EMQs: Regrets, leaks and data centres

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1:42George Osborne: Hello, welcome to this week's episode of EMQs with Ed Balls and me, George Osborne. We've got a real range of subjects for us this week. We've got Laura Koonsberg of The Koonsberg Show, no less. She's asking us a question about our biggest regrets in politics, the things we ignored which we should not have ignored. And you'll find that Ed and I actually agree on this without conferring in advance. Then we have good questions on free movement from our listeners in Germany. Is it such a bad thing? What about the free movement to go and live and work in Germany, for example? We've got questions about leaks and how annoying they are.

2:18George Osborne: I don't mean like plumbing leaks, I mean political leaks. And we talk about Michael Govan, the Queen, and perhaps a leak that did have a big impact on recent British politics. And then finally, Katie Prescott from The Times, their tech correspondent, asks us about how do you win the case locally for building a data centre? All this and more on EMQs. And next week, send us your own question at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk. Message us on our socials. We love answering them.

2:50Ed Balls: so hello and welcome to emq's ex-minister's questions and we are recording this on i was gonna say bonfire night but it's actually lunchtime so it's bonfire day but it's going to be bonfire night guy fawkes is going to be um torched in fires across the nation were you ever an effigy

3:08George Osborne: when you were in government uh there's in in lewis you know in um sussex they they tend to have kind contemporary politicians they put on the bonfire. I don't think, I'm not sure I ever was. It's entirely possible I was. Maybe someone from Lewis could tell me.

3:25Ed Balls: David Wright Not that I know of. And I'm not sure whether we actually had bonfires. I think we were quite fireworks orientated in my growing up rather than the bonfires.

3:36George Osborne: David Wright I was trying to explain to my five-year-old Beau, he was asking me this morning all about guy fawkes and what happened to him and why do we put this thing on a bonfire and did he go to prison because i explained that he you know tried to blow up the king and blow up uh parliament um and he said but did he go to prison and i said yes yes he went to prison he was a you know but and then he said but why do why do we put the guy fawkes on a bonfire did he was he put on a bonfire

4:04Ed Balls: whereupon i said come on bo we're late for school this sounds even more complicated than reparations and apologies at the Commonwealth Summit. The other thing which we have on Good Morning Britain, we've had this for weeks now, is the annual debate about pets and bonfire night. Because, of course, it is a huge problem for pet owners because lots of, particularly dogs, I think cats as well, are kind of frightened. And some people feel very strongly that, as a consequence,

4:29George Osborne: we should ban fireworks nights.

4:32Ed Balls: But it's so much part of our culture.

4:34George Osborne: That's a bit of a killjoy, isn't it?

4:35Ed Balls: It is a killjoy thing. However, there is a solution which we discussed this autumn. Actually, it turns out my sister did this. What you have to do from the very early stages of a puppy's life is you have to play it firework noises at a low volume, and then you progressively up the volume over weeks and months.

4:57George Osborne: Is this Handel's fireworks? For example, that's a slightly more refined version of it,

5:03Ed Balls: but big bangs is the main point. so that they are trained to not find it shocking and frightening. And if you do that, so my sister says her dog is fine on Bonfire Night. I mean, she doesn't want it even to be outside, but he's not destabilised by the fireworks. So basically, it should be part of the training process.

5:20George Osborne: Presumably that's what they do with police dogs and military dogs, I guess. Presumably. Otherwise, it might be less effective.

5:27Ed Balls: I do feel as though we have maybe gone slightly outside our expertise here.

5:32George Osborne: Well, the big event this week, although we are going to enjoy Bonfire Night tonight and the fireworks and everything, is it's our dog Albie's sixth birthday this week.

5:41Ed Balls: Well, if Albie makes through the night.

5:42George Osborne: No, Albie does not like Bonfire Night, but the solution we found, or rather that Thea has found, you know, she's really on it, is to, basically, Albie goes into the sort of utility room, which is the most kind of, you know, sort of furthest from the fireworks. And then put on ACDC. No, and then we put on, do you know what? You probably don't know because, you know, you don't have young children what a white noise machine is. Because I don't think they really existed with our older children. But these days, a lot of young children go to sleep with these things called white noise machines. And indeed, adults use white noise machines.

