‘It was a therapy session!’: Chancellor Healey’s wistful speech lacked any substance

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:53the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaks for 40 minutes without mentioning tax or spending cuts. Is this Labour Party conference in Liverpool a conference or a therapy session? So you and I sat in the Chancellor's speech. We were expecting some kind of bombshell. It never came. I was sitting there wondering whether I'd entered a parallel universe. I actually... Tim Stanley, you and I are standing by the Mersey. We're at the Labour Party conference. We're in beautiful Liverpool. Liverpool. Liverpool. It's really nice weather. When Liverpool is rainy, it's the most depressing place on earth. I think Mogadishu probably ranks above Liverpool in the rain.

2:32Fleshy. But in the sun, it is stunning. Beautiful. It's stunning. I mean, we've been surrounded by lefties, which isn't, it's not my natural habitat here. I don't think people like us very much. We're kind of like getting a lot of side eyes. Yes. People trying to figure out, I know I hate that person, but I can't remember why. And then they're like, oh, they work for the telegram. Yeah. That's it. What wanted list have I seen those two on? Those two neoliberals, whatever that means. Well, no, I think it's the pro-Zionist stuff. Because obviously the pro-Palers have been outside the venue shouting at us all.

3:03We're going to come back to this. But isn't it interesting how the plaster has been ripped off? No one's pretending anymore that this is a party trying to walk a line between Israel and Palestine. No one's bothering that anymore. This is now just a pro-Palestine party. But I find that incredible. Why are the protesters here when Ed Miliband, as Foreign Secretary, has just given them everything they want? To explain, when you enter this conference, you have to walk through a bottleneck of protesters who are pro-Palestine. But they're not just pro-Palestine. They're really, really nasty about Israel in a way that's coded with blood libel and anti-Semitic slurs.

3:37I shouldn't laugh, but someone's actually holding a banner that says Zionists control Labour, which is astonishing. Well, these people think that they control everything else. So why not the Labour Party? I mean, I think we can both agree that it would be laughable to suggest that Zionists control Labour when you consider Andy Burnham's foreign policy decisions. But there you have it. So we've had to run the gauntlet of that. We noted, didn't we, in the conference centre that the Jewish friends of Labour were separated somewhat from the Palestinian solidarity. Yeah, there are several countries in between them.

4:09Colombia and Cuba are in between them and on the other side. They don't have to look at each other. But the Palestinian tent is full of lovely bags and things made locally. The Israel tent is just two sad looking pro-Israel people. The two friends of Israel left are sitting in there and they've stuck them next to a tent with robot dogs in. Killer robots. Killer robots. Celebrating the weapons of tomorrow. I just think that's so on the nose to put the poor Israelis next to them. The Israelis, by the way, couldn't have a bigger flag. They said if they unfurled a bigger white and blue flag, they'd be lynched here.

4:44Well, when I went to the first day here yesterday, when I went through that bottleneck of protesters, I was really angry about it. And I sought out the Israeli stall. And I went up to this lady who was sitting there and said, how do you think about the B? It rhymes with lasteds that are outside. And I realized that I don't think her English was super good. And I think she thought I was calling the Israeli nation a bunch of lasters. Which she would be used to. Which she would be used to. And I could see that she was looking around for security. And I had to backtrack and say, I'm sorry, what I'm trying to say is, I quite like Israel.

5:19I quite like Israel. But this is a very strange conference. It's about 80 % down on the previous year. Is it? I think it's less well attended. I'm sure someone will correct me, but we've been in the hall for Chancellor John Healy's speech. and there were empty seats. Yes, we'll come on to that in just a minute. On the floor section. If we can fill the podcast with its content, because there wasn't any. This is like attending a meeting of a brainwashed cult where the leader died. Yeah. He's nowhere to be seen. He was supposed to be reincarnated as Jesus on the Temple Mount, but instead he just died and didn't come back.

