EMQs: Will new laws protect children online?

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0:52George Osborne: political currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

1:00Ed Balls: Hello and welcome to EMQ's Ex-Ministers' Questions. We're recording this before the weekend. So if you are a Gold or Kitchen Cabinet subscriber, you will still be anticipating Scotland's World Cup campaign starting on Sunday morning. And if you're getting it on Monday, you'll know the result. We You don't. You know, I always think I want Scotland to do well in the World Cup.

1:24George Osborne: Yeah. You actually chaired a football club. But I think the general view, isn't it, is that England fans shouldn't support Scotland. Actually, sorry, it's the other way around, isn't it? England fans are sort of, England's sort of big and, you know, it gets just quite relaxed about things. And it doesn't mind if Scotland does well. It's the Scottish fans who hate England doing well.

1:43Ed Balls: But 1978, when England weren't in the World Cup, we're on the march. We're Ali's army. we're going to the Argentine and we'll really shake them up when we win the World Cup. Scotland are the greatest football team. I loved supporting Scotland in that tournament.

1:59George Osborne: I mean, they didn't win, but I loved it. No, I was only seven years old, so I'm not sure I remember it. Anyway, we, of course, wish the teams, all the home teams well.

2:07Ed Balls: Anyway, as I said, we are recording this before the weekend. George is still in his hotel room. He still has a sort of Scandinavian vibe to it.

2:17George Osborne: Actually, I think it's supposed to be, well, it is a farm. It's called Piglet, this room. It's supposed to be like a pigsty, I think. But it's not a pigsty. It's very, very... I'm actually doing this... George, you were senior tech. I mean, shouldn't you be in, like, pig? I mean, why are you in Piglet? I think you're in a small room. I've got right next to me here a whole kind of cocktail tray. It's quite early in the morning. But look, I've got some house martini. I could be making an old-fashioned. I've got all sorts of... I've got some limes and lemons. This is the funny thing you put into the martini.

2:48George Osborne: And then, I think I'll leave this in the room because they'll charge me if I take it home, not least. There's the CBD oil that I could chill out to. What is that? Well, I think it's a kind of cannabis thing. Is it something where you have to have two people so that one person rubs it in?

3:07Ed Balls: No, I don't think so. I don't know. I'm just musing.

3:12George Osborne: I mean, I didn't stay in hotels like this. I'm not sure. I don't know what you're talking about. isn't it a massage oil you've never heard of you know it's um yeah you put it on your finger i think don't you anyway no you put it in your tongue sorry i'm place a few drops of what we are so old-fashioned here we don't know what cbd oil is place a few drops of the oil on your tongue and hold for a minute before swallowing job is i think if i do i might sort of mildly trip on this um i mean you could still do that with two people yes you could yeah anyway there's no one here to do it.

3:45Ed Balls: I bet you are so pleased you decided to talk about what's in your room because you know it's opened up vistas. People across the world are wondering what does George Osborne do in that hotel room?

3:55George Osborne: Try and set up my podcast kit so I can talk to you and I'm propped up by the side of the bed doing it. Such is my commitment to this podcast and to our audience. Talking of which we get some questions from people who listen to our podcast.

4:10Ed Balls: Well I mean unless you're so relaxed you're beyond doing it.

4:14George Osborne: I've got some electrolytes. I've got some vitamin C tabs. I've got a magnesium pouch here. What is that for? Is that for like constipation or something? It says rest and recover. Pineapple flavour. I thought so.

4:25Ed Balls: I thought so.

4:26George Osborne: That might be the one thing

4:28Ed Balls: you should take in the morning, George.

4:29George Osborne: What? Pineapple, rest and recover.

4:31Ed Balls: I was thinking to get you regular.

4:32George Osborne: Right. Now you're just getting personal. I might ask you about your morning routine. We just had to get you to wipe some Marmite off your face before this podcast started. My morning routine started at 6am when the tea's made with them. Of course. Talking about 1978. Let us have a question from Natalie Fleet. Now, she is a Labour member of Parliament. She's a minister. She is the member of Parliament for Bolsover, the old Dennis Skinner seat, which actually went Tory after him, didn't it? So she won her seat at the last election. This is Natalie's question. Hi, Erin George. Natalie Fleet here, Minister for Violence Against Women and Girls and Safeguarding.

