EMQs: Will Burnham return to free movement?

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1:17Ed Balls: hello and welcome to emqs with me ed balls and with george osborne got a good show for you this week we're going to be talking about andy burnham rejoining the european union can you imagine free movement being a winning argument in a general election or in a second referendum we've also got some questions which start with hymns but actually take us to being a charity trustee? Do you need to study economics to be a chancellor? And then we end up talking about Andy Burnham's pledge to end homelessness with a little bit of a teasing trail to Centristad Live in aid of crisis. And we hope you enjoy the show.

2:00Ed Balls: So hello and welcome to EMQ's Ex-Minister's Questions. And as George prefigured on our main podcast with days, potentially hours to go until voting opens in the US midterms and governor elections. He, from the beginning, has been, I mean, I don't know how big the political currency reaches into the California electorate, but you've been talking up Hilton all the way through. Steve Hilton, your former close buddy. I mean, you were soulmates, weren't you, in Downing Street, you and Steve Hilton. and you were always on the same page on all intellectual policy and philosophical issues. And you've been giving him your best chance.

2:42Ed Balls: He's made it to the final two. I'm not sure you're going to save him.

2:45George Osborne: Well, we will see. And, you know, it depends how many people in Orange County, you know, or up around Sacramento in the kind of San Bernardino, is it? San Bernardino Valley are listening to our podcast. I mean, I think we should close out our look at the midterms by just playing Steve Hilton's last ad of the campaign, because I don't think American politics, let alone British politics, has ever seen anything quite like this. Wake up, California. This is a fact. This is not opinion. The DSA is coming. You think what happened in Paris couldn't happen here? This city is a fucking disaster. This is Fentanyl Alley.

3:30Ed Balls: You're going to put up with another four years of this because you don't like Trump? Because you don't want to vote for a Republican? That is fucking insane. We've got to change things in California, and I'm your only hope. Steve Hilton for governor. Just try it.

3:47George Osborne: Did you ever campaign in West Yorkshire by saying, Wakefield, this city is a fucking disaster?

3:55Ed Balls: No, no. And nor did I ever have to say, you know, basically say the Republican brand is completely appalling, but just try it anyway, which is essentially what he's saying in his campaign ads. But, you know, maybe it'll work for him.

4:10George Osborne: Fentanyl alley. By the way, for those who don't know, the DSA, You're going to be hearing a lot about that, I reckon, over the next couple of years. That is the Democrat Socialists of America. That is the kind of left foot, that's the Corbynista element of the Democrat Party, who've been standing candidates in this election. But I'll say this in Steve Hilton's defense. I mean, I think it's highly unlikely he's going to be the next governor of California. But he got to the final two, which is an amazing achievement for someone who turns up in America. And I think his whole campaign has been very creditable, actually.

4:45George Osborne: I mean, you don't have to, I don't agree with lots of things that Steve Hilton believes in. But I think the way he's conducted it, the energy he's brought to it, the original advertising he's brought to it. His campaign ads have been, you know, not just viewed here in the UK because people are vaguely aware of it, but actually across America. They've really caught people's attention because they're original and different. And this, you know, this is the, this was the guy who brought his original advertising thinking to British politics in the 1990s and 2000s. 2000s, and he's done it in America.

5:16George Osborne: And I think, you know, watch this space, because although he was, as I say, almost certainly losing California, as people would have expected a Republican candidate to do, this is, he is going to use, you know, this, he's given himself a springboard for the next stage of his career, and he could easily now get a congressional seat and sit in the House of Representatives for one of the Republican areas of California after this. so um watch this space watch this space i'm your last line of defense just try it let's get on to

5:49Ed Balls: the um the our questions and uh and um we'll give we'll give you an update on how steve did um in the men podcast on thursday uh next week our first question today comes from a journalist um who has moved over to the sunday times in recent months as political editor and has actually been really setting the agenda this week. Hello, Ben Riley-Smith here, the political editor of the Sunday Times. Big fan of the pod, of course, like the rest of Westminster. I wanted to ask a question about Andy Burnham and a free movement. The Prime Minister made those eye-catching comments to me as part of a series of chats we had over his first 100 days in office.

