Transcript: Election special — Starmer moves into Number 10

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Election special — Starmer moves into Number 10’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
A monumental victory for Labour. Now the hard work begins. Welcome. I’m Lucy Fisher, and this is Political Fix from the Financial Times. After an historic landslide, Sir Keir Starmer heads now into 10 Downing Street as Labour’s prime minister. But his honeymoon could be short. So what will a new Labour government do with its huge mandate?

Coming up, we’re making available an FT live webinar in conjunction with the Politics Live newsletter, recorded at lunchtime on Friday. I was joined by my FT colleagues Stephen Bush, George Parker, Miranda Green and Robert Shrimsley. We kicked off with George summing up the state of play just after Starmer’s speech in Downing Street.

George Parker
I’ll do my best, Lucy, having suffered slightly from sleep deprivation and having no sleep since 10.00 last night. So what’s just happened in the (inaudible) from the last hour as we speak, is that Rishi Sunak has resigned as prime minister, announced his resignation as Conservative party leader as well. And he’s gone to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation.

And then we have Sir Keir Starmer going to Buckingham Palace, accepting the invitation to form a government from King Charles and then arriving in Downing Street to a well-choreographed crowd of flag-waving supporters, where he’s just given a speech in which he’s promised to govern as changed Labour; echoes of Tony Blair talking about governing as New Labour, talking about how he wants to rebuild trust between voters and politicians, and to tread more softly on people’s lives.

But step back slightly here. This is a historic moment for a number of reasons. This is the first time the Labour party has won a general election since 2005. It’s a huge majority on a par almost with Tony Blair’s 1997 election in terms of number of seats won, over 400 seats and a majority of over 170 — again, very similar to what Tony Blair achieved as well. So it’s a huge landmark for Labour. But one thing I would say is very important: the big difference between Starmer’s landslide and Blair’s landslide is that Starmer achieved his on a very, very small share of the vote, didn’t he? About 34 per cent compared, I think, with Tony Blair’s 43 per cent back in 1997. It’s the lowest ever winning share of the vote.

Lucy Fisher
Well, lots to pick through in that. Robert, let’s take you for the first question from Penelope (inaudible): What was the most surprising result overnight?

Robert Shrimsley
It’s a good question. I mean, I think, I suppose the biggest surprises were a couple of places where Labour had setbacks. Jonathan Ashworth, who was a key Starmer ally, expected to go into the cabinet. He lost his seat in Leicester, Leicester South. It was part of the protest against Starmer’s Gaza policy, particularly; an independent candidate pushing a stronger line on Gaza and Palestine and mopping up. And Jonathan Ashworth lost his seat.

Wes Streeting, very much one of the major figures of the Starmer administration, hung on by a hair. I think he won by about 500 votes in a seat that, again, should have been very safe. So I think those were the biggest individual surprises.

I suppose you’d say even two or three months ago, some of the scale of the Tory losses — you know, Liz Truss lost her seat. One probably wouldn’t have (inaudible) to that. And I think the success of Reform, Nigel Farage’s Reform party, has also struck us, isn’t it, as something that began to become more obvious as the campaign went on. But again, two or three months out, you might not have seen that coming.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda, that’s right, isn’t it? The opinion polls have been clear for some time that we were headed for this big Labour landslide. But still, it was a night of quite a lot of upsets, wasn’t it? What surprised you the most?

Miranda Green
I think that the upset point is right, and also because the opposition parties, although they’d also seen the polls that we all had, didn’t quite believe it themselves. So they are kind of shocked by their own successes today. I think that some of the most interesting things are actually when you look at the map, territory that has been blue forever, that’s now changed to a combination, a sort of patchwork of yellow and red and a bit of green. And this is a different sort of electoral map that we’re looking at. I mean, a county like Oxfordshire now has no Tory representation; Cornwall, no Tory representation. So I think that sort of aspect of it, the scale of it surprised me, even though there were indications in the polling.

And like Robert, I think the extent to which Reform, even though the number of seats that Nigel Farage will be able to count in the Commons is lower than the exit polls suggested, by quite a way. They’re showing across the country these second places, they’re second in 98 seats now. This makes them a serious, frightening presence in British politics, not just for the Tory party, which we know about, but now for Labour, which is relevant to our conversation about how Labour will govern.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, same question to you.

Stephen Bush
So I think it may actually. The most surprising result were the two gains the Green party made against the Conservatives, that the Green gain in Bristol Central, taking out another senior member of the shadow Cabinet, Thangam Debbonaire — a very close, very long-standing Keir Starmer ally. But that was sort of expected. That was a classic third party victory of winning a council ward, winning control of the council, eventually winning the parliamentary seat. That’s, you know, been the history of Lib Dem successes, you know, for nigh on half a century.

Whereas in those two Conservative gains, those were targets where they essentially came up almost out of nothing. They had some good council election results in Waveney Valley, but very recent. They’d, you know, not had much time to put roots in for them to win those two seats, even allowing for the fact that, of course, this is a very bad election for the Conservative party who lost, you know, everywhere to everyone. For the Greens to to break out of their inner city graduate liberal core and to gain, you know, kind of conservationist Conservative votes, that to me was the big and I think possibly one of the more long-run significant results of the night.

Robert Shrimsley|
Actually, Stephen makes a really important point, which is that the Conservatives were battered by everybody who was available to battle them. They lost, you know, vast amounts of their vote to Reform. They lost to Labour, they lost to the Liberal Democrats. So they were attacked. And this is going to make it very hard for them when they try to reconstruct and rebuild, is that they’re not sure which side the attack is coming from. It was just whoever can get them out.

Lucy Fisher
And credit to you, Miranda, because I think you were one of the first commentators to identify the threat to the Tory party from the Greens in sort of part of the eastern part of the country, rather than just some of the more progressive strongholds where Labour has held sway. Francis Pinto asks: What, if anything, does the election say about the public’s trust in the political process? George, talk us through turnout and the vote share won by the two main parties.

