288. Is Labour's King's Speech bold enough?

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1:52Hello, welcome to the Resties Polities with me, Aleister Campbell and not Rory Stewart. Because Rory is travelling. But by Robert Pestern and Steffner govern from the rest his money. Robert was at the opening of Parliament yesterday for the King's speech, which introduced a huge range of legislation. Gave us a pretty good idea of how Labour is going to try and turn the manifesto into a government programme. So we'll be talking about new bills, what they mean, what they don't mean. Maybe also what was missing, things we were expecting which didn't appear. We thought it might be something you'd like to hear about.

2:25So me, Robert Steff, here we go. Aleister, before we get into the detail of this King's speech, you've actually obviously written quite a few speeches for monarchs over the years. Does the monarch read it beforehand and ask for any changes? Yeah, you do get a situation where you won't necessarily know that it's the monarch who suggested the change. But you sometimes get them coming back and say they think that a phrasing strays too far into the political arena. They don't like repeating campaigns slogans, for example. So Mission Lead Government probably was borderline, I'd have thought. But yeah, you get them sometimes coming back.

3:05I remember feeling a real free song of delight in 1997 when the Queen talked about delivering a health service for the many, not the few. But there were other phrases that got sort of chopped out as being felt to be a little bit too political. And also they also take an interest in how the stuff that is about them is expressed. So for example, I can remember one year, I can't remember what the countries were, but they wanted us to reorder the ordering of the countries that the Queen was going to visit. So they do come back with changes, yeah. It's a sort of, it's a kind of, it's a very polite negotiation that goes on.

3:44But it's really interesting to see how a manifesto in a campaign gets turned into a legislative program. So you've had a campaign where labor has been very much focused on economic growth as their number one mission. And in 40 bills, which is a lot of bills that were in the King's speech yesterday, by my reckoning, I reckon about 15, you could directly say, are about economic growth, the obvious ones, budget responsibility, national welfare fund, planning and infrastructure employment rights, but also the railways bill, arbitration bill, digital information. And so I think what they're doing is trying to take the campaign, take the manifesto and then translate it into a legislative program.

4:29We have lots of, you know, you've got competing themes, you've got things that you've inherited from the previous government, the cigarette stuff that soon that wanted to do, which Keir Starmer has taken on. You've got the energy, the green energy program, you've got the border controls, you've got some of the education and skill stuff. So there's a lot of, you're trying to create a theme out of competing themes. But I think anybody who was watching it would realize that the government, the one thing it wants to be known for in this early stage of government is about trying to get the economy going again.

5:00Yeah. Although you say that it's about trying to get the economy going again. And yes, it was quite clear and actually been clear for weeks that what they're obsessed with is growth. You can't talk to a Labour minister without growth, getting into the conversation pretty early on. But it is striking to me the first bit of legislation that we're going to see is the, what I mean, what ministers think of as the shackling Liz Truss and Causing Caughting Bill. She got, but she got really cross yesterday. I don't know if you saw that when in the official notes that they put out about the King's speech, it actually said this is explicit.

5:45Absolutely. Yeah. About stopping a repetition of Liz Truss's mini budget, she decided that was breaching civil service impartiality. I have to say, I thought it was quite, I don't know if ironic is quite the right word, but it was sort of amusing to me that she decided to complain to Simon Case, the cabinet secretary about this, because only recently, well, I interviewed her, she said that she thought the civil service should be more politicized and that ministers should appoint permanent seclusion and all the rest. But anyway. Yeah, and don't forget, one of the first things she did was as Prime Minister, was to get Causing Caughting to sack the permanent secretary of the treasury.

6:21So I think she's, look, she should just sort of recede quietly into totally relevance, but the fact is that that bill is directly about making sure that a future Prime Minister or Chancellor could not do what they did without getting proper advice and recommendation from the Office of Budget Responsibility. So it's quite a conservative measure in his own way. And look, on the so -called budget responsibility bill, there is some new detail from the treasury about how it will work. One, they are saying that if a government were to announce tax measures, there would be tax rises or tax cuts, or spending measures that were equal in value to 1 % of our national output.

