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Podcast Episode Summary: The News Agents - "Is Starmer about to break his biggest promise yet?"
Episode Overview In this episode, the hosts Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, and Lewis Goodall discuss the looming UK budget, Keir Starmer's potential break of manifesto commitments regarding tax, and Donald Trump's future political ambitions.
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Key Themes
- Keir Starmer and Labour's Tax Promises
- Background: Labour's manifesto from the previous election promised not to raise income tax, national insurance, or VAT.
- Current Situation:
- As Labour's poll ratings decline, Starmer's stance on these commitments has become ambiguous.
- Speculation surrounds whether the upcoming budget might see Labour reverse its tax pledges in light of worsening economic forecasts.
- Consequences of a U-Turn:
- Hosts discuss the political fallout if Starmer were to break these promises, comparing it to historical examples like George H. W. Bush's failed no-tax pledge.
- Breaking these commitments could severely damage public trust in politics and the Labour Party's credibility.
- The discussions highlight the difficulty Labour faces in managing expectations and the potential backlash from both left and right voters.
- Economic Context and Pressures on Labour
- Economic Forecasts: The discourse indicates a potential £20 billion shortfall due to downgrades in productivity forecasts.
- Pressure for Tax Increases:
- Discussion around alternative tax measures, including a proposed mansion tax, raises concerns about political repercussions.
- The argument posits that any tax increases introduced now could be framed as Labour's failure and lead to significant political damage.
- The 22nd Amendment and Trump’s Political Future
- Trump’s Comments: While in Asia, Trump speculated about running for a third term, highlighting his strong poll numbers.
- Discussion Points:
- The hosts emphasize the impossibility of Trump running again due to the 22nd Amendment, which prohibits a third presidential term.
- Speculation surrounds Trump’s motivations for discussing a potential run, indicating a desire to remain relevant and influential within the Republican Party.
- Trump’s Legacy and MAGA Movement
- Post-Trump Republican Landscape: Hosts ponder whether the MAGA movement can survive Trump’s potential exit from politics.
- Political Implications: The discussion includes recognition of Trump's unique appeal and the challenges successors may face in maintaining his coalition.
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Key Takeaways
- Labour's Dilemma: Starmer's potential reversal on tax pledges could be politically catastrophic, risking public trust and alienating voters.
- Economic Constraints: The looming budget presents significant challenges for Labour, and the need for strategic thinking becomes increasingly apparent as they navigate fiscal pressures.
- Trump's Relevance: Despite constitutional constraints on his candidacy, Trump's ongoing dialogue about future runs serves to maintain his influence within the Republican Party and the broader political landscape.
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Conclusion This episode of *The News Agents* encapsulates the complex interplay between political promises, economic realities, and individual political brands. As Labour grapples with maintaining credibility while navigating fiscal challenges, Trump's ongoing relevance in American politics continues to stir discussions about future Republican alignments. The host's analysis underscores the importance of strategic political communication in a climate of skepticism and economic uncertainty.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Emily Maitlis:This is a Global Player original podcast. Last year, in its manifesto, Labour promised not to increase income tax, not to increase national insurance and not to increase VAT. Does the Prime Minister still stand by his promises? Well, Mr Speaker, I'm glad that the Leader of the Opposition is now finally talking about the economy. I can update the House, Mr Speaker. Retail sales are higher than expected. inflation is lower than expected growth has been upgraded this year and mr speaker the uk stock market is at an all-time high the budget is on the 26th of november and we will lay out our plans but i can tell the house now that we will build a stronger economy we will cut nhs waiting list and deliver a better future for our country the noticeable thing there kia starmer doesn't answer
0:58Keir Starmer:the question even though before he has been absolutely definitive the manifesto stands.
1:05Lewis Goodall:Are we heading for the mother of all political u-turns in the budget which is to come where Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves go back on everything they said about income tax national insurance and VAT and if they do what does it mean for them what does it mean for us. Welcome to the News Agents.
1:28Lewis Goodall:The News Agents.
1:30Keir Starmer:It's John. It's Lewis. And Keir Starmer was at Prime Minister's Questions today. And the question from Kemi Badenow, I think, was quite predictable that she would go on tax because there have been so many kites flown from the Treasury in the past couple of weeks about what taxes might go up and what the government might do to raise revenue, that it was obvious that the question over the manifesto commitments would be central because the easiest thing to do would be to raise income tax.
