What can Andy Burnham learn from Donald Trump?

0:00People don't show up to vote, so I'm asking them to pretend I'm on the ballot.

0:03Ruth Davidson: I'm thrilled he's saying that. His approval ratings are in the toilet. America's midterms matter to all of us. Voters will decide who controls Congress, Trump's Republicans or the Democrats. The people are not being heard. They'll have the power to shape what they can and can't do. We've been traveling the country, speaking to the very people who will decide what happens next. Trump 100. Wherever you get your podcasts. Sky News, the full story first.

0:42Harriet Harman: You can't buy us. Democracy is about something that cannot be bought.

0:47Ruth Davidson: I think it was just unfortunate to use that sum and it's now going to be used politically.

0:57Harriet Harman: Oh my God, that completely changes their machine.

1:09Harriet Harman: Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Ruth Davidson. And me, Harriet Harman. And that's right. As our members already know, we are without Beth this week. Very sadly, we do miss you, Beth, but she's gone off to have a restorative week post the budget. Exhausted, I'm sure. It's been quite a couple of weeks that I've been missing my rigby, I have to say, because I wasn't here the week before. But the show will go on. And what a show we've got for you, because what a week it's been. Oh, my words. Both here and abroad in the US.

1:39Ruth Davidson: Yeah, it feels like for two years we've been living in Trump world and we wake up this morning and we aren't. The Democrats having their moment in the spotlight in the US after winning big in the midterm elections. so we can talk about what Labour can learn from their success. What are the lessons? What's going to be the implication for the world? And what are the lessons for us? And also, we'll talk about immigration and the row about the new rules that Labour's introducing.

2:09Harriet Harman: Lots to get into. But before we do, Harriet, another big thing that happened this week, and this is one of my favourite stories in the year, and every year we have this, and every year it's a corker, which is when dictionaries try to promote their new edition and they put extra new words in it. Do you know what the Collins Dictionary word of the year is? Mogging. Do you know what it is? I do.

2:31Ruth Davidson: But I'm sort of, this is basically about one man in a gym doing his workout, looking over at another man in the gym and the one who is doing better is mogging the one who is doing less well.

2:47Harriet Harman: Well, the thing about mogging is it comes from an acronym. So it comes from AMOG, which is alpha male of the group. And you're right, it did come out of gyms and people like flexing next to each other and having one up.

2:58Ruth Davidson: The idea that we have to have in the Oxford English Dictionary, a kind of macho competitive word, mogging, annoys me. I know it's been now used by women in different circumstances, but oh my goodness me, couldn't we live with a world without mogging. And I've got my own suggestion, actually, from other podcaster, who is Alistair Campbell from The Rest is Politics. His word is perseverance, which is, I suppose, the opposite of snowflakery. It's about a combination of perseverance and resilience. And his new word is perseverance. So I think that would be much better in the Oxford English Dictionary than this ridiculous mogging.

3:36Harriet Harman: But I like that it's been democratised. I like that women have taken it over. And they've started making it about anyone that kind of shows you up or the sort of over tries to kind of put someone else in the shade. And there's just that sense of, I like the idea of taking the piss out of somebody that tries a bit too hard.

3:57Harriet Harman: Right then, Harriet, come on, let's talk about these monumental midterm results then in the US, which saw the Democrats win control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. That means they'll control the whole of Congress for the rest of Trump's presidency. There's been a lot of discussion about where this leaves Donald Trump and how America got to this point. But are there lessons here? I don't know about you, Harriet, but I woke up thinking that maybe the world was a bit of a better place on Wednesday morning and that maybe Americans or cousins had come to their senses a little bit.

4:27Harriet Harman: What was your immediate reaction?

