Is there an inflation crisis coming?

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1:15Ed Balls: This is Political Codency

1:17George Osborne: with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

1:29Ed Balls: so we are remote uh today slightly baffling because we're actually both in um the uk unusually but but here we are i have to tell you george um i got out of my good morning britain car after the show on tuesday and as i was walking down our road to come into our house this guy yelled out from across the road i think he was walking his dog Gordon the chicken and uh I said I said what he said Gordon the chicken I said what he said I'm listening to Gordon the chicken and he actually was walking down our road listening to our podcast your Dorney Wood uh story and um he said he was an avid listener loves the podcast love the story

2:08George Osborne: and so there you are it's gone it's gone viral the um the assault on Gordon the chicken by um The Gove family dog. I have to say, I mean, this is an extra reason to listen to our EMQs, which will come out in a couple of days. But we have a contemporaneous account now because Beatrice Gove, the daughter of Michael and Sarah, has sent us in a message about the incident. Very good.

2:35Ed Balls: Did you also see that Sarah Vine wrote her column in which she confirmed in the mail the Gordon the Chicken story and the role of their dog? and in passing she said that political currency um was her favorite podcast better she said than um what can i say less well-known brands anyway look it is such a relief that we are finally starting this podcast because we've been sitting around for about half an hour waiting for george osborne's wi-fi to actually function he had to get help i mean i thought you were a tech bro with a rucksack making trips to California and you know therefore you would be living in a state-of-the-art tech hub and it turns out that you know your tech doesn't work I don't know what's going on well

3:22George Osborne: all I'd say is there are now layers of cyber security wrapped around me which are hard even for our Persephoneca production team to penetrate and so it's all a bit more complicated doing the wi-fi now i mean are you making that up all all yeah no no all you all you do is live with the foreign secretary so it's obviously easy for you to get on the wi-fi but for me it's like a whole load more difficult i work on the basis that um the people of russia china north korea are part

3:56Ed Balls: of every conversation i ever have so i never really think about it but um how about that look the interesting thing george is you would have thought the depth of our tech relationship between Britain and America, which was supposed to be being deepened by a bilateral agreement, would have solved these tech problems, including for a tech bro like you. But of course, that tech deal is currently still in abeyance and the person who was negotiating it no longer in post.

4:29George Osborne: Yes, that is, of course, Peter Mandelson, our former ambassador. And yesterday, the government published some, not all, of the papers concerning his appointment and what Keir Starmer knew. And there was a statement in the House of Commons. We're going to take a temperature check on the Mandelson files and ask ourselves the question, you know, is it doing more damage or has the damage already been done?

4:56Ed Balls: Then we're going to turn to Iran one week on, the war still ongoing, even though Donald Trump said earlier in the week that it was very complete, impacting energy prices, but also global interest rates, making things harder for central banks around the world, and still the dominant issue in British politics for reform, the Conservatives, and for the government as well, there at PMQ. So we're going to talk about what's happened in the last week on Iran's second.

5:25George Osborne: And then third, we're going to look at the role of ex-Prime ministers. There are quite a few of them knocking around at the moment. But people might have noticed that Tony Blair has weighed in on the Iran conflict. Gordon Brown is weighing in on Peter Mandelson. Boris Johnson's weighed in on Ukraine. Everyone's having a go amongst this elite group of ex-prime ministers. Well, maybe not everyone thinks they're elite because Liz Trust is also weighing in on things. But we're going to ask ourselves a question, is that unusual? Do we normally expect ex-prime ministers to be such a loud voice in our politics, or is that something new?

6:03George Osborne: So we're going to have a look at that as well.

6:05Ed Balls: But we're going to start with the release yesterday of the Mandelson files. And just an interesting insight into how the lobby works, how parliamentary journalism works. This quite big tranche of files released in the afternoon. Darren Jones did a statement, initial flurry of interest in the fact that Peter Mandelson asked for a payoff of over£500 ,000 and ended up being granted severance payment, more like£75 ,000, much lower, but still a significant sum of money. But when you look at the newspapers today, this morning, that isn't what they've all gone on. All the front pages are about Keir Starmer's judgment.

6:47Ed Balls: And that is because the lobby works as a pack. They're kind of like a wolf pack. They're looking for the issue which is going to give them the biggest chance of a kill. I'm not saying they coordinate, but they all have that innate instinct. And while the payoff is interesting, did Keir Starmer make the right judgment when he appointed Peter Mannerson? Is that issue now dealt with by yesterday's revelations? And I would say that the answer the lobby has given in the papers this morning is no. And it goes to a point you've been making for the last few weeks. If you wanted to sort this out, you had to put out all the documents in one go, full disclosure.

7:27Ed Balls: That absolutely is not what happened yesterday. they, not only because the key document about the Mandelson appointment, the Morgan McSwinney questions to Peter Mandelson has been withheld by the police, but also, you know, we're expecting there to be volumes of WhatsApp messages and emails and other communications between Peter Mandelson and so many people in the cabinet, in the civil service. None of that has been released yet. There was nothing about communications between Tim Allen and Peter Mandelson, for example. no WhatsApp messages with Peter Mandelson communicating with anybody in the government about how the government is doing.

8:06Ed Balls: What was his role in the Starman number 10? So it feels as though we're going to have a drip, drip, drip in the coming weeks. Have they passed the test of getting this all done? No.

8:17George Osborne: Well, that's certainly true. And, you know, you and I have been saying, get it all out, get it all out. And they haven't done that. And they've still got this problem of a police investigation. But, you know, without kind of repeating earlier podcasts, I really don't, you're perfectly entitled, well, any citizen is actually entitled to question police judgment before, you know, there's formal proceedings. And, you know, this is just police advice not to publish this particular document, which is the, essentially, Morgan McSweeney, who was then the chief of staff, his questions to Mandelson and Mandelson's answers.

8:53George Osborne: And let's remember the offence that Peter Manilson is being investigated for, as far as we understand it anyway, is all to do with events much earlier, 15 years ago when he was in the government. And potentially, you know, the allegation is he was sending internal number 10 documents to Jeffrey Epstein. So it's not really clear to me why this McSweeney document is relevant to the police investigation. And while it had...

9:17Ed Balls: Allegations we should say that he denies.

9:18George Osborne: Yeah, absolutely. But the fact that that kind of sits out there means that they're not able to draw a line. All that said, I will make a slightly kind of contrarian observation. There's quite a good test in politics, which I think still applies, although obviously the nature of political communication has changed dramatically with social media and the like. But, you know, there's a kind of, you know, today program test, you know, I'd include Good Morning Britain in this as well, which is, you know, the next day is a story running strong. So obviously on the day yesterday, they publish 147 pages of documents.

