Could the midterms be bad news for Burnham?

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2:05Ed Balls: The absolute lesson from these midterms is that the cost of living is more powerful than other political forces, and that's what's done for Donald Trump. If you interpret this result as being all about cost of living, then it spells disaster for all incumbent governments, including the Burnham Labour government. If Andy Burnham wants to fight the cost of living and he wants to persuade Trump, maybe there's an opportunity here. Well, at the moment, it's hard to discern whether it's a really kind of clearly thought out political strategy. I mean, you know, Donald Trump's a busted flush.

2:38Ed Balls: So we are in our studio today here in Hoxton. And I've been getting up early in the morning this week for Good Morning Britain. So unlike most of the rest of Westminster, I'm not bleary eyed because the thing about the midterms is people stay up really late because, you know, you want to see, you know, your Portillo moment. I guess this time it was the Tallarico moment. You want to see things unfolding. And of course, George, you'll have been up because you're a candidate, Steve Hilton. I mean, you know, on a knife edge, was it for the Californian governorship? Well, I don't think it was ever on a knife edge.

3:10I think Steve himself said to me a few months ago he had a very small chance of winning but he would

3:14Ed Balls: give it his best shot he did give it his best shot he did give it his best in quite memorable ways uh yeah um uh but um no I'm I don't think I'll be getting an invite to the governor's mansion in Sacramento I mean I think I think it was 64 36 yeah but he you know he was on the ballot he was on the ballot and he didn't have to you know to could easily have been two democrats on the ballot But no, no Governor Hilton. Did you stay up late watching them? I didn't. I didn't. But I did have this. I was reminded of something this week, which is the British obsession, the British political world's obsession with American politics.

3:52I mean, we would never do this for the Indian election or the French election or the German election, where everyone who's interested in politics and current affairs.

4:04Ed Balls: Emily Maitler, John Soap. Everyone stays out, everyone travels. Piers Morgan, they're all out there doing their shows for America. It's interesting how the kind of, you know, American politics still casts such a kind of massive shadow over Britain. I don't think just because it's very consequential for us, as we're going to come on and discuss. It's just we love kind of getting into the Texas Senate race, you know, District 13 of the congressional race in New York. and you know there's no other country in the world where we have anything like this amount of interest in what they do look i mean it is mainly because it's massive and has a huge impact upon our lives um but it's a bit sexy isn't it as well it's kind of politically sexy we love american politics i think i think also it's first past the post which means you get a result you know when you have like the german elections the french elections they happen over 70 weeks you know you finally get to the result but sometimes you don't know i mean in israel we still don't really know what the result of the election means whereas in america you sort of know on it you know we are calling it for israel elections are straightforward netanyahu always wins somehow that's well he always ends up as prime minister yeah but we're going to be dissecting um those american results but also asking the question what does it mean for the next american presidential election but in particular what it means for the the world and for andy burnham and events here in britain that's what we're going to do first yeah and then we're going to have a look at the budget a week on how's the government doing uh and what about the other you know arguments issues that have arisen for the government since that budget particularly the immigration reforms that shabana mahoud has had to water down and uh the ongoing conversation which more and more people have piled into on should we rejoin the eu and then we're going to um of course andy burnham and the the king were out in the commonwealth summit in antigua and there's been this big repeated argument over years, maybe come to a head, is Britain going to apologise for the slave trade?

6:03Ed Balls: Are reparations going to be paid? And we're going to ask, what's going on? What is the thing about apologies? When do they work? What are they the wrong thing to do? And I think George may also ask whether the Commonwealth is really the place to be having these big kind of geopolitical conversations because... Well, I wish they were having big geopolitical conversations. My question is, what's the point of the Commonwealth? Anyway, we're going to come on to that later on, please. But we're going to start with America. And a mate of mine, Steve, was in contact after our show last week. Not Steve Hilton.

6:36Ed Balls: No, Steve Schran. I was at Harvard with him years ago and a very close friend of mine. I actually officiated at his wedding. I was the person who married him and his wife, Elan, with the permission of the governor of Massachusetts. I said. Well, don't you have to be a kind of state official? No, no. You can do it from the governor. I had a letter from him. I had to put references in. I have a certificate from the governor. And I said, with the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I pronounce you man and wife, you may now kiss the bride. That was back in 1998. One of the highlights of my life, actually.

7:10Ed Balls: It was very good. Anyway, Steve got in touch and said, you and George, you've been too cautious. You're not realizing what a seismic moment this is going to be. And I think we were saying, you know, the Democrats, we think they'll win the House. The Senate could be hard. Maybe Trump could once again defy expectations. It didn't turn out that way. It is a huge result. The Democrats have stormed it in the House and in the Senate, and it's thrown American politics into turmoil. Let's have a listen. The Democrats will control both houses of Congress in January. They flipped at least seven Senate seats and dozens more in the House.

7:48voters across the country rejected Republican candidates even in the reddest of states. Oh, what a night. Against all odds, Democrats have won the Senate, and we have five words for the American people. Relief is on the way. This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, as we have seen probably in the last hundred years. My name is Abdul Rahman Mohammed Sayyid.

8:26And I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect from the great state of Michigan.

8:37Ed Balls: We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas.

8:48Thank you, Georgia. Tonight we celebrate this victory and tomorrow we get back to work. Thank you so much. Thank you, Georgia. Thank you.

9:00Ed Balls: That was CBS. That was Chuck Schumer, the Democrat Senate majority leader. That was Ron DeSantis, a Trump critic, former governor of Florida. Abdul Al-Sayed, who's just been elected to be the first Muslim senator in Michigan. James Tallarico, who has won for the first time since for 40 years, pretty much, in Texas. And John Ossoff, who's retained his seat in Georgia. Rather male list, but we could have included Annie Andrews from South Carolina. We could have included Georgia Keisha Lane Bottoms, who won the governorship in Georgia. But I mean, a storming result for the Democrats. And Donald Trump, he's had to sort of rather change his tune because just a few days before the polling, he was saying, imagine my name is on the ballot and come out and vote Republican.

9:55So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. Just one more time.

10:05Ed Balls: Well, unfortunately, they probably imagined he was on the ballot and voted Democrat. That seems to be what happened. He then tweeted on the night, if my name had been on the ballot, I would have won by a landslide. But he's ended up just having to concede a bit to the Democrats in his post-election responses in a rather un-Trump-like way. Have a listen. I wasn't on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, they would have gotten down. What did you learn, sir? Curious what you learned. Well, we're going to work with the Democrats to make sure things go well for our country. Very important. They've already called and they want to work with me.

