326. Labour's first 100 days, the Tory leadership race, and Japan

22:59They should have a budget that there is for investment. It is for growth and then they should do another one. It was an interesting statement at letter 2 because some of it was praising the Labour government and some of it was praising fundamental so Britain that proceeded the Labour government. So, yeah, praising the Labour government stability. But they also said Britain is a good place to invest because of the English language, because of what they see as a good school workforce, because some of the investments that have been made in infrastructure, because the way that Britain is positioned with its universities, etc.

23:27So, let's hope. And when we've wanted Japan after the break, but it's such an interesting question. What you do with these economies, if you step back and put Britain the context of all the other economies is struggling around the world. Yeah, I thought Peter Kyle, who were both right, he was doing the morning and media this morning and I heard a few of his interviews on the train down. And he was very, very, very, very good, but I would like a better answer on whether single market customs union might not be aware of addressing this, but anyway, there we are. Listen, as a bridge to the Tories, why don't you just tell our listeners, because you claim that I'm too tribal when I talk about Labour, allow you to tell them what of these live shows where we're already taught to, you know, we're well into five figures, the several thousands of people that we're taught to.

24:14What have they said about, in answer to our question, whether with the Labour government, whether disappointed or happy, and what have they said about the Tories? Yeah, it's been very interesting. And the lovely thing about live shows, and thank you to everybody who's come to CS. And we've been traveling around country and we're talking now in Wales and we were in Scotland yesterday, is that you get the interaction, which of course we get and we're very grateful on emails and Twitter on the podcast, but it's a bit more virtual whereas in this case it's very live. And we do a lot of dodgy, incredibly non -scientific shows of hands.

24:43Polling, we call it. Polling, yeah. And obviously we need to point out that it's not necessarily the case that the audience coming to hear us is represented the entire population in the United Kingdom. They may be selecting some ways. Somebody was saying he was at Scotland show that it's actually much younger than a lot of these things. And actually that's true if you look at the data on our podcast. We're very skewed towards 18 to 35. Anyway, that aside, when you ask people what they think of Labour, you ask three questions, Alice, attends to us. Do you think they've done as you expected better than you expected or worse than you expected?

25:18And the results are usually about half as they expected, about half worse than they expected and almost nobody better than they expected, four or five hands got. I think you've been quite generous, though. You think slightly more than you think. I think your Labour tribalism is taking you. I think I've got to be honest where I'd be sitting at the order list is maybe this is just because of my depressive mindset, I think worse than expected has been winning. It's getting exciting. Yeah, I think it's even more than slightly. I'm really shocked you said that. I'm trying to be fair. I'm trying to be fair.

25:52Just to keep you see, it's like we have this awful thing called a tribalism buzzer that we've got in the station. We need to go over you. Yeah, I know. Well, I mean, obviously the idea of it just got on my head there. I also had one guy in the hotel in Scotland who said, I was one of the hands up for better than he spayed, but that's because I thought they were going to be really, really terrible and they've only been terrible. And he was a lachelist. But I'll tell you what, I think, is there, and this was particularly the case in Manchester, there is still an awful lot of goodwill to Labour. They desperately want Labour to do well because I think they know how important is.

26:26If this Labour is a one -term government, where does it go? Does it go back to these mad right when Tories? Does it go reform? Where's he going to go? And of course to my frustration, I keep hoping that I can get the crowd to say they're going to go for a third party that's neither Tories Conservative and I'm not working out as one of the best laugh lines. I don't know. I just not getting the hand. So listen to our listeners what they'd be saying about the last three, the final three. So we started doing this when the candidates were James Cleverley, Kenny Bay not in Robert Generick. And we've kept doing it even since James Cleverley's been knocked out.

26:55And the results are absolutely astonishing. So these are crowds which in Birmingham, I guess, was pushing towards 4 ,000 matches to cumulatively. We had over 5 ,000 people. Let's go 2 .8. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, these are quite relatively large numbers of people. And we are saying to them, if you were a Tory, if you were a Tory, who do you think is most prime ministerial and could be most of a threat to kids, down in other words, who would you vote for? Who would you choose? Yeah. And the result is usually that out of these thousands of people, you get five or six hands for Robert Generick, four or five hands for Kenny Bay not.

