EMQs: Is politics like snooker?

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0:15George 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.

0:23Ed Balls: Ed Balls. A steady-as-she-goes budget. What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic? Hello, Mary Celeste.

0:32George Osborne: Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

0:42Ed Balls: Hello and welcome to EMQs Ex-Ministers Questions. Now, on our main podcast, we were talking about snooker. But I'm going to start with football because last night, Arsenal beat Atletico. They are in the Champions League final. They're going to face Paris Saint-Germain. And I was saying on Good Morning Britain earlier in the week, you know, it doesn't matter if you are a Man U fan or a Spurs fan or a Chelsea fan. You know, shouldn't you support the British team in the Champions League final? Are you supporting Arsenal?

1:15George Osborne: I think I would broadly prefer a British team to win than a European team. But maybe that means I'm not as much of a football fan as I should be. Although I'm going to the FA Cup final that Chelsea's in. which I'm excited about, against Manchester City.

1:30Ed Balls: And you're supporting Chelsea in that game, presumably.

1:32George Osborne: I'm definitely supporting Chelsea.

1:34Ed Balls: Just so you know, George, they're the ones in the blue shirts.

1:36George Osborne: Yeah, I don't know. I've been to the two Champions League finals that Chelsea won, in Portugal and in Germany.

1:44Ed Balls: Although, don't Man City also wear a blue shirt?

1:45George Osborne: No, they wear a white shirt.

1:47Ed Balls: It's kind of like a light blue.

1:50George Osborne: Look, OK, since you like to celebrate football success, regardless of who has it, you presumably were thrilled to see Ipswich back in the Premier League.

1:58Ed Balls: I was disappointed because I enjoy the Norwich-Ipswich game and I don't want Ipswich to be in the Premier League. But if Ipswich, as they were in the late 1970s, if Ipswich were in the Champions League final, I would put my partisan East Anglian affiliations aside and support them. I said this to Sean Fletcher, Spurs fan. He said, just can't cope with the conversation. He said, there is no way I would ever support Arsenal in anything. and you know it was interesting.

2:26George Osborne: I will say to any Arsenal supporter not that they need my advice on both occasions that Chelsea was in the Champions League final I ummed and ahed about going because you have to travel abroad and it's a faff and then you think in both cases you thought well Chelsea's not going to win against Bayern Munich or indeed against Manchester City and in both cases they were just the best most brilliant nights and I was so pleased I went and so if you kind of hesitated I'm not sure there will be Arsenal fans hesitate But if anyone's thinking, oh, can I be bothered to make the trip? Yeah, I'd definitely go.

2:56Ed Balls: So I was on our podcast last week also talking about being at the World Snooker Championships at the final. And I said I spoke to one of our political currency fans who'd been to every day of the whole tournament, 17 days. And he delivered. Ben Sizer has sent us in a question. And here it is. Hi, Ed. Great to meet you at the Crucible for the World Snooker Championships. And I hope you enjoyed the final. In politics, as in snooker, success often depends on playing the long game rather than chasing the flashy shot. Do modern politicians have the patience and strategy of a world champion or are they too focused on the next frame?

3:30Thank you.

3:31Ed Balls: So this is a really good question from Ben. And I am not sure if I fully agree with his characterisation. I think in the end, if you are in a best of 36 frames match, you can't start thinking about, you know, five frames ahead or 10 frames ahead. you have to think frame by frame. You've got to win the next frame. And if you keep winning the next frame, you're going to succeed. And it's right that you have to be careful of the risky shot. You've got to plan ahead. But I think the parallel with politics really comes down to that world snooker final earlier in the week. Wu Yiza, Sean Murphy. Because it comes down to, it's one of the only four times in the whole history of the championship where the whole match has come down to the final frame.

4:19Ed Balls: and how do you handle the final frame and are you risk averse or do you think to yourself the person who goes for it gives themselves the chance of winning there was a particular moment where sean murphy pots a brilliant red but he's taken the white back to safety and therefore he can't capitalize whereas wu yuza wins because in the key moments he decides to roll the dice and the And, Paul, in politics, you could think about what we were talking about, about leadership elections. Do you sit back cautiously and wait for somebody else to make the move? Do you, in your mind, think, you know, Michael Heseltine, he who wields the knife doesn't get the crown, which we know is often not the case.

5:09Ed Balls: Or in politics, like in snooker, do you have to decide that to win at a certain moment, I've got to seize my chance. I've got to be bold. I've got to grab the opportunity because if not, I'll miss my chance.

5:24George Osborne: Okay, so I'm getting a bit lost in all the snooker. But you've got the politics. I have got the politics. I think it's a good question. Well, let's get back to Ben's question. And I'm going to pick up on your point.

5:38Ed Balls: So basically, it's a game with balls on a green table. And there's 15 reds and there's colours.

5:45George Osborne: I'm not very good at it, but I do know the rules. And I know that a blue ball is worth more than a red ball. If we're going to the...