10:01George Osborne: Of course, being Britain, it's not America. When they do the Epstein files, it's like four million documents in Britain. It's 147. But anyway, the 147 pages are published. It's a big, you know, as you say, a kind of lobby scrum, rush to get all the kind of, you know, the killer points, the smoking guns, et cetera, out there. But, you know, listening this morning to the BBC Today program, the Mandelson files were not on the news. And so therefore it begs the question, like, did we actually learn anything yesterday that we didn't already know? I think there is one thing, I'll come to it, but in terms of we knew, or at least Keir Starmer had subsequently kind of clarified that he knew that Peter Mandelson had maintained an ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein was initially convicted.

10:53George Osborne: That's something that Starmer clarified only a few weeks ago, but these documents confirm that he was aware of that at the time of the appointment of the ambassador. And, you know, number 10 is doing its job when it says, like, you know, there are reports that he stayed close to Epstein and he stayed in his house and so on. So that information was available to Prime Minister. But we did we knew that before yesterday. We also knew, because it sort of leaked out, that the kind of foreign policy establishment was pretty uncertain about Mandelson's appointment. And again, we learned more about that yesterday and the permanent undersecretary of the Foreign Office having concerns.

11:36George Osborne: We learned, I guess, an interesting kind of internal Blairite dynamic, which for real aficionados is interesting. I'm not sure how more widely interesting it is, but Jonathan Powell clearly has lots of issues with Peter Mandelson that go back many years. Because, you know, he's complaining not just about the rushed appointment, but he says, you know, we always get into trouble with him. The only kind of brand new piece of information was that Peter Mandelson received a payoff of£75 ,000, which I have to say is very odd that they signed off on that. I absolutely am sure I was thinking last night.

12:09George Osborne: I'm sure it had to be signed off by the Chancellor as well. if I'd been chancellor, I just absolutely would have said, no, see us in court. Forget it. There's no way he's going to take us to court. You know, we don't have to pay anything. So that was the only odd thing. And I thought it was a bit lame of the government to kind of come out last night and say, oh, you should give the money to charity months and months after the event. But my central point, Ed, is I don't think anything really changed yesterday. And, you know, it didn't really change the price of anything in the political market.

12:37George Osborne: And I don't think it made much difference to Keir Starmer's position. It didn't make it better, but it didn't make it worse. And I guess for him, therefore, that's not a bad day.

12:48Ed Balls: I think it is right that it confirmed what we already knew, that Keir Starmer, in knowledge of what Peter Manlessen had continued to do in his relationship with Epstein, and a wider set of risks, which were there in the documentation presented to him, decided to go ahead with the appointment anyway, and that is the question of judgment. And just to say, I think it's important we say this, we had on our programme on Good Morning Britain yesterday three survivors of the kind of terrible Epstein scandal, Danielle Bensky, Liz Stein and Charlene Roshard, who had flown over from America to urge Parliament that Peter Maddison and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor should give evidence to the American Congressional Inquiry.

13:39Ed Balls: But when we ask them what they think about the fact that in the knowledge of an ongoing relationship with a convicted and imprisoned paedophile, our Prime Minister decided to ignore that and appoint him anyway to be the ambassador to America, I mean, in their faces and in their reaction, you see the horror that that was a decision which was taken by not just the Prime Minister, but by our political establishment. And it is actually a shameful thing that the question of the survivors at that time was not in the mines and in the documentation which we saw yesterday. But there are still lots of questions.

14:21Ed Balls: What did Jonathan Powell actually say at the time in January as opposed to later in September? How come the person who they relied upon for confirmation that Peter Maddison could answer the questions was Matthew Doyle, who has now been suspended as a Labour peer because of an ongoing relationship to a convicted paedophile, which he was not transparent about at the time, but where his peerage went ahead, even though later people knew about it. And as I said...

14:51George Osborne: But hold on, Ed, on that particular point, you know, no one knew all that at the time. He was the Director of Communications, so that's why he's in the loop then.

14:59Ed Balls: and in these documents he's thrown under the bus because he's easy now to blame because he's been ditched and he's no longer a Labour peer but I mean I have to say quite how Matthew Doyle's judgment was the judgment you would rely upon on that important subject of course we don't know what Morgan McSweeney said in his exchanges with Peter Mandelson but I'm just going to say to you you know I don't think Matthew Doyle is the person I would have relied upon if I was Keir Starmer making a decision of such importance absolutely not but there is loads more to come out about what Peter's relationship was with number 10 in the months which followed his initial appointment in January.

15:34Ed Balls: So that and the Morgan McSweeney memo is going to bear on the role Peter played and the judgment of Keir Starmer during that period. And this is going to be something which will be with the government always now. And the question is whether this is just, as you say, in the price, discounted, it's all known, or whether there are going to be future revelations which intensify the pressure on Keir Starmer. I don't think yesterday did that, but then yesterday was a drop in the ocean of what is going to come out in the coming months.

16:08George Osborne: I mean, maybe we're not going to see a load of WhatsApp messages. Maybe we're not going to see a load of emails. I mean, of course we're going to... How could we not see them? Because they've made a commitment. Well, they might not exist. I mean, remember, you know, when the COVID inquiry came, It turned out neither Boris Johnson nor Rishi Sunak had their WhatsApp messages and they all had, you know, technical explanations of, you know, what happens when you transfer WhatsApp from one phone to another and so on.

16:34Ed Balls: Well, Wes Streeting chose, praised by us, to publish his WhatsApp messages with Peter Mandelson a few weeks ago in which there were strikingly revelatory things Wes Streeting said about the prime minister, the chancellor and economic policy. and that was just West Street Team. Now, it may be West Street Team was the only person who didn't have his WhatsApp on automatic deletion and maybe Peter Mandelson has broken his...

17:03George Osborne: Or dropped his phone into the middle of the North Sea a la, you know, the Wagatha Christie.

17:09Ed Balls: As Rebecca Hardy. But it may be he's the only one. It may be that Peter Mandelson has suspended his practice, in my experience, of a lifetime, which was writing memos, emails, letters, and decided to do everything verbally, I would be very surprised. I think there is a lot still to come out, a la West Streeting WhatsApps. And let's see what Peter Madison was saying to others in the government about the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, economic policy, tech policy, the wider state of things. That's all going to be published.

17:46George Osborne: Yeah, okay. Well, we'll see. I suspect it's going to be a bit of an anticlimax. And that itself might lead to a whole load of questions, which of the kind you're just asking now. But it does. I guess the West Streeting point is, you know, why didn't they just get all the cabinet yesterday to publish their exchanges? Because they actually told West Streeting, don't do it unilaterally. Wait for everyone to do it at once. So that that's not something that's got anything to do with the police. And as far as I can see, and you could do all of that at the same time.

