Will the welfare rebellion be the end of Starmer?

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1:59This is Political Currency with Ed Balls and George Osborne.

2:12Ed Balls: So welcome to this week's Political Currency. We are remote. I wondered whether this was because George had dashed down to Somerset to beat the crowds on the way to Glastonbury. But I'm not sure you're going.

2:27George Osborne: No, I mean, my house down there is only about 15 minutes away from the Glastonbury site. And I have been to see some great acts there, like Paul McCartney, when he brought on Bruce Springsteen as his surprise act, and Billie Eilish and Oasis. Normally standing next to someone where they kind of screw the Tories. That's a polite way of putting it. Sign and not noticing that they're standing next to me. So I've enjoyed Gleswim past, but not this week. No, in fact, I've done the opposite. I've fled to London.

2:59Ed Balls: Don't tell me you've rented your house out to Rod Stewart. If only.

3:03George Osborne: I know. I sadly know. I mean, if he wants to borrow that, I love Maggie May, right? So if he wants to hang out in my house, he'd be more than welcome.

3:14Ed Balls: Well, in a...

3:16George Osborne: but I did see a very good production of Parsifal at Glyndebourne this week does that count

3:21Ed Balls: no it doesn't but in a in the festival spirit in a Stevie Wonder rewrite I've just called to say I'm sorry I'm just going to do a quick apology to all of our listeners last week I said that the new Labour government didn't change the non-domicile rule and introduce the um the charge we were talking about whether Rachel Reeves would do a u-turn and it was you who did it and I I I unfairly gave you the credit for introducing the non-domiciled charge. It turned out, after I'd left the Treasury, it was Alistair Darling in 2008 who'd introduced this charge. It totally passed me by. Sorry about that.

3:58George Osborne: No, but he, well, I think you were within your rights to think that the idea originated with the Conservatives because it was in that conference speech, you know, I was going to levy a charge on non-doms in order to raise the inheritance of that threshold. And then a couple of weeks later, Alastair Zahling copied it in the autumn statement.

4:18Ed Balls: But hadn't there been some Labour consultation document in 2003 which opened it up? I just remember not ever really engaging with that.

4:25George Osborne: No, no, it was always an issue. I mean, it was a kind of, it was a rising issue. It was an issue of, you know, the real issue back then, without diverting attention too much, was people who, to all intents and purposes, were British, sounded British, born in Britain, spend their whole life in Britain, claimed to be non-domicials and that they would eventually go to some other jurisdiction. That's very different from the current situation where internationally wealthy people who are obviously not British and probably won't stay in Britain for the whole of their lives can't get the special status.

4:57Ed Balls: And I've got to say, after our conversation last week, I've seen nothing since which persuades me we're on anything other than a non-dom partial U-turn track, don't you think?

5:09George Osborne: Well, certainly U-turns are one of the themes of the moment, aren't they?

5:14Ed Balls: Which we're going to get to in a moment.

5:16George Osborne: So what are we going to do on the show? Look, we've got to start, haven't we, with the US attacks on Iran, but more to the point, look, a reaction to those, the British government's reaction, the NATO summit, and the arrival of Daddy, Daddy being Donald Trump. And that was the name not given to him by Donald Trump himself or indeed by Donald Trump's children, but by the Secretary General of NATO.

5:41Ed Balls: And then we're going to move on to the daddy of all political messes. Quite how the government has ended up with an enormous rebellion led by senior backbenchers on one of its flagship bills, a rebellion which is on track not just to reject part of the reform, but to throw out the whole of the legislation if it's introduced next Wednesday. and a big expectation that change is coming. Another U-turn of sorts on the way. We'll talk about that second.

6:13George Osborne: And then as it is a Glastonbury week, remember this?

6:24George Osborne: So there was a time when a Labour leader's name was chanted by the crowd, but the current Labour leader is saying that one particular band shouldn't play at Glastonbury, kneecap. It's the name of the band. And we're going to have a brief chat about whether politics and music festivals mix.

6:43Ed Balls: That's right. But we're going to start with the fallout from the American military action against Iran's nuclear bases last weekend. On our podcast last week, we said it was really unclear what was in Donald Trump's mind, what he was going to do. And there is some sort of ex-post attempt to say that he was always with Israel. He was always part of the Netanyahu plan, that the original Israeli attacks were the precursor to a pre-planned American intervention. I have to say, I don't find that very persuasive at all. I think when we did our podcast last Thursday, he was still weighing things up. And then, first of all, that military action.

7:30Ed Balls: And then the sort of rather surprising announcement of a ceasefire and the Donald getting very angry with both Israel and Iran for not immediately jumping to his tune of a ceasefire, the end of war, a peace which would last forever, 24 to 48 hours after he had just bombed the living day out of Iran's nuclear capabilities. It was a wild weekend.

7:55George Osborne: Yeah, very wild. And, you know, I think this is something we should develop as we look to the NATO summit as well. I mean, it's just the sort of singularity of the Donald Trump presidency. And, you know, Trump did two things, which basically no one else in the world can do. The first is deliver that awesome US power. There's no other country in the world that comes close to being able to do what they did, which is fly stealth bombers literally halfway around the world, you know, drop bombs that penetrate deep into mountainsides and then fly back entirely unharmed and unchallenged. And even unnoticed.

8:34George Osborne: Unnoticed. They flew over all those airspaces and no one noticed. And there is, you know, China is a many, many years off having anything like that capability and no one else in the world has it. And you're right. And I think that plan has probably sat there for 10 years and was activated by Donald Trump. And I guess even the senior military commanders in America didn't know whether he'd say yes or not. And then he does something which is, again, kind of fairly extraordinary and no one else can do. I mean, Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and the like, they've all been calling on Israel to de-escalate, back off, consider a ceasefire, all this kind of thing.

9:09George Osborne: Donald Trump literally goes on television and swears at them and says, you know, I'm imposing a ceasefire. And even Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't pay attention to many people, has to pay attention to that. So all of that is a kind of reminder. I thought it was interesting. There are lots of very sensible people, including my very good friend who I admire a lot, William Haig, who says that the US attack on Iran, rather than the diplomatic route, has actually made the world more dangerous. You'll urge Iran on to try to develop a nuclear weapon. And it's a sort of short-term gain but long-term loss.

