Did Farage go too far or score political points this week?

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0:55This is Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

1:09Ed Balls: So it's a Thursday morning and of course George Osborne has just landed at Heathrow from another, I mean it's almost a weekly transatlantic flight as far as I can see, and just landed from America?

1:24George Osborne: Yes, I've just come back from Washington, a very sunny Washington. It was very rainy when I was there about 10 days ago. And I was meeting various congressional people, members of Congress, senators. Had a pretty splendid lunch in the Senate dining room, which was fun. But they're all talking about an English guy. Well, they were at least all asking me about an English guy, Steve Hilton. because while I was there, the results or the early results from the California primary came through, the primary to choose the two people who are going to be on the ballot paper in California this autumn to be the governor of California.

2:03George Osborne: And it looks like Steve has come out top. And everyone was asking me, like, tell me about this guy. So he's, you know, obviously political aficionados in America had already sort of spotted he was running. But this was the moment he broke through into the sort of broader Washington, you know, beltway consciousness.

2:24Ed Balls: Although as Katie Balls of the Times was reporting from, I think she was at the CPAC conference, everybody there is convinced that Rupert Lowe is about to be the next prime minister. Because if you watch X, and that's where you get your politics from, the Elon Musk algorithm makes restore the dominant figure of British politics these days. But to be fair to Steve Hilton, he is top. And although the question is, I mean, look, Donald Trump has popped up this morning having endorsed Steve Hilton to say that it takes so long to count all these postal ballots because this is another election which has been fixed by the Democrats.

3:08Ed Balls: It's all a con. but it's a great achievement for Steve Hilton to come top in the primary doesn't mean he's going

3:16George Osborne: to win no not at all and it's a democrat state or seen as democrat state and he's the republican candidate but it's a democrat state where a lot of people were expecting that the two candidates this autumn would be democrats because in this primary they just picked the two most popular candidates and you know he'd be he started with nothing I mean I went to see him a year ago we've talked about it quite a bit on this show. You know, there's literally a picture of me and him. You can see it in the newsletter if you're one of our Kitchen Cabinet members that you get. There's a photo I took of me and him standing by his sort of yellow and blue painted pickup truck, which is the Steve Hilton campaign.

3:51George Osborne: And that was the Steve Hilton campaign. There was no money. There was no staff. And one of the people he appears to have beaten is a hedge fund billionaire who spent$200 million on the campaign and didn't get through to the final two. So I think whatever happens for Steve this autumn in the general election, or the main election for the governorship, you know, he's pulled off an amazing feat, a truly astonishing, whatever you think of his sort of political views and all of that, just in terms of a political achievement to be a British guy who goes to California, becomes an American citizen, and then just a few years later to be one of the two candidates to be governor is amazing.

4:32George Osborne: And it proves a rule I've always thought about politics. If you have enough hunger and appetite and people can see that you really want it, that makes a big difference.

4:44Ed Balls: Look, it is a great achievement and it's because he is the charismatic candidate and it looks like the guy who's going to come second, possibly first in this primary, the guy he'll be running off against in the autumn, is the guy Beckerer. We talked about him on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. You know, the opposite of a charismatic figure. You know, a former attorney general in California, former member of Biden's cabinet. If it is simply a charismatic leadership fight, Steve Hilton's got a real chance, even though this is, as you said, Democrat California. But the thing I think may count against him in the end is ironically the Trump nomination.

5:26Ed Balls: Steve has got the nomination from Donald Trump, but this is going to be an autumn.

5:31George Osborne: J.D. endorsed him yesterday on polling day.

5:34Ed Balls: Well, I'm sure that will, I think that may add to my point, which is that it's going to be an autumn midterm elections fight across America and a referendum on Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. There's going to be a big high profile mayoral election in Los Angeles between the incumbent Democrat and a MAGA figure, Spencer Pratt. and you know if it all becomes about do you want MAGA do you want Trump and that kind of captures American politics across the whole of the United States in the end look what Steve Hilton needs now is to make it a sort of non-party non-political just about charisma that's the election he can win but if it becomes a wider political choice about Trump and MAGA and do you want the Trump endorsed candidate, the J.D.

6:23Vensk endorsed candidate, I think that's a much harder

6:27Ed Balls: election for Hilton to win, even against a rather unexciting Democrat.

6:32George Osborne: No, I don't, look, he's definitely the underdog, but he was like a non-runner a year ago. I mean, people thought there was no chance he could get through the final two. And what you say about charisma is interesting. You know, in the kind of classic image of an American politician, You know, they're like six foot two tall. They've got a big kind of mop of groomed hair. You know, they obviously speak with an American accent and they've usually got millions of dollars in the bank. And here's, much as I love Steve, he's like not the tallest guy in the world. He doesn't have very much hair, at least on the top of his head.

7:05George Osborne: He's got a big kind of beard now. and the charisma you talk about which i think is real is all from his messaging and the way he's presented himself on social media and this message which is it should be a referendum on californian democrat rule and what they've done to california because they've been in charge for decades not on trump but obviously you're quite right that that's his big challenge which he knows but you know politics is you're going to be in it to win it and anything could happen now is i think you said last time we discussed this who knows when you're in the final two maybe the other candidate blows up so anyway this is all the diversion from our own problems here in the UK which I was also being asked a lot about in America and in Washington and in particular I was being asked about the horrific murder of Henry Novak so it has been noticed even on the other side of the Atlantic and we're obviously going to talk about that on the show today we're going to talk about the lessons for the police, but also the political fallout from this horrific crime and the terrible death of that young man.

8:11Ed Balls: And of course, that political row from the tragic death of Henry Novak is framing the by-election and the by-election debate for the next two weeks. There is a question time this evening in which five of the candidates are appearing. This will be a big item in that question time debate and you know there is no doubt that this has become a political football in that Makerfield by-election but of course I think also on question time tonight the Mandelson files will also come up so we will ask how's it going to Makerfield how's Andy Burnham handling the challenge and what do the Mandelson files tell us about the state of the governing party in Westminster.