6:21George Osborne: And they play a kind of, it's a bit like the sound of a sort of untuned television set. I don't think those exist anymore. But you remember when you used to have that kind of black and white scrambling noise, like a noise. So you can get the machine, you can either get it on your phone, or like Spotify will have 10 hours of white noise, or you can actually buy these little round white noise machines. You put them on with the baby and it helps them go to sleep and it blocks out all the other noise. And so we put the white noise machine in the cupboard in the utility room with Albie during the firework display.

6:55George Osborne: And she's fine.

6:56Ed Balls: It feels like a particular kind of torture.

7:00George Osborne: We used to try and put earmuffs on her. that they didn't work.

7:03Ed Balls: However, this reminds me, do you remember that speech Keir Starmer did where he talked about fighting and he said the word fight 14 or 27 times in his speech and we decided to do on the podcast, not just that clip, but the producers put a bell, a ring bell between every fight. Ding, ding, ding. And we had all these complaints from people saying, I go to sleep with your podcast. is my soporific way to get to sleep. And this bloody bell kept ringing and waking me up. But that makes me think maybe the solution to fireworks and dogs

7:41George Osborne: is to put them into a room listening to our podcast.

7:47Ed Balls: Anyway, shall we get on to EMQs? Our first question today comes from the BBC's former political editor, um now the bbc's leading um weekend political interviewer her own show taken on the mantle from david frost and then andrew marr laura koonsberg the koonsberg show she has a book out called pay attention and um if you haven't read it there is pay attention laura koonsberg's new

8:13George Osborne: book ed is laura if you're listening to this on on your podcast on the way into work he's actually holding it up. He's properly plugging your book here. Right.

8:24Ed Balls: And he's sent us in a question. Hi, Ed. Hi, George. Long time no see. It's Laura Kay. And I've just published my first book. It's called Pay Attention. And I've tried to get to the bottom of why it feels like things have gone a bit haywire in this country in the last 10 years. Why has our politics got so toxic? Why have we had so many prime ministers? And my question for you is, what is the one thing that you wish you'd paid more attention to when you were in charge? Is there one thing that really nags you that you wish you maybe hadn't ignored? That's the question. I'm sure we'd all love to know the answer.

9:06Bye for now.

9:08Ed Balls: So this is a really good question from Laura. And I thought hard about this. And was there something which nags at me because I should have spotted it or I chose to ignore it or didn't give a sufficient focus to? But actually, I ended up concluding it's a big thing, not a small thing. It's a thing which I feel as though, you know, the biggest failure of politics in the time I was in government. And when the BBC did their Tony Blair Gordon Brown documentary about the new Labour years, I thought they underplayed this, which is that and it's something which we just took for granted. And I think I'm going to say that you and David Cameron fell into the same trap, which is Britain's membership of the European Union.

9:52Ed Balls: We assumed that we were in the European Union and that we were European now and that this was a given. and therefore over those 13 years sometimes we would have rows and disputes with the European Union of course you do that's natural that happens in any organization but we never properly I don't think made the economic and the defense and security and the political case I think we took it for granted we assumed that was it was clear and I don't think that you and David Cameron did enough on that either and therefore when it suddenly became a very contentious issue you You end up with the referendum.

10:27Ed Balls: We thought, but surely everybody understands why this has been the guarantor of economic prosperity and political stability for decades. These are our most important relations. And actually, people didn't feel that. Now, that may be because they disagreed. But I just don't think we ever made the argument. And I look back and think that the biggest failure of our time in government was not to make that case with more determinants. We just took it for granted and we paid a price.

10:58George Osborne: Unlike when we used to appear occasionally on the sofa together with Laura, you as Shadow Chancellor, me as Chancellor. On this occasion, I'm going to entirely agree with you. And we have not conferred in advance, but this was also my answer. Is that true? Yes. How interesting. Over a long period, the British political establishment, who was broadly pro-EU membership, just never made the case for the EU. And I think more than that, there was a kind of job to be done, which was, you know, if you're the opposition, you would say, oh, the prime minister is not negotiating hard enough with the EU.

11:33George Osborne: Or they're being, you know, they're the poodle of Brussels.