4:29Ruth Davidson: Well, Beth has always said that for the last two years, we've been living in Trump world and we wake up this morning and we aren't, are we anymore? I mean, we talk a lot about the cost of living and the effect on politics in this country of the cost of living crisis. But my goodness, they've had a cost of living, or they call it affordability. They've had an affordability election in the United States, which has seen the Democrats sweep the Republicans away and turned Donald Trump into a lame duck. Although Andy Burnham will feel pleased with the result, obviously, because the Democrats are our sister party and it's good to see them on the advance.

5:07But he also might be thinking, I've promised that

5:10Ruth Davidson: we're going to tackle the cost of living crisis here in the UK. And we've seen what's happened where a political leader, Trump, has promised to tackle the cost of living crisis and actually cost of living has continued to go up. He's been absolutely thrashed at the polls as a result. So that is a warning that actually the cost of living, you have to deal with it to be a political leader. And that is a real warning that's come over from the American result.

5:38Harriet Harman: Well, you know, the one thing that really got me was the kind of immediate fracturing, because we saw kind of J.D. Vance coming out saying, look, this was all about the Iran war. This is all about where we are. But I thought that Andy Burnham's reaction was really interesting because he tied those two things together, didn't he? He said, look, cost of living, Iran war.

5:56Ruth Davidson: Vance has turned against Trump, Vance the vice president, and said that here's the reasons why people turn to the Democrats and away from the Republicans. The cost of living, the forever wars, i.e. wars started in Iran, not putting America first and also Trump's relationship with Israel. But I think the other thing is just to recognise that we should just do a little hurrah for democracy, is that people have, in my view, made a massive mistake in America voting for Trump and now they've corrected it.

6:28Harriet Harman: One of the things that I thought was really interesting was the Senate race in Texas was won by a Democrat, James Tallarico. And one of the things he said at the end of it was that, you know, big money came up against Texans and Texans won. And the reason he said that was because it was the most expensive Senate race in history ever, because Elon Musk plowed over$200 million into it. I mean, Musk put in almost half a billion dollars across this whole midterm election. And I think this maybe has resonance for us in the UK because there was, particularly within the bubble, there was so much of a kind of intake of breath when these two really big donations came to reform.

7:07Harriet Harman: You know, that's£72 million, thinking, oh my God, that completely changes their machine. But there is also, even in America, even in the most kind of American bit of America, where they practically have steaks for breakfast and wear cowboy hats to lunch in Texas, they were like, no, no, we don't like this big money. You can't buy us. Democracy is about something that cannot be bought.

7:29Ruth Davidson: I think that's absolutely right. The idea that democracy can be bought and it's an arms race for whoever can just raise as much money as possible to put into a campaign. Although people's votes have won out against all this massive political investment, it's still very unedifying and worrying. And actually, we've got a bill in Parliament at the moment, which is currently going through the House of Lords. And David Blunkett has put an amendment down to say there should be a cap on the amount any individual can donate to a political party. At the moment, there is no cap on how much you can donate.

8:06Ruth Davidson: And I'm backing that amendment. So I'm signing that amendment. I hope you will too, Ruth.

8:10Harriet Harman: As long as it also, as you know, my big thing is, as long as it also applies to the unions, that multi-million pound bankroll the Labour Party.

8:19Ruth Davidson: We just don't want the principle of money deciding who wins elections. It's got to be an argument of ideas and it's got to be an argument about who's right to lead the country, not who can raise most money.

8:31Harriet Harman: I think there's a lesson here for the Tories as well, actually, which is this idea that kind of the Trumpian flag-waving, we're not going to care about policy, we're just going to stay outrageous populist statements and basically say that if you don't wrap yourself in a flag and vote for us, then you're some kind of, not quite traitor, but that sort of sense isn't enough in politics anymore. Because there was a period where it became fashionable post the first term of Trump in this country, in other countries, for politics generally, to do that kind of very shallow, very populist, chest-thumping politics and get rewarded for it.

