Burnham’s broken Britain: PM’s socialist dream quickly turning into a nightmare

0:03The Telegraph. Go bless the Prime Minister. The words there of a prisoner released early today from jail. Burnham's barnstorming speech is already beginning to unravel with violent inmates on the streets, no appetite for reversing Brexit and the economy continuing to tank. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Tim Stanley. And me, Camilla Tominey. I understand this whole idea of prisons being overcrowded. In fact, an inmate from HMP Brixton said, it's really bloody crowded in there. It would be. It's a prison, mate. But at the same time, the idea of... It's not what it was. It's not what it was. We just have much more space.

0:43But the idea of actually releasing wife beaters, I think, is beyond the power. Not least when you listen to a lot of the kind of Labour lefty, Jess Phillips-esque rhetoric on violence against women and girls. We just had Bridget Phillipson talk on the Daily Tea at the Labour Party conference about her work in a woman's refuge. What's she thinking now as Women Inequalities Minister, looking at all this? Tim, before we get into why Burnham's barnstorming speech is coming back to haunt him, shall we give our coverage at the Conservative Party conference a plug? We're going there from Saturday to...

1:17We're in Birmingham for days. It's the longest one. It is the longest one. For the party that's in third or second or first position, I can't... Not first, never first. Never first It is the longest one, yes So we've got a Sunday afternoon event with young Conservatives If that isn't an oxymoron And Poppy Coburn Because she's also young, which is great And I think loads of people have signed up for that Then on Monday we're going to be with Jacob Rees-Mogg Yes, for the more mature Conservative Indeed, for the more traditional Conservative X-rated Conservative Indeed, for the angry Conservative We've got Alistair Heath and Annabelle Denham Decrying the state of things on Tuesday And I think in between we're going to be speaking to Andrew Griffith, the new Shadow Chancellor, and of course, we'll be analysing what now has to be a barnstorming speech from Kemi Badenock on Wednesday.

2:04What's she going to do to beat that? Talking of Alistair Heath, who I just had a little chat with downstairs now, he's of the opinion, and he's written a very punchy column to this end today, that Andy Burnham is, quotes, a maniac. And let me just break that down for you. He's basically saying, listen, this is unashamed socialism. He is basically being a left-wing radical. He's just doing it in a slightly nicer suit than Corbyn ever wore. And because he's nice looking and he's kind and he cries because his father passed away recently, the public is just going to swallow it because it's kind of nice socialism, not nasty socialism.

2:42And he points to a couple of things. The fact that he believes the Overton window has suddenly shifted on Brexit. We were talking about realigning. Then we were maybe talking about the next manifesto featuring the word rejoin. We're now openly debating a second referendum, which is the kind of talk that gets Ed Davey cancelled. But apparently coming from the man from Makerfield, it's fine, even though his own constituency voted 65 percent leave. Alistair also concerned about this proportional representation proposal. the idea that he actually wants to change the electoral system to basically fix it for Labour to be in power forevermore.

3:21Andy Burnham keeps talking about consensus but there's a paradox here which is that his agenda for Britain is just what Labour has always wanted to do. Yes. It's a bucket list of stuff that either wasn't really discussed at the last election or in order to win Starmer had to ignore or reject. So Starmer had red lines on the EU, which included staying out of the customs union, staying out of the single movement, no free movement. Burnham has just torn that up. Now, if you're a left-wing person, that makes sense because you want to be back in the EU. Same with PR, same with a national care service, same with a whole lot of other stuff, which just we were not told about before.

4:05But the frustrating thing is, it's a very radical set of proposals, but he keeps framing it as consensus. It's not there, is it? And because, as I have said in a previous podcaster, he's a very good communicator and the right can't ignore that or pretend he's not, he might get away with it because the vibe is that he's meeting the public halfway when in fact he's not. He's dragging them to the left. And Alice's very important point, which I'm sure we'll come back to, PR is the most boring element of that. The public has already rejected it. We had a referendum on the alternative vote and people said no.

