426. Corbyn's Comeback, Musk's New Party and The Broken SEND System

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2:01Hello and welcome to the rest of the question time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And before we get going, Rory, just want to say a big thank you to all of our viewers and listeners who bought tickets for our live shows. Very excited to be going out again. We're going to London, Glasgow, Manchester and Bournemouth. And a little bit of music, I think, could be expected a bit of music here. Especially in Glasgow, dropping a hint there. I'm actually going to not our far ashes, quite away from Glasgow. I'll go to Scotland next week to be photographed for the Woodland Trust with my favourite tree.

2:33That's wonderful. That's something I really wanted to do and I'm a great artist. Well, you can do that. I've ducked out, so I'll try to do it next year. I assume your favourite tree is in Cumbria or Scotland. It's in Perthshire. Yeah, right. It's an oak cut by Burnham Wood. I've really gotten forward to Glasgow and these live shows remind me what the theatres are in some of these places. So we kick off November the 9th in Bournemouth at the BIC, which is where lots of particles, conferences get held, it'll just be me and Rory. Within 11th and 12th November, the eventim Hammersmith Apollo in London, following the footsteps of my daughter Grace.

3:04Satjus the 15th, we're in Glasgow at the SEC Armadillo. And then on Sunday the 16th, we finish up in Manchester at the O2 Apollo. So to go to your tickets, just go to aegp .uk -trip25. That's alpha -echo -gulf -pupar .uk -trip25. Can't wait to see that. Right, let's get going. Lots of new party talk in the air. Finley, and given the green party already, provides a political home for many on the progressive left, doesn't Jeremy Corbyn's new party risk to a little more than left -wing vote? Innervertently strands in the electoral strands of the right. That's a good loyalist argument. That's what they always say when I was trying to run us in independence, what my Tory colleagues, oh, you're splitting the vote.

3:51And then we've also got questions about Musk, Francesca Vills. What do you think about Musk's new America party? Could it disrupt the Republicans' 2026 election? It's splitting the vote against. It's splitting the vote against what we're looking at. It sort of does. Well, look, I think, I'd love to bring you on this, but let me just begin. I think that our systems in Britain and America are really broken. I mean, I can't get back to it enough. I tried to write this whole book about it. I don't think I did it properly. I don't think I explained how I think a lot of our problem in democracy is these systems.

4:25You talk a lot about polarization, post -truth, populism. And now this is super -powered, I think, by these first -pastor -post -systems. The Republican Party being dragged off by Trump. The Democratic Party totally lost. And I think there is so much room to try to rebuild a sensible, exciting, good -humored, active, socially -media savvy centric round. We need independent parties and the centric round. And you think in the UK that would be somebody who has beautiful ears? Obviously, I'm trying to hold off saying that Jeremy Corbyn or Elon Musk is the answer to anything. But I think the only point that Musk has got, because I think he's got no political judgment, I think this idea may be like Dominic Cummings' new party, something that spats out on social media and disappears the next minute.

5:17Well, presumably thousands of American political consultant mercenaries are writing little tax forum and slide presentations to try to convince them that they're the people who can do it. I suspect not just American, but I think the thing with Musk, look, I don't think this is... You know, there's that old joke, how do you make a small fortune in America? You start with a huge fortune and you found a political party. Right, and a lot of the people who've done that. Ross Perot, Ruff Nader, this time. Ruff Nader, Ross Perot. Actually, Teddy Roosevelt went off to a new party for a while. Sometime, over a hundred years ago.

5:531912 was a very long time ago. But it's never worked. And I think one of the reasons it never worked is the tribalism, the two -party system. In America, it's never worked as well because of the money. And of course, Musk has got the money. What I don't think Musk does have is either the political judgment or the political appeal. Or indeed the ideas. Well, what an authority's ideas. I mean, sorry, we know his central idea, which his government needs to be run more like one of his Silicon Valley companies. I'd run by him and his mates. Yeah, run by him and his mates, cycle the civil servants, become more productive, become more efficient.

6:28I don't think he's got an answer at all to the fundamental problems that affect America. What is he really saying about people on low incomes? What's he saying about welfare? What's he saying about defense? What's he saying about immigration? We don't know the answer. One of the other stuff, right? He polls very badly. I'll have to let's just be frank about this. He's obviously got something about him to become close to the richest man in the world. However, that's defined. He's very clever in lots of different ways, but he's hopeless at politics. I think he was very good at throwing money at Trump.

7:00Why? Because Trump is actually quite good at politics. And Trump needed money and he found a guy who would give him limitless quantities of money. He's loosed by people on the progressive side because he helped Trump. And he's now loosed by the Trump people because he's gone against Trump. So I don't think he's the vehicle at all. So let's come closer to home. So Sarah Sautano, elected as Labour MP, suspended for defying a whip over what to child benefit. To child benefit camp. Very, very strong against Israel pro Gaza. And she shot the bolt to some extent by announcing that she and Jeremy Corby would be co -leading a party of the left.