5:54Ed Balls: But there's more red balls. There are more red balls.

5:58George Osborne: Oh, now I've lost my train of thought. No, the thing about... I think where there is a similarity from the snooker games I've watched with politics and where I slightly, therefore, disagree with Ben is, and you were making a similar point, that, you know, ultimately you've got to win frames to win the match. And in politics, it's all very well to say you've got to have a long-term plan, which I'm an absolute believer in, and you are as well, and one of our big criticisms of Keir Starmer's premiership is he's not been able to set out a kind of long-term vision. Nevertheless, in politics, you absolutely have to keep your eye on what's happening today and tomorrow.

6:34George Osborne: It's a bit like kind of driving. You have to be immediately aware of what's in front of you because if you crash you can crash badly in politics and at the same time you need to know where you're going and what your kind of overall destination is and the suka games i've watched you know once people kind of lose a couple of frames they can go into a sort of downward spiral and then they can and they lose momentum and that's one of the kind of fascinating things about sport isn't it that you know even you know at the very highest level whether it's a tennis match or a football game or whatever you know once you sort of start losing you carry on it's It's quite hard to pick yourself back up and the momentum isn't with you.

7:12George Osborne: And politics is absolutely like that. And in politics, it all becomes kind of self-reinforcing, because once you start doing badly and things start to go wrong, then your own political authority is weakened and makes things more likely to go wrong as well in the future. And reversing those spirals is hard. Where I agree with Ben is it's in those situations where you tend to kind of look for the flashy shot, to use your language, that kind of gets you out of jail. You know, when you're kind of down, you kind of, is there a sort of wonder shot I can play? In politics is often, is there some policy, some amazing policy I can come up with?

7:49George Osborne: If I announce it, we'll kind of rescue my situation. Is there a single speech I can give? Normally, there are exceptions, but normally for politicians in a whole, it's a slow job building yourself up and you can't get out with a single kind of leap and bound to your thought more broadly about leadership I absolutely think it's the case that you have to if you are cautious and you're kind of waiting for the leadership to be handed to you it's usually a mistake there are the odd exceptions sometimes you know the cautious person wins because everyone else blows up but normally and it's certainly true for the successful leaders they exude it's mine I should be the leader I have no self-doubt about that I can do it I'm going to grab the crown you know and it's what sort of separates them out from the pack and in fact it's what inspires people to follow them because they go oh this person's got a kind of glint in their eye they want it I mean there I remember in my own kind of personal experience david cameron in 2005 when the leadership contest was on you know he was a relatively new mp he'd only been in parliament for four years there were loads of reasons why not to enter that contest david davis looked like he was the surefire winner of the tory leadership contest and david had a no i should be the leader and all the time i was there you can't win and And if you don't have any supporters and wait it out this turn, it will come around to you eventually.

9:25And he was like, no, I should be the leader of the Tory party. And I remember looking at him in the eyes thinking, wow, there's something about you. You absolutely think this should be me and I should be the prime minister.

9:37George Osborne: So there's something about leadership, which is, as you say, sitting there and waiting for someone else to make you the leader is usually a mistake. Good question, Ben. And I hope, did you actually stay for the final frame then, Ed, or did you miss, you weren't in the final session?

9:54Ed Balls: No, I was on the TV the next morning, had to get up at 3 a.m. So I watched the afternoon session, left Sheffield at 4.30, jumped on the train at five o 'clock and managed to get home to watch the whole of the evening session on the TV. And originally it was supposed to be my daughter was going to come with me. She's doing psychology and she actually loves snooker because it's such a mind game. But she's got her finals, and she decided that she had to put her finals first. So a friend of mine went, but we had a great time. And Ben, as well as his questions, sent a photo of me and him in the Crucible Theatre, which will be in our newsletter.

10:31So thank you, Ben.

10:32George Osborne: That's got to be reason enough to become a kitchen cabinet member.

10:36Ed Balls: Well, it's just one small notch on the long pole of reasons. I'm not sure about that.

10:43George Osborne: I think they call it a cue, actually, on the long pole.

10:48Ed Balls: They do. I'll chalk that one down to experience. Our next question is also from somebody we both know. In fact, I read her every week, but I last saw her when we both got off the same train and we shared a cab together down in Somerset on the way to your wedding on the Friday evening. She is a former political journalist, and she's now a, I mean, she's done brilliantly well at the Sunday Times, big rising star. She writes beautifully.

11:19George Osborne: Hold on, wait, she wasn't at my wedding. She was? Charlotte Ivers was at my wedding. She was writing a sketch for the Sunday Times about your wedding.

11:30Ed Balls: Oh, she? Yeah, no, she wasn't invited. She was just down there.

11:35George Osborne: I was literally thinking, you were telling a story about it, I was like, I don't think she was on the guest list.

11:39Ed Balls: No, no. I have to say that I only found out she wasn't on the guest list halfway through the cab journey. And I suddenly realised that, you know, I was part of her colour. But she was outside the church. She wrote actually a very nice piece in the Sunday Times. But no, so she may not have been a guest at your wedding, but she was definitely at your wedding.