27:33I would say that's within a statistical margin of error. Yeah. And then you get 99 % of the hands going up for James Cleverley, who of course has just been knocked out. I also got in trouble. I noted that his campaign was being run by Grant Shaps, who was the master of the dark arts behind Boris Johnson's campaign with these amazing spreadsheets. And in an interview, just at the final moments, he was asked what he thought about the different candidates. And he said, as the chair of Robert Generick's campaign, I mean, James Cleverley's campaign. So I said, is it possible that when Grant Shaps was encouraging people to vote for, because there's sort of allegation that swapping that was trying to vote, trying to vote, trying to vote, trying to vote, trying to vote, trying to, that he actually might have been on Robert Generick's side all along.

28:16Anyway, as you did, as you did in the night, he's been in touch. He sent me a list of WhatsApp messages. And in those WhatsApp messages, he's clearly encouraging MPs to stick with James Cleverley. Yeah, I have another account under a different name. I mean, he's got several names. You can have several accounts. You can have several campaigns running. I you take it as a word, just like you take all to a light. You took Matt Hancock and his word, what he said, he was wanted to meet him to get behind you. You took Michael Gov at his word, just before he absolutely shafted you by telling the times that you throw the towel in.

28:48That's right. Yeah. It must be lovely to be so trusted with Tory colleagues. So who do you think is going to win out of Generick and Badenot? Well, I know. Tory members, you know the Tory members better than I do. It's very difficult. I think there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides. So I think Kevin Badenot has the strongest right -wing credentials. She was a Brexitier early. She's made many more provocative statements about issues that a lot of the Tory base care about. On the other hand, for some voters, not all of them, I don't think the Tory party is always, but there will be some people who don't want a black woman, to be honest.

29:23So there will be an element of a racist sexist vote amongst some of the members. There will be some people who think Robert Generick is a central casting 1980s. I was thought. Tory MP type. And there will be other people on the right of the party who will say he's fake and actually he's from the centre and he's tacking back and the more right -wing he gets, the more they're like, oh yeah, but someone from the centre would say that, wouldn't they? There was a huge assault from Matthew Paris on Robert Generick this one. Yeah. Which was interesting. I can't imagine he's a big fan of Badenot. Although I suspect that your friend Michael Goe is, I seem to me to be getting the times quite firmly behind Badenot.

30:02Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's probably, as we speak, having lunch with Robert Generick to heat up a few hours in each time. The Matthew Paris thing was interesting because Matthew, you would have thought, would be a natural support of Generick if Generick could be none left because Matthew's very much from my one nation part of the party. He seems, he seems as a fraud. Yeah, passionately, yeah, passionately remain. And he's, yeah, he prays Badenot because he said at least she seemed original and sincere. The most ludicrous thing I saw on social media this morning was Robert Generick with a birthday cake, with a union flag, an icing union flag on the top, celebrating what would have been Margaret Satch's 99th birthday.

30:39And he's appointed Jacob Rees Augustus as party chair. He says he's Jacob Rees, he's more will be the party chair. So I think we know what the game is. But have you ever celebrated a 99th birthday or somebody's dad? No, my, my, do you want your way for 100? I think my father, my father's a hundred and second birthday just passed, but no, I think there are some cultures in Asia which celebrate death days in that way. Right. Which is amazing because what are we going to be talking about after the break of the day? Good. Okay, well thank you for that. And I think maybe maybe you're hinting that we should go into the break and after the break, pick up on Japan and Victor Orman.

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33:00Welcome back to REST's politics with me Royce Shit. And me, Ernest Kamel. So in an really amazing new turnout for what has been probably the most interesting democratic year in world history. We've got an unexpected one. We haven't unexpected new elections. So we thought beginning the years we were schlepping through. We had India. We had Russia. We had US and UK. Your friend Emmanuel Macron threw an unexpected election in France. And now Japan has thrown an unexpected election to add to all the incredible elections which have brought more than half the world's population. So a lot of the big G7 powers now going through their electoral cycles.

