What if: Obama versus Trump 2028?

0:14This is Political Coquancy with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

0:27happy new year welcome to 2026 the new year is underway we though are not going to be talking about uh the future we're going to be talking about the past we're going to do some what ifs start as we need to go on whose idea was this uh that is what we're doing and um that's what it says here and that's what we're doing so there we are what a future orientated approach this show is taking you're right i mean anything to say about the future before we move back to the past any new year's resolutions for you in 2020 i always have the same kind of new year's resolutions which is you know try and be a bit healthier try and lose a bit of weight try and go to the gym a bit more i mean they're not i wouldn't say they're the most uh interesting ones is that it yeah i think so new job applications monthly weekly you know always up for those mine is i think i would like to go out more oh that's all right you can come with me well the thing is the thing is i was thinking about the last year oh no seriously i'll take should we go to some plays together or that is my point you know i'm listening to music and i'm reading books you can come with me to the opera i i actually went to the opera just before christmas i went to aria dante at the royal Opera House, which is absolutely superb.

1:37And I did go to Handel's Messiah, the Handel Festival. But I don't go to the theatre enough, other than when my daughter's in plays or written plays or acting. And I feel as though, I don't know what it is, I feel as though there's a cultural gap in me. I should make more effort. I quite often am looking for a theatre partner. So yeah. I know, but would you be on time or would you be late? Well, I'm always on time for cutting up. Oh, I see. So it's only the podcast where you're always late. I know the whole play isn't going to wait for me. Yeah. So our first. Unlike the podcast. So our first what if.

2:09How much of my life would I have saved in the last year if George Osborne has been on time every week for the last 52 weeks? Sometimes I'm here before you. Well, that did happen once. Shall we get on with our retrospective? We should also easily explain. We did. You know, these are what ifs. We ask historical what ifs from recent British political history. You know, if you study history, as I did at university, it's really frowned upon what-if questions. Why do historians frown upon it? I don't know. It's such a kind of key question often because it forces you to think about, are there really big forces in history in which individuals are irrelevant?

2:45Or is it down to individuals and luck or bad luck or, you know, random events? Robert Harris, the novelist, has written some really good what-if historical novels. It's enjoyable, but it also makes you think. It does drive some historical rigour. But anyway, it's very frowned upon by the academic profession. Well, if it's frowned upon, then we're going to do it. Yes. Let's start with a question from Billy. Bit of painful, wishful thinking here from Billy, from my point of view anyway. Hi both. Hope you're well. My what if question is about the 2016 Brexit referendum and what followed. Let's hypothesise that the result was 52-48, but with Remain coming out victorious.

3:24and David Cameron doesn't resign the next morning. After working through what you think would have happened in the ensuing years, who do you think would be the Prime Minister today? Love the podcast and happy Christmas. So isn't the answer to this question really clear, that the civil war which overtook the Conservative Party in the four years after the referendum, it would have just happened more quickly, that the splits in the Tory party would have opened up faster, there would have been huge numbers of Conservative backbenchers and frontbenchers and members who would have felt incredibly angry that David Cameron and George Osborne had kept us in the European Union against their wishes and against the campaign.

4:03There would have been a Eurosceptic leader of the Conservative Party faster. So you wouldn't have had David Cameron being replaced by Theresa May. It would have been David Cameron hounded out and quickly replaced by Boris Johnson. It would have just telescoped history and would have avoided the pain of the period afterwards for the Conservative Party politically, but the country would have then quite soon been into a new government with a new prime minister wanting a new referendum. Well, I think a lot depends on the result. So if you take Billy's question, you know, as he puts it, which is 52-48 the other way.

4:41In other words, it was a narrowly won vote for Remain. I think a lot of what you say is true. So there would have been a very, very strong claim from the defeated Brexiteers who, remember, were not expecting to win at all. And so to sort of narrowly lose would have itself been seen as, in many ways, a kind of big political win for them, even if they didn't get it over the line in terms of the actual results. And there would have been a lot of complaining about the way the campaign was fought, the role that people like myself played, the Treasury, the Bank of England. We had a lot of this anyway, even when they won.