George Parker
Well, I mean, it’s very interesting that Keir Starmer, in his speech in Downing Street just a few minutes ago, talked specifically about this question. He talked about the breakdown of trust between the public and voters and politicians as being a wound at the heart of our society. And if you look at the results and their turnout, turnout was about 60 per cent. So one of the lowest turnouts on record overall. And, you know, the fact that the two main parties between them got, well, 50-50, less . . . 

Stephen Bush
Fifty-five per cent of the vote, yeah.

George Parker
Yeah. 55 per cent is again, a very small share and you can tell there’s a breakdown in trust in traditional parties and we’re seeing it all across the western world. Obviously we’re seeing, we’ll be seeing signs of that in France over the weekend as well. And so there’s a lot resting on Keir Starmer and whether he can deliver, whether they can prove that people can trust moderate, mainstream, technocratic parties to deliver improvements to their lives. Because if he fails, then I think the election after this one is going to be an incredibly messy one indeed.

Lucy Fisher
Yes. Robert, I mean, on the one hand, Keir Starmer now has this huge commanding majority. On the other hand, his mandate is slightly vulnerable, isn’t it, given such a low number of Britons actually voted for him — only about 20 per cent of people in this country.

Robert Shrimsley
Yeah. I mean, he’s got about 34 per cent of the vote. That’s very low. On the other hand, I mean, I think he might take it to mean that well, this is the system we have. Part of the reason why Labour’s vote share is lower is because they focused on where they needed their votes, so just stacking them up in places they normally win. And although he’s got to be mindful of this fact as they start to think about the next election, and of course, the nature of politics is that they’re already thinking about the next election even on the day they’ve just won one, against that, they’ve got a huge majority in parliament. This is the system we have. The country understands it, and they have the rights to do a lot of the things that they want to do.

And in many ways, the best defence against the the lack of trust and the potential apathy towards him is to show that he was worth the majority by acting and delivering some of those things. So actually, I think although you can’t forget this fact, it’s probably wisest to put it on the back burner in terms of Keir Starmer’s mindset. Just go, look, I’ve won. This is what we’re gonna do.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda.

Miranda Green
Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. And also, actually, Labour did very well in England, Scotland and Wales. And Starmer made a point on the steps of Downing Street today of saying, you know, stressing that kind of idea of all the nations of the UK will now together meet the challenges, you know. So he’s sort of alluding to the difficult inbox and the dangerous world and all of those things that we know he’s gonna have to deal with very soon, but with the confidence that actually, all the parts of the UK did come with him. So I take the point about the low vote share, but I think that’s actually in favour of him feeling he has a strong mandate.

Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, Anthony Scott from France asks: How well did tactical voting help?

Stephen Bush
Well, tactical voting is the big story of why the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats have had their most successful night in modern times in terms of gains on the night. You know, this is the best night for the Liberal Democrats since the split between Asquith and Lloyd George. And that is precisely because of this incredibly efficient tactical voting between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with, you know, the voters switching. And you really see this in some of the new boundaries. So, in the seat with Ranil Jayawardena, a full brief of the cabinet under Liz Truss. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the precise name of his constituency. You have a very Labour ward that has moved into that constituency, and you can see that Labour vote has clearly collapsed and fallen behind the Liberal Democrats.

In Aldershot, a military constituency, Labour have never won it before. They won it very comfortably. And again you see a Lib Dem ward clearly vanishing like airy nothing. Tactical voting and incredibly efficiency between what in another European country would probably often refer to as the left bloc of, you know, Labour and Liberal Democrats has been the big, big story of this election. That is the big difference in many ways between 2019 and 2024.

And I think a big part of that is because Keir Starmer did not scare people who are socially concerned but have done well for themselves and feel often that the Labour party can’t be trusted not to, you know, not to take the hammer to them. And that is why this has been such a successful election night for them.

Robert Shrimsley
One of the points is that we’re going to see an upsurge of conversations about electoral reform because of the vote shares and people saying this just proves how unfair it is. The flip side of that argument is that the voters do understand the system and they know how to work it to get the result they want.

Lucy Fisher
Well, some of our viewers are already asking about what happens at the next election. Raphael (inaudible) asked: What happens to the Conservative party next and in five years’ time? George.

George Parker
Well, that is a question which is already absorbing Rishi Sunak’s party because, as Robert was saying, I mean, what do they do? How do they fight back when they’re facing opposition on so many different fronts? Do they, as Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, suggested, basically embrace Faragism, become a much more rightwing party, a populist party? There’s an easy way of thinking which says if you just add up all the votes in the Reform UK column and add them to the votes in the Conservative column, hey presto, we’ll win the next election.

I think that would be a route to disaster. You had a number of ministers actually losing their seats on election night and warning against that kind of simplistic thinking and saying don’t go down that route. You win elections from the centre ground. What the public want is competent governments. They don’t want ideology and so forth.

So, you know, whether the Conservative party will heed the warnings of people like Grant Shapps is a different question, because I think it’s quite likely that over the summer we’ll see a battle for the soul of the Conservative party and they go off down the rightwing path, they wander around in the ideological foothills for a few years, grow a long, scraggly beard, look a bit starry-eyed, before finally returning back to the planes of sensibility.

Lucy Fisher
And on that, Stephen, I mean, the next 24 hours, 48 hours is recriminations start erupting. That’s important, isn’t it, as people try to shape the narrative, try to apportion blame and therefore influence which direction the party goes in next.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. And also because the centre of the matter is what the terms of this Conservative leadership election will be. One, as you say, there will be lots of people who want this to be a leadership election in which people go. The problem is, as George said, we didn’t get these votes to the right. We just need to unite the whole of the right.

