197. Question Time: Should Labour be bolder on Brexit?

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0:49Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. I'm the Alistair Campbell. An Alistair is just as usual. I was hoping to have an advantage because he got literally zero hours sleep last night. That's what I should. That's what I could trick you, but actually you just caught me out on I thought we were on leading. Which is a good chance to promote leading. Leading is a separate feed that we do and what happens in it. We interview people. Usually individuals form a president's current prime ministers. Sometimes some interesting pairings. Sometimes we have pairings. Two Andy's for example.

1:20Two Andy's Burnham, who was, I thought, fascinating at the COVID -19 pandemic this week, as was said, he got in basically saying that the government had not kept the devolved administrations in contact with the reality. We've done lots in Ireland. We've done lots of amazing heads of states. We've had great entertainment stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bit more than entertainment stars. Of course, the good thing is that we've had the occasional sportsman. Catchal sportsman, yes. And they're quite timeless, actually, in a way that maybe some of our other feeds are more.

1:49Even the ones we've done recently on the Middle East, I hope we'll stand the test of time. Because although we talk about what's happening now, I think we're trying to get people who really know about the history and about the the kind of geopolitical consequences of what's going on, but set very much in that context of the past as well as the future. So wherever you get your podcasts, check out Rest His Politics Leading and you'll find already, I don't know how many we've done, several dozen. Yeah. So first question, Roy. Sarah Jane Blatemore, who is a neuroscientist and she's written this reading the terrible news about the four boys who died in Wales last weekend made me think about how policy can be changed around allowing young drivers to carry passengers in the car with them.

2:30For 20 years, we've been doing research on brain development and adolescent with a particular focus on peer influence and risk taking and it shows adolescents take more risks when we're with peers and we don't know that's what happened here, but this is her point. In the context of driving, more passengers in the car makes young drivers more likely to crash. Canada and Australia have laws restricting the number of passengers, young people can take in the car for a number of months and years after passing their test as something similar being considered in the UK. Well, it's firstly, big, big shout out, Sarah Jane Blatemore, who's an amazing British scientist who's been doing research, both I think research with social studies, but also neuroimaging on adolescent brains.

3:13She's written a fantastic book for anybody who's got a teenager called inventing ourselves, secrets the teenage brain, and she has discovered just how dramatically when you become a teenager when you enter adolescence, your brain begins to change in terms of actually the composition of different cells in the brain and continues evolving till your 25. So firstly, I think take very seriously the fact that she is absolutely right on risk taking and she's absolutely right, regardless of what the details of what happened in Wales were, which is a very, very sound tragedy, and that may well have some other explanation, but the general point is absolutely right.

3:48Young people, particularly it seems young men, take a lot more risk when there are other people with them, which is why in some countries, you have limits on taking passengers shortly after you've passed your test, and I'd like very much to see this in Britain. I mean, when I was, I got my, past my driving test in grief in Scotland, and in those days there was no traffic light and grief, there was no roundabout and grief. So when I first drove my mother into Edinburgh, I think she, she almost died not just from the traffic, but from a heart attack, but I definitely feel I was very, very, very dangerous.

4:20I'm very relieved I made it through those years without crashing. Well, how many times did it take you to pass your test? I passed first time. Did you? Which is bad. I think I fell five. Yeah. Right. Well, probably your better driver is yourself. I'm not sure. I had this, my knees started twitching as soon as I got into the car. It was a real sort of nervous thing. And so I couldn't, I couldn't use the clutch, because my knee was just, was twitching too much. Yeah. I was at one point in the test. I think it's my third test. I think the guy pointed out gently that I was driving over the speed limit.

4:49He said, should we just stop now? He said, well, we might as well. Now here's one guy, Blaski, will a political party ever talk about the benefits of migration? Well, I think it's unlikely you'll get many people talking about it at the moment, because immigration is probably the single biggest political factor in elections in Europe and North America at the moment. If you look at Biden's challenges, yes, it's against Trump. Yes, it's cost -deliving, but a lot of it is around immigration. If you look at the populist parties in Europe, migration is absolutely at the center of the way they're making their progress.

5:26And therefore, I think it's very unlikely. You'll see liberal conservatives talking about the benefits of migration. And there are, of course, huge benefits. I mean, the most obvious one being that our welfare state is very, very dependent on getting young people in, because we're aging quickly, and we've got fewer and fewer working people to support the elderly. But getting parties to talk about us and nothing. Tell us about migration in general. So you've been looking a bit at migration figures recently. Well, we have the name migration figures last week. And they're at record levels. 745 ,000 people.