5:17But you would have had it more so within the Conservative Party. And within the Labour Party, of course, Jeremy Corbyn was still the leader. So it's not like they would have necessarily just accepted the result. And I think if you kind of fast forward to the next general, you know, David Cameron would have stayed on, I think. I don't think people necessarily would have challenged his leadership because he said he was stepping down. So people would have waited for the leadership contest in 2017. In his kitchen before the 2015 election, he had said he wouldn't serve another full term. So they knew, I mean, so...

5:48I don't think there would have been a move to kind of get rid of him in the autumn. I think, by the way, if he'd stayed on with the actual result we had, there would have been a move to get him in the autumn. But I think if he'd won the referendum or we'd run the referendum, the contest would have come in 2017, 2018. The most likely candidates would have been myself versus Boris Johnson. So what do you do in that circumstance? You know, you've had a referendum, which you've just won, on the promise of a renegotiation, which you've not delivered, a manifesto to kind of deliver change, which hasn't happened, but you've just won.

6:21In that period afterwards, still as chancellor, do you have to show that the status quo is not enough and go hard on reform? Do you have to switch to being a more sceptic chancellor to try and kind of close off the advantage of Boris Johnson? and what is your strategy in that circumstance? Well, to win the contest or to... I mean, I think, first of all... Win the leadership contest. In terms of actual policy, I think not unlike the Scottish referendum, you want to nod towards the feelings that have been expressed in the referendum and acknowledge the people's discontent, either with the way things are or specifically with the European Union.

6:54But that's thinking about the general election and you've got a leadership election to fight first. Well, I think you then... And you know that in the membership of the Conservative Party, they are much, much more sceptic than the voters. Well, I think that... It's not 52-48. I'm not sure that's true, actually, Because remember, two thirds of Tory MPs voted Remain. I think a lot of Conservative members voted Remain. Remember, Theresa May wins the contest. There wasn't a contest. Well, she does actually against Andrea. Well, sorry, you're quite right. Well, Andrea led some... Pulls out. She's colonnated.

7:22There's never a contest in the country. Can you say colonnated? She's crowned. Yeah, I think you can. I remember my own local party at the time. They were very pro-Therese May. They were quite anti-Boris Johnson. They were actually quite sceptical about leaving the EU. and it was all a bit of a shock. So I think it's only the Tory party becomes much more Brexity with the results and with the changes and all these Tory MPs suddenly going like, oh, you know, although I voted Remain, I now see the benefits of Brexit. I think, you know, it's an interesting, I mean, God knows what would happen in the leadership contest.

7:52I always thought that Boris Johnson would be very hard to beat in a leadership contest, but you can grind out a win. You know, the establishment of the Conservative Party would have, I think, rallied behind the kind of Cameron continuity candidate as they did with Theresa May. So we did have a kind of dry run, well, not dry run, a real run of it. But if Romain had won kind of 60%, 40%, which was more like the Scottish referendum, I think that's very different because I think although they got close, the kind of feeling was it was still pretty decisive. There would always been a kind of a bit like there is with the SNP, a kind of call to have another referendum, but people would have said, well, that's settled.

8:30Don't forget, Nick Clegg fights the 2010 election on a Lib Dem promise to have a referendum precisely because he hopes to win it, I don't know, 60-40 and say it's resolved for a generation. So you're right. And that's, you know, I don't think Billy's question is thinking it's going to go from 52-48 lead to 60-40. So I think that you're right. But actually that wasn't where we were. Yeah. No, look, the fundamental thing, however, regardless whether it's, you know, a 52 % win for Romain or a 60 % win for Romain or whatever, is that Britain would have been in the European Union. and, you know, all sorts of things would then have played out.

9:06I suggested, though, you lose. There's a new government with a commitment to a new referendum. Boris Johnson would have claimed, having won the leadership election, that it was a con, that there'd been some kind of sleight of hand. But we would have, the referendum would have teased out more of the issues. You would have actually had more of a kind of conversation about Britain's members of the EU. You wouldn't have had the mass migration, which was happening right then into Germany. You weren't in the immediate aftermath of the Eurozone crisis. and Covid was coming and who knows how that might have affected him.