But there will also be this proxy battle, which is for control of the 1922 committee, which is effectively the shop stewards of the Conservative party who set the terms of the leadership election — who votes in it, what the requirements are. And that will be a way for the various supporters of the leadership candidates, both declared and undeclared, to gain the process for their preferred leader. So, yeah, there’s going to be a lot of Conservatives trying to spike the ball, as it were, over the next 40 hours.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda, just remind us who we expect to throw their hat into the ring for the Tory leadership contest.

Miranda Green
Well, Lucy, that’s become a more interesting question overnight, hasn’t it? Because a lot of the cabinet, an astonishing number of the cabinet, actually lost their seats. So although, you know, we still very much have Priti Patel in the frame, I would say Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman. You know, Suella Braverman has been a little bit too willing to seem disloyal to Rishi Sunak, perhaps not just in the last few days but over the last few months. But Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch are probably quite well-placed.

On the moderate wing, I think it’s very interesting that Jeremy Hunt hung on in Godalming and Ash and, you know, being chancellor of the exchequer and being absent largely from the air war for the Tory campaign because he was defending this serious challenge from the Lib Dems. He hung on; you know, it was a kind of valiant fight. And even though he stood unsuccessfully for the Tory leadership twice now, I can’t help wondering whether he might be tempted a third time because of that kind of head boy sense of duty, you know, to stop the Conservative party like a kind of rush of gathering swine, you know, rightwards over a cliff. So I think that’s kind of one to watch.

Stephen Bush
I think the other thing I would say about this rightwards over the cliff is actually, to give the Conservative right their due, if you look around the whole of the continent, Meloni, what’s almost certain to happen in France in a couple of days’ time, indeed, what’s happening in the United States. All of the energy is on the nativist and populist right. So the argument that people on the right of the Conservative party would make that issues electorally successful to go down that road is not a 100 per cent fantasy.

And one of the reasons why I think it’s going to be quite hard for Conservative moderates to fight back ends is parties which have been always love any argument which allows them to go, ah, the solution is to be more like ourselves. Just that it was such a powerful aid for Ed Miliband in 2010 to be able to point to that Liberal Democrat vote and that ah, see, don’t worry, we can simply hoover up that Lib Dem vote and get into office.

Now, of course, it turned out it was rather more complicated than that. I suspect, as George said, it would also be rather more complicated than that for the Conservative party. But the fact that across Europe, the nativist right is the one with the spring in its step is going to be a massive aid for the candidates who want to move the Conservative party rightward. I think will be very hard for people like Tom Tugendhat, Jeremy Hunt or James Cleverly, all of whom in different ways would be saying, no, we need to remain, you know, or (inaudible) and return to where we fought and won elections in the recent past.

Robert Shrimsley
But I think, I mean, the issue, if you look back to the victory in 2019 under Boris Johnson, you know, he created the correct platform for the Conservative party, which was, you know, Brexity but also quite socially liberal in lots of ways and big-spending — really important, isn’t it, because actually, the Farage party, Nigel Farage himself, is all the things Stephen described. But he’s also obsessed with low taxes and lower spending, which is a less populist position.

So I think the logical place for the Conservative party to put itself is to have someone who seems quite populist, but actually isn’t quite as populist as they project. There was an interesting piece by someone a day or so ago, they said the real divide in the Conservative party is not between left or right but between serious and unserious.

And I think they’ve got to be looking towards somebody who can tickle the tummy of the people who voted for Farage, particularly on immigration — immigration is the issue here — but then on everything else seem like the normal Conservative party. And since the normal Conservative party has in the past also been quite tough on immigration, that is the Conservative party role. They’ve got to somehow absorb and draw the sting of the Faragists without surrendering all that ground they’ve lost, for example, to the Liberal Democrats. It’s not easy. And it’s not easy because they haven’t got that many great people. But one name I’d add to Miranda’s list who I might previously have discounted is Robert Jenrick, who resigned from the Home Office specifically over the issue of immigration. But his background is actually on the more liberal side of the Conservative party. So it could be that he’s facing both ways and is crushed, but he sort of puts himself in that right place.

George Parker
Hasn’t Rishi Sunak just tested your theory to the point of destruction? He has tried to tickle the tummies of people who are minded to vote Reform. He’s deployed the Rwanda scheme. He goes on about woke causes all the time. And what happens is you basically lose what Tory MPs sometimes call successful Britain. That’s what we’ve seen (inaudible) because you can’t sort of say one thing to one group of people hoping the other lot don’t hear it. They do hear it, and you’re setting, you’re basically putting a cultural wall up between yourself and the people who used to be your bedrock supporters, right?

Robert Shrimsley
If you accept the differences, Rishi Sunak was also carrying the baggage of 14 years — Boris Johnson austerity, Liz Truss, Brexit, all these other things, whereas the Conservative party will be opposing a government now.

Stephen Bush
He was also carrying the baggage of being called Rishi Sunak. I mean, one of the many bits of Rishi’s campaign that was daylight madness is the idea that an obviously successful, obviously comfortable global (inaudible) British Asian man was going to be able to carry back the votes of culturally conservative pensioners at a time when the NHS in a rut, we have record immigration and he is from a visible minority. I mean, obviously it was gonna end like this.

I think that where I agree completely with George is almost all of the Conservative candidates in that bit of the wing like are themselves they’re either obviously a bit too liberal or they’re also from ethnic minorities. And broadly speaking, we know throughout Europe there is 25 per cent of the vote which likes this stuff. Is it really willing to be led by a visible minority? I don’t think so.

Lucy Fisher|
But Miranda, can I just, can I bring in, because we had a lot of questions coming in as we’re speaking about the Reform vote, the 4mn people that backed the party. And viewers are really interested in this question of what happens next. Is it a protest vote or is the kind of populist right on the march in the UK?

