PMQs row erupts as Labour fails to define ‘a working person’

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. In 2010, newlyweds Debbie Cooper and Jamie Starbucks set off on around the world honeymoon, but something wasn't right. We kind of started to scrutinize things a lot more. What exactly is going on here? Debbie was missing. We just looked at each and said, so what's the next step? And it's like, police. He was a lovely little boy, but something happened to him to turn him into a monster.

1:04There's nothing off her, he just erased her. Missing Debbie, a new Bed of Lies podcast from The Telegraph. Out now. A row erupts at PMQs. What is a working person? Why can't Labour define that or cut welfare? They seem to be, again, stuck in the 1970s, thinking that the big debate of Britain in 2026 is employee versus employer. Yes, landlord versus renter. Rich versus poor. Basically, you're talking about taxpayers and non-taxpayers. And I think that would be a good line of attack for the right because the battle is between those paying taxes for those receiving benefits. Well, jingle my bells, Tim.

1:48It's only the beginning of November. John Lewis has come out with his advert, I would say, six weeks too early. And everyone hates it. They do. It features a grandma who opens the door to two miserable kids who don't even want to hug and kiss her. Brats! Who refuse to play with her lovely old toy. Yes. So to get their attention back, she goes shopping to John Lurs and brings back lots of toys for them to play with. And through the magic of spending money, she earns their respect and love. It's disgusting, isn't it? It has the feeling of a failed task on The Apprentice. Yes, that's right. You can just imagine Lord Sugar saying to them, what a bleeding hell is this?

2:25You're fired. If those were my grandkids, they'd get a sodding lump of coal, I can tell you that. Well, there's also a scene where the two grandchildren are opening. I don't know why I've turned Sugar into Dick Van Dyke. I know, but I love it. Christmas is on my mind. Jim Jiminy. Also, there's a scene where these kids are opening cards and sort of trying to shake out the money. Oh. Oh, no. Also, I'm sorry, I do love her in Slow Horses. I've loved her since Four Weddings and a Funeral. Who is she again? Remind me. Kristen Scott Thomas. Oh, yes. But she's an ice queen. Is she really best cast as a sort of cuddly granny?

2:55Yes. I think that was wrong. I certainly wouldn't be decorating one of the rooms of my father's home into some kind of present emporium for two snotty-nosed little kids who aren't grateful for anything. And frankly as well, by the way, there is a fallacy at the heart of this. If you give kids cash, they love it. They don't want some crap that's been produced by John Lewis. I mean, any teenager, at least, I know these children depicted are younger. Yes. I mean, kids love cash. The great thing about it is you can spend it on what you want, Tim. When I was a child, I would get in my stocking a satsuma, some nuts and some boiled sweets.

3:31This is the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. I was born in a cardboard box in the middle of the street. What would have happened if that seed had played out in my house is one of my grandmothers would have hit me. Yeah, that's right. My mother and my grandmother would have spent the rest of the holiday rowing about whether or not she was allowed to hit me. Whether or not your mother was a good parent. Eventually, I would have refused to eat something and my mother would have hit me. And then my grandmother would have said, I told you so. I was going to say, if my children were jumping up and down on my father's sofas.

4:00Oh, hello. Absolutely not. I wouldn't be able to sit down for the whole week. No, it's a big thumbs down for the advert. Is it a thumbs up for PMQs with the reserves in place, Tim? You've just come from the House of Commons. So Andy Burnham's in Antigua, falling about a cricket wicket. Yes. Consequently, Louise Haig. Yes. I had my mobile phone stolen, but really I didn't fame. Yes. And indeed, Alex Burkhart, a lesser spotted Tory who happens to be Kemi Badenow's right-hand man, went at it over the dispatch box. Well, Louise was the better looking of the two. I really like her hair. She's had a flick put in, which I thought looked very smart, like Charlie's Angel.

4:37Can I just say you are an absolute sucker for red-headed Labour women? Yes. Because you've got a thing for Angela Rayner and her flame hair. Yes. And you've now got a thing for Louise Hay. She used to dye her hair. I'm into redheads. Are you? No, I really am. It's my thing. It's your thing. Oh, and you're obsessed with Fergie. Yeah. And I kind of take Prince Harry's side over William. So there you go. Honestly. There's one for the royal curious of you. OK. But having said that, she is also an intelligent and accomplished woman. Yes. I'm contractually obliged to say that in case I'd be called a misogynist.

5:08But of the two, it had the feeling of a row between substitute teachers, I felt. There's always a it's always a bit like that. His argument was, tell me, is welfare spending going to go down in this parliament? And he asked that question six times, but in a very kind of I studied history sort of way. Yes. Don't you know I've got some legal training? Whereas Louise Haig has more of a touch of the rover's return about her and was doing a whole talk to the hand because the face ain't listening thing. And yeah, she rebuffed it okay. But as sometimes happens when teachers have a row in a classroom, at first the class is spellbound.