4:42As, by the way, the public said no to devolution in the North East about 20 years ago in a referendum then. Said no to remaining in the EU. But PR is actually very important because what it does is it guarantees that you can never, ever again have a one-party government. Everything becomes a rolling sequence of coalitions. Yes. And if you think about it, who will always be the linchpin to those coalitions? Labour. No, the Lib Dems. Oh, God. No, seriously, you will always get Labour. Yes, that's right. Ed Davey, the kingmaker. Labour and the Tories slash reform getting the most votes, getting the most seats in Parliament.

5:20But you will always have to reach out to smaller parties in order to command a majority. And Alice's point is that a lot of Labour MPs actually don't like this and have always been opposed to PR for precisely that reason. And Burnham is basically throwing his own party under the bus. It is more important to him to have a permanent coalitional centre-left establishment in Britain than it is for Labour to win majorities. And why is he doing this? It all comes back to that strange obsession with Margaret Thatcher. The idea that in the 80s, not only did Maggie sell things off, but she also kneecapped local government, like Millett and Liverpool, because that was going so well.

6:01And through the first-past-the-post system, she was able to command large majorities despite never winning more than 44 % of the vote. And the left, along with wanting to muzzle the popular press, has ever since then had this fantasy of, could we break the Tory party or reform forever by changing the electoral system so that you can never get rid of us? Well, isn't he in that mission reminiscent of what we heard from Liz Truss yesterday? Liz Truss thinks the entire mechanics of Blair and Brown needs to be smashed up in order for Britain to prosper. Burnham is equally radical just on the left in saying the entire mechanics of Thatcherism needs to be smashed up in order for Britain to prosper.

6:46You made that point about Keir Starmer. I mean, actually, Andy Burnham and all of his, we don't want point scoring, we want political consensus. It's nonsense. He's basically saying, when I say political consensus, I mean, I need to persuade people to agree with me and do what I want to do for Labour. Starmer said, I'm going to lead a government of service. And he made a point, didn't he, on the steps of Downing Street saying, even if you didn't vote for me, I want to take you with me. Whereas Burnham is kind of pretending to do that. But he's much, much more dogmatic than Starmer ever wants. There is something, by the way, maniacal about the PR if it allows, for instance, Zach Polanski of the Greens to have any role in a functioning government in the UK.

7:29This guy is an extremist. But that's more important to the left. I know, but that is so irresponsible. I know, but it's more important to the left in its Manichaean vision of good versus evil, left good, right evil. It's more important to them to always keep Nigel Farage or Kemi Baden-Ock out of government than it is to run the risk of letting in Zach Polanski. I know, but people... That just doesn't bother them. But Zach Polanski with the whole, let's legalise heroin. My son was coming back from a politics A-level lesson and said, did you know that a Green councillor has called for all prisons to be closed down?

8:04Yes. I said, no, I hadn't heard that, but it doesn't surprise me. You know, let's just, and we're going to get on to early release in a minute. There are strong anti-Semitic vibes coming out of them as well. And I think that one thing that was underappreciated about the conference was how in 12 months it's gone from a party inadequately, unconvincingly trying to walk a line between Israel and Palestine to a party which is now just pro-Palestine. Yes, it is. And that's a big shift that he has pulled off. And by putting Ed Miliband in as Foreign Secretary, that cements this. That's a big change in Labour Party policy and in British policy that I don't think has been appreciated.

8:45But having said all of this, if his speech was about the past Margaret Thatcher we're going to hear a lot about her in the next few years it's going to be so boring isn't it if the speech was largely about the past and the future because many of these things were about things that are either going to go out to a commission or there's a report being done at the moment or it'll be something we'll put to the public at the next manifesto have a consultation as a number of people have pointed out well what about Britain today Yes. And there was very little in the speech about the actual things happening in the world right now and what he's going to do about them before the next election.

9:25Because if, as he keeps telling us, I'm going to sit out my full parliament, I'm not going to have an election for another three years. Well, not just that. If he's going to say, I've got a 10-year plan. Right. Which, if you don't mind, is a bit presumptuous. It is presumptuous. But if you've introduced PR and you devolve all power to local Labour lefty councils, you could have a thousand year plan because we can never get rid of the buggers. But if you're saying, hold tight, you've got three years left of me, then it's reasonable to say, so what's going to be in the budget? What are you going to do about these early releases?