9:35Of course the irony is in my scenario Boris Johnson becomes the leader of the second referendum campaign rather than Tony Blair and Keir Starmer which is I still feel as though you've kind of ducked my question. Let's assume leadership election in 2018 it was 52-48 Boris Johnson is your opponent the European issue is not resolved it's pre-Covid what do you have to do yourself as the candidate to close off Boris Johnson it's not enough to be continuity and establishment. No, no, no. I think you... How do you deal with the European issue? Two-fold. One is you have to have prominent Brexiteers on your team.

10:09I might have had around me people like Michael Gove running alongside me supporting my leadership. Although, of course, you know, he himself wanted to be leader and his ambition was suddenly revealed. So he might well be have been in the contest. So do you have to offer him Chancellor? I don't know. I don't know. The key thing is you don't offer the jobs in advance. Isn't that the key to winning one of these contests? Well, Boris Johnson try to offer the required urged by Michael Gove. If Michael Gove wanted Boris Johnson to offer the chancellor job to Andrea Leadsom, wouldn't Michael Gove have also wanted to have the chancellor job offered to him by you?

10:42Yes, but it's generally a good thing not to offer these jobs in advance. You know, you buy the vote of the one person who gets offered the chancellorship, but you lose the votes of all the people who want to be chancellors. What I'm asking is, do you have to move to a harder reform position? In particular, do you have to throw free movement into question? I think you probably do end up saying we have to acknowledge the anger and the mood out there in the country and we will push for these further changes inside the EU. Very interesting. Billy, great start to our what if. Let's do one more before we have a break.

11:15This second question is from Ian. Hi, Ellen George, Ian McCord, Independent Councillor at West Northamstack Council. You recently did a What If Mrs Thatcher Had Fought the 1992 election. I think a more interesting question would have been, what if John Major lost the 1992 election? Black Thursday would have been a Labour event. The Chancellor, John Smith, would have died in office. Would there have been new Labour? Would Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have had their project? Who would have led the Conservative? What would have happened to the Maastricht Treaty? Would we have had a Cohn's hotline?

11:46with Kinnock of being a one-term PM. I think it's fascinating given what did happen, but what may have happened that just 100 ,000 people had made a different decision. Well, I think this is really interesting because I think this is actually one of the big sliding doors moments of modern British politics because, of course, Kinnock did come very close to winning and certainly all the polls on the day and the BBC exit poll famously said he would win. So what would have happened? Well, first of all, Neil Kinnock, Prime Minister, end of the Thatcher years, John Major, just a tail end who saw out the final Thatcher term.

12:19Well, let's start with the government. You should have had Neil Kinnock as prime minister. Almost immediately, the ERM crisis would have happened, possibly even quicker than it did under John Major because of kind of general questions about the fiscal soundness and the like of a Labour government. And so the opposition, the Tory opposition would have said, my God, look, you put Labour in for the first time in 13 years. And look, we have a full on economic crisis and a run on the pound and so on. And it could be, given that it probably this Labour government wouldn't have had a very big majority.

12:51It would have really struggled from that point onwards. And until then, until Tony Blair, I think I'm right in saying no Labour government was ever reelected for a full second term in the history of the Labour Party. So, you know, it had been the norm until then that you only had these kind of one term or one and a half term Labour governments. So the Kinnock government would have been hit by that economic storm, Black Wednesday. Then, you know, I think the other things that are interesting, some people say is a very good thing and others not, is I think some of the kind of key bits of the Thatcher legacy, the Thatcher settlement, which Tony Blair and Gordon Brown accepted.

13:27Like we're not going to reopen trade union reform, for example. Those things, I think, were much less settled in 1992. The privatization of some of the key industries had happened only recently. And of course, it was John Major who went on to privatize the railways and the water companies and so on. So that wouldn't have happened. I think maybe the kind of Thatcher legacy would have been less entrenched as a result of that Labour government. I think maybe the Tory party would have moved more wholly in a Eurosceptic direction earlier, because it was really a kind of rebellion within the Conservative Party thereafter.