8:57George Osborne: And on the subject of beleaguered leaders whose parties might be about to turn on them, charismatic outsiders from the regions who might come and seize their position, we're going to look at Germany, not number 10 Downing Street, but in fact the chancellery in Berlin, where Friedrich Mertz, who was elected about a year ago, the German chancellor, is really struggling, low in the polls, and effectively the kind of governor or mayor, but the prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, one of the German provinces, is a potential challenger from his own Christian Democrat party. And we're going to take a quick look at German politics, which bears some remarkable similarities with British politics at the moment.

9:43George Osborne: Anyway, all that to come.

9:44Ed Balls: But we're going to start with what is now a debate about whether there is two-tier policing in our country. Two-tier policing which is discriminating against the white majority and that is a debate which has taken off in the last 36-48 hours since the body cam footage released overnight Monday into Tuesday of the utterly terrible, tragic and horrifying death of the 18-year-old Southampton University student, Henry Novak. And he was murdered by a Sikh individual, Vikram Digwa, with an eight-inch knife. But when the police first arrived at the scene and Henry Novak was on the ground in distress, the crowd of Digwa and his family and friends all said that Novak had done the racial attack, that he was the culprit.

10:42Ed Balls: And initially, while he was on the floor, the police handcuffed him before they realised what was going on. Now, the reason why this all happened in British politics this week is because under our reporting rules, until the sentence, the conviction, the sentencing happened, there was a reporting restriction. And I think the reason why this is more being discussed in America is because, of course, in America, People don't have to comply by these rules. So Elon Musk on X has been winding up a white boy being killed by Sikh men for weeks on X. Actually, Robert Jenrick also raised this in Parliament using parliamentary privilege a few weeks ago.

11:28Ed Balls: But when the sentencing happened on Monday and Diggle was given a life sentence with a 21 year minimum, immediately Nigel Farage, we were saying last week he'd been absent from the Maker Field by-election. He announced an emergency statement, which he delivered at 8am from a field somewhere in Britain, didn't take any questions, in which he talked about the cold fury he feels and thinks that very many other people will as well. He said it shouldn't just be Black Lives Matters, it was now about White Lives Matter. He again made the accusation of two-tier policing. Kemi Bainock responded 15 minutes later on Good Morning Britain in a widely praised interview that she did.

12:16Ed Balls: It's ended up framing a statement on Tuesday from Shabala Mahmood, Prime Minister's Questions, yesterday. Of course, this whole debate about whether this is two-tier policing, whether this was discrimination against a white 18-year-old by the police is all the opposite of what Henry Novak's family wanted and what they feared was going to happen. Let's just start, because I think we should, with Henry's. I mean, the grief of the parents seeing the footage in court and now in public of their son dying on the ground, but not being listened to while he appealed for help and support is so powerful and so moving.

13:01Ed Balls: But this is what Mark Novak said after the sentencing on the steps of the court.

13:08George Osborne: We do not want his death to be used to create further division, hatred or tension. We want his story to make our streets safer for everyone. That is why we are calling on the government to treat knife crime as the national emergency that it is. I mean, let's start with the policing because, you know, that very brave family. And it's absolutely heart-rending to watch the father speak with his daughter next to him and so on. You know, that family does say that the police got it terribly wrong. So they absolutely don't want division on the streets, and they're very clear about that. But they do say the police got it terribly wrong.

13:53George Osborne: And they consented to the release of the body cam video footage. I think without that footage, this story would be quite a lot less high octane in the way it is at the moment in British politics. because you can't watch the footage and not be just appalled by the way the poor boy is being treated. And I know there's an independent police inquiry and everyone says, wait for that. But there are some very basic police mistakes that are obvious and can be called out. You know, they don't check whether the boy's been stabbed. In fact, one of the officers says, you haven't been stabbed, mate, and we now know you've been stabbed several times.

14:30George Osborne: So it's sort of just basic, like you turn up at the scene of a crime, someone says they've been stabbed and the police don't check the question then is were they kind of influenced by the fact he was white and the other person at the scene was a Sikh non-white and it's and that's where the kind of allegations of two-tier policing come in isn't it that that essentially because the police are so kind of hamstrung this is the argument you get, by kind of anti-racism ideology, and they've been explicitly told in their own guidance not to treat all people equally, that they kind of turn up at the scene of the crime and they kind of believe the murderer who says he's been the victim of a racist attack, and they don't believe the guy dying on the ground.

15:19George Osborne: Would you, I mean, let's start with the policing lessons here. I mean, would you accept not just that obviously there are terrible policing errors in this particular case, which the chief constable of the local police force has accepted. But that, you know, something has gone wrong, to paraphrase what Kemi Baden-Ock and others, but also some leading Labour politicians have said, that something's gone wrong with the way the police handle the whole issue of race.

15:52Ed Balls: Look, there is no doubt that something went badly wrong in this case and the police officers got it wrong. And that is what the investigation will look at. But the question is, were they in their minds being influenced by a new woke ideology? or you know was it about policing policy and and i think that it's really hard to stand that up in this uh case i mean it is shocking seeing the body cam image but if you go to what the judge said um in his um summing up at the the uh at the time of sentencing he says the attending police officers honestly believe there were reasonable grounds for suspecting henry had committed a defense They were given a convincing but wholly false narrative of the incident.

16:46Ed Balls: Basically, Digwa lied to them, as did the people around them. And it was dark and late and that the wounds were not visible. He says the genuine shock to the particular police officer when he realised what had happened shows he was doing his best in a very difficult situation. I think that the IRPC will be critical of the police officers. But the question is, were they acting in a way which was discriminatory to Henry because of training they had received? I don't see the body cam image and see prima facie evidence of that in this case. But the reason why this has been supercharged is also because of the 2025 guidance, which has been widely quoted in this case.

17:37Ed Balls: And it's actually just worth reading it and then trying to discuss it. Because the 2025 guidance says our commitment to racial equality means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups, blah, blah. It does not mean treating everyone the same or being colourblind. And it's been interpreted that what that guidance is telling police officers is not to treat people equally, that you should be discriminatory. Now, I looked into this. I went back to the Race Action Plan 2022, which, by the way, was produced when Chris Philp was the policing minister in the months afterwards he was, and Kemi Badenok was the equalities minister.