11:54George Osborne: I was wondering who the anonymous sources of the piece were.

11:57Ed Balls: Now I know. No, she put her name on the piece. No, you. Oh, I see. Oh, my God. What have I done? She was duped. I told her, don't reveal your sources. And then I've blown it. I've blown it on our podcast. Anyway, do you know what I'll have to do now? I mean, as with many of our listeners, we'll have to go up and search Charlotte Ivers' George Osborne wedding on Google and find out what the anonymous people said. You know, what a plonker he was. I can't believe he's managed to scoop up such a great bride.

12:28George Osborne: No, I seem to remember it was actually quite a nice piece. Anyway, I might be misremembering. Anyway.

12:33Ed Balls: Let's just move on. I mean, you know, I'm in the hole and I've stopped digging.

12:38George Osborne: That's also, yeah, I think it's called the pocket in snooker. Anyway, this is Charlotte Ivers. Charlotte, thank you for your question. Hi, Ed and George. Charlotte Ivers here, political currency enthusiast and TV critic for the Sunday Times. Like both of you, I used to be a Westminster dweller and I'm now living a much more peaceful and some might say nicer life elsewhere. But back when I was a political journalist, I sometimes would take a sweary phone call from a special advisor. And it felt very obvious to me that these people were trying to emulate Malcolm Tucker from the thick of it. I also think that the West Wing has shaped the way that many British politicians think about America.

13:15So I'd love to know if this is something you have also seen and if you have any other examples of life and people in British political life imitating television, whether that's consciously or subconsciously.

13:26George Osborne: Thank you. well i mean the west wing was the kind of seminal political show wasn't it for our generation i mean it was broadcast in 1999 it's like a long time ago i and i did i did re-watch it all during the pandemic but at the time if you were a political enthusiast as i was i mean i was a i was working essentially as a special advisor or but had been a special advisor and then i was working in the opposition then you know this was your dream show and it was at a time also when i I think, which I guess is different from now, where there was a sort of feeling that the Clinton White House, which it was loosely based on, although Bartlett, the president, is a very different character from Bill Clinton.

14:08George Osborne: But, you know, it was a sort of ideal of what politics could be, wasn't it? It wasn't cynical. The whole thing about the West Wing, unlike The Thick of It and unlike Yes Minister, the other brilliant political show of my lifetime, although I was only a child at the time, you know, they're both sort of cynical about politics and politicians. You know, and yes, Minister, it's Sir Humphrey who's actually running everything. Although Jim Hacker has ultimately some wisdom, which Sir Humphrey doesn't have. And in the thick of it, you know, again, the politicians are all useless characters. The point about the West Wing was the most capable of all of the people was the president himself, who had won a Nobel Prize for economics.

14:50George Osborne: and all of the people involved had a kind of higher calling. They were doing it for the right reasons. And so I think that's why it kind of set a standard. To Charlotte's question, did it kind of influence behavior? Well, I think it did to some degree. I mean, there were certain political strategies, which I guess the West Wing was reflecting real political life in America, Aaron Sorkin, the writer. but certainly for a British audience, it was the first time they'd been sort of communicated properly and therefore were sort of picked up. So a classic episode is Let Bartlett Be Bartlett, which is when it's like they're trying to overthink what he should be doing and, you know, he's struggling politically and then they just say, why don't you just let him be who he be?

15:41George Osborne: And often in politics I would hear afterwards, it would be like, you know, let Cameron be Cameron or let Brown be Brown or let, you know, So there's a kind of that was a sort of direct copying. There's also there's an episode where I think it's called Rope a Dope, where there's a press conference. I think it's Martin's political opponent who just decides to deal with an issue by answering every possible question, by holding a press conference that goes on for hours and hours and hours. And so that you can't say people haven't had a chance to ask the question or they're running away. and that too I've seen copied as well the the other thing I you know there was a phrase that entered into British politics as a result of sort of fiction and that was the other great political drama at the time House of Cards which was the British West Wing you know but before it became House of Cards on Netflix and with the president it was that brilliant British political drama and it was televised in the early 90s wasn't it and the kind of phrase, you know, you might, Francis Urquhart's phrase, you might think that I couldn't possibly comment, then sort of entered the British political lexicon and you had real politicians uttering it.

16:57George Osborne: But to sort of Charlotte's general point, yeah, I think there are things particularly from the West Wing that kind of strategies that parties subsequently followed.

17:07Ed Balls: You are right, although, as you say, they were probably reflecting kind of underlying political strategies, which predated the West Wing. But you are right. I always thought, I mean, I love the West Wing, but it was quite an idealised version of politics. In some ways, I think primary colours, the film gets closer to the harsh reality of what it's really like to be in American politics. But that is also not a... Do you remember all the excitement?

17:36George Osborne: It was an anonymous book, wasn't it? That's right. Who had written this book?