7:39Jeremy then, we were back. Jeremy would, every time we had the news, we had cabers outside Jeremy's house, and he would trot out a lot of say anything. I wasn't mind him for that. The fact that he just got into the cabin and went off. But we had a bit of that. And he came out and said, yeah, there is going to be something happening. Because he's now not in the Labour party because he's been expelled. What they're saying is the polls would say they could take 10%. My answer to that is, well, maybe I think this is all much more just symptomatic of this sense that we talked about last week of the left of politics, not feeling at one with itself.

8:13Part of the problem that Kierstama is dealing with, because of course, that 10 % is driven by people who feel that Stama particularly has let down Labour voters on social justice. So there's a report that just came out this morning as we're speaking about explosions and child poverty, which is putting a huge emphasis on the fact that the cap that you can only get benefits up to two children, that you don't get it beyond that, is a real contributor to increase in what the report describes, almost de -Kenzie and levels of poverty. People living in houses today, in Britain, with no running water, eating moldy gone off food, rats running around their apartments.

8:58And so that I think is core, but there's also a sense of moral outrage. And where is the courage of the Labour Party around international law and around Donald Trump? And I think that nobody should underestimate Jeremy Corbyn's appeal. I mean, in 2017, he got far more votes than Ed Milibout had managed to do. In fact, far more votes than any Labour leader had got for some time. And Morgan Kierstama got in getting his landslides, just the way the votes fell. Let's take some of the next question then. And this is from Sen Network, they are right at the heart of this debate. The recent news, the education and healthcare plans for children and young people's Sen might be under threat without any clarification, and Bridget Phillipsen about what could replace these legally binding documents, is causing great concern for families and educators alike.

9:49The Canalistron Maury, please discuss. I mean, it's very strange. I mean, at the moment, there's a legally binding commitment on schools to develop a personalized plan for a child. And why? Well, let me imagine that you are like many, many people in Britain, maybe 20 % of children in Britain. And you have dyslexia, and you could be very, very bright at verbal reasoning. And equally have very significant memory problems on numbers, or significant memory problems on certain types of words. And you can deal with this, a good school can deal with this, and give somebody with dyslexia fantastic opportunities.

10:30So, you're simple things. Could be making sure that they know what the work is going to be in the week ahead, and give them the chance to prepare. Could be a little bit of revision at the end of the week, maybe watching a little BBC film on history to embed the knowledge they've developed that week. And teachers doing this well have completely transformed the opportunities of children who frequently are incredibly talented and creative, but who, if you just put them in the conventional system, would be exhausting themselves trying to work in a way that doesn't work for them, and end up feeling stupid and excluded when they're not.

11:10So, even the conservative party, and it's very worst, was not trying to get rid of these personalized plans. I cannot imagine what Bridget Phillipson is talking about. Well, I don't think she used to talk about getting rid of them, but they are talking about reform. And the reason why, and by the way, can be bad knock, seems to be against them and thinks that we're over medicalizing mental health and all that sort of stuff. There's an argument coming on the Tory side on this as well, but I know somebody called Sam Carlisle who campaigns on these issues a lot. And their worry is the Labour are looking at everything through the prison of the cost, because why wouldn't they?

11:48Because money went so tight. But the worry is that on this one, they look at it from the cost perspective as opposed to genuine analysis of the need. And also potentially because of Rich Reeves, which we'll get onto, and this moment where she broke down on the House of Commons, and the pound collapsed temporarily, and the bond price went up, and the fact that they're now really trying to get behind her and prove that they're tough. They're really pushing down this, but the problem isn't cost. It's short term cost against long term benefit. If you think about 20 % of the children in Britain, not getting the support they need now, you might save some money now, but the long term consequence of the economy of producing children who are not as able, creative, skilled as they could be in 10 years' time, that is devastating for our productivity, our businesses, our industry, and indeed for their wellbeing and fulfilment.

12:43Sorry to do the opposite why I said they should do, but just let's look at the cost. So the number of young people with an education and healthcare plan, these ECHPs, this used to be called a statement and the last government changed it. It's more than doubled. And you thought they're about dyslexia, the main area where the cost of co -op has been autism, then what's called BSD, behavior, emotional, social difficulties, and speech and communication. There've been some rise in physical disabilities and severe learning disabilities, these account you have much less of the rise. But the reason why this is such a massive problem for the government is because, as I say, the numbers have doubled, the costs have trebled to 12 billion a year since 2015.