9:50George Osborne: I'm not sure I agree with William, and I hesitate to say that because he's a wise person. I think this clearly has been a massive setback for Iran. It's exposed the weakness of the Iranian regime, its inability to even defend its own airspace. And it kind of knows that if ever got close again to trying to develop a bomb, the same sort of thing would happen. What I thought was interesting is you can either be for it or against it, but the British government was neither. And I thought I'd just play this clip of a medley of government ministers. And anyone who's watched the news over last week will have seen one of these.

10:28George Osborne: Government ministers being unable to answer two basic questions, which is, or unwilling to answer, I should say. One, does the British government regard the American action against Iran as legal? And B, do they support it? Listen to this medley.

10:45Ed Balls: To the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who is on the line now. Good morning to you. Good morning, Justin. Was this action taken by Donald Trump legal or illegal? Well, we weren't involved. It's for the Americans to discuss those issues. I'm surprised, though, that the British government doesn't have a view on whether this enormously important military action was or was not legal. We weren't involved, is the truth. Hang on a second. We were not involved in Russia attacking Ukraine, but we have a very firm view of whether it was legal or not. What is our view of the legality?

11:25George Osborne: Justin, there isn't moral equivalence here.

11:28Ed Balls: I'm not suggesting there is, but we do make judgments about whether actions are legal or not. If I may, can I finish the point?

11:35George Osborne: So we support it as a government, that bombing of Iran. Now, we've shared that long-term aim, we the US and many other nations, that Iran has to be a country without a nuclear weapon. Yeah, I understand the goal. It was just about the achievement and how it was executed. Do we think, does the British government think it was legal, the action that America took? What America has done has made us all safer. There was bombings. And I wanted to understand if we formed a view as a British government, whether that was legal and what you thought of the way America went about it. I'm not going to get into questions of legality.

12:17George Osborne: So that was David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, and John Healy, both being interviewed on the Today programme. And my suspicion, but, you know, it'd be interesting to get your thought. ed, was there must be legal advice, perhaps from Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, that the American action was not legal, or there are questions over its legality. The Americans, A, would say, well, we're not bound by international law anyway. We haven't signed up to all these conventions. And B, anyway, Iran was in breach of its international obligations. And so this action was justified. But it seems to me the fact they can't answer that question, these ministers, means that they must have seen advice that says it's at least of doubtful legality and maybe it's illegal.

13:09George Osborne: And they just don't want to say that about the United States and about Donald Trump. And therefore they can't. And because they've seen that advice, they also can't say whether they support it or not, because they can't be seen to support something which the Attorney General has said is either illegal or at least has big questions over its locality?

13:26Ed Balls: That might be the reason. And it's certainly awkward. They want to say that it's good that there's a ceasefire, it's good that Iran's nuclear capability has been downgraded, but they don't want to get involved in either answering the legal question or the endorsement about the American activity. In marked contrast to the Conservatives, David Wolfson, Casey, the shadow Attorney General, very clear that this was legal and he set that all out in public. It might be that Richard Hermer, the Attorney General, had provided legal advice internally that it might not be legal, in which case it's very difficult then for David Lammy or John Healy to contradict that.

14:15Ed Balls: And as you say, in so doing, they sound equivocal, they sound a little bit unclear. The Times had an editorial saying that this was weakening Britain's standing in the world, this lack of leadership. But I think it's also that unless you've actually done the action yourself, it's easier if you are the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary to go to more generic language about Israel's right to defend itself, the importance of a non-nuclear Iran, without getting involved in a detailed endorsement of the particular action. Because, of course, politics and foreign policy is a dynamic game.

14:56Ed Balls: At the moment you've endorsed that particular action, you're then sort of implicated in a train of events over which you have no control. If you think back to the October 7th Hamas attack in Israel and the aftermath where Keir Starmer jumped in in detail in defending the Israeli response and that caused him a lot of difficulty. I think there is, especially when it was so uncertain, what Donald Trump was going to do next, you could see why they were cautious. Donald Trump said, we've taken out their nuclear capacity. It then became clear that the American generals didn't believe that was the case.

15:40Ed Balls: If Donald Trump then says, well, you know, I said we had, I've now been told we haven't, we're going back in to do it again. If John Healy and David Lammy have endorsed move one, do they have to endorse move two? The great thing about being in opposition is you can, at a certain point say, well, it's nothing to do with us because we're not the government and we've not been privy to the intelligence briefings. Whereas I think if you're the government, there is a natural kind of caution about being drawn in to be implicated in a series of statements about an action over which you are not in control because you're not actually a participant.

16:17Ed Balls: So, you know, it's a calculation, isn't it? And Keir Starmer decided better to look a bit equivocal and mealy-mouthed than to become a fully signed-up participant in a foreign incursion in which he wasn't actually even a little bit of a participant. And isn't that the explanation?

16:39George Osborne: Yes, quite possibly. I guess we just don't know. I mean, we may find out what exactly the British government's advice on this was. I mean, of course, he was not posed the question that we thought he might be posed, and others thought he might be posed to whether the British would consent to the use of the Diego Garcia airbase, which is something that we had to consider as a potential question when David Cameron was Prime Minister. And we thought, you know, it would be a potential challenge to the coalition at the time of the Liberal Democrats. And it's just a reminder also, you know, throughout my lifetime, whether British governments support or oppose American action, often in the Middle East or the Mediterranean.

17:19George Osborne: I remember Margaret Thatcher backing Reagan's airstrikes on Libya and other European countries not being prepared to do that. Or, of course, the Iraq war was the strongest example of that. So anyway, I thought it was just interesting that they couldn't find a way to say we support this action.

17:40Ed Balls: And it was awkward. It was definitely awkward. I interviewed David Lambert and John Healy on Monday and Tuesday, and it was awkward. Back in 2017, wasn't it, when Donald Trump had his first term, those unexpected bombings into Syria. And actually, the British government and the French government both supported him at the time. This time, they weren't even asked for support. They weren't, as far as we know, asked to use those bases. This was the opposite of the early 2000s. This was a president who didn't feel he needed allies and allies who weren't asked and felt and made to feel that they were needed.

