‘The King is furious!’: Why Earl Spencer’s royal claims are unforgivable

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:05That's JoinMidi.com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage. The book is out and they can't shut him up. Charles Spencer continues to accuse the king of being giddy at the death of his ex-wife Diana. Is there anything the palace can do to silence this royal renter gob? We wouldn't be talking about this if Charles Spencer... This is the other thing. Yeah, I agree. The irony. He goes in the eulogy. She was hunted. She was the most hunted woman. The press have got questions to answer. They intruded into her life. We do not have a laundry big enough to air the dirty linen that now Harry and Charles Spencer have.

1:44I think any therapist or psychiatrist worth their weight would say everyone struggles with grief in their own particular way, but you would advise someone three decades off. It's probably unwise and unhealthy to publish a book about your sister's death. Comrade, you're back. I've missed you. Oh, bless you. But you had Jacob Rees-Mogg. I did, but you know, it's just, it's one posh boy and then one wannabe posh boy. He is very posh, isn't he? Well, he is quite posh, but we love that about him. I saw a video of him saying that he was worried people weren't willing to fight for their country. Yes.

2:22Are you willing to fight for yours? Am I willing to fight for Jacob? That's the question. That's right. I think you'd be fighting for king and country. And we're getting onto that later because we're going to be discussing the latest in the Charles Spencer saga. Yeah. I don't think anyone would want me fighting for them. I think at this stage. Could you do some code breaking or something? Yeah. I think you'd be. Yes. I've always thought that in a war, I would get sent to a lovely country hotel to crack codes. I've never seen myself on the beaches or falling out of an airplane. No, me neither. But where do you see me?

2:53I think leading a battalion. Entertainment's division. Oh, really? Oh, yeah, I can see you entertaining the troops. You've heard me singing. My goodness, that was a feature of last week's Daily Tea that you missed. People said never let her sing again. Not so much Vera Lynn. I thought you were going to put me on comms. Oh, right. Propaganda. Yes. Yes, anti-enemy. You'll be our Tokyo Jane. That's exactly it. Right, before we get on to Burnham's big tax bombshell of the budget forthcoming on October the 28th, We need to just plug me and Bridget Philipson at the Liver Building. This is happening on Sunday afternoon.

3:26This Sunday. You can get tickets. We've got the details in the show notes. I think they're£12 each, which frankly, Tim, it's a bargain. Yeah, that's£6 per strong woman. Thank you very much. And it's going to be a big old left-right fest. Anyone can go. Anyone can go. You don't need to be accredited. That's important. It's in the middle. It's the beginning of the Labour conference, which we'll be covering for the Daily Tea. but this event is open to the public if they pay their 12 quid. So please do come along and we'd love to see you on the day. Tim, it's the Ginger versus the Windsor round two.

3:57Charles Spencer has given an interview to the BBC's Laura Koonsberg and Vicky Ward, our Deputy Royal Editor, has read his book in full so we don't have to. She joins us now on the Daily Tea. Vicky, what more can you tell us about Swan Song? I think the most explosive lines in the book remain the ones that have been discussed over the weekend. These quotes that have been attributed to Prince Charles, which are very much denied by the palace, we must add, that he sounded giddy and like a lottery winner when he phoned Earl Spence to tell him that Diana had died and also made the comment that we'll forget her soon enough about Diana when they were talking about plans for the funeral.

4:38So those two quotes together have caused huge ructions and quite a spat and a war of words between the palace and the Spencers, Earl Spencer, over the last few days. And is there anything else in the book? I mean, he's obviously saying this is a swan song. This is a tribute to my beautiful sister. I want everyone to remember her legacy. It's to mark the 30th anniversary. We do get, don't we, Tim, that the male will serialise this book and take the best lines out of it and then splash them. But on the other hand, don't put lines like this in. Don't be so incendiary if you want this book to be remembered as some kind of wonderful eulogy to your sister.

5:16Is it really a book, Victoria, about his relationship with his sister? Or is that really just an opportunity for him to have an attack at the palace? Well, he rattles through her whole life. So there's a chapter about that. There are various chapters about her childhood and their shared childhood experiences and little anecdotes about riding camels and childhood arguments and whether their parents ever said they loved them or not and things like that. But there's a large proportion of the book is dedicated to her death, the immediate aftermath, the funeral, his very famous eulogy, the reaction to that.