5:44We didn't know adults could argue. And then when they get on to something about parking spaces, the class starts talking amongst itself. And that's what was happening in the commons. It was also slightly like, oh, mum and dad are rowing again about which route to take in the car. Like they kept on repeating. It was like, oh, God, they're in the same old row. Oh, yeah. She hasn't stacked the dishwasher properly. Oh, God, Dad hasn't taken the washing out. So I thought that was a sideshow. What did interest me was that Daisy Cooper... Oh, bless her. ...standing in for Ed Davey asked about America.

6:16Of course she did. Where's our Lib Dem bingo card? It's only got two things on it. Trump... And the EU. And in the EU. I know. But although she didn't make an interesting point in and of itself, what she was trying to do was draw the government into distancing itself from America. because we have real arguments with the White House, for instance, over American tech and the way it does business in this country. And she claims that it's able to avoid some of the larger fines on misbehaviour. So she's saying, now that you can see Trump is a lame duck, are you going to distance yourself from him and maybe push back against Washington?

6:50Well, also, she was asking ridiculous questions about do we need to further probe the Epstein files? And Labour are sitting there going, well, it didn't work out very well for our very own Peter Mandelson. So can you just leave it there, please, Daisy? What Daisy wanted is a Sadiq Khanian response to what happened in the midterms. And by the way, we've recorded a separate podcast on events in America. Congratulations to Democrats on a huge victory last night. I mean, let's be honest, Khan is the one who put up the baby blimp of Trump. They're not besties. Trump has repeatedly criticised the London mayor.

7:20With a focus on hope, unity and supporting families with the cost of living, their campaign was a true rejection of the damaging and divisive politics of Donald Trump. Khan can say this because he's not the prime minister. You're not going to get the front... Daisy Cooper, come on, love. You're not going to get the front bench coming out with all this now as Burnham's still rubbing shoulders with world leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. No, of course you're not. And Trump is still president for two years and can do a lot of damage. Louise Haig was keen to point out that the Labour Party did not support the Iran war, whereas the Tories and reform sort of did.

7:54Yes. So that's one dig that she got in at them. But I think the most interesting, Raoul, all of that aside, is the ongoing argument about what counts as a working person. I know this is a particular interest of yours. Well, I started it because I had the temerity to ask Emma. Karl Marx started it, actually. I know. I think he probably did. I had the temerity to ask Emma Reynolds, who was on the broadcast round on Sunday and therefore appeared on my GB News show. She's chief secretary to the Treasury. So basically John Healy's right hand woman. and I had the temerity to ask her why she was taxing working people more in the last budget as the previous budgets had done by putting up employers, national insurance, and in this case, in the case of Healy, putting up income tax on rents and interest.

8:42So putting it up on landlords and savers, pointing out that all of those people, employers, landlords and savers, are indeed working people. She then responded, as we discussed yesterday, with the classic line, which I didn't think she was going to say out loud. And by the way, can I just stress here, there was no gotcha moment. There was no, to use Burnham's current parlance, Googly being bold. She came out with this of her own volition. I didn't force her into saying it. When she said it, I couldn't believe she said it. Well, it was a nasty media trick to invite her to speak. Indeed. Underhanded.

9:16To invite her to speak openly. She volunteered the information and then, of course, I seized upon it. and then it went viral and then lots of other working people who happened to also run businesses seized upon it and all the rest of it. So she's in the House of Commons yesterday. John Healy denounces it. She then has to, well, let's just listen to it, correct the record, my lord. And I would like to correct the record here. Of course, the brilliant men and women across the country who run small businesses are working people. I thank them for their contribution to our local economies and our local high streets.

9:51The bakeries, the cafes, the restaurants, the beauticians, the hairdressers and the local pub and so many more. I love this whole, I would like to correct the record as if she is separate to what she actually said. It was the record who said this and not me, which is just extraordinary. So thank you for correcting the record. She then posts her correcting the record on her X feed. And then it's hit with a community note saying, by the way, you're correcting what you yourself said. Yes. And this is why I think people are a little bit cynical about politics and politicians, because there's a form of unique gaslighting, isn't there, in saying that you are almost as a third party correcting a record that you have nothing to do with, even though you played the record and you wrote the lyrics and you sang the song.

10:38In much the same way that in this session, Louise Hay kept trying to pin everything on the Tories. Fair enough. A lot of it is down to them, but you've been in for two years now. Two years in love. And when is the statute of limitations on that? If Labour is now in power for like 100 years, are they still going to be bringing up the Liz Truss budget? What a thought. But Louise Haig appeared to offer her own definition of a working person. Yeah, let's listen to that. Working people are the millions of people who put in every day and don't get back what they deserve. People who don't have savings they can dip into or pay their way out of problems.