18:20Ed Balls: That document is all about trying to tackle the problem of perceived racism in policing. Most of my adult life, people have talked about two-tier policing, but the two-tier policing wasn't discrimination against white people. It was discrimination against black and ethnic minority people. The Macpherson report, the more recent Louise Casey report. And the question is, what do you do about that? And I think the guidance is bad. It's clumsy. What it's trying to say is it's not enough simply to treat people equally, which is the police oath. you also have to understand that for some communities the history of discrimination means you have to to do more you have to think harder about that i think that is right the idea those police officers went in the times this morning has um members anonymous members of the force in hampshire saying that they were sort of being swayed in how they responded and if that is true that is a really bad thing it's a terrible thing but actually what police forces have been trying to do is overcome a perception of racist bias against black and ethnic minority individuals and they've been doing their best in this case of the guidance it's clumsy but in the individual case of henry novak the judge does not stand up the claim that they were acting because of training ideology it was a difficult situation and they were lied to okay but i mean police officers get

19:47George Osborne: lie to all the time, presumably, when they stop people or intervene in situations. And I think this kind of, I'm going to kind of press you a bit here. I mean, this language clumsy, the word clumsy is actually a word that several government ministers have also used. So they've all sort of lightened on this guidance and said it's clumsy. But I think you have to look at the guidance itself and say, it's not just clumsy, it's wrong. It's wrong. You are right to say there's been a long history of accusations of police racism and you know particular communities but particularly the black community feel uh that um the police has been racist towards them and of course we had the stephen lawrence murder the furson report all of that that long history

20:33Ed Balls: but we've ended up in a situation which is why the race action plan in 2022 yes repeatedly says police must not be racist they have to be anti-racist that's what they are told to do

20:44George Osborne: But there's a difference between being anti-racist and then saying and coming up then with the conclusion that the way to be anti-racist is not to treat everyone equally and not to be colourblind. And that's where I think the ideology has gone completely warped. And it's not just the police, you know, that if you look, it's all sorts of public bodies have now adopted this kind of definition. it means people should be treated differently treating everyone the same is not enough or is not right and that guidance applies to now the national health service to the criminal vetting organization to homes england to companies house it's written into all of these public bodies that they shouldn't treat people equally in order to deliver a fair outcome and i just think that is a massive departure from basic common sense and we've allowed it to happen i completely agree with you it happened in the latter years of that of those conservative governments so it's quite hard for them to say nothing to do with us mate but it you know it is it's it's gone wrong it's gone badly wrong and i thought it was interesting jack straw who was home secretary at the time of them at first the report has come out and said look all that was necessary to deal with racism than the police, but there's been an overreaction, as there often is, or an overcorrection, as there often is in these sorts of situations.

22:13George Osborne: And now we need to correct back. I think the risk for this issue is if you don't acknowledge there's a problem at all, or you think it's just around the clumsy wording of one piece of guidance, that is not most people's lived experience. People who work in companies and get kind of anti-racist training, people who work in the public sector who were exposed to a lot of this public, this guidance, a lot of them know when they hear it, this isn't quite right, but I better keep quiet because, you know, I don't want to lose my job or anything like that. And it's very dangerous when the kind of mainstream political classes get detached from the lived experience of millions of people in work, in the public sector, in the private sector, who go like, this has all gone a bit wrong.

23:00Ed Balls: The thing is, though, George, I agree with you. And I think this guidance is wrong. I don't think, by the way, it intends to say you should treat people discriminatedly. I mean, every police officer makes the oath not to do that. But it's trying to say you have to understand history and why some communities are more sceptical or more worried or more afraid of the police. And by that, they don't mean the white community. But it's wrong. And if that culture has happened, then I think that is really dangerous.

23:35George Osborne: But let's just... The NHS England guidance. Equitable treatment does not necessarily mean always treating everyone the same. Well, of course that's the case. The trouble is you've departed. Once you sort of depart from these big public authorities, your hospital, your police service, your fire service.

23:51Ed Balls: If I go in and I've got an appendicitis, I don't get treated the same as somebody who's feeling a bit fluey. if I'm an asylum seeker and I get given free bus travel and that is different from other people who pay for bus travel that's because I'm an asylum seeker not because I have a particular ethnicity and if I'm from a community which has a deep distrust of the police because of years of mistreatment I think police officers have to be aware of that but if that means that they act in a way which is discriminatory then that's a bad thing and what the language does is suggests but then but jump into the kind of things which have been said in the last couple of days right first of all you know um this is a george floyd moment um look george floyd was killed in plain sight in america by police officers people say keby baylock says this this is our stephen lawrence moment stephen lawrence was killed by white youths but the police then conspired in covering that up for weeks and months and years.

24:54Ed Balls: In this case, after two minutes when they realise what is going on, the police shift their focus. They have made a mistake. The perpetrator, who was not a police officer, but the Sikh guy with a knife he should never have been allowed to carry, gets convicted for a life sentence. I mean, it's just not comparable to Stephen Lawrence, which was about a culture of racism. Now, people are trying to say There's a culture of racism here. We now have two-tier policing in our country. The two-tier policing means anti-white discrimination. When Suella Braverman was removed from office as Home Secretary in 2022 by Rishi Sunak, that's because she made the allegation of two-tier policing.

25:34Ed Balls: And that was so beyond the pale that she lost her job. Are we really saying four years on? It's now become normalised for The Times and The Spectator and the leader of the opposition and the Shadow Home Secretary, just take it as a given, we have two-tier policing. It's so dangerous to the morale of policing. It's not true in the vast majority of cases. If you want police officers to run into dangerous situations, you can't. I mean, we ended up with riots on Tuesday nights with people throwing bricks and bottles and wheelie bins at police stations.