9:10Harriet Harman: And actually, we've seen that run out of road. And hopefully, I hope that this brings us back to the sort of politics where you have to fight on the politics of ideas, what works, what delivers, and this sense that it's not about just calling somebody else out or saying that they've got a terrible idea and my idea is brilliant. And that for my own party, we come back to, right, how do we govern? How do we say this is what we'll do if we govern and this is how it will make things better?

9:38Ruth Davidson: But doesn't it also show that momentum is everything in politics? Previously, it was just somehow that Trump was invincible. And I think what we've had in America is an emperor's new clothes moment. Suddenly, everybody's looking at Trump and saying, really? Actually, we're going to do things differently.

9:55Harriet Harman: And I wonder if the kind of once the dust settles, whether this is going to make Trump easier or harder to deal with as a president, And that has implications for us as an ally. It has implications for Andy Burnham. And in fact, it's something that Susie asked over in our new members forum. She said, what impact do you think Trump losing the midterms will have on the UK? Do you think he'll be so frustrated that he'll start doing crazy things again, like raising tariffs, criticising RPM he has form? I mean, Susie, great question. I like the idea that you think he's going to start doing crazy things, because I would argue that he might have already started doing some mad things, including the tariffs, which came back to bite him.

10:39Harriet Harman: But Harriet, have you got an answer there for Susie?

10:42Ruth Davidson: Well, I think the hallmark of Trump, isn't it, is that he's completely unpredictable. So trying to predict whether he's going to get even worse is very difficult. But I think it also makes it easier for the UK government to work with Trump. I don't think there'll be a change of position. The position is they are important allies. We want to work with them on not only on economic issues, but obviously on security issues, whilst keeping our distance where we think they've done things absolutely wrong, like we did on Iran. So I think that steady support for the special relationship will be there.

11:15Ruth Davidson: But I think it would just feel a bit easier that we won't have Trump hopefully turning around and telling us we should have a united Ireland. And that despite NATO, he's going to be taking over Greenland. Hopefully some of that worrying noise will die down because people want stability.

11:33Harriet Harman: Presumably, as well as dealing with the government, it's a much happier place for Labour to deal with the Democrats.

11:38Ruth Davidson: Well, the Democrats are Labour's sister party and therefore Labour and the Democrats work together consistently. And this certainly, this election result that we've seen this week makes it more likely that we might see a Democratic president, which seemed like a vanishing prospect just a few weeks ago.

12:01Harriet Harman: Let's talk about Shabana Mahmood and the immigration rules. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty fair to say that Shabana Mahmood was in the spotlight this week, Harriet, particularly in the UK, because she backed down, is how it's been written up, of her plans to make migrant care workers wait up to 15 years for permanent settlement in the UK, also called indefinite leave to remain, while extending it up to 30 years for some other migrants. And of course, a political row has erupted over this, as these things do, with the right branding it a U-turn that will cost billions and some on the left calling the reforms cruel and un-British.

12:37Harriet Harman: I mean, that's pretty strong stuff.

12:39Ruth Davidson: But before we get into the politics of it all, I'm so pleased to say we've recruited an absolute expert on home affairs to help us explain all of this. Danny Shaw, who advised Yvette Cooper on home affairs for many years and so been at the coalface. Welcome to the show, Danny. It's really good to be here. Can you just explain to us what was originally proposed, what's now being proposed and what it all means? I think the first thing to say about this package of reforms announced by Shabana Mahmood is that it's a pretty tough package, actually, in terms of settlement, which is essentially people being given indefinite leave to remain, which allows them to stay in the UK to work or study and claim benefits.

13:17The default position pretty much is around five years. You've got to be in the UK for five years. Shabana Mahmood planned to lengthen that and in particular what she planned was that for people who were lower earners they would have to wait 15 years and that would have caught hundreds of thousands of care workers including those who had already arrived in the UK were working in the UK and were expecting to be able to claim settlement after five years and that was what the big sort of political rumpus was really focused on. She's moved from that position. The 15 years has gone. Care workers who were here by May 2025 will be able to claim settlement after five years if they're earning£25 ,000.