5:53So I would say probably 50-50 in terms of her death and everything surrounded it and other bits and pieces. So it felt like it does feel very much like he obviously doesn't get on with Prince Charles. I don't think they've had much to do with each other at all. I think he says he's only had two conversations with him ever these two that he discusses here um there's nothing particularly kind that he has to say about the king um by contrast interestingly he's quite um he speaks with quite affectionate um fondness for the late queen and he kind of excuses do you remember when there was a lot of public outcry because she was delayed in her reaction when diana died and he kind of excuses that and says he understands why that she was focusing on William and Harry at the time and that when she did give an address it was a very affectionate and Diana would have been very proud and thought very highly of her late mother-in-law so it's interesting that the change in tone when he's talking about the two of them.

6:50There's an interesting moment in the interview with Laura Koonsberg on the BBC where he discusses the term giddy which he used to describe the then Prince of Wales's reaction to Diana's death. Let's Just have a quick listen to that. So I've only ever had two calls from him, and they were both around this time. One was on that day of Diana's death, and one was a couple of days later. But are you sure that's what he was thinking? I mean, surely he is... I cannot be sure. I'm saying that's what I assume from the tone is a possibility, and that's all I can do. What made me sit up and listen to that particular moment, Tim, is that the newspapers have said that he's given this interview doubling down on the book, and indeed he did say to the mail in an interview with them, I'm being gaslit by the king.

7:37This is my truth. It's quite Meghan and Harry-esque actually. This is my truth and you've disputed it, therefore you're gaslighting me. Gaslighting appears to be modern-day parlance for disagreeing, but whatever. But in that discussion with Koonsberg, I feel like he's trying to get out of what he's claimed a little bit by saying, well, my interpretation was that he was giddy, but it's very hard to tell at the end of a telephone line. Well, first of all, who remembers in detail and verbatim a conversation they had with somebody 29 years ago at a time of immense shock and grief? But second of all, why say all this stuff unless you're absolutely going to stand by it 110 %?

8:15Well, I don't know. I'll put it to the person who has read the book, because the question everyone is asking is, why now? and reading the book, do you come away with a stronger understanding of why now? Is it that you can tell there is a great trauma here that has been bottled up for 30 years that the author desperately needs to share with someone? I don't think so, actually. I think I don't understand the why now. So his reasoning for why now, he told the BBC that he felt it was his duty as an eyewitness to history to record this version of events. But there's nothing in it which points to the now.

8:56He could have written it 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So the other thing that he says about why he wanted to do it in this particular time is because he's been inundated with requests to appear on a whole slew of documentaries and projects that are coming out next year, which is the 30th anniversary of Diana's death. And he felt that they were all going to be skewed and they'd have a particular narrative and they'd be flawed and the production companies would want to follow a particular track. So he decided he was going to turn all of those down. And so he could actually tell everybody his truth as he described it.

9:30Obviously, I've not read the book, but from what I saw from the Kunzberg interview and other interviews he's done, nothing Spencer has said has been surprising. So we learn, in inverted commas, that Martin Bashir was evil and a liar. And Spencer had actually worked this out and tried to dissuade his sister from having any more to do with him. but Bashir, the evil genius, wormed his way back into her acquaintance. We learn that Muhammad Al-Fayed allegedly, I don't have to say that now that he's dead and everyone agrees he was a horrible man, but Al-Fayed supposedly groped Princess Diana and said to her, Egyptian fathers have the first go.

10:10So we learn that Muhammad Al-Fayed was a horrible person. We learn that Spencer had this conversation with Charles, that Charles was supposedly happy that his wife had died and that Spencer had put a clue into his eulogy that Charles had said we'd forget her by saying we shall never forget her. My point is, nothing he has said, although it is headline grabbing, is actually surprising. Everything tells us what we already suspected and paints Charles Spencer as a really solid guy. What? Before you come in, Vicky, I think it's not surprising that Charles Spencer has got an issue with Charles Windsor.

10:51I think there is historical beef that goes way back. I don't think Charles Spencer is particularly in a position to comment about the morality or the behaviour of others when he's been married four times and has had some negative headlines written about his own behaviour, particularly towards women. Let's just leave that there. Second of all, he went on the airwaves after the eulogy, Charles Spencer, and told people like the US TV host Larry King, that after the eulogy, Charles was perfectly polite to him and that he was polite to him at the funeral and that he expressed a degree of kinship with his former brother-in-law.