17:40Ed Balls: That's right. but it wasn't cynical either there was an idealism in that as well and I think look in passing the fact that Charlotte in her time in political journalism was getting sweary Tucker-like calls and special advisors is incredibly depressing because to the extent that they were thinking that was the right way to do that job I mean it's a terrible way to do the job to be shouting and swearing and showing off in that way um who was malcolm tucker based um look i think you know the answer to that and i was never a great um watcher at the thick of it so um i wouldn't know um but yes you do i i wouldn't know but i think it might have been alistair campbell um what's he up to these days um i don't know he does a lot of celebrity things i think um so the thing i was going to say was if you think about um the thick of it house of cards as you said it wasn't only that they were a bit more cynical but also i think that they gave the impression that politics was always about intrigue and underhand and a con and if you think about um you know what is the the modern equivalent it's actually not about politics but the television series traitors is also a game of intrigue and deception in which people often think that's what you have to do, little cabals and private conversations and lying and deception.

19:16Ed Balls: And I think to the extent that people in modern politics who watch those programmes, including traitors, and think that's the way to be a politician, I think that's also a mistake. But I think to answer Charlotte's question, if people are now watching traitors on television and thinking that is the way to get on in politics that may be going on but it's also a big mistake one other thing i'd like to say which is which is sort of related to this but related to kind of charlotte's tv critic role today but also her past political journalism experience if you think about um kind of moments which are defining in politics.

19:54Ed Balls: Think about Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street with the tear in her eye. Think of Rishi Sunak being drenched announcing the election campaign in the rain. Think of Gordon Brown's walk down Downing Street with his family. All of these were not kind of hugely thought out planned events and they weren't events which had words but actually because of television they were defining and shaping images, which become the thing which captures the political reality through time and helps you to interpret something very different from what the politician intended at the time. In Gordon's case, I think actually in a good way, in Rishi Sunak's case and Margaret Thatcher's case in a more complicated way.

20:42Ed Balls: But I think to understand modern politics, you have to have the eye of the television critic and to see the story the pictures are telling, often independent of the words and the stories that the politician is intending to tell. And so I would say being somebody who is both a television critic but also a political observer is increasingly a kind of powerful journalistic place to be. And I hope that Charlotte is not going to lose her politics reporting as she does her television work. In passing, I don't know whether she's reviewed Secret Service, the ITT drama. I mentioned this on our newsletter the other week.

21:19George Osborne: Remind me, who stars in that?

21:21Ed Balls: Me and Susanna Reid are guest stars in it. But it's actually, Gemma Arterson is the main star. And there are other people who are famous in it. Oh, I mean, but you're all stars. We're all stars. The point is, though, I think actually it captures politics really well. So, and I don't know whether Charlotte has reviewed that yet. I'm going to go back and have a look. But if she hasn't, she should bring both her perspectives to that review.

21:45George Osborne: Be funny if she's only given it her one star.

21:48Ed Balls: Well, I mean, you know.

21:49George Osborne: We will see.

21:50Ed Balls: I didn't agree with every restaurant review she wrote either. But in general, I loved reading them. Thank you, Charlotte, for your question. We'll be back after this break.

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22:44Welcome back.

22:46George Osborne: Well, we have two questions on artificial intelligence. One is from Andrew Feldman, who I, of course, know very well. He was the former chair of the Tory party, is a good friend of mine, and one of our listeners. And also a question from Rosemary. And they're both about how people feel about AI. George, Ed, hi, it's Andrew Feldman here. I'm currently the CEO of Teneo Strategy and Communications. I thought you'd be interested to hear that we've been doing some polling on the issue of AI, identifying which arguments most persuade the public and politicians of AI's benefits and seeing if people in the tech sector know what their strongest arguments are.

23:24So to sum up a long report, we found that you can achieve a big increase in support for AI by showing the difference it can make in the NHS. But most people in the industry think they're better off being more defensive or focusing on the economic benefits of AI. This is a finding that won't surprise the interview. But as we've dug into the testing what works to persuade people with more and more precision, there's a bigger question that kept occurring to me and I wanted to put to you. Does it matter if the UK public and UK politicians are persuaded to support AI or are the forces and the companies at play here just too important for UK politics to be important?

23:55Hi Ed and George. I very much enjoy your discussions and I have a question for you. Like many people I talk with, I have mixed feelings about the potential benefits and dangers of AI and I feel powerless as it's pushed upon us by a small group of incredibly wealthy individuals in an unpredictable foreign country. So I asked AI, what if I don't want AI? And AI put the onus back on me. You must actively curate your tech, it said. But I have other questions too. What will we do with all those people whose jobs are taken by AI? What about its huge appetite for power and resources? Will it really make a positive difference to our lives or will it make a dangerous world even more perilous.

24:41As a citizen, it feels as if I have no agency in the face of this technology being done to me. Should I be excited or afraid?