33:38And this follows the resignation from man that we've talked about in the podcast. Fumio Koshita and the appointment of Shigeru Ishiba and Ishiba has now dissolved parliament which is a pretty risky thing to do as we discover with Emmanuel Macron. He did it eight or ten days after being appointed prime minister. And it can work or it can go. Koshido did the same. He dissolved the parliament on a satris napillation and he got a huge victory. It's always, it doesn't always work and it didn't work for Heath I think. I mean these things often. Yeah. It's strange isn't it? How we don't often talk about Japanese politics.

34:14The British media barely cover it but it's fascinating. Their politics is very very factional. You have this party, the LDP, the Liberal Democratic Party which is by the way not very liberal, not very democratic. It's a very it's a quite right wing party. And they have been in power just with the two little gaps since they were founded I think in 1955. And they came out of two other parties which merged to take on what was then the Japan socialist party which they saw as a bunch of comments. Yeah, if I can allow a bit of tiny bit of rest is history. It's a fascinating story because it connects a lot of the stuff we talk about in the podcast.

34:49Basically the socialist party went through the movement that Labour Party went through with Tony Ben. All the conservative parties going through and Britain at the moment by attacking to the far right which is a socialist party in Japan. Broken to three factions and decided that anything that was popular with the voters was no good and they needed to have no compromise and they need to attack to the far left. Exactly. Yeah. And this provided an incredible opportunity for a man called Ikeda who came in and such an encouraging figure in a world of polarization because he took over from a man Kokishi who was a big egotist, pretty right wing.

35:25And Ikeda tacked hard over and was all about compromised bipartisan ship. He dropped some of the radical reforms. He went out of his way to give very moving funeral relations at the funeral of socialist MPs and then he did something which would seem insane and would be lovely if Kier Samu was able to do. He said, I'm going to double your income in six years. I'm going to double the size the Japanese economy in six years. Put in context the current UK levels of growth, average levels of growth since 2008, it would take us 60 years to do that right. And he did it in six years. So between 1960 and 1966, the Japanese economy doubled in size and by the late 60s and purchasing power parity terms was pushing ahead of the United Kingdom in economic size.

36:11Now, back to you. More recently, a less happy story on the economy, which is why they keep churning through leaders. But what was really interesting about this is the Ishiba who was one this election. This is fifth leadership. Play Biden, isn't he? Yes. And he's blocking away. He's not very popular with his MPs. He's much more popular with his. He played the cleverly trick, but he won. The electoral system for the leader is partly MPs, partly members. And they have many more members. So they have a lot more members. So unlike the Tories, it's got about a hundred thousand members. They're over three million members, the LDP.

36:42So it's a much more representative of the general population. But he was not expected to win at any stage until he won. The first round was led by a woman, called Sanate Takaichi, who is much more conservative. I think damaged herself by being very, very hard over on some of the stuff that the China and the Koreans don't like. She talked about visit. She would happily visit the shrine that they really feel shouldn't be visited by leaders because it sort of celebrates people among the more criminals. The early front runner was this young charismatic guy whose father had been a prime minister, Shinjiro Koizumi.

37:20And his campaign was hit by a very, very large blow when his father didn't interview. So he didn't think he was ready to be prime minister. And then he had a second blow when he said that he'd be more than happy to meet with Kim Jong -un, which again did not go down very well with members or MPs. So he was out. Then this lady won, she won the first round. Then all the others drop out. And Sanate Takaichi won the other guy. He was being part of the Arbe faction and had all the heavy weights the party behind her. So she was, I don't know quite what the accolade would be, but certainly more than a Tory leadership race, she was the dominant one who the party was behind all the way.

37:57She was the bad enough figure. Yeah, the same example. The example thought was going to it. And of course, Arbe, the other thing to say and throw into this mix was Arbe who was assassinated two or three years ago. And there was all this stuff came out about the links between the LDP and the Unification Church, the Moonies. That has reared its head again because the new Prime Minister's new Justice Minister has suddenly discovered that he was still very active within the Unification Church. He's now had to sever all links with the Unification Church. So he's not having the greatest start, but when Kishida stepped down, have a guess at what his disapproval rating was.

