Can Kemi hoover up votes with benefits reform?

0:00Ever notice how every new AI tool asks you to explain your business to it all over again? Google Workspace with Gemini skips that. You get Google's AI built right into the premium versions of Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and more. No new tools, no extra logins. Just one subscription that gives you personalized AI right inside your actual workflow. Make work less work. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.

0:37Hello, welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm James Heal and I'm joined today by Tim Shipman and Michael Simmons. Now, today, Tim, we've had two massive MRP polls coming out. And I think the real question is about the battle on the right, because one of them gives reform second place and the other gives them third place. So tell us about the results.

0:52James Heale: Yeah, so the first one is a YouGov super poll for The Times. and this effectively shows reform way down on where they were this time last year. So it puts Labour in front with 241 seats, which is, you know, 85 short of a majority. Tories second with 130, which is 10 more than they've got at the moment and way up on the 45 seats that YouGov was predicting a year ago and reform in third place on 123 seats. Now, bearing in mind a year ago, they had 188 more seats than that in the YouGov MRP. So Tories seizing on this and saying, look, the right split, we are now ahead of reform. Give your votes to us.

1:37James Heale: And if you add up Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP, you only just get enough to form a slightly shonky coalition of the left. And that's basically what we're up against. So this is good for Kemi Baden-Ock's narrative approaching her conference. reform didn't really get a bounce out of theirs and all the problems that Nigel Farage and co. had over the summer appear to be coming home to roost. But then you open the pages of The Guardian where Survation and 38 Degrees have done their own survey and that gives Labour 272 seats and reform on 153. The tour is only on 85, which is obviously, you know, 30-odd down on where they are at the moment.

2:18James Heale: And Lib Dems, interestingly, in both, holding pretty steady in that kind of 60-70 range. And, you know, if the Tories really are to get back into it, they've got to start squeezing that Lib Dem number. And so reform, obviously, are circulating one of these. The Conservative Party is circulating the other. And actually, in the second one, the servation one, if you put Labour and the Lib Dems together, they would have 241 seats, which is a majority of about 30 or thereabouts. And you can just about function with that for a while anyway. It's going to be very different if the country is basically facing a sort of rainbow coalition of chaos or a relatively stable kind of deal where Labour and the Lib Dems govern together.

3:07James Heale: But as you rightly point out, the main fuss here really is which of these right-wing parties is in second place. And the other factor, going back to the first MRP, reform is in second place in by far the most seats of any party in that YouGov MRP. And what this shows really, I think the two taken together, is that we don't really know anything. British politics is very volatile and a small move in one direction or another for one, two, three, four or five different parties can have a much higher effect than it would do in the traditional kind of two party battleground. I was told last week that the Tory kind of spread of seats was somewhere between 65 and 160.

3:49James Heale: And both of these results fall within it, essentially based on not far different polling numbers. And that just goes to show how volatile it is. A nip and a tuck here and there, a bit of tactical voting here, a bit of anti-reform there, a bit of Labour being organised here, a bit of the Lib Dems either holding firm or not. We're in five-dimensional chess here. And frankly, the fact that we've got two wildly different results, I think, is actually taken together a kind of accurate reflection of where British politics is right now. I think the trend will obviously be quite encouraging for the Conservatives.

4:24I think also there's a question about when the fieldwork was done August versus September. But, Michael, obviously, the Conservatives are very keen to kind of press home their advantage. They've got the wind at their backs, it would seem, at the moment. And the way they're doing that is by talking about welfare. And Kemi Beynok has got a big policy out today, splashes the Telegraph and the Mail, suggesting that after about six months so she's going to take away people's universal credit if they haven't got a job tell us about the policy yeah so this is the the Tories trying to get back on the pitch when it comes to welfare i think helen waitley the shadow work and pension secretary has been a bit frustrated hello lately as tim put in a column well i think she's been a bit frustrated that whenever she's you know announced a review or some new policy on welfare basically none of us have paid any attention because either labor have got the headlines because of their Melbourne review, or Reform have got the headlines because they've announced cuts into the billions of pounds.

5:16The two billions, yeah. Yeah. The Tories don't want to go for that tactic because they want their cuts to be what they call realistic. So the cut they've proposed today, which would not be a cut, by the way, it would be a reduction in the increase, is something like£538 million a year off a universal credit bill of£80 billion. So it's not going to compete with Reform in terms of the finances, but they're going for kind of the politics and the social stigma of this idea. So there's two components to what they've announced. The first is, as you say, you know, if you've been off work for a certain amount of time, you're going to a lower rate of benefit, but they want to turn it also into a contributory benefit.

5:53So if you had worked for years and years and years and then fell out of work, you'd be protected and you would stay on the higher rate. So they want it to be, you know, a pay-in before you kind of get paid out system. The other aspect of this is that you would be given a card, a prepaid card, rather than cash. And this is to stop you spending it on vices. Food stamps, basically. Yeah, exactly. So you couldn't spend it on booze or gambling or whatever. Now, Helen Waitley had it put to her on the Today programme. It's not for the government to decide what these people spend their money on. And she had quite a snappy retort, which is that it's not their money.

6:32It's our money, right? It's the taxpayer's money. And I think that's right. and I think the politics of that will play. However, this to me, unfortunately, is just another example of tinkering around the edges on welfare. You know, as I said, this is less than, well, sorry, as I said, this is just over half a billion pounds in a budget that's heading well over towards over£100 billion for sickness benefit, for example. These little changes are not going to stop this runaway train on welfare spending and no one really seriously seems to be proposing an answer to that.