9:59What are you going to do about these alleged Iranian terror cells? What are you going to do about hijackings of planes? Well, he hasn't even mentioned the hijacking of the plane. So when you talk about the change stance on Israel, that was exemplified by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband becoming, I think, one of the first Foreign Secretaries not to attend the Labour Friends of Israel event at conference. Normally, somebody very, very senior goes along. They said Lucy Powell. They said Lucy Powell, who then said... Who said to them, oh, you've got long faces. Why do you look so miserable? You look a bit depressed.

10:30Don't you think it's astonishing? It's like a fox wandering into a chicken house and saying, you look a bit down. What's the matter with you? Might never happen. But don't you think it's extraordinary? I mean, he might do this by the time this podcast goes to air, but that he hasn't mentioned the fact that a very brave Israeli truck driver, I think it was, has intervened in what could be the next 9-11 in Tel Aviv and stopped a co-pilot from bringing down a jet in the middle of Israel. There's a very funny meme doing the rounds that says, you can now pay extra on some flights to sit next to an Israeli.

11:02Yeah, there is one thing to be said for everyone having to serve in the IDF, and that's that they can pilot planes and things in moments of abject crisis. Do watch our chat, by the way, with the aviation expert who talked us through some of the changes since 9-11 that have led to a degree of danger when it comes to pilots either just going mad in the cockpit or indeed having ideological aims. Shall we go through how this barnstorming speech is now becoming slightly unravelled with sort of 20, well, no, 48 hours on now. And we've got a number of policies that have come to bite him on the Burnham backside.

11:39Which are the result of choices. Yes, of course. The choice to begin with to allow for early release of prisoners. Now, a total of around 4 ,500 are going to be released over the next 10 months, and 700 have been released this morning, including violent offenders and domestic abusers. Now, of course, we should add Burnham did intervene to stop, for instance, the release of the killers of PC Andrew Harper. Yes. But some wrong-uns are still being let out. And we know that because, well, one can actually quote the prisoners being released themselves. Yes. Dean, 37, warned that wrong-uns are being let out early.

12:22He said, all the people who knock their missus about shouldn't be let out. I didn't do anything like that, he said. No, fair enough, Dean. This is from Brixton Prison where 44 people have been released. Elliot 50, who was given a 20-week sentence for stealing a pair of glasses from Selfridges, was released after seven weeks and said that he needed help rather than being released from jail. Should have gone to Specsavers, sorry. Quote, it's help I need, he said. It's an addiction to stealing. Oh my God. I think next to sex addiction, that is the hardest one to have to cope with. Did he steal the spectacles just to see more clearly when he was thieving stuff?

13:01Who knows? Carry on to him. He said, by the way, an addiction to stealing means just wandering into Boots opticians and nicking 60 pair of glasses. It does not mean picking out a pair of glasses in Selfridges. But when Elliot was asked what his chances were on the outside, he replied, 100 % I'm getting recalled. He's got great confidence in his own kleptomania there. At HMP Cardiff, a 32-year-old man gelled for burgery who gave his name only as Tom said of the early release system, I think it's S-H-I-T To be honest with you I'd happily spend my time in there I mean I've been doing it for 17 years I'll probably be back in the next month or two It's like a reset for me this is I take beer, drugs, go back in Put on a bit of weight Do it all again I've got nothing better to do with myself I'm homeless So what else am I going to do?

13:55You can't be homeless and sober at the same time That's probably right Sounds like one of my diary entries from when I was university. Prisoners leaving HMP Wandsworth also thanked Mr Burnham. One left wearing a black balaclava and shouted, Go bless the Prime Minister. Honestly. I mean, to be fair, you can make the argument, well, the Tories started this, they released a load of prisoners, but let's be honest, they didn't release violent prisoners. And on a serious note, Rosie Adams writes in to say, when you consider that a huge percentage of murders are committed by spouses, some the coercive partners, and others those who have finally snapped.