13:28And you taught people in local authorities, I do, they are so struggling for cash and they've been given this thing called statutory override. They can actually complicate this, but they can park the costs. So it doesn't go on the spending that is set out in all the kind of, you know, the red books and the green books and all the rest of it. And that, if they were actually to confront the real costs, you're talking about a lot of councils that, frankly, are bankrupt already. Now, then go on to the point about why is this rise happened and where is the argument coming from? One of the things that some of the people on the right say, oh, this is all because parents who, if they're children aren't geniuses, they want to think that they're special and then these specials are bought.

14:16Right. Most of the demand for these extra ECHPs is coming from the teachers and the schools because they're finding that so much, this is what I said about the head teacher I talked to you last week, so much of their resources and their time and their work is going on children who clearly need to have extra support. So I think what Bridget Phillips is looking at is how do we continue to give proper support to children who need it and keep them in mainstream education and at the same time get a proper understanding of why these numbers are going so high. I think a lot of it, we think a lot of it's going to be COVID, we don't know that.

14:53And then bring in some sort of reform that allows the system to work better, but it is go politically, this is a nightmare. Absolutely, completely. I remember it's also in a Sunday interview strongly implied that Labour would not now have the money to revise the two child benefit cap. And all this is, and I mean, let's take it back to the basics and sound more like a story for a second. Country basically has been stagnant since 2008, GDP per capita grew 2 .5 % from 1989 to 2008, it's grown by about 0 .7 % now, but we're about 33 % poorer than we would have been if we'd been on the previous trend rate.

15:35And one of the interesting things that the government is struggling with, which nobody really talks about, is nobody really knows why, it's really strange. There's a very, very good article written in the FT by Martin Wolf on this, where he says the problem is productivity, but actually nobody really knows how to sort it out. And there's a massive need for really rigorous, serious intellectual work understanding what on earth is wrong with our economy. And if we can't fix that, Labour is in the most terrible situation, which is our public services get more and more expensive. We have a more richer and richer understanding of people's needs and their real needs, as you pointed out, these children genuinely need support, their lives will be much better if they get support.

16:25And the stuff that we can offer in the national health service is better than it was 30 years ago, but we simply don't have the economic growth and the tax revenue to pay for it, meaning that there are basically two ideas out there, and Labour can't decide what it's doing. One idea is the very old idea, which is austerity, we can't afford this, we're going to cut services, we're going to cut quality and children will suffer. And the other one is to go Jeremy Corbyn on this, which is that we need to tax people more, we need to spend more and we need to become more like a kind of classic 1980s social democratic Scandinavian country.

16:58And there's a danger that's where they get driven, and it's better to get there by your own volition rather than constantly being driven there. But I also think, I think I do think, Kimmy Baylock and the Tories that are going for Labour on this, I've got a lot to answer, this was definitely in that basket marked. Let's leave it if there is a lot to sort out. I don't understand, Kevin Vaynerman, we can get on to this in a second. It strikes me that her most silly tactical error was actually she should have supported Kirstama and Rachel Reeves on their welfare reforms last week and given Kirstama a very difficult choice, which is she could have said, I'm providing 120 MPs, I can get your bills through for you.

17:37And that would have put Stimer in a very difficult position because then he would have had an option of passing his bill but doing it with Tories support. I can't understand why she didn't do that. You would know better than I, I'll tell you there's a piece we should put in newsletter, Sam Friedman who was a special advisor and go in education and who writes really well. He does, yeah, but he's written a very long piece about special educational needs and starts actually with this sense of forage and baylock, basically coming at it from a, we've got to cut the money, we've got to get the money down without actually analyzing the issue.

18:06So, can I sorry, I mean keep in truck to you, but it just maybe think about another thing. One of the things that we've learned about forage and reform voters is that they're disproportionately often people whose children have special education needs who are benefiting from sin. They're disproportionately elderly, they're disproportionately receiving welfare payments. So, one of the odd things is that forage can't really go full mask because his voter base actually really depends on the welfare state. Well, you'll go wherever the wind takes him at a particular time, won't tell you that's what he does, but anyway, I think it's the story we're going to have to come, we'll come back to the other big difference this time.

18:41I think you've got amongst the new cohort of labour MPs, you've got quite a few who are the from teaching backgrounds or actually have kids with special education needs as well. Roy, if we've got your break, can I pin you on another educational matter? Did you vote in the Oxford Chancellor's ship? I was support of William Hake. Oh, so you didn't vote for my friend Peter Mandelson? No, William Hake. Okay, and tell me there are lots of people going for the Cambridge one, apparently I get a vote in that. Who should I vote for between the ones that I know are Chris Smith, former cabinet minister, under us, Gina Miller, and Gibraxia campaigner, Sandy Toxfick, John Brown, former chairman of BP.