26:10George Osborne: What kind of country are we becoming? Okay, but just as George Floyd's murder, sparked around the world a you know the black lives matter movement and you know kirstarmer took the knee as did the england football team and all that kind of thing whether that was wise

26:26Ed Balls: or not it was a real response of black people to what they saw in that with their own eyes yeah

26:32George Osborne: but it was also as i've said before on this podcast a in my view a disaster the black lives matter movement because it triggered a white lives matter hispanic lives matter which is why Hispanic voters or deserted the Democrat Party in America and supported Trump. You know, once you start segmenting people into these different groups, once you're playing into this, the kind of splintering of society, I think you are, you're actually empowering racism.

27:03Ed Balls: I understand that. Also, although telling black Americans they should ignore the last 150 years of American history is quite a hard thing for us white people to tell them. Sure.

27:12George Osborne: Yes. But equally, you know, sometimes it takes, you know, why is it that suddenly the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, come out and say, oh, yeah, well, maybe this racism guidance is all wrong or clumsy and we're going to withdraw it. Why does it take a court case? Because that's how society operates and politics operates. It's often specific cases that spark a re-examination of how things have been handled or lead to changes in the law. Or we should come, we're talking, we're drifting into, correctly, the kind of politics of all of this. And I think the way I would think about it is there are kind of clear risks for the way Nigel Farage is handling it.

28:01George Osborne: There are clear risks from the way Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are potentially handling it. And I think there is a potential risk for Kemi Badenoch in the way she has been handling it. Although generally, including in particular the interview she did with you on GMB, she has got some plaudits and she's been the subject of a particularly unpleasant and misleading, to put it mildly, reform attack ad. Should we just take them in order? Nigel Farage. I mean, let me be totally devil's advocate. I don't agree with this at all. But just to get you, you know, if you were him or you were advising him, you'd say, Nigel, this is your issue.

28:46George Osborne: This is what people are thinking. You all supporters think it. Go and say it. Yeah, sure, the mainstream politicians are all going to attack you and sound all pompous and throw back at you the words of the father of the poor boy who was murdered and so on. But who cares? Your message is going to get across. This is you've always been the person who succeeds when you say what is the unsayable that everyone is thinking.

29:09Ed Balls: That would be what he'll be thinking, right? Absolutely. And he will think this week has gone really well for him. On our podcast last week, we said that Nigel Farage was finding it difficult going to make a field. He doesn't want to do press conferences. He doesn't want to answer questions about his donations. But he's under pressure, under pressure from Restore to his right. And this was an opportunity and he did it through a video without any questions in which he basically says white lives matter and puts himself at the centre of this by-election debate. debate. I mean, it tells you, as we said last week, that he is far more worried about the threat from his right flank, from Elon Musk and Rupert Lowe, and that he is reaching into the centre ground.

30:00Ed Balls: And he went out of his way to say things which were so inflammatory that nobody could outdo him, and which I think provides a big opportunity for Kemi Badenock. But it also, I mean, the contradiction in what he's saying is so shocking. At the time of the Sarah Everard murder, which was just five years ago, Nigel Farage was tweeting, we must not allow the tragic murder of a young woman to lead to attacks on men and attacks on the police. When there were demonstrations against the police from the hard left he says the marxists among us are playing the anti-police card after sarah everard's murder and then five years on when it is a attack on a white boy he's doing he's doing the opposite and it's basically playing to let us find a way to tell the white men that you are the victims you are disadvantaged you've been unfairly treated and it's by the state and the police and therefore he's playing the anti-police card now i understand why in his short-term politics he needs this and why he thinks it might help him in maker field but it is the opposite of what he said five years ago and it is the opposite of It prevents him reaching to the centre ground.

31:28Ed Balls: I think it makes it very hard. A Prime Minister who says that the police are racist and discriminatory against whites. It's a fundamental thing, I think, in political and government leadership that you have to support the police in the difficult jobs they do and worry about their morale and give them the confidence to go into difficult situations.

31:55George Osborne: But Ed, these are all problems he'll face if he's Prime Minister. We're talking about him trying to become Prime Minister. Isn't this just going to help? I mean, I think it's hugely divisive.

32:06Ed Balls: I think in the end, I'm agreeing with you that I think he probably thinks he's had a good week and this works for him in maker field. But it takes him in the opposite direction from what we said he should be doing if he's actually trying to win from the centre and the right. I think if you're Richard Tice, you look at this and thinking this is the opposite. I mean, competing to outdo Rupert Lowe in language which sounds racist. Really? No, no.

32:35George Osborne: I think the risk is it kind of pushes him back into the territory he was in 15 years ago, where he was on the kind of unacceptable right of British politics. That's all I'm saying. But he's doing so because he's under massive pressure.

32:48Ed Balls: and he feels that's what he has to do right now, even if it's the opposite of the right electoral strategy.

32:53George Osborne: But it's possible that the sort of political environment, you know, there are parallels with Trump, you know, who was sort of unacceptable, except it turned out a load of mainstream Americans voted from, you know, and then suddenly he becomes acceptable. What about, let's do the risks to, well, the Starmer government is already, you know, dead man walking, isn't it? But, coin a phrase, But what about for Labour more generally? I mean, regardless of Starmer. I mean, for Labour MPs who represent these constituencies, what do you think the risk is for them?

33:34Ed Balls: Well, I think that they were just slow on this Monday and Tuesday. I mean, Tuesday morning, it was going to be a statement from Sarah Jones, the policing minister. Then it became the Home Secretary, she wanted to move by the afternoon. She did a good statement. But on that day, I don't think that Keir Starmer in particular got the right balance between, on the one hand, being horrified by what happened and also wanting to kind of learn lessons from the case, but at the same time defending the police. I think that is your job as a prime minister. That's what you've got to do. And it sounded on Tuesday like he was leaning into the two-tier narrative.

34:17Ed Balls: I think that's just incredibly dangerous for a Labour or Conservative prime minister. He pulled it back by Wednesday lunchtime. Maybe we should listen to Nigel Farage and Keir Starmer in Prime Minister's questions. It is now clear to growing millions in this country that we're living under two-tier policing. The instructions that are given to police officers from police bosses are clear and written down in ink. It says you must treat different ethnic groups in different ways. that apart from...

