EMQs: Can we really fund everything in the NHS?

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1:56Ed Balls: Ed Balls. A steady-as-she-goes budget. What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic? They're married, Celeste.

2:04George Osborne: Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

2:15Ed Balls: So hello and welcome to EMQ's Ex-Ministers Questions. And the moment has come. We've been building up to this for a couple of weeks since I mentioned Kipling's Cakes on our boat in the Solent. And Kipling's have sent us breakfast bakes blueberry, eight French fancies, and some rich and gooey salted caramel brownie bites. and I think they arrived a week or so ago. But the great thing about Kipling's cakes is that they taste perfect for ages. Hundreds of years. Actually, this is best before 7th of July. What's going on?

2:50George Osborne: Well, they haven't sent us an out-of-date cake.

2:52Ed Balls: Well, no, they weren't out of date when they arrived. No, this one's fine. It's 24th of July. Right. So all is good. Right. 24th of July. And this one is 24th of July. So I'm afraid only the French fancies are out of date.

3:03George Osborne: Yeah, but I don't believe they are. I mean, come on. With these out-of-date things, aren't they? They're just there to kind of cover people's backs. And things are still in date, aren't they?

3:13Ed Balls: I think, George, you have agency. I'm going to take a risk.

3:16George Osborne: I'm going to have an out-of-date French fancy.

3:19Ed Balls: I'm having a rich and gooey salted caramel brownie bite.

3:22George Osborne: Right. Now, am I going to have pink, yellow, or brown?

3:26Ed Balls: Totally fabulous.

3:27George Osborne: I think I'm going to go for the yellow one.

3:30Ed Balls: While we're eating a couple of things, we're going to get our first question. Oh, my God. Look at this. Joy, who's one of our gold subscribers.

3:36George Osborne: Oh, this could have been made yesterday. It's fresh. I knew it was bollocks, that stuff, about the out-of-date stuff.

3:42Ed Balls: Go, Joy.

3:43George Osborne: Anyway, right, let's go to our first question. Hello both, Joy here, enthusiastic gold subscriber from Maidenhead. The recent assisted dying debate raised the argument that we should get end-of-life care right before considering euthanasia. But the question of whether hospices are more deserving of funding than new advanced imaging, drugs, replacing old buildings, is a real ethical minefield. It's clear we can't fund everything, even if the public perception is that we should be able to. I've heard medics say that you could put the whole GDP into the NHS, and it still wouldn't cover everything for everyone as new advances just keep opening up more possibilities.

4:22George Osborne: The PIP debate has shown how politically vexed anything approaching rationing is. How do you think a government could go about public or parliamentary debate about what healthcare is reasonable for the state to cover and what isn't. Thanks.

4:37Ed Balls: I think this is a really interesting question, Joy. And anyway, you hint at the answer. I think when you talk about the NHS and how they deal with new treatments and new drugs, because I think that is where the NHS does well. if you have a new drug a new procedure an expert committee assesses it to see whether the science is sound whether it's value for money whether it's affordable and so there is a sort of a managed and budgeted process the thing which is hard but hold on the value for money

5:18George Osborne: affordable is an issue for the state not for the individual because you know the life-saving treatment for you, you know, you want the state to give it to you, regardless of the cost, right?

5:30Ed Balls: Well, but yes, but I mean, there was always an option for somebody to decide to step outside the National Health Service and pay for it themselves. But the question is, how does the collective taxpayer pot called the National Health Service manage that? And there's always debates at the margin, and there's always contentious issues. But I think that new advances the NHS can take on board, maybe not always as fast as people want. The thing I was going to say is, the problems arise when you have these historic legacy issues. And two obvious ones are hospice care. I mean, why is it the case that hospice care is provided and substantially financed outside the National Health Service?

6:14Ed Balls: And the same with social care. Why is social care financed and provided outside the National Health Service. Both of these are under huge pressure financially, social care and hospice care. Both of them have a direct impact upon how the National Health Service functions. The whole debate, as you said, Joy, about assisted dying is complicated by pressures in palliative care and in the hospice sector. The whole debate about the use of beds in A &E and bed blocking is complicated by the fact that social care is provided outside the National Health Service and funded in a less generous way. The government has kicked the funding of social care into the long grass with another review, but the reality is over the last 30 years, we've never managed to find a way to solve the problem of the funding of these historic legacy issues outside the National Health Service, social care and palliative hospice care.

