EMQs: Car doors, pole dancers and Diary columns

0:00Ed Balls: This week on Outrage and Optimism, we look at the remarkable summer we've been having in Western Europe with heatwave after heatwave that has now translated into wildfires in France, in Spain and even in Scotland. There has been a conspiracy of silence in the media that is preventing us from seeing what is really happening. This week on Outrage and Optimism, we cut through to understand what's going on and how our society can and should change to deal with these issues.

0:30Ed Balls: Here's a tip for you. There's a podcast out there with fans waiting to be your next customer. They tune in every week. They trust the host. And that host wants to talk about brands like yours in their own words to their audience. The problem is you just haven't been introduced yet. We're Acast, where that introduction happens. As the world's largest podcast marketplace, we let you browse shows, see who's listening, and book host-read sponsorships or run your own ads all from one platform. Transparent pricing, real-time data, complete control. Start advertising on podcasts by visiting acast.com slash advertise.

1:12George Osborne: The Chancellor of the Exchequer. Getting a lesson from the Shadow Chancellor on how to balance the books is like getting a lesson from Dracula on how to look after a bloodbath.

1:21Ed Balls: Ed Balls. A steady-as-she-goes budget. What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic?

1:28George Osborne: Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

1:41Ed Balls: So hello and welcome to EMQs, Ex-Ministers Questions. This is our first live EMQs for a few weeks because in August we recorded some EMQs about young people and about books, about politics. Our last one out last week was our what-if EMQs. What would have happened if Margaret Thatcher hadn't stepped down or if Britain had joined the Euro? And it was quite turbulent recording it, but it's had a really interesting response. People obviously love that kind of speculation. And if David Miliband had won rather than Ed Miliband, would it have made the difference? So there's so many things which we're able to talk about that.

2:24Ed Balls: Did you enjoy listening back?

2:26George Osborne: I did, actually. I listened back to it and I thought, you know, I did history at university and kind of what if is a really looked down upon branch of history. Is it? Yeah.

2:37Ed Balls: So in historiography, it's frowned upon. Totally frowned upon.

2:41George Osborne: You know, what if Adolf Hitler had been killed in the First World War as a soldier? Like what would happen in the 20th century? You can't do that as a professional historian. And I think in politics, we don't do enough kind of what if because i think it you know what if i was thinking one you know what i'm what if the referendum had gone the other way 52 48 you know um and then you can

3:02Ed Balls: really examine how long would david cameron have lasted for he was thrown out as a conservative

3:06George Osborne: leader and it may not have been that long actually so i think it forces you to think about

3:11Ed Balls: if tony blair had stayed on would he have won the 2010 election yeah so i don't think so no well you wouldn't would you no i'm sure he i'm sure he wouldn't think so either because you know he's a grown-up and he's got he's got he's got a grip on reality yeah i wonder whether we ought to um to do more at some point maybe people should tell us what are the what ifs you would like speculation on you could in the question say um yeah what if this had happened and then give us

3:40George Osborne: your view about what the answer would be what if boris johnson had stayed as tory leader in what was the result of the 2024 election?

3:48Ed Balls: What if Boris Johnson had a moral compass?

3:52George Osborne: I'm sure he would become prime minister, would he? Anyway, we are not going to answer these questions. And now we're going to wait for you to send them in. And we will do another what if episode.

4:03Ed Balls: So our first question today is voiced by one of our listeners. It's a really interesting question. She has asked that we don't give her name out, but she's happy for her voice note to be used. So that is what we're going to say. We're going to hear from someone. Yes.

4:20George Osborne: Hello and George. I'm loving the podcast. I work in a constituency office and every day we're hearing from people who are struggling to access public services, whether that's getting a GP appointment or finding affordable housing. A lot of the frustrations are being linked with illegal immigration and the cost of asylum hotels. These concerns are real, but I think we need to be careful about where the blame is placed. of course the asylum system does need to be improved but blaming asylum seekers won't fix the nhs won't build more houses and won't give councils the resources they need so my question is what's the best way to have an honest conversation with constituents one that acknowledges their frustrations but also redirects their focus to the real causes and solutions good question i mean i think first of all you know as a constituency office this, are you trying to advance a political argument or are you trying to solve people's very practical problems?

5:18George Osborne: And they may have practical problems around housing and access to it or trying to get an NHS operation, in which case I'm not sure you necessarily need to kind of engage in what they think is the cause of their problems. But certainly as a kind of citizen who cares about your country and maybe as someone who, you know, also you wouldn't, maybe you're not, you wouldn't be working in a constituency office if you weren't very interested in politics and having a good political debate in a country. I can see why you want to sort of point people in the right direction, as you would say it. I mean, here I would say, you know, I think to say that immigration, illegal or otherwise, the asylum problems have no impact on issues like the availability of housing or, you know, trying to get a GP appointment is a bit of a mistake.