24:50Ed Balls: Two great questions there from Andrew Feldman, from Rosemary Hall. I have to say, I was slightly disappointed because after my snooker question, when you said we had two questions on AI, for a fleeting moment, I thought, goodness me, George Osborne has delivered an EMQs question from the Pope.

25:08George Osborne: Anyway, what about these questions? What about, do you want to go first?

25:13Ed Balls: I can't go first. Look, you are the AI guru. You've got so many things to say. They're just all bubbling up, aren't they? No, I've got to.

25:21George Osborne: Well, there are many things to say about AI. But on both Andrew's question and Rosemary's question, I mean, the first is, it's a very interesting survey that Teneo, that's the company that Andrew is helping run, has done and points to, you know, some of the benefits of AI that people probably don't understand or it's not as well circulated as it should be. for example, inside our public services, improving our NHS, improving our education system, and those need to be better known. But that's also partly an onus on governments to get on and adopt the technology and make it available through our public services so that things can be improved.

26:03George Osborne: I guess the question I'm going to pick up on is, I think Rosemary's question, and it's reflected in what Andrew's asking as well, two things here. First of all, is AI going to accentuate existing inequalities in our world? Or is it going to reduce those inequalities? And what about the people who are the potential losers from this technology? So the first on the inequality question, I mean, if you think about it, new technology should be enormously empowering and it makes available to people who previously were not able to afford it some of the resources and some of the capabilities that were available to the wealthiest.

26:40George Osborne: So if you think of the power whether it's going to be in your hands if you have an AI tool to organize your life, you know, sort out your priorities, help you amplify your productivity at work. You know, those are things that previously were only available to like a chief executive with a private office or a cabinet minister with a big team of civil servants. You know, you're able to deliver resources that were not really previously available to most people in the palm of your hand, a kind of capability that whole governments wouldn't have had available to them, employing millions of people even a few years ago.

27:16George Osborne: And I think the general lesson with AI at the moment, certainly speaking for myself, is you need to really spend some time working out what its capabilities are. These are the freely available products like ChatGPT. These tools, and this applies to the other companies as well, they're not just simply search engines. They're much, much more powerful than that. So there's a massive opportunity here for this technology to reduce inequality in our world, to empower people who previously were not empowered, to put into the hands of ordinary citizen tools that were previously only available to elites, and so on.

27:51George Osborne: And generally, when new technologies have come along, they have upended the social and economic order in a very big way, often not to the advantages of the elite and the ultra are wealthy at the time. All that said, there's definitely a risk, and it's actually spelt out in some of the reports that OpenAI has produced and other companies have produced, that in the short term, the economic gains accrue more to the holders of capital than the people with labor. I mean, it's a classic economic challenge. In other words, if you have shares in an AI company, you're better off than someone whose job is disrupted by AI or made redundant by AI.

28:30George Osborne: And that's a kind of question for governments. It's not really a question for the technology or a question for the company, because these are questions for Congresses and parliaments and governments. Where I kind of take issue is this sort of lump of labor fallacy. That's, I think, what the economists would call it, isn't it? It's this idea that there's a fixed number of jobs in the world. and that if AI gets rid of your job as an accountant, say, or as a junior lawyer or, you know, or suddenly you're no longer a cab driver because there's an autonomous vehicle driving around, that, you know, that's just like one job lost.

29:09George Osborne: And it's certainly the case that when new technologies come, it's much easier to anticipate the jobs that are going to be lost. So when you invent, you know, the car, you go, oh my gosh, what about all those people who worked looking after horses, driving carriages, you know, making carriages and so on. And what people don't anticipate is there's going to be an enormous car industry and all sorts of associated things connected with that that's coming. And I think that is the case with AI. It's much harder to anticipate the jobs that are going to be created. But the early evidence is that a lot of jobs are being created off the back of AI, as well as jobs being made redundant.

29:47George Osborne: And, you know, I think if you compare AI not to so much like social media which is quite easy to do because you think oh like they're tech companies but if you compare it more to like the arrival of electricity i think it's kind of transformative effect which will be potentially very disruptive and difficult for some of the people caught up in the disruption is going to be felt right across the economy and so to you know rosemary's question like what if i don't want ai it's already embedded in a whole load of technologies that you're using without you even necessarily being aware of it and i think if you think of it more like a like uh something like the arrival of electricity then you understand as societies we have a decision to make how we kind of shape that and how we use it and how we distribute the gains but the idea that you can say no to it i think is itself a fallacy i am going to

30:41Ed Balls: go to Andrew's question and agree, I think, strongly with the fundamental argument he makes when he says, to sum up a long report, you can achieve a big increase in support for AI by showing the difference it can make in the NHS. But most people in the industry think they're better off being more defensive or focusing on the economic benefits of AI. I think the danger for the industry is if on the one hand you massively talk up the economic revolution which is going to come from AI which by the way some economists are sceptical about but you've we're sort of doing a version of that a moment ago George but you're also defensive about the role of government of regulation or taxation and you say we have to be left to get on with it get off our backs don't get in the way what that does is it fuels all the fears that Rosemary and others have, that this is going to be a wild west.