11:27So I don't understand why that narrative has changed. Third of all, and this is what I cannot understand at all, Charles Spencer's over in South Africa. Charles Windsor has to deal with the death of his ex-wife. He has to go over to Paris. He has to identify the body. Charles Anderson, in his biography of the king, went to speak to the staff at that hospital in Paris who said collectively that the then Prince of Wales was in pieces, that when he had to identify the body, he physically recoiled. He then insisted that he spend half an hour with Diana in repose. He then emerged from the room in tears.

12:06We all watched the coffin coming back to the UK. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. We then have Prince Harry's own first-hand testimony in Balmoral. Charles Spencer's not in Balmoral. If Prince Harry perceived that his father was, quote, celebrating his mother's death, Vicky, wouldn't he have written that in spare? One of the most interesting things that came out of this BBC interview is that Charles Spencer said that none of these quotes he's attributed to the king will come as a surprise to William and Harry, which implies that he'd had these discussions and that these conversations had been discussed within the family and had been well known.

12:45But yes, it is very interesting that none of this has come up before and Harry's written extensively, hasn't he, about that entire period. Harry could have used spare because we know the frame of mind he was in and possibly is still in when it comes to his royal nearest and dearest. He actually paints a picture of a father totally and utterly distraught, so distraught that he sits on the end of his bed and breaks the news to him and then doesn't really know what to do or how to behave. He is at sea. There was even an anecdotal report that Charles had walked off into the heather in Balmoral and started wailing.

13:18Now, upset to break the news of their mother's death to them, but also feeling responsible for her death because he was thinking if it hadn't been for Camilla being the third person in the marriage and if it hadn't been for the separation and then divorce, which had occurred in 1996, by which point these two are getting on quite well. They're co-parenting and they're having tea together at Kensington Palace. If it hadn't been for that chain of events, she'd still be alive. Well, also, Vicky, if we're trying to guess why now, I wonder if it could have some relationship to the Sussexes and the riff that's going on in the family at this very moment, because it does seem relevant to it.

14:00In which case, I wonder if you have any sense of how the Sussexes would feel about these revelations, never mind whether they think they're accurate or not. But do you think they would really appreciate Spencer bringing this stuff up, talking about Harry's mental ill health and commenting upon their security arrangements? I imagine that they'll be pleased that he's commenting on their security arrangements because he's sticking up for them. He's saying he thinks they should get police protection, having lived through what he describes the entirely preventable death of Princess Diana. So I think in that sense, he will.

14:37I mean, he hasn't really had a bad word to say about the Sussexes, has he? He's been quite positive. He talks also about how when they took the royal train from London to Althorpe to bury Diana after the funeral service. He talks about how he really noticed that there was a lack of affection for Prince Harry. and he's pinned this on everything that happened after this, the years that came later. He said that perhaps if there'd been a bit of nurture and a bit of care, a hand of care, extended to Prince Harry at this time and he clearly needed it, things might have been different for him in the future.

15:13I think he might not have gone off the track. That's the implication. So I think he's kind of, what he's saying about Prince Harry and Meghan is largely positive. He seems to be on their side. but again that feeds into your point perhaps that's why it's coming now because they're all together aren't they they're all on one side it feels increasingly there's the Spencers and Harry and Meghan on one side and the palace on the other those who are on the side of the Sussexes are more likely to believe that the royal family is inherently unfeeling and lacking in compassion because they'll believe the narrative that the couple were forced out and driven almost to the point of suicide and I can completely understand that I think the forgotten person in all this actually is Prince William.

15:55You mentioned Bashir there. It was quite stark, actually, the statement that William released after Bashir was exposed by the Dyson inquiry into his nefarious tactics. And let's not forget that he falsified receipts suggesting that people close to Diana had been paid for information. And it caused her to disenfranchise herself from most of her closest friends and aides like Patrick Jefferson, her former private secretary, who's appeared on the Daily Tea and others. And only after a full investigation did they realise why that happened, because they didn't know that Bashir had been telling these lies about them.

16:32And Spencer, to be fair, was completely instrumental in exposing all that. But afterwards, both William and Harry released a statement basically saying, listen, we don't want Panorama mentioned again. The context of it is now known. It made her paranoid. It might have even led to her being in the Alma Tunnel that night, but we do not want our mother's memory raked over, commercialised and sensationalised. And I do think there's an irony that the person who is now doing that, it's a bit like Spare, is somebody from within. Earl Spencer has now invaded their privacy more than a journalist like you or I ever could.