10:41I have the right to veto everything. But I don't want to be just sitting there for two years vetoing everything. So let's start with something that didn't happen. There was a lot of prediction that Donald Trump and the Republicans would try and kind of stay. The result was a fraud, that it was a stolen election. Do you remember there was all that talk that they wouldn't certify the results? All of that has disappeared. I mean, if you're a believer in, you know, the institutions of the United States and in democracy in the United States, this has been a good week because the election happened. It was regarded by all sides as fair.

11:15And yes, a stunning victory for the Democrats, particularly in the Senate. But no one is kind of contesting it. And the and the kind of postmortems inside the Republican Party aren't about voter fraud or whatever. They're about the big issues facing the country. So it's worth just sort of noting that because we could be here debating, oh, my gosh, there's going to be like a constitutional crisis in the US. I think they're going to if we look at how the Republicans have reacted. And I think a lot of the media commentary has kind of picked up on it and how J.D. Vance has reacted. And he put out this long post on X, quite a kind of techie kind of detailed response of what was going on with the polling.

12:01The kind of general conclusion is it's all about the economy and it's all about the cost of living. And it's therefore all about the war, the war in Iran. And I just think there's in some ways we'll come on to how easy it is, therefore, to kind of end the war in Iran, which is not straightforward. But is that sort of too narrow an interpretation of what went on? I think the Republicans, as they do their postmortem, it's the kind of convenient place to go. Oh, well, we should never have had that war in Iran because a lot of them didn't agree with it. J.D. Vance, you know, as I know, and he made it pretty clear to anyone who was listening, was not in favour of it back when it started.

12:41So it's a sort of easy place for everyone to go. So whereas if you say, actually, there are a broader set of issues, you know, tariffs were a disaster for the cost of living in America. The unpredictability of the Trump administration made it really hard to invest in America. You know, he weakened alliances around the world, which, you know, undermines the institutions to prop up global prosperity. So even if you're going on the economics and then, you know, what about everything else that was going on at the time, such as the personal behavior of Trump? the allegations of corruption in the administration.

13:13I think it's quite easy when you lose for everyone to agree on the one thing everyone can agree was wrong, which is the Iran war. And then that's easy for everyone. It's a kind of... I'm just, from the Republicans' point of view, I'd be a bit cautious because it enables people to say, oh, well, Trump got that wrong and he probably knows he got it wrong. And I just would caution the Republicans about just focusing too narrowly on that.

13:38Ed Balls: I understand that. But if they are broadly in this area, Iran, tariffs, cost of living, Trump looking like he was more focused on his ballroom than on the lives of ordinary people, they are in the right train. I mean, if you go back to the conversation we had in 2024 when Trump won, we said the huge danger for the Republicans was to think they'd won with an endorsement of a MAGA-style culture wars dynamic for America. And in fact, they won because Joe Biden had high inflation. Growth didn't make people feel better off. He didn't feel as though he was talking enough about the issues they were worried about.

14:19Ed Balls: And actually, two years on, Donald Trump has fallen into the same trap as Biden and gave the impression that, well, actually, this cost of living thing, is it real? Are tariffs really the problem? The Iran war, I'll do it all again. And people just said, well, but that's totally out of touch to the right place for the Republicans. I mean, I think you're right that if you only focus on Iran, that's too narrow. And the tariff championing was done across the administration rather than simply by Donald Trump. I mean, I think J.D. Vance can say, I was worried about the war, but he wasn't worried enough about the tariffs.

14:55Ed Balls: And probably in the spring of this year, we had these conversations. They all thought, actually, this Iran war will be over quick. It won't have a big impact. It's turned out to be much more seismic in terms of the impact on domestic politics than they realized. but if the Republicans decide now we weren't Trumpian enough we want to kind of double down on the MAGA agenda then they'll lose whereas if they decide to say we need to get back to the economy and growth and jobs and the cost of living that is the right direction for them to go in. I guess my question with J.D. Vance is I mean is he now able to be you know a credible candidate for the next two years because he was so the champion of Donald Trump for the last two years anyway he didn't used to be can he do the kind of vault fast he's now doing in his tweet i mean or is he going to end up you know a bit like the the robert jenrich of american politics somebody who's flipped and people think i know but actually is that authentic is it real are you are you just playing games are you trying to take us for fools i i'm not sure he can just dump dump trump and think and get away with that well he faces the classic problem that a vice president has always faced as they come up to their own election, which is how much do you distance yourself from the incumbent?

16:07This was the Kamala Harris, Joe Biden issue last time. And, you know, actually it was the Al Gore issue and it was the George H.W. Bush issue, if you're going right back. And it's hard, particularly with Trump, because he's pretty unforgiving if you distance yourself. Although, you know, he hasn't slapped down J.D. Vance. I would still, there's another kind of cautionary tale, isn't there, which is in the immediate aftermath of a big election victory, people tend to say, oh, well, this is completely changed. So two years ago, it was like the Democrats are finished. They completely have lost touch with working America.

16:44They've become elitist and too woke and they'll never win again. And in my lifetime, there's been several elections where there'll never be another Tory government and there'll never be another Labour government. So you always have to be a bit careful.

16:58Ed Balls: Of course, Obama got smashed in the midterms in 2010, won again in 2012. On the other hand, George W. Bush got smashed in the midterms in 2006, you know, in the aftermath of the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. And they thought, well, maybe we can come back. And then Obama storms it in 2008. So there are examples on either side. There are definitely examples on either side. I mean, actually, Clinton was the comeback kid, not just when he was a candidate, but actually as president, when he also lost heavily in the midterms to Newt Gingrich. That's right. So, but there's a difference between, you know, an incumbent president winning again and the vice president trying to take over.

17:36So J.D. Vance has got a tough, always had a tough challenge. You're right. There'll be quite a few Republicans thinking, oh, maybe there's an opening now for me. Some of these governors.

17:48Ed Balls: Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, they'll all feel more vindicated than J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio. Yes, but I would still say it's quite hard to stop a vice president running as the old candidate. I mean, if you're the challenger, because essentially he represents the kind of establishment in the Republican Party today. Now, that might work, you know, who knows over the next few weeks. But the fact he's moving very quickly. Just one thing to note, we probably don't have time to go into it. He has a list of things that he thinks Trump got wrong. One was the war. One is the cost of living. You could argue that's connected to the war.