6:13George Osborne: And it may be where the kind of liberal centre has been up until this point to say your concerns, public, are totally misguided and it's not a problem. There's clearly areas where a large influx of people does put huge pressure on public services and housing. So I think I wouldn't advise you to sort of completely dismiss their concerns. But I think you can put it in context and you could get, for example, and you would be a very well placed to do it, given you're in the constituency office, some information on just how many asylum seekers there are in this area or, you know, what percentage of the population are recent immigrants?

6:57George Osborne: And so you could say to your constituent who says, I can't get a hospital appointment because of, you know, all the illegal immigrants. You say, well, you know, of course, I understand your concern and we're going to help you get your hospital appointment. But, you know, you should know that only, you know, 3 % of the population here have recently arrived as illegal immigrants or 10 % of the population. So you can, And, you know, I mean, just sort of simple, calmly expressed statistics and facts can help in a situation like that.

7:28Ed Balls: I'm going to give a more, a different answer. And this may reflect my experience as, for a long time, a marginal CMP with a small majority. But I'm going to be cautious about saying this because, one, you know, I was a marginal CMP who then lost his seat. So it's not clear that this has worked for me. And secondly, this is 10, 20 years ago. So the world does change. But if you're that kind of MP, you can't simply do solve people's individual cases or knock on doors. You have to go out and do more broad based engagement. And the way in which I did it was in this way. First of all, we would regularly, maybe every six months, send out to tens of thousands of people a survey where we would ask them, say, 10 questions about big issues like immigration or the minimum wage or GP opening hours or kind of membership of NATO and ask people to send us back their answer to this questionnaire.

8:33Ed Balls: you know do you think this or that and um and we would then write to everybody who came back to us and told them what the answers were um we'd have thousands of people send them back so first of all you've asked people their views on big issues facing not just the constituency but the nation and the second thing we then did out of that we'd pick the the areas where we had the biggest response and we did public meetings and i probably did a public meeting a month for five, six, seven years, where we would invite three or four thousand people in an area to come to a meeting at this particular village hall at six o 'clock.

9:11Ed Balls: You would know that if you sent out three thousand invites, we'd get about 100, 150 people. They would come on, talk about immigration or talk about GP opening hours or talk about welfare to work. The way we would do it was we'd split the room into little groups and they would have discussions. Then the groups would report back to me in the middle of the room and I would then respond to each of the report backs and there would be a public conversation with everybody about the issue and we would you know and at the time it was quite controversial that you would talk about immigration in that way but what it meant was everybody who was there had a conversation an interaction on something they really cared about people could say what they thought so if you take for example immigration I did probably I I don't know, 20 public meetings on immigration.

9:58Ed Balls: In each one of these meetings, there'd be a small number of people who thought we should shut the borders. Even small number of people who thought free movement was a good idea. And the vast majority of people who thought, well, actually, we need people to come and work here, but it's got to be managed and it's got to be controlled. And have we got the houses? And what are the rules around skills? And are we bringing in the right people? And I learned a huge amount from those meetings about what people thought and how they talked about things. And what you see is that often people had a much more balanced, thoughtful, sensible view than the extreme way in which views are often represented.

10:38Ed Balls: And no, as I say, one, I lost my seat, so it clearly didn't work. But secondly, you know, when I think back to those public meetings, nobody came with an iPhone and recorded the conversation or me responding and put it onto Twitter or social media. that didn't exist at the time. Maybe it's hard to do it in that way these days. And also, I think these days, because of social media, people's views are so polarised. I'm not sure whether people are as willing as they might have been 15 years ago, 10 years ago, to come along and join in that kind of discussion. Maybe people would come along with a preconceived view and it would have been an argument.

11:16Ed Balls: We very rarely had big rows or arguments. People were more open-minded. But that was a way in which I tried to do what you're talking about. And I would say whatever impact it had on the people there, I learned a huge amount from doing those meetings.

11:32George Osborne: But do you think the social, I mean, it's really a different question to the one we've been asked, but is social media simply kind of amplifying division? Or is it also giving voice to things that people have felt or would say to their neighbor but weren't sort of picked up nationally? I'll give you an example. I remember some years ago, Sajid Javid, who was a friend of mine and he was a West Midlands MP in Bromsgrove. He said to me, these are asylum hotels. And he was the Home Secretary, Chancellor. He was absolutely part of the government. So these are a real, real problem. He says, in my constituency, we've got one of these hotels.