19:18And my Canada, Mohamed El -Aryan, who is the present of Queen's College Cambridge. And you vote for him? I'd vote for him, and of course, my Canada in Oxford, William Hake, one, so I wonder whether this is going to help my men. And why would you vote for him? So firstly, I think it's great that somebody who has a real deep love of Britain, but also has an international background is a really serious international player, loved running Queen's College Cambridge. He's somebody who was a great master of college, has incredible affection for the university. Well, they all got that, surely. Well, I was really struck by Mohamed because a lot of people, you will know people who run these colleges, who often get a little bit thrown off balance by having to manage academics.

20:02I had to manage academics, but it was difficult to do. They're extremely intelligent, independent people with tenure. They didn't want to be too pleased. Yeah, follow the results. We're not going to be very careful. So I think he would be really good, and I think it'd be very exciting to have Mohamed El -Aryan as the Chancellor of Cambridge. Who are you going for? I think John Brown. John Brown? I think so, because I think he's got, listen, I think these jobs are all about fundraiser. I don't know if you've spoken to William Hake, but I'm sure he loves all the sort of blur and the blur and the blur, but ultimately, I think these are people who've got to get around the world with education in such a parlor state.

20:34Why are you not running? Cambridge. Cambridge, yeah. Oh, you already hatched it, didn't you? I think you like it. Do you know what? I'm going to throw that one back at you. Why do people want these jobs, these positions? Well, I didn't run to be Chancellor of Oxford. No, but would you, might you next time? I don't know. William Hake will be there for 10, 15 years. Will you just be a young lawyer? By that time I'll be completely forgotten about. I'll be on the dustbin of history. I'll never be relevant to anyone. I've written another 30 books. But no, I think ultimately, it is about fundraiser.

21:03I think that you need somebody's properly networked, can do lots of leadership stuff, does genuinely think about education, which is, you know, I'll be getting lots of Christmas, I like. I like lots of... Well, they're all your mates, aren't they? Most of those people... I'm quite friendly with a lot of them, yeah. I'm sure it's difficult. Maybe I'll be able to. Pretty difficult. Were you going to go for Oxford if you'd had a date? I would have done, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then would have... I'd love to see whether you could have beat Abbasid or Ant -Chancell and had all those titles. Okay, well, should we take a break and then come back and talk about your old party in Israel?

21:33We've got quite a few questions on that. Very good. See you after the break.

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22:49Welcome back to the rest of politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell, and Roy Olliglover wants to know, given there's been so much coverage and focus on labor's positional Gaza and a lot of criticism, all well and good, but what are the Tories doing about it? Well, I think the first thing is that the conservatives and right -wing parties in general for reasons that are a little bit mysterious have always traditionally been very, very pro -Israel. But part of the story, I think, in the case of the Conservative Party, in my experience, when I came in in 2010 as an MP, is that Linton Crosby, the Australian strategist, had very much decided that one of the dividing lines they could provide with labor is by trying to make labor seem as though it was obsessed with Palestine, Corbanista, anti -Semitic, and that they could mobilize a right -wing vote that was basically anti -Muslim and use it to seem pro -Israel and challenge labor.

23:51But the Conservative's pro -Israel position goes way back beyond that. Yeah, it goes all the way back to Balford, isn't it? Yeah, it's a very longstanding position. There is a labor equipment of it. I was striking because he came in and I remember this because we sat down, didn't we, with David Mensa, who's now the spokesman, Fennet Nia, who was leading labor friends this around those days. So there's also very complicated questions about who the senior figures in the party are, where support's coming in from, and that again becomes very sensitive because there's anti -Semitic tropes which are deeply disturbing and misleading around the question of funding of parties.

24:28But there is obviously a question around funding and incentives. Let me though say that the Conservative Party, quite interestingly, is beginning to change. And one of the big figures in this change is somebody called Kit Maltese, who you might have heard of. So Kit was Secretary of State for Education. He was a close to Boris Johnson. He's somebody who pretty much you would have thought was on the right of the Conservative Party. He'd been in charge of policing. He'd done big job in London. He'd been a big champion of challenging anti -Semitism, supporting Jewish community in North London. And now he's come out incredibly strongly on Gaza.

25:06He raised in the House of Commons, for example, this is a conservative MP. He challenged the Labour Minister and said, why is the Labour Home Office refusing to give visas to injured guards and children? This organisation called Project Pure Hope has raised all the money to pay for disfigured children from Gaza to come be treated in Britain. The government has given two visas. Only allowed to and and Italy has taken well over 100. In fact, Italy is taking people who were all lined up to come to Britain because the Home Office won't give visas and the Home Office won't explain. So, won't explain why they won't give visas for injured children.