Can the Burnham & Trump love-in last?

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2:45Ed Balls: by the Political Currency podcast. Anyway, half of it. He may well be in coalition talks in a couple of years' time, and he knows it because he's been there. But he has to face both ways, doesn't he? Crucially. Which his activists don't like. How realistic was it for Nick Clegg to prop up Gordon Brown? He'd lost the election in a long period of Labour government. But I tell you, there was enough doubt in our mind as Conservatives. If Dave Davies sewn up for Labour, then he's lost a key period of leverage in those talks.

3:14Welcome to Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne. We've got lots of current news to talk about, but I want to take you on a trip down memory lane to start with Ed. Who was the Labour spin doctor who said that Gordon Brown had psychological flaws?

3:32Ed Balls: Well, of course, Alastair Campbell has always denied what is, I think, you know, the absolutely categorically exposed reality. Yes. that it was him. This was for the Andrew Rawnsley book, wasn't it? It was. Now, the reason I'm raising that is I can't help but notice that your former boss, Gordon Brown, the man who you've been utterly loyal to in private as well as in public, seems to have done an interview on another podcast. I mean, one might say a lesser podcast. Well, obviously. But, I mean... And who hosts that podcast? Alistair Campbell and Roy Stewart. And I'm absolutely... George, honestly, I'm baffled by it.

4:10Ed Balls: And I've said to Gordon a couple of times over the last year or so, he should come on. And I thought he was thinking about it. He's gone on, I mean, just think of the thing. He could have come on our podcast. We did an Inside the Room on the election, which didn't happen. And so that's been done. But he could have come on and talked about what happened with bank independence or the euro or the night before the bailouts in the financial crisis or the G20 summit, which saved the world. So many things he could come on and reflect upon with us. and I don't know. I mean, look, Gordon, it is not too late to set things straight.

4:47Ed Balls: It's fine to go and warm up. I mean, when I used to do media interviews, if I was on the Today programme, before I went on the Today programme, I often liked to do BBC radio leads just to get in the swing of it, kind of warm up. Oh, I see. And maybe, Gordon, having done the rest is politics, that he should come on. By the way, talking of the rest is politics, Did you see the meme moment where Rory Stewart, he's on Newsnight. Somebody's clearly told him he needs to listen to what other people say. So he turns to listen to the New States and political editor, Alvaray. And I mean, it is quite, it is quite a moment.

5:23I mean, it's quite, yes, you showed it to me. It's quite a sort of, he sort of jerks his head around and stares at her.

5:29Ed Balls: He pays close attention. I mean, yeah. If people think the robots have already secretly taken over, that would be a clue, wouldn't it? That is why Gordon Brown should come on Inside the Room. Yeah, don't hang. Stop hanging out with the Blairites and the Old Etonians. Come and join us. Come and come on with the people who believe in politics and public service. Talking of things hitting the media this week while you've been away, I've been on Good Morning Britain and we've been talking all week, of course, about the Earl Spencer, Charles Spencer book. And where, you know, he says it's a work of history and it's the celebration of his late sister's memory, Diana.

6:07Ed Balls: But, you know, I have to say, it just reads like a hatchet job against the king and the royal family, who Piers Morgan says are spitting blood about it. Two things. First of all... I'm not sure how Piers would know that, but anyway. I think Piers knows that because he is in close touch. And on our programme, he said, I'm not going to reveal any of my sources, I'm not going to talk about any private conversations, but I know for a fact they are spitting blood and absolutely furious. So let's just say I think Piers was well sourced. And of course, Piers is suing the book and Penguin because it categorically gets the facts about Piers totally wrong, claims he was at the Mirror.

6:47Ed Balls: And when the Mirror did a big payout to Diana, whereas in fact at that point he was not at the Mirror at all. He was at the Sun. But two things, because we've talked a lot about memoirs, political memoirs over the last few years. two things. First of all, you always know when somebody uses reported speech in a memoir, you know, my memory is this is what happened. You know immediately when you read it, whether it rings true, whether it's authentic. And I just don't think the Charles Spencer accounts of what the king was supposedly saying on the phone to him on the day Diana died just rings true to me at all.

7:19Ed Balls: But the second thing is, I agree with that. I mean, it's so unlikely he would say what he's the legend have said by Earl Spencer. And the idea he was giddy on that day. He would have been absolutely mortified and on edge. And I just feel as though it's one of those occasions where the author projects onto the person they're speaking to through their memory what they believe was the case as opposed to what was actually the case. Wow. I mean, that's a pretty charitable way of putting it. I mean, maybe he just needed the books to sell, didn't he? Well, that is a less charitable way. And that may well be true.

7:53Ed Balls: The other thing though is we've said in this podcast, you always, if you're a public figure, think about what is the first line of your obituary. And Charles Spencer has been very open in saying that, you know, his parents died in their 60s. Diana, of course, has passed away. He thinks this may be his last contribution, important for him to write this book. He would, before this book, have been seen historically as the man who made the speech at Diana's funeral. Yes, it was very powerful, wasn't it? Very powerful. There'll be people who listen to this podcast who don't remember, but he talked about Diana, the hunter in Greek mythology, becoming the hunted by the press.

8:33It was a very moving oration.

8:35Ed Balls: And for years afterwards, he kept her flame alive. But I'm afraid this book changes the first paragraph of his, and the truth is it won't be remembered, and he won't be remembered in the first paragraph about Diana and her memory. He'll be remembered for this sort of personal vindictive assault on the monarchy. And it's a tragedy. And I just think, you know, I mean, as you say, maybe he needs the money. But if not, he's being very badly advised. Yeah, I think the first line of his obituary was written when his sister married Prince Charles back in, what, 1981, whatever it was. I think, you know, the brother of Princess Diana has passed away.

9:21That will be the first line of his epitome.

9:23Ed Balls: Well, I know, but that's true. So on to the podcast. Yeah, at least things are much more rational in politics because we are going to be talking about Andy Burnham's big trip to the United Nations this week, his first meeting with Donald Trump and the discussion at the UN about AI and that crucial meeting, which is underway as we speak between Donald Trump and President Xi. Then, of course, we are just a few weeks away from the US midterms. George said back at Christmas that these midterms would be the biggest political event of 2026. And I think that may well prove to be right. The Republicans on track for heavy losses.

10:06Ed Balls: But also you start to see Republicans trying to distance themselves from the Trump administration halfway through. And depending on how this result goes, it will change the course of global politics in the next two years. We'll discuss that next. Yeah, there are some emerging Democrat stars. Of course, we've got our own version of the Democrats, the Liberal Democrats. Not quite as exciting. They've had their own conference this week. And I know you're a big fan of Ed Davey, but some people, believe it or not, are questioning whether he should continue to be the leader of the party. We're going to look back on their week by the seaside.