11:37Ed Balls: Or you go to ECOFID and have a row about they want to impose tax harmonization and we won't do it. Like they were separate from us and we were fighting them off.

11:46George Osborne: And so as a result, the kind of case for EU membership just went completely unanswered for or unmade for decades. And it was too late then with a month to go to a referendum to suddenly have to sort of scramble together the answers of why it's a good thing to have common security with your neighbours or why your immigration controls are actually stronger if you're in the EU or, you know, the advantages of being in a trade bloc. now i i completely agree and i would also say because i'm not going to allow laura to just get away with um you know saying well what did the politicians do wrong i also think the british media was also sort of slow and one of the things the most kind of including i mean obviously some newspapers sort of vehemently you know were eurosceptic but then suddenly became brexit supporting you know without they suddenly went from being like critical of for example you know we shouldn't join the euro to suddenly saying britain should come out of the eu sunday times you know i remember ludicrous um editorial saying you know we should leave the eu which has never been the kind of position of the sunday times so and and the bbc you know my complaint at the time was i remember in the way they covered the referendum and look i you know i was part of the government that held the referendum so i absolutely take my huge share of the responsibility for that but um you know it was like which side of the argument are you on when they were doing their graphics on TV.

13:11George Osborne: And the kind of remain were represented by a European flag. And the Brexit vote was represented by a Union Jack. I know. And I used to scream at the BBC.

13:25Ed Balls: This is absolutely the point. The problem was, see, I don't think you'd get this if you were in, definitely not in Ireland or Greece or Spain, but I don't even think it would be the case in Germany or in France. the assumption was if you went to a summit and agreed, then you must have sold out the national interest. And therefore you had to have a fight. Margaret Thatcher, of course, had her big budget fight, but we all had fights. You had a fight to show you would protect the national interest. Then when you finally agreed, you hadn't sold out the national interest. But what that did always was separate out agreeing with our European partners and the national interest.

14:02Ed Balls: It was like Britain versus Europe. And we never, and you know, I don't resolve at all from us not going into the Euro. We've discussed that before. I don't resolve at all from my view that not having transitional controls and just embracing free movement with Eastern Europe in 2004 was a big mistake. But I think those things, and at the same time think that we were bed off in the European Union and that was in our national interest. But I think that, because the argument wasn't made, and because the media set up and we set up together that opposition of the national interest and the European interest, when it came to those issues like the Euro or free movement, then there are lots of people who think, well, if you disagree on those things or you don't join Shaggin, that must be because you're not really being European and you're putting Britain first.

14:49Ed Balls: And that ends up in a referendum where the choice is Europe first or Britain first. And then people vote for Britain. Well, of course they do.

14:55George Osborne: Yes. You know, I've had two recent experiences of it, which I thought were interesting. One was I saw the French president give a speech at the British Museum for the unveiling of the Bayer Tapestry exhibition. And, you know, they set up the stage. We set up the stage, you know, the British Museum. And we also had the King and Annie Burnham speaking. But the French were very particular that next to the French flag, there had to be the European Union flag. Because every time the French president speaks, those two flags are together. And I also saw Chancellor Mertz speak in Berlin a couple of weeks ago.

15:31George Osborne: And again, I noticed on the stage, by the way, the event was all about invest in Germany, choose Germany. It was quite sort of German centric event, not European event. But again, he spoke in Berlin with a German flag and a European flag. I don't think even a pro-European British Prime Minister made, you know, I don't think Tony Blair was probably like the most pro-European Prime Minister we've had recently. you know, would have had, like, the European flag next to the Union Jack when they were speaking. Anyway, very good question. Taken for granted in the end. Well, I want to hear from Laura what she thinks we, in her view, we ignored that we should have done.

16:09Ed Balls: Well, listen, I think we should find a way to talk to her about it. We should. Our next question, I mean, actually, this flows on from Laura's question and from, actually, and more importantly, from our answers with a different perspective, a really interesting perspective. And we always like, I mean, the fact that we have people listening around the world is brilliant for this podcast. And there'll be loads of Commonwealth countries, people who are listening. I would love to know what you think about our debate on our main podcast around slavery and reparations and apologies. But this is a question from John, who lives in Germany.

