EXCLUSIVE: work or face benefits ban, Kemi tells under-25s

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0:36Hello and welcome to Coffee and Shots, the Spectator's daily politics podcast. I'm Patrick Gibbons. With yet another scoop from our political editor, Tim Shipman, the latest edition of the magazine is out today. In it, Tim interviews Tory leader, Kemi Badenok, a head of Tory party conference this weekend, and she reveals her plans to prevent under-25s from accessing benefits if they've never worked before. For this special episode today, here is an extract from The Spectator's edition show, where Tim discusses his interview with The Spectator's Angus Colwell and Lara Prendergast, and The Telegraph's Poppy Coburn.

1:09The full episode will be released at 5pm today. Just search The Edition wherever you listen to your podcasts. And you can find the full interview at spectator.com. So Tim, you spoke to Kemi at the start of this week, ahead of Tory party conference, which starts this weekend. What is the main message that she wants to get across. Well, yeah, I mean, it's tough love. It's more tough than love, really. And we've done her up on the front as Mary Poppins, wielding her umbrella in an aggressive fashion. I mean, I think what she thinks is that Burnham is veering off to the left and she needs to remake the case for conservative values, popular capitalism.

1:45And I think she's quite excited about it. I mean, she sort of says Keir Starmer's dreadful, completely uninteresting. She thinks Andy Burnham's quite interesting. He knows who he is. He wants to do things. But because he wants to do things that are so drastically different from where the Conservatives are, that gives her, she sees that as a bit of an opportunity. And on welfare, they clearly think that's, you know, along with the economy more broadly, they think that those are their sort of winning propositions. So what she told me was, you know, about the principles that they're going to pursue their welfare plans on, which are that if you can work, you should, and you shouldn't be gaming the system with a sort of minor attack of ADHD or anxiety to avoid working.

2:24and that there needs to be sort of fairness. If you've paid in, you will get more out. You can stay on benefits longer. And the policy I've got wind of is sort of a plan called get to work. So in future, as I understand it, the Tories will say to under 25s, unless you've worked for six continuous months, you can't go straight out of school at the age of 18 or at any point up to the age of 25 onto universal credit. You instead will have to go on a get to work scheme where you will spend six months preparing you for the workplace. And lots of businesses are complaining that young people, you know, don't have the skills they need.

3:00They're no good at working in teams. They spend all time staring at their phones so they've got no social skills. They will have to go in every day, learn about job interviews, learn about how to conduct themselves in the workplace. And at the end of six months, they'll get a certificate saying, these are this person's skills, hopefully making them more viable to get a job. after six months of claiming what is, by the sound of it, a much lower benefit than they would have had on universal credit at the moment, if they still haven't got a job, they go on to what the Tories are calling a subsistence allowance and that will be quite a minor sum.

3:38And I think the approach they want is that this is then the problem of the parents rather than the taxpayer. So it's pretty tough and lots of people will say, oh, is this a return to the nasty party? Well, Kemi Baden-Ock, to be fair to her, is fairly brazen. She says that, you know, we are saying what we think fearlessly now. We're not worried. And if people called us the nasty party, they're always going to call us the nasty party. Those people we can't win over. In the past, we've tried to. Instead, I'm planting my flag in the ground and we're going to do things our way. And that's the way that we're going to win back support.

4:12And, you know, she's sort of quite bullish. She talks about wanting the party to be more like her. I said, what, do you mean more aggressive? And she said, oh, I've never been aggressive to you, have I? I'm slightly beg to differ on that front. But, yeah, she's like, we should be aggressive. We should be getting stuck in. And with Burnham sort of presenting what she calls, you know, she calls it Corbynism with better packaging and with Farage having some problems over the donors and a sort of fall in his support and looking angrier, I think she sees a bit of an opening here. And, you know, there was one poll that put the Tories ahead of reform.

4:48They're going to need a lot more than that before they're seen as anything like the main opposition to Labour. And having just got back from Labour conference, you know, Labour were very much, this is what we're going to do. Burnham barely mentioned anybody else. But talking to MPs around the fringe, they were all focused on reform still. They still weren't focused on the Tory party. So the job Kenny Baden-Hill's got is to try and change that over the next year. Poppy, I'm going to ask you to cast your mind back to last year, because last year's Tory party conference was described as eerily quiet, with historically low attendance.