18:19Ed Balls: I think probably Donald Keir Starmer will think he's dodged one there.

18:24George Osborne: Now, what about the NATO summit? I think when we were anticipating this NATO summit in the recent months, we thought this would be the big showdown. A lot of people did. That this would be the moment when Trump sort of confronted Europe. And even the day before the NATO summit in the Netherlands, he was calling into question the interpretation of Article 5, which is the self-defense clause of NATO, an attack on one member state, it's an attack on all. He said there are numerous interpretations of it. So that got everyone worried. But the event itself sort of passed essentially in a pretty straightforward way.

19:05George Osborne: All the participants signed up to this target of 5 % of GDP on defense and security spending by 2035. It's a bit nebulous, but there is a hard number there of 3.5 % on defense over the next 10 years of GDP. and Donald Trump ended up by saying it's not a ripoff, which is the closest thing he's ever said to endorsing NATO. But do you think the price of a peaceful summit and getting through it and, you know, Trump leaving town without the whole thing falling apart was everyone having to be unbelievably obsequious and fawning towards the Donald. And does that look a bit embarrassing or that's just a reflection of the reality of American power?

19:53Ed Balls: There was a briefing from Number 10 about how pleased they were that Keir Starmer was positioned close to Donald Trump in the NATO photo, which didn't feel as though like the strongest moment for Britain's independence standing in the world. But any embarrassment there must be as nothing compared to the former Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutter, now the Secretary General of NATO, who having in a text to Donald Trump, which Trump then published to the world, says, you know, thank you for your kind of leadership. You are the peacemaker. Then on camera has this astonishing. It will be your win, he says.

20:35Ed Balls: It will be your win.

20:36George Osborne: Europe is going to pay in a big way. He's even using Donald Trump's capitals. Do you think Mark, I know Mark Rutter because he was the prime minister when I was chancellor and I've seen him since. and he's a pretty effective political operator. Do you think he must have cringed when Donald Trump suddenly posted his private message on social media?

20:59Ed Balls: One would like to think so, but unfortunately it gets worse. Just listen to this exchange.

21:04George Osborne: They've had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can't stop them. Let them fight for about two, three minutes. Then it's easier to stop them.

21:13Ed Balls: And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language. You have to use strong language. Every once in a while, you have to use a certain word. Then daddy has to step in with strong language. Mark Rutter then tried to explain what he meant by these remarks. And this is even worse. This is Mark Rutter, the daddy thing. I didn't call him daddy. What I said is that sometimes in Europe, I hear some countries say, hey, Mark, will the US stay with us? And I say, that sounds a little bit like a small child asking his daddy, Hey, are you still staying with the family? So in that sense, I used daddy, not that I was calling President Trump daddy.

21:48Ed Balls: He was calling the whole of Europe, the small children, worrying about whether daddy Trump would, I mean, I thought it was excruciating. Maybe it's what you have to do. If I was Donald Trump, if it was me, I'd think, oh my God, what fawning nonsense. Unfortunately, I have a nasty feeling Donald Trump probably loves it and laps it up hook, line and sinker. isn't the reality of this summit. It normally lasts a few days. They crunched it down to a couple of hours. Donald Trump came in and went. They avoided a massive clash over Russia. They avoided a massive clash over Ukraine. America is clearly reducing its kind of contribution to Europe's defence, but there's language about Europe at some point increasing its defences at some future point to be unspecified in terms of when or how it's paid for.

22:45Ed Balls: The veneer was held together. But the underlying question about whether or not, which was raised by Trump in his first term, is he committed to this alliance? The underlying question, does Europe have the financial or military capability to defend itself without America? And is it going to be faced with that choice at some future point, maybe sooner rather than later, none of these were answered. So they got away with it. But I would say, you know, just.

23:16George Osborne: I think the commitment to three and a half percent defense spending, the one and a half percent on top of that, which makes five, can be spent on security and infrastructure and stuff. So that's a bit nebulous. The three and a half percent, you know, it did turn out that the two percent that NATO signed up to a decade ago was binding. And, you know, again, I think Trump would say and Trump supporters would say no other American president would have forced Europe to spend the way they have.

23:45Ed Balls: But the UK is not getting to that number to three and a half until for 10 years. There is no budgeted kind of provision for it after 28, 29. he had that odd moment where Keir Starmer was telling people, telling the British people, you've got to be ready in case we see an invasion onto our shores. First time for well over 200 years that that would happen if that was the case. If it is the case, we are facing an imminent threat as opposed to trying to deter some potential future threat. If it's an imminent threat, then i'm not sure saying we'll be ready by 2035 is the right the right response and we'll fight

24:29George Osborne: them on the beaches and on the landing grounds uh in nine or ten years time exactly and so you know i wonder about this language you know two people asked me yesterday um whether there was going to be world war three literally like a random memory i got into a conversation with someone in the street and um who started talking to me about the podcast and asked me is it going to be world war three, George. And they said the prime minister is warning us about these things. And I could absolutely see you need to make the political case for more defence spending. You need to talk about the dangerous world.

25:03George Osborne: You need to set your stall out. But I wonder whether, you know, I would say what the events of the last couple of weeks have proved is that even the totally unforecast, unannounced attack by Israel on Iran and the American attack on Iran has not spilled into a wider conflict, even with Iran, let alone the wider Middle East. And the reason why these wars are not spilling beyond their borders, even though they're having a potentially radicalizing effect on populations, which is a different matter. But in terms of kind of sheer, you know, the spread of war, it's not happening because the United States remains the absolute dominant power in the world, the dominant military power.

25:49George Osborne: It's demonstrated that again this week. And the American president remains the key figure in the Western alliance. And to such a degree that even the Secretary General of NATO ends up calling him daddy. And world wars don't happen when there's one dominant power. World wars happen when there are several powers competing to be the dominant power.