10:41Ed Balls: I mean, fan or not, he was objectively the politician of the year 2024, as judged by the Political Currency podcast. Anyway, let us start, though, with the Andy Burnham trip to New York. We know from the beginning, unlike Keir Starmer, never hear Keir, as he was described by the Conservatives. Andy Burnham wants to focus on the domestic agenda, but this was his first, I mean, he'd been out to Ukraine, but this was his first sort of global leaders summit going out to the UN. And we speculated a week ago that going into that first meeting with Donald Trump, not in the White House, but at the UN, fraught with risk for Andy Burnham and his team, because they'd have no idea what was going to be said in the meeting, what Donald Trump would say after the meeting.

11:35Ed Balls: Would he be criticising this socialist, left-wing, callow youth, Andy Burnham? Where's he come from? In fact, I mean, it couldn't have gone better in optics terms for the new prime minister and his team. This is Donald Trump with Andy Burnham after their meeting, meeting the press and is asked how the meeting went. Mr. President, relations between the US and the UK have been a little bit up and down lately. No, I think they're up. What sort of state would you say they're in now? They were with the last prime minister, let me put it that way. You're getting on well. But even on that, I mean, we took care.

12:16We made a deal that nobody else could make with Rolls-Royce. We made sure that Rolls-Royce was being properly taken care of. We made a lot of concessions. But, no, I think right now, based on my relationship with your Prime Minister, Andy, I think that we're doing very well.

12:34Ed Balls: And a slightly shell-shocked Andy Burnham. He had to go off and, I think, make a midnight speech to the UN later. but this was a rather shell-shocked Andy Burnham, reflecting on how the meeting went. Every British politician, or at least most British politicians, certainly those on the left of politics, have said critical things about Donald Trump over the last decade. And even if they delete them from X, as the Defence Minister Luke Pollard did, if a savvy Good Morning Britain political producer recorded them at the time, they can still be read out. Andy Burnham went slightly further, said in 2017 that as a matter of principle, he would not meet President Donald Trump.

13:11Ed Balls: Of course, he didn't know he was going to be Prime Minister a few years later. This is Andy Burnham reflecting on his meeting. I can certainly work with him. It was a very encouraging meeting. We've established a good connection in the discussions we've had, and that very much came through today. A lot of common ground. He was very upbeat about the country's prospects, which, to be honest, was great to hear. Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's not an easy meeting to take for anyone. And there are echoes of the other two British prime ministers who've had to deal with Donald Trump, Theresa May and Keir Starmer.

13:47And actually, Donald Trump has a history generally of being quite nice on the first meeting with people. You know, everyone, I think, has in their head the kind of encounter with Zelensky in the Oval Office or the ambush of the South African president in the Oval Office. But more often than not, he's pretty positive about someone on his first meeting. and it's only later that he you know maybe kind of undermined Theresa May saying Boris Johnson would be better and he started pining on the pressure with Keir Starmer earlier this year as well so but I think if you're the Andy Burnham team it was a whirlwind trip to New York and you know the meeting went fine he did look pretty nervous as I think any I mean to be fair you or

14:30Ed Balls: I would be nervous you're sitting there waiting to hear what he's about to say he knows what's going to come out I mean he may be the prime minister of Great Britain but it's still a kind of you know nerve-wracking moment so i think you know that went as well as you could possibly hope it would have gone although he did appear to make a concession on chagos islands which we might touch upon and then his speech to the un general assembly i mean no one was listening to it because it was literally midnight and there was an empty room but it you know this week all these leaders around the world they just get up to the podium and read out their thing but if you actually read the speech and saw clips on the television i thought it was a pretty coherent speech you were you were saying to me earlier in the week um you know that you thought it had kind of meshed his sort of domestic and foreign policy agenda together which quite often prime ministers find hard to do you were saying last week you weren't sure whether there was a foreign policy narrative yeah and this was the first attempt to fill in that space yeah and i also thought you know there was a i'm not saying i'd love to think they listened to our podcast and you know said oh we better do that but um you know i was also saying i'd like to see you know britain step up a bit on international AI leadership in the same way that Rishi Sunak did.

15:38And definitely, I think the British were able to articulate something more of a kind of international agenda on AI regulation. And crucially, Burnham will have the G20 presidency for the first time actually since Gordon Brown back in the financial crash. Is he having it in Leeds? Is it in Bristol? Is it in Edinburgh? Well, Keir Starmer took the decision before the mayor of Manchester came from the north to unseat him, to have it in Manchester, in the conference centre where I have given many speeches and I'm sure you have.

16:09Ed Balls: I mean, the thing, Andy Burnham's team clearly think that the way he can do this is go in to an international meeting, 24 hours, and come out. And if that is their strategy, he mixed with world leaders, did a panel about Israel-Palestine with Mark Carney and President Macron. He did a good speech, which, as you said, was coherent and made sense of Andy Burnham making that speech. The Trump meeting went well. He looks like somebody who is comfortable in his skin on the international agenda as well as on the domestic agenda. And I think with Trump, Trump gets charmed by people, but he also likes people who have a bit of confidence and élite.

16:53Ed Balls: He said about Andy Burnham that he was businesslike, you know, like a business person, which of course is for Donald Trump, the highest accolade. Whether Andy Burnham, we said this in the podcast, whether he's got the big answers to the big questions for the future of Britain, whether his 10 year plan, the budget, making the sums add up, really forcing forward an agenda, that's all still to come. But in terms of being comfortable in your own skin doing the job, you know, once again, the contrast with the last few prime ministers is marked. Yes. I mean, as I say, you know, he definitely will have felt that his 24 hour whirlwind trip to New York passed off pretty well.

17:33I would say if you were there and I was not in New York this week, I was in Dublin, as happens, but I was in New York, wasn't in New York. Would you have actually noticed that the British Prime Minister showed up? I mean, was he if you were just one of the people mullying in the crowd at the UN, you know, obviously you would have noticed Donald Trump turning up, threatening to obliterate Iran. You know, you would have heard the AI leaders speaking to the UN General Assembly President Xi's now arrived. I mean, the British Prime Minister. Yeah, I don't think, yeah, Andy Burnham has made a sort of impact on the world stage.

18:09I'm not saying he was trying to or but he's not yet the like a kind of Emmanuel Macron, Mark Carney, kind of an established figure who people. Let's hear what this guy's got to say. Do you think that's not his fault? That's just because it's yet another British prime minister. And I think the world will slightly reserve judgment until they take a view. Oh, actually, this guy is going to be here for a bit longer than some of the recent incumbents.