17:09And this is the man who pledged at the eulogy as blood family to protect their spiritual and emotional wellbeing. Well, how on earth is suggesting that your father celebrated your mother's death helping his nephews? Has he even been present in their lives that much? And William's the silent one here. This is the other thing. These royals are sitting ducks. The king can't sue in his own court. He's got a right of reply through the palace statement, you know, clouded grief has clouded your judgment, or whatever the wording was, Vicky. But they don't really have a right of reply. The king's never going to write a book, is he, saying the truth about my brother-in-law?

17:45That's exactly the thing. Williams the silent witness to all of this right at the heart of all of these narratives that Spencer and Harry are writing about and yet he can't say a word and his entire camp have kept very very silent throughout and I think they've all been briefed all of Williams' aides and friends have been told do not get involved do not wade in we don't want to get not even you know the mildest most subtle comment or reaction we don't want to get involved at all so they're having to watch all this unfold they've watched harry's book they've watched the netflix documentary series harry and megan did they've watched spare they've seen now this um el spencer's book and they're just going to they're having to read it about him as much as harry isn't it and as much as diana they're having to he's he's just having to watch it and stay quiet and you can guarantee that he's going to be absolutely furious about it but but can't do anything it's more coming or are we there now on el spencer i think i think he's going to do a few more interviews broadcast interviews and I think he's done a couple in about.

18:45He's on Lorraine on Wednesday, because I was at This Morning This Morning and I was told he was on Lorraine on Wednesday. I mean, the book's published on Tuesday. I don't think there's going to be, there's nothing else beyond what's been written extensively over the weekend. So it's just, and assuming the palace doesn't engage anymore with him, which I don't think they want to. I think they recognise that they've said their piece and that should be it. I don't think, I think it'll probably fizzle out. Vicky Ward, thank you very much indeed for joining us on The Daily Tea, as ever. I'm a little confused.

19:13Are you thinking that Charles Spencer comes out of this better than King Charles? No. First of all, I managed to grow up genuinely thinking that Earl Spencer was his first name. What, he's called Earl? I thought he was called Earl. Like James Earl Jones? So I thought Diana was trailer trash because Earl is a kind of a trashy name, but then I discovered it's actually a title. Did they not teach you anything at your very impressive grammar school? And I'm inherently suspicious, that this is among the many untory things about me, of people who use irrelevant titles. Well. Titles that to me have no social utility.

19:50I'm Reverend Jones. I'm Dr. Smith. That tells me what you do. I'm Earl Spencer. I have absolutely no idea what that means to me. No. So I don't know. This is why growing up, I just thought the man was called Earl. Right. Anyway, I have been off work for a week. Yes, we've missed you. I've managed to avoid almost all news. And so you just catch snippets on the TV or you see a headline. Ed Sheeran has gone to war with Israel or something. I don't know what that's about. Basically, ginger's been making merry hell this week. But I've managed to get through the week without knowing whether Ed Sheeran is pro or against Israel.

20:28He just wants peace in the Middle East. I'm going to go with anti because they all are. No, no, no. He's had a support act. a support act has been pro-Israel. And the point is, don't come on as a support act to somebody else's main event and start hijacking it with your own pro-Palestinian rhetoric and then leaving Ed Sheeran in the mire because the person who's hosting the concert is saying, a man called Robert Kraft, is saying we're not going to have those sorts of sentiments. Well, I managed to avoid all of this. I also think the Archbishop of Canterbury met ISIS or something like that. I don't know.

21:02Anyway, so when it comes to Earl, when it comes to our buddy Earl, I caught up with him on Sunday and I thought, what a peculiar man. There's something very odd about him. He's a non-blinker. Is he? He's got a very soft voice. He's got Matthew Parris' voice. Yes. And he doesn't blink and he talks about my darling sister. Yes. And I just thought there was something gothic about everything I saw over the weekend. And I think any therapist or psychiatrist worth their weight would say everyone struggles with grief in their own particular way and you can't judge someone for how they feel. That's not fair.

21:44But you would advise someone three decades on. It's probably unwise and unhealthy to publish a book about your sister's death, especially making claims that cannot be corroborated. So to your question, which got me off on Ed Sheeran and the Archbishop of Canterbury, I'm not saying he is a straight up decent guy. My point is he's written a book, which from what I've heard, not read it, but what I've heard, it says nothing surprising. I think it is surprising for the public to hear that the king, who appeared to have the weight of the world on his shoulders as he followed with his sons, that coffin, was actually secretly giddy and acting as if he had won the lottery.