7:15Ed Balls: So So isn't the difficulty that if you change what you decided historically, that has massive cost and there's also will be some opposition to it. And but if you don't, then you have these ongoing rolling health challenges.

7:30George Osborne: But isn't the history of the NHS that, you know, from its creation, there's always been a kind of debate of around rationing, essentially. I mean, we don't put it like that. But, you know, there's always been a row about waiting lists. And, you know, that's because waiting lists in a free system are the way you do, in fact, ration care. And there's always been a row about what treatments have been available. So I think Nye Bevan didn't he actually resigned from a Labour government when they tried to introduce prescription charges, the Harold Wilson government. And in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher restricted access to dentistry and eye care.

8:12George Osborne: But as a result, created all those high street opticians that you see now and much more choice for people about where they go. So I think you've always had these debates. I think in practice, there's a form of rationing going on at the moment. The very, very long waits for quite routine in a medical sense, routine operations like hip replacements, has led to more and more people going private and sort of opting out of the NHS wait. So I think these things happen at the, you know, are going on all the time. To kind of Joy's point, I don't think you ever do get an honest kind of political debate about that because none of the major parties in British politics really want to face up to the fact that the healthcare system is somewhat overwhelmed at the moment, that people may have to go private or opt out or not be treated at all because of the way it's organized.

9:07George Osborne: and we've never really got back to the conversation i think actually was being held in the blair brown period particularly i guess the sort of tony blair premiership of you know an nhs can still you know can mean it's funded by the state but it doesn't have to be provided by the state and there was the the sort of beginnings of bringing the private sector into treatment but that that reversed under the coalition government and then you know subsequent governments so i don't thing you do, I think it will always be a kind of messy, not very public conversation. The final part I just make on hospice care, I don't accept that everything has to be under an NHS umbrella.

9:50George Osborne: You can have a mixed economy and these hospice charities and hospices, I think they bring something very personal, but obviously the most difficult moment for the person as they earn their life and for their family that maybe a big hospital couldn't bring or a big NHS trust couldn't bring. And they're engaged in their communities because of the fundraising they do in a way that sometimes local NHS institutions aren't. You know, I remember the East Cheshire Hospice, which was just outside my constituency, but it was used by my constituents. And, you know, they were a big part of the local community as a result of their fundraising and their engagement in the world outside of the NHS.

10:33George Osborne: The NHS can be quite an impersonal and top-down organisation that's quite unconnected with other things going on. And I wouldn't think it's such a bad thing that there are elements of healthcare that aren't wholly within its purve.

10:53Ed Balls: I'm not disagreeing with that at all. And I wasn't arguing that either social care or hospice care need to be brought into the NHS. I was saying that because they haven't been historically, that means they sit outside and therefore their funding is more under pressure. And those feel to me to be the areas where we are less good at debating how we fund them more effectively. and whereas new advances and the next frontier, the NHS is able to do that consistent with its overall budget. There is a debate about are we spending enough on health but the places which the issue Joy raised which was palliative care and the issue I'm raising is social care.

11:36Ed Balls: They both have the feature that historically because they've been outside the NHS umbrella, therefore they are less generously funded than they would otherwise be.

11:47George Osborne: i have to say i the other day i just got completely out of the blue in the post uh i guess because i'm of a certain age a kind of invitation to be part of an nhs bowel cancer screening oh yeah uh program which um i would you know i had no kind of particular expectation that i would sort of get this thing and uh you know i've thought it was all very straightforward very simple i signed up for it and I'm awaiting the results. Fingers crossed. And I was so impressed. I thought, God, this is really straightforward. It's like prompted me to do this. It's really simple to do. And I thought I was a very, very good example of the NHS working.

12:31George Osborne: We always focus, don't we, on like, not so much on this podcast, but in the news on bits of the NHS that don't work. I thought that was pretty impressive.

12:38Ed Balls: I'm a bit older than you. I've been through it twice. And as you say, it's really easy and very, I think actually very effective. The challenge with prostate testing is people don't know what the results mean. But I think this one, it's really clear. Thank you much indeed, Joy. Our next question is from Adam.

12:57George Osborne: Hi, I'm George. It's Adam here from North Warwickshire. Big fan of the podcast. Listened to his very, very first episode. I have to say I really enjoy how open, honest and frank you are with one another about the political reality that we face. Some of your stories are really insightful and interesting. And I think the way that you've both carried on in the world, you continue to love politics despite politics bruising you somewhat. It's a real inspiration to people not to give up and not to walk away. My question actually relates to your lives outside and after the politics. You both do interesting things.