18:25He talks about, you know, we didn't put America first. I mean, you know, you could argue that's a sort of protectionist policy that's never going to work. And they have tried that for two years now. But didn't you notice the fourth item on his list was the relationship with Israel? He says the Republicans have got their relationship with Israel too wrong. And that, which is code for, we've been too unquestioningly supportive of the Netanyahu administration. I thought that's such an interesting thing for him to kind of put up there. And maybe, you know, speaks to these issues, if we turn to the Democrats now, you know, how are they going to interpret this?

19:05win are they going to say well this was a bit of a gift because as you know cost of living a war that ultimately wasn't really anything to do with us or will they say no no no we actually stood you know in places like texas candidates that people wanted to vote for and could connect to uh well of course alongside all this there'll be personal ambition with a lot of people now thinking oh should i run for president in two years time look i think for for jd vance his

19:33Ed Balls: choices, does he try to move to the centre ground on the cost of living economic argument or does he think actually it's more important to hold together what is probably still a MAGA kind of slanting Republican Party and he joins people like Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson who have been critical on Trump because he wasn't MAGA enough on foreign policy. The danger for him is that that pulls him away from the centre ground that that is his kind of delicate choice for the democrats they've got the same choice which is there'll be some people saying well you know this has exposed the corruption of trump the the culture wars and we should just go after him now let's spend the next two years talking about impeaching trump and trying to bring him down but actually i think the american people will think well hang on a sec it's actually about the economy and jobs and cost of living and that is where you need to pitch your tent and you're going to have um but how much can congress do on those issues You know, that's the question.

20:32Ed Balls: But it's about what they're talking about and who you choose in the end to be the presidential election campaign. There are loads of centrist candidates who've done brilliantly well for the Democrats in this election. And we heard from some of them earlier, but you could put the North Carolina winner, Roy Cooper. You could have in Iowa, Josh Turek. Scott Coleman looked like he's going to win in Mississippi. But some of those governors I mentioned, another one in Texas, Gina Hinojosa, they are people who wanted to talk about the cost of living, moderate take on the Republicans. But there's another aspect of the Democrat Party who will say, no, the left would move is the thing which wins it for us.

21:16Ed Balls: And of course, we played Abdul Al-Sayed in Michigan who won. But actually, for a period, you wondered whether he was going to lose this safe Democrat seat. If they go for the candidates who are divisive and want to be to take on MAGA on the culture war issues, that's how the Democrats could throw this away. Yeah, I mean, that is also the opportunity for someone like Vance or the Republican candidate to run against the Democrats in two years time. Say, look, we put them in charge. As Steve Hilton was doing in California. Yeah, maybe more effect. But that's a classic thing. You can run it now. The Democrats are in charge.

21:54Let's see how they do. I think, you know, you're going to find it's a very interesting question. Nancy Pelosi was here in London, actually, this week. And, you know, she did a really good job when she was Speaker of the Congress and leader, essentially, of the Democrats in Congress. Of keeping together this pretty fractious coalition of very left, radical characters and much more centrist mainstream characters. And that's going to be played out in the battle for the Democrat nomination. And the new senator from Michigan, Abd al-Sayed, he is one of these Democrat socialists of America candidates.

22:39There's this other character we're going to hear about who got elected, DAC, not AOC, Alexander Qazia-Cortez, who is also one of the favorites to be the Democrat candidate at the presidential election. Anyone who thinks Democrats are going to definitely win the next presidential election, just think maybe if she was the candidate, how would middle America vote?

22:58Ed Balls: I mean, you have to reflect upon the Jeremy Corbyn experience. Right. D.A.C. Do you know of Daryl Lisa Avila Chevalier elected for Harlem in New York? She is the new kind of radical left person elected and is already grabbing the headlights. And I think there are certain issues. I mentioned Israel because I think this is a very divisive issue potentially within the Democrat Party that has an important Jewish vote, but also many people who would describe themselves as pro-Palestinian. and other issues like medicare for all is a new emerging thing which is a bit like our nhs so wouldn't be such a extreme issue here but it's like a surprising number of democrats have signed up to this idea of introducing an nhs style it's actually more canadian style if you get into it but universal health care in america so there's just going to be quite a lot of these issues and on the account of and i think this is is it going to be possible to resist going after trump and his cronies and i couldn't help but notice so obama after the result says this is a message of unity you know the country wants to unify exactly hillary clinton now's a time for reckoning now's in a time for accountability we've got to hold these people to account for what they've done and uh and so you know even at the very sort of senior you know grandee level of the democrat Party.

24:24I think there'll be quite a lot of people who want their pound of flesh, who want to, you know, and we'll rightly say people shouldn't be allowed to get away with enriching themselves.

24:33Ed Balls: It depends how you do it, because John Ossoff in Georgia, who's won again, brilliant, and we talked to him a few weeks ago, because he says why don't they care about you? Why do they only care about themselves? I remember doing the Trump documentaries, people would say, the great thing about Trump is he's really wealthy so he can be on our side because he's not out for himself he's not making money whereas actually the ossoff attack is he's more bothered about um the aggrandizing of his family than caring about the cost of living crisis for you you can use the corruption thing but it has to be brought back to the the lived experience of working americans rather than sort of um left right politics and that that is the um i mean it's going to be absolutely fascinating because uh suddenly it's quite unusual to have this both um republican and democrat um nomination processes for the the president um candidate are now wide open i mean you know it's a real battle for um the soul of america but the but the soul of both both parties are sort of like totally um in play now and the other thing is we don't know what donald trump's going to do i mean it's I was thinking about how I would react if I was Andy Burnham, because on the one hand, the easy thing for him to do is to think, I might have an election in one or two years time.

25:58Ed Balls: And Mark Carney, a voter Albanese in Australia, both ran against Trump, although they were actually running against a Trumpian candidate of the right within their own politics. Andy Burnham has that opportunity with Kemi Bade, Norcal, Nigel Farage, if he wants to say that they were the big Trump supporters. And if Donald Trump goes wild in the next months and he can do that, it's harder on domestic policy. But if he goes after, as we talked about last week, Iran with a new attack. On the other hand, if Andy Burnham wants to fight the cost of living agenda and he wants to persuade Trump to dial back on Iran or on tariffs, maybe there's an opportunity here because we don't know Donald Trump's going to go wild.

26:46Ed Balls: He actually probably wants to win a Nobel Peace Prize. The past experience of American presidents in the final two years when they're a bit of a lame duck is to try and, you know, think about Clinton going after the peace process in the Middle East. Obama tried to do the same thing. And different presidents have tried that. It may be that the American president would need allies. And maybe actually that's a smart way to play it for Andy Burnham. Well, if you interpret this result as being all about cost of living, then it spells disaster for all incumbent governments, including the Burnham Labour government.