34:55George Osborne: I'm really shocked that he pretends to have respect for Henry's family and then acts in this way. They are a grieving family. So I think, you know, I think Starmer was strong there in his riposte. But the risk, I think the risk for Labour is it's a bit like with the grooming gangs, you know which is being deployed in the makerfield by-election against Andy Burnham and was deployed in the general election against Labour MPs by reform you know that that that there's the real issue and the um it is not two-tier policing and it's not as being portrayed by Nigel Farage but it is as you know that repeating what we've just been talking about you know many people's lived experience is that some of this racism guidance is wrong and has gone too far.

35:51George Osborne: What about Kimmy Baden-Ock? You see, the reason I bring her in is I think she had a very strong week because she differentiated herself from Farage and made a very powerful point on your show, which is it's not that black lives matter, it's not that white lives matter, everyone's lives matter, she says. and you know of course it comes with extra force that she is a black woman who says this I think the kind of curious risk here for her well there's a policy risk which we might come on to because I think you know you have you've been saying to me that well hold on aren't they actually signing up to this claim of two-tier policing particularly shadow home secretary Chris Vilt but I think there's another there's a curious risk for her which you might it's one of those you know things that might might be hard to spot but you know i don't think you know kemi badenock is at her best when she's on these sorts of issues it's actually what propelled her into the leadership of the tory party when she's on these cultural issues when she's sort of standing up to to use the kind of loose term woke ideology when she's saying stop defining people as black stop defining people as women you know we're all the same you know she's very very strong but but it's a bit of a sideshow for the conservative party and the culture wars aren't wars they're going to win and uh particularly with reform knocking around and they they need to kind of constantly come back to the economy and so obviously this was not the week to talk about the economy she was absolutely on the right topic but i think you you know she might sort of drink the kool-aid a bit and go back to the kemi beinock who defined herself around this set of issues, these sort of cultural issues, and miss the bigger point, which is she's got to drag the Conservative Party onto the kind of centre ground on the economy.

37:47George Osborne: And that is a week by week job.

37:50Ed Balls: I agree with that, although I don't think that she's lost from this week. As I said to you earlier, I think she has to be very careful that she doesn't allow people around her to lean too far into the reform restore agenda and I don't think the two-tier policing language is good language for a potential party of government and as I said it lost Suella Braverman her job but being attacked by Robert Jenrick and Nigel Farage in a entirely erroneous and unfair way to say that she was championing Black Lives Matter, when in fact, as you said earlier, her quote on the very emotional but thoughtful interview with us was that it should not be black lives or white lives, it should be everybody's lives matter.

38:45Ed Balls: I thought she got the tone of that right and it would have done her good. But I agree with you that that's her strong place

38:58George Osborne: but she's got to get onto the economy the ads the reform ad which is entirely erroneous which has a picture of kemi beinog and says it says she says black lives do matter and white lives don't matter which are two quotes taken out of context particularly the second one you know i mean it's basically a racist that you would not put that ad up if it was a white male leader of the Tory party or even a white female leader I don't think I think it was it's

39:28Ed Balls: playing it's actually playing the race card isn't it I don't know whether you saw um on the Robert Peston show uh Robert Jenrick attempting to defend that ad um when Peston played um to Jenrick what can be better not actually said on Good Morning Britain I mean it's it's clearly um it's a lie and it's shocking. But I think it shows you how worried Nigel Farage and reform are. But I think all of that works to Kimmy Badenock's advantage.

39:58George Osborne: Anyway, Wes Streeting was very good in coming out and sort of siding with Kimmy Badenock in that. And talking of Wes, he is, of course, one of the contenders in this leadership contest that is underway but isn't. And we're going to be turning next to the make-a-field by-election and the Mandelson files, which have been this week's installment in the Labour leadership crisis.

40:45Ed Balls: dads don't lose your important relationship with your children call 312-356-DADS that's 312-356-DADS for help and a free father's rights information kit for more information visit dadsrights.com

41:06Ed Balls: so we are recording this on Thursday as the candidates prepare for their question time outing on the BBC. I think at the moment, the feeling in the Labour campaign is that it's going well for Andy Burnham, that the vote is holding up and that the rows between reform and restore working to their advantage. And of course, the reform candidate, Robert Kenyon, to be fair to him, he was a plumber until two weeks ago. And now he's answering questions about Crimea and and immigration and remain. And so this is a baptism of fire, but it's been a bit wobbly for him. But there's still a long way to go. And I think the big question for Andy Burnham is him navigating the tension between being a by-election candidate and also trying to run to be Prime Minister of the country at the same time.

42:04Ed Balls: And that's causing, I think, some unease.

42:06George Osborne: Yeah, and he's been pretty cautious on this whole policing issue this week, although maybe on question time he gets pushed further on it. I thought that there are two things I'd like you to hear. First, listen to this interview on a very good podcast, Electoral Dysfunction, with Beth Rigby. This is Andy Burnham really squirming when I think Beth asks a pretty straightforward question, which is, you presumably want to be prime minister. Listen to this.

42:37Ed Balls: I'm making a case for change in this by-election, a change to Labour, a change to politics, a change to the way the country is run. And I will take that fight as far as I can take it, but I'm not making assumptions here about jobs that I might have.

42:53George Osborne: I know, but it's a sort of weird conversation because this is a by-election, but it's a national conversation about Labour and how Labour might change. And you're clearly running because you want to go back and try and be Prime Minister. Now, so we're having this weird conversation where that's what you're doing and then you won't say it.

43:10Ed Balls: It's not weird because I'm setting out clearly the change and this is quite a change for Labour.

43:16George Osborne: So, you know, he's basically dodging the question, do you want to be prime minister? Even though in all his campaign literature and his sort of video blogs and so on, he says this isn't just a local election. This is about changing Labour nationally. and he says we're going to make Makerfield the most powerful constituency in the country, which is a clue for the local MP is going to be the prime minister. And I thought it was odd because I thought he'd actually decided to be more straightforward on the question, which is, yeah, I'm coming in to not just be the MP here, but to change the Labour body by being its leader.

