EMQs: Is there room for optimism in politics?

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0:32George 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.

0:41Ed Balls: Ed Balls. A steady-as-she-goes budget. What kind of ship does he think he's on, the Titanic? Bermary, Celeste.

0:49George Osborne: Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

0:58Ed Balls: so hello and welcome to emq's ex-minister's questions so i'm um in germany at the moment

1:04George Osborne: and i don't want to play into any kind of national stereotypes at all but i regret to inform you that our podcast has been invaded hasn't it's been taken over we've been captured that is right we

1:16Ed Balls: are joining a few other podcasts this week in the run-up to um the big annual meeting of the united Nations next week in New York, we are part of the Be Hope podcast takeover. This is the campaign to say let's step back from the daily narrative of crisis and pessimism and look for hope and optimism in the world.

1:38George Osborne: Yeah, it's the kind of hopey-changey moment for us. And this campaign is being organised by Project Everyone. And who can be against that by definition? Who can be against the project everyone no it's actually run by a bunch of very good and smart people who i know richard curtis of course he's the guy who wrote notting hill and four weddings and a funeral and all those wonderful comedies like blackadder and the like but has devoted so much of his life to campaigning for development in the developing world and you know reducing hunger and poverty and disease i'm amazing you know a bit of an unsung hero because of all he's done uh to help people when unlike some people in film he could have just sat there with all his money and Kate Garvey who I know really well she's been a campaigner in this space for years used to be of your parish used to be in in the one of the people in the Labour last Labour government but she's devoted her life to this and she works with Gail Galley as well and they have organised this whole takeover we're doing it with others but we're going to do it better than others aren't we i mean i think some other podcasts you may have heard of are taking part but what we're going to do is at least to begin with focus on hope and optimism i hope we do anyway in our podcast don't we because i think we're trying to always bring solutions real world solutions rather than just point out the problems and uh anyway we're going to make an extra special effort this week that is

3:10Ed Balls: right and um with the un meeting focus on um kind of peace at a time of conflict but also those millennium development goals around tackling problems in global health and in climate change um i actually was at the earlier in the week the holocaust educational trust annual dinner um brilliant um organization run by karen pollack been doing it for years the government cross party finances het to send six formers out to to auschwitz and to learn about the holocaust and come back and talk in schools to kind of their kind of classmates brilliant group of ambassadors now all around the country part of that story they chose the theme of the dinner on monday to be to be hope at a time of rising anti-semitism um i think the survivors who spoke more than anybody want us to look for the positive and how we can positively change the world in a better way brilliant speech by Deborah Lipstadt.

4:10Ed Balls: She was a person who, 25 years ago, was sued by David Irving in the High Court for claiming that the Holocaust didn't happen. And she won that case. She claimed he was a Holocaust denier. He sued her. She won. She was Joe Biden's special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism. And she made a very kind of positive, hopeful speech about the potential for change and in that spirit we're going to um have questions at least in the first half of our podcast today about hope and we're going to hand over the floor to three different people who sent us in uh questions um you know different kind of questions to some of the

4:52George Osborne: questions we often get on emqs yeah our first question is seyi akiwowo and she's the founder of a charity called glitch which campaigns for safer online spaces let's hear seyi's question hello i'm shayi akiroro former local councillor in east london founder of glitch and author of how to stay safe online when i was 17 i asked george osborne a question on bbc question time about youth safety i was also campaigning to lower the voting age because i believed young people deserved a voice in shaping the future they will inherit now the voting age has been finally lowered, the newest voters will bring fresh energy to our democracy, but they will also be the most vulnerable to online abuse, disinformation and AI-driven manipulation.

5:43So my question is, what hopeful advice would you give to those casting their first vote and finding their political voice about how to embrace the positive community-building side of the internet without being silenced by its darker side. Thank you.

6:00George Osborne: Wow. Well, first of all, say thank you for this being the second time you asked me a question. Yeah, I mean, it's been a long time since I was on BBC Question Time. But do you know, I asked a question from the audience when I think I was maybe a little bit old and new. Maybe I was like 21 or 22. I asked John Prescott a question when I was an audience member. and it's quite a nerve-wracking thing to do isn't it well certainly i thought it was something the camera's on you and david dimbleby says as he was then the host picks you out yeah so i think well look it's a good question to which i think you are probably much better qualified than i am to answer which is how can you find the right communities on the internet to engage positively but they're definitely there and uh i think it's true that you know that i'm in favor of lowering the voting age to 16 always have been and I'm pleased it's happening.

