'We need to get real' – Claire Ainsley on Starmer, Burnham and Labour’s future

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0:46Noa Hoffman: Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm Noah Hoffman and today I'm really delighted to be joined by Claire Ainsley. Claire is a political strategist and consultant to the Washington-based Progressive Policy Institute. She was Keir Starmer's Director of Policy for about two and a half years, from April 20 to December 2022, while Labour was in opposition. And before that, she led the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Claire has just published a brand new book, and I'd encourage all our listeners to go and buy it. And we're going to speak about it now. It's called Control, How We Lost It and How to Take It Back.

1:24Noa Hoffman: Claire, can you give us a very brief rundown of your book's thesis and how you reached it? So the argument in the book is that as a society and as individuals, we've lost control over many of the things that matter to us most in our lives. So whether that's prices for energy or petrol pump or whether it's the impact of technology on our lives, a lot of us are feeling very overwhelmed. And my experiences in Westminster also showed I think a lot of politicians are trying to give people a sense that they're in control, but actually they don't have many of the powers that they need. So the book charts, how do we get there through processes of technology, the way that the economy has developed over the last few decades, migration has obviously played a part, the labour market and where that's left the state in a position where it really is not as capable as it needs to be to grip that.

2:19And then it sets out a prospectus of what we need to do to get back in control for ourselves.

2:23Noa Hoffman: Can you give us a sort of top line of that prospectus? Yeah, so I think the main thing that is being said in the book is that our sovereignty as a nation is the kind of first and foremost thing that I think governments need to address. So being able to be in control of the things that matter to our countries most. So rather than having an era where free trade ruled and it was entirely open, we're now moving to an era where we need to have more sovereign control over some of the things that matter to us. And that might be of security of supplies. It might be borders, but it's about sovereign nations.

2:59But it also talks a lot more about our individual level of control and what we need to do for ourselves. So I'm urging the centre left to focus much more politically on their own politics of progress. And what I mean by that is making sure that people are equipped to deal with the world that we have so that they have the education skills that they need and they're able to advance. And that is different really from what we've had, which has been a big emphasis on redistribution of wealth. I think we need to move to a much more aggressive pursuit of people's individual control and personal progress.

3:31And I think then collectively that would make society better.

3:34Noa Hoffman: Would you disagree with me that the budget we just heard doesn't necessarily align to your vision for a strong centre-left in terms of focusing less on redistribution of wealth and more on personal control? Or do you think Andy Burnham was going down the right track with his budget there? The budget was a steady as it goes budget, I think. It didn't really move us closer in this direction, but it didn't move us much further away from it either. I just think that a lot of what governments are finding when they get into power and the research that I've done has been in the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia, a lot of governments are finding that actually once they get in, some of the promises they feel that they've made and they need to honour, they actually don't have the means of control to be able to enact those.

4:18so I think the Burnham government is doing lots of the right thing I think that you know Andy Burnham clearly understands a lot of this in the way that he's talked about control more directly but I think we do need to look much more at the tax regime we have how does it incentivize people to make progress clearly he's given big indications on welfare reform but we need to see that being brought through but ultimately people can't see Labour or any government as just redistributing or taxing and spending. Otherwise, really, it just leaves us as, you know, accountants and managers of a system. What we need to do is be able to champion the things that are going to get people to get on again.

4:56And I think the centre-left needs to be much more comfortable with that. And I think that's the way we would find back to our future prosperity. I also think that we need to be much more focused on how the top-level politics really affects people in their communities. And I've called it doorstep economics. And I think that's about not just saying we're going to do the right things in terms of getting growth, which I think is obviously important. And here's what it means in percentage terms. But what does that mean for you in your home and in your community and making sure that politicians have a much more granular understanding of the impact?