5:55He's not the next Messiah, everybody. He's somebody who's leaving Holborn and St Pancras, we think, for a job on the international stage. And now they've got this new guy who's saying, I am the prophet. I am the next Messiah. So the cult is trying to remind itself why they got brainwashed in the first place. Yes, it's also trying to remind itself. So there's an exercise in re-brainwashing. Also, I think it's an exercise in trying to remember what they actually believe in. And I'm not sure any of them are particularly convinced. I mean, we know it's a broad church. Are they even practicing the same religion, some of them?

6:23They're not always singing from the same hymn sheet. And that will bring us on to Healy in just a minute. By the way, you watched it so I didn't have to. Ed Miliband? Was there much there? I did watch Ed Miliband's speech. What was fascinating was to watch the signer for deaf people trying to keep up. Right. Because Ed Miliband's hands move faster than our hand signer's hands. Yes. That was classic Ed and actually quite moving in places. He framed it around his parents, who were both refugees from Hitler's Germany, his father coming here to fight, join the Royal Navy in Britain, and his mother fleeing to Poland.

6:59And he talked about the contrast between the concepts of survivor's guilt, which some Jewish people have, versus a resilience and a determination to make the world a better place. And I don't think there's anyone here thus far who's framed their politics in such a stark moral way. And whether you agree with it or not, there is a reason why they really like Ed Miliband. Yes. But he did put Israel front and center of his foreign policy. The party, it's about the issue itself. It's also about moving on from Keir Starmer. and the sense that we had this great moral compromise. I was talking to an MP last night who said, my constituency is obsessed with this issue.

7:37Yes. They really, really are. Well, they've got the Greens to the left of them, so they're having to kind of, you know, pander to some of these. But they also believe it. But the constituency members really believe it. But there's an irony there, isn't it? This time last year, they're praising Starmer for cleaning up the Labour Party and trying to remove the anti-Semitism. And now the anti-Semitism, I'm sorry by implication, is creeping slowly back in, which I personally find uncomfortable and indeed, you know, immoral. I find it completely and utterly hypocritical, frankly, for some of these progressives to be spouting some of this nonsense.

8:07Interestingly, I spoke to a Labour MP yesterday and they were saying that Andy Burnham feared Ed Miliband. And I said, why? I mean, in one breath, the Prime Minister's got him out of the domestic scene by putting him in the Foreign Office and telling him to go around the country. But it's all harking back to the leadership bid of 2015 and the fact that Miliband defeated Burnham. I mean this is the point that we've been making about the prime minister he's actually a bit of a loser I mean he's lost two leadership races he hasn't had held any of the great offices of state and you and I have both written pieces saying this man is all soundbite and a lack of substance so then we waited for John Healy we waited for the chancellor and we were at the spectator party you were getting drunk on champagne fumes you weren't drinking no I don't drink but I came away from it breathing on you uh off my breasts on champagne yeah because everyone was just breathing is like it was like it smells like alien blood yeah there is nothing worse than secondhand champagne champagne breath i just want to say before i know what you're going to say so let me just mention here that you're right about this issue of um this this is a conference full of mps who feel they should have been leader yes and suddenly burn has been hired to come in and do it for them yes but both both milliband and west streeting made a point in their speeches of saying, yes, I have ambition, but I've put them behind me.

9:23Of course you have. No politician on earth ever puts their ambition behind them, for goodness sake. They're all queuing up for the next roll of the dice. And, well, Streeting was introduced by a boy who's a trainee in Whittle shunting on big ships or something, I don't know, who said that my traineeship has taught me that ambition is valuable. And I think Wes Streeting knows that too. I think so. Again, strange cult where the jokes are about the fanatical, diehard, obsessive ambition of their leader. Streeting also briefly commented upon the alleged terror incident at the RAF base. Yes, RAF Fairford.

10:02Involving the hot terrorists. You said they were hot terrorists at breakfast. We're not going to address the fact that they're hot. Are they hot? I haven't seen the footage. Well, I was looking over someone's shoulder and they had on their computer the four of them being arrested. For some reason, the police made them undress. And it just had a soft core quality to it. It did it. I need to watch this footage. And we now actually, as we were coming out to record the podcast, I note that it's been confirmed that they're British nationals, those involved in this, because there were rumours of links to Iran.