31:37Ed Balls: These powerful people are going to run riot. The economic benefits are going to be huge and disruptive and we'll pay the price and they'll get all the gains. And so I don't think the tech industry being defensive about regulation and tax is the right strategy. I think they should be kind of embracing the confidence which will come from sorting out the regulatory legal environment. But where I think Andrew's right is on the NHS side, if you can show not only in the process of healthcare, but also in discoveries, if you can show that some of the most resistant diseases, which we've been as a world fighting for decades and centuries, or some of the huge challenges in agriculture and poverty around, can you find drought resistant crops?

32:27Ed Balls: If you can show that the DNA analysis, which can come through AI, can deliver discoveries, which until now were not available to us, and treatments which we couldn't deliver before, and also cost reductions in the way in which we deliver those treatments, because AI can replicate excellence. At that point, you really start to win the argument and persuade people like Rosemary, this is going to be a big positive things so i would say and you know i'm not saying that you're resisting this george or people you work with but i think when andrew says don't only look at the economic benefits look at the wider social health benefits and the discoveries and the transformation which can come from that i mean i think he's onto something quite big and important there yes i mean to

33:16George Osborne: do that to the ai companies that you know the people who run them are very focused on things like the scientific benefits. And to take a company not very far from the big new, of course, it's not far from where I'm doing this podcast, DeepMind, which was bought by Google, some of their pioneering work has been in medical discoveries and protein mapping. And Demis Hassabis, the founder, won the Nobel Prize last year for this. I think that's true. But I think AI is, and this is where I come back to it, it's not like social media disrupted communication, education which is obviously a huge space human relationships and so on but the thing about ai is it's a kind of a cross there's you know you can both see the scientific and health benefits whilst at the same time be understandably concerned about people who might lose their job in kind of professional services they're all part of a piece so big is the kind of technological change

34:10Ed Balls: but the point andrew is making here is that he thinks people in the industry resist making their health scientific arguments and want to double down on the only the narrower view of that?

34:20George Osborne: I think it's, well, it's an interesting question. I think the companies try and talk up the scientific benefits, but they just don't get as much kind of coverage and as much oxygen, to be honest. I think there's a kind of general challenge, which is, you know, for a lot of incumbents more broadly, not just people, but companies, new technologies are a huge challenge. I mean, DeepMind and OpenAI and Anthropic, the three of the biggest companies, you know, they're kind of newish companies disrupting the tech industry itself. And I think there's a final point, which is you can say, look, we can't predict the jobs that are going to be created.

34:57George Osborne: But it is often the case for individuals, particularly older individuals involved in this period of disruption. It is hard often to find those new jobs. You know, if you look at the kind of deindustrialization, not just in Britain, but across Europe and the United States, you know, our economies are many times larger than they were when there were coal mines and steel mills. And indeed, in some of the communities and areas where there were coal mines and steel mills, actually, they're vastly more prosperous now. Look at Manchester today compared to Manchester 50 years ago, for example. but for the individuals a 50 year old miner mine closes it's not sort of straightforward being told we'll go and become a web designer you know so i think some of the language around re-skilling can be a bit superficial and there are much harder problems to crack here great questions from andrew

35:51Ed Balls: and from rosemary and good to have george here to give us an inside view the challenges we'll be back after this break with one more question.

36:28And I can keep track from my phone while I get the job done. No bills in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search Xero for your free trial. Conditions apply.

36:46George Osborne: Welcome back. Final question. This is the biggest question of all, isn't it? And it's a question from Tim. Hi, Ed and George. My name's Tim, Tim Sinclair. And my question as a gold subscriber, do the ever increasing number of podcasts make a difference to the way people will vote? Then maybe it will. If judged by viral TikTok influences following, then again, could be I am in your central liberal bubble anyway.

37:18Ed Balls: Oh, P.S. I am. Right. That was a fabulous question from Tim. I mean, I have to say, I understood it a lot at the top and found it increasingly challenging. It was a little bit like an E.E. Cummings poem. It sort of, you know, I think would probably pay textual analysis. But good question from Tim. Or a curate's egg. Well, no, because I think it was a good question. And a curate's egg means it's a bad question. We have discussed that before. So I have three things to say about this. One, the fact that senior politicians, I mean, Keir Starmer, are increasingly doing podcast interviews suggests that they think that podcasts are influential.

37:59Ed Balls: By the way, not with our podcast, because we don't do those kind of interviews other than our inside the room ones. But they clearly think they're important. Whether they're influencing voters, I think it's much more likely that they think that the mediators, the journalists, the commentators, the economists are listening to the podcasts. And in order to get their message over to be understood, they need to speak to the people who then will be speaking to the voters. The podcasts are a way to do that. But then the third thing is, you know, I don't think podcasts in any British general election have been important yet.