Miranda Green
Well, it’s a new phenomenon, I would say, to have results of this scale for a party which doesn’t have, you know, the traditional base in local government, local activists. You know, there’s a certain amount of inheritance in some places, but not that many of the predecessor parties, which were Ukip and the Brexit party in 2019. But, you know, this has sort of bubbled up out of nowhere.

And it seems to me quite an interesting, very modern phenomenon in that if you look at — I know you’ve written a lot about this stuff, Lucy, you know how strong the Reform party has been for quite a while on TikTok. You know, it’s been reaching the parts of the electorate that other parties have not been reaching. And there are even signs in some of the polling that younger voters, who didn’t necessarily come out and back them this time because turnout was low, you know, they’re really Reform-curious, particularly young men, because there’s a huge gender divide in politics amongst the youngest age group in the UK, as across much of the democratic world. So I think it is a real phenomenon. I think it’s here to stay and it’s a puzzle for both the main parties.

Just on the other point of the cover the Conservative party, though. Where I do agree with Robert strongly is that actually, I think what you’re recommending — I don’t wanna put words into Robert’s mouth.

Robert Shrimsley
(Overlapping speech) and they’re often better when you put them there.

Miranda Green
(Laughter) It’s almost asking the Conservative party to learn the lessons of Keir Starmer’s success — you know, in a short period of time, getting elected as party leader on a platform that’s comforting to your membership and then dragging it quickly back to the centre to convince the electorate as a whole, you know. And as Stephen says it’s very tricky to find the individual who can actually do that.

Lucy Fisher
People are also still quite curious about what Rishi Sunak will do next. Cat Stokes asks: What will he do now, George? He said he’ll stay as an MP for five years, but what do you think? Does California beckon?

George Parker
Well, I think most people in Westminster think yes. They assume he’ll be on the first private jet out to California. But he didn’t. He has been saying for some time that he would carry on serving as an MP if re-elected for Richmond in North Yorkshire. And I thought it was interesting that he was explicit in his acceptance speech at his count, that he would continue to represent Richmond for years to come and would live in the constituency and so forth.

So, look, I mean, he has announced that he is stepping down as leader of the Conservative party. He said he wouldn’t do that with immediate effect. He would carry on until the party have put in place the procedure for choosing a new leader, which I suspect means he’ll be leader of the party for a matter of a few more weeks, if not a couple of months potentially.

After that, I mean, you can imagine he . . . He feels to me like a man of honour. He’s made an explicit commitment to his constituents. I wonder whether he will balance doing the work of a constituency MP with finding quite a lot of time for foreign travel and doing a bit of business work on the side.

Lucy Fisher
And Robert, what about the SNP? Lots of questions coming in about the party. One viewer asks: Will we potentially see an earlier election in Scotland, given the drastic decline in SNP seats and the surge in Labour? You’ve been up in Scotland just ahead of the polls.

Robert Shrimsley
I don’t think we will. I think the . . . And what’s happened there is really extraordinary, which is that the SNP, which totally dominated Scottish politics for about 15 years, has had a really terrible life in Westminster electoral terms. It’s gone from seat, I think it was 48 or so, down to — was it eight at the final tally?

George Parker
I think about 10, nine.

Miranda Green
Nine, yeah.

Robert Shrimsley
So, you know, it’s not a . . . 

Miranda Green
There’s some still to declare.

Robert Shrimsley
That’s what it is, yes. It’s not only no longer the largest party in Westminster, but it is miles behind. And Labour, which for years was the dominant party in Scotland, is back in the Westminster elections. Having said all those things, and yes, obviously the SNP had a terrible run of these elections. It had the loss of Nicola Sturgeon, the criminal investigations around her and her husband; it had Humza Yousaf’s leadership, which collapsed in disaster; a brand new leader — the worst possible circumstances for the SNP.

And yet, if you look at it from their point of view, trying to get something good out, see some good of this, their vote share only fell to 30 per cent. So, you know, actually they’re only three points lower than Keir Starmer’s got in Scotland than Keir Starmer in the country. And support for independence remains well over, well into the high 40s. So that base of support and the independence can’t come without the SNP winning in Holy—, in the whole Scottish elections in ’26.

So I think what we’re going to see is a very, very desperate attempt by them to get back on track for Holyrood. They’re gonna put all their focus on to Holyrood. They’re going to count on Keir Starmer being unpopular and doing things they don’t like and running against him as the true voice of Scotland in 2026. Labour understands this, and so Labour has got to find ways in these two years to show the Scots that actually, they’re better off with a big voice in the national UK government, that that works better for Scotland. And that’s gonna be the dynamic for the next two years. If Labour pull it off and the SNP are (inaudible) back again in the Scottish parliamentary elections, then I think they’ve buried nationalism for another decade.

Lucy Fisher
Interesting. And Miranda, you’re a resident Lib Dem expert, used to be press secretary to Paddy Ashdown. Highest-ever count of MPs for Ed Davey’s party. Stephen Hardwick asks: Where do the Lib Dems go next?

Miranda Green
Well, I think they’re genuinely amazed and delighted and are sort of thinking about how they hold on to to those voters and hold on to that level of support. They’re very affected by the fact that having, you know, gone into coalition in 2010 with David Cameron, that the voters then really whacked them in 2015, you know, and pushed them back to a handful of seats. So they want to make sure that they kind of use their new numbers in parliament.

And as Robert said, you know, they’re the third party again. That gives them more questions at PMQs. It gives them much more public money with, you know, 71 or possibly even 72 by tomorrow, MPs. To use all that to show to this quite interesting new, you know, patchwork of voters that they’ve secured across all those Tory territories that they can actually campaign on the issues they fought the election on. They’re quite worried.

And I thought it was notable in Ed Davey’s speeches, you know, overnight that he stressed again this idea of trust and trust once lost. You know, they lost the trust of the voters in the 2010-15 period and they’re kind of determined not to do anything as an opposition party — and one of greater numbers and influence — to do that again. So I think they’re sort of gonna be quite careful about taking risks.