6:56George Osborne: I think there's an interesting thing about 16 to 18 year olds. I think they may end up being more engaged than the kind of 18 to 21 year old who typically do the vote the least in the kind of group in the population. And that's because the 16 to 18 year olds, or most of them anyway, will still be in touch with education and there will be opportunities through their school to engage and have a kind of discussion about politics. And yes, I think it's kind of incumbent on those who run the kind of internet companies or at least the kind of websites that deal in politics to think about a positive way for people to have that conversation and find out what they agree about as well as what they disagree about.

7:42I don't buy into, by the way, this kind of conservative view, or indeed if it's a Labour view, that everyone's going to vote left on the 16 to 18-year-olds.

7:50George Osborne: You might have completely the reverse effect and you might find that people are voting right. And that's one of the kind of shifts that is happening in our politics where younger people are actually turning out to be more on the right of the political spectrum than people a little bit generation older than them. So I don't think it's about how people are going to vote, which is how the issue has been presented, but how they can engage and how their first contact with our democracy isn't a negative one.

8:18Ed Balls: It's really interesting. I mean, I suppose my response to this, I mean, first of all is to say that she's doing what we both try to do in our lives, which is go and be actively involved in politics to try and show it can work and make a positive difference in people's lives. And that's what she's doing as a local councillor in East London. And, you know, it's so easy to be an external lobbying campaigner and to say, you know, it's all about concern and threat and danger and going wrong and politics failing. But that is, in the end, a disastrous way to go about delivering positive change because if all you do is undermine confidence in politics, then much harder to get the kind of the outcomes which happened in terms of reducing global poverty over the last 30 years in the global economy but because of the millennium development goals happened because of positive political change and so being an insider and a counsellor delivering that change but I think there's a wider point as well which is if you think of how social media works now if you think about how say tiktok works when tiktok began it was kind of fun and you know dynamic and um i think more positive i think tiktok is following so much of social media in terms of becoming more kind of negative and conspiratorial and about harm and i think calling that out and trying to find ways in which we can use social media young people could use social media to tell positive stories about change and community action and what is possible so that we don't have that diet of failure and negativity that's the kind of thing which um we need your generation to lead on say and it's great to see that you're doing that as a councillor so um thank

10:16George Osborne: you i do think isn't it i think it's true that the most powerful force you can harness in politics is optimism and hope. In some ways, it's the most difficult thing to harness because it's often done in quite a lukewarm way. And so people resort to negative campaigning and it's easier to kind of say something, you know, negative than to say something positive. And so a lot of political campaigns end up being negative. You know, you may not like us, but we're better than the other lot. But the really successful campaigns, the ones that kind of are generational and sweep the board and have amazing elections and victories, are the ones generally that kind of focus around hope.

10:59George Osborne: I mean, I'm thinking of sort of big wins in my lifetime, like the Obama win and the Bill Clinton win. Both total outsiders when they started those contests. You know, not likely to be the candidates of their parties, let alone of the country. And yet both Democrats, but there's also Reagan, I would say, when I was a teenager. And so Obama and Clinton both used hope, literally used the word hope. Right. You'll remember the Obama poster and people old enough my age or above will remember Bill Clinton still saying, I still believe in a town called Hope because he grew up in Hope, Arkansas. and then people might remember Ronald Reagan's morning in America again um the shining city on the hill and all that so they're they're harder to do well because there's a lot of pretty poor positive campaigns which dare I say we might be seeing some of in the UK at the moment but so you tend to kind of the easier thing is to slip into negative campaigning but the most powerful thing if you get it right is a very very strong positive campaign that's right

12:06Ed Balls: And I think in the case of the Millennium Development Goals, you can see how positive campaigning galvanised the world to action. And I think in the case of climate change, there's a real dilemma as to whether you are more negative and catastrophic about your campaigning. I'm not sure that that is the best way to win the argument. You need hope and success and progress in there as well. I agree with you on that. Our next question, continuing with our takeover, but staying in London, comes from somebody who was a former Member of Parliament rather than councillor and is now the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

12:49Ed Balls: Hello, this is Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, the greatest city in the world. Down every street and in every borough, you'll find some of the world's finest people, theatre, music, food and art. in London you're free to be who you want to be and love who you want to love and celebrate whatever culture you come from what could be more hopeful than that my question to you both is this what is your favorite thing about London and why very interesting well I'm going to start off with with a more political point and then move to kind of broader London culture and the political point is because we talked on our main podcast about Sadiq Khan calling out Donald Trump.

