Is Labour calling Nigel Farage racist?

0:01This is a Global Player Original Podcast.

0:30That is Rachel Reeves in her keynote speech, defining herself by what Labour is not. They are not reform and they are finally taking aim at the insurgent Nigel Farage. Over the last 24 hours, we have seen a gear shift in how Labour are talking about their opponents. They know who they're against, but do we know who they're for? Welcome to the News Agents.

1:02The News Agents. It's John. It's Lewis. And we are in Liverpool, on the banks of the Mersey, at the Labour Party conference. And if it's Monday lunchtime, the Chancellor of the Exchequer must have just spoken. And she has. And we've seen the low point for Rachel Reeves when she was in tears in the House of Commons. And the economic outlook doesn't seem to be getting much better. But she was trying to paint a sort of optimistic picture about the future, whilst at the same time saying, God, there are some bloody difficult decisions ahead. This is a conference, this is a party which has come to Liverpool, I think desperate for some answers about where the party's been and where the party's going.

1:44Looking for definition, political definition, from both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and just a sense of diagnosis as to how it can be that this is a party which is only 15 months into government. And yet somehow, John, I don't know what you think about this, it almost feels when you're talking to people, when you're talking to MPs, when you're talking to ministers, to spads and so on, it almost feels as if they're in a sort of year nine or year ten of a government and almost as if they've got an election which is sort of six months away on the horizon in the near future that they feel like they're definitely going to lose as opposed to still being a pretty freshly minted government with three and a half, four years of the mandate still to run.

2:25That is, to me, the sort of conundrum of this conference. And I think it's actually basically the question that so many people who have come, the delegates and the MPs, are basically all running through their minds and are looking for a sense of answer to, solution to, from Rachel Reeves and from Keir Starmer. So Reeves' attempt to do that today. And look, I thought there was some great stuff in his speech. I thought the attack section that we heard at the top there on reform was powerful. I think there were some great sort of Labour things in the speech. I can already see some sort of rather pointed sort of commentary online taking the piss out of making fun of the thing about school libraries and the fact that Rachel Reeves was saying there are 1 ,400 schools without a school library in the country.

3:05No, that's the sort of thing that not just tickles Labour Party's belly, but it's what the Labour Party is about. It's about spreading opportunity and helping poor kids with the next start in life. But in terms of the answer to that question I've just talked about, I actually think what Reeves said was pretty muddled. Well, I think that the definition that you spoke about was the failure of Labour's preparation for government. What was the mission of this Labour government other than to replace the Conservatives after 14 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she spoke an awful lot about the Tories because, actually, she still wants to be able to blame the Conservatives at the next budget for some of the fiscal decisions that she's going to have to take.

3:44And so it was very important to keep the Conservatives in the crosshairs, even though you've been in government for the last 15 months. I think two things have possibly helped Labour with the answer to the definition. Now, it's not a satisfactory answer in terms of what is our grand vision for Britain. But I think that Andy Burnham going hard, going early, setting out his thought so clearly, has kind of focused minds. And I thought that, you know, she takes aim at Andy Burnham in the speech. And it's just worth listening to this particular clip. People who peddle the idea that we could just abandon economic responsibility, cast off any constraints on spending.

4:28They are wrong. Dangerously so. And we need to be honest about what that choice would mean. Because when spending gets out of control, when market confidence is lost, that doesn't just show up in some OBR reports and some difficult headlines a few months later. It is felt immediately in the growing cost of essentials and rising interest rates. And let me tell you, there is nothing progressive, nothing labour, about government using one in every£10 of public money it spends on financing debt to interest. Billions of pounds every single year going towards repaying debt debt racked up by the Tories paid to overseas hedge funds and investors that's not how I want to spend public money so that was her having a go at Andy Burnham and you you know talk to any one of the people around Keir Starmer and they think that Andy Burnham has given them an opportunity and have given them a chance to define themselves and I think the other thing which again goes back to reform is where Farage stood on indefinite leave to remain and saying right even if you've been in this country for years even if your partner your husband or wife is here legally we're going to boot them out I think that has given Labour at last something to define themselves against reform by and I think that's important because I think that frankly we've spoken about it on the podcast you know where is the kind of standing up and saying this is not acceptable and I thought that you know with Keir Starmer's interview yesterday about racism we got some of that.