12:14George Osborne: You know, we've got 300 young men in this hotel, in this small town. They can't work. They're all sitting around in the town centre. It's creating a really poisonous atmosphere in the town centre. And we've got to do something about it. And not only did the Conservative government not do anything about it, but then the Labour government didn't do anything about it. And then it's all sort of blown up this summer. And we all see it on our social media feed now, the protests in that hotel in Epping. But maybe, you know, it was happening anyway. And it's just, you know, and it was just, you know, politicians just ignored what they should have known was a situation that wasn't going to be sustainable.

12:54Ed Balls: But the reason why you and I never had debates in our constituencies about asylum hotels was because until six or seven years ago, they didn't exist. We certainly talked about asylum.

13:05George Osborne: Well, what I'm saying is the governments have run with these asylum hotels for years, knowing it's going to at some point boil over, isn't it?

13:15Ed Balls: If I had been doing immigration public meetings in my constituency since the 2019 election, which is what I was doing for 10 years, we would have known all about asylum hotels. And maybe if government ministers didn't realise what a big deal this was, because they weren't spending enough time doing that kind of outreach and engagement that our listener says that she thinks she should be doing via her constituency office. I don't think social media has made that worse. But if politics doesn't go out and listen, it's the most fundamental thing in politics. If you don't listen, then you don't hear.

13:53Ed Balls: And if people don't think you're listening, they don't think that you are going to be on their side.

13:58George Osborne: Although, you know, you don't have to necessarily just echo back what people are telling you. No. Because politics is also about leadership, which is what we're being asked about here.

14:05Ed Balls: But often things go wrong when people assume that people have a prejudiced view and therefore leadership is to tell them they're wrong. where it's actually what you find out often is that people's views are more balanced and more nuanced. And actually, you are totally right. You can take people's good sense and persuade them the right way to respond to that is to lead in the right direction. So I totally agree with that. I think focus groups are a terrible way of telling you what to think, but they can sometimes help you to understand how to make the argument. In the end, if you don't lead, what's the point of being a politician?

14:43Ed Balls: Totally agree. That was a really good question from our anonymous constituency office worker. Our next question is voiced by one of our producers, but the question comes from Paddy.

14:54George Osborne: Hi, great podcast. I've never missed an episode. I have a question about the next election. Clearly, West Straten will be under pressure with its marginal seat of Ilford North. Is it possible that the Labour government will decide that West Straten is so important to their front bench that they move him to contest a safe seat and let someone else, quote unquote, less important, fight the Ilford North seat. Has anything like this happened before in British political history? Okay, so this is an interesting question, isn't it? It actually flows from what you were saying in the last question about your own experience.

15:31George Osborne: So Wes Streeting is sitting on a highly marginal seat in ilford and uh i guess the simple question here is well why doesn't he swap seats um and uh but what shall i ask you to go first i mean did it did it cross your mind that you should jump to a completely different constituency or different part of the country or

15:54Ed Balls: i think that i mean there is a phrase for this paddy it's called the chicken run And there is a longstanding tradition of politicians realising that their seat was marginal and shifting. I think famously, didn't Winston Churchill change his constituency at a certain point?

16:14George Osborne: Well, I think he represented more seats in Parliament than anyone has ever represented. I mean, he still holds that record as well as most other probably more important records. But I think he quite often would lose his seat and then kind of get back in in a by-election.

16:37Ed Balls: If you go to the early 90s, Peter Lilly, Stephen Doyle, Eric Forth, there were Conservatives at that time who changed seats to give themselves a more chance of winning. Sometimes it's caused by boundary changes. You remember Richard Holden changed his seat in the last parliament.

16:52George Osborne: He was the Tory party chairman.

16:53Ed Balls: That's right.

16:54George Osborne: Last minute he switched to it.

16:56Ed Balls: He was struggling to find a seat. I think the answer, though, is that…

17:00George Osborne: Well, he switched from his kind of Durham seat, which was almost certainly going to be lost, to Billericke in Essex in the Thames Estuary. And he only won by 20 votes.

17:10Ed Balls: But a win's a win. A win is a win. But I think the answer is it's probably harder these days to do that. Really? Maybe you should.

17:19George Osborne: I mean, I can see why a central party… The chicken run was the kind of new labor attack on the major government as people all started scrambling to avoid what they could see was, you know, a coming defeat. Get themselves into a kind of higher ground politically to save the seats. So I can see where if you're trying to manage a parliamentary party, you say, we don't want that. And see if you're in opposition, why you make fun of it. But ultimately, Richard would be saying, well, hold on, I'm still in the parliament. I'm in the shadow cabinet. And if I hadn't switched seats, I wouldn't be.

17:51Ed Balls: The answer to your question is I never thought about it, but nobody ever suggested to me I should either.

17:57George Osborne: That's because you weren't aware quite how marginal you thought it was.