5:18And Tim, you wrote at the time that Tukami was struggling in the attention economy and needed to reinvent herself. Do you think she spent the last year doing that and is she doing a good job at that? I remember very vividly last Tory conference because the Telegraph had asked me to vox pop young Conservatives, which would be difficult enough anywhere in the country. Surprisingly very difficult at a Conservative Party conference. I couldn't seem to find anyone. So I do remember that kind of air of despair that was hanging over the proceedings that year. It's difficult to say whether or not Kemi has actually turned the fortunes of the Conservative Party around.

5:49She has certainly changed her personal fortunes around. One of the interesting things that's happened in the last year is that Nigel Farage and Kemi Baden-Ock's personal polling have basically just flipped over. So Nigel Farage last year was at minus 6%, which sounds bad. But for a British politician, that's actually a pretty good personal favourability rating. And Kemi Baden-Ock's were quite low. They were basically neck and neck with where the Conservative Party was, which was like minus 30. Really, really appallingly bad. Well, that's changed now. She's actually got a pretty high personal approval rating.

6:18She's still in the negatives, but it's a relatively low negative approval rating. But the Conservative Party itself hasn't actually rebounded. And I think this is something that's kind of missing sometimes from the message when we talk about the Conservatives. Yes, there was that poll last week that showed if there was a general election now that they would get more seats than reform. I think that's more a reflection of where reform have gone wrong necessarily than where the Conservatives have gone right. Kemi's always been very upfront. This is going to be a long-term project. It's going to take years and years for the public to regain our trust in us.

6:48She has been very frank that that's what she's tried to do with the party. She's fixed a lot of the internals. She's got the MPs back on side. I don't know if just another conference is actually going to be enough to really move the dial significantly. You know, if the country can come to trust the Conservative Party again, if it can move on from its flirtation with reform, it's not going to be something that's done over the course of a weekend. Angus, do you think the Tories have worked out under Kemi who they even stand for? I think you can see a, I wouldn't quite call it a sort of southern strategy, but this sort of focus on voters that may have been more inclined to vote for them in 2010, 2015.

7:24and sort of higher earners who think that young people, you know, that work should pay. Maybe slightly, they're called sort of like Henrys, these young people. I mean, there's not much evidence that they are actually going over, but younger earners who are upset about their marginal tax rate, who see themselves as net contributors to the economy, but then see it all going towards, you know, welfare and things like that. And I think it's, but there is just a problem with it. And I think it's interesting that Kemi uses the metaphor of genetic inheritance in your interview to describe Labour, where she says that Labour is the welfare party, it's in their DNA.

7:54But it's precisely sort of inheritance in this idea of genes that people are upset with the Conservative Party for. Young people might say, well, isn't, you know, being ridiculously favourable to pensioners? Isn't that in your DNA? You couldn't have got rid of the triple log. Reform voters wouldn't say, look at the Boris wave. Isn't having an economy based on continually high immigration in your DNA? So, no, I don't think that this is something that can be really changed by a single party conference. But there is an element of high earners, I think, is the type of people that will probably like this policy.

8:22And she thinks she's great. She says to me, I get better every day. I think the most revealing line in this interview, though, and this very much responds to what Angus is saying. She says, we've got, you know, the public are screaming out for a party with common sense. We've got sensible plans that are actually going to work this time. so you know she clearly hopes uh that the things that she's outlining uh will appeal to a broad enough coalition of voters who think that the party has changed if she can persuade them it has changed but the fact that that this time is a sort of devastating little line that kind of she knows that people are still skeptical about the brand she says they associate the conservative party with my predecessors they need to associate it with me now there are some people in the conservative party who think you know putting it all on her may not be the most brilliant idea but you know leaders have to carry them parties particularly in opposition and you know a sort of blunt plain speaking kind of tell it as it is common sense is you know it's not the worst approach in the current political climate and she's got a hope that people see her as strident enough to kind of do most of what Farage would do on migration and crime and that sort of thing, but perhaps with a bit more kind of knowledge of how to run an economy and all that.

9:46And the polls do show that despite, you know, the Liz Truss implosion and all that, the tools are well back in front on economic matters ahead of Labour. And I suspect that while Burnham will get a lot of kind of cultural support from the Greens and the Lib Dems over electoral reform, Brexit and all that kind of stuff, that can also be galvanising for the right. And the more that Burnham just bangs on about the 1970s, it will make Tories think that if they make the same arguments that Margaret Thatcher was making in the 80s, that that will appeal to working-class voters, because it did then, and broaden out that sort of, you know, the southern wealthy, who effectively the Tories are competing with the Lib Dems for.