5:10nine in ten pieces of online child sexual abuse material are self-generated by the children themselves so it can start with a photo being sent to a boyfriend and it ends up being in the hands of organized crime and paedophiles using it as leverage to extort and groom children absolutely disgusting so as a society we've got to be honest we've failed to keep pace with changing threats faced by young people. We've got a sacred duty to protect our most vulnerable and our youngest. So exciting news, the UK will become the first country in the world where it's impossible for children to take, share, view and receive nude images on their devices.

5:55Tech companies have got three months to activate the technology and if they don't, we'll legislate to force them. So with George at the heart of the tech ecosystem. What does he make of the move? And as parents, do you feel more comfortable handing your children their phone for the first time? I know I do. Thanks. Bye.

6:14Ed Balls: So Natalie, the safeguarding minister, she is undoubtedly a rising star of the government. You could think of her as being in the Angela Rayner mould. I mean, very kind of authentic, straight-talking, reaches out across all sides of politics in her style. She also has a very, very tough, difficult backstory, which, like Angela Rayner, in a different way, she's spoken about a lot. She was terribly abused as a girl, groomed by a man. And without going into all the details, it's an awful story, but a story which she is channelling into the work she's doing. as the minister championing action against violence against women and girls.

7:01Ed Balls: And I think she's right to be enthusiastic about this policy. I was a bit surprised that Keir Starmer, having given the impression there was going to be action, he laid down a challenge to the tech industry. But I think the issue here, and George, you'll know more than me, The technology exists so that if an under 16 is taking a photo of themselves with a naked image, that the phone can automatically choose to blur that or to block it or to prevent it being sent. And when Jess Phillips resigned as a minister with that excoriating letter a few weeks ago, what she was complaining about was that the government had been so slow to engage with the tech industry, demanding that this technology is used universally in phones.

7:57Ed Balls: Now, it's complicated, I think, because you need age verification. So it's not only about the technology. But I think I'm right in saying that some phone manufacturers and providers do put this technology in and others, a particular Apple, have been dragging their feet. And so therefore, Keir Starmer is saying, if some can do it, all could do it, get on with it. Because the way in which boys and adult males have used naked images, in particular of girls, to then bully and control is a terrible aspect of violence against women and girls, but also a new aspect because it's happened because of this technology.

8:44George Osborne: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think the sort of bedrock of all the sort of tech policy around how young people engage with technology, whether it's social media, and obviously there's lots of talk of social media bans, or indeed AI chatbots and so on. All of it starts with this technology that can verify whether someone's a child or not. And that is now technically possible. So the technology exists and enables governments like the British government to pass laws like the one that rules that the one Natalie is describing. or indeed, to be fair, the SUNAT government passed the law on, you know, that you had to verify you were an adult before accessing a pornographic website in the UK.

9:33George Osborne: None of that would be possible without the age verification technology, which is now very, very strong and, you know, uses a combination of identity cards and stuff like that, but they can easily be faked and then facial recognition technology, which is so powerful. And all the sort of policy thinking going forward is sort of based on that sort of bedrock of technology. The question then is like, what do you do with that technology? So in this case, there's just an outright ban. So there's no consent. It's not like you can get parental consent to share an image of you nude, although I imagine that'd be quite an awkward conversation at home.

10:09George Osborne: Here it's just been banned. And the same is true with access to pornography in the UK. The kind of social media ban, which is the one that's being speculated about, is more complicated where I noticed when I was visiting the House of Parliament this week to appear before the House of Lords Economic Committee, which we talked about the main podcast, I came by tube and there's a tube entrance to the House of Commons. And you pass these big posters from YouTube now, which are saying, look, we'll verify this as a child and give a parent control on how many hours they can use a phone and it can be zero um so so the the technology doesn't just enables a set of policy decisions which is okay verified this is a child now what do you want to do um so i think that's all that is all quite interesting and in this case obviously the decision is you just want to ban it altogether um of course you know the technology is going to adapt and evolve and you're going to have to and the bad actors are going to try and find ways around it so you've just got to stay technologically on top of it and i think there's a kind of general thing i see from my job which is is an it's going to be an interesting kind of feature for policymakers in this whole space so the technology is rapidly changing you know even in the six months since i joined open ai the power of these models is like dramatically improved and the things they can do is like dramatically expanded but lawmaking is often quite static you know you pass a law takes a year to consult on it it takes a year to pass it through parliament you've set up a regulator so you're going to have to have flexibility to to kind of make sure that you don't fall way behind where the technology is going um which is often what we do when we create kind of powerful regulators i think that will turn out to be a more effective way to generally regulate technology than trying to put into kind of primary legislation the rules around it.