43:53And the risk for him is that his kind of ordinary bloke routine,

43:58George Osborne: I'm the honest guy, look, I'm just a normal person, you know, which has been pretty powerful and quite charismatic, kind of starts to unravel if he starts to sound like a, you know, a sort of politician who dodges the question, do you want to be prime minister, which is, of course, what politicians do. And I did when I was asked, and you probably did when you were asked. But, you know, he says, I'm a different style of politician. And I think that was looking a bit threadbare this week here's um here's a comedian uh this is actually from a couple of weeks ago so this comedian russell kane um was on to this uh with his parody hiya i'm andy burnham and uh what i'm doing right now i'm just making a cup of tea um i do loads of really normal things throughout the day and having a cup of tea is just one of them it's andy burnham here i'm just about to make some toast with white bread of course i wouldn't even know how to spell sourdough and wouldn't be interested in it because it's not normal enough.

44:55George Osborne: I like a nice slice of white, thank you, toasted on a normal toaster. Hiya, Andy Burnham here and I've just put my sock on.

45:02Ed Balls: I've got shoes and socks and sometimes I put a sock on but that's what life's about, innit? Just being normal. I'm just going in here because I'm gonna have a shit. I'm just like you really.

45:13George Osborne: Sometimes I go in the toilet and have a shit. Hi, I'm Andy Burnham and I have an insatiable urge for power. I mean, I like gravy. hey, hey, I'm one of yous. Anyway, I laughed when I saw that first time. But the, what do you think? I mean, look, it's a pretty slick campaign, but this policing issue will feature now in this by-election. And of course, quite rightly, people are starting to ask this guy, hold on, you want to be the prime minister? you know what would you do if you're prime minister we discussed um a couple of weeks ago that uh

45:54Ed Balls: it's one thing to think that at the beginning of the by-election campaign it will be a coronation if Andy Burnham's won it's another thing to think there'll definitely be a coronation at the end of the campaign and you know all of these um these these bumps along the road i think make it more likely that um we're streeting or somebody else will get the 81 uh signatures um because because it does raise questions. I think it's pretty good for Andy Burnham if there is a contest at the end of this rather than not because I'm not sure they're going to be ready. There is one challenge about authenticity.

46:28Ed Balls: If you go out there to say I'm the straight talking guy and then you don't answer Beth Riggi's questions in a straight talking way, then that becomes a bit messy. They also need some campaign discipline about messaging. I mean most of the week has been about does Andy Burnham want to have an early election if he wins the by-election then becomes prime minister kind of like totally destabilising for Labour MPs they're allowing loads of speculation in the papers with his campaign people saying who is going to be his Chancellor is it going to be Shabana Mahmood is it going to be Ed Miliband also very destabilising they kind of get a bit of a grip on this and fight the by-election campaign first but I think the biggest challenge they've got I mean by the way

47:06George Osborne: he should pick Shabana not Ed we should definitely discuss this on a future podcast

47:11Ed Balls: but I think the big challenge is about messaging. And, you know, I have said over the last two or three years about Keir Starmer that when he does the sort of outsider anti-Westminster positioning, this is dangerous. It's easy to do if you're the populist outsider and you are in opposition, but it's much harder to then sustain that when you take on the big job. It's easy to be the sort of populist outsider when you're responding to um to tony blair's essay which andy burnham did a week ago um as you said though when it comes to this debate about policing and two-tier policing i mean andy burnham so far i said nothing um he's obviously gonna have to say something when he gets to question time or maybe before this afternoon because playing the populist outsider card would be the wrong thing for him to do uh politically um in order to win the labour leadership even if it is the right thing to do for parts of the Makerfield electorate.

48:11Ed Balls: And so as a consequence, he sort of slightly runs out of road and says nothing on that issue. Then you had his response to the Mandelson files. Now, this caused lots of eye rolling in the lobby, because I would say when the Mandelson files came out, they were slightly less exciting than people thought. Andy produces a statement on Twitter, in which he says the revelations will further damage confidence in the political system. Change can't come soon enough, need fundamental cultural change. People have lost faith in the system, puts private vested interests above the wider public interest, need a new political culture rooted in accountability.

48:50Ed Balls: I mean, it's all very well. If you slam everybody in the cabinet, everybody in the government, and all the 400 Labour members of parliament for all being part of this failed political culture, which you, the populist outsider are going to storm to fundamentally change because they're all about their own private self-interest and you're the only one who supports the public interest and then you also want to become the leader of the prime minister and galvanize everybody around a common mission and by the way have to actually make decisions and make difficult decisions and handle surprise events and um and sensitive matters and you can't do that in a sort of farage style outsider way Well, you know, I think people slightly think, come on, Andy, you know, grow up.

49:36Ed Balls: We actually want you to start talking like you are. If you're running to be prime minister, sound like one.

49:43George Osborne: Well, you have frequently made this point about what a mistake it is to sort of be anti-politics, particularly if you're very obviously a politician. And, you know, Rishi Sunak tried it, the head boy from Winchester, ex-Goldman Sachs, ex-Stanford, running against the system and the elite. And Sir Keir Starmer, Director of Public Prosecutions, you know, also running against the elites and the people who've been running the country. And now Andy Burnham, who's a lifelong, you know, career politician, nothing against them. But, you know, he was a special advisor. He was a junior MP, cabinet minister, now he's been mayor of Manchester.

50:22George Osborne: I mean, it doesn't work. It doesn't work for the outsiders. But it's true, it's interesting.

50:27Ed Balls: He only found out about this corrupt political culture after he left it, having been an advisor, minister, and cabinet minister in it for 13 years.