27:24And there are certainly periods in the past. So after the Ukraine invasion, which is only a few years ago, and the shock to oil prices, I think almost all incumbent governments in the West fell, including the conservatives in Britain. And if you go back to the financial crash, pretty much every single incumbent government failed to survive the financial crash, including the Gordon Brown government. I mean, that is what happens when you get a big economic shock and a shock to inflation. It's extremely hard for an incumbent government. And it's no good saying, well, it's all to do with Donald Trump or, you know, the Americans or some war in the Middle East.

27:57Voters, you know, aren't that receptive to it.

28:00Ed Balls: Although whether that shock continues to ricochet through next year substantially depends on what Donald Trump does. He could use the G20 in a few weeks' time to launch a big pro-growth, get inflation down, get growth up, let's bring the world together. He could do that. That's massively in Andy Burnham's interest. Yes. And I thought Burnham's reaction was actually more, was better calibrated than some of the other European leaders. I thought so too. They all came out of the woodwork saying, fantastic, Trump's got a bloody nose. You know, we hate the MAGA movement. And, you know, after all, the MAGA movement's been pretty rude about Europe.

28:34so you can see where their kind of anger is coming from. Burnham's was like, we've got to end this war. And that, for his re-election, that's what he's got to do.

28:43Ed Balls: And if he can find a legacy, a path for Trump, I mean, this is so unpredictable, it's so wild. Trump may go wild. But if he can attempt to shape that with others, I mean, is it what Donald Trump wants now? I mean, does he want to go wild and just kind of blow up against the Republican Party in America? I mean, you know, it's not beyond him to decide that his place in history is some kind of wild, potentially even nuclear strike. He could do the wild thing, but he doesn't have to do that. Yes, except that doesn't he is a bit like where we started the conversation of him sort of declaring the results unconstitutional.

29:17He sort of backs off the utterly wild things. Usually Trump always backs down or always chickens out. Taco. The only thing on Iran is it's much easier said than done. I mean, they've been trying to end this war for months. It's not like Donald Trump wants to continue. And the war has been a kind of Cold War. I mean, I know there are occasionally strikes from both sides, but it's sort of been frozen for several months. We haven't had full, all-out conflict. And the problem is…

29:44Ed Balls: But how about Ukraine then? Could he be the president who brings peace? Well, I think he thought he could be, didn't he? But did he ever look like he really wanted to? No, because he never really, you know… Well, that's a longer conversation. You know, were the Europeans and Ukrainians prepared to accept things required to get Russia to sign up something? And was Donald Trump prepared to force Russia to accept something that the Ukrainians could accept? I guess what I'm saying is only this. If I was Andy Burnham, would I think a fight with Trump now for the next two years is politically in my interests?

30:14Ed Balls: Or do I actually think, and that worked for Carney and Albanese, Or do I think if I can persuade Trump that there is a more benign path to his legacy, which helps the global economy, is that something I can try and influence? But is Trump listening to Andy Burnham? The challenge is, if you just stop, if America said tomorrow or Congress, you know, we drew all support to the Defense Department. if america just said we're not you know we're drawing from iran if you're sort of not no longer um kind of blockading iran patrolling the straits of omuz where would that leave the middle east and and iran you know iran's prices we now want to charge a tariff on all boats going through the straits of omuz and the other gulf countries including saudi arabia united arabes powerful nations in that region are saying that is utterly unacceptable.

31:12And that's the problem. We're back to the conundrum, which is how do you get peace over the line in the Middle East and in Iran? And just because they've lost the midterms doesn't mean the White House has a simple path to delivering that. Or that if you just pulled stumps and withdrew, it would all be done. So will the Iranians take the opportunity also to say, actually, actually, now's our moment to do a deal. We'll concede some things we don't particularly want to get it done.

31:44Ed Balls: Why would they? I mean, Putin and Xi may end up in a three-way summit with Donald Trump, but are they going to concede to Donald Trump now? I mean, Donald Trump's a busted flush. So, look, it's complicated being a world leader, especially if you are not an American world leader. and it's complicated being British Prime Minister. And the absolute lesson from these midterms is that the cost of living and people's sense of their own well-being is more powerful than other political forces and that's what's done for Donald Trump. And how does Andy Burnham respond to that a week on from the budget? And we'll turn to that next.

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34:32Welcome back. So it's a week on from the budget. And I guess you would have somewhat mixed feelings if you're sitting in the Treasury today. You would be saying to yourself, well, actually, the budget went pretty well. uh i mean it's been very well received as budgets go budgets which don't go wrong

34:49Ed Balls: by definition have gone right right and the polls are quite good right so 45 percent of people view the budget as fair and 20 percent don't and given how you know utterly unreasonable publics around the world generally are with their governments that's pretty that's pretty fair isn't it i mean you know um it's it's the best received budget um since some of those covid budgets where they were also doling out cash. Do you think that means that we got it wrong in our hot take a week ago? Because we said it's a bit underwhelming and it's not faced up to the big issues on growth and cost of living and in particular on the spending review and the cuts to public spending which are coming up.

35:30Ed Balls: But John Healy deliberately didn't address any of those. He went for something very minimalist. I mean, it's easy for you to be fair if there's hardly any measures. Well, I would say that's for those who know me well you wouldn't be surprised to hear me say i think we got it spot on a week ago because we actually said that's exactly what this budget was about it was make do no harm no unforced errors good jokes yeah minimal budget performance in the house doesn't you know you could have actually not had the budget at all and it wouldn't have made much difference um and uh that you know that they wanted to you know we were thinking about what their strategy was was it just to sort of preserve the burn and bounce, not upset things, not cause a shock.

36:13And then the question we asked, which I think remains as relevant, you know, today as it did OECO, obviously, is, but what about these big looming decisions? And I think it's at least sort of, I guess I was thinking, well, hold on, what are these big looming decisions they're going to have to take? So there's a 10-year plan coming. I mean, I'm going to predict that is going to be a bit of a damp squib. It's going to be full of vague aspirations.

36:39Ed Balls: They are rolling back very fast on its scale and ambition. Right. So I think that's going to sound a bit... It's going to launch a consultation. Don't hold your breath for the 10-year plan would be my guess. Let's hope the consultation is better than the consultation on the migration reforms. I don't know whether you saw this. Two-thirds of the people who responded to the government's migration consultation in the last six months were people who are here on a visa. Right. That tells you that if you're going to do a consultation, you have to try slightly harder to get to a slightly bigger footprint.