18:15Ed Balls: You might be right that the peak moment passed yesterday. I'm just saying I'll be surprised if that is the way things turn out. But you may be right.

18:25George Osborne: I mean, but that's the key thing. There wasn't the smoking gun yesterday. You know, maybe there'll be a smoking gun. But absent that, all of this is still just politics of Keir Starmer's judgment and whether anyone in the Labour Party wants to challenge his leadership. And this is just like another kind of piece of evidence for the prosecution, if you like, against his leadership. But it hasn't dramatically changed things. And I don't think it will, even when more information is released. That's my guess now.

18:53Ed Balls: Just to go back to the payouts point. I mean, it is staggering, isn't it, that Peter Mandelson kind of in a pompous way demands that he should be allowed to leave his job with dignity, the dignity which should be owing to a civil servant and servant of the crown, but also demands a payment of over£500 ,000 to leave the job from which he's effectively being sacked. But as I think happens so often in our country at the moment, and this is not just true in politics, it will be true in business all the time, that the attitude of the HR department is if they're going to sue, the cheaper thing to do is to make the payoff rather than fight it.

19:41Ed Balls: By the way, I don't think this will have gone to the prime minister or the chancellor. I think this will have been made at a sort of personnel employer level. No, really? a permanent secretary decision? I think so.

19:53George Osborne: Well, if that's the case, I would definitely get that permanent secretary in and say, what are you doing not elevating and making me aware of this? Because I thought there, I'm pretty sure, I guess maybe if it's 75 ,000 pounds, it was sort of below the de minimis that would be elevated. But certainly big public servant payouts, I had to sign off as a chancellor that chief secretary did on my behalf. And I would have been livid. If I was in the treasury and they'd said, We paid off the former ambassador who's just been fired by the prime minister. Sorry we didn't tell you, Chancellor. I mean, that would not have been a good day working with me in the treasury, I can tell you.

20:29Ed Balls: But I think the advice will have been, and I think this happens all the time in our country at the moment, that if you fight this, even if your certainty of victory is 100%, the cost to the taxpayer of fighting it will be markedly bigger than making the payoff. It happens all the time. You know, the people sign an NDA, get paid off and leave, even though they were culpable. And, you know, I think it's a very common thing to happen. It may be a rational thing to happen. It may be a financially prudent thing to happen. It may have been what the accounting officer would say to the minister, is what I'm advising you because it's the best way to protect the taxpayer.

21:13Ed Balls: But as you say, it's morally shocking that people are paid off when they fail and leave in disgrace. Of all the things which happened yesterday, it's probably in the public's mind, what are the things which will linger longest, that Peter Madison was paid off when he was sacked.

21:29George Osborne: Don't you remember all the kind of Boris Johnson ministers? When Boris Johnson's government was collapsing and all those people came in and suddenly were Secretary of State for a week or whatever, they all got payoffs as well.

21:38Ed Balls: No, but that is not... You're making a broader point about... That's not the same thing. I'm actually making a narrower point.

21:44George Osborne: You need to have a word with Angela Rayner, because I think she's actually strengthening employment rights at the moment for people who could be fired by their employer. But we will come back to that issue. We should turn, shouldn't we, to the big geopolitical moment, which is the ongoing war in Iran, what it's doing to the oil price, what that means for the cost of living here, and Keir Starmer's decision not to do a Tony Blair, not to be alongside the Americans, and how that's playing out domestically. And we'll come to that next.

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24:04George Osborne: Welcome back. Well, we're almost two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the attack on Iran by Israel and the United States. If you're in the kind of Trump camp, I guess you would say this has all been very effective. There's been minimal loss, not no loss, but minimal loss of American life. The kind of collateral damage has been quite kind of televisual in terms of drones flying into Gulf states, but it hasn't really spilt beyond the border. There's no prospects of the moment of American soldiers being deployed. And at the same time, you know, Iran's Navy and Air Force and indeed its kind of missile capacity has been dramatically reduced.

24:45George Osborne: I guess on the other side of the ledger, you'd say Iran is still clearly functioning or the Islamic Republic of Iran is still functioning because they managed to appoint a new supreme leader. So there was some kind of process they were able to undertake, the son of the last supreme leader, perhaps no surprise there. And I guess, you know, Iran is proving able to destabilize the broader region and have a pretty direct impact, therefore, on oil prices. Destabilize it both in the attacks on kind of refineries and oil and gas facilities in the neighboring Gulf states, as well as the hotels and the banks and stuff.

25:25George Osborne: I think the more kind of direct impact is on these facilities. And of course, this crucial choke point in the maritime choke point in the Straits of Hormuz, ships that are passing through it, which basically prevents all the other ships going through. So that's had an impact on the oil price, which if you're Iran, you know, A, oil is your main export, so you won't be too worried about the oil price going up. And B, of course, it's the thing that is most likely to get through to the White House, probably has little impact in Tel Aviv. And I think one of the interesting dynamics of this conflict is, can Trump unilaterally stop it?

26:00George Osborne: Yes, probably. But there is an Israeli element to this as well, which is certainly the protesters against the conflict are well aware of. But I think in some of the kind of reporting is neglected, the kind of dynamic between Trump and Netanyahu. But, you know, is this becoming the kind of global conflict, the big regional conflict that we all thought? Or are we going to wake up tomorrow and we shouldn't be too surprised if suddenly Donald Trump's called it off and declared victory?

26:25Ed Balls: I think you can certainly say that things are not going as anticipated. Certainly in the White House, the US Energy Secretary had been saying that there wouldn't be a big impact upon energy prices. But we had tankers hit in the Gulf last night, all prices up to$100 in spot markets over a night. Trump said the regime will change. Well, actually, the regime hasn't changed. It seems to be consolidating around the old and the existing regime. Really interesting piece in the New York Times about the internal debate in the White House. People are all worrying about what is the off-ramp, but nobody dares have the conversation with the president because they're not quite sure what the off-ramp is going to be.

27:07Ed Balls: And the Trump taco strategy.

27:09George Osborne: You should experience a new taco. Trump always chickens out.

27:11Ed Balls: That's right. Well, in the case of Greenland, he declared victory and that kind of worked for him. I mean, Venezuela probably was a victory, but it's been so telegraphed now that Trump is going to be claiming victory, even though he hasn't won. It's not clear to me that was quite going to work for him in the way in which he hopes. I mean, there's too much speculation about why it doesn't look like a victory and why Iran is going to be a mess and why the global economy is in a mess. A week ago, you were quite upbeat about Donald Trump. We were arguing about this and you were saying that no, it's going his way.