6:14Well I mean I think there was a lot of nervousness about what Starmer said in terms of from some talking about racism and saying that Nigel Farage's policy was racist partly because it cuts against all the thrust of where Labour has been up to now which is basically to actually essentially say we agree with Nigel Farage about quite a lot of the problems but we basically think that he's incompetent or his numbers don't add up. We talked about on the podcast on Monday when when Farage announced that policy, what was the Rachel Reeves response? It was basically, well, the numbers don't work, which sort of implied that if the numbers did work, it would be a good idea.

6:47Fast forward to Saturday, and Keir Starmer is saying, this is a racist thing, it's a moral problem. You've already seen a shift from just kind of managerialism to values in the space of the week. Now, that might well be a good thing, and I think if it were sustained, it would be a good thing, but I think it does tell you something about how quickly Labour's strategy is shifting and sort of darting around, that that would be the case. It also, you could say, it's a sort of difficult thing to thread to some extent, when at the same time you've got Shabana Bikmood, the Home Secretary, who's speaking later on this afternoon, basically at the same time announcing Labour's own crackdown on indefinite leave to Romain.

7:24All of that said, I think one thing is notable, and I think it does vindicate exactly what we've been saying for a long time, which is about Labour needing to get on the front foot, be gutsier, be more values-based. Today is the first time I can remember for quite a long time that the news agenda is being dominated by something that Keir Starmer has said or Labour has said about farage and reform rather than the other way around. So even though it is high risk, it does tell you something about the value in this difficult news environment for Labour, about being gutsy, about being on the front foot.

7:56And to be honest, saying what they believe, because that is, I'm sure if you actually like, you know, drilled Starman down to his core and a lot of the cabinet ministers around, they would say that they would think that what Farage said on indefinite leave to remain is unfair, immoral and racist. That's probably what they think. And sometimes in politics, when all the House is in doubt, just say what you really think. So I had breakfast this morning with a couple of people, very senior, in Downing Street. And one said, look, it was never part of the script that we would say that Nigel Farage is racist.

8:27We want Keir Starmer to be less scripted. That's what people say. Exactly. And so they live with it. And so the upside is, exactly as you've just described, we now know where he stands. It will appeal to a certain type of people. But the danger is, and it's seen in the Daily Mail today, that the Daily Mail portrays it as Starmer thinks you are a racist if you vote reform. And of course, that's not, of course, what Keir Starmer meant or was saying. And I think you can make the argument that, you know, people vote for reform for all sorts of reasons, but indefinitely to remain argument of Farage, which will affect non-Europeans, because Europeans can stay in Britain, but non-Europeans could be subject to being thrown out of the country even though they came here legally.

9:15You know what's weird about this debate, John? And again, it's such a sort of weird SW1 thing now or sort of the way our media works. It almost feels like in Britain we've got to the point where accusing someone of racism or being racist, in your view, is worse than actually being racist or having a racist view or suggesting a racist policy. That's the kind of weird witch hunt that we're in. I'm not saying for that, it's not for me to say whether this policy is racist or fraud is racist or whatever it happens to be. But that's the kind of like weird jaundice place that we've got into. We saw that even with the Tommy Robinson stuff, or we saw it with the sort of, you know, Unite the Kingdom march and everything like that.

9:48Everything becomes a discussion, a kind of meta discussion about whether or not it's OK to call someone racist rather than actually engaging with the reality and the truth as to whether someone is being racist or is a racist or has a history of racism or not. It's just bizarre. Yeah, but I think that that is a sign of how much our politics has changed. It seemed to be unthinkable that this is three, four years ago, that this debate would be kind of taken so seriously, or, frankly, the threat of reform. But I think that, you know, Labour have not had an argument against reform. They've had it. There's one other thing I want to raise, which is, you know, the budget, which is the government's next huge test coming up.