37:06But I think it's going to be a set of sort of broad and rather vague ambitions around social care. You know, and so don't hold your breath. Certainly, they're not going to take any big comp.

37:18Ed Balls: Energy bills are going up£600 next year. And the public spending plans have cut across the piece. So that begs the question. I was thinking, you know, OK, so your 10-year plan does not require you to take any difficult or unpopular decisions, right? Because it's just a wish list of things you like to do over the next 10 years. your energy bills are going up but you've kind of made your play there you're giving 100 pounds to every family and you've cut VAT on energy bills and you know now that's it they're going up in beyond that you say it's Donald Trump's fault and then you've got the question which you know you have consistently raised which is hold on there are utterly unreasonable if you're a Labour government spending plans coming which are very tight you know so at what point do you ease those plus the pressures to fund the defense settlement plus but i would say this would be a nice to have if you're andy burnham not a must have can you fund your social care plan in some credible way or do you just kind of for that you could just continue to kick the can down the road until after a general election so the so the central question then is what do you do about the spending squeeze and the defense priorities and that looms in the next year or two and the budget didn't really help on that at all.

38:29But given the budget they gave a week ago, it's hard to imagine the next time there's a budget, we assume in a year's time, there will be, okay, now's the time for a big tax rise. Now's the time to find extra money for spending. Because if they weren't prepared to take a tough budget this year because they wanted to preserve the emerging kind of reversal of fortune for Labour electorally, i.e. things are looking better. Why in a year's time is you're staring down the barrel when there'll be a lot of speculation about an election if it hasn't already happened. Would you do your big, tough, difficult budget to fund spending by raising taxes?

39:11So if you didn't do it this year, you're not going to do it next year.

39:13Ed Balls: And they've not launched a process to get to facing up to those big questions. There isn't a big, you know, what is our national choice about social care? What is our national choice about tax and spending? and the health service. And it doesn't feel as though that's what the 10-year plan... We'll see. I'm not sure it's going to do that either. I think the one thing where I still feel strongly is on the Alan Milburn welfare proposals, which I think are now going to come next year. I would have had them out before the budget. I would have funded them. And I would have said, this is our way. Hasn't he got a report coming?

39:48Ed Balls: He has next week, but it's not... It's the preliminary report. Well, I don't know whether... But it's more that the Treasury has to own it and say, we're going to fund it. These are the reasonable savings which can be made over a 10-year period. And beyond that, it's a step too far. Because at the moment, they've left it for Kemi-Badnock and for Nigel Farage, where they can basically say, there's no tax and spending problems because we're just going to cut welfare by 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 billion pounds without specifying what that means. Although the Tories should be careful. I think those numbers are going to start to come under much greater scrutiny as you get closer to the election.

40:23their own savings but that so you could kick milburn down the road you could so the only question i've got and i don't actually have an answer i just raise the question which is could you kick the spending decisions how far down the road could you kick the spending decisions

40:39Ed Balls: jeremy hunt did this yeah but what you can do they have a three-year spending review but you could decide to say you'd have to come up with an explanation as to why there's a particular issue at now which means that rather than doing the full three-year spending You just roll it forward for a year and you say, but you need some kind of intellectual or policy or kind of global or something. But I think you're right because I don't see how, if you don't do it now, I don't see how the year before the election you easily get to this process. What you want is a process which throws through a manifesto so long as the government doesn't repeat the Starmer-Reeves mistake.

41:17Ed Balls: I mean, 97, 2001, as Labour opposition then governments, we were so careful not to box ourselves in on manifestos on tax. And they made a virtue of boxing themselves in in 2024 on tax. And then they bust that with the Employers National Insurance Rise, which is paid for by employees as well as employers. And suddenly there's a credibility problem. Do they repeat that or do they find a way to avoid that? I mean, I think that is very hard, but that's what they've got to do. Because obviously the Tory election campaign is going to be vote Labour and your taxes. So you have to have a bigger argument about the choice facing the nation.

41:56And let's be, you know, I like Andy Burnham and I like his enthusiasm for the job. And you've got to give him credit. He's got off to a pretty good start given the inheritance. But the kind of perennial question over him, over not just his time as Prime Minister, but previously it was like is he prepared to take an unpopular decision is he prepared to sort of do the hard thing or does he always find a way to kind of wriggle out of it and there are many many successful politicians who fall into that category you know electorally successful but you know ultimately the legacy is a bit thin but we're talking about whether or not you can play it

42:34Ed Balls: play it longer and avoid getting to that moment earlier what but anyway that was a week after the budget i thought and the reason i said right at the beginning the treasury will be having mixed feelings today is because you know though we're recording it before the decision is taken almost certainly interest rates are going up in britain today which was not expected six months ago and this is all the cost of living squeeze from them so cost of living is donald trump in the round wall right so you've got energy bills going up you've got you've got interest rates going up you know making mortgages more expensive small business loans more expensive you know in terms of the kind of real numbers for people's lived experience they're all heading the wrong way so one question for you because Andy Burnham has again doubled down on the European question we've been talking about this for the last couple of weeks he did a big interview with ITV with Dan Hewitt alongside the Ben Reilly Smith interview which we talked about last week we had a question from from Ben again about free movement in which Andy Burnham says that he thinks that people of Makerfield are changing their view now on not just Brexit, but also on free movement.

43:43Ed Balls: The public opinion is changing. He doesn't want to lead opinion. He wants to follow opinion, but he thinks it's changing. Is this debate which he is opening up, which I have to say, I find very concerning politically for him. Is this a diversion from focusing on growth and the cost of living? Or can he make this the urgent way to turn round the fortunes of the British economy? I mean, does it help him to avoid the Trump mistake? Or does it become a different version of the Trump mistake? Well, at the moment, it's hard to discern whether it's a really kind of clearly thought out political strategy to introduce this big issue back into British politics and essentially try and reassemble the Remain vote for a general election or some portion of the remain vote you know 48 of people voted remain if you can get 33 of people voting labor in the next election great you know you've won as on gmb this week i've interviewed two different government ministers one from stockton one from bury both of whom had a um a clear majority in their constituency in 2016 to leave and i say to them andy burnham says um public opinions changing the free movement i said is it coming up regularly on the doorstep can we return to free movement and the European Union.