14:02Within the Conservative Party, although that wouldn't be where the real action was, it would have been within the Labour Party, there have been two observations. I mean, first of all, I think looming much larger would have been, look, we got rid of Margaret Thatcher and then we had an election defeat. What a disaster that was. You know, John Major already had Margaret Thatcher as a self-described backseat driver at the time. But the whole, like, what on earth did we do getting rid of Margaret Thatcher just before that general election? And that would have kind of weighed much more heavily. And then I think it would have been the kind of Thatcher.

14:32It wouldn't actually have been the people who fought that 92 contest for the premiership against John Major, like Ken Clarke and Douglas Hurd, who would have featured in the future Tory leadership contest. I think it would have been the kind of Michael Portillo's, William Haig, Francis Maud, Peter Lilly. They were the young Thatcher guns at the time. And they would have been the kind of we've got to get back to the blue flame. and I think they would have had a reasonable chance of winning the 97 election precisely because Kinnock would have been landed with the Black Wednesday fiasco. People say, was that an election to lose, not to win?

15:07I always think anybody who's ever spent any time in politics will always reply to that question. Of course not. That if you are a politician, you would always rather win and be in power and deal with events rather than thinking actually that was the one to lose and let them pick up the pieces and so I've never kind of gone along with that argument but if there was any election which was the one to lose in the post-war period it was the 1992 election because it would have been a catastrophe for Labour there's kind of talk around you know would there have been some clever plan to do some kind of realignment in the ERM you know that Will Hutton was speaking to John Smith he was speaking to David Ward, he was speaking to Neil Kinnock, and maybe there was something they would have done.

15:52No way. That's all for the Byrds. Partly, I think, because there would have been huge caution. Gordon Brown, Tony Blair would have been saying to be Labour, the devaluing party in the ERM is such a bad political signal. We can't afford to do that. But also, I don't think... They would have been middle ranking members of the cabinet. I'm not even sure they would have been in that conversation in Downing Street? Because Kinnick's right-hand person would have been John Smith. That's true. But Gordon Brown was trade and industry. Tony Blair was employment. They were both in economic jobs and they were influential.

16:26But I don't think that John Smith or Neil Kinnick either would have thought that Labour devaluing in the ERM in 1992 would be the right thing to do. But even if they'd done it, I think it would have actually just hastened the Black Wednesday to do more and more quickly. And so you are right that it is, for John Major, a terrible day. Neil Kinnock and John Smith were as committed to the ERM, the economic fallout of, you know, defending the pound and the humiliation. And this was from politicians who saw their destiny in Europe would have been really, really bad. And so I think it marks the whole Kinnock prime ministership.

17:01I think John Smith almost certainly goes as chancellor and maybe more quickly than Norman Lamont went 92 to 93. John Smith didn't owe Neil Kinnock or Neil Kinnock oh John Smith in the way that John Major was in debt to Norman Lamont and wanted to support him for a period before he finally let him go. That was because Norman Lamont had run his leadership campaign. I think as a consequence I think it's likely that Neil Kinnock would have chosen Gordon Brown to be Chancellor. He might have chosen Tony Blair be one of the two. I think he's going to choose Gordon Brown. What that means is all of the...

17:35You don't think maybe you know I've got rid of one kind of reassuring Scottish bank manager can I have another one? Well I'm not sure who that was at the time i mean well you know john smith replaced by gordon brown might have looked a bit same if you're trying to signal a change in direction perhaps i mean who would have been the foreign secretary in the kinnock government who was the shadow foreign secretary pre-92 you won't get it no go on gerald kaufman oh yes yes gerald kaufman actually i did yes isn't that amazing but i mean i think if neil kinnock chooses i mean you know the person who was against the policy was brian gould i don't think kinnock would have done that let's assume he chooses Blair or Brown, either of them then has to go through the pain of the Lamont-Clark tax rises.