26:10Ed Balls: I thought it was really interesting the Keir Star summer language because if you think, it tells you that we are over 20 years on from the Iraq war. Because I think for Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron to use what might look to be hyped up language about a potential threat in order to galvanise action and provision after the 45 minute dossier and the contribution of our fellow podcaster Alastair Campbell, I think there's been rather more caution about that kind of language ever since and Keir Starmer doesn't clearly doesn't feel that same caution um to raise the prospect of the first um foreign incursion onto British soil since the Battle of Fishguard in 225 years ago would be a you know it's a surprising thing I bet you had to look that up what the Battle of Fishguard it's a fact I carry around at all times was that a Wikipedia or a chat GBT it was a it was it was a French revolutionary force giving us a few issues But, you know, as always, us plucky Brits saw them off, I say, without too much difficulty.

27:19Ed Balls: But, you know, I think you have to be careful if you're a political leader. You need to use your most severe language in the most severe circumstances. I think Keir Starmer has actually had a very good few weeks and months on foreign policy. I think he's been much more sure-footed in government than he was in opposition. shouldn't and that's great but I think probably it was a little it was a little bit of you know I thought that was a little bit island of strangers.

27:49George Osborne: Now listen we should turn to the domestic problems where it's for certain that the government has not been nearly as sure footage as I agree that they have been on the international stage but before we turn to it should we just hear the video that the White House posted on its official account as the president returned from the NATO summit take a listen to this daddy's

28:24Ed Balls: home i was actually thinking they were going to um a bit like um duolipa having king creole on stage at wembley at the end of last week i thought they were going to do, Annie, or maybe Mark Rutter, Annie, I'm not your daddy, would also have been an appropriate soundtrack. I'm a bit worried we're jumping ahead of ourselves. We've got Glastonbury to come. But first of all, we've got to talk about welfare reform and this impending rebellion. And we're going to talk about that after the break.

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30:36George Osborne: Welcome back. So the domestic news is being consumed by the problems that the government is having with its own backbenchers over its welfare reform bill. There's due to be a vote in Parliament next Tuesday. These are the cuts to the eligibility for personal independence payments for disabled people and also for the health element of universal credit, which is the kind of cash payment. And these were introduced, if people remember, around the time of what was called the Spring Statement, when the OBR said that Rachel Reeves was going to break her fiscal rules. So late in the day, the government announced changes to disability benefits.

31:19George Osborne: And I think at the time it was controversial, but it wasn't clear that the government with a huge majority, one of the biggest majorities in modern British history, would face defeat in the commons. There was bound to be some unrest on the Labour back benches. But our man on the inside, or man who used to be on the inside you head balls um you predicted you did you did warn us on this podcast that there was trouble brewing uh this is what you said a couple of months ago

31:50Ed Balls: if you say to me you can't borrow more i'll say fine but you also cannot sort out the public finances and the defense of our country on the backs of the vulnerable and the most disabled you just can't do it and a labour government can't do that and find something else to do find another tax find another benefit find somebody who actually is a position to pay but don't do it on people who depend upon personal independence payments because they have nowhere else to go another money to access and the reason why we've got all these stories about potential labour rebellions is everybody is worried that's what's going to happen and that is it's not the right solution.

32:29George Osborne: So, Ed, let's start with, we shouldn't dwell too much on how do they get here, because ultimately they are where they are. But just your reflection on at what point in the last couple of months since you said what you said, could they have found a more elegant exit or off-ramp or made some kind of concession that would have avoided the situation in today where it looks like they are going to either have to withdraw this legislation altogether or make some major concession. And by the way, by the time you hear this podcast, events might have even moved on because it's happening very quickly.

33:06Ed Balls: Well, the bill is supposed to be introduced next week in Parliament at second reading. It's quite conceivable. In fact, I would say quite likely that the government says something over the course of the day about how they're going to respond to this mess and we should maybe in a second kind of talk about what we would do if we were them. But it does go back to the spring statement and the way you introduced it is very important. Welfare reform was a part of the labour strategy to get people off welfare into work. Huge rise in the number of people who were out of the labour market on disability benefits and that continues to rise.

33:44Ed Balls: And that principle, I think, is broadly supported across both sides of the House of Commons, that you need to do more to get people back into work, to support them to do so, but also make sure you tackle disincentives to work in the system. But as you'll remember, the weekend before the spring statement, it became clear the Office of Budget Responsibility was not standing up the Treasury's costings on those welfare reforms. They had a shortfall to meet their fiscal rules. And at the last minute, much bigger cuts in personal independence payments for people with more severe disabilities were put on the table and then scored in those documents.

34:29Ed Balls: And that is the thing which then and since has caused big problems.

34:34George Osborne: Can I just ask you a question about that before you move on? Is that true? I mean, that's a very good excuse for why you might want to rebel against this legislation. Well, it's all been driven by the Treasury and having to hit the fiscal rules, and it's not properly thought out. But fundamentally, if you're going to do something about this ballooning welfare bill, which by the way squeezes out everything else you want to do on health and education and so on, you are going to have to make things a little bit less generous. Of course. And ultimately, maybe Labour MPs these days are just not prepared to vote for that.

35:08George Osborne: And it's not just that they don't like the fact you're hitting a Treasury target. It's that they can't turn around to their constituents in the social media age and under general political pressure from the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and others and say, you know, you were going to get£100 and now you're only going to get£80. They're just fundamentally, they're not prepared to vote for a cut in welfare payments.

35:32Ed Balls: It's not the first time there have been rebellions over kind of tough welfare decisions. Labour faced that in 97 into 98 over lone parent benefits in the first part of the Labour government. You faced it over tax credit reform in 2016. So it's not the first time it's happened. and often it was the left on the Labour side who were really driving these things. If you go back to 2015, when Labour supported your tax credits cuts from the shadow cabinet, it was the Corbyn left which made hay with that in Parliament. I think you can make an argument, maybe the world is different in this Parliament because even with the big majority, it was a much less emphatic Labour win and maybe in the world of social media, individual MPs feel more worried about keeping their seats and the threat from reform or the Greens or the Liberal Democrats or whatever.

36:31Ed Balls: Although, you know, I remember Anne Campbell in Cambridge rebelling on tuition fees and Iraq in order to try and hold on to her seat and that didn't end up doing her much good at the time. But I think this is different because this is not the usual left suspects. It's much more broad-based.