44:59Ed Balls: And it'd be fair to say, I think they just look queasy and say it's not something which is coming up regularly. Right, but so is it a strategy? And there'll be a load of seats, you know, middle-class seats, essentially prosperous kind of commuter belt seats in the South with Labour MPs and indeed Liberal Democrat MPs who say, well, we'd love, you know, in Oxfordshire, they'd love to have, you know, the EU on the ballot paper because it will make it harder for Tories, for example. They wouldn't hold one in St Pancras. That's for sure. so um is it or is it just they're probably doing central manchester yes but it's not clear i mean greater manchester is bigger than central manchester i mean you know maker field no exactly so is this all some clever strategy and as i've suggested you know if you think you're going to face a tough cost of living general election you don't necessarily want to fight it on the economy although labour's ratings on the economy have gone up although also kemi Baden-Ox ratings on the economy have gone up.

45:52So do you want to find it or do you want to give yourself a second option of making Europe an issue at the election and thinking, in fact, this time around, it will play to the kind of remain or the rejoin, you know, votes advantage rather than the Brexit advantage. And it's just hard to know without him. Or has he just opened a Pandora's box because of his freewheeling media style, which we talked about last week? and now you can't really close the box because ultimately it's a vastly more interesting question politically free movement or deals with the eu you know than um what you're going to do about the energy bills in january right and um and i can't help noticing that you know when i like you i get asked about british politics a lot by friends or people i come across people at work when i try you know what everyone wants to ask me about is andy is any burning and rejoin the eu so he's opened this thing up and every time he does an interview and every time anyone comes on your show or whatever they get asked about it doesn't mean it's necessarily a sort of strategy it just might be a kind of careering uh you know issue bouncing off the corridors as it goes down

46:58Ed Balls: through british politics but we talked about how the republicans and the democrats have both got big arguments to be had in the next two years about what kind of party are they and which way are they going to go are they going to govern from the center ground are they moving to the left or to the right. And Andy Burnham's got the same tensions within his own party and big tension over Europe and free movement, because there are lots of, I mean, I'm one of these, there are lots of pro-Europeans who think we shouldn't have left the European Union, but think actually free movement is a huge problem.

47:27Ed Balls: And fighting that for the next two years is very problematic. But there'll be other people who take a very different view. And he's emboldening all those people in, you know, for example, the London Labour Party, you think not only we shouldn't have left the European Union, But free movement is a great thing. And that is your symbol of being pro-European. There's a Leeds MP who's in favour of rejoining the EU. Rachel Reeves. She came out, didn't she, this week? She did last Sunday. Although, you know, three years ago she was saying, absolutely no, I'm not going to blight the British economy in investment by spending the next seven years debating whether we should rejoin the European Union.

48:02Ed Balls: And we're not going back to the single market or the customs union or back to free movement. She's had a bit of a Damascene conversion. conversion maybe now she's um doesn't have the burden of office or or um or leading a re-election or maybe two years in the treasury has taught her that this is something that britain needs to do andy burnham is certainly quoting figures now of what it would do to uk gdp to be much closer to the european trade bloc the one thing which we can say definitively is um that the issue of migration is a divisive issue in both in in all parties and and shabana mahoud the other big story of the week with shibana moods back down but still strong set of migration reforms well i would say i'm look i'm a i'm a fan of shibana mahmood and it helps that she's a fan of our podcast but but those things set aside from her point of view uh and i would argue the labor party's election prospects point of view um it looked like these reforms might be dead in the water.

49:02These were announced under the Starmer government. Various people came out of the woodwork to oppose them, not least Angela Rayner, who was in opposition at the time, not official opposition, but on the back benches at the time, opposition to the Starmer government. And now, yes, she's had to make some adjustments to them under the Burnham regime. And the Burnham political strategy is quite different from Starmer, it feels. It's less kind of reform-facing, as we've been discussing, not least on the European issue. And OK, she's made a significant concession, which is that people who came here to work in the care sector under the Boris wave and under those incredibly lax conservative rules, you know, were going to have to wait longer for their indefinite leave to remain status.

49:49She has carved out the care sector workers and their dependents. It's a lot of people, but nevertheless, she's done it to kind of get the package through. but isn't that just she's still got the bulk of her package through under a new regime and i i think if you were her you go okay it's not 100 but it's 80 and that's not bad now she's got to you know still got to get through parliament and the parliamentary labor body and you know gonna there'll be amendments and all sorts of problems down the track but i think this is just a bit of smart politics she's she's made concessions she's bought off essentially new cabinet colleagues who previously were against you know well done i agree with that and i think in the end results are the

50:30Ed Balls: most important thing here and i think she will now get this bill uh through i mean the question is whether she took more of a hit for her than she needed to but the fact is she is on track what do you mean i'll explain it she's she's on track now um and the obr basically say this she's she's she's within touching distance of getting migration down to the tens of thousands. The old Cameron. David Cameron aspired to it. But then Boris Johnson took us so far away from that. If you go back to that white paper you mentioned, the Keir Starmer, Vivek Cooper white paper, they said net migration down. They said that we weren't simply going to allow all the people who came in the Boris wave just to become citizens with entitlements.

51:19Ed Balls: And in fact, citizenship was something you had to earn. That is what this delivers. And so it's going to deliver a big principle change in the way in which we go about the granting of indefinite leave to remain and then citizenship. You have to earn it in a way which also gets migration down hard. And if that's what's happening in the next two years of this parliament, that is a big success for Siobhan Mahmood, but also for Keir Starmer, as well as Andy Burnham. The question is whether she went out so hard, particularly on the care workers, up to waiting five to, I mean, it wasn't just retrospective, but from five to 15 years and was so uncompromising.

51:57Ed Balls: It was a consultation, but she didn't really consult. And as I said, the consultation was a bit flawed and gave the impression it was all or nothing. And therefore, she ends up looking like this is something imposed upon her, imposed upon her by Angela Rayner or Andy Burnham or the cabinet. And actually, I think she could have said the important thing is the principle and the outcome. And let's work together to find the best way to do it. And, you know, normally when you go into these kind of consultations, negotiations, you do have something in your back pocket to give. and you have to show some willingness, some principled willingness to do that.

52:37Ed Balls: And I think the only mistake that she and her team made was by being too tough, like she wanted to get the praise of the spectator and Michael Gove and the Times and the Mail. And it ends up with her then accepting the U-turn and she gets slammed by the Times and the Mail and the Spectator for giving too much ground. But actually, she could have done this in a way which was easier for her politically. I think she's taken a hit. But the outcome is a good outcome. Yes, although there's still a long way to go. Well, the bill's still going to get through Parliament. And the reality for John Healy and Andy Burnham, they want the economy to grow.