18:17And so that is a kind of terribly difficult thing to do as a Labour Chancellor, to repair the fiscal hole in the way the Conservatives had to do. And I think you're right that probably ends that person's chance of high office later, and probably also Labour had gone to lose a 97 election, and they're out for at least a parliament and maybe longer. So absolutely the election to lose, even though nobody would have thought that at the time. On the Conservatives, just to finish on that. I'll just say, just on Labour, before you move on, of course, at exactly the same time, basically, Bill Clinton's getting elected in America.

18:50And, you know, I don't want to bring contemporary politics into it, but there's obviously quite a lot of people on the left a bit disappointed with the Starmer government's performance. You could imagine the kind of Kinnock government really struggling. And there was such a hope and expectation after all these Thatcher years that you'd have this Labour government. And it would have been struggling for the reasons we describe. And over the Atlantic, there would have been this fresh-faced Clinton. And they would have been like, why are we not like that? Why is this Labour government struggling? And look at these New Democrats.

19:17They called themselves the New Democrats, of course, in advance of New Labour. So I think there would have been a lot of soul-searching inside Labour of like, which was had then in opposition, but obviously easier because they're just lost to say, we've got to change, we've got to be more New Labour. When you won, it's of course much harder to affect internal change? The problem is Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as the modernisers in 1992 after the defeat, whose argument was Neil Kinnock and John Smith didn't face up to the big economic choices. They didn't make the tough decisions. They didn't follow the Clinton example.

19:50The problem is in government, one of the two of them is doing huge tax rises, almost certainly. They're certainly part of a government doing that. The economy, although it turns out to grow more strongly, doesn't feel like that in 92, 93 into 1994. They are, I think, hugely on the defensive. And don't forget that if it's not Neil Kinnock, if Neil Kinnock stands aside and Tony Blair becomes prime minister, then he's ending up dealing with the murder of Jamie Bolger as a prime minister rather than defining tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime from opposition in that period. I think on the Conservatives, you are, look, it's a European crisis, right?

20:25The ERM. So it must accelerate your scepticism. On the other hand, people... And opposition to the Maastricht Treaty, which has already, of course, been a feature of the conservative years. But you would have thought that if John Major goes quickly, the people who thought they had a chance would have been Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, but they're on the wrong side of the European argument. Who else is it then? But remember, they've lost... I mean, Heseltine has lost to Major in that recent contest. And I think he might be like the previous era. And it would have been like, let's turn to the next generation.

20:55Yeah, but the trouble is Michael Portillo and William Hague only really emerge as cabinet ministers, 92 to 97. In 92, they're not really... Yeah, but they would have been shadow cabinet members who probably would have taken the... I mean, you know, if you look at kind of history, it's often the younger shadow cabinet members who make a name for themselves because they take... The old people, the older guard who had been in the Thatcher cabinets would not have done so well in opposition. But hang on, John Major is the young guy who emerges in 1990. He's the chancellor of the Exchequer. Tony Blair emerges in 94, could have been Gordon Brown.

21:33He was, you know, shadow employment. I mean, at that time, Portillo and Hague were much, much smaller figures politically. Wouldn't it have been Redwood, might have thought, or Forsyth or Rifkin? Yes, I agree with you. Those were Lilly. They were bigger political figures than Portillo Hague in that period. Certainly maybe William Haig. In 92, I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. William Haig is actually Portillo's loss of his seat in 97 that propels Haig to the kind of top. But I think generally in opposition, the younger stars come forward and the people who've been in the cabinet struggle a bit more in opposition.

22:10Very interesting. Thank you very much indeed to Ian. We'll take a break and then we'll come back for another What If after this.

22:27Welcome back. Now our next question is from Rob. What if the Conservative Party members had elected Rishi Sunak over Liz Truss? I think the country would be in a better economic position because he knew the need to grasp inflation before it got out of control and raise taxes such as national insurance. The cost of living wouldn't have been so severe and perhaps the Conservatives would still be in power. I would love to hear your thoughts and I really enjoy your discussions. Thank you. So you avoid the Liz Truss quasi-Kwarteng disaster. You don't have that wild autumn 2022 budget. You don't ignore the OBR, sat the permanent secretary and try to persuade the financial markets that borrowing for tax cuts is a growth plan.

