that essentially you need to be white to be English. Most of the political class disagrees with that, including a decent number of Suella Braverman's colleagues in reform. and his private member's book would change it. So you could be English Asian as well as British Asian. And that would be an interesting way of seeing how people identify themselves.

3:32Burnham was asked this question and he stood up, boulders past and said, I'm not familiar with this. I haven't read it. But I think that is the sort of thing I would like to support. And I think on the one hand, this is classic Andy Burnham shooting from the lip, potentially getting himself into, you know, the devil of the detail that he may not be familiar with. And he has got himself in a right old pickle over recent months as a result of that. But I also think this is an example of what makes him a much more interesting politician. And actually, I think on balance, you know, someone the public has warmed to, because, you know, he did say, I basically think this is right.

4:10I will have a look at it, but why not? And, you know, it is totally unimaginable that we would have got an answer like that from Keir Starmer, who would have said, well of course I'll take it away and have a look at it but I you know I can't I can't be drawn here at the chamber now here and now and frankly things have changed and I think a bit for the better and you know Baden-Ottt I think you're probably right probably won it on points it certainly wasn't a knockout but I think Burnham proved again why he's you know this shoot from the lip approach on other matters could be more dangerous but on something like this where it is a bit more of a point of principle and something where the prime minister can use his bully pulpit to send a signal about his approach to race and identity i think um a lot of labor people have looked at that and

4:59Noa Hoffman: gone yeah thank god we change leader always such a pleasure when the shippers kia starmer impression comes out to play it's been great can we he's gone but he must not be forgotten because you know we And he won't be forgotten for the simple reason that, and with the only possible exception of Liz Charles, he used the nadir against which we must measure all other prime ministers in our lifetimes. And from my perspective as a journalist, Trust was at least short, sweet, blew up in an interesting way, whereas Starmer, frankly, tortured us all for two years, including all the people who worked for him.

5:35We must never forget quite how bad Sir Keir Starmer was.

5:39Noa Hoffman: Isabel, Tim is right that one of the big news lines from PMQs was about how people describe themselves in the census. The other was that the 10-year plan will be coming in time for Christmas. has this mean all your Christmas wishes have come true Isabel and what do you make of that and Kemi's line of attack with regards to the Boston Consulting Group's services being used to help formulate the 10-year plan what did you make of that? Yeah I mean I might keep my Christmas wishes on hold just to see the content of the of the 10-year plan and I think that's what Kemi was really trying to get out as her big theme during PMQs today, which is big promises followed by very tiny little policies that come out later.

6:27So, yes, her first question was, he entered Downing Street promising a 10-year plan, 2040 years of neoliberalism, but he's got the Boston Consulting Group to work out what that would actually involve. She then had her second question where, I mean, it was quite sort of funny in pantomime. She said, he's merging the DVLA with the DVSA. and all her MPs went, exciting, Mr Speaker. And that and then her following questions about Antonio Romeo making a speech last night that he went to where he was finding out what she's doing because he's not telling her what he wants to do. It's this theme of the prime minister says one thing, but then in reality, he can't deliver more than a merger between two very small agencies.

7:11And I think she did that pretty well. And I think Burnham helped her unwittingly, he didn't really have many answers and he ended up, his comfort blanket when he doesn't know what to say is to ask a question back. And it's less jarring than Keir Starmer lecturing the lady on the spirit in which she must ask these questions and all that kind of thing. We've got competition now. Oh, yes. But, you know, it's less jarring and patronising than all the sort of tone stuff that we used to get from Keir Starmer. And but it is it's a non-speaker for one thing. And it did allow Bader Nock later in the session to say, I asked the questions here and I was asking about Rose back and he didn't answer that question.

7:55I think also his delivery today. I don't actually think delivery matters if you've got something to say. It's when you have nothing to say and you deliver that badly that it becomes a sort of symptom of your leadership problems. His delivery was quite plodding today in some of his answers to Bader Nock. almost as though he was trying to work out while standing at the dispatch box what the hell to say because he couldn't give an answer on this, that and the other. He got very ploddy in particular when he was trying to lecture Bade Nock about her benefit reforms that she proposed once again yesterday, the£36 billion of cuts saying that honourable lady needs to answer about the cost of living and so on.

8:39I think if you're going to go on the attack on benefits in particular where you need to seem as though you're taking things really seriously, you need to make sure that you've got a really hot and well-crafted attack line. And he was starting to sound a little bit like Burnham, the Labour backbencher, complaining about people having their benefits cut, which he's about to get from his own backbenchers anyway. I can see why he might want to seem as though he has an affinity with those people. But the mood of the British public is very much not, oh, we're worried about people having their benefits cut.