5:25Noa Hoffman: When Keir Starmer was still in power, I think you'd obviously left at this point when he was Prime Minister, we had the famous revelation that Pat McFadden said, Labour MPs are just constantly asking who can we tax in order to pay more benefits. The philosophy you're describing just does seem to me as someone who watches the Labour backbenchers very closely, quite far removed. What you're talking about doesn't seem aligned with the mindset of a lot of Labour MPs. Would you disagree with that or agree? I think we've got to get real. We've got to get real about the level of wealth and productivity we need in this country to be where we need to get to.

6:09And I feel that there is far too much of our kind of economic philosophy that is kind of rooted in a country that has long since passed. Like we are not in a position where we can just tax and spend our way out of these problems. And I think on the face of it, I think Andy Burnham and his government get that. But we then need to have budgets that are going to be really, really bold and dramatic around starting to incentivise people to be more upwardly mobile. So what could we do? Well, things like the tax thresholds, for example, that might be a good place to start. I think Kemi started at the 100k tax cliff edge in her pledges.

6:45And I think that probably wasn't where I'd start. but I do think you have to look at things like when people get a pay rise are they able to take that home does that feel like it was worth all the effort if someone puts into their education do they feel that that effort was worth it and there's loads of graduates that don't feel like that right now so so how do we tackle that how do we make sure that things like actually if you're an older person still in work and you get to invest in your own training we should make that tax deductible, I think, in the same way that we might do pensions. So I think there are lots and lots of changes that we could make that are within national government's control that would start to say to people, if you want to do well, we're on your side.

7:26And politician after politician will sit there and say that, but they actually have to do things that are going to incentivise people to take those opportunities for themselves.

7:36Noa Hoffman: I think a lot of people would completely agree with what you're saying and there's this huge cohort of middle earners who just budget after budget after budget are getting absolutely nothing from it and it does seem at least from what we've seen from the Labour government both under Starmer and Burnham that all of the sort of big retail measures really are to the benefit of the absolute lowest and that there's this big cohort in the middle who you almost get in trouble for saying I want a bit more like I work really hard I want to be able to not have to think twice about going on a holiday but it does seem often that I mean I don't know what you think about the government now and and the cabinet but a lot for a lot of Labour MPs that middle bracket just is nowhere near a priority for them and I understand the politics and why people are focused on people who are the worst off you know it's been a really hard few years off the back of a really hard decade and as you said in your introduction I used to lead the Joseph Roundtree Foundation like I really care and get what happens for people on low incomes but for those people themselves yes they might need some support but on the whole they want to be able they get themselves out of poverty like they're not given that that is something that they do because they are able to then get into work or the right sort of opportunities that they need to be able to make that progress.

9:02So I actually think that this notion of progress and mobility matters for all of those income spectrums. I totally agree that I think more people in the middle are feeling basically financially vulnerable. I think the thing that really worries me is that so many young people just feel like how they get on in life is not about their own effort. And that, I think, is a massive problem. And that really is the big argument in the book, is saying that if we are going to tackle that, we have to be able to create those ladders for them. And yes, that might mean that it's not perfectly redistributive every time there's a budget but what it might mean is you have more people who feel like if I put the effort in if I start a business if I take the risk if I invest in my education then I will start to see the payoff from that and there couldn't be a bigger symbol I think than getting a pay rise and then feeling like well actually what's the point people actually working less because they're going to get more taken off than tax like that feels to me to be a dead end.

9:57And that might not be an unusual thing to say in conservative circles, but I think that's where Labour have to get to, because if they're about anything, they need to be about people's progress and mobility.

10:06Noa Hoffman: I want to talk about sovereignty, which you've discussed. How does rejoining the EU in any way forward your argument that the country needs to hold on to and strengthen sovereignty? so I think what we need to do is think about where we want to get to as a country and whether an actual realistic proposition which there is not on the table there is no realistic proposition of rejoining at this point but we need to think about where we want to get to as a country and whether being part of the European Union and under what circumstances would serve that goal I don't feel massively ideological frankly about the European Union I voted remain but I was a pragmatic remain and said we've got to get on with it what i worry about is that we are now playing a hypothetical game about what that might mean now i'm all for an open debate i think the public can take it we clearly brexit has not delivered what it was meant to to deliver but what i object to is being inside or outside the european union being seen as the goal in and of itself like for me it is that i want our country to be in charge of the decisions that matter to the people of this country.