14:07And if they're not, they will be given another five years to carry on working here in the care sector and then put in a claim for settlement. So the broad package is settlement moves from five to 10 years. There are some exceptions like care workers and various others as well. But overall, it's a pretty tough package in terms of settlement. Just one example, the government is saying if you've got a criminal record at all, no matter what it is, whether it's a caution, whether it's a conviction for a minor speeding offence, whatever, you will not be able to claim indefinitely to remain. That's gone.

14:49One other measure that's being toughened is the requirement on English language. It used to be that in order to settle, you had to learn English up to sort of GCSE standard, English as a foreign language. Now it's going to be A-level standard, for example. You won't be able to have any debts. If you want to settle and you've got income tax you haven't paid, you won't be allowed to under these new rules.

15:10Harriet Harman: So Danny, I mean, I think that let's zoom out a little bit because this is incredibly technical. And as you say, there's lots of different sort of ways in which you can and lengths of time you've got to wait some three years, some five, some 10, some 20, some don't get to at all. But if we zoom out just a little bit, first of all, none of this is about people that have come here illegally. This is about people, mostly about people that have come here to work through legal routes. Is that right? It's mostly about that, but the measures do include provisions for people who've come here illegally on small boats.

15:42And the rules there are going to get very, very stringent. They will be able to claim settlement rights either at 20 years if they're working or 30 years if they're not. So that is a big shift from where we are at the moment. So it does include people who've come here illegally, asylum seekers who've come under legal safe routes, they will be able to claim settlement after five years. So it covers everyone, basically. And, you know, the government is saying that between now and 2030, they expect about 1.9 million people to settle in the UK, about 500 ,000 will be able to settle later because of the measures that they've announced previously was thought that it would be about 800 ,000 settling later.

16:31Harriet Harman: There was something that Shabana Mahmood said when she first put this forward was that to not do this, it would cost 10 billion pounds. And then she said that the changes, even though they're different to what she proposed, would save billions of pounds. And to be honest, I'm not entirely sure where the money's coming from, because all of the conversation about this is about people that are going to be here, earn money, they're going to pay taxes, they're going to be in jobs. So how is that costing UK PLC? I think there's been some confusion over the costing, but what the Home Office said, and what Shaban Mahmood said, was that all the care workers who were going to settle between now and 2030, over the net lifetime cost of them would be£10 billion pounds.

17:18That doesn't mean that not allowing them to settle between 2030 is going to be a saving of 10 billion, because some of them may well settle later under her plans for 15 years. So I think there was a bit of misunderstanding about the figure. She's now simply saying that it will save billions in costs to the Department for Work and Pensions, because fewer people will be able to settle and some will settle later. So I think this will save some money, but it's also very difficult to calculate because we had another forecast from the IPPR, the Institute for Public Policy Research, which said that actually using the Home Office calculations, the total cost for all skilled workers and dependents who would be given settlement in the 2026 to 2030 cohort over a lifetime will be£115 billion positive to UK finances in terms of the taxes that they will pay.

18:20Harriet Harman: Well, Danny, thank you so much for giving us all of that detail here. We're going to let you go and Harriet and I can get into the politics of this, Harriet, because this is one where there really has been a bit of to and fro between Labour and the Conservatives. Thank you very much for inviting me.

18:39Nothing beats a good catch-up with your nearest and dearest. And that's what we do on Life with Nat. I'm Natalie Cassidy and on my podcast, I'm joined by the people who make my life brilliantly chaotic. There's my fiancé Mark, my brother Tony, my sister-in-law Aunty Linney and my nieces Elsbells and Roro. One minute we're laughing, the next we're putting the world to rights. Join the family and listen to Life With Nat every Monday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Nobody warns you about midlife. One minute you're getting on with life, the next you're questioning your marriage, your career, your wardrobe and whether you even like your friends.