18:00Ed Balls: I started off with a seat with a 10 ,000 majority and the boundaries changed actually before I'd even been elected, but for the next election. And then I jumped over where a small part of my constituency was moving and it became much more marginal. To be honest, much more marginal than any of us thought it was going to become. I think I then decided, I bet you West Streeting takes the same view, that it makes me a better politician needing to have that kind of engagement and that operation. It was draining, being shadow chancellor and also fighting that seat. But I think I decided that it would be cowardly to shift and I would be better at my job if I stayed.

18:46Ed Balls: But then, you know, I lost, I think at the time that when I lost.

18:49George Osborne: That's the whole point, isn't it? It's certainly quite cowardly to jump seat. And it may well be that you're a better politician if you're sitting on a marginal seat. But then you can lose and then you're out and you're no longer a politician.

19:03Ed Balls: Although I'm not sure at any point since 2015 I've ever regretted coming out of that.

19:08George Osborne: That's a slightly different point. But you'd have been really annoyed if, you know, Chris Patton was the architect of the 92 election win. a Tory party chairman, but lost his seat in Bath. That's true. And he would have been Chancellor the Exchequer or Foreign Secretary had he won.

19:25Ed Balls: And in retrospect, he should definitely have done a chicken run.

19:28George Osborne: I mean, except he went to be governor of Hong Kong and then European commissioner and all that.

19:33Ed Balls: So maybe, but... But I think he could have done all of that, pretty much all of that, and still have been a cabinet member of John Major's government. I'm sure he would have chosen that if he could have done it.

19:45George Osborne: I mean, I take the rather cynical view from your own personal narrow interest. It may not be the interest, but more broadly, of the party. If you're sitting on a seat where you're heading for not certain defeat, but you're pretty likely to be defeated, you should jump ship. And so if Wes is listening, and we know he listens because he's a gold subscriber, I would not take the Ed Balls, you know, men, you know. And women. your men and women your country is what you know the country will be proud of you that river somme over there you know i would be like might move to the chateau actually i'm not totally sure whether

20:22Ed Balls: you can equate alford north and the soul but i think that's kind of a historical parallel which west street is going to fight against the way i'm going to say is this i would understand if west Streeting fought and stayed. That's what I did. And I think in some ways it would be better for the Labour government if he did. But were he to decide to change, I would have no criticism of him at all. And I would certainly not call that chicken.

20:49George Osborne: It would be like, you'd have a week of like, oh, you know, you've jumped ship. And it'd be embarrassing for Labour because it would be a kind of admission. They're not going to hold Ilford. But they can lose a lot of Ilfords before they lose their majority.

21:00Ed Balls: That's right. And, you know, I think for West Streeting, I mean, it's it's been a pretty tough and nasty place to be. And, you know,

21:09George Osborne: no, he would say he loves us.

21:11Ed Balls: Of course he does. I think it's, I think, I think he's probably had some tough and fractious times, but anyway, let's hope he wins. We're going to take a break and then we will be back.

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21:52Ed Balls: post-read authenticity, and performance data that proves it worked. Don't fight for attention. Buy it with Acast.

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22:10Ed Balls: right welcome back i have to say look i've almost just been killed by the northern powerhouse i'm sitting here george is about to read out the next question and some northern powerhouse picture falls off the um the shelf behind me i'm not sure what

22:25George Osborne: i'm in favor of the northern house it didn't it's true that the bookcase behind you did almost collapse on top of you. You're suggesting that some poltergeist in the room pushed it over, but you just stretched back, put your arms up because we were doing the break, and then you knocked my precious picture, which came tumbling down on top of you. And by the way, you also knocked down one of the two, in fact, both of the podcast awards that we won, which have fallen over in the corner over there, and some strange election night jigsaw.

22:59Ed Balls: We don't need an inquest. I don't know why you even brought this up. Why did you even bring this up? We should get on with the EMTs.

23:07George Osborne: I want to commission some independent legal advice to see whether you've... Do you know what the problem is?

23:12Ed Balls: The problem is because we're on YouTube. It was all on film. Right. So I'm afraid, you know, I'm totally, I'm totally, you know... Bang to rights. V-A-R.

23:22George Osborne: Yeah. Well, I was at the Chelsea Fulham game where V-A-R, I mean, it was good news for Chelsea as a supporter, but actually Fulham were robbed of a goal.

23:31Ed Balls: Although I think it's such a good thing that Howard Webb is showing the leadership he is using as the senior VAR leader and saying they got it wrong, it was a mistake, it was contrary to the guidelines and they will sort this out for the future. It's no good to Fulham, is it? That's true. That's true. But I think football was the winner.

23:58George Osborne: Anyway, I was watching the football with my son and with Timothee Chalamet, who also turned up to the Chelsea game.