22:28So we could go off and marry Camilla. But you know Charles polls really badly, right, for royals. Well, not as badly as Harry and Meghan and indeed Charles Spencer right now. Well, and it is not a democratic contest because it's a monarchy. And also don't forget he's garnered a lot of sympathy lately because of the cancer. A large part of this country has always disliked Charles and really disliked Camilla because of Diana. So my family, Diana, Republican, of course, partisans, very much in that corner. My point is the monarchy operates at the level of Jungian myth of good people, bad people. And everything that Spencer has published, what I can make out, just plays into those myths.

23:07Charles, wicked evil man, hated his wife, glad to see her go. Martin Bashir, sublime liar, capable of fooling everyone, initially including Spencer, but then he saw through him. That's how brilliant Charles Spencer is. Mohammed Al-Fayed, creepy pervert. You know, there is nothing about, there's nothing from what I've heard of the book that in any way surprises me, which for me is one more reason why it should not have been published. Got it. So it's like, what's all? If he had come out and said, you know, I've been, if he had come out and said, it's been 30 years I've been dwelling on this, I've realised that this was a tragedy that was beyond anyone's control.

23:44She died in a traffic accident. Yes. In a car she shouldn't have been in. Yes. She should have been wearing a seatbelt. By the way, paparazzi shouldn't have been chasing Henri Paul, who was drunk at speed. And I have reflected. And actually, Charles was really cut up about it. And Bashir fooled me as well. If he had said all of these counterintuitive things, I might read it and think, I've learned something from this. But I'm afraid when you add everything up, his strange voice, his use of a title that I regard as irrelevant, and all these details that just confirm the almost like operatic nature of the characters.

24:20I just think you're cashing in. Yes. I'm sorry to say. Well, he has got three divorces to cope. I want to add, if the BBC or ITV chose to settle on one random family at number 10 railway cuttings and to make a series of films about them for the course of a year, you would dredge up exactly the same stories that are dredged up about the Windsors. And you know, it was like when someone dies, there are fights over inheritance. You never loved her. There's all that stuff. You would find some barmy uncle who doesn't blink to come on the TV show and say, I think he hated his wife. So my point is, what are we meant to draw from this?

25:07The story is so long ago. It's like the archaeology of trauma. It's like people still fighting over who shot JFK. I know, but we like to... Britain, let it go. We do need to let it go. But just to conclude on that, we do like to hear these tales about this so-called nuclear family that's actually, as I've described it in the past, thermonuclear, precisely because it makes us feel better about ourselves and our strained family relationships. Because we look at Harry and Meghan and we look at William, you know, the classic case of somebody marries in and everyone hates her. The classic case of the dad runs off with another woman.

25:44You know, the classic case of a tragic and premature death that no one expected, and then who's to blame and the conspiracy theories. And then you add in the wealth, and then you add in the historical trauma. I mean, literally, there's like Wolf Hall 2026. There's a couple of really conniving Cromwellian aides at the middle of it all as well. And we say, well, thank you very much. That makes me feel much, much happier about my dysfunctional relatives. It's too much for the institution to bear because we keep saying we need the monarchy. And if that's true, and I do believe it, it's an essential glue to British identity and life, then why at the same time do we continue to expose the individuals within it to this unbearable level of scrutiny?

26:28We're not exposing them. We wouldn't be talking about this if Charles Spencer... This is the other thing, the irony. He goes in the eulogy, she was hunted, she was the most hunted woman. The press have got questions to answer, they intruded into her life. And then he comes up with this in the same vein as spare. You know, we do not have a laundry big enough to air the dirty linen that now Harry and Charles Spencer has. But you must understand from an alien looking down, this must look very strange. The same BBC that will cover an entire day's royal event in hushed voices. And now the horses are going up the mall.

27:05Will the very next day cover an interview that says something like there are a bunch of corrupt perverts. What is it you want? You want this institution to work because it's of social, real social utility, unlike his title, for the rest of us? Or are we going to turn it into this unsustainable soap opera? It's mal, not mal. I just want to say that. And it's mal, not mal. It's mal as in jam, not mal as in smal. And on that note, that's basically all I learned in 25 years of all reporting, folks. let's move on to Andy Burnham and whether he is the king of anything not least the north I tell you what he is becoming the king of Tim Tax Rises

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29:29Now, Burnham, capital gains tax. Dale Vince thinks it's a good idea to make equivalent capital gains tax and income tax. It's something that lefties come out with the whole time. It's not an original idea at all. Where's streeting boosted as well? And it sounds superficially really attractive. Why don't we just charge this capital gains tax, which is the tax you pay when you sell off certain assets? So, crucially, not your primary residence, so I'm safe. Thank goodness. But if you sell things like stocks and shares. Those are the big assets of yours, that place in the Bahamas you've got. Not really.