18:33Ed Balls: And you raised AI because, as you said, you've been in Ireland talking about AI with Irish politicians. and there was a 20 countries put out like an AI manifesto, which Britain didn't sign up to. Which Ireland did. Which Ireland did. Andy Burnham went out to say something which he wanted to be big on AI and the importance of global regulation standards. Do you think that had any resonance? Well, I think it only has resonance in as much as Britain has the G20 presidency next year. and if you know if people are looking for an organization or a gathering that might come up with global rules that might provide a forum for you know a framework for discussing AI and the G20 presents itself as a pretty obvious one because it's a place where China and the United States sit together and so I think people will look at it from that point of view and they'll also Britain will have a reputation other countries have this reputation like France but Britain has a reputation for being good at kind of international summit diplomacy and using a G20 for real purpose rather than it just being a showy moment to have a kind of grand dinner.

19:43So I think people, you know, in the kind of permanent secretariats of the chancellories and presidential offices around the world, they'll be going, okay, that's what we're going to be talking about at the G20 in the next 12 months. So that's his significance. He's the chair of the G20 in the coming year.

20:00Ed Balls: There was a big interesting question for Britain by the way whether to invite Vladimir Putin to that G20 summit because he has been invited by the Americans to their hosting the G20 and he's been invited to the big leaders summit in Miami later this year just confirmed this week which will be uncomfortable and there will be a whole kind of discussion about whether other leaders will boycott it but I don't think you boycott a G20 summit no and I I have a controversial view which not everyone's going to agree with at all that the whole purpose of the g20 is to force difficult conversations and to get people who are not allies around the same table it's not the g7 no and the ga went which used to have russia in as well um but but the the whole point as you say is to have the broadest group of the biggest countries and that's independent of ideology yeah which is which is what the un was always about and it's what the imf has always been about the thing which kind of jarred with me so why didn't britain sign this kind of international statement about AI.

21:02Ed Balls: It could be because going into the summit when you're going to meet Donald Trump, what you don't want to do is kind of poke the bear by doing something the Americans aren't going to do the day before you have your Andy Burnham meeting with Donald Trump. But there was a piece this morning in The Times, AI companies using fear for profit, say UK officials. And it's very well kind of sourced. this is written by Max Kendix, the Washington correspondent, Stephen Swinford, political editor, he would have been out with Andy Burnham, Mark Selman, technology correspondent, and Katie Balls, Washington editor.

21:34Ed Balls: They've all got their names on it. So this is not from someone sitting in London this week? This is not from somebody sitting in London. If you know how to read these pieces. Absolutely. This is somebody who was on the trip. I slightly wondered to myself whether the new AI minister, who is, I think, very good, but less experienced, Kanishka Narayan, whether he kind of has made the classic mistake of sitting on the plane and thinking, if I'm at 35 ,000 feet, I can share my views with Steve Swinford, because, I mean, surely he's not really concentrating at 35 ,000 feet. He must be drinking his gin and tonic.

22:05Ed Balls: And those are where you make mistakes. But the piece basically says, you know, US artificial intelligence companies are deliberately overstating the risk posed by their technology for their own financial benefits, say, British officials. they say that you know all these stark warnings are just trying to rig the system to make the regulation keep out incumbents and that we can't have much influence anyway and to the extent we do it's only by trying to get into the american process i read this piece and thought to myself it's one totally contrary to what andy burnham said it's also crazy politics you know at a time when the ai companies themselves are talking up about risk and asking for regulation when you have the Australian Prime Minister complaining he's only just found out recently about a breach of an Australian government system by a rogue OpenAI agent.

22:58Ed Balls: Politically, you want to be saying, we're taking this really seriously. We're looking to see what we've got to do. The idea that you want to be telling people, actually, it's not really that big a deal and we don't need to get involved. If something goes wrong in the next three to six months, you do not want to be the people who look like you were complacent if I was Kemi Badenoch I would be jumping on this and demanding Andy Burnham and the government get serious because you can't put Britain at risk I mean it's a slightly odd these mixed messages we're getting out of the government I think I think that's partly because Britain is trying to land in a somewhat different place from some of these European countries that signed I think it was originally promoted by Norway this motion on global regulation of AI.

23:42First of all, Britain knows that it's all a bit performative unless the US is engaged. Totally right. I thought it was interesting, by the way, that Andy Burnham described America as our closest ally in the speech at the UN. You know, had no problem saying that. So you've got to keep the United States engaged. The G20 presidency is happening under a Trump presidency. So you can't wait out the Trump presidency. And it's consistent with the SUNAC and Starmer position on AI, which is you want to work with the AI labs who are, including the company I work for, OpenAI, calling for common standards, a global coordination of oversight and regulation.

24:27And you're trying to do it in a way that's not like we're doing this to the industry and we're going to try and come up with a set of rules, you know, independent of the industry's ideas. We're going to try and do it with the industry because this is a technology that they know best and we don't. We're going to try and aim for, let's take the first step rather than start with trying to find the end game of some massive global treaty on AI. Let's see if we can agree common standards, common reporting mechanisms, common oversight mechanisms. So it feels, you know, a bit, you know, like not as exciting as some new global treaty, but absolutely crucial to get any kind of international agreement.

25:07Ed Balls: But you're describing the Andy Burnham speech. What I'm saying to you is that this Times brief piece is actually much more sceptical and negative. Personally, I would be quite sceptical about doing the regulation the big AI companies want, because I would think to myself, I need to make sure as a regulator, I'm not going to do something which stops the entrant, the outside. I don't want to hand over power for them to protect their market. But that's not the same as saying there's not a problem here. And therefore, do we really have to engage and let's just let the Americans run with it? You can see what I mean.

25:36Ed Balls: Over the last couple of years, it sometimes felt as though the British government thought we need growth from anywhere if we can get it from ai let's deregulate and go for it i don't think that's the right political positioning yes i mean it was of course a big brexiteer argument that eu ai regulation was pricing them out of the technology this that britain could take advantage if you remember even the tony blair essay on what burnham should do with his premiership um talked about britain having an advantage over the eu on ai regulation although i noticed tony Blair's now saying we should rejoin the EU in the preface to a new report.

26:13Ed Balls: Two days before the Labour conference, Tony Blair tells Andy Burnham he has to rejoin the European Union and fight the next general election on that. I mean, can you think of a worse time and more... Or better time. Well, I mean, it's so toxic. Well, he's spending all that time in the gym. He's got like, you know, Tony Blair knows how to grab headlines and shape the policy debate. Well, hang on a sec. If you're talking about how to grab headlines, this definitely gets 10 out of 10. But in terms of shaping the policy debate, if Emmanuel Macron or Giorgio Meloni, Frederick Mertz come out and say, we want Britain to join the EU.