38:39Ed Balls: But if you take the last American presidential election where you had Donald Trump doing, for example, the Joe Rogan podcast interview, clearly he felt that that was a way to get directly to voters. And what you've seen in America is podcasters then doing what historically has happened in the UK with newspapers, not with television channels. They're not allowed to because of the Ofcom broadcasting rules, but newspapers saying that we are going to endorse. So you have the Times newspaper saying vote Conservative or vote Labour, The Sun famously saying vote Conservative. but then under Tony Blair changing his mind and saying vote Labour.

39:25Ed Balls: I wonder whether the next general election will be an election in which not only podcasts are more influential in terms of shaping debates and informing the mediators. Will you have podcasts who decide to endorse? Now, George and I haven't spoken about this. I would think, George, it is not something we will do. I can't imagine Political Co-NC as a podcast, either of us on this podcast coming out and saying we together have decided to say vote this way. We will always see our role as informing the debate and helping people to make their own decisions. But could we see other podcasts saying like The Times and The Sun and The Guardian in years gone by, our podcast says vote for this party?

40:18George Osborne: I can imagine in a situation in which we would endorse a candor, if the foreign secretary became leader of the Labour body, she'd get my vote. She came to my wedding and unlike Charlotte, she was actually invited.

40:33Ed Balls: Although you would know that I wouldn't take a view on that at all, because as a Ofcom regulated independent broadcaster, I will say that that's not my place at all.

40:41George Osborne: No.

40:45George Osborne: I agree with a lot of what you said. When we started this podcast, our objective was to try and explain how politics works rather than promote a kind of idealized politics. There's definitely a role in the media and indeed in podcasting to say, oh, I don't like the world as it is. Why can't the world be like this and hold out some, you know, more utopian vision that people should be aspiring to? I guess the kind of West Wing approach, which is this might not be how things actually work, but this is how they should work.

41:19Ed Balls: Although, as you said, the West Wing was never cynical. It was never anti-politics. And I don't think either you or I are cynical and anti-politics. We would never want to be populist podcasters saying they're all useless. And if only it was us, the populist champions doing it instead, it would all be great. I mean, I just I think that is just totally the opposite of how I feel about politics. I want politicians to succeed, all of them, because I think it's really important they do.

41:47George Osborne: Yes. And you quite often talk about the importance of not talking down politics and politicians and politicians shouldn't do that themselves. No, I think what we've set out to do is try and explain how politics works in practice for people. And then, as you say, they can make their own decisions on the back of that.

42:05Ed Balls: and also to persuade the politicians to do the right thing, not the wrong thing, by learning the right lessons from history and not screwing up.

42:12George Osborne: Yeah, and I think the fact, you know, our podcast is listened to by a lot of people in Westminster, in Whitehall, people making these decisions, I know from what happens after we stop recording, people come back to me and message me and go, ooh, you know, actually, I've reflected on the point you guys were making and, you know, we were talking about this. And so, you know, it has that sort of indirect influence, but it's not a direct way of reaching voters. I think if you look at, you know, it therefore plays more of that kind of mediating role. There's a general point, which is I always thought, I used to think this when I was, you know, frontline politician, you know, involved in, you know, running two big election campaigns.

42:52George Osborne: I thought there was always a bit of a mystery how people received their political news and formed their political opinions. There was a sort of fundamental mystery at the heart of politics. And it was a mistake to think that people, you know, picked up the Sun newspaper, read the Sun editorial and go, oh, I'm going to vote, you know, Labour or Conservative today or watch the kind of 10 o 'clock news. You know, how people formed political opinions. We used to put so much kind of effort into trying to understand it. So much of it was shaped by, you know, how your parents voted was often a leading indicator of how you voted.

43:25George Osborne: Your ethnicity was often, you know, had an interesting impact on voting patterns, your socioeconomic position, plus then individual policies, individual politicians. And so it was a whole mix of things. And of course, what politicians do is they sort of reach for the levers that they're in control of, right? They can't influence how your parents might have voted in the past. And so therefore, you do reach for, well, can I get the Sun newspaper to back me at the election? Can I make sure there are great pictures of what we're doing on the 10 o 'clock news? You sort of reach for the things that are within your control rather than things which aren't and shaping what the podcasters are saying is part of that it's one of the levers available and i think particularly in a time when it's even less clear where people get their political information from because far fewer people are reading newspapers or watching the kind of classic broadcasters on their nightly news bulletins you know you basically try everything but when i was working for one of the tory leaders of the opposition and there was a question on who wants to be a millionaire.

44:29George Osborne: And it was someone who was doing quite well. It wasn't like the half a million pound question or million pound question or anything like that. But it was, you know, it was like 32 ,000 pounds or something. And it was like, who is the current leader of the Conservative Party? And this person, there like four answers came up. And the kind of person who looked like pretty intelligent and was, you know, was really struggling with this question. And I remember sitting there thinking, this was in the kind of dog days of opposition, when Tony Blair was a descendant oh my god we are so screwed and there are so many millions of people watching this and even if they do know who the leader of the opposition is they'll be thinking well this person doesn't know so they can't be doing very well the leader of the opposition and i just remember thinking that is like this will not feature in any kind of media summary it doesn't feature in like our plan to talk to the newspapers tomorrow or how we're going to try and influence the bbc or ITV bulletins, but it's been watched by millions of people.