16:42George Osborne: Hi, Ed and George. I find your discussions on freedom of movement very interesting. I live in Germany, so I have a slightly different perspective on the issue. Freedom of movement, for me, very much means having equal civil rights wherever I want to live in Europe. The right to vote, the right to reside, and the right to work. Freedom of movement is not so much about immigration as it is about emigration. Why does the debate over freedom of movement in the UK always couch it as a one-way street? I often feel the Germans have a much keener understanding of the freedom within freedom of movement.

17:22George Osborne: Yeah, well, this is I mean, this flows directly from the conversation. So we we have free movement of people has been seen as an entirely in the sort of British context of people coming to Britain. It's not about Britain's going abroad. it's uh it's been about you know how many people have been coming to britain when we were in the you and you too many romanians too many poles and so on and um and then that and that somehow that's a burden on the uk or that's a challenge the uk or a challenge to communities where they settle in the uk now you can have a whole separate argument which we've had on this podcast about whether immigration is a good thing and whether it's a good thing for the british economy to have all these people from Europe come.

18:08George Osborne: But very rarely in the free movement of people debate in Britain, was there a discussion about, well, hold on, what about the freedom for Britons to go and live in France, work in France, live in Italy, live in the Costa del Sol. I mean, there were many, there were quite a lot of people, Brexit voters who I didn't have much sympathy for, farmers being a big sorry farmers but all the farmers who voted for Brexit now complain they're not getting anything like the subsidies they used to well you know might have seen that on the wall coming but the um or indeed the problems with exports of food which the Burnham government is now trying to solve but um there was that particular group of people who were people who were living in other European countries who supported Brexit and then couldn't understand why suddenly there were all these new rules and restrictions on you know their citizenship or how long they could live in a place i mean nigel lawson was the most famous example of this living in the south of france voted brexit not that when he was actually a politician he did anything to argue that britain should leave the eu but uh then suddenly finds you know well hold on you can't go on just living in france now you're a british's and britain's outside of the eu and he was complaining about the kind of bureaucracy and having to apply for kind of permanent residence um so uh yeah i i think um john is completely right and and it was felt particularly by younger people i think once brexit had happened there was suddenly this sort of shock saying well hold on does this mean we can't just easily go and spend a couple of years working in the rest of europe and i think behind it all was a kind of arrogant british assumption well of course they all want to come to us but we don't particularly want to go to them unless they go on holiday and and it was Yeah, I had a very recent conversation.

19:53George Osborne: I was, this is a bit like, you know, politicians always do this kind of thing. But I was talking to my cab driver who was driving to the airport. But I had a really interesting conversation with this guy who was driving me to the airport. And he was Polish. And he came as part of that wave you're talking about. And with his family, with his wife, they set up shop in Britain and lived in Britain and were having a happy time in Britain. but Poland has become such a kind of go-to place such a strong economy that his wife and their children have moved back to live in Poland so it's reverse immigration because the economic opportunities they feel for their children are greater they also think the quality of the education is greater the he talked to me particularly about for example the teaching of music in state schools in Poland is very strong and what he does is he comes over for a couple of weeks to drive the black cab in london to make some money and because that's what he knows and he's got the knowledge and so on um but then and then go back to poland so this sort of assumption that it's all was a one-way traffic i think was uh pretty myopic of people in bali

21:03Ed Balls: look i agree um in part with this and um look there's no doubt that the restrictions on movement of young people, but also people being able to move to Spain or France. As Andy Burnham said, the Alvide Zane Pet, a right of British workers to go and work in Germany. Those restrictions were an unwelcome shock, and the government's trying to find a new way to open up the youth mobility again in the negotiations going on at the moment. But in the 2010s, there were two big migrations affecting Germany and Britain. In Britain, the big migration was the continuing migration from Eastern Europe within the European Union.

21:48Ed Balls: And in Germany, the big migration wasn't to do with free movement and movement within Europe. It was a big migration, which Chancellor Merkel allowed, from Syria in particular, into Germany. And exactly the same politics in terms of Britain's response to Eastern European migration has happened in Germany. I mean, there is a reason why the AFD is polling so strongly. And it was a reaction to the unmanaged scale of that migration. So I just don't think that John is right to say that Germany has a very different view of migration and movement. And then if you then think...