19:18Welcome to Self Care Club, the midlife edition. I'm Nicole Goodman. And I'm Lauren Mishkon and this is the award winning podcast that tackles what it really means to be a woman in midlife. We bring in expert guests, have candid conversations, ask the questions you want answered so we can all figure it out together. Welcome to Self-Care Club, the midlife edition, because there's a lot more to midlife than menopause.

19:46Ruth Davidson: I think a lot of the time, lots of figures are banded about about this and it can be quite confusing. But I think you're right, Ruth, to pick up on this£10 billion figure where Shabana Mahmood, when she was introducing her original proposals, she said one of the reasons why we need to go ahead with this is it could save the benefit bill£10 billion from people who won't be getting settlement and who won't therefore be able to claim£10 billion worth of benefits and therefore it will save the public purse. and now because she's doing less than she was originally proposing, people are saying, okay, so that£10 billion is not going to be saved.

20:30Ruth Davidson: And I think she might be feeling a bit regretful for having put that figure out there in the public domain because it was an estimate of what might have been saved from the public purse if a particular set of proposals were to go ahead. And ultimately, the government is not going ahead with those proposals. So it's kind of a notional saving foregone. But my worry is now that the opposition, the Tories and reform will be majoring on this and somehow saying that the new proposals are costing£10 billion, which is something very different. I think it was just unfortunate to use that sum. And it's now going to be used politically to cloud discussion of what are, I think, a very sensible, fair and firm set of proposals.

21:22Ruth Davidson: And also about this point about criminal offences. I think people feel really strongly. When I was a member of parliament and had a very ethnically diverse constituency in Peckham, I knew how strongly my constituents, both the ones who were immigrants and the ones who were brought up here, felt about people coming to this country and then making the lives of the local community a misery by committing offences. And people felt so strongly about it that I actually had a rule that I wouldn't even chase up inquiries and found out where a case was in the system on behalf of somebody who was living in my constituency, if they or a family member had committed a criminal offence.

22:07Ruth Davidson: And the reason why I took this very drastic action was because there was a Sierra Leonean community christening in my constituency. And what happens is when people are attending christening, they all bring money to give to the new family to welcome the new baby. And there were two youths who'd come from Nigeria who, obviously knowing this was the case, came to rob the christening and they fired a gun in order to get people to give up their money and they fired it into the air, but it ricocheted off the ceiling of the community centre where this was happening and killed the woman who was there.

22:52Ruth Davidson: And there was a criminal investigation, obviously. And then when the Met Police went and searched the home of this family, they discovered letters from me, copies of letters from me to the Home Office, asking for this family to be able to have indefinite leave to remain or at least finding where they'd got to in the system. and there was such an outcry against the idea of helping people who are making the lives of other people in the community a misery. I thought I had a big consultation and everybody said, don't help anybody in any way who's come here and committed criminal offences. If you want to come here, you've got to play by the rules, even more so than people who were born and brought up here.

23:36Ruth Davidson: You just have to deal with people who were born and brought up here who've committed criminal offences. But if people are asking for something, if they're asking for permission to stay, they've got to set a high standard or otherwise, why should the country respond to them?

23:50Harriet Harman: But I want to ask you a more broad question, Harriet, because I'm kind of surprised about the way in which this has gone, because it seems to me, as it would be quite ideologically uncomfortable for a Labour Party, this particular incarnation of the Labour Party under Andy Burnham to say that if you earn over£125 ,000 a year, you get to have citizenship within three years. If you earn over£50 ,271 a year, you get to have citizenship within five years. But if you earn between sort of£12 ,500 and£50 ,000, you're going to have to wait 10 years to become a citizen of this country. And it does seem to be, and if this had been a Tory policy, a set of policies, that it seems to me the Andy Burnham attack on it would have been that if you're rich, you can buy your way into Britain.