24:05Ed Balls: Do you know who he is? And who does J.D. Venn support?

24:08George Osborne: Oh, I'm not sure. I think the Trump supporters generally now support Chelsea because Trump gave them the Club World Cup. And when you go to a Chelsea game, I'll show you actually on my phone while we're doing it.

24:22Ed Balls: I can't describe that as stag-wiggly fickle. What?

24:24George Osborne: You can't support Chelsea because… Well, you can if you don't already have a team. No, look, I'm showing Ed my iPhone here from the game I went to the other day. This is on the walk towards Stamford Bridge. There's a sort of cutout of Donald Trump and Cole Palmer. And then there's like a blow up Donald Trump as well.

24:45Ed Balls: So Chelsea is boasting that Donald Trump is a supporter.

24:48George Osborne: Well, Donald Trump gave them the Club World Cup trophy when they played PSG in New York over the summer.

24:56Ed Balls: so he's now starting to feature on their scarves well the only thing i'd say is the um the rather international group of footballers who play for chelsea you know if donald trump was in charge

25:09George Osborne: here in britain none of them would have visas they'd all be deported they'd all be locked up by ice and sent home and we're rather off yeah the point here aren't we because we've got a couple of questions we ought to ask here. So we did do a summer episode on young people in politics, and we had quite a strong response from people who said, basically, we're being unfair to young people and unfair to old people. And so we've picked a couple of good questions we had, which I think represents that feedback, as you would say. And one is from Charlie, and the other has been voiced by our producer and it's from Catherine.

25:55George Osborne: Hi Ed and George, I've loved listening to your podcast and as a 20 year old who has a deep interest in politics I was thrilled to see the new episode on young people. However, when addressing John's question at the start of the episode I was so disappointed to hear you George fall back on the rhetoric we so often hear from the older generations. It was worse in our day. I then realised that actually George, you are part of the problem. Current politicians seem to have no real understanding of the issues and adversities affecting young people. You focused on the statistics and numbers, but you missed what really matters, the low morale and anxiety about the future which hangs constantly over my generation.

26:42George Osborne: As John pointed out, so many young people feel resigned about the state of politics, and your response perfectly illustrated why. That's why I'm genuinely fearful that Nigel Farage is going to sweep up the youth vote at the next general election, because there's a complete lack of understanding from established politicians about Gen Z. The truth is, Farage appeals to my generation. I know plenty of people my age who love his TikTok, cameo clips, and his whole big chungus online persona. And Ed and George, they will vote for him. Until politicians like you, from across the political spectrum, start listening to how young people are actually feeling, not just what the stats say.

27:31George Osborne: We're staring down the barrel of a Farage supremacy, driven by young people as the deciding factor. keep up the good work and Ed I do hope to see you back on the front benches soon pushing young people to the forefront of government policy. Hi Ed and George I have to say I was a bit shouty at the last episode where the young man was being quite cross about old people. I'm not that old but at 56 I'm heading that way. From my perspective I left school at 16 because I was told to. Now sixth form or uni for me. Did a YTS and have worked all these years in admin type roles. Opportunities for the likes of me were zero.

28:12George Osborne: I've never earned a great salary, won't have a great pension and have little to show for my life. My children had a wealth of opportunities. My daughter is completing a pharmacology master's degree and is now teaching science in senior school. Please don't pigeonhole old folk as having it all because we don't. I'm not sure how financially viable we are going to be in retirement, even if we make it. Well, thank you, I think, Charlie. Actually, I thought that was a very interesting question from you. And thank you as well, Catherine. Ed, do you want to go first here? Are we being unfair when we say things aren't so bad for young people?

28:53George Osborne: and are we being unfair when we say actually you know a lot of the benefits in our welfare system

29:02Ed Balls: and the like are skewed towards older people well i mean if we wanted a description of the the rather polarized divide between the views of young people and older people charlie and katherine both just set that out katherine saying that these young people have never had it so good i mean i'm not sure she'd quite use in that way that's slightly pejorative but um but don't pigeonhole old folk as having it all and um you know she's right and of course these things are always averages and there are still older people struggling um and

29:35George Osborne: i slightly question whether someone aged 56 we should allow to call themselves old folk well since i'm 54 i'm feeling i feel this is you know she's entering her middle ages isn't she well

29:50Ed Balls: And she's actually younger than me. So I think it's all a bit ridiculous. However, Charlie's point, I think, is really important. If you go back to 2016, when we talked about, you know, at the time of the referendum, so easy to fall into this kind of caricature that the young people were voting against Brexit for a progressive future. And the reality is that for the reasons Charlie said, partly around disillusion in politics, partly around the squeeze on living standards and the unaffordability of housing, but also the way in which social media and algorithms drive and reinforce. I mean, I don't think you can at all take, you know, I don't think you can at all assume that young people are now on, you know, the progressive side of the argument on average, and certainly not in their entirety.