12:13George Osborne: But anyway, that's just a sort of broader observation. But the age verification software makes this all possible.

12:18Ed Balls: Look, it's brilliant that Natalie's driving this work forward and that Jess Phillips came out and endorsed this move. Of course, the reality is behind encrypted chat room walls, these pictures are being shared around the world. And there is a philosophical question, which is, are these simply platforms and the responsibility is the user or is actually Facebook, which meta controls, a place where things are being published and should they be taking editorial responsibility? And I think that is a big fight still to come. We had a kind of amazing expose this week from Trading Standards around fraud in advertising.

13:08Ed Balls: 44 % of fraudulent adverts about finance in the UK have Martin Lewis's face on them. Martin Lewis, the ITV champion of consumers and finance, does no advertising. The Financial Conduct Authority say that 58 % of the fraudulent ads on Facebook Meta, they have already sent a warning to Facebook Meta to say this is a fraudulent ad. And it's still up. And when it comes to people being compensated, all the financial burden is borne by the banks, not borne by the tech companies. So I think, you know, I hear what you're saying about technology, but there are some big questions about who should be responsible, who is publishing and who should, if it was the ITV or the BBC or the Times or the Sun and you published an ad in your paper, which was a lie, you'd be in trouble because you're the publisher.

14:07Ed Balls: And I'm not sure why Meta gets away with it.

14:10George Osborne: I get what I mean the literal reason why they get away with it because it was a really significant legal decision in the United States about 20 years ago that they wouldn't be treated as publishers that they were platforms and that you know they're not exercising editorial judgment on what you see it's you know it's Ed Balls who puts up a post or me who puts up a post rather than you know some editor at Facebook. but you know of course you're right that of course the legislation on this is all evolving and changing there's a very very lively debate and not least in the UK which we will we will keep coming back to anyway great to hear Natalie that you are listening to the podcast thank you for your question congratulations on the legal changes you made we'd love to know what you think about the Labour leadership contest but maybe you're keeping shtum about that for the moment

15:00Ed Balls: Her question was sent over by Sylvia. He's now working with her in the department, but used to work on this podcast. So Natalie had an inside track to that question. Hello, Sylvia. Glad to hear you're doing well. So our next question is from Anissa. Hi, Ed and George. Hope you're both doing well. Love the podcast. So my question is, before 1979, governments treated low unemployment as a moral priority. Since then, controlling inflation has taken precedence. With today's high living costs and global pressures, as well as rising unemployment, especially amongst young people, can the government realistically tackle inflation while still keeping unemployment low and perhaps once again see it as a moral priority?

15:43Thank you.

15:43Ed Balls: So look, this is a really interesting question. A little bit of economics for a second. There was a view in the 1950s and the 1960s into the 1970s that it was possible to trade a bit more inflation for lower unemployment. And therefore, when people said morally unemployment is the big thing, we pump the economy up a bit more, pay a little bit more inflation, we can get lower unemployment. And I think that was all exploded by the 1970s and also academically. The very famous 1966 Milton Friedman American Economic Association presidential lecture in which he basically said this is a fool's game and that you just end up with higher inflation and unemployment doesn't come down at all.

16:27Ed Balls: And that has been the experience. And I think part of this is the Phillips curve, isn't it? The Phillips curve was basically debunked. And we realized that actually you just ended up by trying to go after low unemployment, you ended up with unemployment ending up in the same place, but inflation being higher. Of course, we then went into a period where unemployment was lower in the 2000s and the 2010s into this decade. and so that kind of dropped down the political agenda a little bit and we've just gone through big inflation shocks after COVID and all the disruption which has flown from that and so therefore inflation has been higher up the political agenda but I think Anissa that you are right and I think because we talked about the Labour leadership election on our main podcast but also with Natalie just then, if I was Andy Burnham and I was thinking about a big moral economic issue to drive through the next two years, I think I would choose youth unemployment.

17:34Ed Balls: And I would say that there's a huge problem with youth unemployment short term, but also potentially long term because of what's happening with technology. And I would say we've got to make sure that we are equipping young people for the jobs of the future, work out what those jobs are going to be, but also say, let's remove unnecessary barriers. And that might mean that whether you're talking about welfare reform or the way in which regulations, the minimum wage are working, making sure that you're putting jobs for young people first, that might give him a bit of differentiation as well from the first two years.