9:11it's we're worried about this inexorable rise of the benefits bill and the fact that no party seems to have a handle on how to reform it in a sustained way. And the curious thing about that, Isabel, I thought was that, you know, we do have this Melbourne report coming next week, which I've written about in the magazine today, which will be in your letterboxes later in the week. There's a perfectly good argument that he could make there that we're beginning that process that we're tackling the youth pipeline into a life on welfare. And, you know, after some initial investment, the numbers will come down.

9:45But as you say, he was very flat-footed about it. He sort of didn't really, he didn't even prosecute the argument he has himself been developing. Yeah, and that argument, I think, is one that he really needs to make more grounds with because he is arguing, and he should do so, in my view, unashamedly, that you have to spend money up front in order to properly reform welfare, in order to get people off benefits sustainably, rather than moving them between different columns in a spreadsheet. And he's allowing Baden-Ock to frame it as, he wants to save money by spending money. And if you're going to have this more nuanced and, in my view, more mature approach to the welfare bill, you need to bloody well argue for it.

10:27And you can't let your opponents frame it at all. And he is doing that. And I wonder almost whether he's a bit too late with this because he's been going on about clued cuts and that sort of thing. You know, he can't just talk about avoiding those cuts. He has to talk about what his vision is. And actually, Milburn's been doing a lot more of that in the run up to this report that hasn't been published yet. So there's no reason why Burnham can't be because we, you know, we all know what's going to be in this Milburn report. We basically had a live blog of it over the past few months. And I find it quite surprising that Burnham has not been, given he's very aware of the potential of a list to derail a prime minister, that he's not been more careful about crafting his own argument on this.

11:08I think his arguments have still sounded quite immature. And that is where this sort of 10 year plan becomes interesting as well. And I think it is important for him to have it before Christmas because the sense of drift otherwise would become fairly overwhelming. And I think you've got a situation where, you know, some of the recent coverage of it and some of the interviews that some of the ministers have given, including Angela Eagle, have suggested that it's actually quite small beer, that there's sort of four or five issues and it's not really a grand vision. And, you know, if it is just that, if it is just tinkering, then maybe it is more of an indicator that, you know, he's looking to an election to make his big argument.

11:43But I think it's pretty dangerous for Andy Burnham to sort of sit back and look passive. I praised his ability to just be authentic and speak his mind earlier, but he was also brought in because people thought he had a sense of who he is and what he wants to do. And so far, a lot of the sort of grand waffly vision that we've had, and Bader not kept accusing him of waffle today. I think that's probably an effective riposte to a lot of the stuff Burnham says. You know, he does need to galvanize that into something coherent that he can sell to the public. And it's not 100 % clear yet that this 10-year plan is going to do that with quite the verve and ability to get an entire society pulling in the same direction that dear old Stalin's 10-year plans used to have.

12:29Noa Hoffman: Isabel, Baden-Ock did make quite a fruity gag at PMQs where she compared Ed Miliband's reference to Rosebank as climate vandalism with his misjudgment on doing an interview with Russell Brand. She said that Miliband thought cozying up to Russell Brand would make him prime minister, which obviously did not come to fruition. What did you make of that remark? Was that smart or in poor taste? I think it's probably about as far as you can go at a kind of PMQ knockout unless you decide to make the whole thing about Russell Brand, which I think it was wise not to. And I've been thinking a lot about this because I can very much understand why Labour's opponents have been going after them on their dalliance with Russell Brand more than a decade ago.

13:21Partly, you know, that's just the game. But I actually think that a, I don't really think we care about sexual violence that much in this country. I think we like to pay lip service to it. We like to have sort of violence against women and girls strategies, which don't actually deliver the necessary resources or changes that would show that we were taking it seriously. and I think that a political movement that did care about this would probably be able to say look 10 years ago things were different and we're ashamed that we didn't have more of a perspective on that that actually it still shouldn't have been normal 10 years ago for a guy who had a list of what he described as his victims of his sex addiction in his book to be someone whose good opinion we wanted to court.

14:12But we did it because it was normal. And we need to reflect on that as a society. And actually, I mean, look, one of the reasons that Labour and other politicians, you know, Russell Brand had at the time been a right winger, I'm sure there would have been right wing politicians wanting to get him to change from saying don't vote to vote for this party. The reason that this felt more normal is that it's quite a normal culture in Westminster as well. And I was talking to a campaigner in the women's sector last night and she said, let's not forget that for Ed Miliband and every other leader and prime minister of any colour, they hang out with sexual predators every day.

