Will Burnham’s big and bold speech backfire?

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1:16That's how you turn busy into business. Toast, built for busy. Pensioners will be worse off than they would otherwise be if you vote labor in the next election.

1:28Ed Balls: It may be they thought that the financial markets will think they're willing to make tough choices. Although they're spending the money immediately. Well, they're spending all the money immediately. And more than that, it is not clear to me there are any scrawlable savings at all from abolishing the triple log. The elephant in the room is that the pensioner population is a massive voting bloc. The politician in me says, be very careful.

1:53Ed Balls: so we are in the studio in uh shoreditch hoxton where are we hoxton in hoxton i always get confused and uh the labor party conference has ended we did our hot take after andy burnham's speech on tuesday yvette arrived home last night and it turns out she's been giving our summer interviews some extra publicity take a listen i am still angry about the conservatives abolishing SureStart. As I told George Osborne to his face this summer, that changes now. I can announce we will bring back those SureStart health services into every family centre, reaching up to a thousand family hubs over the next two years.

2:41Ed Balls: SureStart, one of the party's greatest achievements, restored to families throughout the land.

2:54So listen to that, George Osborne. Sure starts back. It's making me nostalgic. I know. I used to appear all the time at Labour conferences and people's speeches.

3:05Ed Balls: Did you get long claps? Well, normally the attacks on me did. You are still so popular at the Labour Party conference. Yeah, they love me, really. And we did a very good interview with that night in the summer. although I will tell you that afterwards her media team which is run by Damien McBride back from the political dead he says on the WhatsApp group great interview with Yvette George and team I think her you know her exchange with you George on Sure Start is going to be the news and I was reading it thinking I think her attack on Keir Starmer might be the news well it wasn't an attack on Keir Starmer it was more like everything he got wrong as prime minister But anyway, thank you, Yvette.

3:48I love being back at the Labour conference.

3:50Ed Balls: And I think Yvette's comments on Keir Starmer did make some news. Yes. But can I give Yvette one piece of advice? Not that she'll want it at all. She says Sure Start's back. I don't think they're calling it Sure Start. I mean, aren't they calling it these family hubs? I mean, if you're going to do it, if you're going to make the, if you're going to say, oh, we're bringing it back, just like, it's like the Ron Seal ad. You know, do what it says on the tin. call it sure start rather than because as far as i can see the i think she had to put it in the speech there hubs hubs are the thing not sure start well look george osborne favorite villain gets a clap sure start gets big claps yeah a bit of free political advice there to the labour government i think she will um on how to do it i think she'll i think she'll take that on board yeah good anyway i know she listened so uh thank you well yvette got back last night but i saw a couple of other people who got back from the Labour conference last night.

4:44I saw Kanishka Narayan, who's the AI minister in the cabinet, and Chancellor John Healy. First time I'd seen him actually in his new role. They were both at the British Museum last night where we had a big dinner for the Lee family, who are the family who own Samsung. And they have an amazing collection of Korean treasures, which are now, as of today, on show at the museum.

5:06Ed Balls: John Healy. I mean, look, after all those days of the Labour Party conference, having to make a big speech and then try to veto all the different things in Andy Burnham and other cabinet ministers' speeches, which cost loads of money, which can't be afforded. You'd think you'd be so exhausted. You'd either want to sit down in front of the TV or go to the pub. We used to take our kids to a musical. I went to Wicked on the night after a Labour conference lots of times. Did you not just fall asleep in the musical? Yeah, but there's nothing more enjoyable than falling asleep at the theatre. I mean, I spend most of my time at theatres asleep.

5:39Ed Balls: but to go to a British Museum dinner on the Thursday night I mean that is beyond the call of duty what a public servant John Healy is well it is the call of duty I mean he was there yeah I don't think I'm betraying much when I say I don't think he was there to see the moon vases and the beautiful Korean calligraphy he was there to talk to Samsung about investment into the UK which is what you and I are paying a salary to do now I admire when the lights go down John Healy is still at work yeah no i actually thought god you wouldn't have got me to do that nor me anyway we are going to uh look what we're going to talk about on this show we are going to talk about the aftermath of the labor conference uh about anti-burnham speech which we did the hot take on but now the dust has settled were our predictions or our instant interpretation of that speech correct and what are the what are the loose threads and the issues that are now running as a result, particularly on social care and on Europe.

6:36We're going to look at both of those things.

6:38Ed Balls: Then Kemi Bednock's got her pre-conference interview with Tim Shipman in The Spectator off to Birmingham for the weekend. Andy Burnham has set the agenda. How is Kemi Bednock going to respond? And can she translate the improvements she's had in her polling in the last year into improvements for the Conservative Party's polling, which has proved rather more stubborn to deliver? And there's a big question whether anyone in the real world, anyone in the country who's paying attention to any of this, because, of course, the news has also been dominated by the arrests near the RAF base Fairford and the subsequent release of the people arrested on bail, the news of the attempted hijack, it looks like, of the plane flying to Tel Aviv overnight.

7:23And what does this mean about the kind of world we're in, and particularly for Britain? Is this a proxy war? Is this a Cold War? What's going on in terms of how we deal with this sort of grey zone of our conflict with Russia and Iran and other adversaries. And how should we deal with it? How should the British state cope with it? So we're going to be looking at the news that I suspect most people have been following over the last week or so.

7:47Ed Balls: But we're going to start with Andy Burnham's big speech. Our hot take is still out there online. You can see it on YouTube or on normal places you hear your podcast. I've had loads of people listen to it. And I think we gave a pretty good first response. The striking thing today, Andy Burnham's big messages on social care, on Europe, still reverberating through the news. But, of course, it's kind of back to business as usual a bit. Nigel Farage speaking in Doncaster. I mentioned Kemi Badenock. Today is the day when early release is happening. Prisoners being released, the first tranche under the early release scheme.

8:26As they come out of prison, they go. Thanks, Prime Minister. If you're in number 10, you go, no, shut up.

8:31Ed Balls: I know. And poor old Alex Norris, who is the Lord Chancellor, is having his installation in the Royal Courts of Justice in all the robes today, which is just like really unfortunate timing for him. But I mean, I think the striking thing, you know, just to say and to note, we mentioned the fact that in Andy's speech on Tuesday, there wasn't a lot of mention of, you know, defence and defence spending and those big dilemmas. Actually, when you think about it, he didn't really talk about policing or crime and the safety on our streets or prisons and early release or really immigration, small boats.