13:33Ed Balls: Of course, he got into a row with Donald Trump during Donald Trump's first term about London. I remember being out in Florida at Mar-a-Lago, actually, when I was making travels in Trumpland for the BBC. And one of the people I met at Mar-a-Lago, it was the day of a big Trump dinner, said, are you from London? And I said, yes. And she said, I mean, you know, but are you safe there anymore? Isn't it so dangerous to live there? And I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, there's all these Muslim no-go areas in London. And I said to her, you know, honestly, that really is nonsense. London, like any other city, has its challenges with knife crime or phones being stolen from people in the street.

14:16Ed Balls: But the reality is, the thing I like about London is that there is no street in London which I ever feel unsafe walking down. Of course, that's me speaking as a man. And I know that, you know, for very many women, being vigilant all the time is a reality of life everywhere. I think this is a, that London is a city which has managed diversity and change in a way which has been, you know, the opposite of no-go areas and community and cultural division. That's an important part of London for me. I also think London, as a consequence of that change, has the most amazing food culture. I mean, it's such a brilliant city for going out to eat, but also going out to shop.

15:04Ed Balls: When I first lived in London 30 years ago, it wasn't easy to find a Chinese speciality supermarket. Now there's loads of them everywhere in Japanese and Middle Eastern and so many other cuisines from around the world. The other thing, I went this summer, George, to Evita twice to see the brilliant Rachel Ziegler singing in that Evita performance. And you sit in the audience and she goes out.

15:30George Osborne: Were you in the street when she does it from the balcony?

15:32Ed Balls: No, I was in the theatre both times watching when she goes out onto the street to sing. And you might think if you're in the theatre and you see this on a big screen that you sort of feel excluded from that. but she turns and winks at us all in the theatre as she goes out. And she goes out to the balcony and there are hundreds and hundreds of people gathering in the street every night. There were to see her sing Don't Cry For Me Argentina. And what a fabulous London thing that is. It says that theatre was full and dynamic, but also crowds in the street celebrating culture. In this case, a British cultural take on an Argentinian story.

16:16Ed Balls: But, you know, a great London experience.

16:21George Osborne: Yeah, I mean, look, I was brought up in London and I've lived here basically all my life. And I absolutely love it. And I think it is what you touched upon. And I think it's what Sadiq Khan is good at articulating, which is it is the great global city. I mean, there are obviously other amazing cities in the world like New York and Tokyo and Paris and so on. But there's something about London which is, of course, it's British, but it's also international. It is the great international city. It's sort of less British than Paris is French or New York is American or Tokyo is Japanese or Beijing is Chinese or whatever.

17:02George Osborne: And I think that's actually to our enormous credit as Brits. um i mean where do you start with what i like i was just sort of thinking when i when i heard this question i was thinking like what i've just done in the last couple of weeks you know i went to an amazing production at the opera house of tosca this week which was just brilliant you know five stars in every sense um then fear i went to it was great right she's so brilliant yeah uh and a bit controversial because she's russian there was a i actually thought that was also it was another thing about London that there was a kind of peaceful protest on the street reminding us of the Ukraine conflict and yet the Opera House was there also celebrating great art.

17:46George Osborne: Thea and I went to an amazing Japanese restaurant called Eel Sushi which has got really recently opened and had you know food as good as you'd have anywhere in the world and as good as any sushi I've had in Japan. Really brilliant. I took my kids to my young kids to the adventure playground in holland park which is just like a brilliant playground open to everyone so there's so many things but obviously it's really one thing i absolutely love about london because that's sadiq's question i love the underground i always have i went to school on it i go to work on it now i take my children around town on it i just love all the kind of thing i like the different designs of the stations the different lines my four-year-old son is completely obsessed with the underground he knows all the stations and the different colors of the lines well i also like the hidden i like the kind of there are like hidden stations which you can go and visit that were used during the war or you know they were sort of close there's that there was actually a british museum station at one point um so i love yeah i've had to pick one thing and actually it's to your point you always feel safe and maybe it's easy for me to say as a you know as a man um you know that i always feel safe on the underground but i do i mean And when I've ride the Underground in other cities, well, particularly when I've ridden it in New York, there's definitely a feeling, an element of kind of risk I have.

19:11George Osborne: Whereas I feel utterly safe on the London Underground. And that is a credit to all the people who work there and a credit to our great city.

19:19Ed Balls: Brilliant. Let's take a break and then we'll have another takeover question.