11:17I want a socially cohesive nation. I don't want a thriving working and middle class. And if being part of the European Union at some point in the future, and there was an actual deal that could be done to get this there, then I'd be open to that. But that is not where we are right now. And I worry that an awful lot of oxygen is going to be sucked up in the next few years, having another hypothetical debate, when really what we need to be doing is getting a grip of the way that AI is going to transform the way we live, the way we work and how do we get the economic advantages and the social advantages of it but put in the safety measures that we need so my my gut feeling is I feel that this is a bit of a red herring

11:53Noa Hoffman: but it's a red herring that's taking up a lot of Downing Street time I mean that's what the discourse is all about right now as set by Burnham then they need to set out an argument as to why this is realistic and doable and it's going to be in our interest and I'm not as I say I'm not ideologically opposed to it. I can see all the disadvantages of Brexit. But I also think we are, we don't want to make the mistake that we made in 2016, which is that we basically went to the public and gave them a false proposition. We didn't really give them a proposition at all, I don't think. We don't want to again play that game.

12:28We need to be kind of, I think, realistic about what is actually achievable with the European Union under what sort of time frame. and maybe it is but I would far rather see an economic strategy which is about asserting what this country actually wants for itself, its own image of itself in 10-15 years time and conversations with the European Union are part of that rather than using that as basically a bit of a displacement activity for coming up with an actual strategy of where we want to be in the future.

13:00Noa Hoffman: So to summarise, you think, get closer to Europe, but don't spend all this time in political capital debating whether we should formally go back in or not. Is that what you're saying? Or are you open to the idea of rejoining? I'm open to rejoining, but it's not a realistic prospect at this point. Europe is changing completely. And I wouldn't be advising Labour, frankly, to open all of this up right now. I would say if you want to have a conversation about Europe, it was never the silver, leaving was never the silver bullet and rejoining is not a silver bullet. What we need to have is a conversation about where we want to be as a country in 10 to 15 years time and how on earth we get there.

13:41And Europe might be part of that, but it's just going to dominate the debate completely. I would far rather we were saying, right, how do we have sovereign control over the security of supplies that we need? How do we rebuild our defence? how do we make sure that our people have got the opportunities locally that they need how do we make sure that we are much better defended from the attacks that we know are you know that are happening right now and i feel that we are not in a position where we're really working out what is our national economic future so i would far rather my national government was engaged in a conversation with the public about what our economic future was here and the question of the european union for me is to one side of that so and politically i wouldn't be advising the Burnham team to be going down this path because I just don't think it's a realistic one.

14:27Noa Hoffman: One of the most salient images, I think, in a lot of the public imagination of a loss of control is the sight of a mega dinghy showing up on the shores of Britain with men, very, very rarely women and very, very rarely children, coming in and then either, you know, they were being put in hotels. Now they're being put in camps next to tiny villages, completely outnumbering local populations. Are you satisfied with the way you see Labour trying to regain control of that very, very stark image of a state that is unable or has been unable to deal with a fundamental job that it has, which is to secure its borders?

15:14So immigration is mission critical. I think immigration and welfare, actually, I think are mission critical for Labour. And I think I would be as dramatic to say, I think for governments in general now, I think if they cannot show that they can get a grip on their borders, and they can get a grip of their own welfare systems, then I think in the longer term, governments of all centrist parties will continue to struggle. I think the proposals that are now being pushed forward, I think are the right ones, have supported them. I think that some of the party have found them painful, but I think they are the right things to be doing.