27:43Ed Balls: It's going to be a Trump victory. The rest of the world is irrelevant and he's in charge. I just wonder whether a week on, do you feel as confident as you were a week ago that actually Donald Trump's got this under control?

27:54George Osborne: Well, I think it's still entirely within his power to end this conflict whenever he chooses. In terms of power, you know, he is in control of the situation. So he could go on television tonight in America and say, we have, you know, eliminated their Navy, eliminated their air force, eliminated their air defences. You know, we've destroyed their missile capability. Therefore, I'm, you know, calling a halt to the operation. And I think, you know, people would kind of question, well, is that really the case? Weren't your war aims broader and didn't you want to have regime change and so on? But precisely because the war aims were unclear, it's quite hard to sort of pin him down on what he was trying to achieve.

28:31Ed Balls: But if he declares victory now, will people think that's real? Or will they think it's just, does Donald Trump make it up as he goes along?

28:37George Osborne: Well, they might be thinking that in terms of how he got into the conflict. But does Iran remain a kind of serious regional threat? I mean, it is hugely reduced in its missile capabilities. And, you know, I don't know what's happened to its restarted nuclear program, but I imagine that's been a major target of the bombing. So I'm just saying that Trump can still kind of call it all off. It's still the same length as the operation last year, which, you know, was more Israeli-led, but had those American bombers doing the big bunker-busting bombs. That, to my mind, means that he's still in control.

29:15George Osborne: I think where...

29:15Ed Balls: Although if you look at the J.D. Vance positioning now, it is clear that even within the White House, there are some people who worry this is going to be a negative and need to start distancing. And I just wonder whether that's like a counter to the idea that this is all going Trump's way.

29:31George Osborne: The risk for Trump here, and therefore for the Western, is that the Iranians are not able to do what a functioning sovereign state could normally do. They can't get any aircraft in the air. They can't put any boats in the water. Their soldiers are irrelevant. They haven't crossed any international border. What they've got is these drones, and the drones carry quite small payloads of one to two to three kilograms of explosives. Now, you don't want to be hit by one of those. But if you fly them into a big building, it doesn't actually bring the building down. However, what it does, if you fly into the side of a boat or hit an installation like a refinery, you know, it causes a fire, it shuts the refinery down.

30:16George Osborne: And so, you know, they're tactically quite small weapons. They can cause quite a lot of wider damage. And the Iranian tactics appear in the last couple of days to switch to this sort of broader offensive against neighbouring countries, oil and gas facilities. And that's what's leading to the impact on the oil price. So that is definitely the risk for America. You could argue in the big, broad picture from the United States' point of view, it's pushing all of these other Gulf states to be much closer to America. So in terms of kind of big geopolitics, when this all stops, it's going to create a much firmer US presence in the region.

30:51George Osborne: And a lot of these Gulf states, the UAE had a state visit for Vladimir Putin a couple of years ago. Saudi Arabia has been talking to China a lot. And, you know, these countries have sort of looked for other options other than the US. But I think the effect of this conflict is going to be to bind everyone much more closely together. But crucially, and you know, this is, I guess, the point you're getting at, which is, you know, what about the impact on the oil price and the domestic US economy? And is Trump still in control of that? I would argue he is in that as of today, he could call it off. You've raised a very fair point.

31:25In a week's time, maybe not.

31:27Ed Balls: There's no doubt it's going to drive more cooperation between the Gulf states because there have been standoffs over recent years. That's going to change. Whether Israel becomes part of that greater cooperation, only time will tell because I'm not sure whether Netanyahu, with elections coming, has an interest in that. What they're doing in Lebanon is quite shocking. but whether they will see america as a more reliable partner than six months ago or a less reliable partner i think it's still sort of in the balance well they're definitely going to be in the

31:57George Osborne: market for america's air defense systems and iron domes and all that kind of thing they may decide

32:02Ed Balls: that they need their own as well in the greater numbers than they have at the moment on the energy markets first interesting substack from nick butler friend of this podcast used to work with

32:13George Osborne: me in number 10 pointing out that actually one of the people whose memos peter manelson forwarded

32:19Ed Balls: we see from the files yeah that is right pointing out that it takes four or five weeks for a restriction in supply of oil coming out of the gulf starts to impact on the actual oil market because it's only at that point the reserves start to run out whereas on gas because the reserves which are held are much smaller, you see a more immediate impact upon supply and on prices. But if you look at oil futures a year out, oil futures are back down to$70 a barrel in 12 months' time. The markets at the moment don't think this is going to be a long-lasting supply shock in anywhere near the kind of impact we saw in the 1970s or even in the early 2000s.

33:03And so I think at the moment, the markets are thinking that the impact will be more short-lived.

33:08Ed Balls: On the other hand, if you look at kind of global interest rates, people were expecting a Fed cuts. That's still expected, although with less certainty. But the financial markets have now switched from thinking that the Bank of England and the ECB were going to, in the case of the Bank of England, cutting interest rates. In the case of the ECB, keep them on hold. Financial markets now both think the Bank of England and the European Central Bank are going to be raising interest rates to deal with a potential inflation shock in the coming months.

33:37George Osborne: Yeah, and that's having a real impact on ordinary people. There are a lot of people out there who may be in the process of buying a home or remortgaging and quite a lot of the mortgage deals have been suspended or kind of taken away from people. So it's not just the impact in the kind of petrol pump, which I think a lot of the commentary is all about, what does this mean for the price at the pump? And that's the most visible thing because the oil price goes up and therefore it's more expensive to fill up your car. But the actual cost of credit in the economy goes up.

34:04Ed Balls: And if you were Chancellor and in a week's time, the Bank of England changed its mind and said, to deal with an inflation risk, we're now going to raise interest rates. What would you be thinking if they did that?

34:15George Osborne: Well, I would think it was very premature, Sure, given we don't actually know how things are going to play out in the next couple of weeks. And I don't think it's by any means certain. Indeed, I would think the expectation is quite the opposite, that this thing is going to go on for months. I think the expectation is it might come to an end pretty quickly in terms of the military action. Now, whether facilities that have been damaged can be repaired in time, I just I'm not qualified to say. But I think there's an interesting point. I mean, you should probably explain as the economist here what, you know, a central bank could have two responses to this, couldn't it?

34:44George Osborne: It could say, hold on, there's an energy shock. Price of energy is going up. That means the price of other products made with that energy are going up. And therefore, we need to raise rates to deal with higher inflation. And we had that big inflation spike as a result of the Ukraine invasion and its impact on global oil and gas supplies. And central banks were criticized for not putting up rates soon enough. There's another argument, isn't it, that this is a kind of one-off shock to energy prices. and central banks should see through that. And the more likely lasting impact are weaker economies, slower economic growth, and that's a reason to potentially cut rates more than you were going to.