1:59Jon Sopel:But as you said, Lewis, it would be the mother of all U-turns and provoke the mother of all rows about, can you believe a single word this government says if it absolutely goes back on its word?
2:13Lewis Goodall:Two pieces of sort of long-term context for this. Number one, this is a long-standing and perhaps the most significant and important manifesto pledge that Labour made. And if you cast your minds back to the general election and the campaign for the general election in May, June, July 2024, it seems like a long time ago. But in many ways, this was a sort of fundamental issue of the campaign. You had Rishi Sunak on the one hand saying that Labour, despite what they were saying, would increase taxes. And Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves insisting and insisting and insisting that they would not do so, or at least they would not increase those three key levers or pull those three key levers of raising more revenue.
2:51Lewis Goodall:that has basically held more or less into the last couple of months where Labour officials and spokespeople and ministers have been sort of contorting themselves into ever more kind of gymnastic positions in basically trying to explain whether or not this manifesto pledge is going to be kept to they've kept using this language which is very unusual which is the manifesto pledges stand as in like what they're standing right now they're in place right now we know they are but will they continue to stand or will they fall in the future? And on that, they have been much more ambiguous. A second bit of context, which is the reason why they're being a little bit more cryptic about these things, is that obviously we've got the, once again, another long run up to the budget, which is at the end, roughly this time, next month.
3:35Lewis Goodall:And basically the forecasts, such as we know what they are, feel like they're getting gloomier and gloomier because the macroeconomic context is getting worse. And indeed, there is this rumoured downgrade on UK productivity growth. That's basically the amount of economic good or output per worker that is produced every single year, the growth of that metric. It looks like the OBR are going to downgrade it. And even quite modest downgrades to those forecasts can produce really massive significant differences into long-term fiscal forecasts. And it is rumoured that the current downgrade, which is going to happen is basically going to mean there's a£20 billion black hole that Rachel Reeves is going to have to fill over and above her current plans.
4:18Lewis Goodall:And therefore, one of the easiest ways, perhaps the only way to fill it, is by changing those top rates of tax.
4:24Keir Starmer:Look, I was talking to a former prime minister, a former conservative prime minister, and that doesn't narrow the field that much because... Well, it does a bit with the number we've had. Well, exactly. So there are so many of them who were saying, look, obviously, I wouldn't start from here. The one thing that is the easiest thing to do and the clearest thing to do is to raise income tax. I mean, this person expressed the preference that really what you need to do is to slash the welfare bill and cut the size of the civil service. But recognise that wasn't going to happen. So what's the easiest thing to do?
4:52Jon Sopel:Raise income tax. But of course, then you are in the territory of George H.W. Bush. Watch my lips. No new taxes. He introduces taxes and he doesn't get a second term as president. And that has always been you cannot have such an explicit manifesto commitment and then walk it back without facing the direst of political consequences. But then if you've got, as you say, Lewis, a 20 billion black hole, you're then left fiddling around the edges with complicated taxes that raise a bit here and a bit there, but they don't quite do the job. So the latest thing we're seeing a lot of speculation about is there's going to be some kind of mansion tax on a one percent tax on a property for every kind of thousand pounds.
5:42Jon Sopel:It's worth over two million pounds, which is often being described as a London tax because so many properties in London, so many houses in London are worth more than that. That raises a whole ton of questions as well. And so you've got all these kind of peripheral taxes that you could raise which will raise a bit the easy bluntest instrument you've got the most effective is raise income tax but with the political consequences that go with that it is tough
6:08Lewis Goodall:and like i say it's rumored that the obr are only going to decrease our productivity forecast by 0.3 percent over the long-term horizon now again that doesn't sound like much at all but that does yield about 20 or 21 billion as i said of savings that have to be made or at least have to be made if Rachel Reeves is going to stick to her fiscal rules, not to borrow more, etc., and to stick with the current spending plans. Nonetheless, as difficult as that might be, and we can talk about whether it is a very good idea to kind of be constantly chasing our tail in this way, basically on the basis of imaginary forecasts long into the distant future.
6:40Lewis Goodall:Nonetheless, I think it would be disastrous for Reeves and Starmer to go back on their manifesto pledges. And the reason that I say that is basically twofold. First of all, John, as you say, getting into that George H. W. Bush territory of having been completely explicit repeatedly about what you are going to do and then to go back on it is politically toxic you don't need to go back to george h w bush just go back to nick clegg and the tuition fees promise that he made not only do i think it would be bad for them i think it would be bad for politics i mean trust in politics at the moment in this country is already on the floor and i think the effect of this would be absolutely caustic because it is something that people readily understand.