10:26Were there links even to the illegal boat arrivals? Let's see. More will transpire. Yeah. But we're at this party. We're at this party. And people are saying to us, oh. The vibe was something big is going to happen. Brace yourself. In the Chancellor's speech. Chancellor in making a huge announcement shock, which at the time last night we thought might be scrapping the triple lock. That's what everyone was saying. So I don't know about you, but my column had said that this conference will contain no substance whatsoever. And for a few hours, I was in a blind panic. You did phone me. Ringing people to try to confirm, is it true they're going to get rid of the triple lock?

10:57I can confirm that Tim Stanley phoned me while I was in my pyjamas saying, if I've got my column wrong, are they going to say something big? It wasn't mad. Where this came from is the Prime Minister went on Laura Kunzberg's show on Sunday and insisted on talking about social care. But again, had no fiscal plan for it. In fact, won't even tell us what it would look like. Is it an NHS? Is it a private public mix? Is it the deal, not reforms that have been around for years and years? Right. And he kept saying, wait and see, wait and see. So we were then told on Sunday night, well, the reason why the prime minister did that was to tee up the chancellor to come out and say, here's the funding formula so that the prime minister can then sell the reform programme in his Tuesday speech.

11:39And what everyone was saying that Healy would suggest was we will scrap the triple lock for pensioners after the next election. So we're not breaking a manifesto before a general election. And we will use the savings to finance the reform of social care. So we all went to bed thinking, blimey, tomorrow is going to be huge. Yes, but then it could be the case that the Chancellor hasn't announced that, but the Prime Minister might. I mean, I would question the wisdom of taking a triple lock away from pensioners on the breadline, i.e. those only earning 13 grand a year to live on, taking that away from them in order to fund their care should they end up getting dementia and in a nursing home.

12:18Well, and Rob Jenrick has written saying that actually, if you stuck to the original funding formula, it would be more expensive if it tracked inflation rather than the metrics that it's been following. So that still might happen tomorrow. And of course, we're going to do a snap analysis of Andy Burnham's speech to the conference in tomorrow's Daily Tea. So you and I sat in the Chancellor's speech. We were expecting some kind of bombshell. It never came. I was sitting there wondering whether I'd entered a parallel universe. Well, first of all, first of all, OK, I think there's been a misunderstanding of John Healy.

12:52People thought because of his association with the Blair and Brown era that he's in any way new Labour. He isn't new Labour, he's old Labour. He's got, you know, a huge crush on Gordon Brown. He's going on about Gordon Brown being the best chancellor in history, how the UK led the world out of the global financial crash. I'm sorry, I think you'll remember that Gordon Brown was junked after two years as prime minister. You lost the general election. And was in charge when said crash happened. Two years, I mean, this is the parallel universe that these people seem to occupy. But here's a little bit of him talking about giving Gordon Brown his tie.

13:32Now, I first worked in the Treasury under Gordon Brown in the late 90s and noughties. It was new labour, new promise then. And Gordon was and is an inspiration. His determination, his drive, his block cap emails in the middle of the night. and I joined him in 1999 and one of my first duties was to join him at Labour Party conference in Bournemouth that year. He'd been at the IMF, he flew in overnight and arrived just before he was due to give his conference speech. So I was in this small room with this big group of Gordon's top aides. I was the new boy, there were big names there. Ed Miliband was there, Douglas Alexander was there, Ed Balls was there.

14:20And suddenly Gordon was just about to go on and soon I said, Gordon needs a red tie. And the only person in the room wearing a red tie was me. So in 1999 at Bournemouth, Gordon made his speech as Chancellor with my tie.

14:44I did get it back I did get it back he signed it and I've never worn it since until today

15:00and funny enough you tried a tie on earlier at the Labour merch stand and that is a rather nice red I don't think it's my colour I'm somewhere between teal and dark blue So we have John Healy, a little bit like Andy Burnham, totally living in the past. Now, going on about the miner's lamp. So, yes. OK, newsflash, everybody. John Healy is a northerner. He comes from Rotherham. He is old labour. He wants to mention things like Orgreave and how evil Thatcher closed the mines. He keeps an old miner's lamp on his desk to remind him of the solidarity of workers, which is not a morally bad thing at all.