26:57Ed Balls: And on these terms, please come to us. That makes sense. The idea that Tony Blair saying that's what we should do helps with the politics of this for Andy Burnham at all is just kind of ridiculous. And I mean, it may be, you know, self-serving doesn't do Andy Burnham any good at all. It makes it much harder for him to pursue that agenda. As you know, I don't think you can pursue that agenda like that anyway. You have to have a new arrangement for the future. You know, whether it was Tony Blair advocating a second referendum in, you know, in 2018-19, which was also massively unhelpful to that cause, even though it got Keir Starmer, the job as Labour leader.

27:40But I mean, you know, this is not statesmanship. Well, I disagree.

27:46Ed Balls: But do you think it helps Andy Burnham that Tony Blair published his article today? No, no, I'm saying I don't think it's not statesmanship. It's trying to anticipate where the debate's going. But let's just... Do you think it helps Andy Burnham, it being published, doesn't it? Well, I think Andy Burnham potentially could make use of... Is it Tony? It's an unknown number, so it could be. Could be Gordon. It could be. Because I don't have his... He doesn't pop up as Gordon in my phone. Could be. A little bit of a diversion. We are being diverted. No, no. But you raised this European thing, and I thought, oh my God, how unhelpful is that?

28:22But in the last two weeks, if you think of the pillars of the brexiteer argument which was we're going to be outside the eu and we don't have to regulate ai as a result that looks pretty thin now this week if you look at the argument that our natural allies the english-speaking world the dominions uh we should we should be looking across the atlantic to canada as our natural ally not to the european continent Mark Carney wants to become an associate member of the EU. And then the big hero of the Brexit here, right, the guy they all said we should be copying. And Kemi Baden-Ock said she's a big fan of Xavier Millet, the president of Argentina, gets up at the UN this week and uses his big moment, not to talk about, you know, cutting the size of the Argentinian state, but to say the Malvinas should be back with Argentina.

29:15The UN let us down. They let Britain keep the Falklands. So these heroes of the, or these sort of nostrums of the Brexiteers about transatlantic relations, English speaking world, heroes in Argentina. I feel looking a bit threadbare, but, you know, people will say I would say that, but it's true.

29:38Ed Balls: I don't have to disagree with that. And I think that positioning for the European issue and the next general election, Fanny Burnham, is kind of delicate but important. I'm just saying that this was an unhelpful intervention. Unhelpful. Well, we can ask Gordon Brown about it when it comes to our podcast. We can. Well, he'll say, what is Tony doing this time? What about China? We don't know how the China Trump, the Xi Trump summit is going to go. Although we know they had a very long red carpet when he arrived at Andrew's Air Force Base last night. And this must be, I can't remember the last time that the president of the United States would have gone to the airport to greet someone landing.

30:22Normally you send the secretary of state or the treasury secretary or someone, don't you, to greet the foreign leader. But he went himself to welcome Xi off the plane. And I would say it's got to be.

30:32Ed Balls: Did I hear on the TV program that the last was actually John F. Kennedy meeting Macmillan? I think I might be right. If I'm wrong about that, can we cut that bit from the podcast? I think I'm right. Yes, of course, they had family relations, weren't they? Did they? Yes, because Kennedy's elder brother, who'd been killed, had been married into the family that Macmillan was also married into. I don't think the same thing applies to Donald Trump and President Xi. But they are, I mean, is this summit? I mean, it's obviously significant that it's happening. And it's significant that Donald Trump is, I mean, And presumably, he likes the idea of being a great leader with another great leader.

31:16Ed Balls: And he probably thinks to himself, when I travel around the world, this is the kind of welcome I should be given. So therefore, he's sort of laying down the template to President Xi. But is actually anything of significance going to come out of this trip? Well, I think it is significant it happens. So there's a significance that the two superpowers now have a regular beat of meetings. I think it's significant it happens in Washington that Xi feels comfortable coming to Washington. I always think, can you imagine in Britain if Andy Burnham says, we've got a state visit, we've got President Xi coming to London, everyone would go, oh, that's outrageous.

31:46We can't have the Chinese president here. And, you know, all the kind of China hawks would come out of the woodwork. No problem with him going to Washington. I think that's a good thing for the world. And I think there's a potential significance in the meeting between the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besant, and his Chinese opposite number, He Le Feng, who agreed. They were sort of preparing this summit earlier in the week and they've agreed some kind of AI hotline.

32:12Ed Balls: In other words, it's a long way short of regulation and kind of common standards or anything like that. Yeah. But if you think of I'm not saying there's a direct parallel between AI and nuclear weapons, but people have often used the example of how the Soviet Union and the United States managed to come to an accommodation on nuclear weapons. as an example of how when you've got a very competitive geopolitically important technology, you can come to agreement between hostile or rival powers. You know, it started with a hotline after the Cuban Missile Crisis, talking about Kennedy. They established a hotline and then that subsequently led to treaties on arms reduction and, you know, inspections and all that kind of thing.

32:52So I thought it's a significant moment. And for anyone who says it's impossible for the world to agree any of these rules, you could look back on this last week at the UN and say UN is still relevant, they were the convening place for these discussions, including the Security Council, the US-China relationship is not so bad that they can't talk about these things and there can't be a dinner at the White House and so on for the President there's a lot of pessimistic news around the moment, but if you're a kind of globalist optimist, perish the thought, you might say actually not a bad week for global institutions and global cooperation.

33:30Ed Balls: Of course the interesting thing for President Xi is he'll actually be coming along thinking this war in the Straits of Hormuz and with Iran is actually really disrupting the global economy. Can't we get something sorted out to get prices coming down? And it'll be coming along thinking the agreement we reached to stop a big rise in US tariffs on Chinese goods, can we extend that? And there'll be rather a lot of Republican candidates in midterm elections in a few weeks' time on President Xi's side, thinking that actually this war and these tariffs are really, really disrupting our chances of success in that election.

34:10Ed Balls: I don't know if you noticed, I just mentioned this, it's just been announced Andy Burnham's next fallen trip is going to be out to the Commonwealth Summit in Antigua with the King. Of course, the subject for that is going to be reparations to Caribbean countries from the UK. Quite awkward for Andy Burnham. This is for slavery. Historic. Exactly. Historic reparations for slavery. But the timing of it is it's exactly the same days as the US at midterm. So maybe Andy Burnham is hoping that Donald Trump is going to get the headlines in those few days rather than him. Anyway, we're going to talk about the US midterms next.

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37:02Welcome back. So it's less than six weeks away from the midterm elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate in the United States. And all the polls at the moment are suggesting that it's going to be a bad night for the Republicans. There's a pretty substantial now Democrat lead in every poll. But of course, it comes down to lots of individual races. Before we get on to, I thought it'd be interesting for us to focus on a few of the candidates running. I was going to sort of make a broader point, which is, does it matter if Trump loses? And how historically significant is this? Because I was using my chat GPT, talking about AI, to look at the historical pattern.