13:41George Osborne: Ed, not just strictly but also your work as a journalist for Good Morning Britain, you know seeing a different side of the world and how different ways of view the world can be.

13:51Ed Balls: And George, not just with your work with the British Museum but also your work with some other big investment groups particularly in America. My question is this, how have your jobs at

14:02George Osborne: after politics change the way that you view the world and view politics? And were you to go back into political office, particularly at some of the very highest offices in the land,

14:14Ed Balls: how would your experience after politics change and shape the decisions that you might make? That's a really interesting question, Adam, and it made me kind of think hard. And of all the different things that I've done I think probably Good Morning Britain is the um the kind of the best um thing for me to learn from what I think you realize when you're doing a program like Good Morning Britain and what you learn is there are some issues which um don't engage the public um and some which engaged them very kind of deeply and acutely I think there's always a danger when you're a politician that you assume because you're talking to other politicians to civil servants everybody's engaged in all the issues that you think are important interesting learning when you come out to see the ones which really hit home and connect with people and i think it tends to be where people are either an issue which makes people feel afraid for the future for them or their family or where they think that um government or politics is is not being straight with them it's taking them for fools it's not being um honest or where people think there is like a fundamental kind of fairness issue which is not being addressed and I think probably compared to when I was in politics I'm better at seeing now the issues which are really going to to connect and that's something which I think would have helped me if I'd had kind of that deep understanding when I was in in government as a a minister I think the winter fuel allowance is a really good example of this.

15:51Ed Balls: We called it on our podcast last July, but through the autumn on Good Morning Britain, I mean, the response we were getting on that issue, people thought they were worried about it. They were fearful. They thought it was unfair. And so that would be the example I would choose. But it's a really good question, George.

16:09George Osborne: Yeah, I think, I mean, to directly answer the challenge from Adam, I assume you're saying, if you were the prime minister here, you say the very highest office in the land you know how what would your experience of you know life outside politics change your approach to that job and it's partly what ed was saying which is i think when you're outside of politics if you're very interested in politics and you you know you set your mind on becoming an mp you've joined a political party you obviously followed politics very closely and then when you're in politics you live and breathe it when you're outside you know you get that immediate reminder that most people don't follow politics that closely.

16:50George Osborne: And even though we do this podcast, you know, days can go by where I'm not, you know, tuning in every day to the news and seeing what's going on. And that is, you know, how many, many people in a much more extreme version, they can go months without tuning in to what's going on. And only a few things really kind of penetrate through and creating. But the public, I think, have a sense of when they need to tune in, when they need to know. And they also will pick up signals from political leaders about the kind of person they are and absorb quite a lot of, form quite strong opinions about people based on those impressions.

17:30George Osborne: And a political leader is not always in charge of that. I think one of the challenges for this government is it didn't get off to a very good start. And unfortunately, the public noticed. so there's partly that that people don't follow politics all the time i think it's partly that there's a whole set of things that influence our society that aren't in the gift of politicians you know big changes in technology uh other forces out there in our community so not everything has to you know you can't assume that all you know things that matter are the things that discussed in parliament. And I guess I would say very sort of specifically about the world, there are sort of permanent forces out there or semi-permanent forces that kind of governments come and go.

18:15George Osborne: But some of these very big technology companies, some of these, you know, rulers who are there for decades in the Middle East, you know, and see many presidents and many prime ministers come and go, you know, they're quite important players in the geopolitical landscape. But they're not always the people who turn up to a kind of g7 meeting or a you know a bilateral with a european partner i don't know those are some of the observations i make but it's a good question adam and i do think you know there's um lots of people say wouldn't you you know have done your job better if you'd been older and had more experience but i do also think there's something about doing these jobs quite young when you're full of energy and kind of confidence and you want to get things done and you're not too jaded, basically.

19:07Ed Balls: Do you think we're jaded?

19:09George Osborne: No.

19:10Ed Balls: Well, jading. So are you saying that we're too old now and too jaded to do these jobs well?

19:17George Osborne: No, I just think sometimes you can – there is a feature of the longer you live, the more you go, oh, well, nothing ever changes and nothing can be done and these problems will endure forever. Whereas there's something about, you know, why is it that dramatic changes in our history have often been wrought by young people? It's because there's a kind of confidence and arrogance of youth, which the best side of, there's also a bad side to it, but the best side of is a kind of belief in change and a belief in human agency. Which often the older you get, you get more skeptical about. You don't agree.