But they do not see themselves, by the way, in that European way as part of a left bloc at all. So you won’t get them, for example. I mean, they’ll agree with Labour where they agree, but . . . (overlapping speech) Well, are they? No, because if you look at . . . Yeah, this is a tension. Because if you look at the territory they now represent, you know, they represent Oxfordshire, they represent large bits of, of Hampshire, Hertfordshire, this is not lefty territory. And also, they do not believe the same things at all, for example, as the Green party on foreign affairs, on tax and spend etc.. So I think, I . . . 

Stephen Bush
They’re gonna have all this pressure from . . . There will be lots of Lib Dem (inaudible). And indeed, one of the things Ed Davey, who deserves a lot of plaudits for how he’s led the Liberal Democrats over the last course of this parliament, he’s faced a lot of pressure already from, people who wanted to go. But why are we losing ground to the Greens among these leftwing graduates?

Miranda Green
Absolutely, yeah.

Stephen Bush
Why aren’t we attacking Labour more over their position on the Israel-Hamas war. And there will be lots of Liberal Democrats who want that quick sugar high of attacking the Labour party from the left rather than governing on the part of yes, the voters that they’ve won in these new constituencies are, you know, socially concerned, you know, people who are, you know, more economically leftwing than the Conservative vote that has remained. But they are not people who want to remake capitalism or . . . 

Miranda Green
Indeed.

Stephen Bush
. . . engage in many of the weird foreign policy positions of the Greens or the Labour left. But there is going to be an almighty tug in the Liberal Democrats between people who want them to be an explicitly centrist kind of Cleggite party and people who want them to be a kind of left of Labour discontent, you know, sort of hoovering up generalised discontent.

Robert Shrimsley
You also made this point early to me, Miranda, about, you know, once upon a time you would look at these Lib Dem victories. You go, they’ve taken these seats off the Tories. Once the Tories come back, they’re in a lot of trouble. The point you were making was about the demographics of those seats, wasn’t it? That is actually different.

Miranda Green
Well, that’s right. They’re different people living in those seats now who look more like natural Lib Dem voters, you know, rather than those who would just swing back to the Tories automatically. So that will help them. And also, you know, it’s habit-forming voting. It’s like when MPs rebel on the government benches. Once you’ve done it once, you might get a taste for it. And the Lib Dems are very good at that kind of Japanese knotweed effect (Lucy and Robert laugh) of digging in and not letting go when they get to territory. That’s not to downplay the internal tensions, particularly as kind of foreign policy responses by the UK get quite complicated over the next year or so. I think there will be tensions there, as Stephen describes, although I think the Lib Dem activist base is not possibly as leftist as many think.

George Parker
I mean, one of the first clashes will be on planning, won’t it?

Miranda Green
Oh, absolutely.

George Parker
Because we know one of the first things that the new Labour government is going to do is to radically liberalise the planning rules to allow more housebuilding on green fields. And the Lib Dems have already shown, from my point of view, these very worrying signs of becoming the party of Nimby Britain. But now if you look at the seats they represent — all of Oxfordshire, more or less, or most of Oxfordshire, as you were saying, Miranda, the home counties — that will become even more accentuated. And I wonder in the end what the Liberal Democrats have to offer to young people if they’re not the party of opportunity and giving people a chance to own their own home and get when you don’t have anywhere to live at all. I’m just, I feel the more they, I feel they’re losing touch with their soul, to be honest.

Miranda Green
Well, I think if they were here, they would probably say that actually, where they are in local government, they try and build quite a lot of genuinely affordable and social housing. And they actually had a bigger pledge on social housing than the Labour party in their manifesto, but where they represent as MPs, they’re not keen at all on private development, housing development-type, you know, greenbelt land, which Labour has pledged to do.

So I think you’re absolutely right. There’s gonna be almighty rows there. But I think that will go across the house because, for example, in these Tory areas now represented by Greens, the Greens also don’t like housebuilding in their area. They don’t even like renewable technology, which would help us meet our net zero, you know, infrastructure building in their area. So some of this, you know . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
(Overlapping speech) for them.

Miranda Green
Yeah. But there is . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
Drive this through fast.

Miranda Green
But they’re in territory which the Tory party would like to get back. You know, there’s a complex, you know, local fight in a lot of places now, which I think George is right will come to the fore over these planning issues.

Lucy Fisher
George, you mentioned that Labour are planning a big early move on planning. Let’s pivot a bit to talk about what we’re expecting from Labour. Nick McRae asks: The new government’s hard work starts today. What do you think will be top of the to-do list for the first 100 days, George?

George Parker
Well, I mean, the planning reforms I think we’ll see some very quick action on. I think that’s for sure. You know, growth is the central mission and everything, you know, everyone thinks that the missions were bits of a jargon and you know, no one, does the public remember what the missions were. As a framing device of what the Labour party are gonna prioritise in government, growth. The growth mission is the central one.

So I think planning will be up there. We’ll see legislation, and the King’s Speech on the 17th of July, which will enact some of the other things they want to do, and things like the National Wealth Fund, GB Energy. And also I think they’ll move very quickly to try and reassure people they’re gonna be fiscally disciplined. So we’ll see legislation to give new powers to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, setting and process preparations for a Budget in the autumn as well.

So I think those are some of the things we’ll be looking at. Also, probably something quite early on on worker rights. I think that’s going to be, you know, something we’ll see to sort of reassure people the party still has radical instincts. And yeah, I think those are some of the main things they’ll be going for sort of in the first few days.

Lucy Fisher
Mads Brandenbough Pedersen from Denmark asks, do you think the result will tempt the new government into more drastic fiscal policies than set out in their manifesto, Robert?

Robert Shrimsley
No. I think that they were quite explicit in what they will and will not, even though, you know, we can all look at what the position they put themselves in and say, well, the sums just don’t add up. They’ve made people expect more on public services, and they’ve led to believe that the public services will get better. And Labour’s giving us up the fund to do it.