18:04Ed Balls: So my advice to Andy Burnham is if you're thinking of the three big things to champion, I think youth unemployment and youth jobs might be a good moral mission.

18:14George Osborne: I think that's sensible advice. And it's a kind of hidden and growing problem in Britain, I would say, because we've got so used to, as our generation, not talking about unemployment. And I think that kind of goes to the heart of Anissa's question. I mean, I think this question has been the core question of sort of domestic politics throughout much of the 20th century, which is the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. That's right. And, you know, John Maynard Keynes' response to the sort of anti-inflationary austerity 1929 response, you know, was obviously sort of shaped a lot of post-war thinking.

18:52George Osborne: And as you say, it all sort of came crashing down in the 1970s. And then you got the Thatcher governments and unemployment was a price worth paying to get inflation down, was what they said. And that was seen as callous and so on. but it became the doctrine and then was enshrined in inflation targeting and ultimately in this country in the Independent Bank of England and the Bank of England doesn't have a dual mandate unlike the Federal Reserve which is supposed to keep an eye on employment and growth the Bank of England is just designed to just supposed to target inflation although in practice I think at times it kind of looks through that and as you say that's because in the end high inflation is the really pernicious thing that doesn't solve your employment problem.

19:36George Osborne: And the interesting thing as well is that, you know, during recent periods of high inflation, when people have been expecting unemployment to really rocket, that hasn't happened. And that may be due to all sorts of things like labour shortages and ageing society and so on. But I think that all of this points to the sort of missing ingredient, the thing that you get low inflationary growth and high unemployment is productivity, improvements and you know that is what's been lacking in britain and in many other western economies um and we're much less good i think at really understanding how to drive productivity growth because people talk about it a lot and there's lots of talk about you know investing in infrastructure and capital spending and so on but i'm not sure people have the yet the kind of magic answer although interestingly in the u.s there is evidence now that productivity growth is picking up.

20:27George Osborne: So maybe things to learn from that. But yeah, this question, I've told you, this question had been asked in 1981. This would have been the defining political question of the day.

20:35Ed Balls: That is completely right. I'm going to slightly take issue with you. In the Bank of England's mandate, it's not a dual mandate. It's not inflation and unemployment. But the inflation target is symmetric, which means that if the Bank of England was trying to get lower inflation at the cost of rising unemployment in the short term, that would be the wrong thing for them to do, because they aren't allowed to get inflation to be too low or too high. And secondly, their mandate says to meet the inflation target and subject to that to support the government's wider economic objectives, which includes growth in employment.

21:08Ed Balls: And if you have a big shock, which pushes inflation up, as you say, when you say see through that, what they have to do is make sure they get inflation down in a way which doesn't pay some drastic cost in terms of high and then potentially permanent unemployment. So it's not only inflation and nothing else.

21:29George Osborne: Would you say the Independent Bank of England has never really been tested since its independence by having to kind of really push up rates in a way that puts people out of work, which was what happened in the early 1990s. We've never had that real test of an independent bank where you get the prime minister of the day screaming at the independent governor saying, you are putting people out of work. I mean, you get a version of it actually with Trump in the United States and the Federal Reserve. But I don't know whether it's good luck or good judgment. Ever since 1997, we haven't had those moments where the interest rates have to squeeze out inflation and cause higher unemployment?

22:14Ed Balls: See, in a way, there was a version of that test with Liz Truss and the Bank of England refusing to carry on supporting with monetary policy the financial markets when they were destabilised by the pension fund problems during her premiership. And that was a bit of a test. But actually, the best parallel, and I agree with you, it's not like the 1970s or 1981. in the autumn of 1998, interest rates had gone up a lot. Unemployment was going up. Eddie George, as governor of the Bank of England, made a reference to, I think, to a regional newspaper, to unemployment being something you had to bear in some parts of the country to get inflation down in other parts of the country.

23:00Ed Balls: It caused a bit of an outcry, And he ended up going to the TUC conference in September 1998 to explain that actually it wasn't the case that he thought unemployment in the north was a price worth paying for low inflation in the south. We talked to Andrew Bailey about this, me and Stephanie, when we were up in Kokodi the other day. I think that was a vulnerable moment. But as you say, because in the end, we moved to a low inflation, low growth, higher growth, low unemployment environment in the years which followed. In that early year, we got through that challenging moment. That is the closest moment.