45:26George Osborne: And it's just one of those things that it comes back to, like how people pick up their political news. And in the age of, as Tim's saying, TikTok as well as podcasts, as if you're an active politician, you just have to try everything.

45:40Ed Balls: I thought the climax of your story was going to be that in that moment when they weren't sure the answer, they thought to themselves, I'm going to phone a friend. And they got on the phone and said, George, who's the leader of the Conservative Party?

45:52George Osborne: I've never been were you ever asked by anyone did you ever know anyone doing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and were you ever a phone a friend

45:59Ed Balls: I was for a celebrity version of the show you know they have kind of fundraising ones

46:05George Osborne: because you're a star

46:06Ed Balls: but no no they were the celebrity and I was one of the people for their phoning but then they didn't do well enough so they were out before they got to

46:16George Osborne: were you like sat by your phone

46:18Ed Balls: of course

46:19George Osborne: and you're not allowed to use the internet

46:21Ed Balls: scared to death Do you know The Wheel with Michael McIntyre?

46:25George Osborne: Yes.

46:26Ed Balls: I've done that a few times. And it is so stressful because, you know, your role there is to be the friend. You know, the contestant has got an answer to answer a question. They can ask you and you have to sort of advise them. If I get this right, I'm a hero. But if I've got this wrong, then and they choose to follow my advice because I must know what I'm talking about. and they then lose their money to pay for their mother-in-law's holiday of a lifetime or whatever. You know, so it was quite stressful.

46:55George Osborne: Would you like to be on Celebrity Traitors? Were you a little bit like, oh, why didn't they ask me?

47:00Ed Balls: Well, I mean, no comment on that. They did ask you? As I said, no comment on that one. I think, though, the truth is that if you are like us, former politician, I mean, it was bad enough in the last series of the main traitors being a barrister, a lawyer, because everybody thinks, oh, a barrister. You know, they're used to making arguments and they're used to manipulating juries. I think if you are a former politician, you're on the traitors, you just start with such a disadvantage because everybody thinks, you know, you must be a traitor. it goes back to Charlotte's kind of question earlier about how the traitors kind of influences kind of wider political perception if the perception is that all these politicians are traitors and I think there is an erm of that

47:50George Osborne: but they're not going to choose like George Osborne as the traitor so you'd be able to use that double bluff

47:57Ed Balls: but then the triple bluff is and that's why they chose him

47:59George Osborne: yeah but the quadruple bluff is yeah but you'll think to get to that point then that's why they did it

48:03Ed Balls: which is why it's a great show But I think being a politician or a lawyer is harder on the traitors and being a former politician or former lawyer on celebrity traitors would also be harder. Easier to be a comedian.

48:19George Osborne: Sorry, we're getting off the subject, but I thought I thought it was great that Amol Rajan is appearing. And there was some rather snippy kind of Today programme chatter, which was like, oh, I can't believe he's taking a week off to go and do. I mean, what? I mean.

48:36Ed Balls: Can I just say, it's not a week. It's weeks and weeks. Kate Garroway did it with, you know, on GM. I mean, she did brilliantly in the celebrity version. But she was off for a few weeks.

48:46George Osborne: They don't care for it. I thought they did it all in a couple of weeks.

48:48Ed Balls: Anyway, I'm. No, no. Because I think, well, it depends how long you're in.

48:51George Osborne: Well, I thought it was pretty snippy of those Today program things. And I think it's nothing good for the Today program.

48:57Ed Balls: Are you saying that there's sometimes a little bit of tension between Today program presenters? Because I've never seen any. I've never seen any evidence of that.

49:04George Osborne: Anyway, I'm rooting for Amol.

49:07Ed Balls: Thank you for your brilliant question, Tim. And that's all we've got time for in this episode of EMQs. And we will be watching Celebrity Traitors closely when it finally gets filmed. Although it won't be for ages. It can't be on TV until the autumn. No, it's being filmed now, isn't it? I know, but they then edit it for months.

49:25George Osborne: Yeah, they all have to stay still. There's a bit of a conspiracy of silence, actually, isn't there? Because sometimes newspapers do find out who's won. But they don't want to be spoilers.

49:35Ed Balls: It's not in their interest because if people know the result, you've killed the programme and people buy the newspapers to read about the traitors. So if you've got a question of your own, you can send it to us either by emailing questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk or messaging us on our socials. And always, we love a voice note.

49:51George Osborne: And we love a variety of questions, as you will have gathered if you've managed to get this far through our questions today, where we've covered all sorts of different topics and somewhat got off the subject in some cases. But we've enjoyed it.

50:07Ed Balls: All to the good. And we'll be back on Thursday with our main show. See you then. See you.

50:20George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

50:58Thank you. at paylocity.com slash one.