15:37But it does suggest someone still living in 1984. Can I also just remind everybody of Frank, Daily Tia Frank, who reminded us some weeks ago, the Labour governments before Thatcher from 64 to 70 and 74 to 79 closed substantially more mining pits overall. About 295, Thatcher's government closed between 115 and 154, depending on the counting method used. So I do rather object to this kind of strange rose-tinted, only the Conservatives closed down mining towns. No, I'm sorry, Labour did. And by the way, I don't remember Blair or Brown reopening any mines or indeed re-industrialising parts of the forgotten north or Wales or Scotland or anywhere else for that matter.

16:20But, you know, this seems to be conveniently forgotten. Healy, on his trip into the past, said that the first conference he'd attended was 1986. and he mentioned that year Neil Kinnock arguing for sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Yes. I felt that was an unsubtle comparison being made to Israel. Possibly. I think his point in that speech was that nothing much has changed.

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18:57The emphasis is very much upon Labour's past. Yes. I have not yet heard anyone at this conference use the S word. I've not heard anyone say socialism. No, no. I've forgotten what the word is. Right. I've used the S word on a number of occasions. to attend some of these events, but yes. And I think the distinction is important because it's not about making a philosophical case for the ownership of the means of production. Rather, it's about reminding ourselves of the good we did in the past to make us feel better about ourselves. And that is cope for what they feel were the compromises of the last two years.

19:34But then, can I just say on that though, when he harked back to 1986, I wrote this down. He spoke about Neil Kinnock and John Smith And he said, it was a vibrant time. It was an awful time to be on the left. For the Labour movement. It was an awful time to be on the left. What's he talking about? When they lost, they kept losing and they had balmy Labour councils. That's what I thought. They had militant here in Liverpool. That's right. It wasn't a vibrant time. It was a dreadful time. Also, other things where I thought, are you all right, John Healy? I must pay tribute to Rachel Reeves. I've written down.

20:03He said that as though she had died. I wrote down why. I then also questioned his statement that Starmer rebuilt Britain's international reputation. Yeah. Did he? Then I also wrote down, hang on, I started here. We are creating hope again. Yeah. And he had a go at Cameron's austerity, Johnson's Brexit, Truss's mini budget. He had a go at Andrew Griffiths, who is the shadow chancellor for having a role in the Treasury when Truss's mini budget was put together. Okay, fair enough. Talked about quiet patriotism, which is a throwback to the quiet bat people in The Thick of It. That's right. He talked about the need for fiscal discipline, which obviously didn't go down very well in the hall because they'd all like us to be taxing and spending and borrowing more.

20:49This was the only time in which he talked about the things over which he has real control, tax and spend. And he said, we're going to stick to the fiscal rules. That was it. Otherwise, this was a 40-minute speech by a chancellor in which he did not once address taxes or spending cuts when we are approaching a fiscal cliff edge. Now, you might say he's saving that for the budget, but how extraordinary that our new chancellor has nothing to say about those two critical things. How can he claim to be fiscally disciplined when it was revealed last week that borrowing is£8 billion higher than anyone anticipated?

21:30But his fiscal headroom is slowly evaporating ahead of the budget on October the 28th. Well, he's trying to blame this all on his Tory inheritance. He's trying to pin the NEATS crisis upon Boris Johnson in the post-COVID years. And he's trying to pin the bad fiscal position upon Liz Truss. But the problem is, is we are where we are, undoubtedly because of those two things, but also because of decisions made by Rachel Reeves in those first two years. Didn't you think it was interesting when he started talking about benefits needing to be a bridge to work rather than a crutch, how reluctant the floor was to applause that?

22:05And this is despite a message being sent to MPs on WhatsApp saying the Chancellor is going to mention welfare, please clap as hard as possible. I mean, he was quite right wing in his rhetoric of saying we cannot consign a million not in employment or training young people to the scrap heap. We've got to create jobs for them. So then came and I noted it was 27 minutes in. Then came an announcement that they were going to make a down payment on Milburn's reform. So Alan Milburn is trying to work out right now what to do with these one million needs. And basically he announced that they were going to plough 100 million into a new apprenticeship scheme.