6:30It wasn't planted, we weren't encouraged to ask the question. We just posed it and he answered. But it was clear to me that Andy Burnham has done a lot of thinking about how to more positively frame free movement. So my question to both of you is, can you conceive of any scenario in the near future where the British public votes for a prospectus, either at an election or a referendum, that includes Britain returning to EU free movement?

6:56George Osborne: Yeah, well, first of all, Ben, well done at the Sunday Times. Ben wrote a really good book on the recent history of the Tory party. So I think it's an interesting question here. Could you win the argument on returning to EU free movement? Well, I think there are potentially, well, there are three things you could do. First of all, you could try and negotiate some form of EU membership or associate EU membership that didn't have full free movement. So that's kind option one. And of course, David Cameron was searching for the EU to give him something like that in his negotiations in 2015, 2016. And maybe the world's moved on over the last 10 years and the Europeans realize this is an issue that has to be addressed, or maybe they want Britain back enough because not least of the kind of security support that we bring, the national security support we bring, that they'll kind of give Britain some kind of special deal.

7:54George Osborne: So that's option one. I think sort of option two is you just try and persuade people that the economic benefits of joining are so much greater than the kind of immigration costs. But I have to say that is a hill that many people have died on politically over the last 10 years, myself included. So, you know, good luck there. I think the third thing is a really complicated argument. I say complicated because it's very politically sensitive to deliver, which is like, what kind of immigration do you actually want into this country if there's going to be immigration? And, you know, after the end of EU free movement, after we left the EU, we then had enormous immigration, much bigger than the number of people who'd previously been coming from Europe, from the Indian subcontinent, from Africa and elsewhere in the world.

8:48George Osborne: And all the evidence is those people have come to make a permanent home in Britain, where a lot of the evidence is that the people who moved from places like Poland under EU free movement have actually started to go back. And it wasn't permanent. And it was kind of young, skilled or hardworking people who then want to return home to build a longer, you know, to settle with their family in the country they originally come from. And I think you could try and enter into that argument. It's not easy. It's a very complicated argument to make. But it's an interesting one, you could say, that actually we were sort of better off with temporary European free movement than permanent immigration from the rest of the world.

9:30Ed Balls: So I hear, I think you saying that the answer to that is no, or at least it's very hard to see, as Ben asks, can you conceive of a scenario where the British public votes for a prospectus, either an election or a referendum that includes returning to EU free movement. I think you could actually see people choosing to vote in an election or in a referendum to return to the European Union. I think it's not impossible. I can see that, but only if you've cauterised the free movement issue. If free movement is the entry price for going back into the European Union, I think it can't be won. So I think my answer is no.

10:12Ed Balls: And Andy Burnham's raising it, and that is fine. And we discussed on the main podcast that he wants to put these things out there. But I think everything in my experience politically, there'll be some people say, oh, you know, you're out of date, you don't understand the world's change, nobody cares about free movement anymore. All my experience tells you, but you can't. And I'll give you three reasons. Reason one, people back when we in the European Union didn't think the migration was a bad thing. They didn't think that people coming to Britain was a bad thing. They didn't think young people from Eastern Europe coming to work in Costa Coffee on motorways or in those kind of jobs, young people.

10:51Ed Balls: It was a challenge, particularly on the Eastern side of the country, people coming to work in big warehouse distribution and often on very low wages. I think that was much more of an issue on the Eastern side of the country than on the western side of the country. But they weren't against migration. But what they felt was that it wasn't under control, that it was out of control, that it was a free-for-all, that it was a free market, free movement, free-for-all. I mean, we discussed on our podcast neoliberalism. I think the only thing where I actually think in the last 40 years, you can say we came anything close to what you might call neoliberalism, was deciding in our labour market to have free movement within an enormous labour market called the European Union.

11:39Ed Balls: And the argument is, well, that's good for business because you can lower costs. But actually, for many people, they felt that for their jobs and their standards of living, it was a blow. And then there's also housing, and there's also the wider kind of integration issues. But managed migration, in a European relationship, you can do free movement. I just don't think you can. That's my first point.