9:12Ed Balls: All of those issues which are central to Nigel Farage's and Kemi Badenock's agendas. It wasn't that he argued a different line. He just didn't really engage on those things. Quite striking when you think about it. Yes, I think you're being a little bit unfair on immigration. He did have a couple of lines. He didn't have any policy to announce on immigration, but he did say, you know, he made immigration one of the kind of two or three key priorities. Immigration control, I should say. We should maybe listen to the peroration just to take us all back to that moment, because it's definitely set the political agenda for the autumn.

9:47Ed Balls: It's time to draw a line, to move beyond a decade of drift and division, to bring a spirit of unity and positivity back to our country, to unlock the working class aspiration that is still there in every postcode in this great land. all together now we can do it we will believe again we will hope again thank you conference i mean let's be clear the i think the labor conference justified or set the seal on the defenestration and decapitation of kia starmer didn't it i mean uh i don't think anyone who gone to that conference or did we make the right decision to get rid of Keir Starmer? Because I think they will all have sat there in the hall thinking, can you imagine if Keir Starmer was giving this speech?

10:44And there was remarkably little trouble. I mean, given there's just been a coup, you know, you didn't hear from the, you know, decapitated former leaders. And in some ways it's, you know, we've talked about this, well, it's sort of politics back. I mean, that's the kind speech you would expect a prime minister who's just got a big majority to give. It's just we haven't heard it for two years since that big majority was created. And so Andy Burnham, I think, energized Labour and they definitely have come away with a spring in the step thinking, you know, this election is up for grabs. And of course, they're now ahead in the polls, ahead of the Tories and ahead of reform.

11:24We'll see how long that lasts. But of course, looming now is the budget in a couple of weeks time and all the issues that you just mentioned that he didn't really mention above all the state of the economy and the big tax and spending decisions which

11:38Ed Balls: ultimately crippled starmer it's right we talked about um on tuesday whether he was seeking to to build that center-left coalition bring back green voters bring over lib dems and also um I think very importantly for Andy, the working class, which his dad and his family represent, which he feels have been ignored by politics for too long. Can I ask you one question about that? Because I've been meaning to ask you since I heard that speech. Maybe I'm getting this wrong, but my memory of sort of Tony Blair was that he was trying to get the Labour Party out of just being the working class party. and he was trying to reach into the middle class and you know he was trying to say we've got to be mondeo man you know if you remember all that worcester woman and florida families families who went on vacation to florida um and and both starmer but particularly andy burnham it's all about the working class the working the working class just you know statistically people who self-identify as working class is only a portion of the population there's a very large portion of the population who identifies middle class and i think it's generally the case that middle class voters are the people who Labour were winning over at the last election.

12:57Ed Balls: That's right. And if you look at the characterisation of the Labour vote compared to 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, much more likely to be graduate, much more likely to live in cities, much more likely to have a higher income. And what Andy Byrne is trying to do is to bring back some of that lost vote. But I think in his mind, this is a pro-European lost vote. I think it's a bit nostalgic. My sense in Makerfield, in Morley, when I was an MP, there's a much harsher view of what needs to be done and what's gone wrong. And that's why I think these issues around kind of crime and borders, I think you have to talk about.

13:43Ed Balls: He's clearly, I mean, where I disagree with you is I don't think I can think of Labour leaders who are so willing just to take open policy risk. I mean, just to go out there and say, I just think we should change the political system and let's just have change in the voting laws. I just think we should go back and reopen the whole Brexit settlement. And I don't know what the answer is going to be, but let us just put on the table. Should we join the European Union again? I just want a national care service. And I don't think it means a tax rise, But I just want to start the debate. And I think he's clearly decided that he needs to be big and bold.

14:22Ed Balls: But there were good reasons why in the past Labour leaders were a bit more cautious sometimes about setting hairs running, because you don't quite know where it's going to end up. We're going to talk about those issues in a moment. But if you just take another issue today, which is on the non-political agenda, but Andy Burnham is kind of allowing it to be on the political agenda, which is what's happening with the Premier League and Man City. Now, this is very complicated. You should set the contact. Manchester City look like they're going to be heavily fined and potentially, in effect, kicked out of the Premier League for abuses of the rules around funding.

14:56And it's been years in the making. There's been a long investigation.

14:59Ed Balls: That's right. Andy Burnham, when asked the question, consistent with that, you know, let me just give you my view. Let's just start the debate. says that he is worried about what is potentially going to happen because of the impact it will have on UAE investment into Manchester. Now, football fans... That's because Abu Dhabi owned Manchester City, we should say. Yeah. Now, football fans all across the country... I mean, I'm not sure whether it makes any sense to take away Man City's title from 10 years ago, let alone to give it to Man United, who would have won. I'm sure there will have to be a punishment to Man City.

15:35Ed Balls: it's going to be tough because you have to apply the rules. But frankly, it is not the job of the Prime Minister to start getting involved in giving opinions about what the Premier League should or shouldn't do with Man City. Football fans across the country will be thinking, you know, are you trying to bias the Premier League in favor of Man City because, you know, of Manchester, when actually justice requires a different outcome? If I were the Prime Minister, I just would not be getting involved in that at all. And if I was one of his advisors, I would say, Andy, there are limits. to the things you should just decide to have opinions on.

16:08Well, it's interesting because I think on the substance, Abu Dhabi has been a huge investor into Manchester and one of the reasons why there's been that turnaround in the economic fortunes of Manchester. And I remember as Chancellor, I was there at the opening of all the brand new facilities around Manchester City Football Club. But so I can actually see other prime ministers being, wanting to send a quiet word.

16:32Ed Balls: Tempted. and potentially say behind the scenes can someone go and sort out this kind of football route so it doesn't damage relations with the uae um and just like john healy turning up at the samsung dinner you know they're trying to of course keep the investment flowing into britain i think what is interesting is you know he is freewheeling a bit and um if the critique of starmer was you know he operated in a tiny bubble and you know no one was i mean andy burnham feels like at times is operating in a bubble of one he's just saying what he thinks and because he's essentially been a one-man band as i mean i know he had a good team in manchester but he was the mayor of manchester he went around saying things and and it earned him a reputation for he says what he thinks he's a he's approachable he's honest and so on but he's not the mayor of manchester anymore newcastle villa arsenal norwich fans all thinking prime minister don't get involved i mean i put norwich into that list because they really care what i'm just we we actually had a bit of a run in the uefa cup in the early 1990s you're putting yourself in the same same category anyway yes i'm just saying all the top clubs i think i think there are a lot of football fans who feel strongly about this who will think that it is not the promises job to look like he's trying to bias the process but it is the purpose of the job to run our foreign and economic policy which are tied up with manchester city but i thought there was an interesting story i read in the newspaper in the times newspaper this morning that he had held a political cabinet just before his conference speech.