11:09And people who rely on good public services. Those are the people that this Labour government are delivering through when the budget served last week. So that's people who don't have savings and people who use public services. Now, in case she has to correct the record herself, she was asked by Luke Evans if she would repeat that. And she said, I'm not going to repeat my answer. I've already given it. So she's had a chance to correct the record and she seems to be standing by it.

11:41Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's go.gle slash workspace with Gemini.

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13:27Now, people without savings. Who doesn't have some savings? Well, some people don't have savings, but we're talking about a tiny minority of the country. But also doesn't use public services. You cannot not use public services. If you call the police, you're using a public service. So her definition of working people is basically people completely on the breadline only. She is talking about homeless people in Delhi. Right. She's talking about Burmese warrior people. She's talking about people who live in some far off mountain in Peru. I know. Not anyone in this country. Because she's just defined it as everyone and no one at the same time.

14:10But this is all about, as you pointed out at the very beginning, the kind of feathering of Marxist unionist nests where they seem to be, again, stuck in the 1970s, thinking that the big debate of Britain in 2026 is employee versus employer. Yes. Landlord versus renter. Yeah. Rich versus poor. And I just don't think people see it like that. And I've been amazed, by the way, when I've looked on my own socials at the people then recording videos on the back of the interview who literally are. Well, it would have been the butchers, bakers and candlestick makers of yesteryear. But the hairdressers, the pie shop owners, the cobblers, the plumbers, the electricians who have all taken quite understandably great offence at the idea that they don't work for a living.

14:57This will come back to haunt them, by the way. Can I just say there's a bit we've got now, I think, three idiotic Labour statements that are going to come back to haunt them. The first is national security should not come at the expense of social security. Yes. As soon as Putin does anything, he's going to look really stupid, Andy Vernon, for coming out with that ridiculous phrase. Second phrase, employers aren't working people. And then third phrase, OK, it was actually honest when Pat McFadden expressed it. And again, it came back to haunt him at PMQs today. All I'm doing is taxing people to pay benefits to others.

15:35Bingo. Yeah. Yeah. So these three catchphrases should be deployed, by the way, by Labour's rivals at every given opportunity. The Tories have weaponised the Emma Reynolds gaffe quite well. Haven't seen reform do it as well. But the point is, that's what should be going on in rotation. And we're keeping an eye on it as journalists because the point of the Emma Reynolds quote is Labour keeps saying it won't raise taxes for working people. So what we've been trying to get for several years now is a definition of working people. Because if they choose not to go for an election and they're in for another three years, at some point looking at their plans, they're probably going to have to raise taxes, in which case we'd like to know now, do I count as a working person?

16:17The other thing is, if your economy either goes south or changes, a lot of people shift from being employees to people working for themselves. They become sole traders. I mean, anyone who does sort of like consultancy work for online design or anything like that is now technically self-employed. So they've gone from labor's basket of good person to labor's basket of shame. But they haven't changed in terms of their social status. Just because you've lost your job and you've had to become like an Uber driver or something, and maybe you've got a small pot of savings which you're still living off in order to keep yourself going, you've not suddenly leapt several rungs up the social ladder to the point where Labour shouldn't think of taxing you anymore.

16:59They have this totally unrealistic understanding of the class dynamics in modern Britain. They don't get how people live. The right is simply missing a trick here. I mean, Farage has got close to it with Alarm Clock Britain. Thankfully, the Conservatives have moved away from the rather pejorative language of workers versus shirkers. Isn't it simply working people are taxpayers? Yeah. I mean, some pensioners still have to pay tax, obviously. And they're not technically working because they're retired. But basically, you're talking about taxpayers and non-taxpayers. And I think that would be a good line of attack for the right because the battle is between those paying taxes for those receiving benefits.

17:39Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think ultimately this is a government which is all about managing decline. It's going to try and do it in a softer, gentler way than the Tories did. So it's all about protecting vulnerable groups and about protecting people on welfare. But there is no economic plan to turbocharge the economy and take it off so that the free market grows and we're all making money ourselves. It's all now just about parceling the cash out, redistributing the pie. And the odd tweak here or there to make your life a little bit easier, which might give the false impression to some people that the government is an activist government that's trying to do something in a positive way, as Burnham keeps saying.

18:20But the truth is, as Burkhart pointed out, we're now looking at a welfare bill of around£183 billion, and we can't continue going down that path. Also, the pie, I mean, the pie's already been handed out. We're talking about what we do with the crumbs right much of the pie is gone the pie's gone yeah the pie's being spent on benefits debt massive public spending just crumbs left and that's why a budget comes out with four p off a jar of gherkins tim i'm thinking about pie now yeah should we go and eat some pie we'll be back tomorrow at 5 p.m

19:18Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.