37:44And since 1946, the President's Party has lost seats in the House of Representatives in 18 out of 20 midterm elections. And the only exceptions where a president has done better in the midterm, has gained seats in the House of Representatives, was Bill Clinton in 1998. And if you remember, that was actually when the Republicans had overreached on impeachment. It was he was in his sort of second term and all the news had been dominated by impeachment because of the Monica Lewinsky affair. And he actually then goes and wins seats and the Democrats win seats in midterms. And then George W. Bush in 2002.

38:20But that's immediately after or a year after 9-11. And so it's a very different mood in the country. In other words, you know, presidents do lose in midterm elections. And certainly Trump did lose heavily in his first term and Biden lost as well. The only exception, though, is the Senate, which is also in play. And here, both Trump and Biden did, in fact, pick up Senate seats, even as they were losing House seats in their most recent midterm elections. So generally, you expect the presidential party to do badly in the midterm elections. So I don't think it would be a huge surprise if they lost control of the House of Representatives, which they currently control.

39:02They may lose control of the Senate, and that would be a much bigger win for the Democrats. But is it such a big deal of Trump? I mean, everyone, Trump haters will go, yeah, there you go. Proof the guy's, you know, very unpopular. Historically, I would say, you know, on trend.

39:19Ed Balls: Well, I think to use an American phrase at the moment, the issue is the size of the wave. So, yes, you would expect the incumbent to do less well. The way it works is the whole of the House, which is like the House of Commons, kind of like the House of Commons, that's all up for election. But in the Senate, it's only a third. And I think, you know, it's one thing for the Democrats to do well and potentially take control of the House. But, you know, at the moment, they're under pressure in the Senate as well. I think the current polls say that Trump might lose both houses. And that is very constricting to his ability to do anything in the second half of his term.

40:03Ed Balls: In the first term, the action he's taken in Iran or on tariffs were enabled by having support in both houses. So that would shift things. It also says something about the nature of American politics. I remember us having this conversation in 2024 at the time of the Trump victory and saying that very easy for Donald Trump and his supporters and Republicans more widely to see this as a victory for, you know, for the way they fought that election, for the Trump positioning on the world, but also on culture war issues within the United States. Whereas actually the alternative categorisation of 2024 was a reaction against the incumbent by people who are cross with politics and in particularly angry about higher prices for their petrol or their diesel or for their food and feeling under pressure on cost of living.

40:58Ed Balls: And if you look at the polling now in 2026, the Democrats are leading not just in the opinion polls over 10 percentage points, as I said, a big wave in historical terms. But the Democrats are leading on the economy, on immigration, on prices, on cost of living. and it's the the trump encumbency which is under pressure not just because he's in power but because he is seen to have made the decisions on the war in iran and on tariffs which are now being seen by by not just democrats but by swing voters and some republicans to be causing these problems so that changes the way in which people will think about how you fight the next election as as well The polls are not so different from the beginning of the year.

41:46Ed Balls: The thing which has shifted is attitudes towards Donald Trump himself. People who are who were strongly pro him before, much less strongly pro people who are against him much more strongly against. How will Donald Trump, I think the other thing I wonder about in terms of Trump, how will he interpret this result? Does he say, you know, I got things wrong. You know, I reflect in the second half of my time. I think maybe I'm going to. What he says is, what is clear? The only way the Republicans win is when I'm on the ballot. That's what was there in 2024. That's not where he is in 2026. It doesn't mean that J.D.

42:27Ed Balls: Vance doesn't become the candidate. But what will Donald Trump's attitude to be to who is the candidate and the Republicans in 2028? Does he decide to turn against people he felt have let him down? If you just look in the last couple of weeks, you're seeing lots of ads now by Republicans coming out against the war in Iran, against terrorists, because they think that's what they've got to do to win their seats. That's going to make him furious. Yeah, I think the big change over the course of this year has been that the Democrat attacks on Trump to some degree, you know, worked in his favor because they were attacks on his style or the corruption that is, you know, alleged to surround him or, you know, the culture wars and his immigration control or whatever.

43:22and you know Trump was oh they're playing into my hands because I'm actually you know the Americans want a strong successful president who's making money and cracking down on immigration I think the big big change over this course of this year has been that there are now this real bread and butter economic issues around the cost of living around diesel prices in particular in America which are now over six dollars a gallon and and you can directly attribute those to a presidential action. You know, it's not he's not trying to say it's all kind of global events and the world economy. It's due to this ongoing conflict in Iran, which he obviously started and quite obviously at the moment cannot bring an end to.

44:04And I think that suited the Democrats. And where the Republicans are starting to distance themselves from him, the Republican candidates, it's on these sort of bread and butter issues. It's not on the style issues. And I think a big challenge for the Democrats, if they do win, there is a difference. You're right. If they just win the House of Representatives, There'll be a lot of, I mean, it certainly hinders the administration's ability to do much, but that's not so surprising anyway in the second half of a presidency. They're often quite lame duck, those second halves of presidencies, particularly when the president's not standing for re-election.

44:35It's if you lose control of the Senate as well, then you are opening yourself up to a whole load of Democrat action in terms of investigations into the Trump family, the Trump administration's behavior and so on. And that could be challenging, although it could curiously ultimately work to the advantage, I think, of a Republican candidate in a couple of years time, because that Republican candidate will now be able to run against a Democrat Congress. there's an interesting question if you were running for the presidency in two years time as a Republican would you want to win these midterms or would you rather your party lost them and then you've got something to run against which is oh look we put the Democrats back in charge and look

45:19Ed Balls: what happened the funny thing is I'm searching here trying to find one I for some reason which I don't fully understand, have ended up on a Republican state mailing list. And I've been on it for the last four or five years. So every six months, I get an email asking me whether I want to contribute to the new fundraising drive. In the last three or four months, I'm getting twice a week emails. I mean, a bit like you, in a way. I get emails from J.D. Vance, and I get emails from Donald Trump Jr. And they all say, Ed, we need you. Yeah. But the strike. Have you coughed up yet? I haven't coughed up.

45:56Ed Balls: You're not persuading. No, but the striking thing is, you know, J.D. Vance will say, Ed, I've just come from a meeting in Republican HQ and I've got to tell you, the news is terrible. Republicans aren't going to turn out in this election and we are going to hand over control in the House to the socialist Democrats. and we need you more than ever. We can't have Republicans not turning out. It's not just about voting. We need you to support us to get the vote out. It's just been very striking to me that the tone and the regularity has shifted in the last few months. They are worried about Republicans staying at home and you never want people to get into that habit.

46:39No. Is Don Jr. asking you to join his crypto scheme or go to one of his hotels?