10:27But, you know, most people under the age of 50 can't remember the 1970s. I say, I mean, I was born in the 70s. I can't remember them either. So, and anyone who's not done any sort of deep reading around all the problems then, which really was the total Madeira of modern Britain, it's astonishing that Burnham seems to want to revive all that. It used to be a Tory attack line and now he's embracing it himself, saying everything that happened for the last 40 years is a disaster. So the Tories sent opportunity, but it's still a pretty tricky environment out there and who knows how broadly this particularly strident individual will be to people.

11:03The other thing I love, the other revelation, we must talk up the scupette, that is there's an 88 foot long buyer tapestry recreation that the Tories are going to put in at their conference on Labour's first... I'm in it apparently. So there's apparently scattered through it are lots of rather demeaning pictures of Robert Jenrick, very small, on his hands and knees, begging or wailing or all that kind of thing. But yes, now I'm, apparently there are 14 journalists depicted in this. It was a sort of desperate attempt to get some favourable copy. I've seen you're not on your knees on this. I'm not on my knees.

11:42In fact, I've seen the bit that I'm in, which is where Baden-Ock is elected and I'm sort of scribbling on a tablet of something or other. But they'd be very grey. I mean, it's not flattering. But Jenrick is just at my feet, looking about the size of a sort of, like, my pet dog. It's his place for Zumpuk. Tim, one of the points that you made yesterday after Burnham's speech was that he wasn't really talking about foreign policy at all, or defence. Do you think that will, and obviously actually your piece, Kemi, is talking about that, do you think that will play well for Kemi, probably? I think it will play well for Kemi within the Conservative Party.

12:13I mean, defence is such a massive bugbear of theirs, particularly for individuals like Tom Tugendhat. But it's not really going to pay particularly with the country. I mean, defence spending is one of those great questions to pull people on, where people always say, yes, we've got to spend more money on our national defence. It's so important. And then you run down the list of, OK, well, then how are we going to pay for it? Are you willing to raise general taxation? Oh, no. Are you willing to cut pensions? Oh, not really. Don't like that. What about the schools that are not going to get built?

12:38Oh, I'm not sure. But I will tax people that aren't me. I'm willing to press that button, which is usually applicable for basically every issue that you can think about. So it's not really a vote winner. It's again bad not kind of going to the party and saying, look, I'm true, very conservative. We're going to be firm. We're going to be tough. It's not really something that's getting out there that I think is going to be a popular. I kind of think it appeals to the people Anglis is talking to, who think the Prime Minister ought to be serious and ought to have a view on this stuff and ought to talk about it in their conference speech.

13:09And, you know, most people in the country will not agree with her stance on the Middle East and that sort of thing. But she's sort of amusing about Ed Milban standing there shaking the Iranian foreign minister's hand, which she describes as incredibly naive. Gormless, in fact, is probably the word I would use. And interestingly, in terms of differentiating from reform, Trump is not popular in this country. And one of the things people are suspicious of Farage about, in addition to all this, you know, is that are the finances slightly shonky, is his sort of knee jerk kind of closeness to Trump.

13:44So she's actually sort of quite interesting and nuanced on that. She says she's very irritated by him talking about United Ireland and frustrating that the Americans clearly hadn't thought about what could happen in the Strait of Hormuz. I just don't think these guys think past page one. And then she says Trump is quite erratic. These are all statements of the obvious to some degree, but it's actually quite rare that Conservatives make that point. I do think this is the problem with running on like you're the common sense politician because it wasn't that long ago that Kemba Baden-Walk was underwriting the Iran war and attacking a Prime Minister for not going further.

14:16I mean, was that common sense at the time? I'm sure she thought it was. I'm sure many of our MPs thought it was. But it was something that's turned out to be very unpopular and has actually materially hurt the country's interests. So I do feel sometimes the less the Tories talk about their kind of, you know, drum beating and future wars, the better for them. I'm sure selfishly, more hybrid warfare in Europe is not the worst thing for them. Because if Burnham's not talking about it and they think they can get Farage on some sort of old Russian sympathy stuff, then, you know. And she said to me as well, the Chancellor John Healy, of course, resigned over defence spending.

14:45She sort of didn't make the cut in the end, but she said, you know, he's trying to make us forget that he resigned over this, because we're still going to have to wait till next year to even see the colour of the government's money on that. So with quite a lot going on, I do think it was curious that Burnham didn't do a slightly more on it in his speech, and she's trying to sort of make that point.

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