Can Britain’s Politics Cope: David Dimbleby Thinks Not

0:00Small businesses are the pulse of every community. They bring people together, create opportunities, and drive growth. Chase for Business helps business owners like you with personalized guidance and convenient digital tools all in one place. With that guidance and your determination, you can take your business farther and help build a brighter future for your community. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026, JPMorgan Chase and Company.

0:37When you're running a business, the best days are the ones where priorities stay on track. For midsize and large companies, risk can affect multiple parts of the organization at once, from property and liability to cyber and regulatory challenges. At that level, managing risk becomes an ongoing discipline. At the Hartford, the focus is on helping businesses manage risk before it turns into something more disruptive. And when losses do happen, that work is paired with insurance coverage shaped by years of underwriting, risk engineering, and claims experience. Learn more at thehartford.com slash risk mitigation.

1:12Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut. From coast to coast, unlock adventure at Red Lion Hotels by Sinesta, where restful sleep, friendly service, and trusted local knowledge are part of every stay. Red Lion makes it easy to feel welcomed, comfortable, and connected wherever the road takes you. Whether you're traveling for business or pleasure, you can spend less and make more of every trip. When you sign up for Sinesta Travel Pass, you'll get their best rates instantly. Go to Sinesta.com to book your stay and unlock the best rates with Sinesta Travel Pass.

1:46Here today, roam tomorrow. Join now at Sinesta.com. Terms and conditions apply.

1:54Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. We're in a dire state. You can explain how awful things are and say we'll do our best, but you have to have a degree of charisma to do it. And one thing our present Prime Minister does not have is charisma. David Dimbleby, who anchored 10 general elections on the febrile atmosphere in UK politics. Would you say to the Labour Party, don't change your Prime Minister? No, absolutely not. I'd say change him. I think you've got a dud there. A nice man and no doubt very intelligent man, but a man so overcautious, seen publicly as somebody who decides something and then once he gets a bit of opposition, turns back.

2:42From Bloomberg Weekend, this is The Michelle Hussain Show. I'm Michelle Hussain.

2:52As we go into this episode, I want to say that if you're from the UK, then David Dimbleby is not going to need an introduction. You'll know him, or at least you'd recognise him. He was, for decades, the face of election programmes on the BBC, the person who said which party had won, who announced on air in the middle of the night in June 2016, nearly 10 years ago, that the UK had voted to leave the European Union. He has seen prime ministers from Thatcher to Blair and many more since come into power and then leave it. Which is why I thought of him in relation to the unrest in the governing Labour Party right now.

3:38The possibility that Keir Starmer, who won a landslide election victory just two years ago, could soon be unseated by one of his own. I wanted David Dimbleby to put that in a wider context, to analyse what's happening in the UK, to look at its leaders, Starmer, of course, but also Andy Burnham, his most prominent potential challenger, and Nigel Farage of the Reform UK Party, who, you might remember, has been on this show. And David Dimbleby was also the face of royal coverage on the BBC. So this includes his reflections going right back to Diana's funeral in 1997 and to the King and Prince William today.

4:27So with that, on to the conversation. This is what happened when he settled into his chair in the studio. Oh, thank you for tempting me in. You only got me here by grotesque flattery. I like to think of it as persuasion, but you're someone who's observed... Are you beginning now? I am, we're already recording. How long are we going to talk for? I think we'll talk for 40 minutes. Jesus, yes, okay. It'll go by quickly, I promise. That's what they say. That's just flattery to you. You might even enjoy it, you know. No. So we'll revisit that question at the end. So with the level of instability that the UK is seeing at the moment, this prospect that we might have a seventh prime minister in a decade, as an observer of the political landscape for so many years, I just want to know what you make of that and why you think it's happening.

5:25Well, the churn in prime ministers has really been Tory, hasn't it? Cameron, May, Johnson, Trust, for God's sake. And then soon I could barely have a chance and then there was a general election. So it's the Tories who've been doing the churning, not Labour. I do remember there was a famous thing Harold Wilson always said, which was the way to lead the Labour Party when they're in government is to keep driving so hard that everybody's clinging on for dear life, not to fall off the Labour wagon. The moment you sort of show any signs of deferring things, changing your mind, then everybody starts fighting for their idea of what the Labour Party should be.

6:08So you need a prime minister who can drive it. And that's the key thing. And then that brings back confidence to the Labour Party or fear that they'll be kicked out if they're not in accord with it. But the fact that it is happening now to a UK prime minister being questioned and more than questioned from within his own party, doesn't that show that there is something wider afoot than these two dominant parties, that there's something about our political firmament or the appetite of our public that seems to engender this? Well, there's certainly an electoral system, and I don't want to go into constitutional things, that absolutely doesn't reflect opinion in the country.