22:28George Osborne: Although I think he's saying that they treat European... I think Britain treated free movement from Europe the same as it did immigration from outside Europe. Whereas I think he's saying that Germans treat migration within Europe as being quite different from migration from outside Europe.

22:44Ed Balls: But my point is because the big migration to Germany has come from Turkey and then from Syria. And that has also been politically very difficult. and nobody in Germany is saying let's have free movement with non-European countries. Our problem was that the very destabilising migration was a within European migration rather than an external migration but the politics in terms of their impact the lasting politics have been similar in Germany and in Britain and the problem now is yes the more recent Boris wave was a non-European migration but as I said on the podcast last week if you return to free movement what you are doing is allowing if they chose to people to come to britain to work to get pensions to get benefits from germany or france even if they were migrants or asylum seekers who came from syria or where else and the politics of that for britain now is very difficult there have been some people say you know am i saying things here which are anti-European or Eurosceptic.

23:48Ed Balls: I've never been a Eurosceptic. I was sceptical about the Euro, and I was sceptical that we could make free movement work, because I actually wanted us to maintain our relations with the European Union. But you only have to look at French and German politics to see how migration, if it's not managed and controlled and seemed to be fair, could end up being very destabilising. And so in that sense, we aren't different from France and Germany, but the free movement label is different in Britain, because I think for France and Germany. It was an external migration rather than an internal migration.

24:20George Osborne: Although I still think really what the British people were concerned about was external migration. It was the sort of chaotic scenes across the Mediterranean and then across the Channel.

24:32Ed Balls: And people on motorways going into Germany, if you remember. So maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. But in that case, what you're saying is that Germany's failure to manage the external borders has been undermining for Britain's membership of the European Union. I think you might be right. I'm just not sure that John and his question is acknowledging that.

24:48George Osborne: Okay, we'll take a break and we're going to be back with another question.

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27:15Ed Balls: welcome back next we hear from johnny you want to know more about leaks you guys have talked on the show before about how chancellors use authorized briefings and market testing ahead of budgets but my question is really around what happens when a leak is not intentional so when an unapproved story breaks do you actually know who did it or do cabinet ministers and the treasury just have to look around the room making educated guesses back in your day my guess would definitely be michael gove and on a human level when you're in government and a genuinely wrecked a carefully planned announcement how annoyed do you get and what you have to actually do in that moment this is a really interesting uh question isn't it because i think actually i mean look as you say sometimes there are authorized briefings sometimes the the politician may know of a leak which is um has not been formally authorized he's not gone through the formal process but everybody knows what's going on but i would say in my experience, tell me if I'm wrong, George, the principals, so the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, the Chancellor and the Home Secretary, the Education Secretary and Number 10, will often have disputes at the most senior level about why has this been leaked and who did it.

28:22Ed Balls: And people saying the person who had an interest or the department who had an interest in briefing this was Number 10 or the Home Office or whatever. I mean, I think the truth is that it is often a big topic of conversation between political principles. Yes.

28:43George Osborne: I mean, normally the result of a leak inquiry, if you have one, is that it's come from a cabinet minister or their special advisor rather than the civil servant. um and um it's in my experience it was very rare to have entirely kind of malicious leaks from public officials it was much more i mean it did happen i mean i was the beneficiary as shadow chancellor of of leaks of of alistair darling's budgets and i used to phone up nick robinson saying i know what's in the budget he was the political editor then i said i know what's in the budget it's coming in three days time and i would deliberately you know leak the good things if you like all the things that the government thought were going to be popular on the day so that it kind of diminished the impact on the day um but they were very rare and there's much more to do with you know gossip or um people wanting to make sure their side of the story is heard in the press or that their um their principles side of the stories are heard i mean how do people feel about it they feel pretty annoyed generally um and what the worst thing to do is then you know for the prime minister to say to cabinet no more leaks because then that usually leaks within an hour and uh and leak inquiries they do sometimes work i mean they they they do um you know there was um wasn't there a pretty um interesting case recently of um the deputy ambassador to washington being fired because of a leak for example um so you can you know with modern community if you're not careful about how you communicate or if it's too obvious about how you've leaked um or you've been loose with your gossip you know there can be a reckoning um i remember can i tell i tell you a story when i was a special advisor i was a special advisor to douglas hogg who people might remember as the agriculture minister who wore the hat and the kind of in the middle of man cow disease and um there was a lot of um uh speculation that people wanted him fired from the cabinet, right, because of his handling of BSE.