14:52Some of him are quite avert about being sexual predators. And so it's much more normal than it should be to walk among, you know, I don't just mean walk among rapists, because actually, I think we all, unfortunately, we all know people who are rapists, sexual abusers and domestic abusers. Some of them are there in plain sight, some of them aren't. But actually, I think it's normal within Westminster to walk amongst people who are kind of known to be sexual predators. and once that becomes normal you start to forget that these things matter and that's not me suggesting that that anyone you know can say from 2014 we didn't mean this oh you know this you know these were different times what I'm actually saying is I think it would be much better if we were able as a political class to say actually we'd normalize far too many things here and there was not an outcry when Ed Miliband hung out with Russell Brand at the time from anyone other than people saying oh he's quite annoying and you know if people really cared back then about sexual violence there would have been more of an outcry because while he has only recently been convicted the debate has been about how much of his behavior was in plain sight and um it was in plain sight then and as far as i remember it given i was covering it at the time it was much more about just the fact that russell brand believes in revolution and didn't think that people should vote that than anything else i think that's absolutely right you know i think i was on the Daily Mail back then and it was entirely you know the condemnation of Ed Miliband was entirely in the way that Kemi Bodenock did it today which is that this might be a terribly nice man but he's completely wrong about everything and hanging out with this unfunny sort of crusty loser chap with ridiculous views was a problem and I think that's why Burnham could have embraced the joke a bit in the way that you said and a way of diffusing it might not have been to sort of just ignore it but to actually engage with it.

16:50And I do think if Angela Rayner or Louise Hague have been at the dispatch box today, I think you might well have got a very different answer. And I don't think that reflects terribly well on men in Westminster. I do know several people who you might categorise in that way, both in our profession and amongst the elected fraternity. And, you know, I do think this is an issue that Westminster, you know, perhaps ought to grip. But the other thing I found very, very, I mean, not surprising, I guess, but a bit disappointing was that when she cracked this joke, there was a lot of sort of fury from the Labour benches that she'd done it in a kind of now the the nice way of interpreting that would be to say oh well they didn't like jokes being made about a sex offender but actually I think the reason they were upset was because it was like well this isn't fair on us for goodness sake you know and how dare you criticize us you know blah blah blah we didn't know what we knew I mean we've had Lucy Powell basically out and about in the last couple of days saying who was allegedly the one who arranged this meeting between Miliband and Russell Brand and say, well, we didn't have social media in those days.

17:49We didn't know what was going on, which is, you know, the Guido website, I think, showed she'd tweeted a thousand times at that point, you know, when she'd never heard of social media.

17:56Noa Hoffman: I was just going to say, I do also find it quite rich coming from Labour MPs when you have women in Piddington saying, please, please listen to us. We're not comfortable having 1 ,200 men whose criminal records are unknown housed so closely to us. And those views have very much been dismissed by a lot of Labour MPs. And I think that is actually a violence against women and girls issue. That's not to say all those men are going to commit offences against women. But you have women in that village, the vast majority of women saying, I'm really worried. And a lot of them and a lot of their concerns are being dismissed.

18:31Noa Hoffman: In the same breath, you've got Labour MPs, you know, being quite po-faced about comments made with regards to Labour failing to ignore warning signs when it came to Russell Brand. So I just think across the spectrum, but as well in Labour, and we're going to see this debate bubble up again when it comes to the conversion therapy bill, there's just a lot of confusion and a lot of interesting opinions on the issue of women and girls that are not quite logical. And you do see double standards come up now and then. The Labour Party thinks it's whiter than white on this stuff because it was always cared about the issues.

19:05But I've been attending party conferences of all parties for 25 years, and it's invidious to have a sort of perverts off, as it were. But my very strong impression is that Labour men are at least as sexist and rapacious and predatory as Tory men. And that is not the perception you would have from the righteousness that the left likes to display on this issue. I don't think they're probably any worse, but they're certainly not any better. And, you know, it is incumbent on people in the Labour Party to recognise that, I would suggest.

19:37Noa Hoffman: With that, I think we will bring this episode to a close. Happy 10 years of Coffeehouse Shots, everybody. Please continue listening to the podcast. We have a very loyal and very lovely audience and we value you a lot. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Isabel. And thank you for listening to Coffeehouse Shots.

20:01Thank you.

20:29Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.