7:23Lewis Goodall:It's about their taxes. It's about things they understand like income tax, VAT and national insurance. And to go back on that, however economically necessary it might be right now, would be, I think, toxic for them and toxic for politics. And the reason I think that it would be especially toxic is not so much that I don't even necessarily think. I think there could have been space to argue for tax increases on income tax and VAT and so on to fund public services. And because the Tory inheritance was so bad. You know the time to make that argument? It's not now. It was during the election. Or even, if not during the election, then after the election, when even then there might have been space to say, God, we've looked at the books and it's even worse than we thought it was.
8:03Lewis Goodall:The problem with doing it now is they haven't been making that argument for the last 18 months. And so to suddenly turn around and go, oh, actually, we've discovered that Brexit is worse than we thought. Or we've discovered that the productivity growth forecasts because of Tory failure are going to be even worse than we thought. These are technical, difficult arguments to make that, to be honest, is a little bit fallacious. Well, I think if you increase taxes now, for them politically, I think what it looks like is Labour failure. And I think it will be the easiest argument in the world, not just for the Tories to make, but for Farage to make.
8:33Keir Starmer:OK, so let me put another scenario to you, which is this, that you say, I don't really give much of a damn what the OBR says. I don't care what this forecast is.
8:43Jon Sopel:taking one number and casting it to the future and tying our hands to the amount of money we have to then save in the budget is ridiculous and the OBR doesn't face political accountability no one in the OBR is standing for re-election we're the ones who face the electorate every five years it should be our judgments that determine what our economic policy is and we say screw the OBR now that would be another trust yeah I know it's one of the areas where I think Liz Trust might have a point which is that you talk to any serious economist who says the idea that the OBR is entirely tying your hands to what you as a government can do is so prescriptive when it's a guess economic statistics and economic estimates of what growth is going to be what productivity is going to be they change so dramatically so quickly that tying yourself to one number which is what happens now with the OBR saying right this is our judgment and then the politicians have to
9:45Lewis Goodall:tailor their budget accordingly it's not a great way to do business legacy that he's left the kind of economic infrastructure the architecture of this country there's more and more sympathy to that within the labor movement and labor mps as well by the way the idea of some hostility towards the OBR for exactly the reasons that you outlined John the problem of course is that it does exist now and if Reeves were to turn around and say well I don't much care or I don't agree with what the OBR says. The problem obviously is not so much the political reactions. I think there'll be Labour MPs who would absolutely support that.
10:12Lewis Goodall:The problem obviously is potential market reaction to it. Because as we saw, when Liz Truss decided to circumvents the OBR in her mini-budgets, then the markets, that was one of the reasons the markets responded negatively. And one of the only bits of economic good news that Reeves has received of late is the fact that actually in terms of the cost of UK government debt has been falling. Partly because it seems the markets for now are reasonably sanguine about Rachel Reeves as a Chancellor and actually take her commitment to what they see as fiscal responsibility seriously. So I suppose the argument, the scepticism from the Treasury and from her would be that if she doesn't respond to it, if she just says, well, I don't think this is right, I'm going to ignore it, then you imperil that market position because the OBR is there, whether we like it or not.
10:55Lewis Goodall:Thanks, George Osborne.
10:56Keir Starmer:We put these sort of questions to Rachel Reeves when we interviewed her after the budget this time last year. And this is what she said.
11:03Emily Maitlis:Employee and National Insurance could go up again. Look, I'm not going to tie my hands further than I already have done. But this... Oh, because the others were ruled out. Yes, because those are manifesto commitments, Emily. And unlike previous governments, we're going to stick to our manifesto commitments. So we could see another hike in employment. This is a significant budget. It wipes the slate clean. We're not going to need to do another budget like this again.
11:26Keir Starmer:So there you have her saying we're going to stick to the manifesto commitments. Well, fine. and they're not going to just, you know, rip up the OBR and the role of the OBR in setting the financial targets. So if they've got a£20 billion shortfall, what are they going to do?
11:43Jon Sopel:Where does that money come from? Not easy because they've tried cutting the welfare bill. That failed. That led to a rebellion of epic proportions. And Keir Starmer had to backtrack on that. It's hard to see where you get the money from.