6:52And so a lot of people feel that they vote in a general election and it doesn't get represented. I mean, if you look at the last general election, reform got, I think, more votes than the Liberal Democrats. They got a tiny number of seats. The proportions people get doesn't reflect the balance of opinion. So if you go into the voting booth and you vote and millions of people vote and then you don't get any seats in the House of Commons, you feel unrepresented. And I think that does cause huge frustration. I mean, it's crazy to argue for, you know, a change in our constitution. I don't think that's going to happen.

7:28It's a long process. But it's, I mean, our constitution is very suited to aristocratic government in the 18th and 19th centuries. I mean, the public having views? I mean, people below a certain freehold value of house having views? No, it wasn't contrived for that. It was simply for a simple, virtually a dichotomy. And even then, during the 18th and 19th centuries, we churned prime ministers. So there's nothing much new in the churning that went on with Liz Truss. I mean, she was obviously a disastrous choice and it didn't work out. But it's, I think, much more important is that how do you get, and this is where reform comes in and I suspect some of the vote for the Greens come in.

8:10If people don't feel that they are getting represented, if you have a swathe of people voting reform who got more votes, for instance, in the last general election than the Liberal Democrats, but only got four seats to the Liberal Democrats, 40 or 50, whatever it was, then people, you know, facing issues about their income going down and the NHS not serving them well and everything. But I voted and nothing actually happens. And if you take, I mean, you have to be careful with voting, but you have to take sort of accumulation of individual votes. I mean, the sophologists always treat it as a great swathes of opinion.

8:54But if you go into the minds of just a single voter, in Makerfield, for instance, where there's going to be this by-election. The one that may bring the likely next prime minister to parliament. Yes, though Reform won 50 % of the vote there in the local elections in that area. So nobody knows quite what will happen. But I mean, if you took that and just examined what individual voters thought and then asked them whether they felt they were represented, that's why they're voting for Reform because they don't feel, what is that word, heard? They don't feel heard. But we're off track on the churning of prime ministers because I think that's much more to do with warfare within political parties.

9:36Yes, but I remember the time, and I'm sure you remember as well, where in the British political establishment, more widely the public, you'd look at the many prime ministers somewhere like Italy and you'd feel quite superior about it, that that was not the kind of thing that happened in the UK. Do you think that we are heading for a multi-party system That will mean the only way to govern will be to be in coalitions. And that will need a different mindset. Certainly on the present form of reform. I mean, if the local election results were at a general election, and of course there are all sorts of caveats you have to put in about, well, would they have been exactly the same?

10:21If it had been reformed, wouldn't have a working majority in the House of Commons. So, of course, there would have to be, yes. And, I mean, it's easy, you know, I mean, it's easy to mock countries like Italy where it was all chaotic and now seems to be rather stable. I mean, these things come and go. We were the sick man of Europe, remember, way back. I mean, in my lifetime, not in yours. We were the sick man of Europe because our growth was low. We had winter of discontent. We had strikes everywhere. The country ground to a halt. we had a three-day week. I mean, we've been through s*** before, you know, and we're going through s*** again now.

11:01So is your... Are you baffled? I'm not saying I'm an optimist. I'm not saying I'm optimistic. I'm wondering if you're saying, should one be steady at the moment then? And would you say to the Labour Party, don't change your Prime Minister? No, absolutely not. I'd say change him. I think you've got a dud there. I mean, a nice man and no doubt very intelligent man, but a man so overcautious and so seen publicly, I don't know what he means privately, but seen publicly as somebody who decides something and then once he gets a bit of opposition, turns back. Unlike Thatcher, unlike Blair, who are kind of bold statement politicians.

11:40In times of crisis, you need that. And at the moment, the Labour Party is in complete disarray about what it really wants. So if it is Andy Burnham who comes to Parliament and then is in a position to challenge the Prime Minister, do you think he would be different in substance or is it the case that he'd be a better communicator and that is crucial in our age? I think he'd be a far better communicator. I don't know what his views are. I mean, I've had him on programmes often and have never quite been able to work out what he stands for to tell the truth. I think it comes and goes a bit. I mean, you know, we've now got this thing that he wants to go back into the EU.

12:22Oh, no, I don't actually. No, I don't want to go back into the EU. No, that's way. Well, obviously he has to say that because if he goes, I mean, he's not going to win the Labour Party over. He's not going to win the country over if he says it's time to go back into the EU. Well, he's probably not going to win election in that particular area. Yeah. And in that area, I mean, which was a reform area. So how would he be different? I think he has on his side the kind of political patina of energy, youth, enthusiasm, and the so-called success of Manchester, which is, compared to the UK as a whole, tiny microcosm, but nevertheless generally seen to be successful, that they brought in, they got industry to come to Manchester.