14:34This is absolutely deplorable. Migrants are put into military camps and HMOs while ordinary, decent and terrified relatives are having to leave their homes for safety. She's pointing to the fact that some battered wives have literally had to go into hiding because their ex-husbands and partners are being released, which is frankly an absolutely frightening prospect. Deport the foreign nationals taking up our jail spaces and coercing inmates to follow their ideology or else and deport the lot pronto. Leave the family abusers right where they are. Now, she makes a very, very valid point. I understand this whole idea of prisons being overcrowded.

15:13In fact, an inmate from HMP Brixton said, it's really bloody crowded in there. It would be. It's a prison, mate. But at the same time, the idea of... It's not what it was. It's not what it was. We just have much more space. But the idea of actually releasing wife beaters, I think, is beyond the pale. Not least when you listen to a lot of the kind of Labour lefty, Jess Phillips-esque rhetoric on violence against women and girls. We just had Bridget Philipson talk on the Daily Tea at the Labour Party conference about her work in a woman's refuge. What's she thinking now as Women and Equalities Minister, looking at all this?

15:50Yes. I just find it very funny that the prisoners sound like GB News pundits. How dare you? You might be using box poppers. No, no, no. That is my model of soundness is what I'm saying. Oh, okay, fine. As is so often the case with the left, they have this idealised noble savage vision of prisoners or the homeless, that they're all these fallen angels who just need a little bit of TLC. Yeah. It's like Andy Burnham with his whole training shtick, isn't it? Yes. Rather than punishing people, let's just help them and train them. Hold their hand, put an arm around them, hug a hoodie. They'll never go on benefits again.

16:31No. And the bill will be reduced by 90 % or something, according to a commission. But when you actually speak to prisoners, they say things like, there are some wrong-uns in there. I know. To be fair, that explains the completely contrary approach that the Conservatives are taking with their tough love. Yes. Tough love for youngsters who are not in employment or training actually tell them, get out of bed, get a job. And if you don't, we're going to take away your universal credit. You cannot go from university onto universal credit. And at the same time, they want to rewire the benefit system so that you won't get the full universal credit unless you've put a certain number of years of payment into the system through working and through taxes.

17:15It's a contrast between touchy-feely and smashy-testy. Yeah, or it's like smashy and nicey. Yes, exactly. That's how the next election is going to be for Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. and Mrs. Nasty on the right. And let's see what the public wants. Do they want nice or nasty? Well, I don't believe that we have to choose from this horrible cosmic dessert trolley of hell. No, I don't. I believe we can have something in between. But it's so depressing that Labour always goes this way, beginning by saying, let's try a different way. yes let's let some people out of prison let's guarantee everyone a home let's spend billions to try to put people into sheltered accommodation or something and a couple of years later it always always ends with a prisoner coming out and saying oh we're back in there in a couple of months well to be fair who can blame them because at least they don't have to pay energy bills if they're in the cells but don't worry because andy burnham that vat has come off energy and that's all going to save us, well, not very much because diesel's now at£2.

18:19Energy bills are going up anyway in the new year.

18:30Did you manage to catch James Murray, the Treasury Minister, on Nick Ferrari this morning? He was asked to count the cost and account for how much money would be saved by this VAT cut. And this happened. What the Prime Minister announced was to remove VAT off electricity bills for six months from October through to March next year. What would be the VAT take for the Treasury for that six-month period? Well, that depends exactly on usage over those six months, but it's a six-month plan to take VAT. I mean, roughly, how much is it going to not bring in? There must be a ballpark figure as how much this is going to cost.

19:05Yes, but I haven't got that figure in front of me, but the exact amount will depend. Hang on, so you're the Financial Secretary of the Treasury. You've taken, obviously, a very eye-catching decision, along with senior colleagues, and you don't know how much it's going to cost you. Well, I haven't got the figure in front of me right now. Why not? Sorry, I haven't got that right in front of me. Don't you think it's a fairly relevant figure, Secretary? The actual amount would depend on exactly what the usage is. I appreciate that, but you have worked out with your colleagues. Well, whoever came up with the idea, you say, OK, yeah, that will help people.