7:15Talk about how I'm pretty sure our national output is currently about 3 trillion. So that would be about 30 billion quids worth of spending or taxing. The mini budget announced 48 billion of unfunded tax cuts. And as Alice pointed out, one of the controversial things that Causing Caughting and Liz Truss did was to say they did not want the Office of Budget Responsibility to assess the consequences of this for the public finances. So they are setting the bill considerably lower than the measures that were announced by Caughting and Liz Truss. And they are saying that the Office of Budget Responsibility would have the right to actually, in consultation with the Treasury Select Committee, to initiate an investigation, even if a Chancellor and Prime Minister didn't want them to.

8:07So that is giving, I think, significant new power to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Now there is one let out clause, which is you might call, I suppose, the Rishi Sunak COVID let out clause, which is they are saying that if measures are temporary and are measures that respond to a national emergency, then you wouldn't necessarily have to use the OBR. But I'd be interested to know whether you think, in the end, we elect politicians to do stuff for our benefit. We don't elect the OBR. There will be some who say this makes the OBR too powerful. I just wonder what both of you thought about that.

8:47I mean, as you were speaking though, I was wondering what Gordon Brown would have thought of it. And I think he might have thought it was himmning a Chancellor in a little bit too much. As you say, 48 billion was a huge figure. So is 30 billion within the, not within the sort of three trillion scale, but it's still, you're basically, it is deliberately saying the OBR will have greater significance within the management of our economy. Now that's a decision that they've made. And I think broadly that is the right decision. But I think some, you know, my own view is that Liz Truss was an aberration.

9:18I'm not sure that the country ever will again, I hope, have a Prime Minister who is so sort of out of control and so disrespectful of the institutions which were already there. So I think this is much more about signaling the commitment to stability. I think some of these bills are actually about saying to the markets, you have now got a serious grown up sensible government that is going to treat the take the economy seriously and sensible. Yeah, because it feels like that, you know, all the businesses I've been talking to since the election, it's like they've all just collectively had a sigh of relief of like, okay, hopefully now it's going to be calm for a bit because, you know, we all know businesses are used to turmoil all the geopolitical things that happen that, you know, affect business.

10:07But it's the stability in terms of policy and things like that, they need more than anything. And the fact that there isn't going to be some person who comes in and suddenly changes things that tanks the market. So, surely that is going to give more confidence and we talk a lot on this podcast about investment in this country and there's been a massive lack of, you know, private and public investment, which is, you know, big contributor to growth. So you've got to hope that this will mean that will encourage more investment, which will help growth because from looking at this King's speech and I know we'll, there'll be more that comes out in the autumn statement and things.

10:44It doesn't feel like there's a lot there for growth in the short term, but you do wonder how we're going to get growing if we don't put more investment into things, I guess. I think the National Well -Fund Bill is very much about saying government setting the framework and then absolutely it's all then about the sort of partnerships you can get and the sort of investment you can get from the private sector. I also think they really are putting an awful lot on this planning and infrastructure bill. I think that is where I think it'll get tough politically because this is and this is where a big majority helps because they are literally going to be moving from a kind of a nimbi culture to a sort of sorry, but we said we were going to build and we are going to build and you're going to have to have very, very good reasons why we shouldn't build in the places where the planning applications come through.

11:37So I think that is a sign of commitment. I actually think this stuff could start to move quite quickly, but a lot as you say, they will depend on the reaction of the private sector. So I'm just interested to know, given that you have seen the interaction between politicians, departments and institutions like the OBR, if it's now all about Rachel Reeves and her officials persuading the OBR to be more optimistic about growth based on the measures she's announced, how likely is it that they're going to succeed? Well, I think there is a clear direction of travel that they've set out. They've set it out during the campaign.

12:16I think the civil service, the government has done a very, very good job in turning a set of manifesto commitments into a government program. That says there's kind of real cooperation going on. The OBR will not want to be seen as an extension of government in the political sense, but I think that direction of travel is now pretty clear. You write that there is some, I don't think this is good a picture is 1997, but there is some kind of economic good news that has started to come through. I think it is entirely possible that come the budget, they will be a slightly better field of the economy than now.