46:44Ed Balls: I mean, no, he's asking you to give money. But it is sort of, I mean, they're very regular. I mean, to begin with, I thought you must have given him my email, being your mate. But I have a feeling these emails may be generic. Yeah, he probably has other ways of getting your email as well. In fact, he's probably, I mean, if I was interested, he'd be monitoring it anyway, wouldn't he? Now, listen, we're talking about Vance. It's still the case on the Republican side that the most likely candidate for the Republicans is J.D. Vance. But Marco Rubio is certainly in the running. But no, there haven't been sort of other Republican governors emerging from the woodwork in the last couple of years.

47:24Ed Balls: And J.D. Vance feels like he's currently ahead. He had a very good boost from the summit we talked about in Texas a week ago. Yes. Now, however, on the Democrat side, it's completely open. I mean, we have no there's no obvious candidate to be the Democrat challenger in two years time. And of course, it's an open presidential election. It's not an incumbent. Donald Trump is not running, despite the fact he would love to. And I thought we'd just play a little medley because there are three candidates up for the Senate, three Democrat candidates who have kind of caught the nation's attention. And at least two of them are potential presidential candidates.

48:06Indeed, one is being talked about a lot. I'll tell you who they are, but listen to these three candidates and I'll tell you who they are afterwards.

48:15Ed Balls: I've spent my life serving others, first as a public school teacher, then as a lawmaker bringing both parties together to cap the cost of insulin, to cut property taxes and take on corruption. My faith teaches me to serve my neighbors. That's exactly what I'll do in the United States Senate. We don't live in capitalism. I'm a capitalist. We don't live in capitalism. We live in corporate socialism. So if you're a corporation, you can buy a politician to get that politician to rig the system for you so that you make more money and you X out every other market in which you compete. Brown beef's up 20 % since Trump took office.

48:56Ed Balls: Coffee, 40%. Health premiums through the roof. And remember, while you pay more for everything, the first family's wealth is growing by billions of dollars.

49:12Ed Balls: Because they're crooks. And everybody knows it. So that was James Tolerico. He was the one talking about his faith. He is running for the Senate in Texas. He looks a bit like Richie from Happy Days. There's Abdul El Saeed. He is running as a Democrat for the Senate seat in Michigan. He's the one talking about we don't live in capitalism, that he was a capitalist. And then the last candidate there is John Ossoff, who's the existing senator for Georgia, running for re-election. And he is the one taking the fight to Trump and his family. Three really interesting candidates who also have quite a strong social media presence as well.

49:54Ed Balls: That's right. First of all, James Tallarico. I mean, he oughtn't to be set to win. I mean, Democrats don't normally win in Texas. It's been decades. I mean, it used to be a Democrat state. I mean, Lyndon Johnson was a senator from Texas. But the last Democrat senator was Lloyd Benson, who's famous for his I knew Jack Kennedy, only I know Jack Kennedy moment in the TV debates. But Tallarico's ahead. He's running against a candidate who is, for the Republicans, so challenging they don't want him to go on television at all. He defeated the incumbent in the primaries by going substantially to the culture war's right.

50:36Ed Balls: But it's clearly not working for him. And Tallarico is impressive, isn't he, as a speaker? Yes, I mean, he really does look like a sort of Boy Scout. It's worth looking up a picture of him. And he's become the kind of toast of the sort of Democrat intelligentsia. And in fact, he was on one of the talk shows. Jimmy Kimmel interviewed him and then Trump banned the network from or threatened the network from airing the interview. He's head of his church. He sort of wears his religion in a very, I guess, in some ways unusual for Democrats, but powerful in Texas. Yes. And actually, I think there are echoes of the sort of young Bill Clinton as, you know, the young kind of telegenic Southern Democrat who wears his religion on his sleeve.

51:26Ed Balls: If he wins, you will hear his name a lot in the next two years. So that's one interesting race. And as you say, Texas very much in play. I mean, the demographics are changing in Texas and you would think it was swinging back towards Democrats. So maybe this is the moment. The next candidate, really interesting. This is the guy who defeated the Democrat establishments candidate for the Michigan Democrat nomination. This is Abdul El Saeed. We talked about on the podcast a few months ago, didn't we? So he would be the first Muslim member of the U.S. Senate. He is in a vowed, despite saying I'm a capitalist, he's part of what they call the Democrat Socialist Movement, which is also Alexander Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, I guess, is the kind of grandfather of the movement.

52:09And people said, you know, this has screwed the Democrats' chances in Michigan. But at the moment, he is ahead in the polls in Michigan. Michigan is one of the seats where if Trump holds on, or the Republicans hold on, they'll have held on in Michigan.

52:23Ed Balls: It's interesting, though, isn't it? Because I don't think, in general, the Republican attack on Democrats as, you know, socialists and lefties is working in this election because of the fact that, that is really about incumbency and prices and inflation and whether Donald Trump is making the right calls. On the other hand, if the Democrats lose in Michigan, this would be a bad result for the Democrats. And to take a New York style candidate and take him into Michigan was a risky thing to do. I mean, he's not he's not he's not running the kind of campaign you would normally run in in Michigan. So it's going to be it's certainly tighter than it would otherwise have been.

53:06Ed Balls: But it becomes a test of whether or not that sort of more left Democrat platform can work once you move away from the big East Coast cities. And I mean, I think he's had some quite of complications in this campaign. He's associated with people who, you know, some of Jeremy Corbyn's old mates who are getting him into deep water around some of the things that they have said in the past, in particular about Israel, Palestine. Yeah, I mean, Michigan does have a large Muslim population for, you know, sort of odd reasons of history. But you're right. And I think there's a big question, which is if if the Democrats win in the midterms, who is going to be their candidate?

53:45I don't think it's gonna be this guy, but he'll be in the he'll be in the Senate. And there's a lot of talk that Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, may well run for the Democrat candidacy. And, you know, she's obviously very charismatic, but it would be a big, big leftwards move. by the Democrat Party. And then the final candidate is emerged, I would say, I'm speaking from thousands of miles away, so I haven't been following this guy's career for years, but he's certainly caught my attention in recent months, and I think he's caught everyone else's attention who sort of dips into this. This is John Ossoff.

54:20He's the senator from Georgia. He's just very articulate and almost sort of Obama-like in his ability to sort of communicate and his kind of big rhetoric. And he links directly the cost of living to the Trump family in Richmond, as he sees it, or the building of the ballroom. He's managed to kind of be a voice for Democrats across America and anti-Trump people around the world. He's like, why can't someone call all this stuff out? And this guy has stepped forward. And there's now a lot of talk that he will be a runner for the presidential election. But I guess the challenge is what exactly is his base other than Georgia?

55:08But Georgia is a swing seat and Georgia has turned out to be a key state in recent elections.