19:58Ed Balls: well to be honest with you i've got my daughter sending me these messages saying that she's at the opticians and is she going to be home to meet the plumber and it's totally distracting me so it's driving me up the wall but let's hope let's hope the plumbers not blame margaret thatcher for the opticians i know look while i solve my domestic issues let's move on actually let's have a break

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22:23Ed Balls: So welcome back. Our next question is for Mark. Hi, I'm George. This is Mark in London, and I have a question about market volatility. you both cited James Carville, Bill Clinton's chief strategist's famous quote that he would want to be reincarnated as the bond market. Given that UK guilt surged by nearly 22 basis points

22:44George Osborne: merely as a result of Rachel Reeves appearing to shed a tear in the Commons it feels like we're sitting permanently on an economic tinderbox where the markets have more control than ever

22:55Ed Balls: on government direction. When markets are so volatile, is it really the case that the government

23:02George Osborne: is now entirely hamstrung on policy direction? And if so, how can the government change that position? Thanks. So I'm going to take issue, Mark. You're right to kind of bring us back to some of the fundamentals, which is like the bond market. I don't think it's the case that markets have more control than ever. I think you could look back at periods of our history when markets have had a very big control over British government. So you look back at the 1970s when that Labour government of Wilson and then Callaghan with Dennis Healy as chancellor, you know, was entirely kind of hamstrung by what was going on in the international markets, really the perceptions of the UK, and we had to go to the IMF.

23:48George Osborne: You could look at the ERM crisis and Black Wednesday, where the British government is totally at the mercy of what's going on in the markets. So we have had periods, or I guess Alistair Darling, if he was still alive, or Gordon Brown, if he was here in the studio, would say that autumn of 2008, when Lehman Brothers was going bust and the Royal Bank of Scotland was collapsing. If you were sitting in the Treasury, you didn't feel like you had much agency. So I think this is just a feature of government that periodically markets can be very, very powerful and influential. And maybe not in the case of the financial crisis, but in the other cases I've given you, it's when markets don't have confidence in your economic plans, basically.

24:37George Osborne: It's when you're saying things about that you can afford your debt and the markets begin to doubt that and the markets are the people who've lent you that debt. and big moments of history often revolve around those times when governments are no longer in control of markets are the french revolution being the absolute classic example of where you know that is brought about because the french government cannot finance its debt anymore and you know the effects of that are felt in the bread prices in paris so i i would say you know that's all a warning to today's generation of politicians you know if you think the liz trust thing was a just a useful stick to beat the conservatives with and all to do with a you know a kind of libertarian right-wing government doing some crazy things then i think you're making a mistake i think it was a very very powerful reminder of how quickly you can lose control and this labor government has now had two moments it's only been in office for a year where the bond market has had a big jitter one was around the budget last autumn and the second time was that week of the big U-turn on welfare.

25:46George Osborne: And as you say, Mark, Rachel Reeves crying in the comments, and therefore people wondering whether she would be fired and whether or she would quit and a more left wing, essentially, or less fiscally austere chancellor come in. And so if you're sitting in number 10, number 11, you know, I think you feel much more so than I I suspect the Parliamentary Labour Party does, or indeed the Conservative opposition does, constrained by these markets. But that's not necessarily a brand new experience in British politics.

26:18Ed Balls: I think you're right. Although there is a dimension to this which has changed. If you think back to the Wall Street crash of 1929, or pressures to devalue 1947 to 49, the devaluation in 1967, as well as the examples you used, 1992, Liz Truss. these are all times where the government's strategy was doubted by the markets where the market tested with their resolve and they were found wanting they couldn't hold that exchange rate parity they couldn't hold support for the fiscal strategy that they were taking the dimension which changed is is pace so in the 30s and 40s and 50s even in the early 90s if you think about the Black Wednesday, the pressure on the pound unfolded over a full day.

27:08Ed Balls: In 1967, it actually happened over days. I think these days, the market pressure can be very, very fast and very, very rapid, and news comes out so quickly. So there's less space and less time, but the fundamental point is true. And then I think the answer to Mark's question is, no, governments aren't hamstrung. But I don't think markets are either kind of oblivious or just unforgiving. But I think it does come down to mood and judgment. It's not simply about numbers. It's also about whether they think the politicians have got grip, whether they get it, whether they've got a strategy. If you think, you know, you mentioned Liz Truss, the point where I think the markets really wobbled wasn't the day of the Truss-Kwarteng budget on the Friday.