35:25Ed Balls: That is right. And the conventional economic way to think about this, which is, I think, the right way to think about it, is if you have a price shock, a supply shock like this, which pushes up prices for a time-limited period or even in a permanent way, what you shouldn't be doing is trying to raise interest rates to stop that happening and to accept a slowing economy as a price you have to pay because actually this is just a change in relative prices you should see through it i think the problem was when you go back to after the pandemic that was the view that central banks took and they then got into a mindset in 21 22 maybe they got behind the curve maybe it led to a rise in inflation expectations maybe it locked in higher inflation.

36:08Ed Balls: We mustn't make the same mistake again. And I think in financial markets at the moment, and this is reinforced by some of the things said from the Bank of England and the ECB, there is a worry that they may be trying to fight the last war all over again. You know, last time we were behind the curve, let us not get behind the curve this time. Let's do something preemptive. In my view, that would be completely the wrong judgment. I'm totally where you were a moment ago when I asked you that question. The Bank of England should not be doing something right now to deal with a supply shock because of a rise in energy prices.

36:42Ed Balls: And if anything, that might lead to further down the track, bigger cuts in interest rates if they then hit the economy at a time when unemployment is rising and the economy is slowing down. So I'm hoping that markets will kind of calm down on this, but that is a matter for central bank leadership from the ECB and the Bank of England. There is a separate thing there, which is really interesting on the fiscal side. Keir Starmer saying, you know, we'll do what it takes. Are we going to have to have some price cap like Liz Truss introduced on energy bills in the autumn of 2022? I mean, that cost tens and tens of billions of pounds, that price cap.

37:21Ed Balls: Look, it may be a good way politically to help consumers right now. But I think what happened with the Liz Truss debacle in her short-lived time as Prime Minister, it wasn't only what they were doing was unfunded tax cuts. It wasn't only the whole issue around the LTR pensions investment problem. It was also that after the pandemic, when you had a big rise in borrowing to deal with the shock of the pandemic. Two years later, another big rise in borrowing to deal with an energy price hike. If now in 2026, governments, governments like Britain, much higher levels of debt, much more vulnerable financially as far as the markets are concerned, started saying we are in a temporary way going to throw money at another price shock.

38:08Ed Balls: I think the market reaction to that could be bad, very bad indeed. And what we're seeing currently in market prices is a bit of an anticipation of that, as well as hedge funds unwinding their positions. If I was Rachel Reeves, I would be extremely cautious about the prime minister giving the impression that a one-off rise in borrowing to pay for an energy price cap is going to be a good thing to do, because I think the cost to the economy and to our debt service of doing that could be very difficult to deal with.

38:36George Osborne: If people like Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, you know, pretty right-wing in there in different ways, felt that they had to spend tens of billions of pounds subsidizing people's energy bills, a huge government intervention and a huge increase in the size of the state, despite all the protestations that they believed in the opposite. Think of a Labour government, you know, two or three years out from an election, big increase in domestic energy bills, huge pressure from the parliamentary Labour Party to do something and pressure on, you know, an already somewhat beleaguered prime minister and the chancellor attempting to say oh i don't know it's all very difficult we can't really afford it and what about our fiscal credibility i mean i just think the chancellor in that situation is under huge pressure to do so i mean here's a simple question for you first i mean they're not going to go ahead and put up fuel duty by five pence in september i don't know why they're maintaining the fiction that they're going to do that that's currently baked into the government's budget plans and government ministers probably you know you've been interviewing them this week are saying oh you know wait and see and so they're not going to be able to go with that.

39:38George Osborne: So they've already got a hole in their budget. Let's imagine, so it's a bit of a what if, the situation continues to deteriorate in the Middle East, the oil price stays high, it looks like a lasting impact on energy bills. You can't be a Labour Chancellor who says to Keir Starmer, I'm sorry, mate, I can't help you out.

39:58Ed Balls: Look, go back to the Chancellor's spring statement a week ago, in which she started by saying the plan is working. It's all on track, nothing to worry about. At a time when she already knew this turmoil around her was going to destabilise her growth, inflation and fiscal forecasts. If I was her, I would have had a very different tone in that spring statement. But if you were going to move on fuel duty, when the time to do that was last week, they didn't do that because they didn't want to have a fiscal event. But I mean, does that mean we now have to wait? This fuel duty rise comes in in September.

40:33George Osborne: But it's not going to happen, Ed, is it?

40:34Ed Balls: Yeah, but are we going to wait until November before this is announced?

40:38George Osborne: Here's a narrow cast to the small group of Treasury officials who still think it's going to happen. Everyone else knows it isn't. So start doing the numbers because you ain't going to put fuel duty up in September.

40:50Ed Balls: But how do you announce that other than in what we're not allowed to have, which is another fiscal event before November? So they've got themselves into a bit of a hole, but stand back more broadly.

41:00George Osborne: you don't need a fiscal event you can just announce you know just like they did with pubs and whatever i mean when they do the u-turn you just announce the u-turn and then you clear up the numbers at the later event i mean you made the point when we were talking about the spring statement it was actually one of the biggest fiscal events anyway because they were having to just account for previous u-turns well if you're going to do it the orderly time to have

41:20Ed Balls: done it was um last week and that would have got them ahead of things rather than there's a key

41:24George Osborne: Key word there, orderly.

41:27Ed Balls: However, I just think Rachel Reeves will be saying to the Prime Minister, whatever the political pressure, if you think that we can get away with another multi-billion pound, you know, 60, 80 billion pound rise in borrowing to pay off for a one-off cap in bills, there will be turmoil and we will be blown away. And precisely, as you say, because it is a Labour government in that position, which is why what Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves desperately need is for this conflict in the Middle East to be over and for energy prices to return to a more sensible place quickly. And the last thing they want is the Bank of England or anybody else assuming things are going to get worse before they have.

42:06George Osborne: Donald Trump has made it perfectly clear in his very unhelpful, truth social posts, unhealthy for sitting in Downing Street. Keir Starmer has not got the ear of the president when it comes to decisions on the longevity of this conflict. I can't, there's no, I mean, I'm trying to think of any kind of historical precedent. You might go back to Suez and Eisenhower publicly cutting the legs off the British Prime Minister and the French president at the time. But, you know, obviously a wholly different situation and a wholly different kind of president. The American president literally posting in public, sorry, Britain, we don't need your aircraft carrier.

42:44George Osborne: Thanks very much. You know, we don't need people to join wars we've already won. I mean, I can't think of anything like that.