53:19Ed Balls: And these OBR forecasts now on net migration are very tough. And it may be the OBR has been too generous on net migration. I think the net migration numbers may now come in even lower than the OBR is forecasting. And that impacts on the growth numbers next year. Although it's partly, we should say, because the UK is a lesser place to come to, not just because economically there are fewer opportunities. So it's a bit of push as well. Will Andy Burnham fall into the Donald Trump trap on the cost of living? I think they are, you know, it's all still to play for. anyway none of this has been what's been taking the headlines of britain for the last week or so that's all been about the king and prime minister burnham's trip to antigua not for a holiday but for the commonwealth heads of government summit chogham as it's known in the jargon where they've been under pressure to apologize for britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade and we're going to turn to apologies in the commonwealth next

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56:02Ed Balls: So welcome back, King Charles and then Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister, out in the Caribbean for the Commonwealth Summit this week, actually joined by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who went out there to talk about debt relief. he loves a Commonwealth he really does I'll talk to you about that in a moment the king he was a bit grumpy because it did absolutely pour with rain and you know look the king's dealing with cancer he's in his 70s he's got absolutely drenched you know what's the point of having all those flunkies with the one moment I would have been furious however sometimes he has a reputation sometimes for losing his temper and he shouldn't I would have definitely been like him I'm standing here in the rain and there's some equerry with an umbrella 100 yards away where are they but the great skill in life is to be able to turn adversity into humor and that's what he did at the evening dinner perhaps part of my role as head of the commonwealth is to act as an umbrella for you all and i must say during my visit here It has been a great pleasure to meet so many prime ministers, almost as many as I've had at home.

57:15Ed Balls: As we've often said in the past, the raw speechwriters are class. And that is just the right tone. Of course, the big question. They are literally class. They're good at their jobs. Of course, the issue has been all the pressure from Commonwealth leaders, not just for an apology from Britain for slavery hundreds of years ago, but also to pay reparations. All of them are campaigning on that in their localities, but with a question of republicanism lurking in the background. I mean, i.e. some of these countries getting rid of the king as the head of state. That's right, which, of course, none of the Commonwealth countries have done.

57:57Ed Balls: Andy Burnham didn't want to have the big mess that Keir Starmer had a couple of years ago so he went in with a sort of slightly vibey Let's talk about it Let's share our feelings Let's hear from those who are affected And there were reports of the king who having pushed away the idea of the apology was a bit grumpy I don't know if that's true It felt like there may have been a bit of miscommunication but fundamentally they were in the same place There wasn't an apology but there was a lot of talk about sorrow and shame but not a formal apology and certainly no reparations Andy Burnham's clear we're not paying reparations but we've got Gordon Brown here to talk about debt relief and things which we might do and now we're going to have a process a process of investigation and so with a thought that at the end there won't be reparations but there might be some money and there won't be an apology but maybe there'll be an apology so what do you think?

58:50Well I mean I have two thoughts One is, there's a kind of question of do these apologies matter or work? Maybe we'll come on to the precedence. I mean, my other thought is what on earth is the Commonwealth doing, talking about all this? Should we start with the, I mean, in other words, there's so much going on in the world and the Commonwealth should be, the whole proposition of the Commonwealth after its creation was this, A, obviously there were historic ties between all the nations, Although, curiously, some new countries have joined the Commonwealth who were never part of the British Empire.

59:26But this was going to be a sort of non-aligned group of countries who would bring together rich and poor countries, developing countries, advanced Western countries. And this was, you know, outside of the American axis. And in a world of America and China these days, this is a group of people, a group of countries, a group of leaders who can form common kind of third party positions. But instead of talking about, you know, how to deliver security in an age where you don't want to be overly reliant on the US or China or how to deliver new rules on AI rather than just, you know, the Americans and the Chinese designing these rules.

1:00:00I mean, there's so many things you could talk about. They end up with an utterly, in my view, utterly pointless row about slavery. Not that that's not to diminish the horrors of the slave trade or to diminish Britain's historic role in ending the slave trade and using the Royal Navy to force every other country to end the transatlantic slave trade. Of course, slavery has continued in its modern forms, very sadly. But Britain has also been a leader there.

1:00:26Ed Balls: Although slavery did grow in Britain during the period when the campaign against slavery was at its height. And then at the end of slavery, we chose to pay very large compensation to the slave owners. So, you know, even our ending of the slave trade is complicated. But it was also an example of what actually these days people accuse America of, which is extraterritorial projection of power. The Royal Navy would intercept like Spanish ships, French ships and whatever that were carrying slaves from Spanish colonies. And so I just think it's a, you know, there's a mix. And I totally agree with you, by the way, on the Commonwealth.

1:01:06Ed Balls: The Commonwealth works if it's like a launching pad into the bigger conversation of the G7 or the G20. The first one I went to was in Mauritius in 1997. 1997 it was complicated because we were in this seaside um hotel where the only people staying there other than gordon brown me gussel donnell and charlie wheelan were a whole load of honeymooners and we used to walk down you were in love with you were in love with each other and and we used to walk down the beach to breakfast in the morning as these gordon in his suit we're all in suits and ties but these honeymooners kind of walk you on the golden sands in bare feet and swimsuits but There we were.

1:01:42Ed Balls: But we launched the Mauritius mandate for debt relief into the IMF meeting. But we were able to use it as a staging post. Whereas at the moment, this doesn't feel as though it's connected to the wider global story. No, I mean, sorry, I was about to tell a story about doing something called the Toro Malinos deal. I did in a hotel with holidaymakers with the European Conservative Party. Maybe we should come back to that. We had to call it the Malaga Agreement because the Toro Malinos Agreement sounded so ridiculous. But the, yeah, no, I just think there's a lot of people who are vested in the Commonwealth.

1:02:15A lot of people think Commonwealth's a great thing. And there are lots of, you know, Commonwealth scholarships. Not least the king. The king. You know, people argue he will be the last member of the British royal family who will be head of the Commonwealth. I wonder whether that's actually the case. And there's lots of, you know, good things that are done in the name of the Commonwealth. But as a kind of gathering of world leaders where you could create quite an interesting alliance of people from the global south and countries like Britain, Canada, Australia, I would say this summit has failed.

1:02:48Or certainly I've not noticed them doing anything else. And this obsession with autopology feels more to do with – and again, I don't diminish the horrors of the slave trade. But 200 years later, why now, when you weren't 20, 30 years ago, bring it up, why has it become such an animating issue? It feels it's got a lot to do with domestic politics in some of these countries. And this call for reparations, which is, you know, just a version we've been talking about the budget, which is it'd be great to be able to solve my problems at home with my domestic budget if some foreign country gave me a load of money.