27:59Ed Balls: It was when Kwasi-Kwarteng as Chancellor went on the Laura Koonsberg show on the Sunday and said, this is just the beginning. There's more to come. And markets thought, what more uncosted, unfunded tax cuts, really? And if you go back to last autumn, in the conversations, I think we've talked about this before, that both of you and I had with market participants, it was not simply the scale of the tax rises, but the fact that so much money went immediately into the National Health Service in year one, which felt contrary to the messaging around the fiscal rules and prudence in fiscal policy. I think the answer is if you are clear about your medium term strategy and you are transparent about the decisions you take and the decisions you take are demonstrably, the decisions and what you say are demonstrably consistent with that medium term strategy.

28:56Ed Balls: I think the markets allow governments quite a lot of latitude. Back in 2000, we had the budget in surplus, which wasn't what we intended. We need to move it back into deficit because we wanted to borrow more for investment. I remember at the time, a lot of concern in the Treasury, would the markets wear a government choosing to move from surplus to deficit? But we said, you know, these are our fiscal rules. We've been totally transparent. There's a medium term plan. Actually, the markets didn't really move at all. but if you start to lurch or do u-turns or say things which don't actually fit with the either the truth or your strategy if you're not transparent and things kind of come out in a in a messy way and markets think actually these guys don't get it they've not got a grip

29:47George Osborne: that's when it goes wrong but the grip is um is also around deliverability isn't it I mean, the word is credibility. And it's interesting. Someone was asking me this week that the big international investor, I referred to this on our podcast, that surely the welfare U-turn shows that Starmer can't control public spending. essentially can't make meaningful decisions to rein in the government budget, which means he's pushed into higher taxes, which is going to run counter to the government's message that it wants to get the economy growing and it's going to be damaging to growth. And therefore, that's going to put more pressure on debt.

30:26George Osborne: And so that U-turn on disability benefits wasn't just kind of a political embarrassment and it didn't just affect the people who receive disability benefits. It had a wider message that this government appears to have a big majority but it can't necessarily deliver. And so I was kind of giving advice to number 10 and number 11, not that they want it from me, but I would try and do a series of quite small things that you say you're going to do and And then you do them and you do them in a relatively short period of time and you prove you can deliver. And you sort of build credibility back up and you just establish that what I say goes.

31:12George Osborne: When I say I'm going to do something, it's going to happen. And here's the proof because I said I was going to do this two months ago and it's happened. And that's, you know, we're recording this in the week of the mansion house speech. So Rachel Reeves has announced a load of reforms to financial services, none of them particularly radical. If we get, you know, three or four months down the line and none of them have really happened and there's still reviews and it's all like kind of disappeared, people aren't really going to go, well, you don't, you know, you don't have any credibility when you say you're going to reform our economy or our financial services.

31:41Ed Balls: There was, though, I remember this so well, in the August of 1992, a month before Black Wednesday, when Norman Lamont announced that he was going to issue Deutschmark-denominated UK bonds, because if we then devalued in the RM, it would cost us more. And that shows how serious I am, how committed I am. And the markets thought, oh, my God, he's lost it. I mean, that's ridiculous. There's no way they're going to do that. And I think that was seen at the time as being a very bad signal. He thought it sounded tough. Markets are judging whether or not, in fact, you will deliver it, whether you should deliver it, whether you can deliver it.

32:17Ed Balls: We talked about this earlier in the year, about the government meeting its fiscal objectives. Markets want them to meet the fiscal objectives, but they want to know that they actually will. So when they say, we're going to meet them, but we're not going to raise taxes on working people, well, markets think, well, who is going to pay the tax? And we said at the time, if you simply say, as a Labour chancellor, we're going to meet them by big cuts in public spending and big cuts in welfare markets think well really yeah and that is part of the problem i don't think see i think it's too simple to say kia starmer richel reeds got into trouble because they couldn't control parliament and therefore they can't do welfare and spending tough decisions the reason they got into trouble was because they set off on a strategy before the budget without confidence that this was an argument they could win they gave the impression they could but actually they hadn't prepared the ground they hadn't done the work it wasn't going to add up and so i think you know talking tough doesn't always persuade sensible people you're actually going to be tough so you need to have a deliverable medium term strategy and be transparent about its deliverability and make sure your individual decisions are consistent with their strategy if you get that all together you've got latitude i

33:33George Osborne: agree with you about the latitude yeah interesting i fear we're going to be coming back to the bond market in the coming months and years our next question is from hayley she's another of our gold subscribers hi ed and george hayley here gold subscriber and i love listening to the podcast every week your ability to disagree well feels somewhat unique in our modern world and your discussions spark many a debate in our house as we all look to the summer with the schools closing and many of us taking annual leave, thinking about holidays at home and abroad, but most importantly, some time away from work to rest and recharge, which has been shown to be so important both for wellbeing and productivity.