13:06Manchester was revived under Burnham's mayoralty. And we keep on being told he was very good with the buses. So, you know, those sound small things, but they show a kind of willingness to change. So I don't, I mean, who knows? Andy Burnham's people have told Bloomberg that he would not change the current fiscal rules, which essentially limit borrowing, which leads to the question of how differently he may or may not govern. Would he be a better communicator but a prime minister with a similar policy agenda? Which leads me to wonder, is there something more fundamental to do with the country underway?

13:46And you've seen, you know, different governments over a long period of time in that are we as a country in favor of we want good public services but we don't really want to pay the levels of taxation that make them possible? Well, we're pretty well taxed, aren't we? We're fairly highly taxed. We're up with the European averages. I think we're in a position of stagnation on government borrowing, on taxation, and on GDP growth. I mean, there's been, since Brexit, what is it, fall on prospective growth of 8%. So people are genuinely feeling hard pressed, hard done by. They're not able to take their holidays.

14:34Money doesn't go around as well as it did. And that's really oppressive because it's a trap. Because the theory of successful social democracy is amelioration all the time. That's the point of it. A society goes richer because of the energy, inventiveness, enthusiasm, and commitment that it has to its own prosperity. So it produces better educated people. It produces more intelligent solutions to problems. And we've had, of course, the problem going from a heavily industrialized society to a service industry society, which is difficult. But this position of falling back, so you get these terrible stories of, you know, young people unemployed in perpetuity and then coming forward with supposed mental health problems and then being put on drugs and all that.

15:29we're in a dire state. I'm not pretending we're not in a dire state. I think we are in that sense as a society. Economically or socially? I think you mean. Economically as well. And what is the impact of that on the social fabric? I don't know. They don't riot. Well, they do riot, actually, as we saw this week. I mean, the two massive demonstrations in London, which mercifully didn't end up in a thousand deaths. And I think people who vote reform, I don't know quite what they're after, but it's certainly, I think, probably above all greater prosperity. I mean, that's the one thing people go for.

16:04It may get disguised as controlling immigration. You know, it may get disguised as cutting taxation or something, but it's actually GDP growth so that people feel, each generation feels that they're doing better and not that they're slipping back. And that's the key to good government. And I mean, God knows how at the moment that can be done because we're, you know, up to our eyes. The IMF says we can't go any further on our debt, on our guilt yields and all that. We can't change that. You can't effectively reduce taxation. You can't effectively, I don't know, I don't know what you do. Are you worried?

16:43But what I do know you do is you have to kind of recognize those are the problems and talk about them. And you need the leaders who are fit for the moment. Yes. I mean, maybe I put too much on leadership, but I do think that acknowledging, you know, you can't just be mealy-mouthed and say things are going to get better and then actually do nothing very much. If you want to, you can explain how awful things are and say we'll do our best. But you have to have a degree of charisma to do it. And one thing our present prime minister does not have is charisma. I mean, he mutters. He mutters. I mean look at Trump Trump's a good example Trump traded on exactly the same disaffection in the middle of America that has led to the rise of reform that is to say lower middle class, put it that way and working people who just feel they're slipping backwards and that's why Trump was so enthusiastically endorsed That's why he may be in trouble in the midterms if the economy doesn't pick up.

17:48And that's a strong, real political instinct. I mean, people in Wall Street or the city can sort of sneer at it, and those are the left behinds, but they're the voters. It's a democracy, and they're the ones who have to be constantly nurtured and looked after if democracy is to work, if to succeed. Are you worried about what the future holds for the country? yes yes but i've always been i've always been worried i was worried when we had the three-day week i was worried when the offshoot of the iraq war i'm worried about the iran war of course i'm worried about the future in that sense but if you mean am i worried about whether our politics can cope with the crisis we're in uh yes i am because i think in some ways it's unfitted to cope for the reasons that I was explaining.

18:41What do you think about the prospect of Nigel Farage being the next Prime Minister?

18:49Well, I don't think, can I say this? I don't know. I'm not sure he's temperamentally suited to the job. And I haven't yet seen any signs around him of people of calibre to act as Chancellor the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, until we see them and how competent they are. At the moment, it's a bit of a sort of mix and match leftovers, it seems to me. I don't yet feel that Farage is presenting other than himself and some bold ideas which may or may not be acceptable or doable. I don't think he's presenting himself as a government yet, but he's got three years to go. We know that they've got a big policy on mass deportations.

19:42That's what they have promised if they come to government. And that does mean that, given they want to abolish the indefinite leave-to-remain status, where people can be here without being British citizens if they've fulfilled the requirements, I mean, the prospect of policies like that, Instinctively, how do you respond to them? What do you think they would mean for the Britain we know? I think instinctively that they would be totally disastrous because I think that the ramifications would go well beyond the few who may be here because they've cheated about their circumstances or, you know, have got indefinitely to remain improperly.