12:51I was interested in what Steph said there and Steph, you said something, you and I did an event a few months ago and we did the same event a year ago with a group of business people where I noticed over the course of that 12 months, a very, very different feel from the audience about Rachel Reeves and about the Labour Government. I wonder if that of itself is actually going to have an impact on some of these investment decisions. People sort of feel they're dealing with something they want to deal with now.

13:26That has been a factoring conference making. I remember really vividly when Rachel spoke at it, which was, it must have been not this year, it was last year, she was quite nervous, the audience could sense those nerves. I know at the previous year it had been Johnny Reynolds who'd spoken and then he came back this year to speak again. The difference between how the audience felt about the representative of Labour speaking was totally different. I think to begin with when Rachel had first book in that previous year, it was a lot more like, oh, I know she's got the economics background, she's worked at the Bank of England.

14:08She does seem quite nervous, a bit tentative answering some of the questions, but then a year later everyone was talking about how this is really good. Look, Johnny Reynolds was getting a completely different reception than he had like the three years earlier and there was a lot more confidence in who the chancellor's going to be and what they're going to deliver. I definitely sense that in the room. The thing I wanted to ask you though, I was to on the planning reform because a lot of these bills are related to the success of them is going to be dependent on the planning reforms happening. I totally hear what you're saying, they're going to just know forget about an in -beers and they're going to crack on with it.

14:46But is that going to work on a local level when they're also talking about devolution and more power to councils and more power to the Metromares and everything? And also the constituent MPs, when they're getting grief from people who are saying their green area, their car park, whatever it is, because like the Daily Mail didn't ask or didn't they the other day where they said, if you live in any of these areas, expect big building work coming in and obviously they're anti -labor and everything else. But my mates were then all talking about, oh, do you think that's going to be this name? You think that's going to be this?

15:22Do you really think that on that level they're going to be able to get past people? Are MPs going to be on board even though their constituents are going to be kicking off of them? Well, some constituents will be kicking off because we I think we have created a bit of an in -be culture, but don't underestimate how if you can make people feel that they're part of what they call in the sense of national, this mission of national renewal. People will compete, people will want investment to come into their area. If you look at the way that the howtons are in T's valley, and I hate the whole freeports thing, but if you think that the big message that he puts out there is we've been able to attract investment.

16:06So I think what this is what they're trying to do is to flip the debate. Now, there will be, there's no doubt about it. Anytime you try and close a local hospital or close a local school or build something in an area that feels comfortable within itself, you will get protest. But I think what they're doing is hammering the message that when we say we have to build, build, build in order to grow, grow, grow, grow, that is what we've been elected to do and it's what we're going to do. And so therefore there will be some very difficult conversations. People are talking about the first big rebellion might be in relation to the, you know, the two -child benefit cap.

16:41It might be, but I think there will be local rebellions against some of the planning stuff, but that is what they're going to have to drive through. If they don't, then they're not going to be able to deliver on the growth mission. And every Labour MP who's been elected knows that. And just out of interest, Alistair, do you think, for example, we have seen this mooted often, but in practice, it hasn't really happened, but do you think, for example, if there's a massive wind farm development, local people should be offered, you know, discounted energy, do you think there should be local bribes of that sort?

17:17Well, why find exciting about the whole devolution agenda? And as you were asking, you were that question, Steph, I was thinking of Manchester, well, I know you know the North very very well. Yeah. I was thinking of Manchester. One of them, whenever Rory Stewart and I have been been doing public meetings and you get this very negative sense of politics, the one thing that when you throw it back to people, we may even have done it at that Mate UK conference, people have really brought into the idea of powerful metromares. And if you look at Manchester, there has been a lot of building going on in Manchester.

17:50And that has been part of this sense of, we've got more power, let's use it to do stuff. And I really, really hope that when they talk about devolving power and pushing stuff out more locally, yes, it's about saying people locally have a great to say of what's happening there, community, but we shouldn't see that just as a purely defensive thing. It's about saying you want to get to a place where people say, yeah, we want to be part of this green energy thing. We want to be part of getting these onshore wind farms in. And yes, Robert, you may end up saying, okay, we're going to do this. Here's the downside and here's where we're really hope that we can really turn this nimby as something on its head.