19:35They need help. We're a cost-of-living government. But how much am I not going to take? Yeah, sorry, I haven't got that figure right in front of me this morning. four times and you haven't. I find that extraordinary. I have had some experience interviewing James Murray in the past and it's not always easy for him. He is the person that absolutely sticks to the government script even when you're asking him to deviate and just express an opinion on literally can you please just can you just answer just a question. So then Ferrari gets into you know can you even tell me what you had for breakfast this morning and then James Murray jokes back I'm going to have to check my notes and come back to you on that which was actually quite funny But the point is the growing frustration with the government coming out with stuff that they can't actually explain properly or indeed do the maths for.

20:19We're streating in his Space Force. Exactly. He was asked about the cost of something, wasn't it? And he said, I'm embarrassed. I don't have it in front of me. And I just think that's unforgivable. Yes, it is unforgivable. Because it's our money. It's our money. Well, talking of our money, we've also got, so we're kind of on to problem number three for Burnham. Yes. UK borrowing costs at highest level since 1998. Again, it's the good old fashioned guilt yields, which you and I, we don't understand. But what it means is that the cost of debt is more expensive than it's ever been. More expensive even than nine out of 10 Liz Truss's tenure.

20:52And I say that, Tim, just to goad you, because I think I should. The FTSE has fallen by 2%. Basically, the economy is in turmoil. And we didn't hear very much about any of his economic plans in his great, big, tearful, barnstorming, not tub thumping, speech bathed in the light of a miner's lamp. We're going to stick to the fiscal rules, he said. Yeah, he doesn't know what they are though, unfortunately. He also made loads of spending promises. Oh dear. That fall of 2 % on FTSE is the worst since May and is probably linked to the Iran war. This is why things are only going to get worse because diesel oil are all being attacked and there are going to be bottlenecks in supply and Britain is unusually overexposed to that.

21:34By the way, this is where, if he was still Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband was, that is why, that is why, that is why you need to have solar and wind. OK, fine, but we don't have it yet. Yes. Also, with this whole AI revolution and data centres, would you mind just taking a decision on Jack Doran Rosebank, for the love of God? But no, Burnham's worried about the optics. We know that much. By the way, the other question that was asked of... Did you read, just I'll throw in here very quickly, very good piece. I hate to recommend rivals, but Janan Ganesh in the FT made a very good point. There's no growth in this, in his speech.

22:08And it's not just that there's no growth. He talked about good growth, good growth, as if growth has a moral quality. And I suppose it could be if it's a contrast between slavery and sweatshops versus people being properly employed. But the point is, it's in his head. He is culture warified growth. So is he saying that Thatcher growth, which averaged about 3 % a year? Because it was service economy, because it was finance markets, because it was people getting their house and buying and selling it. That's all bad, immoral growth, which kind of in the long run stains your soul somehow. But good growth is locally devolved regional assembly mandating factory producing widgets.

22:51Well, I'll tell you what is bad growth. Eurozone growth. I think we can all agree that the growth is bad in the Eurozone because every five minutes, the Chancellor tells us we've got the best growth in the Eurozone and we're all meant to be very proud of it. Yet in the same breath, this mass devolutionist, this person who thinks that Westminster has got too much control, now wants to not just devolve it to metropolitan mayors but to give it back to Brussels. So can we please discuss, frankly, in my mind, the sheer lunacy of not just saying, well, actually we might rejoin in the manifesto, But now engendering a debate about a second referendum.

23:29Yes. Ten years on from Brexit, we had that once in a lifetime vote. He's representing a constituency that overwhelmingly voted Leave. There is a huge amount of debate as to how much economic harm Brexit has caused. And actually, you can't have it both ways, by the way. Is it Thatcher? Is it Brexit? Is it global headwings? To what extent can you take responsibility for two economically illiterate budgets, which literally led to the resignation of Rachel Reeves and by association Keir Starmer? I mean, if it's all going so bloody swimmingly well under Labour, why don't we have any growth at all? Why are billionaires leaving in their droves?

24:09Why are businesses literally got their head in their hands right now going, oh, my God, why is the footsie down by 2 %? Please answer all of these questions. Well, and the Eurozone does not have good growth or very much growth. It doesn't have any growth, Tim. It's not doing a lot of growing. And I've greatly enjoyed Andrew Neil going on various television programmes and saying to young Labour ministers, are you mad? Are you insane? Because as he points out, the EU is a different place from what it was when we voted to leave it. It's now more right wing. It's going to be dominated in the future by populists who are really more interested and it becoming sort of a protectionist zone with a big wall to keep foreigners out of it.