11:55Lewis Goodall:I mean, look, we should say, I mean, one way or the other, there's a bit of a sleight of hand here. and the Tories were as guilty of this and Reeves has been guilty of it as well. Income taxes are going to go up in the budget. Sure. And they have been going up in multiple budgets over many years because what they've been doing is basically they've been freezing the thresholds at which people pay the tax. So more and more people, as a result of fiscal drag, as it's called, find themselves in higher rate tax bans that typically if those bans had gone up with inflation would not have been the case.
12:22Lewis Goodall:That raises huge amounts of money and it's been long speculated that Reeves is going to basically pull off that trick again. So in effect, income tax will go up anyway. Look, it is very difficult. But in a way, John, I think that interview, that clip just there, just shows the problem. And this, to be honest, has been a problem with the Starmer project for a long time and the people at the top of the Starmer projects, including Reeves, which is very often they appear all tactics and no strategy. There was no need to make those pledges in the run up to the general election. That was the original sin.
12:47Lewis Goodall:It was. That was the original sin of this Labour government. I know why they did it. Yeah. And I know there was such pressure and there was the Ming-Val strategy. But let's be honest, they were winning that election anyway. and maybe they would have run it with a slightly smaller majority, but it would have been worth having a smaller majority to maintain the manoeuvrability because then they would have been making an argument from day one. They would say, look, we're not in favour of increasing taxes. We will make sure there's a world where perhaps we might have to increase taxes, but we'll make sure by the end of the Parliament we get them down again and we will prioritise working people.
13:15Lewis Goodall:But because the Tories have been so feckless and so useless and they've screwed everything up, then we're not going to sort of tie our hands. That would have been an argument. It would have been a powerful argument that would have put it back on the Tories. The problem is, as Lyndon Crosby, the great election strategist for the Tories, has said many times, which is off-quoted to point of cliche, but it's true. You can't fatten a pig on market day, i.e. you can't just make an argument out of nowhere and expect it to land. Yes, they're right. Brexit has been catastrophic for our productivity and for our trade.
13:42Lewis Goodall:Yes, they're right that the Tories had a poor economic record and British productivity barely moved during their time in office, which is basically the root cause of so many of our problems now. Not until it's all the Tories fault, but it's clearly on their watch and it was partly their fault. That is all true. But you can't just turn around on budget day and say, look, I know we said that we wouldn't under any circumstances need to come back for new taxes, but we are going to because of those things. Why? Because both of those things were known when they decided to make those pledges in the first place.
14:15So it would have been a more strategic position to basically not make that argument or not to make that pledge.
14:19Lewis Goodall:And honestly, Labour MPs are really against this when you talk to them, precisely for the reason that when they're going on the doorstep now, they are getting such hostility. The idea of this being an extra thing around their neck is going to be absolute poison. Justin Maddison, Labour MP, who until recently was a minister in the government. I asked him about the idea of those headline taxes going up. This is what he said. There is a suggestion, and it's been briefed a lot at the moment, that the Chancellor in her budget may well seek to break the manifesto on which you and your colleagues stood not to break, which you said that you would not increase the headline raise of income tax, VAT and national insurance.
14:58Lewis Goodall:If she did that, do you think that would be a mistake?
15:02Emily Maitlis:Well, look, I've just said that in terms of employment rights, that it's really important that we stick to our manifesto commitments. So I think the same would apply to any fiscal interventions. Clearly, I don't know what the Chancellor's got in mind, but that would make a very difficult conversation. There's not a lot of trust in politics at the moment already, is there? And breaking very clear manifesto commitments is going to not help in terms of repairing that trust.
15:28Lewis Goodall:There you go. You can hear it. Yeah. And it's not so much even about the economics.
15:31Keir Starmer:It's about that question about political trust. And what do they do about this other thing about? I mean, he was talking about employer rights there. And you've got this package coming through in the Resolution Foundation coming out, which is a think tank that is kind of closely allied with this government coming out and saying, you know, if you're going to implement this in full, it's going to be very bad for business and have a very detrimental effect.