30:44Ed Balls: And if you were a Labour or Conservative politician and that was your assumption, then you're making a very, very big mistake. So I think Charlie's point there is a powerful rejoinder. We saw it, didn't we, in Germany earlier in the year where the AFD vote to the right of German politics was heavily in East Germany. Young people biased rather than older person biased. And Donald Trump did well relative to past elections from Republicans with younger voters. So Charlie makes a very important point. And I think if you are combating Nigel Farage, you can't just think about the views of older people.

31:28George Osborne: Yeah, I mean, my response to Charlie is, you know, I'm not a practicing front bench politician, but I was. and I was trying to respond to the question, which is, you know, young people have never had it so tough by pointing out that, you know, hopefully in a quite objective way, which perhaps doesn't take into account how people feel about things, but rather looks at the hard facts, that on certain things like employment and employment income, things have actually not been so bad for young people recently. But I completely accept that's not how they may feel about the situation. And there are a whole set of other things like a particular challenge, I think he highlights, which is graduate employment.

32:13George Osborne: A lot of more people coming out of universities than used to with not unreasonable expectations, not least having borrowed money to pay for that degree, that they're going to get a certain type of job and that job not necessarily being available. So I accept the kind of anger and feeling of, you know, we have it tough. I think previous generations of younger people would have felt similar angers and resentments about things, maybe not exactly the same things. I absolutely agree with what Ed says, that we should take your cautionary tale that young people are going to vote for Farage very seriously because the Labour government is reducing the voting age from 18 to 16, which I'm strongly in favour of.

33:00George Osborne: But I don't think it's going to help the Labour government, which is what the sort of Tory opposition has been. Oh, yeah, all these people are going to vote left. I think a large number of young people are going to vote right. And I think if you look historically, I mean, young people tend to be at the head of kind of movements calling for change in history, radical change, dissatisfaction with the system. And, you know, historically, right-wing movements and right-wing shifts in countries have been driven by young people, by students. That's where a lot of the energy has come from. And so you might well see the same now.

33:36George Osborne: And it might be the case that, you know, the last generation was sort of more, you know, I guess the millennial generation, not Gen Z, may have been more progressive, woke-ish, Me Too-ish movement and all Black Lives Matter movement. Gen Z might be quite a reaction to that. And that could be a big coming force in British politics. And as for Catherine, I would just say, I mean, I was joking a bit about you describing yourself as old folk. I think you come into the category of people who are actually in the kind of what Ed Miliband in the past would have called the squeezed middle, but he was talking about income and I'm talking here about age.

34:16George Osborne: So, you know, you are not in receipt of the state pension or indeed your, you know, company pension if you have one or employment pension. And so, you know, you are probably feeling pretty stretched because you are in the kind of section of the population, which a lot of pressure has been put on recently, which is the kind of working section of the population who are paying more and more and not least as that section of our society shrinks um and i should say i commend you for what you have achieved in life and the great opportunities that you've provided for your children because you are also an example of someone who has clearly made the most of life and and made sure that your children

35:00Ed Balls: do as well although um it is expensive having children and um it's expensive having children even if you do it a second time around, as George was discovering at the moment, whereas Catherine's daughter is completing her master's degree. So maybe finally, as Catherine reaches age 56, what would I call that, you know, kind of like middle age?

35:22George Osborne: Young.

35:23Ed Balls: Early middle age. Youthful. The pressures are starting to recede. As for Charlie, let me just say this. There's no point, Charlie, in worrying about getting me back on the front benches. It's you who need to be on the front benches. Get out there, Charlie. Get elected. Start articulating on behalf of young people and all people in our country. And, you know, given your excellent question, I'm sure you'll make an important contribution on the benches if that's what you choose to do.

35:47George Osborne: When in 20 years time, Charlie is leading reform, I'm going to say to you, Ed, it's all your fault you told Charlie Harris to get involved in politics.

35:57Ed Balls: I would rather young people got involved in politics, whichever side they choose to get on to, than not getting involved at all or just kind of marching with, you know, demonstrators instead. So get involved, win the argument. That's what I would say. By the way, that is not an argument against marching in demonstrations, but that isn't all it is.

36:18George Osborne: That's actually the history of the Labour Party, isn't it? It was always about taking the fight to Parliament and getting elected rather than just being a kind of protest movement.

36:28Ed Balls: And just to lower the tone a little bit, in order to be ready for the final installment, the third of the Downton Abbey films, I've had a Downton Abbey binge in the last month or so. And from a standing start, I watched the odd episode here and there, from a standing start over the course of the last six weeks, I'm now on Series 6, Episode 5. And you are totally right.