42:49Ed Balls: is quite astonishing. Of course, it worked for Albert Albanese in Australia, and it worked for Mark Carney, but the British relationship with America in not just security and intelligence, but much more widely, is so deep. This is obviously destabilising.

43:04George Osborne: Yeah, but hold on. The difference, Ed, to pick you up there, is Mark Carney and Prime Minister Albanese were not getting an aircraft carrier ready to join in the action, or at least be present in the action. The point here is, although Keir Starmer didn't say it, you know, it was clear that Britain was starting to send and indeed has deployed some military forces. And so there you open yourself up to the American president saying, we don't want you, mate.

43:32Ed Balls: But you have to be open to that with Donald Trump at all times. I mean, in terms of military capacity on the ground, Britain has done far more than Canada, Australia, Germany, or France in the build up to this conflict to be there and ready. But of course, I'll get no credit for that. On the other hand, Keir Starmer...

43:47George Osborne: Is that true about France? Hold on. France has actually got a quite significant naval flotilla going to try and help open up the Straits of Hormuz. And we've got one destroyer that's finally set sail from Portsmouth.

43:59Ed Balls: But I think the British capacity was already there and had already been put into place beforehand, not in terms of naval. I don't understand the situation in terms of ships at all. But in terms of wider capacity and support, I think Britain has done far more than France as well as other NATO countries. That's as I understand it. But look, Keir Starmer will think to himself, the opinion polls are on my side and have moved in my direction. Labour voters, Green voters, Lib Dem voters, all strongly supporting what I'm doing. Conservative voters split exactly equally between support for Keir Starmer and support for the Kemi Bainock do more position.

44:36Ed Balls: Reform supporters just supporting doing more. But Nigel Farage has now done a big U-turn and shifted. I mean, actually pushed into it last Sunday by Robert Jenrick on the Koonsberg show, saying, actually, we shouldn't be involved in these wars. And essentially saying Nigel Farage was wrong to say, we'll do whatever America wants. Reform has shifted. So far, the politics has been moving in Keir Starmer's direction. Actually, we should just hear. This is him responding to Ed Davey in PMQs. The leader of the Conservatives has been competing with the honourable member for Clacton to be Donald Trump's biggest cheerleader.

45:15Ed Balls: And the Prime Minister was right to reject their costly warmongering.

45:22George Osborne: He's right about the leader of the opposition leader reform. Last week, they were urging us to join. This is serious. to join. If they had been leading the country, if they had been leading the country, we'd been a war.

45:35Ed Balls: They've now come to Parliament to say, order, order, order, Prime Minister. I mean, look, if there is a big energy price crisis this summer, it hits living standards and hits inflation, then that's very bad for Keir Starmer. But right now, the opinion polls and his confidence in PMQs suggests to me that he thinks he's in the right place and Donald Trump attacking him in this way is not damaging him.

46:02George Osborne: No, I think I'm sure you're right. And we discussed it, didn't we, last week, the whole kind of legacy of the Iraq war and how that hangs over the left in British politics. Well, maybe the whole British politics. And Keir Starmer's sort of doing the opposite of Tony Blair. In fact, we'll come on to former prime ministers shortly. But, you know, he's rejecting the kind of Blair advice, if that's the right way to put it. You know, you've got to be close to the Americans and he's taking the other view, which is you can say no. But you do pay a price in terms of Britain's ability to influence, well, certainly influence the United States and therefore probably global events.

46:39Ed Balls: Last week, we talked about the Ian Duncan Smith position and then the Michael Howard position. And Kimmy Badenock started out as Ian Duncan Smith. And do you wonder, is she starting to move towards a bit more of a Michael Howard? well, you know, got to be cautious about this. You're telling her, don't do that. Stay in the hard place. Continue to say, I'm backing Donald Trump. It's all going to work out fine. And Kim Starmer's got it wrong.

47:03George Osborne: Well, I think as a leader of the opposition at this point, particularly, it was still a couple of years away from the election. You want to be kind of asking all sorts of questions of why ships aren't ready and why the evacuation flights aren't on time. And, you know, has he spoken to the president about this, that and the other? You don't necessarily want to kind of be out there as the kind of cheerleader in chief for the war, which is what Ian Duncan Smith did at the time of the Iraq war. And by the way, I was someone who absolutely supported the conflict and voted for it as an MP at the time.

47:33George Osborne: I just don't think that's where a leader of the opposition wants to be at this point, and particularly as you have even less influence on events than the prime minister. But there's one observation I make, which is, you would think this whole situation is tailor-made for the Green Party leader. I mean, we were just playing Ed Davey. But, you know, Zach Polanski has been making the weather. He's ahead in the polls over the other centre-left parties. He's just won that seat in Manchester. And this is, you know, classic kind of anti-war territory and he could be addressing big rallies and so on. But he's sort of gone quiet because he's got his own ongoing saga, which is, you know, quite bizarre, which is before he was a green politician and green activist, he was actually a hypnotherapist who claimed that he could increase a woman's breast size through his hypnotherapy.

48:23George Osborne: And he said, in fact, he said on your show when you quizzed him about this back in September, I was misrepresented. I apologized a day later. And now, as of today, it's emerging that that's not the case. There was some sort of BBC undercover investigation that exposed this. and this all kind of rumbles on and I mean first of all tells you quite a bit about Zach Blansky potentially and you know his past and so on but also means the Green Party leader isn't as front and centre of this domestic row about the Middle East at the moment.

48:59Ed Balls: We did talk to him about this on Good Morning Britain in the autumn and on the one hand I didn't think his explanation was compelling on the other hand I could see why he was an effective communicator and he's carried on being quite an effective communicator ever since. The by-election result is a sign of that. But it is true that in the end, if you have these things in your past and you can't properly explain them, they never quite go away. And as Nigel Farage discovered, if you win by-elections and do better in the polls, you then have to answer all the difficult questions anew. And let's see, if Zach Polanski emerges from this new period of exposure and intensive scrutiny still strong, then, you know, he'll be doing well.

49:41Ed Balls: But as you say, he's still got a bit of proof. We're going to take a break and then we're going to carry on that conversation provoked by Tony Blair's intervention last week on Iran and ask, what role should prime ministers play after they've stopped being prime minister in the public life of the nation and the world?

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51:11George Osborne: Welcome back. So a week ago, Tony Blair at what was supposed to be a private Chatham House only event, I think for Jewish News, where he was being interviewed by Robert Peston, your fellow band member. He said on stage at this event, and then it subsequently leaked, despite those Chattermouse rules, he criticised Keir Starmer's approach to the Iran conflict. We've just been discussing that. He basically said Britain should be there when America needs us because when we need America, we need them to be there.

51:44Ed Balls: He actually said we should have backed America from the very beginning.