10:29And the phrase that Starmer kept on using in his interview with Laura Kunzberg yesterday on the BBC, which is, the manifesto stands. Well, will you raise taxes? The manifesto stands. Well, why don't you just repeat the lines? And I'm not sure. This is the question about whether they will increase VAT or national insurance or income tax. Yeah, and I just don't understand where they are on this, because if that is the policy, that they're not going to raise VAT, income tax and national insurance, then just say so. And Rachel Reeves has sort of said that today. So what was Keir Starmer doing yesterday?

11:05And I'm surprised there hasn't been more attention focused on this, because it will be a huge decision if Labour say, right, we're going to break our manifesto and we're going to raise VAT. Yeah, and they definitely need a very compelling story and account as to why that would be the case. And so far as we know, one thing about this government has been that they have not been compelling story makers. They kind of burn through stories. They burn through narrative. And I think you're right. There's this very peculiar language that has been adopted about saying that, you know, because Rachel Reeves have been repeatedly asked, and Starmer, particularly focus on that and whether that might go up.

11:38Because that is a very easy way of increasing revenue. It happens kind of immediately. you can do it, it's almost impossible to avoid etc. So it does raise could potentially raise a lot of revenue to help Rachel Reeves get out of the so-called black hole that she may be in as a result of the OBR the Office for Budget Responsibility changes to growth forecasts and productivity forecasts which we know are coming but it is a very peculiar thing to say well basically my promise stands, which basically means my promise stands right up until the moment that I break it which is just a kind of very political which is as you say it is getting more attention because it is a very particular form of work.

12:13But I think they need to be making the political argument. They need to do it now if they're going to do it. Exactly, exactly. And that's what I thought about Reeve's speech. So what I thought about Reeve's speech, and I know you and I slightly disagree about it because we were in the hall and we were talking about it afterwards. What I think about Reeve's speech is there were some good bits in it, and actually she can be quite an effective platform orator. She's usually quite a terrible interviewee, but she's quite a good platform orator. But summed up to me, the muddle the party is in in a lot of ways right now because she burned through themes.

12:38She burned through ideas. I mean, I just noted some of them down. So, you know, just in the same speech, basically, obviously she was slamming reform. She was talking about our patriotic missions. She was talking about having faith in what is to come. She was talking about our patriotic cause. The slogan was renew Britain, unlocking opportunity. And then this particular bit, which I think really sums up the confusion. She said year one of our government was about fixing the foundations. And year two was about building something better. Now, the thing is, she, in the next breath, started talking about the fact she's going to have to take tough decisions when it comes to the budget come November.

13:13Well, hang on a minute. If year one was about fixing the foundations, then why are we still having to make tough decisions? You know, if the builder comes along and says, I fixed the foundations of your house, and then in year two, the house starts slipping again, you'll turn around and go, well, you didn't really fix the foundations, did you? So I think one of Raiv's problems right now is that she does not have a compelling account to the party or the country as to why it is that she is continuing to have to take these difficult decisions that she is having to make. And part of the reason for that, we can talk about some others, part of the reason for that is because she herself has imposed the fiscal conditions on which she now operates because of her commitments on tax, and partly as well because the growth that she promised has not been forthcoming.

13:59But if you look at why the welfare reform measures failed, and that rebellion kind of absolutely scuppered the plans of Rachel Reeves, which adds to the sense of the fiscal black hole, was that no political argument was made. It was an accounting exercise that we need to raise X billion pounds because of having to spend more on defence, and therefore, right, personal independence payments will be in the firing line. And you think there should have been weeks and weeks of preparation of preparing the parliamentary Labour Party, of preparing the unions and kind of key stakeholders of the civil society, that this is what you were going to do.

14:33And they didn't do it. And Labour MP said, hang on, no, we're not having it. If you are going to break a manifesto commitment and the consequences that go with that of such a headline manifesto commitment, then I think you need to be making that argument pretty clearly now and preparing everybody for it and to say why and what the advantages will be at the end of it. In a way, one of the most compelling bits, or the most notable bits is, as you've already said, John, where she basically talks about the importance of fiscal responsibility and the idea that there is nothing Labour, there's nothing social democratic, there's nothing progressive about spending£1 in every£10 on debt interest payments.