12:04George Osborne: Okay, but before you come on to your other two points, can I just pick you up? Because I think in the referendum, it was not the free movement of people from within the EU that was the issue. So, I mean, it's definitely an issue in some places, I agree on the kind of East Coast, but it was the elision of free movement and not being in control of your borders with illegal immigration or refugee immigration, which is not illegal, from North Africa, from Central Asia. It was the boats coming across the Mediterranean and then people back in those days, it wasn't boats across the Channel yet. It was people kind of climbing on board the Eurostar and in the back of lorries.

12:42George Osborne: It was that, you know, we couldn't control our borders. But the immigration people wanted to stop was not the fruit pickers from Romania and the people coming in from Poland to work in the factories and the like. It was, who the hell are all these other people who are coming? And the whole thing was very successfully by the Leave campaign elided. And the truth is, we continue to have all the bit that the immigration people don't like. And we've lost the pool of skilled labor from Central and Eastern Europe and other European nations that were pretty good for our economy. And they did. And the integration issues were not nearly as, you know, families coming from Poland or couples coming from Poland were not big integration issues so much around that.

13:25Ed Balls: In the 2010 Labour leadership election, when there were five candidates, the two candidates who spoke up and said free movement since 2004 has been badly managed and destabilised and we shouldn't have done it. And we have to learn from this because we are being hit by this politically were me and Andy Burnham. We were both four big in the European Union. We both voted to remain in 2016. in 2010 both of us said free movement within Europe is hitting us really hard and hitting people in their wages terms and conditions and and I think that was right and I think that was I'm not going to disagree with you that it gets elided with other things and and it also get got elided by by by racism arguments and by by scares but there was one there was a truth secondly if If you talk to David Blunkett, very close to Andy Burnham, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, all of them pro-Europeans, all of them would say, we made a mistake in 2004, not having migration controls from the accession countries, because we could not cope politically and in housing and economic terms with the numbers of people who came from Eastern Europe into the UK in that period.

14:42Ed Balls: And they're right that that was a problem. Third thing is this, to go to your point about the elision, what we would be saying is that anybody who has come to anywhere in Europe in the last five years and claimed asylum would then have the right, once they became a citizen of France or Belgium or the Netherlands or wherever, to then come to Britain and work here. They wouldn't have to come on a small boat. that would be entitled to housing and benefit support. I mean, how does that get weaponised by reform and Nigel Farage? I mean, if you've solved the small boat problem and you've solved the permeability of Europe's borders, then, okay, it's easier.

15:35Ed Balls: But we're a long way away from that. Think of the politics of free movement, of people who have originally come from outside Europe into Britain within the European Union and how that would work. I mean, I think it's just quite toxic. And I think that's in the end going to be the conclusion of politics in France and Germany as well. The truth is in the late 1950s, Tony Benn called it a neoliberal capitalist club, but it was actually a sensible economic arrangement Well, let's be honest, the only people who really moved were people who were students or kind of intellectuals or people with in-demand skills.

16:21Ed Balls: The labour market has become a very different place since the late 1950s. And free movement, I just don't think, is sustainable within any European Union. But for Britain, going back in, given our recent history on small boats and our lived experience of free movement in the late 2000s, I just think it takes you away from winning the argument, not towards it.

16:45George Osborne: Here's an interesting thing that Ben throws in at the end, which I think is absolutely critical. He says, in Iguod's question, winning the argument, either in an election or a referendum, it's a lot easier to win in an election because the no vote is split. Right. Between reform and the conservatives. Right. So you could actually, you know, you can you can you can win the country on, as Keir Starmer showed, on 33 percent of the vote. And I think you could assemble a coalition of 33, 35, whatever.

17:17Ed Balls: Do you think you could then reenter with free movement without another referendum?

17:22George Osborne: Well, who says who says you can't? I mean, Ted Heath joined the European Union or the European Economic Community at a general election. there was no referendum. The referendum came later, Harold Wilson trying to resolve internal issues in the Labour Party.

17:36Ed Balls: It wasn't me who thought having a referendum was a good idea.

17:39George Osborne: No, well, I... We now know...

