What can Harold Wilson teach Andy Burnham?

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28:16So, Nick, why Harold Wilson? You don't have to really explain to me because as a fellow devotee, I kind of understand. But, you know, for those ignorant people watching and listening who perhaps aren't as au fait with the great man from Huddersfield, what is it about Wilson that made you want to write about him? So two major things. The first thing is the remarkable story of his background. The first of the post-war prime ministers who had been privately educated. He'd gone to a grammar school, of course, famously Wirral Grammar School in sixth form, who it seemed to me had got to the top of British politics by dint of his own qualities.

28:59And I thought that was a really inspiring story. Let's even put aside all his great achievements. But the second thing was, I wrote a biography that was consciously revisionist because I felt that he'd been significantly underrated, both in terms of his election-winning abilities, remember? Played 5-1-4, in Labour Party terms, that's such an impressive record. Best there is. Best there is. And also what he'd achieved in government. And there'd been two major biographies of him, one by Ben Pimlock, one by Philip Ziegler, both written in the early 1990s. But it says, I mean, first of all, by the way, they were written without the benefit of government papers that are released.

29:44So I say that just as a qualifier. But at the same time, there isn't a single chapter in either of those books that is devoted to Harold Wilson's achievements. And that struck me as such an omission in the historical literature that existed. Well, he, I suppose, I mean, and this is where your revisionism comes in. But, you know, for a lot of the period of his sort of post-prime ministerial years, right, he's sort of regarded as a schemer, devious kind of figure, cunning, clever, undoubtedly. Everyone always talks about his quicksilver mind, you know, just how intelligent he was. But fundamentally, a bit of a sort of power broker who didn't really believe him very much.

30:21But you think that is completely untrue? I do. And in a sense, he was devious, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Yeah. In a sense, his probably most famous phrase, a week is a long time in politics, was actually used against him because what he actually meant by that was short term things happen in politics, but the media moves on. So don't be distracted by these short term things when you're trying to achieve something greater. But of course, that isn't how people interpreted it. how they interpreted it was he was a master tactician rather than a strategist. This was someone who was willing to take different, sometimes some would argue conflicting positions on a single issue.

31:08And it was used to show, yes, he was devious, he was somehow untrustworthy. And yet for me, and if you look at perhaps the one issue where this was levelled at him, It was actually Europe where this was levelled at him because he wasn't afraid in the mid-1960s to play with some Eurosceptic language. I think he did against Heath in the 1966 election. He then attempts to join, of course, in 1967. Very pragmatically, he would say, I'm philosophically a Commonwealth man, but he could see the economic argument for joining. he then has this period where he gets so much criticism when Labour's back in opposition in the early 1970s because he comes out remember against entry but on the Tory terms now it is awkward it's subtle but in strategic terms I suggest this is very clever because he never allows the Labour Party and as we've discussed it there was a huge Eurosceptic part of the Labour Party in those days that he had to hold with the more pro-Europeans like Roy Jenkins and others.

32:20He can hold the party together but what he also does is leave open the possibility of being able to come back into government, use the device of the referendum and stay in. And there's a lovely story in the book actually where the morning after the referendum where by the way as esteemed a national newspaper, as the Daily Telegraph said, quite frankly, this is a triumph for Mr. Wilson. And he sat with the private secretary and he says, you see, they all say I've got no sense of strategy, but I've spent the best part of 10 years achieving this. And he did. And indeed, he's the only party leader, the only prime minister in our post-war history who had a significant schism within his party on Europe.

33:09and successfully navigated it and achieved the policy. I mean, Heath is often credited, of course, with taking us in. Of course, literally he did. But Wilson cemented our membership for the next half century because all Heath did, of course, was just, you know, take his troops into the lobby, aided by a selection of Labour MPs who broke the whip, led by Roy Jenkins, and that had parliamentary authority. But it didn't have the authority and legitimacy of a referendum, which Wilson gave it and basically kept us in until 2016. that settlement did hold until 2016. It did, and he is one of a tiny number of post-war prime ministers who conquered the European issue.