51:47George Osborne: And I thought it was actually not a bad neat encapsulation of his entire Iraq war argument all these years later. But it kind of begged the question, we were debating it, weren't we, when we were discussing what to do on the podcast about, you know, former prime ministers weighing in to current politics. So it kind of begs the question, you know, what is the right and the wrong thing for a former British prime minister to do? And I think we've got more alive at the moment than we've had, well, certainly in my lifetime. Let's just have a, let's remind people of some of these interventions. We've got a little medley here.

52:24George Osborne: A majority of voters opted to leave the European Union. I believe then, as I do now, that was an historic mistake. And I've watched with growing concern as the British people have been led to expect a future that seems to be unreal and over-optimistic.

52:43Ed Balls: There are lots of people in Britain who are cheering President Trump on and he want him to see the BBC. There's no logical reason that I can see why we shouldn't send some peaceful ground forces there to show our support, our constitutional support for a free, independent Ukraine.

53:03George Osborne: Our belief is that the only long-term solution to growth, productivity and better public services is the full embrace of this technology revolution, which prior to generative AI was already a revolution. And now I think you've got with generative AI a revolution on top of the revolution existing.

53:21Ed Balls: This is information that was 15 years old that is now becoming available to us. And it's remarkable that our checks and balances in the system have not found out about this before now.

53:31George Osborne: So is this all brand new, these voices from the past weighing in?

53:37Ed Balls: There was a great piece by Rob Hutton in the House magazine a few years ago about this, where he quoted Stanley Baldwin's promise when he stopped being prime minister in 1937. And Baldwin said, once I leave, I leave. I'm not going to speak to the man on the bridge and I'm not going to spit on the deck. And I think you can argue that Edward Heath stayed in the House of Commons for a long time in quite a salty way. It was called the Incredible Sulk. But if you remember when Harold Macmillan, former Prime Minister, Lord Macmillan, criticised Margaret Thatcher on the economy in the 1980s from the Lords, it was like a big and unusual event, a former Prime Minister criticising Margaret Thatcher.

54:20Ed Balls: And I don't really think that she did the same to John Major because Harold Wilson had passed away. But Dennis Healy, Jim Callahan were much more cautious in the approach they took to their Labour successors. and it has changed. I wonder whether John Major in the 2016 referendum wasn't the first to kind of go full frontal the way we heard in that clip. And it's obviously caught on. I mean, it could be because all these prime ministers just think that their successes are just no good anymore. Although I bet you every prime minister in the last 200 years has thought that their successes weren't as good as they were.

54:58Ed Balls: It could be, as you say, that there's a lot more of them and they're egging each other on. It could be that, like with Brexit or the pandemic, massive events, they feel they have to say something. It might also be because they're all younger and they don't feel as though they want to retire and they still think they've got something to offer. And therefore, you know, pretty much every other job, if you look at you, George, you know, you have left being chancellor. You go on to do other jobs around the world. It's harder to do that as prime minister. you have to have security you've been in that job maybe if that happens to you younger then um you kind of want to stay involved and so just trying to work out why it's happening so often

55:46George Osborne: um what do you think well but partly we live in a much more intrusive media age so you can't just sort of retire to your you know country estate or whatever like former prime ministers used to do I think it's, I mean, I think they're all slightly different, aren't they? I mean, I think John Major, first of all, the referendum, it was such a unique event. People were entitled to sort of come out of the retirement to make their view clear. It wasn't only a debate held between the active politicians at the time. And in fact, I would say one of the most important but underreported events, which I remember at the time screaming at the broadcasters about from inside Downing Street, was John Major and Tony Blair's joint visit to Northern Ireland, pointing out that Northern Ireland would be a big issue in Brexit, which was basically not covered at all during the referendum campaign.

56:35George Osborne: So I think the referendum campaign is somewhat different.

56:39Ed Balls: And Gordon Brown did the same in 2014, didn't he? But again, that was quite an unusual thing for a British Prime Minister to intervene in a vote. That was the Scottish Convention referendum.

56:48George Osborne: And that was absolutely the invitation of people like myself and David Cameron and Alistair Darling, who were all involved in the campaign. I think the, you know, Tony Blair is, I think, a bit of a unique case because he set up the Tony Blair Institute. We've had nothing like it in British politics before and we probably won't have again. And it's, you know, a thousand people and it's influencing and advising all these governments all around the world. I guess I was a bit surprised that he went semi-public in his criticism of Keir Starmer.

57:22Ed Balls: And he must have known what he was doing. I mean, if you say that even at the Chatham House event, I mean, he must have known there was a good chance that would appear in the newspapers and allow Keir Starmer and other ministers to say, we've learned the lessons from Iraq and you haven't. I don't know.

57:37George Osborne: I mean, it's an odd. I guess if you were doing it, why would you do it at a Jewish news event on Chatham House rules? I mean, you must have sort of thought. I mean, if you were going to make it public, you think would have chosen a more obvious way to do it. And the odd thing is, you know, it's not like he doesn't have roots into Downing Street. I mean, I don't know if Keir Starmer speaks to him at all. I mean, that's a good question. I don't know whether they ever speak. But, you know, people like Jonathan Powell, who we've been talking about on this program, you know, he's the National Security Advisor and he was Tony Blair's Chief of Staff.

58:10So it's not as if Tony Blair doesn't have roots into the kind of current foreign policy

58:15George Osborne: establishment. I'm not, I guess, I'm not, you pointed out Harold Macmillan's attack on Margaret Thatcher, Ted Heath was a constant thorn in Margaret Thatcher's side while she was leader. I just wonder if it's so new. I don't know. Maybe it's just the opportunities there because everyone can tweet and everyone can sort of self-post and, you know, you do a private event and the words can be immediately leaked. And, you know, it doesn't have to be a journalist in the room who breaks the kind of Chatham House rules. There's just any member of the audience can do it.

58:48Ed Balls: I have an alternative theory, which links to the fact there's a lot of them around and the fact they are younger, which is in politics for everybody, but especially if you're prime minister, the question is, how will history see you? What will be the first line of your obituary? And if you have more years to influence and shape that after you've become prime minister, the temptation to try and change the narrative about you shifts. And if you think of different people we've talked about, John Major, remembered for Black Wednesday, Gordon Brown, remembered for the global financial crisis. both of them I would say from a lower position have seen their reputation rise and that's partly been because of the way they've conducted themselves Gordon kind of returning to the sort of old kind of moral advocacy about women around the world and education but also the two-child limit here in Britain now more recently Peter Mandelson.