19:51We'll see you next time. knowing everything runs smoothly in the background. It's completely shifted the way we work. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com.

20:07Ed Balls: So welcome back. Our next question in our takeover is from the filmmaker and activist himself, Richard Curtis. Hello, this is for Ed and George and political currency. This is my question. We're living at a time when, understandably, a lot of people feel very pessimistic. When we read the news, watch the news, it often feels like a constant stream of bad things, with bad leaders and natural disasters and armed conflict and the cost of living crisis. And I think this is pushing a lot of people to not only feel helpless, but actually quite tempted to completely sort of disengage. age. But a recent report from the one organization and Project Everyone, which I helped co-found, shows that there really are still a lot of reasons to feel hopeful.

21:00But these just aren't the things that are being talked about, probably because they don't make for good headlines, because they're slow news, as it were. I'm obsessed by how the younger generation have such sort of sophisticated and deep understanding of issues of race and gender and climate. But there are also the sort of specific things, you know, in the last 25 years, extreme poverty's been hard since 2015. 50 million more girls are in school. Deforestation in the Amazon is down by 30 percent. Renewables are now outpacing fossil fuels. So my question to you two is, what are the areas where you're seeing progress and that give you hope now and for the future.

21:48Ed Balls: So thank you to Richard for that question, but also for the leadership you're showing with this campaign. We're really happy to be part of it. I mentioned global poverty earlier. The reality is what we've seen in the global economy in the last 40 years has seen just an enormous fall in people living in poverty around the world. There's a lot more that has to be done but i mean it has been a great achievement maybe my answer to your question richard in the next period might be the conquering of disease you know after the pandemic with ai with the progress we're seeing in research there's a real possibility isn't there that you know in cancer in heart disease in dementia we could see in our lifetimes or in our kids lifetimes you know the conquering of diseases which you know in our growing up we assumed would always be be there so that is i think one area where i feel optimistic and then a second area because we've we've done this a bit in this podcast today and it's so easy to do to talk about social media and technology as a negative but the reality is compared to when we were young it is now so much harder for an author for an authoritarian dictatorial political leader to suppress and repress populations um because information flows so fast and so wide through um kind of social and kind of wider media very hard i think to um to deny populations news about the world in the way that you could 40, 50 years ago.

23:36Ed Balls: And it doesn't mean there aren't dictatorial authoritarian regimes, but I think they are increasingly challenged by the nature of the 21st century information economy. And that is also a very kind of good and positive thing. So there's two positives for me.

23:52George Osborne: So first of all, I mean, Richard Curtis has entertained me my whole life. And I want to say a big thank you because a lot of the things I've most enjoyed watching on television and laughed most at have been things that he's written and everything from like not the nine cut news i think he started out on to black had a vicar of dibby i mean there's so many cool things and then all his films and i grew up in notting hill and his film notting hill is an homage to the neighborhood i grew up in and there's a kind of scene where hugh grant walks along the portobello road over a year you know it's to demonstrate that there's been a passage of time um and it's just you know if you it's often when you see films about the places you know they're very inauthentic and you go oh you've got that wrong or that's that building's not there i often think that about films about politics and westminster i go well that's not realistic whereas i thought that movie nottingham particularly captured the world i grew up in but to richard's point i mean i first of all you know i also worked pretty closely with richard when I was chancellor when we were increasing development aid to 0.7 % of GDP or GMP.

24:58George Osborne: And, you know, it's very sad that there's been a kind of retreat from that by subsequent conservative Labour governments. But there's still a lot of good work being done out there to reduce poverty and address inequality in the world. I guess the, you know, you can look on the kind of grand scale of there's still an overall incredible reduction in poverty happening over our lifetimes in the world doesn't mean there aren't massive problems and terrible situations but you know it's there's been more human progress simply on poverty in my lifetime than at any point and things like life expectancy child infant mortality you know staggering improvements i mean i'm going to pick up on your point about technology you know i'm like the phone i hold in my hand the thing the access to information that i have the the ability to connect with anyone around the world the ability to stay in touch but you know it's something even when i was born would have been regarded as inconceivable the information that i can get from google chat gbt you know i would have had to go literally to the british library to get some of that if they let me in and uh you know dig around in books for weeks and weeks to find out some of this and that that democratization of information has been very challenging to authority and has had all sorts of you know negative side effects because when you bring down hierarchies so you no longer just sit there and watch the 10 o 'clock news and what the bbc's 10 o 'clock news editor or itv's 10 o 'clock news editor decides you should be watching but you're on the you know that creates all sorts of problems of fake news and false information but fundamentally it's been enormously empowering for people to have this information in their own hands and to stay in touch i agree with you on