34:12George Osborne: I wanted to get your thoughts on how this works and how you think it should work in government. I remember the backlash that Dominic Raab had when he didn't return home as foreign secretary as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. But outside of politics, I would be expected to prepare my team so that they can either manage issues in my absence or escalate them to seniors as appropriate. So I wanted to get your thoughts on where this balance lies. Ministers obviously hold significant office and those offices should be respected, but they're also role models for everyone else. If they are respected to return home, is that also the case for junior ministers?

34:50George Osborne: Is that then also the case for their civil servants? If that's the case, then what happens to doctors and nurses, teachers and police officers? Are they also expected to cancel their annual leave if it's needed? Jacinda Arden took maternity leave and set the standard as a role model in that respect. Do you think there is a space for ministers to also respect annual leave more and act as role models for everyone else?

35:13Ed Balls: So this is a really good question, Hayley. And I think that you are right that politicians, cabinet ministers have got responsibility to lead. But I do think it's hard. And let me explain why. Hard to go on holiday, you mean? No, it's hard to be a cabinet minister and to do that leadership. And the example I'm going to use is this. When I was Secretary of State for Education in August, I went on holiday. I left my kind of schools minister to handle the announcements of results on GCSEs and A-levels. And I think it was really important to trust him to do that or her to do that. I wasn't ringing up from my kind of holiday.

36:07Ed Balls: I didn't want to signal to the department that I had to make every decision. I didn't need to clear the press release. I had to show the department and my junior minister that they were trusted and they got on and done the job. But if there had been a massive scandal breaking on the day of the GCSE results, that there had been a terrible flaw in the marking, that the results couldn't be trusted, a bit like Gavin Williamson and the results in the COVID period. And I had said, as the Secretary of State, nothing to do with me, I'm on holiday. Leave that to the junior minister. I think you would pay a massive price for that in a crisis because the truth is, as a cabinet minister, you know, you are personally appointed.

36:52Ed Balls: You are accountable personally for the decisions. And I think it's really hard. I think if you are a police leader and you've got on holiday and there's a command structure and you've left people to make decisions to handle the day to day crisis of policing, of course, you shouldn't be second guessing from your holiday. The same would be true of even a permanent secretary unless it became a systemic crisis for the organisation. And I think for a cabinet minister, big crises are systemic for your leadership. I think in those situations, very hard for you to stay away. So I think Dominic Raab did need to get a grip of that crisis at that time.

37:32Ed Balls: But that isn't to say the cabinet ministers have got to be in charge every day. and the point you make, Hayley, is that you have to show trust, set an example and lead. But there are times when leadership means coming back.

37:47George Osborne: Yeah, it's a good question. It's a constant dilemma if you're in these jobs because on the one hand, it's important to get a break for your own sanity. Well, some people survive without breaks, but certainly I needed a break. And Margaret Thatcher hated holidays. She'd go on holiday for two days and then she'd come back because she just didn't want to have a holiday. But I think it's good because it helps, you know, helps you sort of decompress a bit and think about the autumn and think about, you know, the sort of longer term issues you've got facing you. And you don't want to look like someone who's so nervous and so reactive that the moment anything happens, you immediately come home.

38:26George Osborne: And so that judgment has to be made. Like I do, because I also agree with you, if there is a real and unexpected problem, something that's not like you know routine gcse results or some sort of pre-planned announcement you you know it's not good enough to say i'm staying on holiday and i would say it's true people of almost all senior positions not just uh cabinet ministers they're more exposed to it because they're more likely to be on the front page of the newspaper they're kind of sitting on a beach while there's some you know disaster happening at home but you know if you were a CEO of a big company.

39:03George Osborne: And there was some enormous...

39:04Ed Balls: The chief executive of Heathrow asleep while the power went out overnight.

39:09George Osborne: And they decided to shut down the airport.

39:11Ed Balls: And he was uncontactable because he was at home. I don't think you can ever be uncontactable.

39:15George Osborne: Right. So if you were running one of these big companies and there's some big, you know, crisis and there's a data breach or some disaster like the one you were just talking about there, you know, you can't, it's not good enough to say, well, I'm sorry, I'm on holiday.