38:33This little gift gear, Starmer, right? Great. What was this disapproval rating? Disapproval rating was 79%. That's going some because some people got pretty depressed when you're down. It's sort of 35 % disapproval, but 75%. That's not what I'm saying. He was on 79%. Of course, this came after these scandals involving slush funds within the factions because there are factions within the party. The LDP has been so dominant as a party of government that it's almost formalized these factions. They've now sort of tried to get rid of those. His faction got disbanded. His faction was called Koki Kai.

39:04So how long has slush fund stuff going on? Lots and lots of division within the party. But once you get those figures, you've got to go. So he's gone. You guy comes in and says, straight away, I'm having an election. So at the bottom of this, as you said, is this question around the amazing Japanese economy? And one of the facts that I'm fascinated with is that Japan grew so quickly from that period in the 60s that by 1989, it was the second largest economy in the world and was on track to overtake the US. So people talked about Japan the way they talked about China a few years ago. My colleague at Yale, Professor Paul Kennedy raised this book called Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which basically seemed to suggest, maybe unfair to Paul, but basically that the world had been dominated by Spain and then by France and then by Britain and then by the US.

39:54And that was a big bestseller in Japan. Good for me, bro. Yeah. Again, you know, famously the Royal Palace in Tokyo was worth more than the whole of Manhattan. And the Japanese companies were buying the big American television studios, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The Japanese economy in 1989 was eight times larger than the Chinese economy. So at the period where, you know, you were already working, Japan was this sort of economic superpower that didn't really need to worry. Most of our meetings with them apart from when we went to Japan were around the G7 and the G8 because they were big, big players inside the US, huge jobs.

40:31And then, of course, they ran into a wall. And it was the strangest thing that's almost happened to any economy on record. And although people say it's because they were getting older and begin coming up with answers around that time, the answer is the economists don't really understand fully either how it happened or what they should have done to get out to it. But essentially, the whole thing ground to a halt in nominal GDP terms between 1991 and 2012. The US economy grew by 160%. The UK economy grew by a similar amount, what from about 600 million to about 1 .5 billion. The Japanese economy in that period didn't grow at all in normal terms zero growth.

41:14If you'd put 100 ,000 yen in your fridge in 1995, I'm a stone in this from Guy called David Pilling, by 2012, it would have been purchasing terms to be worth 112 ,000 yen. If you put it in the stock market, it would have halved in value down to 50 ,000 yen. As I think I mentioned when I got back from Japan, I've been talking to a lady whose house outside Tokyo was worth 70 % less than when she bought it 25 years ago. So that's the bad story. But oddly, you can also tell a good story because strangely, because their economy is flatlining at the same time as their population is decreasing and actually many things are getting more affordable.

41:51In per capita GDP terms, often it doesn't actually feel that painful for the average Japanese. And one of the most sort of positive times was the time of Koizumi who was the man who was the prime minister for a lot of the period when you were in office and who just torpedoed his son's electoral chances. He's only the know -be who briefly looked as though in the early, in the big dude. Yeah, in the early 2000s, he was going to turn it all around and he dissolved the parliament, won a snap election, incredibly successful. Everybody was very excited. And again, it was the same with Shinto Abbey. You remember there was Abonomics and again Japan has been struggling.

42:27You know, is the answer to go the sort of full Cameron austerity or is the answer to print money? It doesn't seem to matter what they do. Nothing they do is turning this around. Well, that's the economics, but on the politics, apart from a brief period in the early 90s and then the consequence of the crash 2009 -2012, the LDP has been in power through that entire period since it was formed in the 50s. I mean, you sure about the conservatives being the greatest party of government this law? Yeah, well, also just to, I mean, you're often mocking me for the idea that the kind of British class system, well, something so many of these Japanese prime ministers including the current one, the current one.