15:10There's nothing Labour or doesn't promote social justice to lose control of spending and then end up like, you know, basically the bond markets coming after you and so on, which, as you say, was partly aimed at Andy Burnham. It reminded me a little bit, remember this, in the late 1970s that Jim Callaghan makes a speech when he becomes prime minister, where he basically says, he basically says, that the old model of Keynesianism, where you basically spend your way out of a recession, he tells Labour that option, insofar as it ever exists, no longer does, right? So, and people say, you know, Thatcher was the one who sort of came up with that.

15:42Actually, it was Jim Callaghan in the late 1970s who kind of brought about the end of that old order. That's sort of fine. But I don't think the Labour Party is in any mood to hear it. I don't think the Labour Party, we saw this over the welfare bill. We saw it over the proposed welfare changes. We're seeing it over the two-child benefit cap. If it's the case, if it's the case, right, that Rachel Reeves is basically anchoring her entire reputation and her politics around saying, look, I would love to spend more, but we can't, the truth is that on all sorts of different areas, they have given in repeatedly, whether it's on welfare, whether it's on pensioner payments, and all of these different sort of things.

16:20And I don't think that the parliamentary Labour Party, or the country right now really wants to hear that message around fiscal discipline. I think we're looking ahead to the contours of the autumn to come, the political autumn to come. I think that is basically the defining kind of fissure in our politics right now. It's the fact that Reeves, because she feels that she has to and because the markets are telling her that she has to, is basically being forced into a series of spending decisions and the Labour Party, most Labour MPs, aren't convinced about it and don't want to hear it. So this is where I kind of agree with you and disagree with you.

16:53Where I disagree with you is I think that what she did that was successful in the speech, or the argument that she made was, yeah, there are bloody tough times ahead, but look at the progress we're already making. I mean, for a Labour Party audience, which is, you know, partly who she was talking to, and, you know, addressing them, I thought that the value stuff and the morality stuff and what they're already doing to help people with school meals and, you know, pay for nurses and all those things that are kind of the press button issues that kind of Labour activists love. I thought she was moderately successful in marshalling that argument, but also at the same time as saying, yeah, very tough decisions.

17:31And no, we're not going to be able to just loosen the purse strings massively in the coming period. Now, I think that governing right now in a social democratic country in Europe is bloody difficult. And I was with a former senior Treasury civil servant last week who was there when the Tories were in power and was saying it was just almost criminal, the legacy that she was left by the last Conservative government and the fiscal black hole. So, I mean, she has had a difficult hand to play. They haven't landed that message. No. In a way that David Cameron and George Osborne very successfully in the post-2010 period basically landed, which lasted for years, landed with the public the idea, largely unfairly, but that the Labour government had spent too much and therefore all the things they were having to do, We don't want to do them, but it's a result of the inheritance that was left behind.

18:17I think there's loads of reasons why that hasn't landed this time. More hostile media environment. The fact the country, I think, is just sick of that kind of hair shirt message. And they were more willing to hear it in 2010 than they were in 2024. And the fact that perhaps Starmer and Reeves are less politically adroit and less good at communicating that stuff. When I think about this conference now and where the Labour Party currently is in its thinking, I think fundamentally one of the problems or the biggest problem of all in which they find themselves is that basically they were lazy, intellectually lazy, in their run-up to the general election, you've already referred to this, in the sense that their diagnosis, what was their diagnosis, both publicly and, to be honest, largely privately, about what was wrong with the country?

18:57It was that the Tories were shit. It was that the Tory party were feckless, useless, disputatious, riven with internal splits. And you may well think that all of those things were true, but certainly not solely the root structural causes of British decline. And the truth is, although Keir Starmer going into the election was quite big on diagnosis in the sense of saying, right, Britain has got a massive, massive sort of set of problems, they did not really, seriously, in any kind of intellectual project way, develop a sophisticated analysis beyond the Tories' own incompetence as to the problems that we've got here.

19:34And as a result, now the Tories have gone and things aren't improving or they're not improving rapidly. The growth isn't coming rapidly. All of the things that they hope would happen are not happening. And the politics that they're in, the politics that they're in is so fractious, the Labour Party finds itself almost like it's run down in the road. They can't compute, haven't been able to compute, exactly what to do next, because they didn't do that thinking when they were in opposition. No, it's obvious that the marked difference... If you think of when Blair came into power in 1997, and kind of operational independence for setting of interest rates by the Bank of England, the minimum wage.