15:53Jon Sopel:and again you know so it seems that rachel reeves whichever direction she moves is going to face attack criticism i mean it's just impossible look i remember us talking about um in the run
16:09Lewis Goodall:of the election how the fortune for fortunes of this government might go and i think we talked about at the time something i did sort of knocked around in my head for quite a long time which is you know that labor labor governments always struggle in times of scarcity even more than conservative governments because there is no kind of like reflex in the labor psychology of kind of taking your medicine in the aim of sort of over the long term kind of getting better you know there is something i mean there is something in the conservative psychology which they the idea of kind of parsimony the idea of austerity of sort of cutting and all these sort of things belt tightening belt tightening it's sort of deep it speaks to a deep instinct within conservative politics and psychology, even if very often actually they don't follow through on it and they love spending and their own particular things, but sort of rhetorically at least it sits comfortably with them.
16:59Lewis Goodall:That is not true for the Labour Party. There is a long history of the governments in the 1970s or the 1920s, first Labour governments governing in times of scarcity is an ill-starred omen or poses an ill-starred omen for Labour governments. And I think we're seeing that play out again now. And I think the danger, of course, with you can see, we talked about that polling yesterday for Labour, where actually it's clear they are hemorrhaging votes, not only to the right with reform, but to the left on Greens and Lib Dems. And you can imagine if they do this, the critique from both sides would be powerful.
Read the full transcript
17:31Lewis Goodall:We heard it from Kemi Badenow in PMQs today, basically saying there is nothing they don't want to tax. They want to tax your savings. They want to tax your income. They want to tax any profits that you make, any investment, whatever it happens to be. And you can imagine that from the right. And then on the left, of course, particularly emboldened now by a sort of revivified kind of economically populist streak in the form of Zach Polanski, but others as well going, where's the wealth tax? Where's the capital gains tax? Where's the billionaires tax? Why aren't you going after the rich? Now you can make good pragmatic arguments against any of those particular things, but they are that.
18:05Lewis Goodall:They are sort of pragmatic contingent arguments rather than powerful political ones which we made against them. And you can just imagine it exacerbating their problems to the left and to the right on
18:15Keir Starmer:both their flanks my my guess is that the things that rachel reeves if you know politics was not
18:20Jon Sopel:a real problem the things that she would like to do would probably upset the left most of all that she probably doesn't want to do wealth taxes she knows that you know she's got to keep industry going she's got to have entrepreneurs in this country that there is a risk that people kind of just you know move away or don't invest and all the rest of it and yet of course you know she's politically constrained and she's politically constrained in that she can't raise income tax or VAT or national insurance because of the manifesto commitment I you know I go back to the question if you've got a 20 billion black hole how are you going to fill it given the constraints that she's
18:58Lewis Goodall:under from left and from right yeah I think that the argument that Starmer Reeves need to be making to Labour MPs in particular is that we have now got relatively limited time even though the election feels like it's a long way away in terms of sort of big policy moves it's sort of this budget it's the next budget by that time that's over you're starting to really seriously think about the next election so and they know what the threat is over the horizon the threat is over the horizon is not just another Tory government it's a government perhaps the like of which we've never seen before which is going to reorder British democracy and even in a narrow self-interested way reorder the Labour Party right and reorder its prospects therefore it is incumbent upon them to be brave And if that means confronting certain things that aren't very palatable within Labour politics, like welfare reform, like cutting the sides of the civil service, for example, so you don't have to make those politically difficult decisions on income and tax and VAT and so on, then maybe that has to be done.
19:49Lewis Goodall:as well as I do think, I mean, you might slightly disagree about this. I think, you know, there have been lots of people, for example, the LSE Wealth Commission. There are ways of taxing wealth that you could do better. I think you've got to do it smartly. I think you've got to do it strategically. The worst thing would just be to do a bit here and a bit there and do a kind of knee-jerk thing that might prompt some capital flight. But you've got to think, I think be radical and bold in a big way. And what I fear is, even with income tax and that, notwithstanding the manifesto stuff, it's just yet another bit of, well, to use a Keir Starmer phrase that he used to go on about, but, you know, who rarely talks about now sticking plaster politics.
20:19Lewis Goodall:It's just a bit of classic British patch of men, whereas what's needed right now is some real imagination in terms of changing the attack system, changing the British state. I agree with everything you've just said,
20:29Jon Sopel:but if you are trying to do a budget that is radical and bold and entertaining ideas on welfare reform that's going to be pretty fundamental and all the rest of it, where is the argument? Where is the pitch rolling? Where is the laying the groundwork?
20:43Lewis Goodall:We said that in the Starmer's conference speech, that there was none, which is exactly, you know, We're often wrong, I'm sure. But on this, I think we're right. We're right now. We're a month away and now they're suddenly starting to talk about it.