43:08His father was a cabinet minister, his mother's father was the governor of a province and was one of the big rulers occupied Singapore during the Second World War. Shinto Abbey's grandfather was there into the early. But also there wasn't really a proper denazification. So Shinto Abbey's grandfather had basically been the dictator of Manchuria during the 1930s. If this was any other country in the world, I can think of. The party of the government were getting booted out the whole time, wouldn't they? Well, very, very low turnout because everybody's so depressed, the opposition totally. And yes, I suppose you end up with a word, but these things can collapse because remember the Liberal Party in Canada from Trudeau, almost to my clicknutti, it felt like it was the natural party of government and all the matter were tiny moves from the Liberal Party and then it suddenly sort of blew itself up overnight and went to one of its worst defeats ever.

44:00Well, we've been banging on for a long time, briefly on Hungary, all ban. So the European Union has this strange system where there's a rotating presidency where a different country takes on the presidency every six months and part of the duty of the president is that they go and have to sort of make a speech to the European Parliament and Ursula von De Laen responds and then people join the debate. So Victor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, it's the president. He's the current president, goes and make a speech and von De Laen, who was criticized and then again, I mean, most of us, I'll cast remember, but he is basically the most strong example of a popular strong man in Europe and he's the guy that's really pushing for a sort of Trump -seeking ping -puts in strong man -version world.

44:42So he goes along and does his thing and basically sort of makes lots of criticisms of the European Union. von De Laen really puts the boot into him. For the first time in those terms, reminds him of some of the sort of historic European debates that led to wars and essentially says to him, which side would you have been on? Which side would you have been on when the Czechs were under attack? Which side would you have been on in the past? When the Hungarians? When the Soviet Union comes running in Hungary in the 1950s, where would you have been? So my favourite line in Ursula von De Laen speech said, there are still some looking across Orban who blame this war not on the invader, but on the invaded, not on Putin's lust for power, but on Ukraine's thirst for freedom.

45:24And the only person who came to his defence was this German hard -right guy. But then the other thing they did, they invited the opposition politician, Peter Magger, who's also an AAP, so they invited him to make a speech. And it was good theatre because Magger goes straight up to Orban, totally took Orban by surprise by offering to shake his hand. He sort of reluctantly took his hand. And Magger then went up to the podium and really laid it in turn. And he said to him, asked him if he was proud that he's created the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, in European. Which of course, Orban supported supporters would not recognise at all because he convinced them they're just doing really well.

46:04And I mean, this is the odd thing about the alternative reality. I mean, when you say the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, they really wouldn't recognise that, but the truth is of course that actually the Hungarian population, like the Japanese population, is going in the wrong direction. But they don't because Orban has done what a lot of these kind of populist hard right leaders do, you know, suppress the media, no real freedom of speech, rule of law, get hold of the institutions, weaken the opposition. So this guy is worth watching his speech, but in Vondeline speech as well. And there's also a French politician called Valérie Haier, who I think I sent it to you and it's subtitled for the heart of Frenching, but she did absolutely.

46:39And she didn't stop looking him in the eye. And he kept looking away. He kept pretending he's taking notes the whole time, like he was, you know, a lecture or something. But it was very, very interesting. And I suspect you look, he defended himself and he said that all this stuff was kind of, you know, left his lies about what's happening. He was going to chance for his funders. Yeah. And he was very, very dismissive of the whole thing. And of course, a lot of these speeches attacking Orban were essentially about Ukraine, basically saying that you are Putin's man, you're not Europe's man, you're Putin's man.

47:11And it was, you know, he sat there and took it, but he that was a bad, bad day at the office of Mr. Orban. Right. This was the same event where famously when Tony Blum, we had the president, Dave, remember Tony Blum, absolutely. If you want to see somebody taking down Nigel Farage, it was one of the best moments of Nigel Farage's career. Right. Final little stat on Japan, which I'm much getting some obsessed with Japan. As you know, the Japanese population is falling really fast as it gets older. And it's interesting because South Korea is on the same trajectory, Russia is on the same trajectory.

47:44And most European countries would be on the same trajectory if it wasn't for immigration. The Scottish population, for example, is well below replacement rates if you set aside immigration. In fact, the Scottish population was pretty much at the same size it is now in about 1950. But in Japan, it's going to drop to 100 million in 2050 by 25 minute, down 43 million by the end of the century, which will be about the level that was out in 1910. Orori, thank you for bringing us back to Japan to end this podcast that we'll see soon. Thank you very much. Bye bye.