17:40Ed Balls: Exactly, we now know it wasn't you who thought it was a good idea. But once David Cameron opened that, once opened that door, I think it's...

17:48George Osborne: What do your opponents do? I mean, you know, you get... Assuming you win the general election, you know, you've energised reform, you've seen off kind of any kind of chemi, You made not Tory revival because you made Europe the issue again.

18:01Ed Balls: But it's a dynamic game politics. You have to think about not just this moment, where that takes us as a country. Where would it leave the Labour Party? Andy Burnham as the King of the North, a North West mayor. I mean, in that scenario, I actually think Labour ends up as a party of cities, intellectuals and the South. I mean, there's no way you hold Rotherham, Morley, Makerfield. Yeah, but you hold Kensington. Chelsea. But that isn't Andy Burnham's vision.

18:31George Osborne: Tom Bridget. No, I know. It may not be his vision, but it may be a way to, you know, it's what happened to the Democrat. By the way, in America, we were just talking in our main podcast.

18:39Ed Balls: But what does it do to our country then? I mean, it's the opposite of consensus building.

18:44George Osborne: Well, I'm just saying it's easier to win an election than a referendum. I'm not disagreeing.

18:48Ed Balls: I understand the argument, but I'm just not sure where that takes a sense of common purpose and unity in our nation. I think it's unbelievably divisive.

18:57George Osborne: Anyway, talking about unity, at least, if you're sitting in Chester Cathedral, this question from Margaret. Hello, Ed and George. My name's Margaret and I'm the chair of Making Music, the national charity for leisure time music in the UK. I'm also a trustee of Chester Cathedral, which has a very fine choir. You discussed women and choral music. Of course, the words of when a knight won his spurs were written by a woman, Jan Strother, the pen name of Joyce Ann Strother. She was well known for writing Mrs. Miniver, which was made into a film in 1942. Being a charity trustee has been a very valuable and enriching experience for me.

19:37I know that George is a trustee as chair of the British Museum. Is Ed a trustee? And would you encourage podcast listeners to become trustees?

19:46Ed Balls: So isn't that a brilliant question for Margaret? Who would have thought that your favourite hymn choice was actually written by a woman?

19:56George Osborne: Back in the 1930s or earlier even, yes. No, it's a great, well, I won't say it again, but it's a great hymn. And I'm not going to attempt to sing it. But I have been humming it ever since we discussed it on the episode. But Margaret's got a good question about being a charity trustee. You know, I'm chair of the trustees of the British Museum, and that has been enormously rewarding and one of the best things I've done in my professional life. But I think there is something also rewarding, isn't there? I mean, that's a big museum and a big national museum. But I think Margaret's right that sort of being a charity trustee, I have been a trustee of various smaller charities in my life.

20:42George Osborne: and it is very rewarding. You're not running the charity, but you are getting engaged with the work of the charity. There can be very important decisions for charity trustees when things go wrong or when they need, you know, it's not a clarity of objectives or you need a new director of the charity or whatever. But in kind of peacetime, if you like, it's generally just very rewarding and you can engage in the work of that charity and in the engagement of the community. So I would definitely encourage our podcast listeners to become trustees, Margaret.

21:13Ed Balls: That's right. And it's great that Margaret is. The truth is, it is not without risks. I think people sometimes think, you know, being a charity trustee, what could be the harm in that? But then you find out when charities go wrong. I mean, I was just thinking of the famous case of Kids Company, which got into great difficulty and caused huge damage to the standing of people who were on the board of trustees at the time, government money being misspent. And so it's important on the one hand not to underestimate the importance of the role. And it's also important not to make the bureaucracy so stifling that people don't want to do it.

21:55Ed Balls: I'm a trustee on the Institute for Government. And so I go through all the processes there. And I'm also the patron of Whiz Kids and Action for Stammering Children. So I do lots of things there without the legal and sort of fiduciary responsibilities of being a trustee. And both are good and rewarding. But I think probably I quite like being a patron. But being a charity trustee is great. It's really important that people are willing to do it.

22:22George Osborne: Thanks, Margaret, for your question. We're going to be back shortly after this break.