I think they’ve also intentionally locked themselves in on almost all the important tax measures that you can take. Their fiscal rules have locked themselves in quite hard on borrowing. So what they’re really counting on, I think, are there’ll be some of these smaller taxes that they’ll play around with, things they haven’t made commitments on.

What they’re really counting on is getting a bump to GDP in the first year and hoping that their mere presence — and Rachel Reeves was quite explicit about it — their mere presence says to the world, Britain is back for and open for business; come and invest. Stability will encourage more private investment because private investment has been a lot of the problem in Britain.

And what they’re counting on is growth moving forward fast enough. And you know, reaping some of the benefits of what Jeremy Hunt was doing at the Treasury to give themselves a bit more headroom to spend. And then maybe when they’ve been in there a year or so, they can have another look at the fiscal rules if things look better. But I think the bad news for all those who’ve been looking at Labour is that they may actually intend to do what they said.

George Parker
And also, I think the other thing is, if you keep the fiscal rules tight and you keep bearing down on public spending in the first couple of years of a Labour government, which, of course, famously is what Gordon Brown did back in the late 1990s, it puts pressure on your departmental ministers to actually be serious about doing the difficult reforms that you can only really do at the start of a parliament, when you still have political capital in the bank.

So in particular here, I’m thinking of Wes Streeting at the Department of Health. You know, he seems to . . . he talks a really good game on reform. Let’s see if he can deliver. And I think if he goes to the unions and say, look, Rachel Reeves isn’t going to give me any money to sort this out. We’ve got to make the whole thing more efficient.

The one other thing I’ll just pick up on Robert’s point about, you know, the bump that they’re hoping to get from, you know, just being there. The other thing that Rachel Reeves has started talking about the last few days is the fact that she hopes that Britain can be a safe haven, will be seen as a safe haven for foreign investment.

And what she means by that is not just that we have a, you know, a pro-growth, pro-business new government in place offering stability, but also look around the world, look at what’s happening in France, at what’s happening in Germany. Look at what might be about to happen in America. You know, we now have a moderate, technocratic, stable government locked in for five years. Come over here. Invest here.

Lucy Fisher
And there’s a lot of questions coming in about what role Labour — sorry, what role business will play in a Labour administration. Ralph Jackson asks, will Starmer’s government include people from outside the Westminster bubble, from business, to help get things done quickly? Miranda.

Miranda Green
Well, what an interesting question. You know, we’ve seen several prime ministers experiment over the years with what they like to call governments of all the talents — the goats — and then they drag people in from the business community, give them ministerial briefs. The business people can’t work out quite how politics works, and the relationship tends to not go that well in the medium term, shall we say, to put it politely.

You know, maybe he’ll try that. You certainly find, I think, my — I don’t know if my colleagues here will agree with me — you certainly find an appetite from very senior business people to want to help and to want to contribute good ideas towards this growth agenda that George has described as being central to the whole thing, in order to get the tax revenue to fix the public services, etc, etc. But I think that that sort of keenness from the business community to get involved also comes with a slight tinge of worry about whether Labour’s actually thought through all of its plans that well in terms of what it wants for the business sectors.

I’m not quite sure, actually. I mean, I did listen to Keir Starmer’s speech as he entered Downing Street today, though, where he said he invited all of us to become part of the government, apparently, which, you know, I would quite like to take literally, you know, and move into a Home Office brief as soon as soon as I’m asked. But . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
I was thinking Sport.

Miranda Green
Were you? (Laughter)

George Parker
Minister for Freebies. First, ask Keir Starmer.

Miranda Green
Yeah. But, I’ve always wanted Prisons. But actually, you know, that is quite interesting. They clearly know they need help to make these missions work. And that includes, you know, from business.

Lucy Fisher
George, we’ve certainly seen Rachel Reeves, Jonathan Reynolds be in listening mode since the past few years when it comes to business execs. Are those sort of same executives in for a nasty shock now as the shutters go down, as the opposition moves into government, MPs change their phone numbers, not so freely available over WhatsApp?

George Parker
Yeah, the smoked salmon and the scrambled eggs may be slightly less forthcoming now that they’re in office. I mean, they’ve done an amazing job — Starmer, Reynolds, Reeves — in courting business. They’ve brought people into their orbit through various advisory panels, whether it’s on things like national infrastructure or financial services. So people feel they’ve had access. And I think they’ll bring one or two people into government, in ministerial jobs, in fire seats in the House of Lords. For example, I think you could see the . . . you’ll probably see a trade minister or an international investment minister coming in and being given a seat in the House of Lords.

Miranda Green
So goats in ermine.

George Parker
Goats in ermine. Precisely.

Lucy Fisher
Scarlet goats.

George Parker
Precisely. But your point, Lucy, is the correct one, which is that, you know, when you’re in office, the shutters do come down. And actually, you know, ministers just naturally are a little bit more wary about bringing people with commercial interests into government, lest they be accused of basically being lobbied and doing favours for their friends. So the relationship becomes a lot more complicated. But I think there are certain trusted people in the business world who they will continue to seek advice from. People like Shriti Vadera, John Kingman in the banking world, people who will pick up the phone tuned in, tuned in a very discreet way. But in general terms, yes, a lot less access.

Lucy Fisher
Robert, you said you believe Labour when they pledged not to raise national insurance, income tax, VAT or corporation tax. There are some taxes on the margins that they have left kind of open that pathway to. There are quite a lot of questions about CGT. Sandra Kiyo asks, when can we expect an increase in capital gains tax?

Robert Shrimsley
Well, as you say, they’ve left it open. I mean, I don’t . . . The issue on capital gains tax is that it’s been looked at before, the issue, because one of the central points is a fairness issue, that people look at it and say, if you earn in a certain way, if you’re paid in dividends or shares, if you structure your income in a certain way, you can pay much less tax because capital gains tax rates are lower than income tax. And so there’s a fairness argument that particularly appeals to Labour MPs.