23:15So that is definitely avoided. On the other hand, Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister in 2022, a bit like Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister a few weeks later, still faces a cost of living squeeze. He faces the small boats crisis. He faces the post-pandemic very high NHS waiting lists. But I think the other factor is that he is also under much more pressure politically in the Conservative Party. The advantage of Liz Truss is it's sort of a firewall between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. Rishi Sunak comes in with Jeremy Hunt to solve the problems which Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng gave the Conservative Party in the country.

24:01Whereas if that hadn't happened, wouldn't Rishi Sunak, as the Prime Minister, have been much more front and centre within Parliament, the Conservative who got rid of Boris Johnson and therefore the sense of betrayal and kind of disloyalty and anger towards him within conservative circles in Parliament would have been more acute. And therefore, if anything, he would have had a harder time as Prime Minister with his cabinet. But fundamentally, it doesn't make any difference to the election result. And Labour still wins in 2024. Well, a bit kind of disappointingly, I'm going to agree with you, really.

24:38So I think, first of all, you know, unlike these other what ifs, he does become Prime Minister a month later. So it's not like the ones we've been speculating about, which is, you know, well, what if Neil Kinnock had become Prime Minister? I mean, Rishi Sunak does become Prime Minister a month later. And so you have to ask yourself, as you are, what would be fundamentally different about the Sunak premiership a month earlier? Now, you would not have had the Liz Truss moment and the quasi-quartung mini budget. Which is a gift to Labour in 2024, but I'm not sure you need it to win. So I think, you know, fundamentally, it would mean that the questions of economic competence, there'd definitely be some tiredness with the Conservative regime and, you know, the cost of living issues would have been exactly as they were.

25:19But you wouldn't have had this, you know, and by the way, you kind of trashed the economy in a single day. But I think fundamentally, Sunak would have faced the same problems he faced, which was he's inheriting the legacy from Boris Johnson, the COVID years, the cost of living crisis, partly driven by the war in Ukraine. I think he fundamentally makes this kind of crucial, in my view, mistaken decision at the beginning of his premiership, his actual premiership, which is not to distance himself from Boris Johnson. Even though he is the man who brings Boris Johnson down. Remember, he's the guy who resigns as Chancellor of the Exchange.

25:53And that is even more likely if there'd not been Trusquartek in between. That gave him an excuse. Right. But, you know, the biggest... Because he could have distanced from the past in a more general way. You know, in fact, he had a better platform when he did become Prime Minister because he could distance himself both from Liz Truss and say, I warned about all this. so you can trust me on the economy. And I resigned from Boris Johnson's government as Chancellor Exchequer and precipitated his downfall because I was fed up with the ethics. But he doesn't do any of those things. And he kind of plays safe in trying to kind of keep the party together.

26:27And I don't think he would have, like, run against Boris Johnson. It would have been harder for him because he was the guy who wielded the knife with Sajid Javits. So you might have had more of the kind of poison. Who's the appointing this Chancellor, by the way? It wouldn't have been Hunt. No, it wouldn't have been. He inherited Jeremy Hunt because Jeremy Hunt was brought in by Liz Truss to stabilise things after Kwasi Kwarteng. And then she's gone within days of Jeremy Hunt being appointed. I remember Jeremy telling me he didn't really know Rishi Sunak very well. So who would he have appointed?

26:57I think he was, you know, who ended up being in his kind of senior members of his cabinet. Dominic Raab. Dominic Raab, who helped run his leadership contest. Oliver Dowden became his deputy prime minister. James Cleverley Suala Bravman Priti Patel these were all pretty senior people in his administration so you know it could have been any of them I mean I don't by the way I don't think he'd want to be particularly his chancellor in this situation because I think he's all over the chancellor he's a bit like kind of trying to be Gordon Brown's chancellor it's quite hard and of course national insurance would be higher because he would have stuck with the increase in employers and employees national insurance that he had put through his chance to exchequer which he didn't inherited having been ditched by Jeremy Hunt in those days.