36:51George Osborne: Who are the people who you say, the fact that they're involved in this means this isn't just your kind of, I mean, I know he's not in the party anymore, Jeremy Corbyn, but you know, you're sort of Diane Abbott's of this world. You know, these are people you would be worried about if you're sitting in number 10.

37:07Ed Balls: 10 select committee chairs elected in parliament to the most senior backbench positions, including the chair of the Treasury Committee, Meg Hillier and the chair of the the welfare committee Debbie Abrahams who are both saying they're not saying we're particularly worried about one aspect of the bill and we want to put an amendment in our name on that aspect which would be a quite normal thing to happen they have a reasoned amendment going down at second reading to reject the whole legislation which has got you know 120. You should explain to me if this was carried the whole legislation before

37:46George Osborne: right? This reasoned amendment, I know it's all a bit technical, but this is the kind of key vote on whether we should proceed with this legislation, not just the fine detail. And if this backbench amendment, the more than 120 Labour MPs to date have signed was carried, then the legislation wouldn't happen at all.

38:01Ed Balls: That's right. And Labour in the past, Labour in the past and the Conservatives in the past were put through legislation which tightened eligibility criteria to get people of welfare back into work. The problem is, as we talked about three months ago, the impact assessment driven by these big cuts in personal independent payments, which is where the money comes from, the change in eligibility so that you can be unable to wash from the waist down or use the toilet and still lose that financial support leads to a rise of 250 ,000 in poverty, 50 ,000 children, leads to 800 ,000 already in poverty, getting into deeper poverty.

38:43Ed Balls: and what you're seeing is senior backbenchers across the Labour Party in Parliament, not simply the left or the hard left, saying we can't support this whole approach and therefore they'd rather see the legislation fall. I don't remember seeing such a concerted piece of opposition like this ever in the last 20, 25 years of my being actively involved in politics. And it came sort of out of the blue. It went from questions about would there be some rebels to over 100 people already with their signature down on this piece of legislation, with the government then scrabbling like mad. You had Keir Starmer last night saying, it's just noises off.

39:34Ed Balls: You had Angela Rayner saying yesterday in PMQs, that they will go ahead next Tuesday. This morning, Douglas Alexander in his interviews was saying, well, next Tuesday, when the bill is scheduled to appear, alongside briefings in the newspapers saying there's going to have to be major concessions, number 10 seems to be simultaneously saying they are going to back down and they're not going to back down. The Treasury doesn't want to back down. Others clearly want to back down. I mean, it's absolutely chaotic and broad-based. And, you know, unless something big happens, they're going to lose this legislation.

40:12George Osborne: No, I thought Dougie Alexander was demonstrating why he'd been in politics for 30 years, whereas Keir Starmer was a bit more recent to the game, you know, because he was definitely the junior. I mean, you know, he's a sort of senior junior minister, if you like. And it's certainly not his decision. And he was absolutely covering his back and to avoid digging in. What would you do now, come to come seriously? You're like doing your old job in the Treasury or, you know, we're sitting in number 10 and say Keir Starmer calls us up and says, George and Ed, tell us what to do right now. What would you advise Downing Street?

40:48Ed Balls: Well, look, you know, without being too much of a smart ass, I'd say I wouldn't start from here. But of course, that's not that's not much use to you right now. I would say, you know, this was a ticking time bomb three or four months ago. and why weren't the political operations of the Treasury and Number 10 gripping this. But we are where we are. And what you can't do is have days of speculation about this. Clearly, the worst thing by far is for this amendment to be put down, called by the Speaker, which is quite controversial, to have a reasoned amendment at the second reading to pull the whole legislation from the government's own backbenchers.

41:31Ed Balls: But I think the Speaker will find it very hard not to call this right now. That is obviously a disaster. But there's two other alternatives.

41:38George Osborne: It would be interesting whether the Tory high command complained about that, because during the Brexit years, they used to hate John Bercow allowing reasoned amendments at second reading, which has not traditionally been allowed. But if Lindsay Hoyle does it now, the Tory opposition will be rubbing their hands.

41:53Ed Balls: And Kemme Badenock very smartly said that she would back the government, she would bail Keir Starmer out so long as he goes ahead with even tougher welfare reforms and promises no tax rises in the autumn, which we know is totally impossible commitment for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to make, which allows them to then join those Labour rebels and to defeat this bill. That is clearly the biggest disaster. But there's two alternative choices. One is to put forward amendments. And the second is to pull the bill and regroup. on the former i can see why if you're keir starmer you know i've said its noises off i want to show that i've committed to um to this reform i don't want to look weak i say to my political people um having said how on earth can we've ended up in this terrible mess and then decided that's an unproductive conversation to have right now because we've got to get this sorted out to say find the concession which gets us out of this the problem with that is they got into this problem in the first place back in March through at the last minute, scrabbling around, trying to find an extra revenue raiser to placate the OBR from the Treasury.

43:06Ed Balls: And that has turned out to be a deeply messy way to go about. The mistake they made, there's never been, I think Liz Kendall has worked very hard on this, but there's never been the principled speech from the Prime Minister or the Chancellor, setting out what their approach is and how this all fits together in a coherent way, including the personal independence payment reforms, which is, I think, what Tony Blair would have done or what Gordon Brown would have done, what David Cameron would have done. If you have an amendment which goes down now, first of all, for it to be meaningful, it has to cost billions.

43:39Ed Balls: So that is extra billions, which will have to be found in the budget by Rachel Rees, because there won't be time to then come back with new revenue raises easily in this political environment. In any case, the danger is you don't go far enough in order to solve the problem and stem the rebellion, which ends up being worse. And the danger is it ends up being unprincipled and messy. Better thing to do, I would say, is actually take it on the chin. Say we didn't set out the argument clearly enough. enough, pull the bill, have a period of reflection. You might ask somebody senior and significant to do a piece of work for you if you're Keir Starmer.

44:21Ed Balls: Come back then, I mean you could come back in beginning of October, September, October with new proposals which if put on the table in a clear enough way which may have some other revenue raises from other places but deal with the problems having gone through a period of principal consultation, then allow you to score more than you would otherwise be able to do at the time of the budget. And you actually get yourself back on the front foot on the purpose of this legislation and why you're trying to do it, which at the moment, I think that's an argument they've entirely lost. I mentioned 2015. You know, at the time, Labour decided to vote with you on those welfare cuts.