26:52Ed Balls: that although i do think we're going to look back and say that what we did to um the the well-being of a generation of um of young people who have had to live in the playground for close to um 24 hours a day on their phones i think we're going to worry about that and the exposure to to violence

27:11George Osborne: but there was a lot of loneliness in the world before as well and people you know the the social network has and has you know has connected people think of elderly people left essentially a you know alone in their homes all day now finding communities online uh people who might have thought they were kind of oddballs and misfits in the playground the literal playground able to find you know other people online i mean obviously sometimes with very dangerous effects but often very positive effects um i just think the very simple thing you know when i think all the people i was at school with or when i went on you know when i went on holidays when i was either a child or in my teens or my 20s you know you never stayed in touch with most of those people you couldn't unless you were kind of sending them letters and postcards and whatever.

28:04Now, through things like Instagram,

28:08George Osborne: people are sort of constantly connected with all of the people or many of the people they've met over their lives. And so 20 years later, you may never talk to that person again, but that person you met on holiday, you can see how they grew up and now they've had children and a family. You know, it's a very, very sort of different experience. And a lot of it is positive. We obviously, policymakers should do, and the media, focus on where there are problems, but that doesn't mean there's not a lot that has gone right. And we should also, should we also say that podcasting has been an enormously positive development as well?

28:46Ed Balls: It's been a massively important development in your life and mine. I think, though, if I was a parent again, we would think differently about the use of phones for young children. And because you are now going to be a parent, you are a parent again for a second time around. I think you'll think differently about your children's use of mobile phone when they're 11 than your older children when they were 11. So, you know, there are there are things we have to adapt and learn from. I don't think we got it all right. That's the only point I'm making. We should take a break and then we've got time for one more question.

29:26monday.com ai agents took over my work and i absolutely love it chasing deadlines writing status reports updating stakeholders agents handle the daily grind now i stay in the loop only when it matters create your own ai agent in minutes on monday.com

29:47Ed Balls: welcome back so our final question is from florian um he didn't actually i think submit this as part of the podcast takeover but we thought it was a good question and fitted with our wider theme he's an international listener one of our kitchen cabinet members and so florian if you don't mind you've been inveigled in. Hello, George. Hello, Ed. My name is Florian. I'm from Austria and I'm 34 years old. I serve as a member of the Low Austrian State Parliament. I was just elected as party leader in my hometown and our capital city of St. Poulton, where I'll also be the lead candidate in the next year's local elections.

30:25Over the years, I've seen many talented people, especially young ones, leave politics because our party lacks a structured way to develop and integrate new talents. That made me curious to learn from your experience. How do British parties identify, recruit and support the next generation of MPs? And finally, as someone preparing for my first campaign as lead candidate, what advice would you give me in challenging a long-standing social democratic majority in my city? Thanks in advance. Love the podcast. Cheers from Austria.

30:59George Osborne: Well, how about that? We have members of the lower state parliament in Austria, not far from where I am. I'm literally on the Austrian border, on the German side of the Austrian border in the Alps here. And he's listening to our podcast. It's great that we have such international reach.

31:18Ed Balls: I think I'm going to let you answer the question about how to challenge the social democratic majority in his city. I mean, presumably the answer will be, have they delivered the change people want to see? Or does Florian have an alternative view of change, which is going to deliver better change for the people of the city? But on his other question, I do think both the main parties in the UK have done a good job of bringing in younger people into politics. You can see that in the intakes of young members of parliament in 2010, the Conservative Party, and most recently Labour in 2024, but back in 1997 as well.

32:04Ed Balls: I just wonder whether, to get to kind of the heart of Florian's question, whether our parties are good at supporting and sustaining young talent once they're actually in and involved in politics. Do we do enough to support kind of young councillors with the work they do? And, you know, if you look at the mess the government's got into on promoting young talent since 2024, I'm not sure they've got that right. I think there'll be quite a lot of frustrated young people in Parliament on the government side don't feel as though they're getting a proper look in. Back in 2010, do you think that you and David Cameron got supporting young parliamentarians after they'd come into politics in 2010?

32:47Ed Balls: Did you get that right?