23:40Ed Balls: But it was nowhere near as serious as 1981 or 1991.

23:43George Osborne: A very good question from you, Anissa. Thank you very much. We'll be back shortly after this break.

23:59George Osborne: welcome back now we've got a question from anthony uh well i say this question it's actually it's a it's a statement which is that which we invited we we did ask someone to tell us what was going on um so uh this is a this is anthony's question and a response to our inquiry hello ed George, I love the pod. On a recent episode of EMQs about resignations, George said he never understood why government ministers weren't affected by the ban on MPs having an office for profit under the crown. The Act of Settlement 1701 brought in the ban on offices for profit to stop the monarch buying MPs' votes. But there was an exception if you were a minister at the time of election.

24:42This led to ministerial by-elections taking place every time an MP was appointed to a new job. With some modifications, that system largely stayed in place until it was suspended during World War I and abolished a few years later. But I have a question for you. History becomes optional for English students at the age of 14, which is an unusually early time to stop learning it, both by international standards and compared to other parts of the UK. Do you think English students would benefit from learning more history during secondary school?

25:12Ed Balls: So Anthony, Thank you for kind of clearing that up. And on the history point, look, I think it is vital. And I work with Gordon Brown as chancellor, a historian. And I talked to him a lot about the economics I'd learned. He talked a lot to me about the history he'd learned. And I don't think you can be a good politician or a good policymaker unless you understand economics and history. and I guess, George, as a chancellor who was also a historian and probably learned your economics on the job, you'd probably agree you need both.

25:51George Osborne: Yeah, well, I absolutely think having a sense of history or how people in the past have faced similar situations to the ones you face and how they've responded and the lessons from that are really important, even if history doesn't repeat itself. And economic history is a proper discipline and part of that. So I agree. I mean, Anthony, let me just make an observation about the Office for Profit under the Crown. He reminded me of my history, which was it used to be the case that if you accepted a ministerial job, you had to trigger a by-election in order to tell the constituents that you were now going to be a minister and they had a chance essentially to reassess where they still wanted you as the MP.

26:41George Osborne: And so people like Winston Churchill, I mean, it was quite current, as Anthony's explaining, until just after the First World War. People would have to sort of trigger these by-elections. And that's why you have this odd distinction between the payroll, and yet when people resign from the House of Commons, like Josh Simons did, to create the Make-A-Ville by-elections, he accepted one of these sort of medieval offices, the Chiltern Hundreds, and the Manor of Norsted. But maybe it's coming back, Anthony. This is a version of history repeating itself because you could say that Andy Burnham, in order to become prime minister, has put himself up for election in a by-election.

27:25And so the first choice of whether they want Andy Burnham

27:29George Osborne: to be the prime minister of this country goes to the people of Makerfield. And they will make this decision, I would suggest, on behalf of the rest of us. so um so but the people in makerfield uh probably for the one and only time in makerfield's history um get the chance to choose the prime minister of britain very interesting look i also hope that

27:51Ed Balls: andy was listening to our main podcast where we were drawing upon history of jim callaghan and john major gordon brown tony blair teresa may boris johnson to help him think about how to form an administration. As you know, I teach a class with former Permanent Secretary Nick McPherson, Professor John Davis at King's Treasury and Economic Policy since 1945. We all believe that history, including contemporary history, is really important in educating policymakers. And we've had 250 Treasury civil servants do that course as part of their job, as well as full-time master's students. And you are right.

28:29Ed Balls: it's both about understanding when history is repeating itself but also looking out for whether it's when it's not repeating itself and and why and if you don't learn the right lessons from history and you learn the wrong lessons then you also can make very big mistakes i am i did a lecture in 2002 or 2003 called why the five economic tests when i went back to 1925 1949 1949, 1967 and 1992, and in every stage looked at why government screwed up big economic policy decisions to go back to the gold standard, the devaluations, the ERM. And normally it was because there was a cross-party consensus in advance saying this is a really good thing to do.