17:58Now, I think that political cabinet, for those who don't know, is where the cabinet meets, but there are no civil servants. And I think that's pretty unique. I mean, I don't know about you. I mean, I was involved in lots of prime ministerial speeches behind the scenes. I mean, the hours coming up to the speech, the prime minister or the party leader is practicing going through the speech. You know, often they've got a kind of lectern erected in their bedroom where they're, you know, and they've got their aides, you know, practicing with them, practicing the autocue. To tell you, actually, I'm done with that.

18:26Speech is fine. I want to have a political cabinet. It's extraordinary. But he calls that meeting, doesn't he? Because that is, let's be honest, the first the cabinet here, that there's going to be some commission on electoral form, that we're going to set out options on reconnecting with the EU in some way. It's probably the first most of them heard that we're going to have a national care service. I mean, let's just remember, Andy Burnham said he wanted to fix social care. He said there was going to be a commission. He said it was a big priority. It's only in the last week that he said it's going to be a national care service on the same foundations as the National Health Service, i.e.

19:03run and paid for by the government. So that must have been the moment when essentially they were all bounced. But what are you going to do? Like you're sitting in the prime minister's, you know, conference suite and he's about to give a speech. And you go, actually, prime minister, I don't agree. I don't agree with this speech you're about to give.

19:20Ed Balls: The funny thing is, the thing the cabinet ministers like compared to Keir Starmer is Andy Burnham wants their views. He's happy for the meeting to overrun. He's actually almost encouraging people to speak up. Now, of course, there will have been some cabinet ministers who knew more than others. I've no idea whether you are right to say that a lot of the cabinet ministers found out for the first time he was about to massively push the boat out on Europe or on proportional representation. But Andy Burnham is also the kind of prime minister who then, in that political cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, sat back and encouraged them all to disagree.

19:53Ed Balls: I mean, his willingness to open up the debate includes within his own cabinet. I mean, that is also a very striking thing. So, you know, I don't know I'm right. But I bet you there were people around the table saying, well, I'm not sure I agree with this, Andy. No, I mean... I'm not sure I agree with that, Andy. I mean, more than one, more than five, more than ten. So, you know, but actually people shrug their shoulders and think, yeah, I know, but you know, that's what Andy's doing He's just putting big bold ideas out there and we'll see how they fly. I mean, this is such an unusual approach to Governing we should talk about whether or not this is actually I mean two big things social care which bleeds into Tax and the budget and then yeah, is this going to work as a strategy?

20:35Well, I think of all the risks he took in the speech You know, you could shut down the European risk because it all peters out and there's not you know some big proposal in europe electoral reform i mean people have talked about electoral reform before but perhaps you know the next election is going to be the last ever election for under the first bus space but we're a long way from that at the moment the thing that is immediate and that if i was a cabinet minister in that meeting i'd have been going like have we really thought this through was the decision to abandon the triple lock on pensions because that is a very straightforward you know pensioners will be worse off than they would otherwise be if you vote Labour in the next election and there's no other way of cooking it you know you can't save money and say no no you won't be worse off because you know people and reform have immediately come out and said we will oppose that if you vote reform you'll still have the triple lock and and that is that is a classic political decision that has lots of upside you know you are serious about public finances you're answering the question of how you in part we're going to go on to this of how you might fund you know your plans for the future um it's all some way off so it's not you know something you have to do immediately people aren't going to necessarily see anything uh you know any loss of uh be out of pocket before the general election but you know there's lots of it and it's and it's been applauded by quite a lot of serious commentators as a serious move.

22:02But, you know, if you're sitting in your constituency and suddenly the reform leaflets are starting to appear this weekend saying, you know, vote Labour and they'll take away your pension, you'll be thinking, have we really thought this through? Have we gamed up our response? Do we have clear answers to the questions that are being thrown at us?

22:20Ed Balls: The striking thing is they must have intended this, this confusion over the triple lock. I was getting messages yesterday from the Treasury to say the triple lock has not gone, it's been amended. There will be a formula every year to make sure that the pension goes up by inflation or earnings. But if the pension has fallen behind the current level, as in today, at the beginning of this process, of the pension related to average earnings, then formulaically there will also be a catch-up. and that therefore it won't be, as we were wondering on Tuesday, Treasury discretion. And yet Andy Burnham absolutely gave the impression in his speech that he was moving to a double lock, that the earnings link was going, that it would be, and all the briefing in advance.

23:14Ed Balls: They must have decided they wanted to have this row. It may be they thought that, as you said, it does get applauded by some commentators and therefore the financial markets will think they're willing to make tough choices. Although they're spending the money. Well, they're spending all the money immediately. And more than that, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies makes absolutely clear, which is what we said on Tuesday, it is not clear to me there are any scoreable savings at all from this abolishing the triple lock. It may be in the coming years it will save money relative to what might happen.

23:48Ed Balls: And it certainly costs more in the past relative to what did happen. But at any point of time, when you look forward five years and say, on the basis of the current forecast, if you change from the existing triple lock to this new system, do we make any savings? The answer to that is no, barely, possibly, definitely not certain. To the extent that there are savings, it will happen because there's some big surprise event in the future we're not expecting, which would cost us more because of the ratchet effect. Andy Burnham has said in interviews yesterday, there's no need for tax rises for social care because he will go at the pace in introducing the National Care Service driven by the savings he's going to get from the triple lock reform.

24:37Ed Balls: But the triple lock reform savings are nebulous and uncertain. And so I think that the financial markets look at this and think, well, if you are going to spend all this money and it's not clear where it's going to come from, how are you going to pay for it? And that feels to me like it's still a big unanswered question. I think that is actually the vulnerability. The fairness argument is a bit more messy because they're going to claw back ground saying, well, actually, it won't hit pensions as hard as you think. But the bigger question is how they're going to pay for social care reform. Yeah.

25:05And there's, you know, the elephant in the room is that the elder population, the elderly population, the pensioner population is a massive voting bloc. Labour did a good job under New Labour of winning them over. So remember all those Gordon Brown announcements, which you were party of, party to, you know, free bus passes, free TV licenses, winter fuel payments. You know, there was a reason they were now. They were for pensioners. And the Tory...

25:31Ed Balls: During a period when we didn't have the earnings link. Right. And pension credit. Right. And, you know, the Tories went into the 2010 election promising a restoration of the earnings link, which Adair Turner had said was a kind of quid pro quo for raising the pension age. And then the Liberal Democrats wanted the triple lock. The parties competed for the pensioner vote for a reason. And Labour has opened up a flank here. And then the question is... It seems deliberately, and they gave the impression, I think they gave the impression it was worse, that it is actually going to be. But they've got to claw back that ground now.