20:52Jon Sopel:And, you know, you just launch this on an unsuspecting public or an unsuspecting parliamentary Labour Party and the backlash is going to be enormous. Of course. And so I just, you know, I agree that this is what they need to do. But where is the preparation for that so that you can sell it?
21:09Lewis Goodall:Well, of course. But there is, of course, one other alternative, one possibility, which is they don't intend to do it at all. and this is a bit of kite flying just so when the day does come and she can stand there, the Chancellor, at the dispatch box and say, there's been much speculation that we will need as a result of Tory failure, Brexit failure, whatever, to raise the top rate of tax or VAT and abandon our manifesto pledges. I'm not going to do that. And then everyone cheers. Now, which not only obviously is a nice line, but also potentially masks the real pain that will inevitably come in other areas.
21:44Lewis Goodall:So we can't discount the idea that maybe this is just a bit of clever treasury spinning that we're falling for.
21:50Keir Starmer:In the meantime, probably having a chill effect on the economy as people are thinking, what's about to happen to us? Do we suspend investment? Do we do this?
21:57Lewis Goodall:These long run ups to the budget now are crazy. I don't understand why. She did it last year and it was a mistake. And it's a mistake again because all of politics basically just ends up being frozen with this sort of speculation. And we're all just waiting for this date in the calendar as opposed to sort of getting it out of the way a bit earlier. But again, I think there are OBR reasons for that as well. They would say, well, we have to wait for the OBR to do the full forecast. But again, I'm just like, well, get to do a bit quicker. I mean, like, you know, much of this stuff is by definition, guesswork is too strong a word.
22:26Lewis Goodall:But it is certainly informed guesswork. The SARS, I'm sure, would accept it. Perhaps they could do it a bit more quickly.
22:31Keir Starmer:OK, we're going to go to another bit of speculation in a moment, which is, will Donald Trump run for a third term? Or is he going to finally recognise that there's this thing called the US Constitution, which says he can't? The Speculation Agents.
23:18Keir Starmer:the news agents so donald trump is in asia as you may know at the moment and he's flying around and what he loves to do is come back to the cheap seats on air force one which is right at the back of the plane which is where the 12 or 13 journalists who are traveling with the president sit and he comes and opines and last night he was opining on whether there will be a 2028 run
23:48Jon Sopel:for donald trump he seems to rule it out i have my highest poll numbers that i've ever had and you know based on what i read i guess i'm not allowed to run so we'll see what happens
24:00Emily Maitlis:you're trolling when you talk about a third term i don't think i don't think i don't think he said
24:05Donald Trump:that I don't think he'd use that term, but it's a very interesting thing. I have the best numbers for any president in many years, any president. And I would say that if you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run.
24:21Keir Starmer:I'm not allowed to run. Donald Trump accepting that this thing called the 22nd Amendment is quite a pesky little thing. I might well stop him to run. I honestly think that what he's doing is just trolling us endlessly. you know the next thing you'll hear is oh so many people have contacted me they're so disappointed that i'm not going to run that i'm looking at ways that maybe i could run and certainly some of his outriders you know the steve bannons of this world believe there is a way in the world in which he can run will run i frankly doubt it i hate this uh this conversation not the one we're
24:55Lewis Goodall:having john i love all our conversations of course i'm very interested to hear again your reflections of being on air force i didn't say anything about it a couple of dozen times over the past three years but anyway didn't say a word no no of course no no indeed but i hate it just just almost the way that it's framed in a lot of the media which is like can trump run again no he can't like no he can't like the 22nd amendment there are lots of provisions within the u.s constitution which are badly drafted and unclear which is not exactly ideal when you're dealing with you know constitutional law but anyway the 22nd amendment is not one of them the wording is clear the intention which was you know is drafted in the aftermath of fdr's death during the truman presidency and he you know basically even though fdr had been popular and it was the second world war there was a deep feeling that there'd never been a president who had had more than two terms before and it shouldn't happen again it's completely clear right so this this endless talk talking about it saying can he to me legitimizes the idea will he is a different question and i you know i personally i think you and i agree about this i don't think he ever really seriously would just because i think it's his age i'm not sure he'd want it like at that point by the time you get to sort of that level i think probably in his bones he must know that even this supreme court which has been deeply supine towards him and which has been you know a third of them have been appointed by him and who knows by that point even more may have been appointed by him i think even he knows that they wouldn't roll over on that because it's so clear trying to sort of justify some i mean even he is dismissed there's been this theory hasn't there about him running for vice president and then whoever's president resigning.