29:12Ed Balls: Let's join the ERM. Let's go back to gold. So I've always felt that history teaches you when there's a cross-party consensus on something in economic policy, you should be very, very suspicious and that's why we fought so hard to make sure there wasn't one over the euro

29:25George Osborne: in the chancellor's small dining room in number 11 which is a beautiful room arguably i think the nicest room in the whole of the downing street complex i got put up on the wall two paintings were from which was sort of led from the national collections one was of winston churchill who was chancellor at the time of the return to the gold standard and the other was of john maynard canes who was at the dinner arguing against that he helped. Winston Churchill's chancellor had a dinner in that room with the bankers and things to make a decision on the gold standard. And John Maynard Keynes was the only person in the room saying, that's a bad idea.

30:01George Osborne: So we had a picture, we had a painting of Maynard Keynes and a painting of Churchill in that room.

30:05Ed Balls: And Maynard Keynes was in a really bad mood because he felt he had a cold and didn't perform well. And much of the thing which drove him in the next 20 years of his career was trying to make right the fact that in that dinner in 25, he didn't feel as though he made the argument effectively to Churchill. He thought Churchill was sympathetic, but the governor of the Bank of England was on the other side of the argument, and I think so was the permanent secretary of the Treasury. And Keynes didn't win the argument, and he never forgave himself for that. When Winston Churchill died many decades later,

30:41George Osborne: obviously he was a great national hero, And Harold Wilson gave the, he was prime minister at the time, gave the kind of speech in parliament, which is a brilliant speech. Maybe we'll come back and talk about that on another occasion. He noted that in the one place where, you know, they didn't celebrate Churchill was the South Wales mining communities, which were crushed by the decision to return to the gold standard in the late 20s when he was chancellor.

31:05Ed Balls: I know, but it was recommended by the Cunliffe Committee and it was supported by The Times and The Economist, Labour and Conservative. And what an error that was. Beware when a consensus forms. Join the ERM. It will be the solution. It was a catastrophe. Let's take a break and we'll have one more question.

31:34welcome back our final question is from gareth hello gentlemen my first interest in politics came as a teenager watching spitting image and rory bremner i didn't really understand it all at that age but i loved the impressions and whilst i now hope to understand the world of politics better, I still do love to hear a good impressionist, with Matt Ford, in my opinion, one of the best out there. I don't recall having heard many, if any, impressions of either of you, so I have a couple of questions. Firstly, how do you feel about the fact you're not widely impersonated compared to the likes of Michael Gove, Boris or even Lee Anderson?

32:08And secondly, and most importantly, can you do any good impressions yourselves? Ed, we've been treated to your Gordon Brown on many occasions, so anyone else in your repertoire? And George, George, who can you do? Hope you keep doing this great podcast for many years to come. It's a great listen.

32:24Ed Balls: Now, George, I think this is slightly unfair because I remember you doing, you know, Gareth says you don't do impressions. You do a really good William Hague.

32:35George Osborne: William Hague, come with me to the Robber Valley. Meet the communities that I grew up with. It's a bit like Harold Wilson, actually. They grew up very, very close to each other. and if you listen to harrow wilson and william hayley next to each other they're unbelievably similar um i used to do a tony blair i kind of liked tony blair when i was prepping various tory leaders for prime minister's questions against him um and i one that you can't do anymore you know it's just not allowed is the peter mandelson impression i used to do go on go on give us your peter manderson oh come on george why are you talking to ed edward is not

33:15Ed Balls: your friend you know that george look i have to say george i think you're actually quite a good chat but you may be good at the jokes but you're not so good at the policy yeah ed he calls himself a blairite uh don't think so yeah we're gonna stick to our day jobs or our part-time jobs

33:33George Osborne: um and matt ford does a great i watched um matt ford i i saw a clip of it on um on my phone the the other day, which was Matt Ford doing the impressions of Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage talking about the World Cup. And I have to say, Matt, they were really, really good. They were very, very funny impressions that he does.

33:51Ed Balls: Matt Ford also does a brilliant Donald Trump. But just to get to...

33:56George Osborne: He's quite easy to do Trump, though, I feel.

33:58Ed Balls: Isn't he? But just to get to Gareth's question, you know, what is the reason why... I don't remember seeing lots of people doing impressions of you or me. Now that might be because we weren't prime minister and I think prime ministers are kind of different because they have such a status. But I think there's also something about if you are somebody whose style is almost already a caricature, if you think of Roy Hattersley or Norman Tebbett or Jacob Rees-Mogg or John Prescott, they are already so verbally distinctive, like they're sometimes physical, but in their verbal style, it's already like they are kind of beyond the day-to-day.