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24:16George Osborne: Welcome back. Now here's a good question. I'm not sure it is a question actually. It's an observation. It's on a theme that Margaret started from the Reverend Phil Weston. Hi Ed and George. In last week's EMQs, George invited any vicars listening to explain why unfamiliar hymns are sometimes chosen for church services. In my experience, this is usually for one of two reasons. Either the choir know the hymn and want to introduce it to the rest of the congregation, or it's chosen because its lyrics reinforce the theme of the sermon or of the Bible readings. I hope this helps clarify matters, even if George remains unconvinced.

24:54Incidentally, before ordination, I worked at HM Treasury from 2000 to 2007, a place I know Ed and George both know well. As a young economic advisor, I even had the privilege of working briefly for Ed on topics such as public service reform and public sector efficiency. Now, of course, I work for someone even more important. Loving the podcast. Keep up the good work. I understand Phil, I should say Reverend Phil's point about hymns, first of all.

25:22Ed Balls: And it may be useful. If you're the vicar and you're doing a sermon, you want the hymn to have the right words in it, fine. And if you're the choir and you've been practising and you want to sing the hymn to the congregation, fine. But actually, why do we go to church? I mean, we partly go to hear the choir. We partly go to hear the sermon. But we mainly go because we want to join in. And if we don't know the hymn, that's like really annoying. So I'm afraid, Phil, if you're the kind of vicar who is choosing obscure hymns because the words fit your sermon, George and I, we're not on your side on that one.

25:54Ed Balls: But I actually do remember Phil very well from his time at the Treasury. I didn't know that he was going on to be a vicar. But I remember all the work he did around, he was involved in a lot of the public efficiency work, which came out of Gershon, and ways to try and release, to use technology, release resources in the civil service. I was wondering who, I mean, obviously now, as he says at the end, I mean, he follows a higher being these days. But I mean, even back then, I mean, presumably the hierarchy would have been something like God, then Gordon Brown, and then the other God, Gus O'Donnell, who would have been the permanent secretary at the time.

26:39And then you.

26:41Ed Balls: Exactly.

26:41George Osborne: Are we going in ascending order, by the way? Are we starting with God, then Gordon Brown, then God, Gus O'Donnell, as he was called?

26:50Ed Balls: And then the chief economic advisor to the Treasury.

26:52George Osborne: Was he the supreme being?

26:57Ed Balls: I suspect he was. I wonder whether the Treasury has such clear hierarchies today.

27:02George Osborne: Are they all powerful special advisors?

27:04Ed Balls: I think if you're John Healy, then what you certainly need is a bit of divine intervention to get the economy growing next year. How are you going to pay for this defence commitment?

27:10George Osborne: Yeah, well, praying is not normally a strategy, but it sometimes works, doesn't it? Yeah. That is great. Anyway, I'm afraid, Reverend, you have not convinced me, nor by the sounds of Ed, that vicars in churches should play obscure hymns. Or if you can have one, maybe get away if you've got five hymns with one obscure one, just to give the choir an outing. Or just let the choir sing it. But don't ask the congregation, St. Barton, something.

27:38Ed Balls: it's so annoying if you're in the congregation but thank you phil for your public service and your and your pastoral role and for sending us a question great to know that you're still um you know listening to our podcast and we love that as you said george it kind of struck a nerve our hymns discussion because we had loads this week and he is another um listener who is um also gonna give us a little bit of musical advice i am recording this inst andrews where i'm a student of economics as well as being a St Leonard's organ scholar and one of my absolute

28:12George Osborne: favourite anthems to play and to sing is Blessed Be the God and Father by Wesley and he builds up some really beautiful music throughout and you end up lovely F major chord and then suddenly out of nowhere comes this enormous chord and it's incredible but I also had a question I'm studying economics at the moment but I wondered what the most useful background for a Chancellor of the Exchequer would be whether it's to study economics at university or whether it's something completely different altogether.

28:48Ed Balls: Don't you just love an F major chord?

28:50George Osborne: I have no idea what it means.

28:53Ed Balls: It's a chord in F major that's what it means I mean it's kind of like.