15:48I think you have to be able to say to people, you've got democratic control over your borders. I am really concerned that central government is not listening hard enough, well enough to people locally about the impact of migration in their communities. So yes, we have the visible symbols of boats, but you're not going to solve, even if you stopped every boat, every boat across the channel, you are still not going to solve the problem. And And you're not going to solve it if you constantly talk in terms of numbers that are arbitrary, that don't mean anything to people. It will ultimately be solved when you can say to people you've got democratic control over your borders, when you've got people who feel a bit more prosperous because that is also driving it.

16:26But that also in people's communities, people feel that the impact of migration is being managed and that we have got a brilliant history of managing migration really well. Communities have been able to integrate with one another for a long period of time. we are at risk at taking a liberty with that by doing this means of introducing migrants into communities which are clearly going to create lots and lots of social frictions. So I think the government has been brave and courageous in gripping the issue. I think it's a necessity but I think they need to be equally brave and courageous by listening to what local communities are saying about the impact of migration locally.

17:04Noa Hoffman: When Burnham says we all have a part to play in having illegal migrants live near us in our communities, whether you're a more deprived northern town struggling economically or a leafy village in Oxfordshire, is he right to say that? Is this a burden that we all need to carry? Is that a fair thing to say? What do you say to people who think, hang on, I never voted for this. I never consented to this. I don't want to play a part because this is not something I agreed to. Again, going back to that feeling of loss of control, do you think Burnham really understands that sentiment and where it's coming from?

17:46Yeah. And I wouldn't describe migration as a burden as on the whole. I think migration has been a good thing and I feel like a lot of us have been enriched by it and feel that actually the diversity in lots of places is a good thing and it's how societies evolve. what I think the Prime Minister was getting at when he said that was that basically there has been a disproportionate price of the downsides of migration paid by communities that are also the hardest up because the housing is cheaper and therefore people who are perhaps better off have not had to deal with some of the impacts that you might have when you have newcomers in your place so I do think he was basically saying we're not just going to have this like dispersal strategy which is go wherever it's cheapest and poor communities are just gonna have to suck up the fact that they now have to get on with this without the support what that can't mean is that you then have communities that are then totally overwhelmed and we've seen these rebellions from local areas and like who wouldn't think good on you for standing up for your place you can see that lots of people that are advocating are not saying it from a position of racism or hostility to newcomers in the right sort of numbers.

19:03But if you've got a small village and you've got a much, much bigger encampment that's coming, that is not going to be good for anybody. And it's not going to be good for those migrants either. So I do think getting to grips with the integration issue is going to be as important as reassuring people that you've got control over the borders.

19:19Noa Hoffman: And just one more on this topic, a big flashpoint in the migration debate and the control debate is the European Court of Human Rights. Keir Starmer acknowledged that it needed change, that it's not fit for purpose. But Labour and his position was very clear that we're still better off a party to it. We just need to update it. If you were advising Shabana Mahmood right now, what would you tell her to do about the ECHR? I would say do what it takes to get control of the borders. And she would have to then get a legal view on as to whether that was necessary in terms of being able to negotiate reforms.

20:01My understanding is that they want to reform rather than withdraw. And I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to say that I think that that is necessarily the way you need to get to. what I really dislike is the posturing around it where people kind of say oh well if we get out of DSHR suddenly the problem's solved like there isn't a silver bullet on this stuff and I'm pretending to the public that there is is dishonest and it is serving nobody it makes people out there just feel like politicians just keep making promises that they can't deliver and so the pattern goes on so I think we would be better off getting real about what it's going to take to get control of our borders and having a more honest discussion about that and then if that is where we end up then we would have to have reforms to it we would have to have amendments and I advocate for those you know advocate for those in the book but I think the most important thing is to get our priorities straight and for me our priority my priority is about saying how do national governments that we elect be in charge of the things that affect us and you clearly in my view shouldn't then start taking state control of industry and those sorts of things it's not that's not going to help.

21:08But you do need to have democratic control. And I think governments have just let that slip and we are paying the price for it.