On the other hand, in the past, when the government, previous governments, have looked at this, they’ve found that once you raise it to a certain point, above a certain point, it doesn’t raise the money that people think it’s going to raise, because displacement typically comes in. People restructure their portfolios and stuff like that. So I would not be at all surprised if we saw something on CGT.

But again, one of the points that Rachel Reeves has said frequently is, you know, there’s no hidden taxes in my agenda. So, you know, we’re not committed to it. In a way, it would be better not to do it first time out of the gate against that. If you’re gonna do anything unpleasant the start of the parliament is the right time to do it.

One of the points I’d make, though, is that Labour doesn’t have to increase taxes because the Conservatives have done it for them, because they’ve frozen personal allowances on income tax, frozen all the way through 2028 or ’29 now. And that’s gonna keep happening unless someone unpicks it. So Labour doesn’t have to raise income tax to raise income tax.

Lucy Fisher
Yes. Good point. I do wonder if Labour will move to either make a CGT increase quickly or rule it out, because I remember ahead of the 2021 Budget, when people were speculating that the Tories might do it, people started to sell their businesses. We saw real spikes, so could be unintended consequences.

Robert Shrimsley
I think if given the growth agenda they’re pushing, given the desire to get money into the country and to stop people who are, whose income is very portable leaving, I just wonder if it would, if they would feel it sent the wrong message out at the start of their regime.

Stephen Bush
Oppositions love to see the idea of equalising CGT because it’s intuitive, people understand it. It’s one of the taxes people have heard of. And it feels . . . 

Miranda Green
Think-tanks are always selling them to (overlapping speech).

Stephen Bush
Yeah. It feels fair, right? Nigel Lawson wants to do it. George Osborne talked about doing it in opposition. And then they go into office and go, oh, actually, it’s a bit difficult maybe. Yeah. And I would be, as with Robert, I assume that history will repeat itself. I actually think the tax that is worth asking about in some ways is national insurance, right? Why did successive chancellors like this deeply stupid, silly double tax that as we become an ageing population where more and more of us are still working in our 60s, it is illogical for us not to be paying, you know, for us to get an arbitrary tax cut at 65 because it’s politically easier to raise than income tax.

But it wasn’t politically easier to raise in this election; the Labour party had to match the Conservatives on it. So if I were Rachel Reeves, I might be sitting there thinking, well, look, I could stand up and go, well, the party opposite wanted to do this, and we in fact are going to merge these two taxes together, because one way that you could get more juice out, you know, more juice, is making people who are still working, regardless of their age, pay income tax on the same terms. And it gets rid of all of the difficulties of double taxation. It’s pro-growth tax measure. So I think if there’s a surprise tax later on, I wouldn’t . . . I think that would be the one I would be thinking about.

Miranda Green
Just to be clear. Sorry, could I just . . . so you mean, on people who work beyond pension age?

Robert Shrimsley
Beyond 65, yeah.

Miranda Green
So it’s not new taxes on pensioners pensions. It’s taxation on work you do beyond the somewhat arbitrary age of . . . 

Robert Shrimsley
You just (inaudible) have national insurance and income (inaudible).

Miranda Green
Yeah, that’s it. I agree with that.

Robert Shrimsley
So about pensions. The other one I still think that they will end up looking at is the tax relief for pension savings. You get to tax me for the higher rate if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer. And that again, that rubs against the fairness agenda that many Labour (inaudible). So I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not looking at that one down the line.

George Parker
George Osborne looked at it, of course, and then backed away under pressure from Tory MPs. But there’s a lot of money at stake in that particular area.

Lucy Fisher
Lots of questions coming in about EU relations. George, Joanna Rogers asks: Private investment is down because of Brexit, what will the Labour government really do to get closer to Europe?

George Parker
Well, it’s the subject, as we all know, that has barely been raised in the course of the campaign for obvious reasons that are well known. You’ve heard different messages coming from Keir Starmer on this. In the past, we’ve interviewed him and he’s given the impression he wants to really warm things up. And there are two things to answer the specific question that he could do. One is to basically go on a, you know, sort of issue-by-issue basis to try to eradicate some of the more egregious barriers to trade. So whether it’s on veteri—, food and agricultural products, having a veterinary agreement dealing with mutual, recognition of qualifications, that sort of thing, to try to make life a bit easier.

And then you can take a step further, potentially, by doing something that Rachel Reeves suggested in an interview with the FT, where you start to align your regulations. And if you go down that route, you eventually end up probably accepting EU rules, so-called dynamic alignment, having judges in Luxembourg adjudicating on cases. Now, that is something you could ask the Europeans to do. The problem is it takes two to tango. And that’s the question. I mean, do you immediately run into the problem of, the kind of problem that Boris Johnson ran into, which is if you’re not part of a single market, you aren’t prepared to accept free movement. Why would the European Union play ball?

The second track, which I think we’ll see a lot more on, and Robert’s written a very good column on this, is this idea of a security and defence pact with the EU, which goes beyond the kind of things you would normally think about when you talk about security and defence. You move into areas such as illicit migration, energy security, supply chain security, that kind of thing. So I think those are the two tracks.

But, you know, in the end, you can be nice about the European Union, you can have much better relations. I’m sure Keir Starmer will do that. But in the end, the EU is a very transactional, rules-based organisation and frankly, they’re not gonna be doing us any favours just because we’re nice to them.

Lucy Fisher
Few other policy areas I’d like to just sort of race through. One here that seems made for you, Miranda. Will or should the new government work with the further and higher education sectors to support economic growth and place higher education on a sustainable footing?

Miranda Green
So I think this is one of the areas where you’ll have an immediate change of tone from the new government. You know, the contrast with the outgoing Conservative, even ministers in the education department who like nothing better than to sort of slag off British universities even though they’re an enormously successful export in the industry and you know, world-renowned in terms of research.