50:35George Osborne: What about the, just on the Mandelson files, if you're right, it was a bit of a damp squib. It was like, whatever, you know, a million, what is it, a million pounds worth of a thousand documents. Anyway, I thought the thing, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, you get into trouble for telling the truth. and um you know if you actually read the mandelson exchanges with various members of the cabinet it's you know with uh pat mcfadden it's like yeah the trouble with uh you know the government and the labor parliamentary party is you know all they ever talk about is how to raise taxes not how to you know make the country grow and uh with um various other people he's you know saying there's no economic plan even your your big pal Darren Jones is conceding to him there's no economic plan and um you know then he says you know the Downing Street operation is a bit of a mess I mean this is all coming out in the map but of course all of this is true and then you know there's the sort of shock horror is oh it's all true that's right it was less a

51:42Ed Balls: smoking gun than a Rosetta Stone you have to sort of read the hieroglyphics and work out what is really going on. There's actually a lot in there. Although interestingly, I think what the media moved quite quickly to is to what isn't in there. So you now have Darren Jones and Keir Starmer WhatsApp messages in the Spectator today from Tim Shipman, which weren't included in the Monday bundle. And as you say, where did they come from then? Well, I mean, they were messages between Keir Starmer and Peter Mandelson and Darren Jones and Peter Mandelson. And if Darren Jones and Keir Starmer wanted to release them, they would have put them into the bundle on Monday.

52:19George Osborne: Well, they actually said they didn't have them. They said they had a disappearing messages feature on WhatsApp, and they couldn't.

52:25Ed Balls: Well, then, you know, unless there was a long copy list, I mean, who knows? People will speculate that this is Peter Mandelson saying, if you go out and pretend you don't know me and you were never a friend of mine and we never worked together in a way which is actually disingenuous and untrue, then you know don't forget i mean you know that is probably a very um unfair allegation to get to make some i've no idea whether peter's releasing these messages but somebody's got them

52:53George Osborne: and somebody's about time we had another you know everyone likes a comeback but but don't you think it's the return of the prince the return of the prince of darkness he's he's been so quiet in this story you know understandably but maybe now he's now he's resurfacing the real issue here though

53:11Ed Balls: is it lays bare the state of the government and how it's been for the last two years. If you were a loyalist thinking, you know, maybe it's not as bad and maybe it can be turned round and maybe it's not really number 10's fault and then you see these messages, you realise, goodness me, it really is that bad and it really was number 10's fault and all the things which we feared and we were told and all these cabinet ministers were telling us, no that's not true it turned out they are all true and so I think to be honest it really sucks the life out of any possibility that this could be turned around strategically and so it felt to me like pretty final Patrick Maguire, the Starmer biographer has been very effective on this for the last few years and as he wrote in his column earlier in the week the messages stand up what people always told him in private even if they wouldn't say it in public and it's sort of um peter madison in one of the whatsapp messages refers to it as the patrick maguire syndrome which is that basically you know in the end it takes you over and consumes you and as the full reality drenches around you and i think that's what happened to many members

54:34George Osborne: of the parliamentary labour party i've got a question which is um how do you think darren jones's leadership campaigns going because i read in the newspaper earlier this week that he was thinking of running for leader this is the chief secretary to the prime minister isn't he um but he does various sort of informational videos on tiktok if you want to follow him i don't think

54:57Ed Balls: you should ever be snarky about people who are willing to put themselves forward and seek office in the public interest. And that's why I think that it's wrong to assume if Andy Burnham wins this by-election that there's just a coronation. I think, by the way, if Andy Burnham loses this by-election, the idea that this is good news for Keir Starmer is also totally for the Byrds. I mean, if Andy Burnham can't win in Makerfield, then Keir Starmer and the government are in even bigger trouble. But if Andy Burnham wins, You know, I think there will be people who will be collecting names. I think they'll think that time for a contest is a good thing, even if it's destabilising, because they'll think that the by-election has not persuaded them that Andy Burnham's got all the answers.

55:46And so maybe Darren Jones will be a candidate.

55:50Ed Balls: Can he get to 81? Or two.

55:55George Osborne: Let's turn next to the situation in Germany.

56:01Ed Balls: For a second then, I thought you meant 82, but you actually just meant two. I just meant two. Come on. I mean, is his mother a member?

56:10George Osborne: It was always... Is his mother a member of the parliamentary Labour Party? The first leadership contest I voted in as an MP was in the year 2001, and Michael Portillo was the person I supported. But there was a strong suggestion that Michael Portillo didn't even vote for himself. So it's possible to get zero in a leadership contest. and now listen what about the situation in germany because there are lots of parallels to what's happening here in the uk and we thought it would be worth just checking in on politics on the other side of the channel and we'll turn to that next

56:52George Osborne: welcome back so last year friedrich mertz the veteran of german politics with three times tried to become chancellor and leader of his party, finally made it to the chancellery. And there was a real feeling here is a serious guy who's used his time in the wilderness to learn lots of things about business, who's going to come in and shake up a moribund Germany in a way that his predecessor, his centre-left predecessor, Olaf Scholz, had been unable to do. And that he had a kind of charisma because he was, you know, he's a sort of tall, serious, no-nonsense individual, who I actually know reasonably well.

57:30George Osborne: And he's suddenly, you know, he's engaging in private. The early signs were quite strong because he made this really bold move to change the German constitution and borrow lots more money to fund essentially the rearmament of Germany in the face of the threat from Russia. And it was what you had actually advised the British government to do back then, to find space in the fiscal rules. But the fiscal rules, let's be honest, in Britain get changed all the time. In Germany, they hadn't been changed since the founding of the German Republic after the war. I mean, it's absolutely entrenched in the German constitution that you should not run a budget deficit of any size.

58:13George Osborne: So it all looked kind of interesting and it all looked like the franco-german motor was back up and running at the heart of the european union and so on fast forward a year and it's all looking very very weak because he has a very low poll rating and his party has a very low poll rating so he's very unpopular there are lots of stories about how he's a loner he's operating in a sort of silo in Berlin. He hasn't made connections within his own party, which explains why he hadn't previously won the leadership of his party, that he doesn't have close advisors, he doesn't have politicians around him who he can trust, and that he's very unpolitical, that he keeps making sort of essentially gaffes in or doesn't have the kind of touch you need to be a sort of smooth political operator, and that his great rival back in the day, Angela Merkel, did have.

59:09George Osborne: And it all is a bit starmerish. It's the guy, the serious guy who's going to come in and sort everything out, who actually turns out not to be a very good politician. So the problem is Britain, Europe, the world does need Germany to get its act together. And it looks like they are drifting into a sort of British style political crisis right now.