20:23But overall, I think it would have a terrible effect on communities that for 20, 30, 40 years have lived side by side, I think it would be devastating. But I also don't think it would be doable. ICE in Britain? I sort of don't think so. I mean, I... Well, I've asked Nigel Farage this question because he's been on this podcast. Yes, has he? And he said we'd do it in our way. That ICE is not the comparison because, you know, ICE are armed and obviously they exist in the United States and have done for a long time before Donald Trump. But he was very clear that a reformed government would do it in their own way.

21:07And what did he mean by that? I think he means that they would actually deport people in high numbers in a way that he would say previous governments haven't had the bottle to do. Well, good question. We didn't get that far. Well, they would leave the ECHR. I know, but you look at the process for that. leave the ECHR, they've got to change the law, they've got to get the judges out of their hair. And then how many people are they going to deport? I mean, a million, half a million, I don't know what the plan is. But he's made other things happen, as like leaving the EU, as you witnessed over many years when he came on Question Time, the program that you presented for so long.

21:50Do you think that that exposure on television helped him become the national public figure that he now is, that people knew him because they saw him on television, they liked the way he came across. And, you know, the program that you fronted was part of giving him that kind of national status. Mea culpa. Not you personally. I tell you what. Donald Trump benefited from being recognized on TV. Boris Johnson did as well. It brings us to the whole business of social media and the way people communicate nowadays. I'm in two minds about under BBC rules once he'd become a UKIP representative in the European Parliament he had a right, the party had a right I can't remember how many times two or three times a year out of 26 programmes but then the question always was well who do we put on and they were all such drongos apart from Farage he was the only articulate one I mean we did try one or two others but they were so boring and so confused and maybe in the interest of democracy we should have put them on as boring and confused, but we wanted a good argument about what reformers are doing.

22:58And so Farage, and this is the problem actually with reform now, that he is the only voice, really, the reason you were talking to him. He is the only voice, and I think that's a kind of Achilles' heel for him. Yeah, they're definitely now trying to build up others. Yes, but he's not very good at the relationships, you see. He calls out with people quite easily. He's quite thin-skinned, in a funny way. If you're going to lead a new party, you've got to be quite broad-shouldered about who you bring in. I'm conscious that we're now 10 years on from the EU referendum, and you were the voice who said that night on the airwaves, we're out, the people have voted to leave the EU.

23:38But you had also, in 1975, anchored the results coverage of the... We've left Farage now, have we? Well, I mean, his big cause was before this, before the country as a whole was the EU. And it just made me think with this 10-year anniversary. You've been a witness to many big political moments anchoring all those general elections and the voice of the referendum in 2016 when the results came. And you played a similar role back in 1975 when the UK voted to stay in the European economic community as it was then. How do you reflect on seeing that total expanse of time and two different decisions by the British public?

24:18Why did they vote for and then vote against? Or how did it feel both of those nights to you, having seen that entire trajectory? The first one was virtually a foregone conclusion, really. Wilson had been away. I mean, unlike Cameron, who you remember came back before his referendum, which I think actually think was a disastrous mistake to call it because it became something quite different. But he came back from Brussels with one or two minor concessions that had been offered, which were no help. But Wilson came back and Wilson was a wily prime minister. And he came back and said, oh, we've got this and we've got that.

24:59and people just voted for it because it seemed then to be the way to go, not least because the French had been trying to keep us out. So it was to, you know, de Gaulle had vetoed us going in. So we thought, well, there must be something good here because he doesn't want us in, so let's get in. I mean, that was a much easier course. And I think what happened in the years since was that it was an easy target. Everything could be blamed by the conservatives and by the left of the Labour Party on being in the EU, loss of control, particular issues like fisheries and all that. And so it built up a momentum.

25:36And when, in my view, very inadvisably, Cameron decided to call a referendum because he thought he'd win it and then went to Europe and got absolutely no change at all, he was asking for trouble. And the facts are, I mean, it may be, okay, that people who voted Brexit may say in 50 years' time it'll show it was a good thing, Britain will. But we've had 10 years of it now and it has shown us no advantage at all that I can see and hasn't had any effect on immigration numbers except we no longer have people from the EU coming easily and students coming in. We have no particular advantage. And 10 years has passed, a decade.

26:18And I'm not surprised, actually, that people are very restless. If a future prime minister wants to take us back into the EU or even the single market, do you think there should be another public vote? Absolutely. So that's the only way to undo Brexit, to actually have another public vote? I think it'd have to be, yes. But I think having had the 52-48, which we now know, incidentally, if there were a vote, would be reversed pretty well. As opinion stands at the moment. Yes, as opinion stands. But that's quite interesting because there's not been a case being made for going back in, just a lot of regretful noises.

26:52But yes, I think there should certainly be, but it won't be in my lifetime. Well, I hope I may live long enough to see.