24:52That's their chief concern at the moment. And the price of us going back into it would be enormous. We would lose the rebate, presumably. We would have to accept free movement. Annie Burnham says leaving the EU meant we lost control over our borders. That's very strange. You can have an exchange agreement with France, which we've been doing one in, one out. Although that's been canned. So why don't, I tell you what, why don't we reward the French for literally doing less than nothing with the 650 million we've already paid them to police our borders, which basically means waving migrants onto boats from Dunkirk and Calais.

25:30Thank you very much, French. Let's look at that and say, I tell you what we should do. We should cede more power to the French and the Germans and Brussels. Are these people completely insane? It's not even supported by the public. Should the UK rejoin the EU? Yes, 21%. No, 79%. That's on the basis of 25 ,000 votes. That's from our readers. OK, we are Telegraphians. Those are our readers. But if you look at other polls, you will often find that rejoining wins. Yeah, but only when they don't spell it out. No, no, no. But if you add conditions, if you say, are you happy to rejoin if it means... Joining the euro.

26:08Joining the euro, single market, customs union, freedom. then the proposition tends to lose. Just to mention the one-in-one-out scheme, that was the pilot scheme that allowed the UK to return some small boat arrivals in exchange for someone coming from France who had a legitimate claim to be in Britain. Total number of people who have been removed to France under that scheme in a year, 1 ,500. So it just simply didn't work. But I come back to the culture war approach to economics. Even if membership of Europe wouldn't do much for us, it falls into the category in Burnham's brain of good growth, much as wind and solar are good growth.

26:48And this is because as a proper social democrat or socialist, he thinks society can be engineered, that you can make moral choices about the way that the economy should be. Whereas we tend to think how the economy functions is in large part a product of the choices that individuals make, I wish to set up a business. Changes in taste. People want to buy this, not that. Or most importantly, technology. So there is no point anymore producing buggy whips for horse carriages. It might be good growth for us to have loads of horse carriages because I love horses pulling carts. I think that's fantastic.

27:30That's good growth. But the reality is no one drives them anymore. So you don't want to have them. So the world is currently going through this AI revolution that demands that we accept the way things are going and we help to facilitate it. And that's chiefly done by the government taking steps to make sure that energy is as abundant and cheap as possible. But that's not the Burnham approach. The Burnham approach is the good growth is the moral growth, which says, how do you feel? Do you feel empowered in your area. Do you have lots of European wind farms with diversity in your local region? I know, but then the irony of that as well, these wind farms and these solar farms all using parts from China.

28:15Second of all, yes, growth is bad if it's created by energy I consider to be dirty. But let's just deal with the actual reality of the ground. Is there anything more sort of totemic of Britain's decline right now in the face of Burnham's frankly nauseatingly schmaltzy rhetoric. I'm sorry, but the more that I listen to that speech and clips from it, the more I find it nauseating than the announcement by Greggs, his beloved sausage roll chain. This is the place where the prime minister, because I don't know if you know, but he's from the north and he's just like the ordinary common man who enjoys a sausage roll and a cup of coffee.

28:54That's just how down to earth he is. He's constantly in Greggs. He practically lives in Greggs, okay? He is that real. Greggs has announced that because of automation in factories, they've decided, actually, let's let go of around 4 ,000 staff. Because we can just get robots, the killer robots you and I saw at conference. We just get robots to make these sausage rolls. It's awful, isn't it? It's horrible. But where's the actual? So this is the other great irony. All of this kind of like flat cap wearing, bucket hat wearing. I'm for the worker. It's 1975. We have got actual factory workers at Gregg's now in abject jeopardy.

29:35Where's the protestation about that? What are you going to say on a Liverpudlian stage that can convince those workers that you do actually stand for them? Rather than basically standing for this kind of mythical, I don't know who it is, some kind of like Morris Glassman would say, the sort of globalist, the sort of the good person, the campaigner, the person who believes in, as you say, good growth. What about the actual worker? What about the actual worker whose job is going to be wiped out? This is when they say this stuff as well about green jobs. We're going to create thousands of green jobs.