21:13Noa Hoffman: Let's talk about AI. We're seeing quite a big problem now with not just needs, but also people who, you know, played by all the rules, tried really hard in school, got good grades, went to university, got a degree. And even for that cohort, The graduate market is really, really tough. And I'm thinking my the entry level work I did when I first entered journalism, like a really, really basic news report or a weather report. But AI can do that in like two seconds. And it's not just journalism. It's across the white collar industry. How do we even begin to go about tackling this huge topic? So it is the topic of our time.

22:08It is the big challenge. And actually a lot of the book is about how technology is partly like responsible for the problem and the solution in a way. and I think how AI has changed the labour market as we speak in some ways it's in some ways it can be quite hard to predict because like with a lot of technological change there are often these kind of doomsday scenarios and actually what happens when you look back on it it doesn't map completely to what the predictions are so I think we need to do a few things I think we need to get democratic decision makers to be much more adept at working with the tech market in a way that makes policy much more responsive so you mean mps by yeah so yeah so so so mps in our system so i'm thinking about it globally but also all the sort of different mechanisms of policy that you might have because what we have is we have a we have governments with a small g so governments everywhere so far behind where the technology is and i think we need some of those firms to get stuck in and take some responsibility so those sort of scenarios that we had a few weeks ago where the tech firms were all saying, but we've created a monster we now can't control.

23:14It just felt so irresponsible. So I think partly it's about making the tech firms who've got the expertise responsible for becoming involved in the policy design with citizens, because ultimately I do not think a group of centralised politicians and civil servants have got the capability, knowledge, know-how to do that. And that's not a disrespect on them. It's that we've just basically left the tech sector to get on with it. And we're now retrospectively trying to put in some safeguards and we need to learn from what we've done wrong on social media which is we've let the genie out the bottle and then now we're trying to put it back in with AI there is a lot that actually is in our control so we could have a much more responsive way of making sure that people were redeployed there are lots of jobs that will be augmented rather than replaced how can we make sure that people have access that kind of education and skills how do we make sure that small businesses can absolutely make the most of AI so that they are constantly becoming more productive, more efficient.

24:15I just think there's a lot probably the government is already doing, but I also think the public needs a stronger narrative of saying this is a huge risk and a huge potential enabler of our productivity in the future, so this is how we are going to get in charge of it and get back in control of it. And that really is the message for the book, is not for the state to be in control of everything, but is for ourselves as individuals. And I think if we have more of these kind of warnings from industry without any responsibility about what to do about it, we're going to find ourselves, I think, turning back in on ourselves as a society rather than feeling like we've actually got the power to take it forward.

24:53Noa Hoffman: One of the AI debates sort of bubbling away and it sort of comes up and then fades away but it's been quite consistent is net zero versus data centres. and you have the likes of Ed Miliband in the government, you know, expressing doubt about data centres behind the scenes. Then you have the likes of Kanishka Narayan, the AI minister, really wanting to push ahead and, you know, be at the forefront of this digital revolution and not let the country fall behind. Should Burnham tell Miliband to shut up? I want us to be at the forefront of AI. I think we've got loads of assets in this country, which are already showing that we can be an important player, if not a big player, an important player, both in terms of the development of the technology and the safety aspects of it, which we have led on, thanks in large part to Rishi Sunak's leadership on it.