33:49Many others did not. And absolutely, you can't blame Harold for the rise of Euroscepticism that happens far later, post-Maastricht, in the early part of this century. He settled it for at least a generation. What do you think? I mean, he's often said, I mean, he himself said, along with the Open University, that his greatest achievement was holding the party, the Labour Party, together, which, again, has often been kind of rubbished a little bit, I think, by historians, but also by others, sort of saying, well, party management, that's not exactly the stuff of statesmen, right? But, of course, I think probably what that, as your book argues, and I think is right, is that, you know, if you don't keep one of the major vehicles of British politics together, then you can achieve absolutely nothing, which he did, despite the fact that, as you say, in many ways it was ideologically riven, he had some probably the most talented biggest beast possibly to have ever sat around any cabinet table certainly any Labour cabinet table you know you mentioned Roy Jenkins Dennis Healy Barbara Castle you know it goes on Tony Crossan you know it goes on and on and on and yet he didn't face his challenge even though it was much speculated about and he left at the time of his own choosing what do you think modern party leaders can learn from how he approached party management if anything because of course maybe you could argue Maybe that political world is dead and it's tougher now.

35:04I don't know. What do you think? I don't think the essential qualities required of party management have changed very much. I mean, clearly, we know it's a very different political world. We know it's 24-hour world. Social media has had a huge impact. But the fundamentals of being able to keep a parliamentary party, in the case of the Labour Party, the wider Labour movement, together and able to deliver change in Parliament is still absolutely fundamental. all. And where I think so much can be learned from Harold is, it's ironic isn't it, as you indicated Lewis in your question, that his abilities in party management are somehow criticised, that this meant that, I think Edward Heath said about him that he was a great politician if perhaps not a statesman, it's that that it's pushing towards.

35:51But actually what... Heath was definitely not a very good politician so I suppose he'd know whether he was a statesman or not, others can judge. Yes. What is fascinating I think with Harold here is he always wanted to balance the different factions and in fact it worked often against his friends and there's an example where in 1970 election which he unexpectedly loses the only one he loses and george brown who'd had this bizarre period of being the deputy leader but on the back benches from 1968 loses his seat at belper so suddenly there's a vacancy for the deputy leadership and the person i often think this is a real sliding doors moment in history the person who wants to be the deputy leader is barbara castle and she goes to harold and says i want you know your support to become the deputy leader and harold says i can't do that because you are viewed as from the left of the parliamentary party and so still am i and a great ally of his indeed and and she'd obviously just walked through the fire with him on in place of strife and the trade union reforms.

36:55And so he said, it can't be you. It has to be somebody from the right of the parliamentary party. I have to balance the deputy leader and the leader. And of course, what happens is that Roy Jenkins, in the end, becomes the deputy leader. But she was very disappointed. She felt very let down. And I often think had she become a deputy leader in 1970, she would have been in a very good position to succeed. Harold Bunny eventually left. but it's a demonstration of the fact that he was always conscious in reshuffles in junior ministerial appointments that he wanted each of the strands within the parliamentary party to feel they had a voice as part of his team have we lost this do you think more broadly in british politics i mean in the sense that you know even if you go through to i mean wilson was a master at it in terms of having that balance but it is a trend that you see both in the conservative and labour parties, you know, right through to the end of the century, people think that Margaret Thatcher's cabinets were just full of Thatcherites.

37:52Well, they clearly weren't, because the cabinet turned her in 1990. Even in 1990, the cabinet has wets in it, people who didn't agree with her. Blair's cabinet had figures from the left, right through to the end. Not that many actual true Blairites in the end, even the last sort of Blair ministries and so on. It feels to me now that both the Conservative and Labour Party, as you've had over the years, more and more almost purity tests kind of imposed upon it. We're seeing it play out at the moment with the Conservative Party a little bit. The Labour Party under Keir Starmer was pretty doctrinaire about how, maybe not in terms of what it believed, but in terms of knowing who its people were, and very factional in the way that the party was led.

38:32I don't know what you think about that. But I think that, is there an argument to say that maybe one of the reasons why we keep asking ourselves that, you know, two-party politics has receded or appeared to recede? Well, it's because the main two parties seem to have wanted to make themselves smaller in recent years. You'd expect me, I think, to defend the Keir Starmer period, where I do think there were a range of voices from people I'd identify as Blairites of the soft left that were around the Cabinet table. But, well, it depends how you define that, Lewis, but in terms of this, I would say the better example for where it went very, very wrong with this approach is actually Liz Truss on the Conservative side, where she essentially appoints to her cabinet, everyone who's supported her and doesn't really reach out to those people who supported Rishi Sunak over the course of that summer.