28:58George Osborne: I think I think my my son Bo is learning to play the piano already knows a lot more about music than I do is only five years old.

29:05Ed Balls: I'm reading a new novel by, you know, Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote the Poisonwood Bible. She's an American novelist. She's got a new novel called Partita, which is all about a young woman piano player. And I'm certainly straying here into the kind of cultural recommendations we do in our newsletter for Kitchen Cabinet members. But it's really, really good. If you're a Barbara Kingsolver fan, this book is up there. Anyway, George's question, what is the answer to this? I mean, isn't, obviously, if you're going to be really good in the Treasury, you need to have studied economics, right?

29:43George Osborne: No, is the short answer to George's question and your pointed commentary on it. There's an interesting point, which is the, I think the only Chancellor, well, maybe since the Second World War, certainly since the 1960s, who studied economics was Rachel Reeves. So Gordon Brown was an economic historian or a historian. And as much as that's what he studied at university, he spent much of his life in politics. I was the same. I studied history. Ken Clarke was a lawyer. John Healy, what has he been? a kind of community activist for charities and stuff before he came into politics. Trade unionist. Trade unionist.

30:33George Osborne: I mean, I just don't think, you know, I'm afraid the history of economists as chancellors, I'm not saying a chancellor shouldn't listen to economists, has not been a great one. And that's partly because...

30:46Ed Balls: On a sample of what? Well... Can I just say, I don't want to kind of overdo the economic expertise bit here, but I have to say that if you want to have draw conclusions from a data set you need more than one observation

30:58George Osborne: that's kind of thing you learn in economics okay but i would say you know the great chancellors right let's leave out the modern you know the immediately kind of modern era the great great chancellors gladstone david lloyd george uh the um uh nigel lawson the great kind of radical Chancellor Margaret. They were not economists. And that's very important because the job of the Chancellor is partly to set an overall economic judgment for the country. But these days, not least thanks to e-balls, the big macro judgment is anyway made by the Bank of England, not by the Chancellor. I mean, you could say the Chancellor needs to set the inflation target, but no Chancellor is going to change that inflation target anytime soon.

31:42George Osborne: So the macro judgment is being made by the Bank of England. And the fiscal judgments are being made by the Chancellor. And those are essentially kind of political decisions, in the sense that they're about who pays and who gets. And you could get, you know, two people who've won Nobel Prizes for economics, who could tell you completely different things about what should be done in that respect, because they've got different opinions about how society should be organized. In fact, there's a very good play, which I must go and see on at the West End at the moment, written by James Graham, the kind of great sort of playwright of our age, who's written a play about Milton, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman arguing it out.

32:29So no one would say that Keynes and Friedman didn't know what they were talking about

32:34George Osborne: when it came to economics, but they have very radical different views about the economy. So chancellors don't need to be one of those participants in the economic argument. They need to make a decision about what kind of society they want to live in, along with their prime minister and their cabinet, the kind of values they have and the kind of economy that supports those values and the decisions about, you know, how much you tax and how much you spend and how big the state should be and so on. And there are not, you're not going to find you could get your brains trusted, the best economists in the world.

33:06George Osborne: And they'd all disagree. I mean, it happened to me when I was, you know, doing the job in 2010, 2011, 2012. Well, there were economists of equal distinction arguing ferociously I was doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing. So that's why I don't think you need to be an economist to be a good chancellor. And why actually sometimes, you know, I remember a story about one recent chancellor. It's a bit unfair to say who they were. Not a Labour. Oh, go on. Who, you know, just ended up sort of doing their own sort of spreadsheets on how the inflation target was composed. And that's not the job of the Chancellor's Checker.

33:42George Osborne: You can employ some people like the Reverend Will West to do that for you. You know, your job is to make the big calls on how you think the cake should be divided. Who pays and who gets.

33:54Ed Balls: George, I think you're protesting too much here. And you're sounding like it struck a kind of a raw nerve. And of course, you're completely right. And of course, you don't need to be an economist to be a good chancellor. And I would never make that argument. I think you absolutely need to have a good economist around you and you need to be able to talk and understand and engage in that. And you get better at that over time. Rupert Harrison would have been hugely important to you in your understanding of the economy. But you also need to put things in context. And that is why history. I don't think you can be a good chancellor unless you want to study history and context.