26:06Yeah, I mean, I think we...

26:07Ed Balls: On the fairness ground, I mean. Perhaps we'll go into it in detail in an EMQ if someone wants to send us a question about exactly how this new triple lock or version of the triple lock is supposed to work. It's essentially the earnings link with temporary inflation protection, I think, as it goes along. And the IFS says that if it had been in place since I introduced it in 2010, it would have saved around£9 billion a year by now. Now,£9 billion a year is not insignificant, but it's half of what's required to fund the National Care Service on most people's estimates of what that service might look like.

26:42Ed Balls: The important thing is those were non-forecast costs. And what you can't do is spend savings which you aren't forecasting. It's actually money we would have had to spend more on pensions than we're currently anticipating. You can't say, well, given we would have had to spend more than our fiscal rules currently allow, in that case we can respend it somewhere else. The truth is you don't really want to spend it in the first place. And that is why that is messy. The other thing, I don't know whether you heard Ed Davey on the Today programme this morning. I mean, he is saying that he's opposing the change in the triple lock.

27:16Ed Balls: And there's some pushback from some of his own MPs. I think the Conservatives will have a bit of that kind of pushback as well. But the bigger thing Ed Davey said was, he said, one, where is the money going to come from to pay for social care? Because actually, he wants to deliver the reform. And that is going to be a big question. But he also said, whatever happened to this consensus? He's called to a meeting to have consensual talks about reform. Andy Burnham then just goes and announces the reform anyway. Ed Davey had said, you know, we want to support any reform which makes progress. But then suddenly the triple lock thing arises.

27:51Ed Balls: The thing which is odd about this is, and this is what I don't really understand, I would have gone about building consensus by trying to persuade people of the scale of the problem, the range of choices, the fairest way to deliver the social care, and then have a conversation about how we pay for it. What they've done this week is that they've led, with the last of those, exactly the same way in 2010, when Andy Burnham went out with what the Tories called the death tax, exactly the same as Theresa May in 2017, exactly the same with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak in 2019. You go out there and you tell people, first of all, about the tax rise, or in this case, the triple lock change.

28:29Ed Balls: you lead with what you are going to ask people to pay before you've won the argument, let alone build a consensus about the reason why we're doing this in the first place. What I worry is that you end up getting it the wrong way round. Why are you leading on the triple lock before the lose case has even done her report, let alone you've had a consensual process to try and see whether... And Ed Davey rightly says now, if I sign up to anything about the substance, keby badenock will say this too if i sign up to anything on the substance about how the the care reforms will happen implicitly that means you're expecting me to sign up to the triple lock change and i'm not going to do that and therefore the whole thing falls apart no i mean as it happens ed davie was also at this dinner at the british museum last night and um and did you know there's a very large british korean population in kingston i didn't know that and he is chair of the all party career group.

29:28It's interesting that the Conservatives of all the parties, opposition parties, have not come out of the blocks yet on what their response to the Triple Lock is.

29:36Ed Balls: It's in her draft manifesto.

29:41They're in a tough one because there are lots of Conservatives saying you cannot be fiscally serious and that's got to be the space we can occupy on the political battlefield.

29:49Ed Balls: How do you feel about that? They're saying that you can only be fiscally serious by ditching that George Osborne reform? Well, it was actually a Liberal Democrat request to form the coalition. You know, we were... The triple lock? Yes, we wanted the earnings link, which was a big deal back then, coming off Margaret Thatcher's inflation link. That was what we fought the election on. And then in the coalition negotiations, they said, oh, we've actually got this additional thing, the triple bit of the triple lock, which has got to be a minimum of 2.5 % a year. As it turns out, that's not proved to be, in recent years, the main issue.

30:22The main issue has been the relationship between inflation and earnings. So I'm quite unsentimental about it. But the politician in me says, be very careful before you go into a general election telling pensioners you're taking money away from them.

30:38Ed Balls: Isn't the thing which actually is going to determine all of this? They'll say, by the way, to me, oh, we're not taking money away from pensioners. But you can't on the one hand say, we're saving money from the pension to pay for this care service and then say also to pensioners, oh, no, no, no, you've misunderstood. do we're not actually taking money away from you that if you if you that's where the muddle at the moment and if you end up in the general election still in that muddle that's going to be a big problem it doesn't pay for um the national care service into the next parliament i don't see how they can find the money for that but more generally i don't know what sense you had from him but for john healy this budget in four weeks time the spending review next summer i mean this is a very very difficult thing he's got to pull off and i didn't feel as though um there was any attempt to prepare the ground for him yeah i mean it just feels to me as though andy burnham is relying upon john healy's going to sort out the budget and the spending and shabana mahoud is going to sort out borders and immigration and i don't have to talk about either of those things i've got my vision yeah but you think i know but actually you know yeah this budget and this spending review is really really hard and how are they going to do it yeah and let's be honest about the labour conference not only did Andy Burnham barely mention the tax and spending borrowing problems that Britain faces and that are going to dominate politics for next year but also John Healy's speech underwhelmed you know it didn't it didn't really knock it out of the park that was you know that's the first conference speech from the new chancellor and maybe he wants to play it down and maybe he's like thinking you know forget about my conference speech I've got to get my budget right which which obviously is to some degree true.

32:17But he didn't, you know, it's got to be in some way aligned with the Burnham strategy or you've got to tell Burnham, look, I need you to provide cover. I mean, when I was Chancellor...

32:28Ed Balls: It was the other way round. Andy Burnham's team were saying to John Healy on the Monday, don't pour cold water the day before Andy Burnham's speech. You know, John Healy's speech was actually rather nostalgic. Reindustrialisation, the working class, the trade union learning fund didn't really have lots of tough... It did have some around welfare, but it didn't really have... I mean, he was preparing the ground for Tuesday rather than preparing the ground for his budget. Yes, but if you think, you know, one of the things I had going for me when I was Chancellor is that the Prime Minister always had my back was just as tough on the fiscal messaging as I was.

33:04And that was, you know, it wasn't like that's just George Osborne's problem he's got to deal with. David Cameron was always there for me. And, you know, Healy might be feeling quite alone as he approaches this budget, to be honest. I was also wondering, I mean, John Healy represents a South Yorkshire seat, doesn't he? Which was probably very Brexity back at the time of the referendum 10 years ago. I wonder what he thinks about reopening the whole debate about Britain's membership of the EU.