5:56More people came the left. And it's absolutely, and that's net, isn't it? Because it's 1 .2 million. So 1 .2 million came, the rest of the left. A lot of them European Union citizens post -Brexit. We've created these massive gaps in the labor market. And so I don't know whether the people who voted for Brexit will be pleased or not at 1 .2 million immigrants coming in. One in five of them from India. 141 ,000 from Nigeria. 89 ,000 from China. I'm thinking the Chinese probably mostly in students. Other countries that are providing people, as you say, frankly, to fill the public services. And I think if you're working, I've had in the last few days, I've had to go to hospital twice as a visitor.

6:42And you notice two things. One, they cannot operate without immigrants. And secondly, it feels really, really, really pressured. Way more pressured than I've ever known it before. They're all saying the same thing. Or that you had an extraordinary figure on the last podcast. And how much the government is now spending on health and such. How much it will continue to spend. Going up, you said about 40 tips. 40 % by 2027. Yeah. Of overall public spending. So if you have these huge demand on public services, particularly for older people and the care homes, I mean, I think if you, again, if you're going to a care home, you sort of feel the stresses that they're under.

7:19You talk to people who are working there, they say the quotes can't find the staff. So where are they going to get them? We're having to go abroad. And of course, as we get older, we're going to need more people looking after us. Where are they going to come from? And one of the challenges in this, again, is I think the central question for any government, which is what type of migration they're targeting. Yeah. Because part of the government is thinking we want to bring in highly skilled software engineers, tech engineers to transform productivity in Britain and grow the economy. But of course, a loss of what actually is required are lower skilled people, you know, people to help pick fruit, people to help work in care homes, people to help clean in hospitals, etc.

7:58And a lot of these people were from you prior to Brexit, were from the European Union. So we're also seeing with 1 .2 million people coming in a very significant change over time to the multicultural nature. Britain, I mean, we talk about multiculturalism. Britain is going to become more and more multicultural. Absolutely. Karabek, what are you reading at the moment? And what has been your favourite book that you've read this year? Favourite book I've mentioned before, Jim Down, Life in the Balance, Intensive Care Doctor. I'm reading a book at the moment, which has got a beautiful title, The Vierwarden Vasvier Zint.

8:34Now, I'm ashamed to say, I can't remember the name of the author, but anything that's beautiful. Vierwarden Vasvier Zint, Ina Kutser Gashichter, how we became what we are. Doesn't sound the same in English. No. Vierwarden Vasvier Zint. Yeah, it's very nice, very good. So I'm really glad you'd have to think very hard how you produce the same illustration in English. So what are you reading? I'm reading a book called In Love with the World by Jungé Mingur Rinpoche. So he is a, I guess, Tibetan epali abbot and Rinpoche, so he's a reincarnated llama who chose to leave his monastery and go and basically live homeless on the Indian streets.

9:12And so his life had been very, very sheltered. His father had been a sort of abbot and reincarnated llama. He'd grown up as a little princeling, and then he decides to go and essentially live homeless. And living homeless in India is pretty extreme. So for the next three years of his life, he lives in situations of very extreme grinding poverty, comes very close to dying on a number of occasions, and has to apply his Buddhism in the highly recommended, it's a very joyful book, it's a very inspiring book, and it's an astonishing personal story. Excellent. Elaine, German budget, what's going on with the German budget?

9:48Why hasn't it got much international coverage? Gone test that German budget. Well, I'm really surprised this hasn't got more coverage because it's massive, and it's, in fact, we're recording this on Tuesday, it's 10 .30 and in half an hour's time, if I'm right, all our shouts, the Chancellor Germany will be in the parliament trying to explain what the hell is going on. If I can give a plug to Tannit Koch, who used to be the editor of Built Sightle, and now writes a column in the New European, she's done a really, really good piece about this. Essentially what happened is that the, see, we don't have a written constitution.

10:23The Germans have something called the Bundeswehr Fassalz -Gericht, which is the Federal Constitutional Court, and they have called out the coalition for relocating 60 billion euros worth of credit that they were allowed to spend because of emergency relief during the pandemic, that they've now tried to put into the climate and transformation budget, and the constitutional court has decided they can't do this. And it's absolutely taken the coalition government, the SDP, the Greens, and the FDP. It's taken them right back to the happy with that, because they're sort of visibly quite conservative.

11:05But the Greens, of course, want, they want to get rid of the, can I give you another word, the Shuldon -Bamza, which is the debt break. They want to get rid of that so they can borrow more money. So what would happen to this money if the Constitutional Court doesn't allow them to spend it? Well, that's what Shulds is going to have to try to address today. But he basically has said we're going to have to accept the judgment. And the judgment means they've got to give the money back. The judgment means they cannot spend that money on the things that they want to spend without effect from parliament.