36:50George Osborne: Would you rather live upstairs or downstairs?

36:53Ed Balls: Well, I think, you know, unlike you.

36:56George Osborne: I have no doubt where I'd like to be. I might have been up.

36:58Ed Balls: I think you probably would have been down, but you were always aspirational. But the thing I was going to say was, as they rail against the established order and a time of change, it's young people who are articulating the argument in Downton Abbey for progress. So there we are. Good on you, Daisy. i'm sure you know what i'm talking about um don't they have to sell up um or they have to don't ruin it for me i'm only on series six no no in the finale spoiler alert i don't know yet

37:28George Osborne: i've not got there yet well they can't they can't afford the big house spoiler alert we're going

37:32Ed Balls: for an ad break we'll have one more question

37:42Ed Balls: Do you keep hearing podcast ads like this one, for example, but always wonder how you actually get involved with them for your own brand or organization? Well, it's easier than you think. We're Acast, and we give you the platform to do it all yourself. Browse thousands of popular podcasts. Choose the shows that match your perfect audience. set your budget and launch and if you want a hand our podcast specialists are there to help you launch with confidence this is podcast advertising without barriers get started at acast.com slash advertise welcome back our final question is from scott and i think you'll like

38:27George Osborne: this one Ed. Hi Ed and George. A confession and a question. I was listening to your discussion about ministerial cars recently and it triggered a memory of an occasion when I was walking past the Department for Education when you were the Secretary of State and this car sped up right outside the entrance to the department and the door suddenly, the passenger door suddenly, at the back passenger door suddenly flung open hitting a pedestrian who was just not aware of the car and will walk straight into the door and there were lots of bystanders and a kind of rather shocked secretary of state got out and kind of realized what had happened and did apologize to the man who had been hit by the car door but I will confess I did give the story to a diary column and it did make it uh into a diary column uh in the summer of 2008 and that is my confession but my my question is is on diary stories uh how irritating and annoying or maybe sometimes amusing are they as a senior frontline politician just wanted to know what your experiences of them were goodness me scott thank you for your candid confession you bastard that's what you're

39:54Ed Balls: really thinking i can't but i remember this occasion very well actually because not as well as the whole person you knocked off that i mean you know thank you scott for acknowledging that i immediately apologized and um you know it certainly was not um intended and didn't cause

40:11George Osborne: any harm but so they weren't on a bike they were just walking were they this poor hapless citizen and who you assaulted?

40:17Ed Balls: Honestly, they were walking slightly too fast is the answer. And I think it was slightly, they were walking irresponsibly fast. Close to the curb. Much too close to the curb. But anyway, to answer your question, Scott. So first of all, in politics, one, as you get attuned to it and as you get kind of experienced in it, there are certain moments where you think totally bang to rights. I mean, that is definitely going to a diary. I remember that moment and thinking immediately, I wonder if this is going to take one day, two days, three days or four days. I didn't know it would be you.

40:53George Osborne: That's how a politician thinks. He thought immediately about the media coverage, not about the poor victim lying on the floor, writhing in pain.

41:02Ed Balls: I'd already applied the bandages and called the ambulance. So one, I knew immediately it was going in a diary. Secondly, what you learn in politics is however attuned you are to avoiding mishaps, when they come and get you, you're never expecting them. And you just sort of think, oh. And then the third thing is, if it's in a diary, it's a massive relief. Because, you know, it's on the front page of the Daily Telegraph, you're in trouble. If it splashes the newspapers, if you're leading the BBC, Whereas if it's in a diary, it probably means it wasn't a catastrophe. And it's not that often that a diary story leaps onto the front pages.

41:45Ed Balls: And so if it's just a diary story, then you roll your eyes and think, bang to rights. And sometimes, you know, it's funny. And, you know, I mean, I had one occasion where I was my schools minister, Vernon Coker, brilliant guy. He's now in the Lords as a defence minister. he was the schools minister and we were doing a um event downstairs in the education department for all the staff at christmas it was actually like a strictly christmas event 300 people there

42:16George Osborne: and i had to say thinking lord coker would be a good character in downtown and i could be a good

42:21Ed Balls: and i and i was um had to say a few words and i was kind of you know it had to be you know kind of serious and also funny and it was a party christmas thing and i referred to um having been up at Lord Coker's house the week before up in Chipping Norton. In Cottgrave. It's gone on Lord Coker's in Chipping Norton. In Cottgrave in Nottinghamshire. And having gone into his garage and to see, to my surprise, in his garage, because I turned the wrong way when I was trying to go to his downstairs toilet, went into his garage by mistake and there was a carpeted platform with a pole stretching from the floor to the ceiling and it was where the pole dancing happened and i thought to myself i never knew vernon cole coker was a pole dancer yeah and i then said to vernon how come you've got a pole in your and he said that his his daughter and i think at the time was a trainee teacher um she did it as as an exercise because it's actually really good for your core.