39:22We all know where that very rapidly ended. So I think the lesson of it is that if you, on party management, you do need to bind in as much as you can. You can't always, you can't always live a consensus, politics isn't like that. but certainly what you want is for across the party the different strands exist to at least feel their view has been put at the highest level but for example i mean just on a labor point in the starma years i mean i remember speaking to a couple of people around starma who were sort of furious at some of the uh people from the party from the left of the party who might have either indicated that they were going off leaving the party going off to join the greens or whatever Now, some of them are actually really pleased that these people had left.

40:09But in a way, either reaction is quite telling about what's happened to our politics, right? Because if you're furious about it, well, you can't be furious about putting these people in the freezer. And then, you know, you basically go, you're not welcome here. And they leave and they go somewhere else. You can't be surprised about that. But also, if you're glad, if you're pleased. And again, we're seeing this with the Conservative Party a bit at the moment. You see a lot online commentary about, you know, One Nation types. Good, you're Lib Dems. We don't want you in a party anyway. you know it is absolutely inevitable if you have that sort of attitude that if you're supposed to be a really big tent party and now historically our system has relied on big tent parties with multiple traditions multiple factions kind of fighting it out if you end up with these purity tests then don't be surprised if you end up with a party politics which isn't two-party anymore so it's interesting this because there were obviously just to take recent years there were clearly people who had said awful anti-Semitic things that did not belong in the Labour Party.

41:06I don't know that's not the point you're making, but that is certainly the case. But the two main parties have always existed on the basis they are broad churches, and that's because they then sit across, to change the metaphor, a significant part of the political system and different people feel that their views are represented. but I do think a tolerance for a range of views is actually a strength not a weakness that isn't to say that there aren't going to be people who are beyond the pale I think it was Neil Kinnock who said even broad churches have walls and clearly you can go back to the 1920s 1930s where the Herbert Morrisons the Ernest Bevins are very clear that communists did not belong in the Labour Party so there is obviously a limit to it but certainly Attlee Wilson and indeed you know later leaders as well.

41:53Having that range of views is certainly not a weakness. You have written a lot about Harold Wilson. You knew Keir Starmer very well. It was often said, and I don't quite know where this arose from, that Keir Starmer was an admirer of Wilson himself. I mean, I asked him about that a couple of times and I didn't have to say get the impression of a deep aficionado of the man. But was that true, do you think? Was he a Wilson admirer? Look at the quote on my book from Keir Starmer. And he certainly, I'm very pleased that he read my book when we were in opposition. And I certainly discussed it with him on a location.

42:30When he was leaving office, one of the last interviews he did, he kept talking about there being three landslide victories, 1945, 1997, 2024. Given that Wilson had one in 1966, might suggest that maybe Wilson was not always at the foremost of his mind. I mean, what I'm saying is, Kirsten wasn't a great man for Labour history, was he? I think it's fair. He wasn't steeped in. He wasn't that interested in Labour Party political history. I think he's under fit to say he wasn't interested in it, but clearly his background is different. And I think one of the things people often forgot about him was that he was a latecomer to politics.

43:05He was in his mid-50s by the time he becomes an MP. So his background sat somewhere else. It sat in the law, it sat in human rights, it sat in being the director of public prosecutions. Whereas clearly some of the other leaders had, well they'd written books, I mean Attlee had written books. Wilson had written a new deal for coal which basically was one of the reasons he got the parliamentary seat at Ormskirk in 1945 so you say he didn't have that which is quite unusual for a Labour, most Labour leaders or certainly senior Labour figures as you know, I mean geeky on this stuff it doesn't usually cut it right particularly the Labour Party is a deeply romantic party, it's obsessed with its own past perhaps too much so often but that is the sort of very often is the sort of person who gets to the top of the Labour Party Kirsten was nothing like that We're often accused of over-romanticising our own past.

43:53That is absolutely true. No danger of that with Keir Starmer, I think. True. No, he didn't have that. He didn't have that view. He didn't have that emotion about the Labour Party. Is that fair to say? I don't think that is fair because he did and does very much have an emotion towards the Labour Party and its success. And he unquestionably, in my view, sees it as the progressive vehicle for change. As did Harold Wilson, by the way. And if you go back, so Attlee would have shared that view. so I do think he definitely has that but we've had other leaders it's certainly true who not only were writing books before they were leaders but they were happy to do so afterwards How do you think history will judge some?