59:31Ed Balls: I mean, it is so fascinating. The oldest ever person to become German Chancellor spent his campaign attacking the incompetence and lack of vision of his predecessor, now mired. I mean, he is almost as unpopular as Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer now after his slump in the polls. People say too focused on foreign policy, didn't really deliver on his tax promises, unpopular...

59:56George Osborne: I think to be fair to Macron, that's after whatever it is, eight years in office. I mean, I wouldn't put Macron in the same category.

1:00:03Ed Balls: But, you know, very focused on foreign policy, didn't deliver on his kind of pledges, cuts to welfare and pensions disappointed his base by doing a u-turn on borrowing for defence hasn't got a growth plan the economy not doing well partly thrown off by what's going on with um donald trump but also criticized as you say for a lack of vision there was a great one year in peace by derek scally in the irish times in which um you know a spd says it's a huge problem him he's such an impulsive person this is Mertz and then CDU allies of Mertz did not race to contradict that observation with one senior advisor conceding that a main part of their job is to prevent Mertz in public repeating the last thing he's heard on any issue and he goes on Mertz is aware of the criticisms and in December fired a close advisor so no vision saying the last thing he's been told, then firing his advisors when he gets frustrated.

1:01:06Ed Balls: I mean, it is. But the other thing, of course, is that. It is what? The other thing, of course, is that there is a popular.

1:01:13George Osborne: You're about to say it's very similar to what's been going on in number 10.

1:01:16Ed Balls: No, I'm going to add on. There is a popular elected local government leader in his party. Not Andy Burnham, but Hedrick Verst, the 50-year-old prime minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, tall and tie-wearing. Actually, I think in a coalition up there with the Greens. So he's sort of in favour of a broader tent in his politics. And suddenly everybody's saying, you know, why can't we have him? He's much more popular. Why can't we just ditch Mertz and let Vers take over? Vers doesn't say he wants a job. But, of course, in the German system, you don't have to be elected to become the Chancellor. And so in exactly the same way as here in Britain, so soon in a parliament, I mean, look, to be fair to Mertz, he didn't win a majority.

1:02:03Ed Balls: But people are saying, why can't we have the guy from the north who's much more popular and a bit younger and a bit more charismatic who could come and take over and make it all fine?

1:02:12George Osborne: I feel if he was called versed in Britain, Mr Sausage, it wouldn't quite have the charismatic appeal which it appears to have in North Rhine, Westphalia.

1:02:25Ed Balls: I'm not sure whether you should knock people in politics for their surname because it can all work to your advantage.

1:02:31George Osborne: I think I did once or twice, but then I gave up the habit. There's another kind of parallel with Britain, which is, okay, all of the sort of political classes obsessing with who's the leader, whereas there are some long-term fundamental problems with the German economy, just like with the British economy. That they were the most competitive industrial economy in Europe. They were one of the largest exporters in the world. They had this huge trading relationship with China where they were actually exporting to China. You know, they ditched nuclear power after the Fukushima accident in Japan and went for a kind of cheap Russian gas to fuel this industry.

1:03:12George Osborne: And now, years later, and they also gave up on reform. Angela Merkel was chancellor for years and years and years. No significant economic reforms during her chancellorship. and now the kind of reality bites the chinese are producing electric cars at half the price that are much better than the german auto industry is producing uh the reliance on russian energy turned out to be a geopolitical fiasco and they're having the same conversation we're having which is like where is germany's place in the world economy where are our big tech giants where's our role in artificial intelligence and quantum computing and all of this, where is the modern manufacturing that China has seemed to be able to master?

1:03:59George Osborne: And that's the big conversation that sits behind the political travails of these governments.

1:04:06Ed Balls: Of course, that's right. But I think the only thing I'm going to say is that don't take agency away from leadership, because it is possible to address those issues and to get a sense of national mission. I don't think that having... I agree with you.

1:04:19George Osborne: I agree with you entirely about that. I do.

1:04:22Ed Balls: I don't think having an old outsider is a good idea. But alighting on a young outsider may not work as well. It's always very hard for the centre left or the centre right to think that populism works, because in the end, it never works. What you've got to do is have vision, but you've also got to be good at it. In the end, you know, if you attack the previous guys for not being competent, you've got to be competent. You've got to run your government well. You've got to make decisions and take people with you. You can't have Manderson-Files-style chaos, whether that's in Downey Street or in the German Chancellery.

1:04:58Ed Balls: And in the end, it's dead easy to say, oh, well, you know, there's these massive problems and nobody could do it. But it is possible to do it well, and it's possible to do it badly. And it feels to me as though many of Mr. Mertz's critics are saying he could have done it better. And that's something which Pat McFadden, Darren Jones and Peter Mandelson and many others in a British context can agree when they look at another political leader languishing in the polls.

1:05:29George Osborne: Well, that is it for this week's political currency. Lots more to discuss over the coming weeks.

1:05:36Ed Balls: You can join us on Monday for Ex Minister's Questions to hear us answer all your questions across the political spectrum. If you can't wait, you can get the episode early and ad-free by becoming a member of our Kitchen Cabinet or by becoming a gold subscriber.

1:05:50George Osborne: Yeah, and Kitchen Cabinet members get not only the mug and the bonus content and the members only chat, they now get this weekly newsletter where, you know, we give you not just sort of cultural recommendations, which you feel free to ignore or criticize or enjoy, but we also, you know, update you on events that have happened in between our regular podcasts. And as I mentioned earlier on in the show, you can see the picture of me with Steve Hilton's battle wagon in California a year ago.

1:06:21Ed Balls: We keep getting messages from people saying how much they are loving the line on ITVX, which I recommended. Haven't yet had a message from anybody saying they've been to Diggerland since George recommended it. But, you know, if you have and you've got some photos, We'd love to have them in our newsletter. And of course, if you want to send in a question for EMQs, message us on our social media accounts, email us at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk. We always need a voice note if you possibly can.

1:06:50George Osborne: See you on Monday for EMQs.

1:06:52Ed Balls: See you then.

1:07:01George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production. you