33:31Ed Balls: Well, I'm certainly wondering what the voters of Makerfield think about this, because, of course, Andy Burnham started his by-election by walking away from things he'd said in the past about kind of wanting to rejoin the European Union or to kind of restart that process. He's won his by-election and it's now back on the table. Andy Burnham was talking about his speech and he cited you as an inspiration. Oh, not again. He did, yeah. Sorry. Here we are. Well, we will set the options out later this year. George Osborne recently called for Britain to look at rejoining the customs union. the Liberal Democrats called for the single market to be looked at as an option.

34:11Ed Balls: And obviously there is the big option, which would be to rejoin. But there's another option. And that option's on the table. But there's another option, which is to stay as we are. My point is this. Ten years on from Brexit, it's not enough just to say, oh, well, we'll get round to thinking about it. We need to think about it. My judgment is Brexit in its current form has caused more harm than good. And I think around 60 % of the British public now hold that view. It's not a good thing if the public are ahead of politicians on this issue. It's right, if you're going to put forward a 10-year plan for Britain, as I am going to do, to have an honest debate about these things.

34:49Now, there you go.

34:51Ed Balls: He's obviously listening to the podcast. Well, I mean, you have said this very many times. Shall we just remind people of the Osborne view? And I've argued on this podcast right from before the general election that Labour should have at least committed to rejoin the Customs Union, if not the single market. And the kind of trade deals they've done and are looking to do are kind of inching towards that anyway. It was never clear to me that the Brexit vote was a vote for leaving the customs union in the first place. It didn't feature in the campaign at all. And it's all after the event to say we can strike our own trade deals.

35:22That became a Brexiter justification for Brexit after it didn't feature in the campaign.

35:28Ed Balls: But this is a very conscious decision of Andy Burnham not to talk about a new forward relationship, which could involve, you know, a new kind of customs union, a new kind of economic relationship. I've always said you have to look forward. He is explicitly talking about going back, rejoining the Brexit settlement being a bad settlement and Brexit was a mistake. I mean, are you signing up? Well, I definitely think we should have a much closer relationship with the EU. Yes. But if you were Andy Burnham, would you be putting having a second referendum in your manifesto? I wouldn't make that commitment yet.

36:08But I think the politics for him are quite straightforward. You know, we're coming because we're about to turn to the Tories. But if you think of Labour at the end of this week, they now have very clear paths to winning the general election and staying in office. And they're being a Labour prime minister after the general election. So, first of all, they've become more popular. They have a more popular leader and who can communicate. So there's a prospect they can win the election outright and keep their majority or keep a majority. But they've also set out a very clear plan now for a coalition or an alliance of some form with the Liberal Democrats if they fall short because they are offering something on care, which is a big Davey personal priority.

36:46They're offering electoral reform and they're offering a closer relationship with the EU. And Davey sort of set out his price, which is can you do something on the tax free allowances? Fine. you know i was happy to say yes that in 2010 andy burnham very happy to say yes that in 2028 or whatever and also you could even now give him the concession on the triple lock in those talks um so so burnham has a pretty clear path to staying in office and even if all those things weren't enough he can always ultimately rely on the smb vote in parliament to put a labor prime minister in rather than the Tory prime minister.

37:24I mean, deeply unstable government and very, very uncomfortable for Labour. But there are many paths for Labour. And we haven't mentioned yet, we'll come back to it on this podcast at some point, you know, the situation the Greens are in as well, because they're being squeezed and some of the language around Israel and Palestine has helped Labour on that front too. So I think they come out of this conference saying, well, you know, they are the most likely party to win the election. Or put it this way, is most likely to be a Labour Prime Minister after the election, if you look at it currently.

37:55That was not the case three or four months ago.

37:57Ed Balls: But let me take you back to the conversation which we started with. I mean, in passing, before I do, there's this mood around a bit amongst commentators, Labour commentators in the last 48 hours. Look, it's OK to sacrifice sacred cows. You can say these things and it's all OK. And therefore, why don't we do more of it? But there is a sort of naivety to it, is if, you know, at the moment, France and Germany and the European Commission are thinking, you know, the most important thing for us is to get Britain back into the European Union. If you are Germany and France, what you're worried about is national rally and the AFD.

38:31Ed Balls: And it's not all clear this is your big priority. And the idea they're going to say, come back in without needing to sign up to free movement or joining the Euro, I'm just not at all sure that the cost-free smooth path. But the bigger point is this. You mentioned John Healy, his seat in Rotherham. I mentioned Makerfield and Andy Burnham's seat. in Greater Manchester. I mean, these are seats which voted by two thirds for Brexit. And the view of people in the Hobon and St Pancras by-election, the view of people in central Manchester is different from in those red wall constituencies. And it may be this puts together that Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, you know, brings the Greens in.

39:13Ed Balls: Maybe that's right. But what it also says to the Tories and reform, it's easy what your election message is in Morley or Rotherham or Makerfield, which is if you vote Labour or if you vote Liberal Democrat, what you are doing here is voting to rejoin the European Union. It's a bit like your SNP argument back in 2015. And so the vibe strategy. Will that have the potency that it had in 2016 when it suddenly came down to control of borders and immigration and money for the NHS? You know, some of those lines. I'm not saying the immigration stuff isn't still very live, but I'm not sure you'd be able to reconnect it in a general election campaign about our future relationship with the EU.

40:01And, of course, in that election.

40:02Ed Balls: So the 2019 sentiment in Conservative and a big chunk of Labour Britain around get Brexit done, that is gone. And therefore, you can afford to fight the election on, you know, this is the path to a rejoined coalition. Is that actually the politics of Britain today? Well, put it this way. I'm going to flip it and it will turn us to our next subject, which is in Aldershot, currently held by Labour, in Kensington, currently held by Labour, in Tunbridge Wells, held by the Liberal Democrats. You will be able to say, vote Tory and you're going to get reform. because what's the only option if you're you know the Tories aren't going to win an overall majority are they no one thinks that so the coalition they're talking about they really you know and if they're campaigning on anti-Europe anti-immigration etc they're obviously bedfellows of reform and I think it throws into sharp contrast the challenge now for Kemi Badenhock which is what is your actual path to getting a majority in the House of Commons or assembling a majority among conservative and other parties we will turn to that next

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42:44Ed Balls: So welcome back. I mentioned the Kemi Badenock Spectator interview with Tim Shipman in which she has some strong policy around welfare reform and getting young people back to work. not having young people 18 to 25 going on to universal credit if they've not worked for six months, but instead saying they would be on a lower benefit and they'd have to look for work every day. She also says that she's not worried about the Conservatives being the nasty party because she needs to be tough. She says that she wants to be the politician who can say no. That may not be popular, but that's what people need to hear.