45:03Ed Balls: They then kind of ploughed on. And this is something which Harriet Harman will remember very acutely. Rachel Reeves, at the time, shadow work and pensions.

45:11George Osborne: She was the acting leader of the Labour Party. She was the leader of the Labour Party. Harriet was the acting leader.

45:15Ed Balls: Rachel Reeves was shadow work and pensions. They decided to plough on with this. And what that then did to the politics of the Parliamentary Labour Party ends up, and more widely in the country, ends up with that Jeremy Corbyn victory. So I would say scrabbling at the last minute in a more chaotic way to come up with some compromise, which you try to negotiate before next Tuesday, is the wrong approach. And it's better to take it on the chin, pull it out, think it through, have a better process and get something back on the table, which you can score properly before you get to the budget.

45:52George Osborne: Yeah, I mean, there are two counter cases. The first is big controversial reforms in our country have often come to quite close votes in Parliament. So when the Labour government introduced top up fees for higher education and when we increased the limit on those, both of which I think are reforms that no one is proposing to reverse now and I think help fund higher education for 20 years. They were both close votes in Parliament, very close for Tony Blair. He almost lost. Alan Johnson did an amazing kind of wind up speech that kind of brought the Labour rebels or some of them back into the fold.

46:30George Osborne: And the Conservative opposition at the time voted against, which I was very uncomfortable with as a junior shadow minister. And then, you know, our own vote in the coalition to increase those top up fees where I had to tell people like Tracy Crouch, she wouldn't have a ministerial career if she didn't vote. and she promptly ignored me and did have a ministerial career. But enough people believe me that we got the vote through. So sometimes you do have to kind of just bite the bullet and get on with it. And then second, I would just ask this question, is the Labour Parliamentary Party serious about governing?

47:03George Osborne: Because it's not just to pick up language you were using to kind of placate the OBR. These are fiscal rules the government has set out to try and earn Britain economic credibility, to provide credibility in the bond market, to do something about Britain's very high interest rates that it's paying on its debt, historically high. And, you know, if it's, you know, they can't pass a cut to winter fuel payment. They can't pass, you know, changes to disability benefits, even though Britain is the only major Western economy where more people, you know, where the employment rate has not reached the rate it was before COVID and the incapacity benefits bill has ballooned.

47:45George Osborne: If you've got other things like the defence commitment we've just talked about on the NATO targets, we were talking about having to potentially U-turn on non-DOMs. I mean, all of these things come with a bill. And if the Labour government can't deliver its domestic programme, and at the moment it seems to be stuck in a cycle of announcement, U-turn, announcement, U-turn, isn't that ultimately much more damaging for the Labour Party's fortunes and the prospects of these Labour MPs getting re-elected? And there's a poll out today that says, you know, reform would win by far the most seats. A YouGov MRP poll that Labour would lose over 200 seats.

48:24George Osborne: The Tories would be reduced to, you know, 40 something MPs in Parliament. And isn't it because, you know, you've got to show some grip and direction. And if you're endlessly backtracking, retreating, rather than confront, you know, you've got to at some point call the bluff of your own party and say, come on, we've got to be serious about governing.

48:44Ed Balls: I know, but you've got to do that in a politically realistic way, in a way which takes your ministers with you and your parliamentary party in the wider country. And the reality is, at the moment when the centre says, we're not going to U-turn, and therefore you've got to go out and defend this position, junior minister, backbencher. They think, well, I did that for you over the winter allowance, and then you changed your mind. And why do I know you're not going to do it this time? And the problem is, if you're making a principled argument, the argument over tuition fees was a principled argument.

49:20Ed Balls: Actually, interestingly, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were agreed on the principle. We were never against a graduate contribution to people's university fees. fees the question was was that better done through um you know a top-up fee paid for by a loan or done through a contribution the tax system is about method not about the the principle um the principle that um that you should get people back to work i think that's accepted the principle that not everybody needed the winter allowance was accepted but if you say which is where you started, the problem is the fiscal gap. We've got to do this in order that we can make our sums add up.

50:06Ed Balls: So it's not about the principle, it's about needing the money. Well, people then say, well, is that the best and fairest way to raise the money? And the problem with the personal independence payment proposal is it hits people in the bottom half of the income distribution. Some people on severe disabilities will never work in a very heavy way. It raises child poverty, It doesn't reduce it. Every welfare reform Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did happened at a time of falling child poverty, not rising child poverty. And people say, but if you're doing it for the money, and everybody knows the pip change before the spring statement was for the money, they say, well, isn't there a better way, a fairer way to raise the money?

50:44Ed Balls: Keir Starmer's already conceded that on the winter allowance because he said, okay, that wasn't fair. I'm going to put it back and Rachel Reeves will have to find another way. So I think the answer to your question is that you should never set off down a path of saying our fiscal credibility depends upon delivering this unless you're sure that as a matter of principle and fairness and values you're going to be able to get it through and i think in both these cases the winter allowance and the pit reform that's their problem that's why they're facing a u-turn so and is it damaging to their fiscal credibility absolutely but they've got an election to fight in three years and they've got the biggest revolt we've seen for a very long time.

51:25Ed Balls: And what are they going to do? The Treasury is still telling people they're not going to U-turn, but that's what they're saying about the winter fuel allowance three weeks ago.

51:31George Osborne: And who do we blame? I mean, is this the Chief Whip's fault? Is this the Treasury's fault? Is this the Prime Minister's fault? Is it Morgan McSweeney's fault? I mean, this is the Chief of Staff who's getting suddenly a load of anonymous Labour MPs saying they want regime change and so on. I mean, all I would say is of the senior Labour high command that I've met, the one who strikes me as having the most political now is Morgan McSweeney. So if you're not a Labour supporter, the first person you'd want removed is their chief political strategist, Morgan McSweeney. But is this all a bit unfair?