1:03:22And that's kind of what people hope I think these reparations are going to do. You can say here at home, we would invest more in education or we would do more for the environment here if Britain gave us a lump of money. So we're just going to be angry with Britain because it doesn't give us a lump of money.

1:03:38Ed Balls: It's important to say, because we're sounding as though kind of apologising is always the wrong thing to do. Actually, government's apologising for historic events. I mean, just a list here. Grenfell Tower, apology from Keir Starmer. Windrush, apology from the Home Secretary at the time, Amber Rudd. Bloody Sunday, David Cameron did an apology, important apology. I think it was in 2010. The Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven, Tony Blair apologised on both of those occasions. Hillsborough, David Cameron said he was profoundly sorry for the failures that caused the Hillsboroughs disaster. Governments do choose to apologise.

1:04:15Ed Balls: You could also add in Gordon Brown famously apologising for all the looked after children who were sent from Britain forced to migrate to Australia. I mean, it is a regular thing to apologise. It's not always the wrong thing to do and doesn't always lead to reparations or to payments. I think most of those are very different cases of relatively recent failures of the British state. didn't tony blair um apologize for the irish potato famine in 1840 well first of all he was somewhat ridiculed for it second it turns out he didn't actually know he was apologizing it was actually his office had sent out the apology before he saw it um and it was a sort of mealy mouthed apology when you actually read the wording but it but it does sort of fall a bit into that category and i think um which is there's one thing for you know something very complicated like Bloody Sunday or Grenfell Tower where there are kind of administrative state failings there's then potentially also not a cover-up or a refusal to be accountable for what happened and the people affected or the relatives of the people directly you know recent relatives of people affected are still alive and it's very raw the slave trade obviously leaves a massive and horrific legacy around the world.

1:05:38And there's been slavery since the dawn of time and sadly there's still slavery today. But it's a... But what is... I mean, I don't think it matters if the British Prime Minister gets up and says we're profoundly sorry for the slave trade. Because I would say that today, I'm profoundly sorry for the slave trade.

1:05:54Ed Balls: But that's not... And that's even more complicated when you start talking about reparations. I mean, if you are the British descendants of people who came here on the windrush boats or for whatever reason. I mean, are you now, as a British taxpayer, supposed to apologise to the people of the Caribbean or to Africa for the slave trade or for you to make a financial contribution when you are the descendant of the people who were affected by the slave trade? It's just not, I mean, people will say it's a long time ago. Is it really the priority? Other people were worse. Why should we pay? It wasn't us who did it.

1:06:34Ed Balls: There's loads of arguments. But do you think Burnham has kind of basically weaved his way through it? I think there's been a bit of... I think what they've done is clever. It's interesting. If you go back to 1997, Tony Blair and his government debated whether to apologise for Bloody Sunday, which of course was terrible and much more recent and a huge kind of... Although much more localised. I mean, obviously tragic for the people involved in that march in Derry, Londonderry, but not the same as the transatlantic slave trade over centuries involving millions of people. But there had been an inquiry done by a guy called Widgery, the Lord Chief Justice of Britain, Lord Widgery, which had basically, this is before Tony Blair's time, had basically blamed the citizens for being armed and kind of causing all of this.

1:07:28Ed Balls: and there was a debate as to whether or not Tony Blair should apologise but if he had apologised in that context then it would have been pretending to apologise but in fact standing up this false narrative and so what was decided was instead to launch the Savile Inquiry which turned out to take 12-14 years, cost£200 million but by the time it came to David Cameron apologising he was apologising for something which had been, because of Savile put in proper context, there was a proper understanding of what actually happened. And I wonder whether the strategy here is to do the same thing, that rather than apologise, that you go through a process which ends up with a proper contextualisation of this historically and takes reparations off the table.

1:08:18Ed Balls: And they're hoping that by the time you apologise, you can genuinely put it to bed. Because if you apologise now, it doesn't solve anything. People say, oh yeah, that's all very well, but what's an apology? where's the money? I just think it's not the central thing is it's not really relevant to the big issues facing the world and indeed facing the countries of the Commonwealth and you know Kemi Badenok I mean she is self-evidently a black woman who grew up in West Africa and you know the area most ravaged by the slave trade the transatlantic slave trade and she said this and I agree with her the transatlantic slave trade happened centuries ago it's time for the Commonwealth to start looking forwards not endlessly backwards we should not be entertaining the idea of reparations.

1:08:57And the problem with this endless talk about apologies is it's a distraction. And it is a distraction. And unfortunately, I just think it undermines the value of the Commonwealth or the possibility of the Commonwealth. And sadly, the Commonwealth consistently disappoints.

1:09:12Ed Balls: Look, Andy Burnham, Gordon Brown, and King Charles at the Commonwealth meeting this week would entirely agree with Kemmy Badenock. But the problem is, if you turn up Kemmy Badenock and say that to the Commonwealth summit, you know... Well, she probably would, though. Yeah, but then that's the end of it. Yeah. And so in the end... It might be quite hard to argue with her. Well, look, in the end, if it's all going to go, then you might as well go in style. But I would say if she turned up, she would want to persuade them that this is not the issue. There's a better way for the Commonwealth to have its influence in the world.

1:09:47Ed Balls: So I think... Look, I also don't disagree with anything she wrote in that article, but I think she'll dial back if she becomes Prime Minister. and has the um midterm elections helped to become prime minister is it a sign that incumbent governments are on the ropes because of the cost of living that's been a theme of this podcast anyway thanks for listening uh you can listen to emqs on monday where we have a question don't we from the person who's normally asking the questions uh on tv but she's asking our podcast laura koonsberg has sent us in a question thank you laura you can hear our answer to that you can here on monday unless you're a gold subscriber or kitchen cabinet member in which case you can hear it tomorrow on friday and we love receiving your questions and you can send them to questions of political currency.co.uk also if you're watching on youtube you can go into the comments and send us comments there and you can do that on your social media platforms as well we like a voice note so we can play them out and we'll be back next week with our main show and friday or monday with emqs would love to hear from someone saying no no i got it all wrong about the commonwealth that's a really powerful and important organization for the future.

1:10:54Ed Balls: Well, I think there may be some people who want to say this. I've been a little bit devil's advocate on it. We'll see whether that provokes that. But thank you, and we'll see you next week. See you then.

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