43:24Ed Balls: It's pretty uncompromising. I think she's also very open about the fact that her poll ratings have improved, but the Tory brand is still struggling. This is Kevin Hollingrich, her party chair, looking forward to her speech this week. Do you think that Kemi Badenok's speech will be as emotional, as exciting, as attractive to your members as Andy Burnham's was to his members in the room there in Liverpool? Well, I would say this. Hope is not a strategy. I think what you'll see and hear from Kemi Bairdnock is a strong leader. You'll see that she has a good team around her and a clear plan. That's what people want to see.

44:04Ed Balls: If people want to see the detail behind our policies, whether it be protecting our bodies, stopping all the small boats, or getting the economy growing again, all those detailed plans have been set out on policy.conservatives.com. People can see them rather than just vague promises of something that might happen in the future, which many of those plans are really going to fall apart under pressure, I think. So you'll see detailed, clear plans from Kim. So first of all, Kevin Hollenrake is one of the nicest and smartest Tory MPs. And I congratulate him on becoming Tory party chair. In opposition, the chair of the party is a really important job.

44:40It's a bit less important when you're in government. But it's great to have Kevin there. And Kevin, all Kevin's instincts will be we've got to try and win back center ground voters, small L liberal voters. You know, we don't want to get into this battle of who's more reform than reform. So coming into the conference, first of all, there are, he says, he's going to set out clear and detailed plans. I think that's a kind of interesting challenge for Kimmy Bajnog, isn't it? I mean, she's in a very secure position compared to where she was a year or two ago. And all credit to her. You know, it is not easy at all being the opposition leader, especially after an election defeat.

45:18And she has established a brand. She's established a reputation. She is, you know, she's still net unfavorable with the public, but it's less net unfavorable than most politicians. And that is, you know, not to be underestimated or that. But her challenge is the Tory party. You know, she's not sort of dragged the Tory party forward much. and these middle years in opposition between elections the conferences are hard because there's this constant tension do we set out more detail as kevin saying they're going to or does that you know by the time we get to the general election that's all going to have been lost in the you know and out to prove to be outdated lost in the weeds and outdated or but if you don't say anything specific you know what's your conference about and essentially this conference i think is very straightforward for the tories this is what's your response to Andy Burnham new prime minister new government new situation um and a kind of heartfelt emotional speech will go down well in the hall and show she's still you know the kind of top of her game but I come back to this like what is your actual path for victory and the thing that I think will be worrying the conservative strategist and she has some good people around now who work for David Cameron like Stephen Gilbert Mark McGuinness it's a different team it's a more experienced team they will know the biggest threat for the conservatives going into the election particularly in the kind of home counties the south is going to be vote Tory and you're going to get Farage and they don't at the moment have an answer that they mean Kemi Bainrock says no no no I'll never do a deal but if you had a general election where the Tories let's say you know have 200 and something seats and they could form a government with reform are they really not going to form a government i mean it's not realistic and so that you know that's the problem that's the problem and uh and it's hard it's going to be very hard for her to prove that there's some other path to to a majority government it's interesting there's some uh good polling by

47:24Ed Balls: Peter Kellner using YouGov, looking at that reform question. And we've mentioned this before. We talked about it in the hot take around proportional representation, which is that tactical voting to stop reform is currently very powerful in the minds of Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and Conservative voters. And if you look at their polling and you say, what does reform get before you inject the tactical voting? they do pretty well um once people actually vote tactically and they're willing to do so across all constituencies including not voting conservative in order to um stop reform in those the seats as you say um you end up on the path to a labor liberal democrat coalition the other thing just to um you know i got sent this and it's not coming out till sunday monday but Jane Green who is a Nuffield political research centre academic at Oxford she actually does ITV general elections with us.

48:28Ed Balls: They've got some She's one of the stars of our election night show we do with ITV. That's right and she's great she sent this to me. It's coming out next week but basically saying, I'm not going to blow the detail, but that although Kemi's brand has improved as a person, we know that's mainly because reform voters have been more willing to give her a look. It hasn't really improved for the Conservative Party, but it's deeper than that. If you ask voters on the right, who is the most likely to win locally? These days, it's reform, not Conservative. And if you ask them, who are the people who are making the economic argument against Labour and the government?

49:06Ed Balls: They're more inclined to say reform than the Conservative. So how do they go about at this conference, not only taking on the government, but actually doing so in a way which makes them distinctive and more effective than reform? Because, you know, Nigel Farage is popping up today in the run-up to the Conservative conference making his speech in Doncaster. Yeah, well, first of all, sitting around and hoping that reform implode and that Nigel Farage leaves the stage is not a strategy. It may happen, and I think there was a lot of excitement earlier this summer over the sort of funding scandals.

49:44And of course, you know, they're still open-ended, some of the investigations there, that that was going to, you know, do the job for them, for the Tories. But that is not, that's not a plan. You can't rely on someone else to screw up to be your kind of route to success. And so, you know, they are faced with this very difficult problem, which is how do we prove to people that we have a chance of being the government and we don't need to rely on reform because if there is, you know, if there's any hint of they are a backdoor to letting reform in, they'll be crucified in a load of middle-class seats around the country.

50:20And the obvious sort of space for them to occupy remains there. In fact, Henry Burnham has left the door open, at least for now, which is like who's got a credible economic plan? You know, who's got the pro-business, sums-add-up plan for Britain?

50:35Ed Balls: Which might interestingly include Europe, because actually having a credible pro-business plan for a better relationship with Europe, which isn't Nigel Farage, but isn't rejoin. That is a rich scene, which she's not attempted to get into that space at all yet. I totally agree. Now, she is from the kind of Brexiteer wing of the party. That was how she kind of emerged as a political leader. But what she actually you absolutely don't want to be in a trap where you are arguing for sort of uneconomic things. And so if Labour does pull off some kind of arrangement with the EU before the election, big, big question, as you say, you know, you don't want to be there like vote Tory and we're going to unpick this thing that's helped businesses export to Europe again.