26:27Keir Starmer:And then President J.D. Vance stands down and he fills in the role because he's one heartbeat away.
26:33Lewis Goodall:And even he said the other day, he said, well, you'd be allowed to do that, but I wouldn't do that. I think the people wouldn't like that. It's too cute. It's not. It wouldn't be right. So even he said that. So even the sort of get arounds, I think the sort of more interesting question is kind of in a way why he keeps sort of even just hinting at it and why the MAGA movement, I mean, Steve Bannon in particular, who the other day was talking about it wearing his Trump 2028 hat, why they keep talking about it. I think that's quite interesting. I think there are a few reasons, right? One is that Trump, he wants to maintain his relevance.
27:03Lewis Goodall:You know, he knows that two-term presidents very quickly within their second term find themselves basically superseded in the media and political conversation. And Trump, more than any president, does not want to be superseded in the political and media conversation. He wants to remain central to it. And if all the talk starts to become about the kind of runners and riders and who might sort of take on the sort of MAGA mantle, then suddenly he's a little bit diminished. And by talking about it and even positing is a possibility, it makes it harder for the would-be pretenders, the could-be kings, the Vances and the Rubios and whoever it happens to be, to start to talk and plan for it actively until such time as he definitively rules it out.
27:42Lewis Goodall:And even then, there, he doesn't quite definitively say,
27:45Keir Starmer:well, I'd love to, you'd have to see. But also MAGA is his creation. and what Donald Trump is also seeking to ensure is that whoever is the Republican candidate in the 2028 election is fully signed up to his MAGA project and so you know he's trying to keep them sweet he wants to have Marco Rubio and JD Vance sucking up to him so that one of them gets the
28:10Jon Sopel:nod that you should be the person who becomes the nominee and you know Donald Trump's support his approval for a particular person is going to be absolutely critical to whether they win the nomination. He'll be like the apprentice. Exactly.
28:24Keir Starmer:He'll get them doing tasks. Yeah. And it's a beauty parade and they will parade up and down. He'll probably moderate the debates and ask them just to kiss the ring the entire time. Entirely. And that is going on endlessly.
28:38Jon Sopel:I was hearing from someone who's been very closely involved in sort of, you know, the British national security establishment and saying that, you know, trying to deal with any of these people in America at the moment. He said no one sits in their office. You know, Hexeth doesn't sit in the Pentagon. And Tulsi Gabbard, as the director of national intelligence, doesn't sit in her office. They're all hanging around the White House in case Donald Trump calls and they can have a FaceTime with Donald Trump because it's a court. And so you want to be near the king. And none of them are ever actually doing any work.
29:10Jon Sopel:They're just spending their lifetimes, you know, kind of around the president in the hope that they'll get preferment.
29:15Lewis Goodall:I think the Bannon comments are interesting, not least because I think Bannon and Trump are experts at trolling the left. You know, they know that even by wearing a Trump 2028 cap, everyone will react really negatively to it. That's kind of why I say I sort of hate the question, because like, you know, everyone react really negatively to it. Trump knows it's a good distraction tactic rather than talking about the various things that are going wrong at the moment. Everybody's then talking about whether he will or whether he can or whatever, you know, kind of works for him. I mean, he, you know, he's sort of ruling out, but not really.
29:43Lewis Goodall:and no one even though he sort of rules it out to some extent no one really believes him um and so you know there's a poll the other day that shows that majority of americans do think that he will run in 2028 you know that's the kind of way that it's kind of even that just shows how sort of crazy things are i think the other reason bannon might be talking about it though is i suspect and you've already sort of mentioned it john i think he knows and i think maga will know that the maga movement is so contingent upon him and it's such his creation and the truth is is that actually american presidential coalitions and majorities often are not always but often are quite attached to and contingent upon a particular individual you know there tries to be a successor or someone who will kind of inherit the mantle of that person's electoral coalition but they often struggle to do so and that is of course for me so the big test of american politics going into the 2028 presidential election on the republican side which is assuming trump doesn't run which i don't think he does can any successor whether it's vance or whether it's somebody else can they emulate that political pull that trump has got i.e has trump actually permanently recast american politics and american political demography has he created what you know american historians would call a new party system.