7:04James Heale: This is a thimble full of spit in an egg cup in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, essentially. I mean, you know, serious numbers need to be removed from all this. But, you know, the reaction is still, this is unfair. How dare they? You know, as you say, built into that question, we're telling people what to do with their money. No, no, we're not. We're giving them money and we don't want them taking it to the bookies. Guess what? Contributory benefits are absolutely standard almost everywhere in Europe. All those countries that people on the left in Britain look to and think, well, gosh, if only we were like the Scandinavian countries or the Germans or the French.

7:41James Heale: They all have contributory benefits. And for some reason we don't, which is why we're a massive magnet for migration. And we have bills that are drifting ludicrously out of control. And I think the actual, the kind of cash card idea could be taken further. And I think there might be some cross-party consensus on this, which will come out of the various reviews that the government have commissioned, which is if you look at our massive problem with anxiety and depression leading people to being out of work, one of the things I think most people would agree on is, okay, you don't necessarily need to give these people cash benefits, but you could say the NHS is terrible at providing talking therapies because the, the waiting lists are so high.

8:24So instead of giving you an out-of-work benefit, we're going to give you a voucher that you can use for private mental health care, for example. I think we're going to see ideas like that and removing the cash incentives kind of out of the system. Tim, you've written this week's cover. We're approaching Labour conference season. And I know, for instance, there's been a whole rash of mixed news coming out this week. We've got sort of growth being slashed by the OECD, and it's just been announced in the last 10 minutes or so that yesterday saw the highest number of small boat arrivals cross in a single day, 781 this year.

8:55Tell us about the sort of mood of the Labour Party. Andy Burnham's done a big sit-down with the Indy Statesman. How do we sort of assess it? Because it seems there was initially a bit of a burn and bounce and maybe now we're seeing a bit of the malaise creeping into Labour.

9:04James Heale: Well, look, the numbers have ebbed off in terms of headline numbers. Burnham is still judged to be the best Prime Minister. He's also, in terms of his approval rating, clearly at the top of the tree at the moment. The Kemi Begnoc is in a clear second place and creeping slightly upwards and Burnham's numbers are creeping slightly downwards. I think if you talk to people in the Labour Party, there was the initial wave of excitement about him arriving. They've seen him communicate quite well, but they are, even MPs are beginning to ask, where's the beef? And as I reveal in this piece, if you talk to people who've been sitting in the private focus groups that Labour people have been doing recently, I don't think they're seeing sort of a lack of trust and suspicion really cut through into the numbers yet, but in what they call the QUAL, which is the sort of qualitative thinking where people just speak in these focus groups, there are certainly questions now being asked.

9:53James Heale: People say, well, I like the look of this fellow. He seems like a reasonable sort. But what's he actually going to do? How is he going to improve my cost of living? How is he going to make my life better? And, you know, we still ultimately haven't got really clear answers to that. Burnham's done a lot of little symbolic things which all add up. But, you know, he hasn't yet made a big sort of statement on economic matters and maybe that we have to wait until the budget. As my piece says, even the budget might not, you know, a huge enterprise. A lot of the big decisions have been punted off to next year, defence spending, welfare cuts.

10:25James Heale: It feels a little bit like all this stuff has been put into the long grass. And while, you know, we've got briefings this morning, surprise, surprise, that John Healy is going to reduce the amount of headroom in the public finances. Rachel Reeves left him a cushion of 23 billion. That is going to come down. My sources in the city seem to think that the markets will probably swallow headroom of about 15 billion. but Burnham hasn't spent that much money so far you know a handful of billions so it could be this is a much smaller budget than the ones Rachel Reeves has done for the last couple of years but the big question really is whether he'll go for an election and there are people around Andy Burnham who think you know seize the day Prime Minister you know you're a great communicator you can take the country with you but take them to what?

11:03James Heale: and until you've answered that question I don't think you can call an election and as one of my sources said you know the professional political strategists in that building can read a poll like everybody else and we've just been talking about these two MRPs In one of them, it looks slightly easier than the other for Labour to form a government. But in neither of them is Labour anywhere near a majority. And in both, you would be looking at a loss of a very, very large number of Labour MPs. So while even theoretically this might work for Andy Burnham, it's hard to see at the moment how it works for the Labour Party.

11:31James Heale: And it's also hard to see, given the sort of electoral bloodletting that would probably follow, why Burnham might think it's a good idea. The other thing I found telling as I was putting calls in on this is this idea that, yes, Burnham wants to do something very demonstrative. He wants to transform the whole political economy of Britain, transform the nation. But one of the things that he's most obsessed with is this devolution stuff. You know, Number 10 North, giving more powers to mayors and to metropolitan councils and all the rest of it. He sees that as like a really big thing, really important.

12:02Politics for 25 years.

12:03James Heale: It's one of the things he most wants to achieve in politics. And it's like he thinks he can be a great prime minister just by doing that. Well, I mean, I've got news for him. I mean, he'll be disappointed with the outcome because we've tried all this stuff, as you say. And it's not clear that the quality of leadership in these local areas is good enough to transform the country. But if Burnham thinks that that is literally like a really important transformational thing, why would he need to call an election and have the ability to raise taxes? And then the final point is just, you know, what are you having this election for?

12:33James Heale: The only purpose really is to do big, bold things which would require him to tear up the self-denying ordinance on raising income tax, VAT or national insurance. The second you do that, the entire election is about here's a bloke who wants to put up your taxes to fund welfare and migrants. Every right-wing party will say that. Quite a lot of voters will swallow it. But equally, if Burnham didn't do that, what's the point in holding the election in the first place? So at the moment, while some people in Westminster are 100 % convinced this is going to happen by next spring, the people I've spoken to in the last week for this piece are sceptical and I am also sceptical.

13:09Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Michael. Thank you for listening to Copy Our Shots.

13:56Thank you. Try Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.