30:50George Osborne: And I remember going out for lunch with Rachel Sylvester, still very active, very effective journalist, and I was a special advisor, and Brian Mawinney, who was the Tory party chairman, it had been... There was speculation that Mawinney was trying to persuade John Major to fire, like, ineffective members of the cabinet, including Douglas Hogg. and um then um uh so i have lunch with Rachel Svester she asked me about this yeah and i go well you know Brian Mawinney is he doing such a good job as party chairman we were like 20 points behind the balls and then you know Douglas Hogg is like takes the view Brian Mawinney's your butt out of it right so anyway have my nice lunch next morning in those days you know there wasn't social media or whatever.

31:38George Osborne: So I go and get my copy of the Times newspaper, which she was writing for, splashes, like, you know, calls in the cabinet for Mawinney to be sacked. Like, oh my God, that's my lunch. And then it was like on the Today program, I was just like, oh my God, what am I going to do? I'm going to be fired. This is like the worst moment of my entire life. Literally, my political career was about three months old at this point. maybe it was like a year a couple years old and um i just decided maybe i should just like not go

32:12Ed Balls: to work at all today or that might be obvious yeah so i remember just lying in bed thinking

32:18George Osborne: what am i gonna do and uh so i went in i just spent all day and the next day waiting for the reckoning waiting for the cabinet secretary or brian you know by the way i should say i have very high regard for so you know i just went all of douglas hogg to say this is outrageous or anyway no one ever picked me up on it but it was after that i was always very careful around rachel but also um just generally i was like oh my god that was an early lesson i had a similar story i

32:49Ed Balls: mean it is true sometimes the leaks are totally deliberate for an interest of a cabinet minister sometimes they're their complete cock-up i was at the press gallery lunch this is where there's a speaker and all the journalists in the political lobby invite somebody along and i was sitting with Sherman. And we were just having a conversation and she asked me about something about adult skills and the government's approach. And I just answered the question, I mean, totally innocently. I assumed this was already announced in the public domain. She splashed on it the next morning and I woke up and thought, that was my lunch.

33:19Ed Balls: And I didn't even know it was news. I mean, you know, I wasn't even being loose or, you know, it was certainly not deliberate. There was also one, I'd gone out for lunch with Larry Elliott at The Guardian in the first term of the Labour government, and he said to me, do you think there's any chance, because we'd ruled out joining the euro in the first wave, barring unforeseen economic circumstances, we weren't going to join in the first parliament barring these unforeseen circumstances. And Larry said to me, do you think there's any chance? And I said, no, I mean, I can't foresee these unforeseen circumstances.

33:55Ed Balls: I just don't think it's going to happen. So he decided this was a story. So he splashed, Britain won't join this parliament, which I didn't think was actually that much of a news story. I arrive into the office on the Monday or the Tuesday morning, and Gordon is in, and I go around to see him, and he says, this Larry Ellick story, he said, where did that come from? I said, well, I think it was me on Friday. He said, well, he said, it's fine, he said, but just to say, I was at a early morning breakfast with Tony Blair, Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine discussing the pro-European campaign and this Guardian splash says we're not joining and it's all off and he said I mean you know I mean your timing wasn't great and I said I'm really sorry totally I mean I didn't even think it was particularly but um just one thing to add in though sometimes these things happen not because they are in somebody's interests or a cock-up, but because somebody knows something, it's not that important to them, but they know it might be interesting to the journalist.

34:56Ed Balls: And you basically do it as a trade. You say, just so you know, this is what's going on. No skin off my nose. I don't really mind. They splash it. And that means that you're sort of, you know, you've got a currency, a currency into a dynamic relationship. Political currency. That is when leak inquiries are important, because actually, if you think people are being loose then two things one you want to make sure that the information is properly controlled so only people who need to know know and then you also need people to believe ex-ante if you do know you can have to answer the question as to whether or not you were the source and if not if it's a free lunch to give an easy story which you don't care about at a free lunch then that's when things go wrong johnny mentions a leak which i think or is in i

35:42George Osborne: I don't know if he's directly referring to this. He talks about Michael Gove in his question. So definitely Michael Gove was, you know, not particularly disciplined in keeping political services.