32:49George Osborne: Yeah, I'll come on to that. I think we did or we tried to. We were very active. and I think that would be my sort of first advice to anyone who's a party leader whether it's in a town or country you can't just sort of assume that things are going to happen and sort of sit back and new talent and young younger generations are going to engage your party I think you have to actively go out and facilitate it and encourage it and through a series of organizations which later you know as people started to take knocks at the kind of camera and leadership people started to kind of criticize like the a-list and women to win and so these organizations were designed to dramatically increase female representation in the conservative parliamentary party from the situation when i first became an mp there were literally you know i think there were like more mps called michael than mps who were women so you know we went out to sort of actively recruit young women to become members of parliament and and to do that not not in a kind of you know way that you're sort of tilting the seesaw so that they're going to get an advantage over men but by saying by explaining that for example being a young mother is consistent you can you can operate a political career and be a young mother for example so those things I think they worked and then when we had new MPs I mean obviously some of these people won't be our listeners favorite people in politics but uh people like liz truss kemi badenok later um these were products of that program uh and indeed people like sajid javid and rishi sunak as well because we also wanted to get people from different ethnicities into our parliamentary party and you know they all went on to achieve a high office in the party at least in case of kemi so um and of course she was in the cabinet so yeah that all works so i think you can you can be you have to be active i would say and i guess that kind of my answer to florian you know i don't know the circumstances of austrian politics you're in the center right party aren't you um i think it's something if you were to distill some of the um things that ed and i have talked about over the last year with the labor government and in the run-up to it i think we both agree that you have to have a credible analysis of why the incumbent is failing so it's not good enough for you to just say to your social democrat opposition in your town well they're social democrats and they're wrong and you know we know that the left always gets it wrong you know which is what a conservative might say or indeed what keir starmer says oh well you know we have 13 years of terrible Tories, Tories are awful, ghastly people.

35:32George Osborne: No explanation why they won four general elections and no explanation why millions of people voted for Tory prime ministers. Just like, you know, the moral certainty that my opponent is wrong. That gets you nowhere and you don't carry the public with you. And you have to have a kind of meaningful analysis of what's gone wrong. And I would say what went right. I think one of the successes in politics is if you present yourself as a natural successor to something and just saying everything wrong is is you know you can say look they got off to a good start they had good motives you know they got a couple things right but then they lost their way and then now the town needs to change so i think a kind of credible analysis that sent people with some common sense would nod along to and say yeah that's fair enough is important and then of course you've got to have a kind of credible you've got to have an intellectual underpinning to the policy program you're presenting that there's something that holds it together that there's a common thread there's a common objective and that and that there's a you know the politics is all about you know the engagement it's a it's a future business you know some american once said and you know we've been talking about technology and changing our world in this um the cmqs you know what what's what's your answer to kind of harnessing those changes in a positive ways for your community so i sort of you've got to start with the thing it's not the slogan the slogans are the last thing you've got to start with the kind of intellectual underpinning of your case for why your opponents have gone wrong and why you would be better so florian we look

37:08Ed Balls: forward to um updates from you on how your elections uh go and um whether your campaigns um work out what you learn from your successes or failures in the in the next period but um Good luck and great to see, as we say, young people getting involved in politics and making a difference. We're at the end of our Be Hope special edition of EMQs, our podcast takeover. And thanking to Say Akawowo, to Sadiq Khan, to Richard Curtis, also for organising it, Richard, with Kate Garvey and Gail Galley. And also to Florian Crumbock for also being part of our takeover. That is the end of this week's EMQs.

37:52George Osborne: Yeah, thank you. It doesn't mean we're going to switch back to all sorts of negative crisis-based questions next week. If you've got crises or problems you want to point out to us, please send those questions in. Hopefully we are, as I said earlier, more of a solutions-based podcast than just a criticism. So send your questions in to questions at currency.co.uk. And if we don't get around to answering them immediately, sometimes they sit on our list and we pick them up a couple of weeks later or indeed when we get a sort of you know holiday break and if you have

38:25Ed Balls: been inspired or provoked or horrified by anything we've said in this podcast takeover we'd love to hear from you comments and questions we can come back to that next week send us your voice notes or emails via questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk and as we always say if you can review the show please do so especially if it's a good review if it's not a good review you know this is all about

38:47George Osborne: hope and positivity isn't it george yes it is i feel the one star of you is neither hopeful nor

38:52Ed Balls: optimistic so no more of those not that we get any i don't we don't what are you talking about we don't get any what are you talking about um we will see you next week with another episode of emqs and uh also with our main podcast and um see you soon thank you so much have a hopeful week

39:16George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

39:38made sure it all made sense. Easy. Create your own AI agent today on Monday.com.