34:31Ed Balls: I think it's okay to be a lawyer and to be focused on, you know, cases and answers, so long as you're willing to be contextually broad and not think that was yesterday's case and it's a new case now. And therefore, I don't have to sort of think about what is common, you know, across a society. And it's okay to be a scientist and focus on complex problems, so long as you don't think that it's possible in running the economy to have like a control experiment where you can have laws and predictable relationships in the way that you can in physics, because that is not how people are. and that isn't how the economy works.

35:12Ed Balls: But if you can combine an understanding of science and evidence and law and logic and history and context and economics and our experience of how the economy works, then you can be a good chancellor. And the idea you need to be an economist to get that combination right is obviously rubbish.

35:30George Osborne: Thank you, George. We've got one more question after this break.

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37:44George Osborne: Welcome back. And now our next question is from someone you know, isn't it, Ed? It's from Matt, Matt Downey. Hi, Ed and George. This is Matt Downey. I'm the chief executive of Crisis, a big fan of the podcast and perhaps an even bigger fan of Centristad who are playing two gigs for Crysis this December. Thank you so much for that, Ed. My question to you both is about Andy Burnham's pledge to end rough sleeping. Obviously Crysis will be doing everything we can to help thousands of people in our services and play our part in making that happen. But the last time there was a breakthrough on rough sleeping in the late 90s, early 2000s, it came from central government, from a unit that was charged with doing everything it could across all the departments of Whitehall.

38:27But this time, that responsibility is falling to mayors at local level, rather than being driven by Whitehall.

38:34Ed Balls: I'd love to get your thoughts on which of those two options you think might work best. Great question, Matt. And just to explain why Matt is a big fan of Central Stad, We are doing two gigs this Christmas. All the tickets going to Crisis at Christmas, to Crisis at Charity, and at the Water Rats, and they are both entirely sold out. We've actually got a wait list for both of them. We sold out last year and we thought, well, you know, do we risk having two? So it's basically a residency, except for we have an opening night and a closing night. There's no night in the middle. because it's just an opening and a closing night.

39:17Ed Balls: But it's two nights, and so it's like a residency, and it's sold out, and loads of people are coming. I hope you're coming, George.

39:21George Osborne: Well, you've reserved a ticket, I hope. There's one on the door, isn't there?

39:24Ed Balls: George never goes to any play, opera, musical, or event without there being a ticket left from on the door. So we'll sort you out. I'll have a little float for you behind the bar. If you want a half a mile, let's pay for that as well. It's for charity. It's for crisis. You don't mind paying for it?

39:40George Osborne: No, I'm pretty free in buying the pints when I get in. I seem to remember that. Member of the cabinet I bought a pipe for at one of the gigs, I remember, about a year ago.

39:52Ed Balls: It's also so tight and packed that you can only dance by going up and down. And it turns out George is very good at pogoing, which is why it's your kind of gig. Although it was when you threatened to do a mosh pit dive that we got worried. Anyway, maybe we should dance. Given that this is for a very serious cause and charity and Matt is not only plugging our concert, which is sold out anyway. Although there'll be quite a lot of podcasters coming or fans of political currency because they'll be on the mailing list from previous events. But to answer, did you hear Andy Burnham on Monday on Good Morning Britain was asked why his plan in Manchester to end rough sleeping worked and then didn't work.

40:32Ed Balls: And he said it was because it was only being done in Manchester. Therefore, he had the ability locally to put together the coalition to deliver it. But because it got round that Manchester was a place where you could get support, people started coming from more widely across the UK and they were a bit overwhelmed. So I think his argument is that it can be delivered locally so long as everybody's doing it in every part of the country.

41:04George Osborne: Yeah, that's the annoying thing with localism, isn't it? People do things differently. That's what Whitehall is always frustrated about. Yeah, we want everyone to make local decisions. Oh, but why do you all take a different approach to these things?

41:16Ed Balls: And you can all regulate the buses, but you've got to charge£2 because I've announced it.