35:53Ed Balls: Is that true?

35:53George Osborne: And was in the run up to our election in 2010, was actually sort of kicked out of the David Cameron kind of core meeting because he was telling Dominic Cummings everything. Cummings was his political advisor. And Cummings was telling the spectator. um but um there is one particular leak which had a big impact which was a lunch with the queen which um michael gove was at and i was at and actually nick clegg was at and with prince philip at windsor castle in which uh there was a discussion about the eu this was years before the brexit referendum in which the queen expressed some frustration at sort of brussels bureaucracy oh you know there's like too much red tape from brussels and then two or three years later there's a sun splash saying queen wants to leave the eu which was in the middle of the brexit michael go bang to rights well he had an interest in he had a big interest in it but it was um a not what the queen said be a private lunch at winter castle um in fact i'm pretty certain it's the opposite of the Queen's view about Brexit.

37:04George Osborne: But that would cause me to leak conversations that I shouldn't, so I'm not going to go there.

37:10Ed Balls: That was a great question from Johnny. We'll take a break. We've got time for one more question.

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38:54Ed Balls: so our final question is from katie prescott who is the technology business editor at the times and um great to have her ask us a question hi ed and george it's katie prescott here the technology business editor at the times we're hosting the times and sunday times tech summit on Tuesday. And inevitably, we're going to be talking a lot about all the computer power that AI needs. Now, if you were still an MP, how would you look to sell the benefits of AI data centres to your constituents?

39:26George Osborne: Well, Katie, this is a good question. And, you know, I declare an interest here. I work for OpenAI, which builds and uses offtakes from data centres around the world. and this is a big issue you know how do you how do you win popular support locally for data centers indeed we're recording this after the midterm elections where quite a lot of the candidates who won the democrat candidates did so partly on an anti-data center ticket particularly in the gubernatorial races the races to be governors in places like texas um what is interesting is um in the budget it wasn't a much kind of noticed part of the budget because you know people were focused on things like them you know handouts on energy and the tax on the banks and stuff but there was a package from the government which attempts to um work out a sort of compact between local populations and those who want to build data centers now the case for building data centers it's really twofold one is it powers ai technology now you might not be in favor of that but it's happening and so therefore the other argument is if it's happening don't you want some control over this infrastructure that's really critical to britain and britain's economy going forward do we really want all of our data centers abroad well that's a chancellorial argument it doesn't

40:45Ed Balls: pay my energy bill if i lived right 100 yards down the road well except you might there might

40:49George Osborne: be an argument which is do you want your chat gbt you know um queries to be held locally inside Britain and subject to British laws or held in some foreign data centre. So I think you can make an argument that the public might understand about why you want local data centres. The key thing here is how do you actually win the arguments? Well, if you look at the way they've been won in the US and the politics, as I say, is changing, essentially it's several things. And these elements were in the budget. There was a sort of, this is going to be the kind of deal if you want to build a data center in britain um and one is you've got to provide an absolute guarantee that it's not going to impact electricity prices locally which is more of an issue in the us we have sort of local grids and things than the uk where the electricity price is more national but and water and water so water so the first one is electricity and there's no doubt these are you know these are big consumers of electricity um water is uh and we can maybe you know go into it in greater length on another episode but has become a kind of urban myth these days data centers recycle the water they don't use a huge amount of water yet yet it's still one of the biggest objections to data centers um and or that they pollute the water but these days they're entirely kind of the modern day centers are kind of closed circuit with the water the water is recycled um there's also an argument there's obviously the planning argument which is they're being built on you know some site and we want that site left untouched that's the same argument you get with house building or factories whatever um you can then make the argument about local employment they do they create construction jobs but also there's quite a lot of maintenance jobs associated with them um and then finally you know what's happened in some u.s states where companies like open ai have built data centers or are building them is there's usually a big offer to the local population around kind of free ai credits or tokens for um students in all the local colleges or in the schools or there's usually a sort of offer to the local population of the benefits of ai and um which is not so dissimilar from a housing developer saying we're going to build a playground or we're going to you know so it's it's a kind of modern version of that But I think to the credit of this government, and as I say, not much noticed in the budget, there is a kind of data center compact.