20:10There were a whole series of measures that had been planned, prepared, that the Labour government would come in and would hit the ground running. Now, some people might have not liked the policies that people came up with, but, you know, astonishingly popular, the headwinds. But Blair came in in 1997 with the economy really in great shape after the disaster. It was terrible. So the legacy has been terrible, but there wasn't the thinking done about what they were going to do and how they were going to craft their message. I do think, in a way, it's not our fault directly, but it's the media's fault.

20:44I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few days. I think actually Labour would do quite well to actually come out and start attacking it as part of a different media strategy. which is that when you think that one of Labour's problems right now is that they find themselves, and it's partly because they seem to have so few ideas in the governing space and policy space that they talk about very kind of excitedly or in an interesting fashion. It almost feels like there's going to be an election tomorrow or in six months. Whereas, of course, there's not going to be an election for four years.

21:13We in the media, I think we have started the media more generally, and it's partly because there's now such a surfeit of polls, so many more polls than there used to be. Twitter is full of polls and everything. We've become almost American in our media political culture of basically talking about elections, elections, elections all the time, rather than actually governing projects, what the government is doing, the sort of policy issues. In America, it is true. It is true that there's always an election around the corner. So that's what's determined that media political environment. But in Britain, it's not.

21:40We don't actually have this still four years. You think about where we were in the parliamentary cycle, in the equivalent, in the last parliament. Boris Johnson had just won the Hartley Paul by election. He'd won a ton of loads of council seats. He was riding high. He was talking about basically destroying the Labour Party. 18 months later, you know, 12 months later, he's gone. Trust happens. Starmer's coming in. So I do think that part of it, in terms of the malaise, is part of the kind of media culture that we're in. But also, Starmer, I think tomorrow, it's a delicate thing to say because you want to recognise the extent of the whole.

22:09And the Labour Party do fear reform, and I get that. But it's a little bit of like, lads, let's calm down a little bit here. You know, let's keep our heads a little bit here. Let's not get distracted. But it does come back to that same thing. That is an easier message to land when you can say this is the end point. This is the mission. This is where we're going. So let's not get distracted. The reason that this conference is so distracted by the politics right now is because they're so unsure what the Labour Party politically wants to do. So they're getting distracted by the wider politics that is happening around them.

22:41They need to decide what they want to do and then everything else will fall into place. Well, one of the people that Rachel Reeve singled out for praise in her speech was Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, who is, of course, going for the deputy leadership and very much the favoured choice of the leadership as it currently is. We'll be talking to her in just a moment.

23:14news here in Edinburgh. I'm Simon Marks. My American Week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff. Discover how today's story affects your life. Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

23:35The News Agents. While we're joined now live on our stand, News Agents stand by the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who has come straight from the conference hall and just made her speech. Education Secretary, thanks so much for joining us. You had an announcement to make on something the Labour Party has long desired on maintenance grants. Tell us about it. Absolutely. So I announced today that we'll be introducing new target maintenance grants for lower income students in courses that align with our missions and our industrial strategy. We'll set out more details at the budget. But for me, this is an important signal about how we make sure young people get the support that they need.

24:11It's the part of the system that's been missing for a long time in terms of maintenance grants since they were last scrapped by the Conservatives and I'm delighted to be bringing them back. The context of this is George Osborne abolished maintenance grants and the Conservative government introduced loans which has meant that we've been in a slightly invidious position where quite often poorer students, because their parents are less able to support them through higher education, end up becoming more indebted than richer ones. Yeah, so there are still loans, of course, and just last year we increased the loan, but previously there were loans and grants for lower income students those grants were taken away and i've been determined for some time to bring them back because i am worried about the cost of living pressures that lower income students are facing and i want every young person to be able to choose their path and be able to go on to a college or university course that's right and how many how many students will that help because you say is it only for specific courses and presumably an income threshold what is what are the details on it so we set out all the detail at the budget but it'll be paid for by the international students levy that we'll be introducing so a fee that'll be charged to international students and we'll reinvest that into domestic students.