55:13Ed Balls: Although what was Bill Clinton's base when he emerged? I mean, the truth is, as you said, he's the incumbent. We'd expect it to be tight. He is storming this election. He's well over 10 points ahead at the moment of his Republican rival in Georgia. As you said, brilliant with a crowd. He's great at motivating a rally and he is brilliant at linking in a very compelling way for a Democrat or swing voter Trump corruption to what they are living in their lives in terms of the cost of living crisis. And the test for him is partly whether he can translate that kind of rally style into the television studio and into the close interview, where I think up to now he's been less effective at that.

56:03Ed Balls: It's a bit more raw. But if he wins big in Georgia, then there'll be a lot more talk about him as a potential candidate for the Democrats in 2028. I was talking to a Washington insider this week who was saying one thing that is happening in Washington at the moment is lots of people are hiring up lawyers who are good at congressional inquiries and will represent to you if there's a Senate investigation, just in anticipation that if things go the Democrat way, there's going to be lots of inquiries into what's gone on over the last couple of years. So very interesting. I'm sure we're going to come back and to talk about this more in the run up to and especially in the days after these elections.

56:45Ed Balls: Another trend which is interesting is Democrats pulling out in favour of independent candidates who then can can build a broader base against them. And there are, you know, so many fascinating races where, you know, the Democrats are more competitive than they might have been. interesting to see what happens in Idaho, Ohio. Also the main race, which is where the Democrats got into terrible trouble with their candidate. And that's kind of throwing things into confusion. We'll see how that all goes. Going to be exciting, but not as exciting as the Liberal Democrat conference, which has just finished in Brighton.

57:22And we're going to look at that next.

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1:00:04welcome back so if you remember just a couple of years ago ed davy could walk on water or at least he could sort of jump into water in wetsuits and do all sorts of stunts high wire axe news two years on the liberal democrats those pesky liberal democrats with no patience have got tired of their leader or appeared to be tired of their leader some of them anyway yeah and appear tired of him larking around and have called for more substance so there's been a little bit of pressure on eddie davy and there's been this question of like how come the greens are doing so well and how come all the attention is on the other parties at the moment in british politics How come no one's paying any attention to the Liberal Democrats?

1:00:44We've heard the call and we decided to pay some attention. So in case you were doing something important and you missed Ed Davies' speech to the Liberal Democrat conference, here's a little medley.

1:00:55Ed Balls: Conference, we are the only ones with the courage to say it. Fixing our relationship with Europe is the only way to get our economy back on track. Growing our economy like this will mean we can tackle the cost of living too. That starts with income tax. So I'm announcing our plan to raise the tax-free personal allowance to£15 ,000. That's what I'm fighting for. A liberal country, a caring country. That is the fight of our lives. Oh, it may be nostalgic, all that call for an increase in the tax-free personal allowance. That was exactly the Liberal Democrat demand in 2010 when they were forming the coalition, which we went on to deliver and took the personal allowance up by many thousands to£12 ,500.

1:01:50Now, he's now been frozen by Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves and so on. Oh yeah, tripped down memory lane.

1:01:58Ed Balls: I thought the more striking call for a tax cut was a cut in fuel duty, 10p cut in fuel duty for the Liberal Democrats. I thought they were the green guys. I know, but they want to cut fuel duty for the cost of living reasons. And on Europe, I mean, in that clip we just played, he didn't say rejoining the European Union. He didn't say getting back into the single market. He said fixing our relationship with Europe. Well, I mean, who can't be in favour of fixing our relationship with Europe? Deliberately ambiguous language. The dilemma for Ed Davey is this. He won lots of seats and they've been winning council seats as well.

1:02:37Ed Balls: Yes. Often. To be fair to me, he makes this point, which actually they've been doing really well in these council elections over the last couple of years. Reaching into conservative areas and defeating conservatives. But rather a lot of people who, in the Liberal Democrats, who actually would like to be fighting Labour and the Greens and their constituencies can't understand why calling for tax cuts and ducking the Europe question, when the Greens might be more clearer on those things, why that is in their interests. And it sort of comes back to, in the end, what the Liberal Democrat strategy is and how you win.

1:03:14Ed Balls: I mean, I joked at the beginning of the week that maybe a Davey was happy that his conference speech was obscured by the... United Nations General. No, but also... global debate about AI in the meeting between President Xi and President Trump. But also the Charles... Because partly what you do, if you're the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy was brilliant at this. You want to be friendly and affable and interesting, but you want to have the flexibility to be, you know, to look in different directions if you're fighting Labour in central Manchester or in North Leeds, or if you're fighting the Conservatives in the southwest of the country and you don't want to be too defined by your policy stances because what might beat the conservatives in Oxfordshire may make it harder to beat Labour in Manchester.

1:04:04Ed Balls: I felt though on tax he was taking a bit more of a gamble of being a bit clearer. I think the interesting thing for Davy is this when you look at the polling I went back and looked at a sub stack it was actually from last year but it was really good by a guy called guy called James Breckwoldt, who is a Manchester PhD student, done lots of data analysis, looking at the Tories who voted Liberal Democrat in 2024. And you might have this caricature, and you might even have this caricature if you're a Liberal Democrat activist in Manchester or Leeds, that the people who switched to the Liberal Democrats were switching because the Tories were too anti-European or they were being too culture-warsy or too anti-immigrant.

1:04:48Ed Balls: Whereas actually, if you look at the people who switched, they're not really like Liberal Democrats. They're much more like the Conservatives. They were Conservatives who just didn't like the Conservatives in 2024. And what Ed Davey knows is that he needs to keep appealing to those people if he's going to win those seats and even win more seats in 2028. and therefore he kind of wants to be for tax cuts. And he wants to muddy the waters on Europe. But he doesn't really want to get into any of those cultural issues from the left side, which many of his activists will want him to do, because he'll think that makes it harder for him.

1:05:25Ed Balls: And in that sense, I think he's probably enacting a strategy which made sense in 2024. The question is this. The toys are no longer the bugbear. I mean, it's now Labour compared to 2024. And can you afford as a leader to be that undefined for so long? And do people really know who the Liberal Democrats are? If I said to you, tell me, other than a Davey, the top three Liberal Democrat spokespeople, you could say Daisy Cooper, who's the deputy leader. Lembert Opik or Hasila? I think he may have gone. Simon Hughes, gone. Charles Kennedy, of course, sadly deceased. long time ago. But, you know, given the size of their parliament...

1:06:12Ed Balls: Nick Clegg. Oh, no, he's just been doing rather well for himself in some of his investments in Silicon Valley. I think he's chosen the post-politics Osborne route. That's my sense. He was making a lot of sense on the Today programme this morning. Well, there we are. Which cultural institution is he going to chair? No, I thought the... No, there's a serious point with Nick Clegg here, which is, you know, But of course, Ed Davey was a cabinet minister in the same cabinet I was in. And I thought for the last two years, he's he did. He clearly did very well, the general election. But as you say, first of all, you know, he won some disaffected Tory voters.