30:01It is just the house. But if we were to sell off shares, you'd have to pay extra tax. And their argument is, why don't we just tax out at the same rate as we do income, which taps into the left-wing theory du jour that the problem at the moment is we incentivise the wrong things, that the asset-owning class is dodging taxes, whereas the very hardworking are paying too many taxes. So the argument is, let us raise CGT and at the same time, cut income tax for the low paid. And the theory is that these two things would broadly balance out. So raising CGT, it is calculated, could bring in an extra$14 billion to the Treasury, whereas lowering the income tax would cost it about$20 billion.

30:46It's Robin Hoodonomics. Right. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Yes. And, of course, the Prime Minister is focused upon the cost of living. So politically, this empowers him to go to the country and say, I have made life a bit cheaper for the low paid. Right. A couple of problems with this. First of all, we're already experiencing a millionaire and billionaire exodus. We've got Chris Rockus now. Can't see him for the dust trail left by his Lamborghini. He's taken£350 million worth of taxes with him. We've got Sir Jim Radcliffe. OK, he already took his taxes with him back in 2020 when he moved to Monaco.

31:21But basically saying this country is on the slide. That's then going to influence other high net worth individuals. We've heard from Mr. Betfred. He's saying, look, I'm a bit too old to leave the country now, but if I was younger, I'd leave. And by the way, I'm going to tell my children and grandchildren who are presumably inheriting his vast wealth that they should leave the country. Bridget did not like that. Bridget Philipson didn't like that on a GB News show. But then I also pointed out, OK, we could do this whole tax the rich thing and good luck with that. But can I just say 14 billion here, 8 billion there, 10 billion there.

31:55It makes no difference, Tim, when The Weeknd heralded the following headline. PIP payments are set to double by 2030. Right. They're going to go up by 19 billion pounds. Yes. So I said to Ms. Phillipson in a little dress rehearsal for Sunday, there is a deceit, a conceit at the heart of this government that you're actually cutting welfare. you're having a meaningless row about basically trying to cut a cut and there was that attempt to cut five billion which doesn't even touch the sides there was a labour backbench rebellion and the whole thing was abandoned we know the work and pension secretary himself pat mcfadden appreciates that the only policy they seem to have is to tax working people to pay benefits to those who don't work so i wish the argument could be recalibrated between those who are making a contribution to the tax system being protected, be they princes or paupers, and those who aren't not being overly benefited because we haven't got enough money.

32:56The other key benefit story of the weekend, Sun on Sunday reports that because of the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap, if you're a family of eight, could be Catholics, going to caveat, could also be immigrant families, then thanks to the scrapping of that cap, they're now coining in with an extra 21 grand a year. that you and I and anyone else working pays for. I mean, the last time I checked, when I got pregnant with my third child, the editor of the paper didn't come forward and say, oh, how can I subsidise that? I mean, it's a choice. But if you're on the state, you know, let's just procreate till the cows come in.

33:31I don't mind financing people having kids because I feel I'm investing in life and the future generation. The problem is that no tax in reality is hypothecated. That if you were to raise CGT, It would not go directly into taking the low paid out of work. What it would go into is the pot, which would pay for the amount of money we're spending on things like PIP benefits, which we're all very sceptical of because we think people are getting them, they shouldn't be getting them. I mean, that's the basic argument here, right? Or it would cause businessmen and women to employ fewer people and therefore it's not helping working people at all because they take their businesses overseas, they shut them down, or they purposefully make them less profitable because they don't want to pay higher CGT.

34:15Yeah. Well, another problem with raising CGT is it's very probable that people will just cease economic activity in that area. I mean, that's what tends to happen with tax. So it might not bring in as much money as expected. So for instance, if you have some shares, well, you'd pay the CGT if you sold them. So you'd think, well, I just won't sell them. So you'll just sit on the money, which is okay for you. And we don't get to realise it, but it means that economically, you might argue that's money that should be circulating in the economy. It's not, and it's money that won't be going to the Treasury either.