43:22Ed Balls: So I kind of make this reference in this education department party to, you know, Vernon Coker and me thinking he was a pole dancer. And everybody laughed and kind of evening happens. And as we were walking out, my private secretary said to me, he said, Eddie, I thought that was a bit risky with the pole. And, you know, watch this one. weekend, Mail on Sunday Diary, Black Dog, Vernon Coker's daughter is a pole dancer, says Ed Balls. And I was so mortified. I shouldn't have said it. Not as mortified as she was. No, I had to apologise to him. I had to apologise to her. They laughed it off, but I felt really regretful.

44:07Ed Balls: So that is one of those occasions where, I mean, it was never going to be a front page story, but it was a diary story and I shouldn't have said it. And it was a bit embarrassing. It was funny, but in the end, I shouldn't have said it. So every now and then a diary story can slap you in the face like a piece of wet fish but generally diary

44:23George Osborne: stories are better than being on the front page yes i'd agree with that i mean anything i'll actually um add the perspective of someone who's edited a newspaper with a diary um to the evening standard when i took over as editor i revived london as diary and put a lot of resource into it because i thought you know it's an important part of the history of the evening standard that you know it's got a strong diary. And I think a bit like I reintroduced the cartoon, I think it's part of what sort of makes up the light and shade of a newspaper. But I remember at the time, you know, I'd obviously never edited anything since my student magazine.

45:03George Osborne: And I asked the great and now sadly late Harry Evans, maybe the greatest newspaper editor in Britain ever, certainly in modern British history. I asked Harry Evans, how do you edit as a newspaper? And he sent me a kind of list of tips, which I won't go through them all today. Maybe I'll do it another time. But one of them was make sure, he says, you can't read everything in the newspaper as editor before it goes out. It's too much. You can't read everything. And by the way, Evening Sound was being produced in a rush every day and had to go to print at midday. But you must, as editor, always read the diary column every single day because it's the only thing that will get you fired that evening by the proprietor if you get it wrong.

46:00George Osborne: Because if you put something in the diary column that's about in some way connected with the owner or offends someone who the owner knows or, you know, as a newspaper editor, you're toast. and uh harry evan said yeah that is the thing it's the diary column and can get you fired as an

46:20Ed Balls: editor it's also the case isn't it that i mean that's totally right but as our society has become more litigious and the law has changed um it's become more expensive and risky having that kind of diary um column because you get you get sued and there are fewer of them around i mean do you remember in its heyday the um the um the marina hyde matthew normand guardian diary was absolutely brilliant black dog used to be great even today though i think christopher chope still does

46:46George Osborne: peterborough in the telegraph kevin maguire chopper as we call him kevin maguire still does a diary

46:52Ed Balls: in the new statesman which is great the times diary is probably um the most impactful national newspaper diary in the heavies uh these days there are still diaries around but you know

47:03George Osborne: are they what they were well no but the newspapers aren't you know generally what they once were but That doesn't mean they don't have a different kind of presence. And, you know, the online content. You see, your assault on that hapless pedestrian, which is, remember, the core of this story, not the core of the... Did we really need to return to that? Not the core of the polder.

47:28Ed Balls: The difference is my stories ended up in diaries. Yours ended up on the front page of the News of the World. Yes, they did. But we probably shouldn't go there.

47:37George Osborne: But I'm just saying that these days there would have been...

47:39Ed Balls: My whiplash impression.

47:41George Osborne: Oh, I thought it was you doing the drum kit and touching the...

47:45Ed Balls: That was my mistress whiplash moment.

47:48George Osborne: There would be a video now, wouldn't there, of you assaulting this pedestrian?

47:52Ed Balls: Almost certainly. It's a dangerous game. That is it for this episode of EMQs.

47:57George Osborne: Thank you very much, Scott, and everyone else who asked a question. Please keep sending in your voice notes, your emails via questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk. Do make sure you review the show. because it helps other people find it.

48:11Ed Balls: And we've also had such a fabulous response to our summer EMQs and special episodes. And we're going to answer more of those questions in the coming weeks, some of them today. But we love getting your feedback and your questions and your responses. So thank you so much. And we'll be back next week with another episode. See you then.

48:38George Osborne: This has been a Persephoneca production.

49:08Ed Balls: where that introduction happens. As the world's largest podcast marketplace, we let you browse shows, see who's listening, and book host-read sponsorships or run your own ads all from one platform. Transparent pricing, real-time data, complete control. Start advertising on podcasts by visiting acast.com slash advertise.