27:42So Liz Trust reverses, Kwasi Kwarteng reverses that. It's the only thing that Hunt keeps of the Kwasi Kwarteng budget. Everything else is reversed. So I think you then, you know, career towards the general election, you still have the split on the right because of Farage, I guess. And so I'm not sure the result would have been that different. I mean, I assume maybe they would have done a bit better because they wouldn't have had the list trust moment. I mean, Labour, Rachel Rees, would have gone even harder on her working people tax pledge because at the time she would have been opposing strongly the national insurance rise, which Rishi Sunak keeps.

28:24I mean, she was slightly blunted in that argument once Jeremy Hunt ditched it, but she was already on the record opposing that. Harder for her and Keir Starmer to sort of instantly establish economic credibility because they're not Liz Truss and they're not the Tories who've just done that. So how does, do you remember the 28 billion borrowing for? The Green Deal. The Green Deal. I mean, that ends up being ditched before the election by Rachel Reeves. Personally, I think they should have stuck with some version of it. And all that money they raised in taxes in the first Labour budget, they should have spent on an industrial policy, not on doctor's pay.

29:01But I wonder, without the Liz Trust markets wobble, do they feel less under pressure? Yeah, probably guilt markets are less angsty about the UK. I mean, there's definitely a guilt markets are on to the UK before Labour arrive in office. So it opens up space on borrowing, but they shut down space even further on taxes. I'm not sure that makes the post-election inheritance any easier for... I guess it makes the Tories a bit less chaotic, doesn't it? I mean, it's not like, yeah, you know, they had this prime minister who was only there for a month. Very interesting. But I don't think it's this bigger what if.

29:43No offense to Rob. We've had bigger what ifs on the show. But I thought that was a great question. Let's turn now to the break.

29:59So welcome back. I started this EMQs by saying our what ifs were all about reliving the past on different scenarios. But we're going to change for our very final one and look forward. Because our final question is from George. And it's a very interesting future what if. Hey, guys. Love the podcast. It's George here. Obama recently gave a speech where he roasted Trump. and it got me thinking if trump's able to change the constitution to enable him to run for a third term will obama contest him and if he does can he win crazier things have happened thanks uh well george is right that wilder things have happened i mean there are two big what ifs here the first is what if donald trump runs for a third term which the u.s constitution prohibits but let's be clear this is not in the founding father's text this is not a sort of thomas jefferson thing this is all post second world war after franklin roosevelt served four terms well they died in his fourth term and so it's not as entrenched in kind of american thinking as you might you know believe but it is in the constitution it is in the constitution and the question is can you change the constitution there it's a very high bar particularly in a in a very split country to get the constitution amended again.

31:21And I think expert opinion that somehow he runs as vice president and the vice and the president stands aside and he de facto becomes the president for third term everybody says actually legally that can't happen the constitution is clear on that. Well I'm not sure that amendment is that clear and that's definitely the route so you almost certainly just can't run as president but you can run as vice president I don't think there's any prohibition to be running as vice president. So you can either run as vice president and take over as president. And that's, is that allowed for under the constitution?

31:56Or you are the vice president running the country, which is a bit like when Vladimir Putin, you know, became the prime minister for four years and Medvedev became the president. Remember, Eddie goes to the Supreme Court, ultimately, and the Supreme Court is Republican, right? I think we should stop raining on our what-if parade here. I mean, our what-if depends upon him doing this. So assume he's done it. So Trump is running for office. Constitutionally. Constitutionally. Well, no, hugely contested, I imagine. Very controversial. And I think this is actually, it comes, it leads into this question about Obama, which is, for the Democrats, do they go, OK, Trump's running, issues resolved, you can run for a third term, in which case we're putting up Obama, or are they making the election all about the illegitimacy of the Trump third run at office and the unconstitutional nature of it, which would, my guess, be probably the wrong thing to do politically because the public will be, well, we don't care.