44:34We've talked about how the sort of tides of history have come to maybe view Wilson differently you've had your role to play in that obviously it's difficult because he only just left office but what do you think? So he'll have to be judged alongside the other prime ministers who weren't in office very long, right? Because that's just the brutal truth of it. He was in office for two years. Now, I think of that category of which there are, well, there seem to be an increasing number in British politics at the moment. I think in that category, he will stand fairly high for two reasons, I think. One is, I think history will judge his foreign policy and foreign affairs achievements kindly.

45:15I think both, hopefully they'll judge the close, not just the close relationship with the EU, but his work on Ukraine, his handling of what I think everybody agrees was such a difficult, dangerous international picture. And I think it's said a great deal in his last week's in office. Where was he picking up awards? He was picking up awards in France, picking up awards in Ukraine. The first British Prime Minister to receive that award. So I think that's it. The second point is, I do think decisions made in the first two years i'm thinking for example of the funding extra funding for our health services a good example will pay dividends and show results later in the parliament now if you compare this to some of the other leaders who are in office uh for such short i mean anthony eden doesn't come anywhere close to i think what i've just uh described and in fact has been going to be defined by the serious crisis if you look at the the leaders that we mean rishi sunak less than two years, Liz Truss, 49 days, Boris Johnson, I think three years, just two and a half, three years.

46:16But Keir Starmer wouldn't have wanted to be compared to them, would he? He certainly would not. But I think history will judge him above them anyway. And what about compared to other Labour prime ministers? So again, I think you have to go across the category of the ones who've been the shorter time in office. So they are Ramsay MacDonald, who obviously is twice, but in the edge. Checkered figure for Labour people. Defects indeed in 1931. The other one is Jim Callaghan, of course, who just about gets to three years in terms of... But is that fair? I think you could cut that historically in a very different way, right?

46:52Because what you could say is, no, you can't possibly compare him to them. Because Jim Callaghan comes into office in a government which has no majority. Ramsay MacDonald never has a majority. He's only ever governed as a minority until he forms a national government. You've got to compare him to other landslide prime ministers, of whom there aren't many for Labour, but, you know, Attlee, Wilson, Blair. And against them, he's going to be such terribly, isn't he? Because what historians will say is he has something those prime ministers had, which was a huge majority, which he won as the leader.

47:21So, you know, you credit him with that. But somehow he managed to spend that enormous political capital so rapidly and ends up being forced out of office after two years. So there's two points there, I think, that are both important. First of all, I think history will judge very kindly. December 2019, worst result since 1935 to landslide victory in 2024. I think that is one of the Labour Party's great electoral achievements. But where the negative is, is most certainly you win an election in 2024. The other landslide winners, even though, I mean, Harold Wilson is often accused of wasting the 1966 result.

48:01I disagree, but he has been. Of course, you'd have hoped to have lasted longer in office post a victory like that. There's no question or debate about that. There's no precedent for it. Not on the Labour side. Do you think that will bother him? Do you think he's a man who is much interested in history's judgment? Of course he will have wanted to have gone on further. You know, he certainly wouldn't hide that. But also, I mean, I've spoken to him in recent weeks. He certainly isn't bitter. He certainly isn't that. And I know he absolutely wants to see this Labour government win a second. He's not bitter at all.

48:40Genuinely, I've spoken to him a few times in recent weeks. and of course he'd have wanted it to turn out differently. Of course he would have wanted to have continued and delivered on the mandate that he had. But certainly that isn't the emotion that I'm seeing in him at the moment and he's absolutely committed, as I say, to this government succeeding. Has he thought about what's next for him? Not specifically. I would like to think, given his international record, that there may be a role of some kind on the international stage for him because I think the relationships, but also the respect I used to see for him was significant.

49:17I remember I attended a number of international summits with him. I was a regular at the European Political Community Summits, as you would expect me to be in the role I had. And that respect and affection indeed for him amongst particularly European leaders, but more widely as well, is still there. Something I thought about a lot, why do you think he was so much better at foreign policy and international politics than he was at domestic politics? Because it's not as if he had a long pedigree or background on international affairs coming into office. It's something he just took to very well in a way, navigating the exigencies of domestic politics.

49:53He just never took to it in the same way. I just thought he had a subtlety of language, but also an innate understanding of where international politics was in the mid-2020s. And bear in mind, Lewis, I've sat on aeroplanes next to him for many hours on many, many occasions over the last two years. And it just seemed to me that his set of skills was very suited to the kind of relationships that you needed to build. And also his ability one-to-one to build a relationship of trust with the person that he was speaking to. You could see this, for example, with his relationship with Volodymyr Zelensky, for example.