52:05George Osborne: And fundamentally, your prime minister is responsible and Keir Starmer, who has found his stride on the international stage and found a way of presenting himself in difficult situations, like NATO summits with Donald Trump, has not yet found his stride, hit his stride domestically, that you still don't have a kind of clear idea of Starmer's Britain, what the Starmer government's for. You know, they're not communicating domestically with the same confidence and sure touch that they're communicating internationally.

52:38Ed Balls: Well, I think it's always a big mistake to blame the advisors. and I think that's the wrong thing to do whatever the Times is writing today. But we have said over the last few months that number 10 need to have more of a policy grip on what's going on in the conversations they're having rather than finding out after the fact. I think it's written in the Patrick McGuire piece in the Times today that number 10 saying, but we weren't involved in the policy. But I mean, why not?

53:13George Osborne: Exactly.

53:13Ed Balls: The government.

53:14George Osborne: I remember on winter field payment. On winter field payment, Keir Starmer never asked the Chancellor in the bilateral meeting they had about that announcement way back in July last year.

53:28Ed Balls: And then if you go back to the very first formation of the government, at the time, if you remember, we said we were worried about putting new intake MPs straight into the government. There's now lots of UN Take MPs who've concluded their priority is to win their seat, but they're not going to get into the government in this parliament. And therefore, when they're told, you know, if you do what you think to do, that you need to do to win your seat, you'll never get a job in the Starboard administration. They think, well, you know, I'm going to do what I think I need to do to win my seat because I'm not expecting to get in the Starboard administration anyway.

53:59Ed Balls: The chief whip was not in the room and part of those early discussions. And I think blaming Alan Campbell, what I hear...

54:07George Osborne: Tell us about Alan Campbell, for those who don't know.

54:09Ed Balls: Alan Campbell is a chief whip. He is a very savvy political operator. He knows Parliament deeply well. He's been warning about the risk of this rebellion for a long time. I don't think it was taken seriously. And so in the same way as the centre needs a grip on policy, it also needs more of a grip on the nature of politics. Angie Hunter, Sally Morgan, Jonathan Ashworth, Joe Irvin, Fiona Gordon would never have allowed this disconnect. If Keir Starmer is turning around and saying, why didn't I know? I mean, that is a big failure. But in the end, the failure is him not to have asked and not to have been worried himself in the first place.

54:55Ed Balls: If you treat members of Parliament like fodder, you know, they're there because of us. You've got your seat because of us. Do as you're told. In the end, people like Meg Hillier and Debbie Abrahams and a lot of the others think, well, you know, Clive Efford. Clive Efford.

55:15George Osborne: I really like Clive Efford. He and I got on very well in the Parliament. The Eltermann B, yeah?

55:20Ed Balls: Eltermann B. In South London. Centrist centre-left, head of the Tribune Group. never been hard left never been a rebel never going to become a minister in this administration he's at a different stage of his life but I mean he's a loyalist how's Clive Effort ended up signing a motion to eradicate the entire welfare reform bill and how could that be a surprise to number 10 and who was in charge of stopping that happening and you know scrabbling around with the prime minister and the chancellor ringing people in the last 24 hours is weeks and months too late so I think there is an operation issue but fundamentally I'm going to go back to what I said at the time of the spring statement I think it's a policy issue in the end labor can make tough decisions.

56:12Ed Balls: It can get people back to work. Labour in the past made very difficult decisions around pension and retirement age and public spending. But you cannot say to the Labour Party in Parliament, we have to make tough decisions to balance the books. And we're going to do that on the backs of the poorest people and the people with disabilities, because that is our choice rather than doing it on other groups who we've decided are going to be protected and not to see their taxes rise. To say we're going to do nothing on any taxation of capital or wealth or housing, but we're going to do it on the poorest, most disabled people.

56:52In the end, they're not going to go along with that.

56:55Ed Balls: And they haven't gone along with that. And that was the policy mistake.

56:59George Osborne: So I think it's a fair bet to say that the crowds gathering at Glastonbury today and who will be there over the next couple of days are not going to be cheering and chanting Keir Starmer's name, are they? I think it's fair enough. But they might be chanting the name of Kneecap, the band that Keir Starmer has said shouldn't be playing at Glastonbury. And we're going to turn to music and politics next.

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59:32George Osborne: Welcome back. Glastonbury is underway. And we thought we'd remind you that politics and the music festival have often gone hand in hand. So here's some recent politics from Glastonbury. Build bridges, not walls. Is it right that so many people in our country have no home to live in and only a street to sleep on? Is it right that so many people are frightened of where they live at the moment, having seen the horrors of what happened in Grenfell Tower?

1:00:07Ed Balls: Democracy has failed us because it was ill-informed.

1:00:15Ed Balls: And I just want all of you to know that when you leave here, we can change that decision. It is possible.

1:00:25Ed Balls: Equally as heartbroken over what happened in America yesterday, the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is a law that ensures a woman's right to a safe abortion and other basic human rights.

1:00:42and i'm um i'm devastated and terrified and so many women and so many girls are going to die

1:00:48Ed Balls: because of this and um i wanted to dedicate this next song to the five members of the supreme court who have showed us that at the end of the day they truly don't give a shit about freedom

1:00:59George Osborne: so that was olivia rodrigo and uh guerrillas before that complaining about the brexit vote and your friend Jeremy Corbyn addressing the crowd. I think you were among the audience, were you, Ed?

1:01:12Ed Balls: I've only been to Glastonbury once in the summer of 2017. And my main memory is sitting through the most dirge-like performance I've ever heard by Radiohead on the main stage on the Saturday night. No, on the Friday night, I think. And then the Foo Fighters being really good on the Saturday night. and the amazing goat curry and the smells of wet wood and...

1:01:39George Osborne: Cannabis.

1:01:40Ed Balls: You're about to say substances being smoked. But everywhere I went, there were these Jeremy Corbyn chants. It was definitely his high point. Obviously, he went on from that to disaster in 2019. But this was just...

1:01:57George Osborne: He almost won the 2017 election. Very close.

1:02:00Ed Balls: And Glastonbury was in the afterglow of all of that.

1:02:06George Osborne: So, Ed, are you a fan of Kneecap? This is the Irish rap band. And they often sing in Irish, the original language, but they also sing in English. And here's an extra from their song, Get Your Brits Out.