1:06:53And second, he benefited enormously from the split on the right between the conservatives and reform. But if you looked at I was talking to, you know, a conservative activists again this week. And, you know, they were saying to me, there's like no chance at the moment the Tories are going to win back any seats in Oxfordshire for the next general election. They're all liberal Democrat, for example, and seats like Tunbridge Wells in the home. These are liberal Democrat seats. They've got a lot of formerly Tory seats.

1:07:19Ed Balls: So that if that's Ed Davies ambition, well, this is the right strategy. Yeah, I thought he what he's starting to do is actually gear up for the coalition talks that he thinks might be coming. because there's a poll as it happens today which shows for the first time Labour are the largest party after a general election if it was held today but they don't get a majority and I've often said on this podcast you know what is the conservative strategy for a hung parliament that you know they've they've given themselves one option which is some deal with reform and even now they're trying to say they rule that out but have they created any optionality to do a deal with the Liberal Democrats, as David Cameron did in 2010?

1:07:57Answer, no.

1:07:58Ed Balls: Although Ed Davey is giving them an olive branch with his tax proposal. So what Ed Davey needs to do is, I think, sketch out two things. One is, what are my key asks in a negotiation? He's put in place the tax ask, which is exactly the same as the one in 2010, which is very easy for the Conservatives to say yes to. Although, of course, Andy Burnham in August was saying he would like to undo the freeze of the personal allowance and give help to working people. So, Davey can face both ways on that one. And it's a really easy thing to give in a coalition talks. I mean, the Treasury officials will go, no, no, no, it's far too expensive, but you can say, sorry, guys, we've got a former government.

1:08:35And it's a classic example also in politics that if you think you found a way to raise money in tax, as Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves did through freezing the personal hours, eventually it comes back to bite you and then, you know, parties will get elected promising to unfreeze it. So there's the tax bit. And I think on the European bit, I think you're being a little bit unfair. I think they're clearer. He says he's going to fund this tax cut by rejoining the European single market, which will bring growth and higher GDP. I mean, I don't think you or I would have let each other get away with that if we tried to do that as costing in a general election.

1:09:10But, you know, I can imagine a demand at the general election or in the coalition talks after a general election, which is we want to restart talks to join the single market or the customs union, much harder for the Tories to say yes to that. The missing piece of the puzzle, and we're still a couple of years off probably from that election, is what's the ask on electoral reform? But I think it's interesting, isn't it, that if you look at the Labour conference coming up, a lot of local CLPs, constituency Labour parties, want debated changes to the electoral system. And so you can see the kind of Lib Dem asks in those coalition talks, which will be very similar to the ones they were in 2010.

1:09:52In the end, we gave them a referendum on a change to the voting system. It would have to be a referendum.

1:09:58Ed Balls: But you give them a referendum and then reveal to them that you were going to campaign against it. I think if he does that deal with Andy Burnham, then Andy Burnham will be campaigning with him. But I thought the interesting thing, come back to this Liberal Democrat conference, is you're beginning to see the outlines of the demands for the coalition talks. But he has to face both ways, doesn't he? Right, crucially. So the one thing Ed Davey has to be able to do is create some optionality. Now, back in 2010... Which his activists don't like, or some of them don't. Right. So back in 2010, you could have said, and we've discussed this on our Inside the Room and so, you know, how realistic was it for Nick Clegg to prop up Gordon Brown?

1:10:35He'd lost the election. It had been a long period of Labour government. But I tell you, there was enough doubt in our mind as Conservatives that we had to seriously negotiate with the Liberal Democrats and take on both their demands. If Ed Davey is sewn up for Labour, if there's no prospect of Ed Davey supporting a Conservative administration, then he's lost a key piece of leverage in those talks. So he does have to create some leverage. And he also doesn't want to fall into the trap of perhaps people who will be quite anti-Labour at the next election saying, oh, if I vote Lib Dem, I'm definitely going to get a Labour government.

1:11:10because then you also run into the problem Nick Clegg ran into in the 2015 general election when we ran that against him, which is, you know, vote Clegg and you get Miliband. So it's an interesting dilemma. But I felt this week was the first week he's starting to face up to the reality, which is he may well be in coalition talks in a couple of years time. And he knows it because he's been there.

1:11:32Ed Balls: And it could be with Andy Burnham and it could be with Kimi Baden-Nock. Yeah. And very interesting. I'll end with a little contribution from our old friend Paul Johnson, now head of the Queen's College in Oxford, ex-head of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, just because I think you'll enjoy this. Torsten Bell. Minister. Minister. He's still minister, right? In the Department of Work and Pensions, former Treasury Minister. This was his tweet. Liberal Democrat joined the reformed Tory circus in promising tax cuts they have no idea how to pay for. the coalition government showed us how this ends trashing both public services and the public finances.

1:12:12Ed Balls: This was Torsten's contribution. Rubbish. Paul Johnson's. Public finances haven't been in better shape since. Yeah but you did trash public services. Paul Johnson responds Have you noticed before we even get to, have you noticed they've revised the productivity numbers during my entire period as Chancellor. The British economy was way more productive than we were told at the time. But they've not revised the growth numbers which was still very disappointing. they've changed the productivity work. Second strongest growth in the G7, strongest recovery from the crash you created. Paul Johnson. Something to discuss with Gordon when he comes on the show.

1:12:43Ed Balls: He definitely can. Paul Johnson, this is his reply to Torsten Bell. Fair enough. This is not remotely serious from the Lib Dems, talking about the tax cut paid by the European stuff. But let's not forget, current government claimed a fully costed manifesto on basis of 8 billion of tax increases. It has increased taxes by 70 billion pounds. Pots and kettles spring to mine. Paul Johnson, he's not lost it. No. He's not lost it. Another glass of port at a high table. That is it for this week's episode of Political Currency. Yes. At this point, George pinches my script in order to read out what you're supposed to say.

1:13:24Yeah, make sure you check out the show notes, see how you can become a Kitchen Cabinet, Gold subscriber, get the EMQs early. and remember to send your questions to us on all the various social media outlets in which we appear.

1:13:36Ed Balls: The very exciting thing, and I don't even need the script for this, we are going to do our EMQs for the first time this week on video on YouTube, so you can see it rather than just listen to it. And as George said, you can email in if you want to use what I'm now told is old-fashioned technology, questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk, but you can also send your questions in on YouTube comments, on Instagram comments, on X, which used to be called Twitter. There's all sorts of ways to send in your questions and comments. And George reads them all. Who's the tech bro now? We are going to see you on Monday for EMQs.

1:14:12And next Thursday for the full podcast. See you then.

1:14:43We'll see you next time. is possible.

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