33:02We just want someone who's going to fix the economy and so on. If the Democrats are making it all about the constitution, They can't run Obama, can they? Because he's also in breach of the Constitution and being president for two terms. If they are off the Constitution, which seems to be pretty unlikely, but say they are, so there's a lot of what ifs here. Then is Obama the best candidate against Donald Trump? Well, he's certainly, you know, got star quality. He's very charismatic. He can pack a football stadium in the same way that Donald Trump can, though, of course, very, very different rhetorical style.

33:35And I guess a lot depends on, you know, like the state of the economy at the time. It's kind of curious. I mean, I think Obama is seen as quite sort of detached now, isn't he, from American politics. Let me kind of give you... What do you think? I mean, is he the best candidate? By the way, some people think Michelle Obama would be a better candidate. I'll give you two views and then see what you think. On the one hand, he left office after two terms with a markedly higher approval rating, 58 % than Joe Biden at the end of his term or Donald Trump at this point in his third term. and more than that the polling i looked at it was from earlier in this year and this obviously polling not done in the context of the what if we're talking about um obama currently has the highest favorability rating of any ex-president in american politics so he beats clinton and george bush jr and joe biden all the rest of them so you know on the one hand strong candidate on On the other hand, I remember hearing this lots and lots of times when I was making the BBC documentaries I made about Donald Trump back in 2017.

34:51There were lots of people who saw Obama as the outsider, the challenger to the system. And I spoke to lots of people who said that they voted for Obama in 2018 and voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because they wanted the outsider candidate. and what Trump has managed to do, partly because of losing in 2020 and the way in which he and politics handle that, he's managed to retain the sense of being the outsider, the challenger to the system, even though he's into his second presidential term. I mean, it is astonishing. You can't do this in British politics. You can't be the prime minister in prime minister's questions and also the leader of the opposition.

35:31But Donald Trump manages to do that in American politics, Whereas I think Obama is much less seen as an outsider challenger to the system. You know, he did big multi-million pound deals with Netflix. He has become a sort of part of the kind of anti-Trump phalanx alongside, you know, George Bush Jr. So he's part of the sort of Republican Democrat establishment who disapproves of Trump. So I think it's harder for him to be the challenger to Trump than another candidate who was different from Trump, challenging Trump, but also challenging American politics. So the question is, can an insider win in 2028?

36:12Because Obama is an insider now in the way that Trump still isn't. But don't you think if there's a sort of unknown Democrat governor, say, running, you know, they're just going to be crushed by the Trump name recognition and the Trump ability to define his opponents. I mean, Biden beat Trump in 2020 precisely because, you know, he had a big presence and a big name and he couldn't be just sort of crushed by Trump. Maybe Hillary Clinton would be the candidate to beat Trump. And remember the Democrat, I think there's quite a lot of sort of guilt still within the Democrat family that they were so hard on Hillary Clinton when they were running in 2016, when she was running.

36:58And all the kind of, you know, liberal press going after her and, you know, essentially opening the door for Donald Trump. Maybe this would be the kind of revenge of Hillary. Very, very interesting. That was a brilliant one from George. and thank you for sending in all of your what ifs. We do love doing them. So please keep sending them in and we'll come back and do another set despite the disapproval of historians at some point in 2026. Yeah, anyway, enough retrospective pondering, although I think in that case it was a bit of prospective pondering. We have got a lot to cover in the coming weeks and months.

37:322026 is going to be another big and volatile year in politics. Who knows who is going to be leading the various political parties at the end of 2026. Although my money is on Sir Ed Davey still being in charge of the Liberal Democrats. Not sure I'd put too much money on all the rest of them. But we will see, who knows? And we're going to be giving you the insider view on what's going on in the government, what's going on in the economy, not just here, but internationally, and what's going on in all those countries around the world who affect our future too. So make sure you follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss a single minute.

38:08And of course, you can always become a gold or kitchen cabinet subscriber and get the inside scoop earlier without ads. And we're going to be back on Thursday with our first regular episode of the new year. See you then.

38:26Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.