18:32That I think is part of the politics of what's behind the screens, this key speech. But again, I mean, obviously we're at an early stage. And even though we've got, you know, pages and pages of background notes to the King's speech, it's pretty general stuff. So, you know, when we talk about devolution, for example, yes, there is a lot of economic evidence that if you give forms of regional or local government more fundraising power and more investment and spending power, you get more rational economic decisions for a community and indeed more rational investment. But right now, the powers that the Metro hat mayors have are a fraction, for example, of what many of our more successful competitors have given their forms of regional.

19:19So, it'll be interesting to see how bold, Kirstaama, will ultimately be. Do you think he will be really radical and tough when it comes to transferring those powers? Well, we'll see, but I thought it was interesting that you think about his time as Prime Minister day one, First Minister of Scotland, First Minister Wales, First Minister of Northern Ireland, day two, calling in all the Metro mayors. That to me was a signal of intent that and they've all complained that they had next to no relationship with the last government. I think that was him saying, I'm serious about this and I'm serious about devolution of power.

19:58Siddi Khan often talks about he as mayor of London has the ability to tap into about 7 % of funding that affects Londoners, whereas counterpart in Tokyo can tap into 70%. He's involved in 70 % of funding and how he gets distributed. So, that is a, you will care move in that direction. I suspect that is what the Metro mayors are hoping. And if you look again, look at the, I agree with you, it's only words at this stage, but these are the words that are going to get turned into new law in the course of the next session of Parliament. I think the fact that they picked on this extra devolution bill signals intent, that is the direction of travel.

20:39And I happen to think it's the right direction of travel. So much more to discuss. Let's go to a break.

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22:43A lot of what we've heard from Labour has been involved state intervention, doesn't it? It's like nationalising railways. It's given power to councils to run bus services. It's having this still on GB energy firm. Do you think people trust the government enough to like run services again? Because it's not going to mean all of these things suddenly get better, is it? You know, all of the infrastructure in particular for real needs massive investment to improve capacity more than anything. And then with something like buses, they're not suddenly not everyone's going to start using them again. Yes, it might mean they if it's council led, they'll run services in places that aren't profitable, which will be great for remote areas and you know, important for employment and things like that.

23:33But there, you know, people aren't going to just suddenly start using buses if they're still slower than cars, you know, that the things like there should be priority services for buses. There's still the issue around prices, you know, in December, and they then suddenly going to go up in price. So there's lots of, you know, great words said about how we're going to take control again and bring these services back. So they're brilliant and they're affordable. But a lot of it to do is to do particularly in transport with a lack of investment. Absolutely. But Steph, if you just to go about to Manchester, is public transport in Manchester better than it was a decade ago?

24:14It is. Yes. Incomerably. Exactly. Now, that I think part of that has been the fact that you've had the ability of locally elected politicians to have a greater say in how those services are run and they've been able to be able to build support for that. I think you point about whether people trust the state is a very good one. And the short term, it's complicated, but the short answer is no. But the reason for that is that we've had the last few years in particular where people sense of the public services that they're not working. Now, it all depends on the delivery. These changes, which yes, are partly about investment.

24:52And that's going to be slowing coming forward. But it's in a sense, you know, you've got the reform coming first and then the then hopefully the investment as the economy grows. That's how they're how they're planning this. But it's really interesting. If you look at the the reaction of the, I don't read the newspapers anymore, but I always look at the kind of media monitoring summaries. And it's very interesting to look at the front pages this morning. You've got the Guardian, the F .T. essentially saying, you know, a stack of bills focused on growth and planning reform. The right wing papers, the express in the mail are using the same headline, red revolution.

25:28Now, I know the I don't the anybody looks at this and they're talking about the big state. I don't think is the big state. I think it's using more of the leaves of the state to try to give local communities the power to improve services at the at the local level. But it is interesting how far the, you know, the political pendulum has swung. I mean, when you were working in government, it was really striking to me, talking to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, not only did they not want to reverse any of the Thatcher and John Major privatizations and you didn't reverse rail privatization. Periodically, you looked for sort of symbolic things that you could privatize to prove that you were on the side of the private sector.