24:37Harriet Harman: And if you're a poor, hardworking person that works in the service industry or you're delivering public services, you have to go to the back of the queue. And does that not seem an uncomfortable place for an Andy Burnham Labour Party to be?

24:52Ruth Davidson: Well, I think you're absolutely right to pick up on this, Ruth. So what Shabana is saying, there's two ways you can hasten your right to get permanent settlement. One is by working hard in the public sector or in care work. And the other is by having shed loads of money, and therefore you're paying your taxes. Now, in the past, you're absolutely right, Ruth, the left would say, why should people just because they're rich get a free pass into this country, where people who are contributing and working hard, for example, in public services, don't? And I think the argument put forward quite simply and straightforwardly by Shabana Mahmood is we want their taxes.

25:30Ruth Davidson: And if they're coming here and earning a lot and therefore paying a lot in taxes, we want that money into the Exchequer in order to fund our public services and to deal with our deficit. And that is the argument. And it's been so interesting that there's been not a squeak out of the left, which has had it as an article of faith for years that you shouldn't prioritise settlement for people on the basis of their wealth. But actually, she's turned it round and said it's on the basis of their tax contribution. And that's why we're welcoming them, because they're going to be helping pay money into the Exchequer.

26:04Harriet Harman: Do you know, Harriet, one of the things that I think is most interesting is that the reform response to this has been to say that they're going to review citizenship of anyone that settles under these rules, potentially with a view to revoking it. And the response from the Green Party is Zach Polanski saying that these are cruel reforms. And yet neither of them have made particular waves. They haven't really had a big kind of uptake out there, to me it seems anyway. And it seems to me that even a year ago, both of them on an issue of immigration from opposite ends of the sort of poles would have been able to exert much more pressure on the government than are exerting now.

26:46Harriet Harman: And it did feel to me like a straw in the wind that we're almost back to kind of two-party politics, where it's the Tories versus Labour on a big issue of the day. Well, I think it's two reasons.

26:56Ruth Davidson: Firstly, I think that people in the Parliamentary Labour Party are taking the judgment that it's actually a sensible set of proposals, that it's defensible, that they can go out and argue it and sound as if it's perfectly reasonable. But secondly, they just don't want to be rocking the boat. They know it's just very recently that they had a massive rebellion which showed that Keir Starmer, although he was prime minister, he couldn't actually get things through the House of Commons and it undermined the government. So I think it's that they think the proposals are sensible and they also are fearing instability.

27:32Ruth Davidson: And that's why I don't think that even though some might have private views that it's not tough enough and she shouldn't have backed down or that it's too tough and it's unfair and helps rich people at the expense of poorer people. I think people will, members of Parliament, Labour members of Parliament, will keep their concerns to themselves. And this is now going to be a done deal. And I think that's rightly so. I think immigration can be such a divisive issue. It's good if people think that the government are being fair, have got control of the situation and that there is stable political support in Parliament behind that.

28:11Harriet Harman: Now, Harriet, I always love when we have a procedural question, because as a former mother of the House and the longest serving female MP in there, there is nothing about parliamentary procedure that you don't know. So explain to me and to our listeners why there's going to be no parliamentary showdown about this, why there's going to be no rebels on the back benches. Explain how this works.

28:31Ruth Davidson: Well, sometimes when the government's making a change, they have to bring legislation to Parliament and there has to be a vote to change the law. The government have got the power through the Home Office, through existing rules and laws and regulations to make this change without changing the law, without having a new bill brought forward. So that means they don't have to have a big in-principle vote. Now, it might well be that there is a vote of some sort in Parliament that the opposition can make an Opposition Day debate and make MPs vote on it. But it won't be what's called an effective vote.

29:07Ruth Davidson: It will be a show of views in Parliament, but it won't actually change the substance. And I think on that basis, those people who might on the Labour side have been tempted to cause a fuss about this and show their opposition are thinking, well, there's no point because if there's not even a focal point where we can vote against it, we might as well just suck it up. So effectively, it just makes it easier for the government to make this change. They've been quite straightforward, bringing forward a set of proposals, then having a statement at the end of the consultation. But I think now they've got to settle down and actually make the new system work.