59:46Ed Balls: Tony Blair on the other hand starts from a much higher standing in the opinion polls when he leaves and then that goes down a lot after he's prime minister, all because of Iraq and the Chilcot inquiry. And you have to see everything he's done there since the Tony Blair Institute intervening on the pandemic, trying to be part of the Middle East Board of Peace, all trying to shift the narrative about Tony Blair's place in history to kind of to make it about something else or to try and change how people perceive Iraq. Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, not sure that they, I mean, they went out in a bad way.

1:00:23Ed Balls: I'm not sure they've done anything to help themselves. Theresa May, she went out in a difficult way on the European Union negotiations. She hasn't chosen to intervene on Europe, but she has around violence against women, trafficking. She's been much more careful. Rishi Sunak now writing a column in the Sunday Times, judicious in his interventions. I would say his standing is on the way up rather than down. Then, of course, there's David Cameron. He's the only one who's gone back into an active public service role within the British government as foreign secretary. I think he thought he came out of that well.

1:00:58Ed Balls: But if you were to say to people at the moment, David Cameron, I think they would still say, the guy who was prime minister took us out of the European Union by losing a referendum. And I'm not sure that anything's happened subsequently, has changed that narrative and that place in history. But what you've got is a lot of former prime ministers all trying to reshape the narrative about them to varying degrees yeah i don't think

1:01:22George Osborne: there's anything wrong with that you know i very regularly say yes to um programs which sort of look back at the years i was in government not they're not necessarily about me or they'll be about like the coalition time or the referendum or because i think you know if you're not trying to defend what you did and explain what you did and uh trying to get people to understand what you did you can't expect anyone else to do that on your behalf i mean i think it's a mistake not to comment on your time in office that's not the same as commenting on what's going on now although

1:01:50Ed Balls: on this podcast george you were former chancellor me a former covenant minister chancellor we both comment on what happened back then and what is happening now so we we are we i mean look neither of us were prime minister we don't spend our lives with security we don't have the same position that a former prime minister has.

1:02:08George Osborne: But we do do this. I'll put it this way. I don't think your interest in how the country is governed, the big kind of policy issues of the day, disappears the day you stop being the prime minister or indeed the day you stop being a cabinet minister.

1:02:24Ed Balls: I wonder if what we do is we talk about what is happening, should happen, and in a pro-politics way, try and talk about what is the right thing to do rather than if all you do is ex-post judgment popping up and saying, well, you got that wrong, maybe that's a bit negative.

1:02:41George Osborne: Well, there's a risk we're going to sound a bit self-serving. I draw the distinction, I think, in all the prime ministers. I think there is a distinction. There are quite a lot of prime ministers, some of whom, you know, I know really well and I like and I really admire John Major, for example, personally, and he was the first person I worked for. But, you know, I think a lot of the prime ministers you're talking about are quite transitional figures who are not going to be big features of British history books in 100 years' time. But one or two are big figures, and quite clearly Margaret Thatcher is, and you can certainly argue that Tony Blair is maybe not as big as Margaret Thatcher, but a big figure.

1:03:21George Osborne: And that's slightly different. I think the kind of noise around them, their role after they leave, is somewhat different to the kind of prime ministers who are a bit here today, gone tomorrow.

1:03:34Ed Balls: Very interesting. There was a tweet from John Rental today. Folk memory is a selective and cruel thing. And this is him saying what each prime minister will be remembered for, the one thing they'll be remembered for. So Chamberlain appeasement, Eden Suez, Wilson the pound in your pocket, Ted Heath three-day week, Margaret Thatcher the Falklands, John Major Black Wednesday, Tony Blair Iraq, Gordon Brown financial Christ, David Cameron EU referendum, Theresa May Brexit deadlock. He says, Boris Johnson got Brexit done. I think he might be remembered for Partygate. Liz Trust, midi budget. And then he then says, but Rishi Sunak.

1:04:12Ed Balls: Not clear what Rishi Sunak's one thing is. I'm not sure whether John's right about all of that is. It is interesting.

1:04:20George Osborne: The de-industrialisation, or you'd say the minor strike, wouldn't you? I think more than the Falklands, actually. Or maybe it's two things. It's Falklands and the minor strike.

1:04:28Ed Balls: You can't have two in this game. You have to have one.

1:04:30George Osborne: Yeah, I would say she's much more important for her impact on Britain's kind of domestic economy.

1:04:36Ed Balls: I mean, Gordon Brown will be remembered for being chancellor in some ways, I think more than... He's more, isn't he, seen as a kind of partnership with, it's the sort of Blair Brown years, isn't it?

1:04:44George Osborne: I think that's probably right.

1:04:46Ed Balls: And how about Rishi Senna?

1:04:46George Osborne: I think he'd be more remembered for being chancellor during the pandemic. I think there was a moment when the kind of people, millions, tens of millions of people were like, oh my God, what is happening in our world, in our country? you know with all the best will in the world they looked at boris johnson and wondered whether he knew what he was doing and then they were enormously reassured that the guy next door

1:05:05Ed Balls: did seem to know what he was doing and for david cameron losing the eu referendum yeah but i think

1:05:09George Osborne: david cameron actually you know the co the very existence of a coalition will turn out potentially as our politics gets more complicated to um to have been a precursor of the of a world to come

1:05:22Ed Balls: maybe but not as big as losing the eu referendum really sorry george he should have listened to I've said this very many times. And Tony Blair, will it be the Middle East Board of Peace? Will it be pandemic vaccine advice? Will it be making money around the world? No, it's going to be the Iraq war.

1:05:41George Osborne: And new Labour, remember? Yeah, that's true.

1:05:46Ed Balls: And keeping you laugh out for 10 years. The first line of your obituary. Keeping you at a number 10 for 10 years. Yeah, well, I was never a number 10. That's the point. I was in number 10 far more when Tony Blair was there than I ever was afterwards. That is it for this week's podcast.

1:06:05George Osborne: Yeah, we're going to be back on Monday with Ex Minister's Questions, where we answer your questions about the various political topics that you raise with us.

1:06:12Ed Balls: If you can't wait till Monday, you can get our EMQs early and ad-free by becoming a member of our Kitchen Cabinet or a Gold subscriber.

1:06:19George Osborne: And if you join our Kitchen Cabinet, of course, you not only get the ad-free version of EMQs, but also our main show and you get a members only chat and you get the political currency mug and you get our bi-weekly newsletter. I mean, what an amazing bargain.

1:06:33Ed Balls: Our next newsletter out on Monday, I'm going to be discussing Baron Noir, When the Cranes Fly South and other kind of cultural moments. George will be talking about politics and what's changed between our podcast and the beginning of next week.

1:06:48George Osborne: Yes, which potentially is quite a lot. So there'll be lots of things to read in that and we're going to see you on Monday for EMQs.

1:06:55Ed Balls: See you then.

1:07:03George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

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