41:22George Osborne: Here's a question which I think Matt will know a lot more about than me, which is, it is undoubtedly the case that one of the kind of successes of the Blair premiership when it came to delivery was the rough sleeping initiative, where a lot of effort was focused, was thrown by Downing Street onto dealing with rough sleeping. And, you know, my understanding is that the problem was particularly acute in London. And clearly Andy Burnham has that in mind because he's committed a large amount of money in the budget. It was about the biggest single spending item in the budget to dealing with rough sleeping and thinking, well, we can replicate what happened under the kind of delivery focused Blair premiership.

42:04George Osborne: But my question would be, you know, was rough sleeping in the late 90s, early 2000s, the same as rough sleeping today? Well, obviously, the consequences are for the people and there's still the fundamental thing of sleeping on the streets. But, you know, there's a lot has changed in our society and the composition of our society since. And it's, you know, in many ways, it's a much more complicated society. And there's all sorts of kind of substance abuses, mental health issues and the like, which, you know, we are certainly much more aware of now. but also potentially are more widespread. So I wonder whether the kind of centralized approach is going to work.

42:38George Osborne: I mean, the irony of the question is that, you know, Prime Minister Burnham, and it's very admirable he's saying this, says my priority, and it was a priority not just when he stood on the steps of Towning Street, but priority in his first budget is to end rough sleeping, which presumably means by the time you get to Christmas, you don't actually need crisis. And yet I don't think anyone believes that there won't be a very important role for crisis this Christmas as there is every Christmas. And so I don't know. I think in the end, the central initiative trying to work all over the country is probably not going to work in the same way it did in the late 90s because we live in a more complicated society and the issue has become more complicated.

43:20George Osborne: And so I think you're going to need to use, you know, it's partly, isn't it, coordination of agencies. And so much has happened to sort of fragment the way government operates. There are so many different more players in government. Top-down control doesn't work as well as it used to in government. As, you know, in fact, Yvette was saying this in the interview I did with her over the summer, that, you know, being a government minister compared to 20 or 30 years ago. Gordon Brown's calling again.

43:48Ed Balls: He's ringing again. I'll have to ring him. I'll have to ring him back. Look at that. He probably knows we're talking about rough sleeping. I agree with what you're saying. Can I just say one thing, though? Am I right about that, do you think? You are, but I actually wonder whether... Is it more complicated? The word sleeping, I think when we were in government, we thought this was people needing shelter at night to sleep. But these days, there's a problem of people rough living at King's Cross, in the streets, in Oxford Street, in London, I'm thinking. But the same would be true in Manchester and Leeds, 24 hours a day.

44:21Ed Balls: And these are people, as you say, it's not, I mean, it may be they have places to go and sleep at night, But actually, it's about drug use, about mental health problems. And it's more complicated and the response is more sophisticated than simply finding places for people to sleep. And so it may not, I mean, I don't know whether that means it has to be more locally tailored. Maybe it does. But I also think it's not simply about getting people off the streets at night. It's a much more complicated problem. I mean, I'm sure crisis is very aware and involved in that. But if Matt would come back to us and tell us what actually needs to be done to make this work, and, you know, as a question which tells us the answer, we always like them.

45:10George Osborne: Thank you, Matt, for that question and hopefully for a follow-up. That's it for this episode of EMQs. If you've got any questions of your own, do email us at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk or message us on the socials and the link is below if you're watching on YouTube.

45:22Ed Balls: If you're coming to Centrist Dad on the 16th of December, that is a special crisis night. Matt will be there on stage saying a few words. He may end up singing Like a Prayer by Madonna with Robert Peston. We will find out whether he's up for that.

45:35George Osborne: The crisis is the charity, not the band performance, right?

45:38Ed Balls: Look, the Centrist Dad band is five men all having a crisis together all the time. But we're also doing it for the charity crisis, which is a separate kind of crisis. Both great causes. We love questions from you on anything you like. Tone, era, subject. Get creative. Send us a voice note. Send them in the comments on here. However you fancy it. We love it.

46:02George Osborne: See you on Thursday with our main show. And the midterm results.

46:06Ed Balls: See you then.

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