34:49Yeah, good point. It probably disincentivised people who wouldn't ordinarily buy shares. I'm thinking about the people who were convinced by Margaret Thatcher to tell Sid. Yes. It probably would make them think, well, actually, no, I don't want to be doing another return to the exchequer on what I've made on these shares. So let's just forget that idea. Well, this is my other point. We are told by the left-wing economists that assets are bad. Yes. Well, your home is an asset, your car is an asset, your jewellery is an asset. In other words, it's things that you acquire as you enter the middle class.

35:20And we want to encourage people to invest and to save. And we want people to have the stocks and shares and things. Whenever a government starts taxing any kind of economic activity, it discourages it. Yes. Classic Arthur Laffer. So this is your point about people running overseas. This is one more reason why it's becoming pointless to make money and enter the middle class. If you make over£100 ,000 a year and everyone will gasp and say there's a lot of money, well it is. But the money that you make over that is then subject to a marginal rate of 60%. You lose the tax exempt part of the income.

35:58Plus you also lose the additional income you'd be getting for child support and things like that. So in other words, once you try and enter the middle class, the Treasury really penalizes you. So that disincentivizes productivity, just as a rise in CGT would disincentivize people from investing. At the same time, this is not going to crack the really big problem that no one wants to talk about, which is the deficit and debt. Yes. Now, I know that debt is now something that in our heads we just write off, but it has become silly. Yes. You know, we now owe nearly three trillion pounds. Yes. And this has risen threefold since 2008 in terms of a percentage of GDP.

36:39And it's predicted that within 50 years it'll reach about 275 % of GDP. I mean, that's just horrifying. It's madness. And by the way, Britain is an outlier. We are way above the average in terms of our debt. Although we're kind of level pegging with most European nations because everybody has been spending too much money, particularly post-COVID. Right. Right. Now, just to say the counter argument is, well, it doesn't matter because we buy it ourselves. You know, we issue the gills. It's all in pounds, et cetera, et cetera. But the problem with that is that the cost of borrowing is going up. And it's going up in part because people do not trust the British government to be able to finance its debts because of these massive pip spending.

37:19Yes. So, in other words, it just frustrates me that the conversation that Labour is having is not how do we reduce spending? Yeah. How do we take action to grow the economy by expanding the business base? Instead, it's how do we take from this group of people so that we can give to that group of people? No, it's basically there's a pie and Labour are saying, how can we slice this pie more thinly? And a capitalist would say, can we just grow the pie and have bigger slices for everyone? And I noted that when it was reported in this newspaper, Dale Vince is quoted as saying, Well, look, if you allow the low income to keep more of their money, they'll spend it in the high street.

38:00And I'm like, what? But hang on. What kind of economics are we running here? What is the morality of this system where we're saying, give you more of your money so you can blow it in the high street? Yes. Rather than save it and have a good pension. Rather than saving and investing or rising up the housing ladder. That this is basically a cheap form of Keynesianism where we're hoping that the poor will spend our way out of our problems. It's complete madness. And that a final point is the obsession that politicians have with taking the low-paid out-of-income tax. Superficially, sounds like a really good idea.

38:36Of course, everyone should be keeping more of their own money. And let's also remember, by the way, it's not a left-wing construct because reform have come up with this idea of raising the personal allowance up to 15 grand, 20 if they can afford to. But there are some civically minded conservatives who are saying, is this really what we want? Because the result is, if welfare is going up at the same time, you have one part of society not giving and receiving. You have another slice of society, us, not using much in the way of welfare, but giving an awful lot of our own income. Is that sustainable?

39:15Is that what we want? I thought that the principle of welfare in this country was contributory. I put in a very small amount because I'm poorer paid so that at some stage I get a national insurance payout that says you've fallen ill or you've retired so you get this money. What we have instead is an entitlements mentality whereby the middle class finances, welfare, no questions asked, assumed to be morally good to everyone. Yes, that's right. And I don't think that's not just fiscally sustainable. I'm saying it's starting to border on immoral. And so politicians who keep saying, well, we're just going to keep taking people more and more out of tax at the same time as we're going to keep paying out more and more benefits.

40:04What is the point of being middle class? And this is verging now upon theft of middle class, not just income now, but, oh, assets too. Also, there is a vindictiveness to it all because just as Andy Burnham said, we need to have more migrant hotels in middle class areas, even though it might cost the taxpayer more, which doesn't make any economic sense at all. And just as they put VAT on private school fees because they wanted to clobber the middle classes, they had this perception that they were all driving around in Jim Ratcliffe's or Chris Rockus' Lamborghini. They're obviously not. And then we now have this suggestion of reducing the mansion tax threshold down to 1.5 million.