50:42he had a close relationship with Friedrich Mertz, George Maloney, Donald Tusk in Poland, Emmanuel Macron's another example. They liked and trusted him when he had the opportunity to sit down one-to-one for discussions with them. And maybe domestic politics doesn't quite blend itself. Is it the irony that this guy, who's actually an outsider from a pretty working-class background, in the end managed to connect with elites better than he ever could with the British public? I wouldn't describe it as elite v public because I've seen him many times talking literally to people who've got significant issues in their lives.

51:28And his last Prime Minister's questions, he had a number of people in the public gallery that he'd specifically helped, and not just, by the way, as Prime Minister, but others in the course of his career. Again, I think it's the example. It's not so much somebody who's elite. It's much more to do with the personal relationship and rapport that you can build one-to-one. He must, though. He wouldn't be human if he didn't feel some resentment towards Burnham, right? I mean, you know, he must. He must do. Come on, he must do. I mean, you know, he's the guy who wins the 24 election. He's put in five years.

51:59He's given up a big part of his life when he could have been doing something else and spending time with his family, who he clearly adores. And he wins the majority. And, OK, he makes a ton of mistakes. But then this guy who's not been part of that basically comes in on the horse over the hill, wins the by-election. He's forced to basically campaign for him to take his job. I mean, that must all be very sore for him, right? Well, I've genuinely never heard him say anything, genuinely, this resentful about Andy or indeed any other people. They're not best buds, are they? Let's be clear. Well, I've seen them work together very significantly.

52:35By the way, one of the things they certainly worked together really well, and which I was proud to work on, was the Hillsborough Law, which we managed to clear the House of Commons in the final week of Keir's premiership. But I genuinely don't think he'll be overcome with negative emotions in that way. That isn't to say, of course, that two years in a parliament, he obviously would have wanted to continue. It must have been tough those last days. I mean, you were close to him. It must have been tough those last days in office. When you feel the authority sort of seeping away, did he feel it? Of course it was.

53:06It's not just about, I mean, I mean, funny enough, the final days, not so much, because by that point, he'd made the announcement and was in a phase of thanking people and making sure that things were, decisions were made so you could hand on things in a good place to Andy. the tougher periods I would suggest it was earlier in the year and particularly around the May local elections they were the tougher periods really when political reality I'm afraid comes to everybody at whatever level you're at in the government or indeed anywhere else and the political reality was obviously very difficult after the results we had in May What does it feel like when you're in the heart of government when you know all this is going on You must feel like it's that sort of spinning out of control.

53:54There is a supreme intensity to it. But I would always say this, Lewis, and I say this to those who now are carrying out this work in number 10. And it's a cliche, but I will say it. The very worst day in government is 100 times better than any small victory you can get in opposition. And the Labour Party has to do well to remember that because I'm afraid too much of our history. It's been spent in opposition. And Andy Burnham, now joined a very elite club. The former Prime Minister Club is getting quite large. The former Labour Prime Minister Club is still an exclusive group. How do you think, I mean, his early days, how do you think he's taken to the job?

54:37I think he's made a very strong start. And one of the things I've noticed, particularly the 2024, 2024, by the way, because we had those terrible riots to deal with in that summer, to a certain extent last year. He's managed to dominate the news agenda in a way that I think the government found tough to do over the previous two summers. And I also think what he brings, and again, this is very unusual, isn't it? Certainly in Labour politics. He's somebody who had one Westminster career, but then was able to go to a very different type of job, but to observe and think about what Westminster was doing well and what he was doing badly.

55:19And I think he's managed to retain, if you like, that freshness that you can still see in the way that he communicates, which I think is important. Do you think there's a sort of historical analogue for him? I mean, he's the first Northern Prime Minister since Wilson, of course. That's one thing. I mean, it sounds a bit trite, but it's genuinely unusual to have a Prime Minister with a non-Southern accent. And the accent, and I would say this, obviously, of course, Welsh is the best accent for all three. I've had many of those, yeah. Kinnick, Lloyd George, of course. But Harold never lost the accent.