39:28Ed Balls: And if you're Keir Starmer, you might leave Angela Rayner in charge for two weeks while you're on holiday, but you're not going to give her the briefcase for the nuclear codes, are you? No, you can't say she can launch the weapons because I'm on holiday. You just can't.

39:39George Osborne: No, but there is also something, however, about – it depends on your style of leadership, as I say, because some people like Thatcher never wanted to be on holiday. But if you take, you know, Tony Blair, you take what felt like a whole month off in Tuscany and whatever. Caribbean.

39:58Ed Balls: put islands boats expensive designer shorts now to put to be fair to him you know when there was

40:03George Osborne: something terrible he would cut so the omar bombing happened while he was on holiday and he immediately flew to northern ireland but generally i think he he conveyed not that he was detached and lazy and you know i valued his holiday too much he he actually reminded people that he really was in charge because he left John Prescott doing things at home. And, you know, they didn't always go according to plan with John. And everyone was like, oh, when's Tony Blair coming back? You know, it wasn't a bad kind of demonstration that you do miss me when I'm not around.

40:39Ed Balls: I think also the point Hayley makes, which is it's so disempowering for your team if you don't trust them enough to let go of, you know, of most aspects of running the show while you go on holiday. I'll tell you, when I was chancellor, it was, I think, the second summer.

40:58George Osborne: And we went on this family trip to America. And we were out in the Midwest, in the Wild West, in the Rockies. And it took a long time to get there. And I'm with my young family. And it's been a really intense year. And the London riots happened. I'm not the Home Secretary. I'm not the Mayor of London. and I'm not the Prime Minister, I'm the Chancellor. And David Cameron said, look, I might have to recall Parliament. And even though the rights by this point were under control, over. And I was like, OK. And he just left. Then, you know, it was a different time zone. And I went to bed and I just had this message on my phone when I woke up.

41:43George Osborne: He says, I'm really sorry, George. I'm recalling Parliament and you need to come home. and it took me you know 24 hours to fly back from holiday which i'd only just arrived on knowing by the way the riots were over it was like it was all performative but i had to because there was like the idea that i could still be on holiday when parliament was

42:01Ed Balls: back but you did a statement on your responsibility for the global economic crisis if i remember yes and i had to therefore i therefore had to come back from holiday to respond to it because

42:10George Osborne: i was like if i'm coming back ed balls can bloody well come back and put it this way if i'm coming

42:17Ed Balls: back i might as well do something and the vet was shadow home secretary so me and her both did statement responses on consecutive days and we had to leave all of our kids on holiday it's still talked about in the family as you know the time when you both abandoned us we were with friends

42:30George Osborne: and our kids i wasn't i i had also taken on on holiday a g7 call about like the financial situation and i got loads of complaints from people saying he's on holiday taking this he's in America taking this call. And I was like, the Americans have organized this call. This call is happening. You know, the people who've organized this call are in America. It doesn't matter where I pick up the phone. I mean, I don't have to be sitting in my office in London to take a phone call from America. I could be in America when I take the phone call. And anyway, I do remember wandering around in the Rockies trying to get phone reception to make sure I could actually take part in this G7 call.

43:10Ed Balls: We're going to take a break and we've got one more question.

43:21George Osborne: Hi, this is Kim and Penn Holderness from the Laugh Lines podcast.

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45:04Ed Balls: Welcome back. Our last question is from Jack. Hi, Ed and George. Jack from Surrey here. Last week, you guys were talking about what kind of people you would think are Machiavellian. You got me thinking about a book which a friend of mine lent to me, just some light reading, called The 48 Laws of Power by a man called Robert Greene. And it has some interesting themes. And I'm not sure what I made of it, but I'd like to know what role you think books like this have in society. Are they just for people who see themselves as Machiavellian and want to gain personal gain, things like that? Or do you think they have a genuine role of people trying to improve themselves?