25:48So I think we have to go full throttle on AI, but I think that in order to do that, you have to come up very creatively and very quickly with some of the solutions. So for example, in Virginia State, which has got the highest concentration of data centres, they have come up with a kind of new tax rate class to make sure that local citizens aren't then paying for the energy that's needed. So there might be different types of solutions in different places, but I don't think we can put an obstacle to progress. We have to be able to come up with some of those answers on it. And I think that rather than having a binary debate of, you know, net zero versus data centres, let's get real, we are going to win if we have the energy that we need but we all know and actually Ed Miliband has been the chief opponent we all know we need to make that energy cheaper more ready available more accessible so how do we make sure that we are bringing industry in to be able to push forward rather than getting ourselves involved in a binary debate in which meanwhile you know the world moves on and we get overtaken should the government approve the Rosebank oil field I personally would be in favour of more more energy production if it made costs cheaper i have got to say i i haven't looked at the science on it in terms of the impact so with that caveat i would be i would support the decision that they have just made and i want us to be able to prioritize cheaper energy i think the uk is already doing an awful lot in terms of global climate change so i'm in favor of making sure that we prioritize kind of costs however i do think that we can't lose sight of wanting to be able to come carbon neutral so I think we have to moderate some of our ambitions and timelines that's fine that's pragmatic.

27:33Noa Hoffman: Claire why did you leave Starmy's side before he got into power that's the that's the best bit why didn't you wait around for that? Well I had been working for Keir for two and a half years and I felt that I just was struggling to keep a family life that's the honest answer going at the same time as doing everything that is demanded of you and I don't live in London I live in the north of England and I've got two kids who are now teenagers and I honestly I just thought they're going to need a lot more from me in the next few years and I'm glad I did because it's true they did need a lot more from me so I don't feel that I've got any regrets about not being part of that and all I've tried to do since has been supportive but it has also opened my eyes because the work that I've done since I left the team has been in this work this international research and it just shows you that so much of what is happening in this country has either already happened in the US or we've got always already happening in Germany and France and if we don't course correct very soon we are going to end up I think in a position where the popular the right national populists are almost the kind of unenviable but inevitable option and I don't want to be there.

28:51So yeah, I feel that, you know, I'm really proud of what we were able to do, but I don't regret it for sort of personal and also kind of professional political reasons.

29:00Noa Hoffman: So watching from the outside, Stammer's downfall, the Burnham coup, did it come as a surprise? What did you make of that entire episode?

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30:04So it wasn't a surprise in a sense that I think here had obviously lost public support, and it was really hard to see how he was going to get that back and I felt sad about that, to be honest, because I really respect him. I think he's got a lot of integrity. I think he was doing a lot of the right things, but for whatever reason, that had not connected with the public and I think the party within Parliamentary Labour Party, it looked like increasing numbers of them were losing confidence and obviously you can't govern sustainably like that. So I wasn't surprised in that sense, but I was surprised at the manner in which it happened.

30:37I think at the time, I think Labour MPs coming out so publicly in that way when there wasn't really a plan was, I think, really troubling. And I just thought that the public might look at us as the same as the Tories, that that would be quite damaging. That said, I think given that hand, I think Andy Burnham has played it about as well as he possibly could. He's obviously restored the parliamentary party's confidence in the leadership, that he's managed to get our public standing much better. and I think he's showing a kind of a sense of direction that people can get behind but I think we've got to be really careful that we don't try and then put on to Andy all the things we put on to Kia without taking responsibility as a party for the fact that like we can't have the welfare bill going the way it is or consigning that many young people or frankly I think disabled people who probably could have the opportunity to work if work was flexible enough and if he's not going to he's going to have to grit some of those issues and he's gonna have to have a parliamentary party that is behind him in a way that they weren't with kia yeah so that was one of one of

31:40Noa Hoffman: the big moments you know leading up to starmer's downfall was his failure to quash the welfare rebellion do you think burnham will be able to get away with it if he does take some tough decisions off the back of the Melbourne Review, which obviously we're still awaiting, because he does have this sort of burn and bounce glow. He's very popular in the party at the moment. Do you think he can sort of harness that to stop too many Labour MPs, you know, throwing their toys out the pram if he does have to make some sizable changes, which surely he will, to benefit in order to resolve the NEATS crisis.