11:32I think even that, it's an absolute clear ruling that this was in defiance of their own constitutional arrangements. So as Elaine says, I find it bizarre that Germany is still a pretty big economy, even though it's not doing as well as it might be. And yet, had you read about it? I hadn't. And the German economy is the biggest news of course in Europe. And biggest news in many, many ways. I mean, partly because it's really struggling. As you say, it's teetering on the edge of technical recession. And I think I do want to talk about German economy a bit because during the days of Cameron Osborne austerity, it was always the German economy was the alternative to the kind of neoliberal austerity that were meant to be two ways of running an economy.

12:13The sort of British neoliberal way, which was all about financial services and low taxes and the same thing, and Germany, which was meant to be more about bigger tax burden, more investment of vocational training, bigger manufacturing base. And Germany seemed very, very successful during that period, which led a lot of economists. And this will include people advising Labour Party to say, well, we should be more like the Germans, right? The problem now is that the German model seems to be in real trouble because it feels as though a lot of their industrial investment, a lot of their export bets, a lot of their investment, for example, in pharmaceuticals, the current industry is now beginning to go wrong.

12:47And they may not have the flexibility that the British economy has to adjust, which is a real challenge when we think about what a different economics strategy could be. Matt McQueen, why do successive governments prioritize chasing benefit fraud rather than tax fraud when one of these is a far bigger problem than the other? Well, what do you think the answer to that is? I'm asking you, Roy, what do you think the answer is? Well, I guess the beginning of that is that, I mean, yes, governments do chase tax fraud and you'll see every government endlessly standing up very optimistically. Labour conservative always in their budget say, we're going to get much more money by chasing tax fraud.

13:21And I think sometimes they're successful. I mean, they do close tax loopholes. I think George Osborne claim to bring in quite a lot of money from chasing it. Benefits fraud is another issue. I mean, I think the problem with benefits is that either you're trying to be strict in which case very unfairly, people who should be getting support don't get support. Or you're on the generous side and a few people who maybe shouldn't get support do get support. And I think one thing that's certain is governments never get it exactly right. And that leaves the suspicion that some people are getting benefits who don't deserve to get benefits.

13:52And I guess that is always going to be something that's politically hot topping. I remember, I mean, even when you were in government, you also made moves and trying to cut down a benefit fraud, right? Oh, yeah, but I look good and brown when he was chancellor was constantly trying to raise more money through shutting down tax loophole. Yeah. I think the answer to the question though is that it's an easy issue around which to do dare I say populist polarizing politics. You know, it's about the kind of richer off there and while they do what they do. But if you can get some poor people over there and we can sort of look down on them and basically, they're the ones ripping us off.

14:27I think it helps the populist. Richard Kuma, if the tax burden is so high, why are key public services like health and education underfunded? Where does the money go? Well, a lot of it at the moment goes on paying debt. We have had low growth, low productivity and a couple of emergencies, including COVID and the war in Ukraine. But essentially, I think if you've had a schlotic growth stagnating wages over a extended period of time, we're having to spend more money on paying down debt and we haven't just been more money to keep public services running at a minimum. But the fundamental truth is that Britain isn't as wealthy as it sometimes likes to think.

15:07It doesn't actually, it's tax burden is high historically, but it's not as high as it is in places like France or Germany. And health and education get an incredible amount of money. But because of the way they work, we're still not getting the results that the public want. And Alice has pointed out that we're about to end up in a world in with health and social services are going to consume 45 % of our budget, you know, hundreds of billions of pounds a year. And it's something that isn't talked about in this political debate. Theresa May put another 300 million a week into health. Boris Johnson put more into health, where she soon export more into health.

15:41But the truth is everyone can see that waiting lists are going up. And health inflation is much higher than normal inflation. In other words, the costs of running health services hide normal inflation because people are getting older all the time. They're living longer, drugs are more expensive. Also in the autumn statement, Roy, if you're looking at the figures, Jeremy Hunt is actually putting more money into the health service this year, but then the increase is slow. And it's interesting how you didn't make a thing about putting more money into health at all. So I mean, they know that they're going to have the pressures are going to rise and rise and rise and rise.

16:13My worry, of course, is that there is a pretty well organized debate going on on the right of British politics, which essentially is saying the health services not fifth purpose, we've got to get a new model. And the truth is somewhere in between, which is that we desperately need reform, that we're not going to be able to afford to keep endlessly increasing health spending without some reforms the way the NHS works, the way productivity works. And this was something that new label was quite bold on. Now, of course, my great hero who people can listen to on the rest of politics leading is Alan Melbourne, who was the Labour Health Secretary, who was very radical.