45:47Ed Balls: Also, a side note, while reading Boris Johnson's book, I was very intrigued by a passage that stated that you, George and Boris, had a handbag style fight in a lift in China. or something along those lines so i would like you to explain a little bit about that as i thought was quite interesting thanks very much guys love the podcast and keep up the good work as usual so jack's asking a very important question about self-help books and whether they are relevant but before we get to that handbags in a lift in china yeah everybody was kung fu fighting

46:27George Osborne: I think I know what I know this I was asked about this when the book came out so we were on a joint not a joint visit we both were visiting he was the mayor of London I was chancellor we were both visiting China on a trip and this hadn't been coordinated but we were both in Beijing on the same day

46:48Ed Balls: was this the one when he did the terrible rugby tackle of the eight year old boy

46:51George Osborne: possibly yeah I think it may have been and

46:54Ed Balls: this is not the Olympics

46:55George Osborne: with the no no there's different one different one so um we had a because we both organized this trip separately we thought it was a bit mad to be in beijing separately and we came together and gave a kind of joint present speech or presentation at a university to some chinese students but then we ended up in hong kong on the same day and we decided to go out for dinner with a couple of our kind of special advisors aides who were with us so we went to a a restaurant in know hong kong and then in the um uh in the lift on the way down from the restaurant we were doing a kind of bit he you know he's quite kind of physical and he was sort of joshing me around a bit so we were not fighting but he was sort of you know right sort of bumping into me in the lift and this got written up as we'd had a fight in the lift and um and it was not a fight but the only time I ever saw Johnson almost get into

47:56Ed Balls: Is it a thing wanting to get all physical

47:58George Osborne: it is for him It's slightly odd isn't it

48:01Ed Balls: What's his motive

48:02George Osborne: I don't know I think it depends depends on the gender of the person in the lift Are you sure I tell you what I do remember there was a meeting with him and David Cameron and he came in as mayor of london with his note like his briefing notes of what to ask the prime minister and david cameron just grabbed it off him right like lent across the table and grabbed it and boris johnson did almost hit i mean he he he like he went around and sort of almost sort of rugby tackled him to get the note because he's gonna give it back to me give it back to me and then uh sort of physically tried to attack the prime minister to get it off him well um but i think he i he i think he liked You know, I remember when he was asked about his ambitions for the leadership, he said, well, you know, the ball comes loose at the back of the scrum, you know, then of course I would pick it up.

49:01So I think, you know, I think he liked a bit of jostling and joshing and all that kind of thing.

49:06George Osborne: Not really my style, but more his.

49:08Ed Balls: The thing is, was he a tight head, a loose head or just a bit of a flanker?

49:17George Osborne: or uh did you um see that one labor mp described these labor rebels who were suspended this week of being guilty of knobheadery which is a fantastic word a new word in the english language and should be a you know should definitely be a candidate for kind of new word of the year

49:35Ed Balls: that is true look we have totally failed to answer jack's question about books about books i think we probably should have one go personally i think um these you know the books which are six axioms which have guided my life you can copy me i'm not totally sure how useful they are particularly 48 48 however the thing you know i wrote a book which was lessons that i would like to pass on to my younger self and i think if you if you if you think of what

50:07George Osborne: What was the number one lesson? Can you remember?

50:09Ed Balls: No. If you think of The Prince by Machiavelli, he tells stories and discusses examples which, in context, and we're talking about hundreds of years ago, from which actually you can draw learning, which are relevant to the way in which you think about decisions today. And I think the reason for reading political books or people's reflective memoirs is so that you can think about lessons you can learn. I think probably the books which say, here are the five lessons, are less likely to be useful for you than the ones which are, here is how I faced challenges and the decisions I made and why I made them and how I now assess them, because that allows you to put yourself into their shoes.

51:05Ed Balls: If you read The Godfather, quite helpful for understanding the way in which politics works in a different context. So I'm just not totally sure about the self-hold books.

51:17George Osborne: No, but also to the kind of question here from Jack, I don't think you just read Machiavelli because you want to be a Machiavellian person. I think it's part of your education about the world you grew up in and the thoughts and thinking that has influenced it. And, you know, and I don't we've often discussed this before, but I think, you know, there's a great line from the Peter Pan movie. I've just been looking it up actually on my phone while we were answering this. And it's from the Disney movie of Peter Pan. and it says this, all this has happened before and it will all happen again. It's the opening line of Peter Pan, but it's a great rule in politics.

52:05George Osborne: Whenever you're facing a crisis or a situation you think is so particular to you or your government or this particular moment in our history, just remember all this has happened before and it will all happen again.

52:17Ed Balls: But always learn from history, but never expect history to repeat itself. always remember it's probably a cock up but it might be a conspiracy I think in the end these lessons are always more complicated than you know plus ça change but there we are that is it for this episode of EMQs please do keep sending us your voice notes and emails via questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk

52:43George Osborne: make sure you review the show as it helps us reach more listeners and we're going to be back next week with another episode see you then see you then

52:59George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

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