32:26Well Andy's got a number of advantages that Keir and Rachel didn't have and they include the Alan Milburn review which I think set out the argument on welfare although it was about young people set out the argument on welfare that always ought to have been made they've also got the Stephen Timms work looking at the impact on disabled people because I think a lot of MPs were uncomfortable about was people who are disabled now who have had a certain level of payment suddenly starting to have that withdrawn and I think that would have caused a lot of anguish in the country and I think that the time that has now been given to be able to work some of that through I think will mean Andy Burnham is then much better placed to be able to affect that those sorts of changes when when he needs to but that said they haven't come forward with those plans yet and obviously part of the reason why Keira and Rachel got into so much trouble in the first place was because they were going they were going at pace for it like they They were doing some of the things that commentators said they should be doing.

33:21But the parliamentary party, as we know, just wasn't behind them to do that. So I think the circumstances have changed quite a lot. I think in hindsight, obviously, Labour should have taken the time to get the proposals right and make sure there was political support. I do think the parliamentary party is in a different place now. I do think it accepts the argument on welfare reform in a way it didn't. But to your point about kind of opposition and going into government, a lot of this wasn't the debate that was around in 2023, 2024. and you can see why MPs and the public were taken aback by that because that wasn't really what they thought they were getting when they voted for change.

33:54Noa Hoffman: Claire, since you're a political strategist, I want to briefly touch on opposition. So you've got the Greens who are now, you know, sort of tanking off the back of their disgusting anti-Semitism. You've got Reform who have gone down and they're sort of plateauing. They've got that 20 % core base who seem, you know, quite sticky. It seems like there's not much Farage can really do to upset them. But the floating voters between them have definitely started to abandon ship. And you've also got a situation now where Kemi Badenok is really coming into her own. The Tory brand has obviously been significantly tarnished from their 14 years in power.

34:36Noa Hoffman: In fact, the brand was, is, depending on your view, quite toxic. But Baden-Ox, she's slowly, slowly climbing up the rankings in the polls. What do you make of her performance? And off the back of that, is she perhaps now a threat to Labour in a way they used to see the Greens and reform as threats in its various incarnations? How do you analyse the opposition situation at the moment? You can't underestimate how much reform going so far into the lead really quite soon upended both Labour, who were in government, had won a landslide, and obviously the Conservatives. And they've both had strategies to deal with that.

35:21And as you've said, you could say so far reasonably successful. I mean, I tend to think until you have an election, you don't know what's going to happen and things have moved so quickly. It would be daft to kind of predict forwards. I do think reform are a, you know, they are a serious contender for the longer term. The Greens, I think, if they do not reverse this decision on this, on their sort of motion that got passed at conference, if they really do wait for two years, I think that they will, they will really regret that because I think the Labour Party basically got infiltrated for a period of time.

36:00And it was Kears standing up to that that reversed that. But I think the Greens, I think it's extremely unfortunate that that is now happening to them. So I take as a party political person, I take absolutely no pleasure in it. I'd rather there was a Green Party in contention that had taken a stronger line about it. And we then didn't have the kind of permission for anti-Semitism that is coming with that. So I regret that. But that looks like they are not then viable at the moment. I do think reform revival in the long term, I think we don't know when the next election is going to be. So we don't really know what that's going to look like.

36:33But I do think that the Labour strategy of introducing a new leader, fairly steady at the moment. But over the next 12 to 18 months, gripping and being able to demonstrate that they have gripped immigration, welfare and the economy, I think at least gives us a story to go back to people with. What I worry about is if Labour goes too early, is that if we go before we've been able to demonstrate any effects of having a better Labour government in power than we had before, I think that's a real risk. And I think the public don't think the clock started in July 2026. They think it started in July 2024.

37:12So we're going to have to tell a story that's about what has been achieved over that time and what they will get if Labour is re-elected that we can't do just yet.

37:19Noa Hoffman: Claire, it's been such an interesting and fascinating conversation. Your book, Control How We Lost It and How to Take It Back, is out now. I'm sure we're all good booksellers online. Thank you so much for coming in and thank you for listening to Coffeehouse Shots.

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