34:47Ed Balls: It's that caricature which allows you then to turn that into a recognisable impression. And I'm not sure that when I think of your communication style, I mean, there's lots of things I caricature you for, but it's not necessarily the way you talk and without that you know Yes I think

35:08George Osborne: I think there's two things, one is it's interesting, I don't think David Cameron was actually much parodied or the impressions of him weren't very good either and I think it's a combination of two things I think we fell in between sort of several stools, we were not you know we were kind of post the spitting image age the thick of it was a very good parody of Alistair Campbell and kind of number 10 Downing Street under Tony Blair. But there wasn't actually a kind of leading kind of... I mean, I'm being a bit unfair to some of the people at the time, but there wasn't something everyone watched or listened to at the time that was a kind of political parody.

35:43George Osborne: Or if there was, it was actually things like, have I got news for you, which don't do impressions. Although Rory Bremler did turn up in my constituency as William Hague to campaign alongside me with a television crew when I was canvassing and I didn't really know what to do. Because he said, hello, George, it's William Hague. And I thought, oh, my God, it's Rory Bremner and I'm on camera. What am I going to do? So I had to sort of play along with it. So there were impressions of me, but they weren't very good, honestly. And there weren't very good impressions of David Cameron. So it's partly a timing and it was partly, I guess, we had less easy to parody voices.

36:18Ed Balls: Although you can imagine him up in Fife. The thing is, Osborne, you don't seem to understand. You may have been chancellor, but unlike me, you never became. Prime Minister, that's the difference.

36:28George Osborne: That is the difference, I agree. But then, you know, I didn't lose an election quite as badly as he did. Although I did lose a referendum. Well, you did lose a referendum. He was on the same side in that referendum.

36:42Ed Balls: Oh, I see. It's his fault. Well, it was Labour's fault, yeah.

36:47George Osborne: I mean, Corbyn, letting Corbyn in, Corbyn indicating that he would have voted Leave. But we do know if Andy Burnham had been Labour-leaner, it would have gone the other way.

37:00Ed Balls: I'm not sure about this boy, Burnham. Does he really understand quite how hard it was back then? Thanks for your question, Gareth, for giving us a chance to hear George's William Hague and my colour village, my Gordon Brown.

37:14George Osborne: Maybe I should come to the Kerr Coddy Festival next year. Not sure I'll be welcome. Not sure I'll be allowed across the fight. Would you like to come? Not across Fife or across the Firth or Fours.

37:25Ed Balls: Why don't you come next year and we'll do a conversation and we can use it in the podcast.

37:32George Osborne: Do I get an invite to the house in North Queensferry? You definitely do.

37:36Ed Balls: Absolutely. I'm sure we can. Stephanie Flanders, you, is part of our conversation with Andrew Bailey in her podcast this year. And, you know, who knows? We might even get Gordon on stage.

37:45George Osborne: I don't think he's ever forgiven me for existing. What? No. shadow chancellor.

37:52Ed Balls: The thing about George Osborne, he is a historian and that is something you should have credit for. It's just a pity he didn't learn from history.

38:01George Osborne: Gordon Brown was a historian, didn't he? Economic historian. Wrote a book about the dockyards on the Clyde. He did.

38:08Ed Balls: And Jimmy Maxton. Thanks for your question, Gareth. That's all we've got time for this episode of EMQs.

38:13George Osborne: Yeah, do send us your questions via our socials or you can email us at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk

38:20Ed Balls: And don't forget, we're going to be recording our summer episodes and we would love to hear your questions and suggestions on your best political books, TV shows, films, things which can get us all through the summer months. Any great summer political stories. What is the most significant August event that you remember in your lifetime of political observation? We'd love to know.

38:48George Osborne: I wonder what that would be. What about the coup against Michael Gorbachev? I think we're supposed to do that in some EMQs.

38:56Ed Balls: Okay, all right. But that's exactly the thought process we're trying to get going. Do send us your questions and your thoughts and your ideas. We might even do another what if. Maybe the First World War actually started in August.

39:08George Osborne: Might be a leading candidate.

39:11Ed Balls: I have a feeling that Saddam Hussein may have invaded Kuwait at the very end of August as well.

39:18George Osborne: Hmm.

39:19Ed Balls: Right. I think we should start thinking there's quite a few.

39:21George Osborne: Yeah, we're going to be back on Thursday with our main show. See you then. Bye.

39:32George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.