43:17George Osborne: And the government's attitude at the moment is we would like data centers. So it's their kind of pro data center development. But with these conditions.

43:27Ed Balls: Let me ask you a question, which actually may be important for Katie's summit. But I mean, look, before I do, I mean, presumably the point is these data centers are big and noisy and a bit unsightly. And it's all very well making a national interest argument. But you've also got to go out there, I presume, if you are wanting to build one with an ex-ante prospectus. As you say, you say to the local community, here's what it won't do and here's what we will do for you. And if that is a good enough offer in terms of jobs, not raising energy bills, but more importantly, investing in wider public services, you've got a chance.

44:10Ed Balls: But my question to you is, is this how it's going to be from now on? I mean, is it inevitable that these data centers are huge and noisy and unsightly? Or can AI help us to find a way in which data centers can be smaller and quieter and less disruptive? I mean, are we just going to have to get used to this? And if so, are we going to have to trade off, you know, where they are? I mean, maybe the Sahara Desert would be a better place to have them, for example. You know what I mean?

44:43George Osborne: OK.

44:44Ed Balls: I don't mean that about the Sahara Desert. I mean, somewhere a long way away where nobody's living may be a better place to put them, especially if you're not going to have to cut down trees rather than close to communities in Britain, one of the most densely populated countries in the world.

44:57George Osborne: Well, first of all, there's the national security and data privacy argument, which is, do you want Britain's data held or processed outside of Britain?

45:08Ed Balls: Isn't our data being held and processed out of Britain all the time at the moment? My Apple data, my Microsoft data. Yes, it is.

45:16George Osborne: But equally, some things companies commit to local data residency. privacy um second there's actually speed of you know how quickly you get an answer and that you know so and geographic location makes a difference does make a difference right and um and then third in terms of um kind of location um there's an interesting debate so these these we don't really have them in britain but these huge data centers that are being built in america you know they have tended to be in somewhat more remote locations but not not the desert really not not the most remote parts of the u.s by any means um and i think you know the kind of assumption with the um the changing politics in america is they're going to be sort of pushed out into more remote areas now at the same time there's just you know there's a huge demand for these things those are the sort of big data centers the um there are you know increasingly smaller data centers in cities um and there you do get kind of local argument it's an interesting question in britain so in britain there's actually a row it's not it's not directly affects the company i work for but there's a row whether to have a data center uh not far from here off brick lane there's a kind of big local campaign stop the data center because they want to put a data center in a in a disused uh brewery um and um but in some ways that's quite unsight you know it's quite out of sight it's not it's brownfield development there's lots of reassurance on noise and whatever but people are against it because they just don't want the quotes the data it's become a bit of a

46:51Ed Balls: thing like we don't want the data so it's kind of american data centers and then you is it become an anti-american well it's become it's become a kind of i think it's also a way of

47:01George Osborne: campaigning against ai isn't it yeah yeah but um but i think you know but the government answer

47:07Ed Balls: the question that can they become less unsightly and quieter well i think the technology is

47:12George Osborne: constantly improving and i don't think they're particular i mean they look like warehouses they don't they're not they're not like big kind of belching factories pouring out smoke or you know i mean they but the government is keen to see them and um you know wants to has particular ai growth zones in for example teesside and south wales to attract the investment i mean i would say but you know you may say well i would say that you know if you want to have some control over your destiny in an AI future as a country. You need data centers. And otherwise, you're entirely reliant on someone else. By the way, the problem with putting them in the Sahara Desert, say, is that whoever runs the Sahara Desert might cut them off when you need them.

47:49Ed Balls: I totally understand. Thanks for your question, Katie. Hope the summit is a big success. And that's it for this episode of EMQs.

47:57George Osborne: Yeah, I hope you enjoyed that. Lots of different range of questions there. And you can send us your own questions. You can email us at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk

48:05Ed Balls: Or you can message us on your socials. Or go on to comments on YouTube or other social media platforms. We love that. Ask us anything. Send us a voice note as wide-ranging as possible. And you can see very wide-ranging questions today. It's great.

48:19George Osborne: We are going to see you on Thursday with our main show.

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