31:02Lewis Goodall:You know, sometimes a presidential figure can come along like FDR did when he created the New Deal coalition or Reagan did to some extent in the 80s. And you basically reconfigure American politics a little bit. You bring new people into your tent, your coalition, and they stay there. Or is it a little bit more that the people who voted for Trump and the coalition he created, simply it's about him and that American politics and the GOP and the Democrats sort of slightly reconfigure back to an older pattern once he's gone. I don't know.
31:30Keir Starmer:I don't think it snaps back automatically. No, I suspect not. And I don't think that you will get the turnout if Donald Trump is not on the ticket, because I think that there is a unique appeal that he has. And some of these trends were in place anyway.
31:45Lewis Goodall:Yeah, exactly. Trump accelerated them, but they were sort of like the move away from white, non-college educated voters was happening before Trump. He just sort of accelerated it.
31:54Keir Starmer:You know, the stuff that we've seen the last week that Canada is going to face 10 percent higher tariffs because they didn't like an advert that the Ontario government put on American television.
32:06Jon Sopel:I think that sort of madness of capricious. Right. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. I think that goes when Trump goes. I think you'll see a more regular, predictable kind of Republican candidate. But before we leave this conversation, Lewis, I know you love a quiz. I love a quiz. So I want you to guess what Donald Trump had for lunch today when he was having lunch with the South Korean president, President Lee in Seoul. Packet of Cheetos? No. Monster munch? No. He started off with a seafood salad, which was tossed in a very famous Korean staple product. What was it tossed in? Kimchi?
32:40Jon Sopel:Thousand Island dressing. Right. And then for pudding, what was it? Was it a malheur rice? no it was a gold adorned brownie all right so adorned in gold what could be more trumpian
32:56Lewis Goodall:than that do you think they serve that at pennsylvania avenue john i think they probably
33:00Keir Starmer:would and i think that's why president lee thought it would be a good idea about massachusetts avenue do they serve it there now you're asking we'll be back in just a moment
33:19Lewis Goodall:The News Agents. So, John, you gave me a quiz. I'll give you a quiz. So I've got some good news. The good news, of course, is that the Epping sex offender who escaped the other day... Well, I say escaped. He didn't actually try to escape. He was just let out. He was going to the prison, Houdish Kabatu. He was let out, tried desperately to go back in, ended up in Dalston with an avocado bag. He was obviously found again in Finsbury Park. He's now left the country. He's been deported. Good news. Bad news, we had to pay him to leave. do you know how much we had to pay him to leave five pound luncheon voucher uh luncheon luncheon vouchers no it was actually 500 pounds it's emerged today that the home office had to pay him 500 pounds to leave the uk because basically it's been explained that these are discretionary payments that are made sometimes to if someone is being deported to basically make sure that they leave without they go quietly because otherwise they might put in a last minute complaint or appeal which could keep them in the country so it's turned out that i mean this happens we you know quite a bit but obviously in this particular case you can imagine that the reaction has been very very negative because we've had to pay this guy who wanted to leave you go back to ethiopia as well as having committed a terrible crime we had to pay him 500 pounds to leave so i can understand that people will be losing their shit about the fact
34:41Keir Starmer:that we are paying£500 to a convicted sex offender to leave the country. It's actually cheap.
34:47Lewis Goodall:It could have been up to£1 ,500, apparently.
34:49Jon Sopel:Well, can you imagine, though, if he had exercised a legal challenge or whatever and how much more that would have cost the country in terms of accommodation, in terms of the delay, in terms of lawyers' fees, in terms of all the rest of it, it would have probably run into tens or even hundreds of thousands.
35:08Keir Starmer:so frankly if he's gone for 500 quid i say goodbye good riddance don't come back do you think that
35:15Lewis Goodall:that's very measured very sensible take is the take that's going to be taken on the front pages tomorrow and on several less reputable news outlets i am absolutely 100 sure it won't be well we'll leave you with that we'll be back tomorrow bye this has been a global player
35:30Emily Maitlis:original production
From the publisher
With the budget looming next month, Keir Starmer has refused to stand by his manifesto commitments not to raise income tax. It comes as Labour's poll rating hits an all time low - so will this be the final blow for voters?
Later, after admitting he won't (probably) won't be seeking another term, was Trump ever serious about a third run at President? And what is the future for MAGA when he leaves office?
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/