51:19And it's why the kind of for this conference, we're recording this on Thursday, all the big interviews for the conference will start to be done on Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And you do have to have worked out where your position is going to be on something like the triple lock, because you can either go down the reform path, which is we're against this. Very tempting. You know, you want to out. You don't want to let reform get any kind of space with a pensioner vote. and you want to be do you want to be the biggest party on the right or do you really want to be a big alternative government in waiting and to be the alternative government in waiting you know it's quite dangerous to allow Labour to look more fiscally responsible being or at least being prepared to take fiscally difficult choices and you know the interesting Tory position would be we'll go with the triple lock changes but rather than immediately spend the money on some totally uncosted unscoped care service thing that you know could be a disaster you know we should be saving the money and we should be dealing with our deficit we should be trying to get our interest rates down and we should you know no one's really making that argument and and you can't it's politically fertile territory for conservatives has been in the past and and it's what the business you know the business community i was i've done a couple of events this week with kind of footsie chairs and ceos and so on you know what they're all crying they don't yet hear they don't buy yet the kind of like renationalizing the water industry and manchester's manchester is manchesterism it's a bit of a mouthful um you know other solutions which andy burnham says they are they they they're looking for who's going to make the case for a pro-business pro-enterprise britain that's the big big tory gap in the market reform aren't there and the libbony aren't there at the Maybe they could be after the budget, but they're certainly not there now.

53:08Ed Balls: I mean, can Kemmy Badenock and her shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffiths, do this? I mean, they're in their comfort zone talking about deregulation. As I said, in her spectator interview, I think she's strong on welfare reform. Not saying I agree with it all, but I mean, that's good. And that's very fertile territory, I think, for them, for the Tories. You know, I would definitely be doing what they're doing in that space. But on culture wars and on Britain's relationship with Europe, they do slip into that 2016 comfort zone. And I'm not sure whether that's the right place for her to be. She should be defining herself against reform rather than looking to narrow the gap with reform.

53:49Yeah. And Andrew Griffiths, you know, he's got a big challenge. I think he assumes that he because he has a pretty distinguished business career. I mean, it's quite unusual for a politician to have had his CV. He was the chief finance officer of Sky. He's chaired various British companies. But the thing that you can just turn up, I've heard this from business people, and say, well, I've been a business person, so business must trust me. It's got to be like, what is my kind of credible plan to make the sum set up and get businesses investing in Britain again? And then can I persuade people that I've got a path to being the chance exchequer for Kimi Bednar to be the prime minister?

54:28And if you just sit there and say, well, we're going to get an overall majority in the next election. You know, people are not at the moment ready to believe that. So you do have to. It's complicated and difficult to play this game. But you have to be clear that there are routes to getting you in that don't rely on Farage. and it's interesting you know the liberal democrats i don't think i'm really betraying anything when i was you know i was talking to ed david last night and he was saying you know right up to 2010 they really felt the kind of interest of the conservatives and what the liberal democrats were up to what we used to call love bombing and he says it's interesting there's just like no tory interest in what the liberal democrats are up to at the moment i i have said before i think that's a mistake that's a tory mistake very interesting well we will be back

55:13Ed Balls: in a week's time talking about how Kemi Bainock does in her conference. She'll be hoping that she, unlike Ed Davey, she wants to get airtime for the Conservatives at this conference. Of course, for the Labour conference, things were overshadowed in the first 24 hours, certainly, by that seeming terrorist attack at RAF Fairford. We didn't hear much from West Streeting or Shabana Mahmood on Good Morning Britain this week about their policy agendas for the future, but we heard a lot from West Streeting at the beginning of the week about those events on Saturday night. And we're going to turn to what was going on there and more widely events across Europe.

55:57Ed Balls: What, as you said earlier, is called the grey or hybrid war happening with potentially Iran and certainly Russia into Europe. We'll talk about that next.

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58:29Welcome back. So while British politics has been focused on the Labour conference and the Tory conference to come, out in the real world, the proxy attacks from Russia, the potential proxy attacks from Iran, as yet unproved, seem to be getting closer and closer to us. And we've had all sorts of incidents. We had the people arrested by the RAF base at the weekend. Still very unclear exactly what was going on there, but enough for people like Donald Trump, the US Secretary of State and the British Prime Minister to all weigh in and say there may be foreign involvement in some plot. We've had that story, haven't we, of drones in Germany and on the Polish border from Russia being found with explosives attached to them.

59:19We had that attack on the Ukrainian train where a number of foreign VIPs were traveling, including Boris Johnson to a conference in or coming back from a conference in Kyiv. and then a story which I always thought at the time was a bit under under reported but was pretty extraordinary which was that the then British Prime Minister's home Keir Starmer's home was attacked by people who seem to have been put up to it by the Russian state a pretty direct attack on our on our head of government and this is all happening and it feels like you know that the temperature of this Cold War is hotting up, this new Cold War.

1:00:00This is the new Defence Secretary, Wes Streeting, setting out the challenge we face.

1:00:06Ed Balls: And we should be in no doubt that the threat that Russia has posed to Ukraine is a threat that they pose to Britain and all of us in NATO. There is a risk of war of a kind that we just have not seen in this country in my lifetime. and the likelihood of Britain finding itself at war decreases if we invest more in our armed forces, in our capability and in our alliances. So that was Wes talking to the Sun newspaper at the weekend and I guess the kind of question is this, you know we both were members of parliament during the Blair premiership, which got completely overwhelmed by international events.

1:00:53And, you know, it's interesting, isn't it? We've just marked the anniversary of the moment when U.S. troops finally leave Iraq after all these years. And I guess the question is, first of all, how serious is the threat? The one, you know, maybe Wes is younger than me. But, you know, when I was a child, we did live in a situation where we were told we were four minutes away from nuclear war. And there was a very hostile adversary in the form of the Soviet Union with a real potential threat to begin a general war with the West. So maybe it's not as dangerous as then. How do all these proxy attacks and kind of this sort of gray area of state sponsored terrorism?

1:01:36How new really is it? And second, is a Labour government ready to lead the country through it? In other words, you know, the ways his rhetoric, of course, was not matched by Andy Burnham's in his conference speech. Andy Burnham had next to nothing to say on the international situation or on and didn't even mention defence spending, even though it's one of the big pressures in the budget. And clearly, if you're Andy Burnham, it's the last thing you want to do with your premiership, which is spend a whole lot of time on kind of foreign and defence issues. He's got big domestic things he wants to achieve.

1:02:09So, you know, but many prime ministers would wish that were the case and turns out not to be the case. they have to end up dealing with these threats to the country.

1:02:17Ed Balls: I mean, look, there are kind of two different kind of views about what is going on in terms of these hybrid or grey attacks. And they're distinguished by the fact that they aren't attributed. So therefore, countries try to do these things in an increasingly brazen, but still under the radar way. So it's not clear whether Iran was involved last weekend, yet certainly not in the public domain. and Putin can deny his involvement in a lot of these events, although the evidence is absolutely accumulating. And is this sort of clever and strategic? It's a way of undermining confidence. It's a way of destabilizing the NATO alliance.