40:46Well, that is a policy entirely designed to hammer the middle classes. And I know people might recoil in horror at that, but the amount of people that will be fiscally dragged into that simply because they live in the southeast. Somebody put on X, this is what one and a half million pounds buys you in Wandsworth. And it was a really very average sort of three bedroom flat or something ridiculous. Now, imagine this double whammy. Imagine this double whammy. You impose a mansion tax at 1.5 million and therefore people want their home to be devalued below it so they're not hit by it. And you combine that with this ultra high borrowing and inflation spike, 3.1%, which then incentivizes the Bank of England to put up interest rates.

41:30You're basically creating the perfect storm of a house price crash while mortgage rates actually go up. It's enough to make anybody's head explode with any fundamental understanding of economics. Or, as I come back to, any concern for the ethics of how you tax and finance a community? because when you start hitting assets, I know it looks easy and I know the argument is there's no effort being made. It's just gaining wealth while it sits there. But if you think about it, you're starting to tax people for being alive. So you sit in a house and your house, because of a local house boom, happens to have gone up in price.

42:14So then when you die, the inheritance tax kicks in or when you sell it, there's stamp duty and things like that. You're taxing me for being alive for doing stuff because I've got to move. I've broken my hip. I've got to move into a smaller house. So I'm going to sell this house. And so suddenly I'm being taxed just for being myself. I've got some stocks and shares. I've got some stocks and shares. My car is broken down. I need a new car. So I'm going to sell the small amount of savings that I have built up. We're going to tax it. You're taxing me for being alive, not for making bad decisions. It's not like cigarette tax or alcohol tax Where you might say, well, it's a sin tax This is just, I have to do certain things Because I'm a part of society And the government says, well, while you're doing that I'd like to have 45 % of it Well, also you're taxing the people Not only the ones that are taking the risk In order to build something That they then hope will lead to investment coming in And also more jobs I mean, that's ultimately the aim of any businessman or woman I know they're castigated by the left but they want to be successful so that they can grow their businesses so they can employ more people.

43:27And if they're not awfully Machiavellian, which most of them aren't, the more successful they are, the more they can increase wages and all the rest of it. That's how it works because they don't depend on a sort of state handout and they don't depend on a left-wing government constantly giving them pay rises in the public sector. They can't, so they have to be successful. When you're talking about penalising millionaires, billionaires, business owners, people who might have high CGT bills, what you're doing is you're disincentivising risk-taking. And if you disincentivise risk-taking, then there is no entrepreneurialism.

43:59And if there is no entrepreneurialism, there is no growth. No. And finally, there is something really, I think, quite disgusting about Labour making this pledge in its manifesto of we won't hit the big three taxes, the main headline taxes. We'll keep those. We won't rise those. And Labour probably keeping that promise while getting around it with a thousand stealth taxes instead. So dishonest. It's why people hate politicians. Yes. Because we all know you're being loyally. It's very Keir Starmer. We could all see what you're doing, but you will face us at the next election and you will look us in the eye and say, I didn't raise income tax.

44:41No, but you completely destroyed the business environment in this country. Yes. And you drove thousands of middle class people overseas. Well, they're also still trying to insist that they haven't increased national insurance. Well, they have because they increased the contributions for employers. That was another little, oh, technically we haven't, but actually we have. Why are they lying to us? Just lying to our faces, Tim. It's an insult. We shall put this to some of the Labour ministers and MPs we meet. Ask Bridget that. I will. Why are you lying to me? I like Bridget. I watched her interview on Sunday.

45:15and I kind of quite like Bridget. Well, somebody wrote in and said, I don't like, somebody wrote in, a listener stroke viewer wrote in at the weekend and said, I don't like the way that you're being affectionate to Bridget Phillipson because she's a vindictive class warrior. And I had to point out when I call her my bridge, our bridge, I'm doing it ironically. This is, I am not on this woman's Christmas card list, folks. Yeah. We have a grudging respect for each other because at least she wants to come on the Daily Tea, on GB News and make the arguments. But let's be honest, we do not agree on anything except perhaps the joy of hockey.

45:47Also, Bridget was, and I also feel sorry for her because she was education and equalities, but they took the education away from her and left her with just equalities, which in Westminster is the equivalent of asking someone to make the teas. Yeah, it's like taking the chocolate off the digestive. Right, Tim, glad to be back with you all week. We'll be here all week, folks, 5pm.

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