16:45I saw him. I saw him in the weekend, by the way. Gone. And he can't get over how much you love him. Well, I think it's a, he was saying to me, I can't get over how much Roy loves me everywhere. I go people say, you know, Roy Stewart really loves you. Well, if anyone listens to that leading interview, what you can see there is that at that point, Labour was much more confident about talking about reform to public services, much more confident about saying, yes, we're going to put more money in, but the price of putting more money in this, we're going to really change the way they work. That was about setting up foundation trusts, that was about thinking about which bits the market could help in.

17:18He wasn't an anti -market fundamentalist. And I think we're going to be in real trouble in Britain if we don't recognise that there is this train coming down the track where we're going to end up spending so much money without actually delivering the services that people want without reform. Okay, we're ready. Let's have a quick break.

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18:47Now, Roy, you read a lot of books. Martin Lynch wants to know, it's coming up to Christmas. Wood Charles Dickens, a voteatory or labor. Oh, I think he probably, oh, that's a very good question. I like that very much. So Dickens, I think, would vote labor. Dickens is a controversial figure now. People point out that some pretty peculiar stereotypes of minority ethnic groups, of Jews and others. But he was a man with an enormous, prodigious social conscience.

19:20He'd saw a loss of bits of Britain that other people didn't report. So I think, um, Charles Dickens would have been a labor voter. And we love him for that. T .S. Eliot on the other hand would have voted conservative. And Lord Elgin? Lord Elgin would have voted the Lord Byron. Lord Byron wouldn't have voted at all. Now, John, if you were a leader of a hypothetical third party that was about a win election, and could bring across one person from the labor party and one from the conservatives, who would you choose? Why and what cabinet position do you give them? So hold on. You got, you're like a Lib Demi type of thing.

19:54Lib Dem, and you get, and that's right, Lib Dem, and you get a restless politician, a centgram party, a restless politician, a fantasy football, you get one labor, one conservative politician. I guess to make it more difficult for us, they have to be people who are in parliament at the moment. Okay. Shall we go Peter Carl? Peter Carl. Yes, I'm definitely taking Peter Carl. Peter Carl is the prodigiously talented and wonderful labor lead on science and technology. Yeah, so let's go piece to Carl and then on the Tory side. Well, you know, I'm beginning. I mean, this is a radical chance. Not long ago, Julian Keegan was, you think she'd be trying to minister.

20:28Alex Chork, Victoria Prentice, he's all people I admire. Okay. But I'm beginning to think that James cleverly might have a future. And this is something that you had pointed out with Fiona. I'm hoping that the conservative part of the future is not going to tilt to a swallow -brawman pretty Patel right. I think Priti Patel's in a bit of a prime position, so to say. But I mean, do you think Bravaman's shot her bolt? I think she may have shot her bolt. And Priti Patel has not. I think Priti Patel is the entry drug to the financial forage. What about the man in the jungle losing lots of viewers? Well, that's what I think Priti Patel is the entry drug to.

21:00And I think they'll all be asked and leisure election to commit to whether they bring forage back. I think the party will lurch to the right. They won't learn the lesson. One of them will bring forage back and forage will then eat them from the inside. And that'll be the end of the conservative party. Hmm. Happy days. James cleverly, you don't think shithole gate has damaged him. Well, I think it would it would really help if he didn't say the word shit a lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. Batch it. What was bad? The Rwanda Plan was Batch it. Yeah. Stockton or the MP was a shithole. Yeah. Yeah. Not good is it?

21:29No, not good. If you can get a grip on that though, I think he's actually, I think his civil servants really liked him. People in the far enoughs like him. I think home office loved his first speech. He made when he arrived. He's somebody who I tried to persuade him to run as my kind of running mate when I was running for leadership because I've always thought that he's he's a kind of real person. He was some territorial army officer for 20 years. He's relaxed. He's a bit detached from politics. He's quite a bloke. Yeah. He's he's a good friend to people. I'm just looking down the front bench now.

21:58There's nobody springing out at me. I think yeah, I've fun enough until recent days. And I did think that Cooper gave him an absolute battering yesterday in the comments. But I think yeah, I can see cleverly emerging in a different light. Very good. Okay. Now this is the old chestnut that keeps coming back, but it does relate to what we just talked about in Matt Holden. Do you think it's genuinely possible for a new political party to emerge and challenge the status quo? How much funding would this kind of enterprise need? I'll try first. I think just following on what I was saying about pretty paternal and Nigel Farage, I think the obvious opportunity is if the Conservatives make the catastrophic error of lurching further to the right after losing the next election, then I think that is space.