1:02:32Ed Balls: Ed, are you a fan of that? No. I mean, it's not really my kind of music.

1:02:37George Osborne: You're not going to be covering it in your band, who are playing, aren't they?

1:02:41Ed Balls: They're playing in a week's time. Well, we are actually covering Charlie XCX, who is on the stage at Glastonbury. Are you playing her song Guess? No, we're doing it. I love it. But no. And, you know, I want to make a serious point here. I don't think that politicians saying kneecap should be banned from Glastonbury does anything other than give Necap more publicity for the expression of their views, many of which I find pretty abhorrent. And let's not forget one member of the trio has been charged with a terror offence. Following allegations, he displayed a flag in support of Hezbollah and made statements in support of Hamas.

1:03:19Ed Balls: Necap have responded with a statement in which they say they do not and have never supported Hamas or Hezbollah. On October the 7th, young israelis were at a music festival when hamas missiles and kind of guns and drone-based knives destroyed many of their lives and many others were taken hostage and thing i would say there is a very fine tradition of music and politics mixing you know i grew up in a home in which my earliest memories are of Peter, Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger because my parents had lived in America in the early 60s and the sort of the way in which the civil rights movement used music and poetry in order to make their argument was very important and very powerful and stayed with me all over their lives but the idea that we should be anything other than condemnatory in our hearts about this band celebrating them at our musical festival Glastonbury so I find it pretty abhorrent but I don't want to give them more publicity so I feel as though I've talked about them enough.

1:04:24George Osborne: I mean isn't that the point if you look through our history you know there were American politicians railing against the protest songs of the 60s I remember in the Thatcher period saying you know that Frankie goes to Hollywood being too explicit Mick Jagger was arrested by the police as a very famous piece of pop art of Mick Jagger in the back of a police car I mean you know I don't understand why the current generation of politicians, because Komi Baden-Ock has also weighed into this and said they shouldn't play a blasphemy. Why on earth are Starmer and Baden-Ock weighing in? They're only going to make sure that when kneecap come on stage, they're going to get this massive, you know, cheer from the crowd.

1:05:06George Osborne: I don't even look, of course, I'm the opposite of a supporter of Hamas or Hezbollah, and I applaud the action taken to try and eliminate them. But do you really, really want to be prosecuting like an Irish singer for talking about hammer? I mean, aren't you just kind of fueling the publicity?

1:05:26Ed Balls: So we should be hit and miss about when we decide to enforce the prescribing of terrorist groups.

1:05:33George Osborne: I think you have to be careful not to fall into the trap of trying to ban or arrest pop stars who are very popular and only fuel the sense that they are, you know, rebels. And the worst thing for these people would be to ignore them. The worst thing, they want the attention, right? They want the record sales or the downloads these days. And I think if you do everything with a bit of, you know, of course, moral seriousness, but also not falling into the trap that countless generations of previous politicians have fallen into of trying to ban things. I think that's better. Or weighing into who should play it.

1:06:20George Osborne: The Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch have got enough on their plate worrying about who the line-up at Glastonbury is.

1:06:26Ed Balls: I don't disagree with you about Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch. But if David Baddiel was here, he would say that something said on a stage by a pop star which was racist about black people would be absolutely condemned. And we must never allow us to have a different standard when we're talking about racism towards Jewish people. And if Hamas are a prescribed group, you've got to take that seriously. And you don't take it less seriously than the groups which persecute another group. There'll be lots of people chanting Palestine action in the coming days because of the government's decision at the beginning of the week to prescribe them.

1:07:06Ed Balls: But if I was a senior pop star figure going on stage, I think I would get myself informed about the terrorist charges individual members of Palestine Action are currently facing, what they did and why they've been prescribed. Because I wouldn't want to be in a position where a little bit further down the track, I'm embarrassed by what I appear to be condoning.

1:07:29George Osborne: Look, I'm not supporting any of their alleged views or supporting any of their alleged comments. I just think the authorities and people in, you know, senior positions in public life shouldn't fuel their publicity. The fact we've, I mean, as you correctly point out, the fact we've been talking about it for 10 minutes shows that they've succeeded.

1:07:49Ed Balls: succeeded that is true and i think they'll probably have more success over the weekend and um that's all of our collective fault and we've contributed to it here but i despite all of that will still enjoy glastonbury this weekend my favorite thing to do on the sunday evening of glastonbury um because you know i'm almost always at home rather than there i've never been once is to um have the tv really loud open the doors and the windows try and get some airflow have a beer and sit back close my eyes and imagine i'm there and i would say beyonce on the sunday night at glastonbury the cure on the sunday night at glastonbury have been some of the the killers do you remember they were brilliant the killers i think they were were they saturday night or sunday night i think they were saturday night maybe they were sunday night anyway doesn't matter the point is they were fabulous experiences and i will enjoy all of those and if um if other bands are on other stages.

1:08:49Ed Balls: Good luck to them. My only disappointment is, you know, by the way, I don't know whether you know this, I have actually played at Glastonbury.

1:08:55George Osborne: I do know this because you've told me about 10 times.

1:08:59Ed Balls: I don't know. Centrist Dad is back in concert next Thursday at the Water Rats. The Water Rats, which, by the way... It's like the Pyramid Stage, isn't it? I mean, it's roughly the same size crowd, isn't it? Where Bob Dylan, the Pogues, and Oasis played their first live gig in London. and the same is true for centuries dad and look what we all potentially go on to do so um i can't

1:09:25George Osborne: wait for the charlie xx um ripoff of peston singing i love it by charlie xx or something quite well at least he's not telling the audience to guess the color of his underwear

1:09:38Ed Balls: and we're also doing we're also doing we're also doing i'm not going to say the name of the song I'm just going to see whether anybody guesses this we're also going to do a topical song mixing politics and music by XTC see if you can work out what is going to be on our set list next Thursday that is all for Political Currency we'll be back on Monday for X Minister's Questions

1:10:00George Osborne: yes or of course you can hear it earlier and ad free if you become a member of our kitchen cabinet and you can find the link to do that in the show notes see you then see you soon

1:10:18George Osborne: Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.

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