30:11Where are they? What do they look like? How do the needs tap into AI, by the way? How are we re-energising this entire new industry in technological innovation. And back to the original point, how are we going to power it if you can't even take a decision on the North Sea? Yes. Well, in the same way people have been quoting Dennis Healy, who in the past said, you cannot have hospitals, schools and factories without a strong defence. Likewise, you cannot have the romantic 1970s view of Britain that Andy Burnham has without a flourishing economy, which is modern high-tech and moving with the global winds rather than pushing against them.

30:57So this big change is going to come. It's awful. If I could flick a switch and make it not happen, it would not happen, but it's going to happen. So the number one task of government right now should be to make sure that it happens in such a way that we get the most money out of it. And you have to look at what Britain is naturally strong at and say, let's do more of that and just write the rules or tear up the rules so that that bit of it flourishes. In Andy Burnham's good versus bad economic imagination, for example, the finance sector is evil. Yes. The success of London and Canary Wharf in their mind has come at the expense of the regions.

31:38I'm not quite sure it's that clear of a trade-off. But, OK, maybe. Let's assume that is correct. Nonetheless, it's one thing we're good at. Yes, services sector. So you've got a choice. You're going to cripple that? Well, because it doesn't involve northern factories, then Andy Burnham doesn't want to acknowledge the growth there. We've got to establish a rule in this podcast that we stop saying northern as if it's a pejorative. We don't mean it. We don't mean it's a pejorative. I'm saying that... We mean it's a cliché that it's being deployed in the most cynical... Or even worse, idealistic way that he had.

32:14I'm sure he closes his eyes and he has this vision of Britain. And it is how he remembers the North from his childhood. And everything looks better in your childhood. By the way, mine was Margaret Thatcher's era. And I remember things being better back then in many ways. But you cannot engineer society and the economy to reflect your ideal from 50 years ago. Also, you've got to deal with the world as it is, rather than as you wish it to be. So we have the battle between the nasties and the nices. We have the battle between, you mentioned Dennis Healy, so it's eyelash theory versus eyebrow theory.

32:56And we have the battle, frankly, which is always the case with left and right, idealism versus realism. Yes. I'm sorry, that's what this comes down to. And human nature versus the engineered soul or the imagined soul. So to bring this all the way back to prisons and benefits, reality is human beings are generally good. And I believe as a Christian are made to be good, but we're also fallen and we praise the temptation. And if you build a welfare system, if you build a justice system that rewards the wrong decisions, people will make the wrong decisions. So in order to actually have a good moral outcome, you have to be tough.

33:36and you have to say, no, you have to put some money in to get the benefits. Or if you steal that pair of glasses, you're going back inside. You have to say those things. Because if you do the opposite and pretend that we're all angels whose behavior is perverted by capitalism, so if we just get rid of all the tough stuff and we just give trust people and just give them handouts and just open up the prisons, then people will naturally behave like living saints. We've run this experiment so many times in the last few decades. And it's so frustrating that our prime minister has decided that we should run it again.

34:16Yes. And he's doing it without a popular mandate. Again, to come back to what we were talking about, about consensus. The consensus that got Starmer elected was a centrist consensus. He could only win that massive majority, perhaps by lying to us. Yeah. But by saying, not going to go back into the EU. Red lines. Tough on crime. All this sort of stuff. And I will reform the benefit system because don't forget, he tried. And I won't increase income tax. So he gave Labour the majority. The Labour majority then said, actually, we'd like socialism. So they carried out a coup, got rid of him, brought in Andy Burnham.

34:53He does not have a mandate to do any of this stuff. But he's going to pretend that he does. and he's going to deploy his fantasy vision of Britain from 50 years ago to try to persuade us that this is what we all secretly really want. We just don't know it. Why we've been voting against it at every election since 1979, I don't know. Not on my watch, Tim Stanley. Enjoy your sermon. Amen to everything Tim Stanley has just said and we will be back with more of this tomorrow, 5pm. Thank you.