55:50And if you hear him in the 70s, he sounds just the same. And similarly, I think it's really important that when you hear Andy, when I hear him speaking, I think that's a really important thing because it shows that Britain and British politics, that it has to be about places outside London as well. And something, a case I've been making, slightly different, not from the perspective of the north of England, but certainly from the perspective of Wales that I've made myself. But as a student of Labour history, you know that his big idea, devolution, again, that's something else that's sort of considered as if it's just an intrinsically Labour idea now, but not for most of the Labour Party's history, because most of the Labour Party's history, Labour Party associates devolution with inequality.

56:31And there is a certain truth to that, right? If you allow places to make their own choices, they'll go in different directions. And that's not something that Labour Party historically is terribly comfortable with. So the division, of course, that existed in Wales was between Anir and Bevan, who was very opposed to devolution, and a far less well-known figure called Jim Griffiths, though he's actually very important because he's the one who takes the National Insurance Act through under Clare Mattley. Jim Griffiths has been proved to be the one who was correct in Welsh politics for once rather than Anir and Bevan.

57:04but I think first of all something about decisions being taken as close to the people they affect as possible I think is a positive and good thing but to your second point what you have to accept alongside that as well is that it's not going to be uniform it is going to be the case that people will take different decisions for their particular and you're right that people like Anir and Bevan would have looked upon that with great suspicion in the 1940s and 1950s The best way of achieving equality is through a strong central state, level everything. A great centraliser, of course, and the NHS is a very good example of his centralising attitude.

57:43But at the same time, I just think we are at a point in our politics where devolution, which I've seen in Wales for 27 years now, since 1999. But I do think people want to see those decisions made with knowledge and a feeling for their area, which is crucial. One final thing. We'll end with Wilson. Let's imagine we could bring Harold Wilson back to life, put him into modern politics. Do you think he'd like politics in 2026? Do you think he'd be good at it? My suspicion, given his such a range of skills and his adaptability, is that he probably would have picked up on the power of social media far earlier than the rest of us did.

58:22I think he'd be brilliant in the content age, Wilson. He always had a line. What's that line when he came out with Macmillan after the Night of the Long Knives? What did he say? He said that it turned out that he'd sacked half the cabinet, but it turned out he sacked the wrong half. And there you go. That's a Twitter clip in the making. Nick Thomas-Simmons, thanks so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you.

58:51This is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. Ben, I've been reflecting a lot lately on how many big life moments our listeners have experienced with us. Yeah, it's pretty wild. They've watched us go from dating shows to engagements, weddings, babies, buying homes. Every stage comes with new decisions. The milestones are the fun part, but the planning is where things get real. That's why Klarna stands out. Klarna gives people smarter tools to help manage everyday money with flexible ways to pay, cash back that builds automatically, everything in one place, and support that makes everyday decisions feel less overwhelming.

59:31Since life moves so fast, the right tools can help you feel more confident. Download the Klarna app today or visit Klarna.com to learn more. California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance law license and MLS number 1353190. Clown a balanced account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply.

59:59Well, next book, which I can heartily recommend, Harold Wilson, The Winner, is out now. That is it for us for this week. And thanks as ever to our very own little kitchen cabinet, our production team, Shane Fennelly, Michaela Walters Natalie Inge Anna Georgevich Jess Williamson Mikey Bags Martin Crozer and Lizzie Ward our executive producer is Louis Dagenhart our editor is Tom Hughes the news agent is presented by me Lewis Goodall Emily Maitlis and well as Harold Wilson once said a week is a long time in politics and it certainly is on this show without John Sopel who will be back next week once he's been fished out of the monsoon by the Hanoi Coast Guard we'll see you then have a lovely weekend this is Ashley Akinetti from the Ben Ben and Ashley, I almost say this podcast.

1:00:43Ben, I've been reflecting a lot lately on how many big life moments our listeners have experienced with us. Yeah, it's pretty wild. They've watched us go from dating shows to engagements, weddings, babies, buying homes. Every stage comes with new decisions. The milestones are the fun part, but the planning is where things get real. That's why Klarna stands out. Klarna gives people smarter tools to help manage everyday money with flexible ways to pay, cash back that builds automatically, everything in one place, and support that makes everyday decisions feel less overwhelming. Since life moves so fast, the right tools can help you feel more confident.

1:01:24Download the Klarna app today or visit Klarna.com to learn more. California resident loans made or arranged pursuant to a California finance law license, NMLS number 1353190. Clown a balance account required to be eligible for cashback points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. This has been a global production.