1:02:58Ed Balls: It's all very kind of subtle. Or is it a reflection of weakness, which is, you know, Putin can't advance on the Ukrainian front. He's under big economic and political challenges because of the casualties in Russia and the challenges of conscription. And so this is a different way of fighting back and a reflection of weakness rather than strength. You can make the same argument about Iran as well. But when Wes Streeting says, you know, we need to be ready, and he actually in those interviews was saying that us as individuals We need to have our water and our food ready. What are we actually preparing for?

1:03:43Ed Balls: I mean, are we actually preparing for somebody attempting to incurs into Europe and into the UK? As you say, that feels a long way away at the moment. And that makes you wonder, well, is this kind of normal defence and security lobbying rather than real? It doesn't mean we don't need to be vigilant, but is this really the threat which we're being told it is? Well, I think Russia absolutely has form, as do others in, you know, essentially having unbadged or unattributed attacks, unattributable attacks on the West. Do you remember the original Ukrainian invasion was all around sort of intervening to help Russian minority populations in eastern Ukraine?

1:04:26And the Crimean invasion in 2014 was all around sort of unbadged soldiers or militias. It wasn't clear where they were coming from. And I think it's perfectly imaginable in the next five years that there is some similar kind of incident on one of the Baltic states like Estonia or indeed on the Polish border. You know, I think Putin's explicit. He doesn't accept that the Baltic states are independent states, even though that's been a settled position since the end of the Cold War. so yeah i think those things are real it poses real challenges for your how you kind of um orientate your defense forces and make your work your defense budget because should you be spending money on you know drones and uh intelligence agencies and information dissemination and information rebuttal government's announced a new agency that's going to tackle as they say media disinformation and fake news and so on or do you you know spend the big money on the big kit the aircraft carriers the jets that could actually fight a hot war with russia and it's exactly the challenge that was faced at the time of all those wars in afghanistan and iraq which were again they were kind of they weren't against proxies but they were against kind of militias and terrorist groups and so on they weren't against a kind of standing army of another nation so i think it poses a lot of challenges for the defense budget and i personally think all the debate in britain which is all about we've got to spend three percent of our national income on defense has sort of missed this big point which is what are you actually going to spend the money on and where's our confidence that the british military know what to spend the money on or indeed that the british politicians have worked out what to spend the money on so i think that's a kind of big question and then the second thing is you know where is the western alliance in all this you i would argue that if you think of the two biggest threats to the labor government this autumn that are foreseeable that are coming from abroad.

1:06:20One is a diesel ban from Donald Trump because of the rising big increase in the cost of diesel in the US. He is very likely to impose a ban on the export of diesel from the United States and that is going to hit the prices here in Britain. The diesel price at the pump is already over two pounds a litre. And the second is this made in Europe regulations coming from Europe, which are European Union, which are, you know, you can't assemble a car in Britain because you're not, you can sell into the European market because you're not making, you're not using enough EU made components. So those are, but those are all fragmentations of the Western alliance now, albeit on the economic front.

1:07:02But this is not the, if you're sitting in Downing Street, those are probably your two biggest foreign policy challenges right now, immediate. They're the things I know Downing Street are very, very worried about.

1:07:13Ed Balls: But if you're West Streeting, you also want to keep the pressure on on defence spending and defence capability, including, as you say, more sophisticated defence capability. And if you look more generally at what the Chatham House security establishment are saying, they're saying that, you know, we're falling behind. Do they ever say that we're not falling behind? Well, exactly. There's a Sky TV programme just about to start, War Games, in which Michael Gove is the Prime Minister, Harriet Harman is involved, Aisha Hazarika, Nicola Sturgeon. They all sort of enact an attack on Britain. And what I think from the pre-briefing becomes very clear is they get told by all the generals, you know, we've got at most one to two weeks ability to defend ourselves before we have to capitulate.

1:07:57Ed Balls: And so this is all that sort of pressure being built. I'm not saying it's not real. there's a very good piece of the ft at the weekend by by will lloyd about britain's resilience saying we've gone um from just in case being the philosophy which guided our preparations to just in time you know in the hope we can scramble things together um in the event of a crisis and there may be some truth in that on the other hand the thing i think it's always important to say when you're being you know why isn't the west doing more why aren't they more decisive you know surely we should be calling out Putin, this grey war, it's a real war, let's take him on.

1:08:32Ed Balls: As well as the fact that's quite complicating and quite economically costly, we don't actually know what's really going on at the moment. I was involved in the Treasury when we had dealing with terrorist financing, that whole operation using the SWIFT financing network in order to identify the way in which terrorist finance was moving and to cut it off. But when it became public, that was the end of it. because at that point you've lost your ability to disrupt. And you'd rather assume that if European powers are collaborating together through NATO or in different ways in order to destabilise Iranian and Russian grey plots, I'm not sure I particularly want them to announce it.

1:09:16Ed Balls: You know, I kind of want them to get on with it. It doesn't mean that they shouldn't be accountable, but it's not clear telling your enemy what you're up to is the right strategy. Yes. No, and of course it emerged after the Cold War that there were all sorts of covert strategies and cultural and political organizations were being funded by the CIA on the side and so on. Just to end, let's end where we started because we started with a clip from Yvette at the Labour Conference talking about her interview with me over our summer series. I'm going to end by, I spoke to Michael Gove about his TV show and he said to me, you know who was really good?

1:09:51Nicola Sturgeon. Nicola Sturgeon was really effective and he could see, he said it was the first time he'd really seen why she was such an effective leader in Scotland, politically effective. And that, I think, was our impression, wasn't it, when we did the Inside the Room interview with her. Now, she's had all sorts of political troubles. And it turns out that the thing that's given her most trouble recently is the publicity for this new, I think it's a Sky show, isn't it? Yes, right. Where, as part of the publicity, she's straightening Michael Gove's tie, which does not go down well because Michael Gove's the Prime Minister I think she's like the Deputy Prime Minister or something like that and she's straightening his tie in the nationalist community in Scotland

1:10:35Ed Balls: Michael Gove probably even more of a conference villain than you in the Labour Party and in the SNP conferences but I think it would be a good show I mean that and the traitors we've got some good TV to watch he said it was such fun to film that is it for this week's episode of Political Currency make sure to check out our show notes to find out how you can become a kitchen cabinet or gold subscriber to get our youtube emqs early and all sorts of other perks yeah that's right and join us on monday for ex-minister's questions uh we're going to answer all and any of the questions you can think about you can message us on our socials you can leave a youtube comment because of course we're on youtube now and email us at questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk so see you on monday for emqs and do include a voice note if you're sending us a question or we'll get in touch to make sure we get that sorted out we love your questions on anything see you monday for emqs and then next week for the main podcast see you then

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