22:43or to ramp up what we currently have and get more young people straight from their bedrooms, basically, onto what, the factory floor or what have you. And he was trying to inspire the spirit that actually these children or these young people shouldn't be left behind, that they're the ones who can spread hope. But I also thought, well, in the same breath, you're giving them benefits for conditions like mild anxiety and stuff. So are these the children of the future, to quote the 1980s pop song? This is the serious problem that Labour knows what it fiscally has to do, but it is culturally biased against taking the steps that are necessary to get there.

23:20Yes. Because it has a bias towards saying, are you anxious? Please take time off work and here's some money. And that's part of the problem of a party run by social workers, teachers and trade unions. Yes. That's where their instincts lie. It was exemplified in that sign in the toilet that I put on X, which said, are you suffering from sensory overload? Do you need help? You're in a toilet. Of course you're suffering from sensory overload. Those places are disgusting. By the way, I'm suffering from sensory overload. I'm suffering from socialist overload. I'm being triggered. Come and help me. I'm a righty alone.

23:52I'm at sea here. So we also heard he's going to bring back something called the Union Learning Fund. So all they really announced that was new here was the re-industrialisation of Britain, which has been everyone's goal since about 1975. Yes. and some extra spending on training programs. So we've got nothing in terms of a serious economic plan. No. We've got growth and hope in every postcode, but no idea of how we're going to do it. Also, who's stumping up the most cash, by the way? It's actually Rolls-Royce. I mean, he mentioned that Rolls-Royce is going to invest 300 million more into shipbuilding.

24:26And I thought, well, that's private enterprise. That's not state money. So basically, you are going to be reliant on really successful companies run presumably by really wealthy people who you're trying to tax more to actually create these jobs. The government isn't creating the jobs, Tim, unless you're talking about the public sector. You're talking about enterprise creating these jobs, and yet we've had two budgets and one to come that look like they're going to thwart business people even more. This is the thing you have to understand about Labour. I know this because I was one. For Conservatives, politics is one part of their life.

25:00It's almost like a tragic necessity, something you have to get involved with. For Labour, it's totalising, it's everything. John Healy spoke about how he actually met his wife at a Labour Party conference. Got engaged two weeks later. Got engaged two weeks later. And they genuinely believe that everything good in this country is because of them. Yes. And so if someone opens a factory, he was talking about how at the old site of Orgreed, there was now this super high-tech manufacturing plant. He talked about that and claimed it as if it's there because Labour. Yeah. No, it's there because of private enterprise.

25:32in the same way that if you have a child, it's because of your family. That's right. If you do a charitable collection, it's because of your church. But Labour literally cannot separate private initiative from a Labour government. And it's an extraordinary place, by the way, to try and make that argument. We're in the Liverpool docks, which were regenerated by Lord Heseltine, a Tory and a load of private equity. Yeah, exactly. But I'm sure Labour would like to take credit for this entire area, looking like it is now. But let's be honest, it wasn't their project. Yeah. And a final thought, you got into an argument with Novara Media, which you can see.

26:05Well, I know. They might cut it up badly and I might come across like an evil right wing Harrodin witch. But that whole thing is, is neoliberalism ending? Has Andy Burnham ended neoliberalism? I don't even know what neoliberalism is. No one can tell me what they think neoliberalism is. What is it? If neoliberalism is the state vanishes, then part of the reason why we're in the mess we're in now is because the state is too big. Because the tax take is too big. Because spending is too big. Because something like 6 million people are on benefits right now and are not in work. So if the legacy of neoliberalism is the triumph of markets and private enterprise, it's actually not the world we're living in.

26:44And I come back to your point that this is like entering a parallel universe where labor builds everything. Private capital is in a conspiracy with crypto and tech business and Putin to destroy everything. and as long as this place feels good about itself, then Britain is good. This is not a party conference. It is a therapy session. No, that's right. Tim, we have to leave Liverpool now because we have got a Telegraph event tomorrow morning that we need to play a starring role in and then we are going to be analysing Andy Burnham's speech from the studio.

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