29:47Harriet Harman: Well, Harriet, you mentioned the consultation there and consultations happen before kind of all of the law changes. And it's a way to make sure that outside of Parliament is feeding into the democratic process. There has been some commentary about the consultation on this one and it's had some attention. And the reason that it is is because the way in which governments do consultations, you take down lots of information about people. And this one showed that only 18 % of the people that responded to this consultation said that they were already British citizens or were British citizens from birth versus 73 % who said that they were current visa holders.

30:25Harriet Harman: So that's people who are here, who have a right to be here, who are working here, but who are not citizens already. So can you explain to me how consultations work? And I mean, because they're not like polls, are they? They're not like they try and get this right number of people to represent the country from age ranges and places that they live and all the rest of it. It's a bit self-selecting.

30:47Ruth Davidson: Absolutely. It's like, here's a set of proposals. Anybody who's got views on them, this is your moment to put in your views. So for example, when the government were consulting about big changes for special educational needs, there was massive response to the consultation, overwhelmingly from parents with children who did have special educational needs. So it is self-selecting the people who respond to the consultation. But there's two things about a consultation period. One is the external, the public and the sector, but the other is internal, which is what MPs think. And MPs have been important contributors to this consultation.

31:28Ruth Davidson: And I think Andy Burnham and Shabana Mahmood have listened to that because what they don't want is a situation where the government brings forward proposals, as with what happened with Keir Starmer, and the parliamentary Labour Party say, no, we're not going with that.

31:42Harriet Harman: I mean, there is also quite a big industry now for charities, organisations, lobbyists, etc., to try and motivate people in a particular way to on particular consultations to all pile in behind one particular angle. And I mean, that's perfectly legitimate. It's completely allowed. So do you ever just dismiss what's in a consultation? Do you ever read it and go, all right, yeah, OK, you know, a lobbyist group's clearly got people to pile in here. or do you have to do it? I mean, there's no restrictions on ministers having to actually do what a consultation comes out in favour of, do they?

32:19Ruth Davidson: No, you're not mandated. It's not like a referendum where if a majority are against your proposals, you can't go ahead with them. Or if a majority are in favour of them, then you definitely have got to go ahead. But I think that the point you make about some organisations generating lots of support or opposition to a proposal is important because actually, if people can be motivated to be very in favour of something or very against it, the government does have to take that into account. One of the things that's been discussed recently is the consultation on the special educational needs proposals, because it's been a very controversial issue.

33:00Ruth Davidson: And although the proposals that come out undoubtedly won't please everybody, people will give the government credit that in a difficult area, they have really, really tried to listen.

33:15Harriet Harman: That is all we've got time for today. One thing to mention, if you are one of our members, if you're coming to our live show in just a couple of weeks' time, our favourite part of live shows has always been hearing from you and answering your questions live on stage. So we've started an area on the members' forum for you to submit your questions in advance. The link will be in your newsletter this week as well as in the show notes for this episode.

33:37Ruth Davidson: And if you've not got your tickets yet for the show on the 26th of November in London, there are a few left and the link for that is also in the show notes.

33:46Harriet Harman: And we'll be back on Tuesday for our members episode. But from Harriet and I just now, goodbye.

33:52Ruth Davidson: Goodbye.

34:00Nothing beats a good catch up with your nearest and dearest. And that's what we do on Life with Nat. I'm Natalie Cassidy and on my podcast I'm joined by the people who make my life brilliantly chaotic There's my fiancé Mark my brother Tony my sister-in-law Aunty Linny and my nieces Elsbells and Roro One minute we're laughing the next we're putting the world to rights Join the family and listen to Life with Nat every Monday and Thursday wherever you get your podcasts