So I think you’ll find an incoming Labour set of ministers will actually want to work much more closely with higher education and with the scientific research base in universities so that they can make sure that these institutions are kind of at the centre of, you know, regional hubs for skills and research and jobs and all the rest of it.

Some of that’s gonna have to, though, be doing a deal which accept some demands from the sector, which is going through a huge financial crisis. I mean, the FT’s written a lot about this. The undergraduate education side of higher education isn’t funding itself, except with mass imports of students from abroad. They’re running at a loss. It’s basically a mess. The sector’s gonna be asking to be propped up financially from the government, but the government’s not gonna want to be as hardline as the Conservative government was in saying no, because it knows that universities are important ingredient in regional economies. But it doesn’t also want to encourage sort of moral hazard by, you know, saying that they will bail people out if they’re in trouble.

It’s a really complex area of policy actually, and it’s one of the areas where Labour have been pretty unclear what their plans actually are in reality, but I think it will be a different atmosphere because it will be ministers wanting to work with HE, you know, to solve not just the economic problems, but also the sort of huge crisis coming down the line in British undergraduate education.

Robert Shrimsley
I think it’s really interesting and I think there’s been quite a few areas, this is one, welfare reform is another, where there’s gonna be this tension within the Labour party. On the one hand, I think policy, money, all the external imperatives are gonna drive them towards a not very different position from the government, but a much more apologetic tone about it. We’re gonna be much nicer, we don’t hate people on welfare, we don’t hate students but actually we’re gonna have to do this anyway.

Lucy Fisher
Well, Robert, what about social care? I mean, Graham King asks: What will the party do to challenge, about the challenges to social care, which is at the root of discharge delays and admittance and ambulance delays in the NHS? That has been kind of thrown in the long grass in this campaign by the Lib Dems, hasn’t it?

Robert Shrimsley
Yeah. I mean it’s a central issue for all the reasons you describe, which is that it’s this immense blockage in the health system. At its root, this is a desperately underfunded sector. I mean, there’s no way around this fact. It’s just not . . . People are not paid enough. Councils who have to support . . . The funding will come through local councils. They don’t get the support from central government to ensure the level of care that is required and the quality of people.

And so you get people, you know, people are pulled into this sector, and then they realise they can have an easier life working at a call centre, and they’ll probably get paid better as well. So it’s become completely reliant on immigrant labour, which at the same time now the government’s trying to crack down on. The only clear-cut policy I think I’ve seen from the Labour party is that it’s going to pay these people more, which is probably a very good idea.

But again, you immediately come to, OK, where’s the money coming from? Unless you’re going to allow local councils to raise more money themselves. And so one of the things we saw, particularly with George Osborne, was a way of we haven’t increased your taxes, we’ve let somebody else increase your taxes. So you could see a bit of that. I think Labour is still committed to resolving the issue of the cap on spending that, you know, cause eventually. If you, say, have dementia, you go into a care home for years and years and years and you have a house, there can be a charge on your house, you could lose all your savings.

I think Labour’s committed as well as previous governments to putting a cap on that so you don’t lose all your savings. But again, detail’s vague, timing’s vague. So it’s another one of those, there’s a major problem and we’re sort of waiting to hear how it’s gonna be fixed.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, Luke Hidveggy from UK asks: Do you think that this Labour government will descend into factionalism like so many Labour governments of the past?

Stephen Bush
Well, yeah. The Labour party’s greatest enemy historically is itself, and I don’t anticipate that will change. So I don’t think it will be factionalism of the kind of left vs right kind. But they have these very tight spending reviews. There are various crises across the public realm, and there are issues which really animate Labour politicians. Welfare is one, the justice system in particular is another. And of course, that’s something that is particularly close to Keir Starmer’s heart. I was joking recently with a, possibly a junior minister in that department who was saying, oh, well, the slightly strange thing is the, you know, the boss has lots of opinions and you kind of, you think your policy is gonna be one thing, and then oh no, the boss wants it to be another one.

And these rows over quite limited amount of money are going to be quite fierce. Yes, the majority is very large, but I think we perhaps as a trade have slightly over-indexed on the Conservative party’s divide, where you tend to have these weird sort of Balkanised factions of about 10 or 15. So if the majority is bigger than that, you can just ignore them. Whereas in the Labour party, you have these big waves and there will be these big waves of revulsion against two-child limit, against not putting more money into the prison system, against not fully funding the NHS workforce plan. And yeah, so I think rows over spending are going to be a big, big part of the Labour government.

Lucy Fisher
George, Ishbel Mattson asks: Which manifesto pledge will Labour break first?

George Parker
That’s a really . . . Come on, help me out, guys.

Miranda Green
How about House of Lords reform or something like that? Or I can’t . . . (Overlapping speech)

Lucy Fisher
You don’t think they’re forging ahead with getting rid of the hereditaries, at the very least?

Miranda Green
Would it be good if they did because it’s another cost-free, you know, immediate change. I can’t remember whether they actually explicitly said they wouldn’t do anything more dramatic on House of Lords or the . . . 

Stephen Bush
Well, they’re gonna get rid of the heredi— for state politics . . . 

Miranda Green
. . . Constitution until a potential second term.

Stephen Bush
They’ve got to fix that problem of not having a . . . 

Miranda Green
They need the vote. That’s right, yeah.

Stephen Bush
I actually think that we’re often really cynical about manifestos, but most manifesto promises are kept. Even the Liberal Democrats, when they were the minor party in the coalition, implemented 80 per cent of their manifesto. Like one of the reasons why the Conservatives have done so badly in this election is it’s really, really rare to have a situation in which a party runs on one thing, turn, then comes back to the country and four years later goes like, yeah, we didn’t do the 40 hospitals, immigration’s gone up, we haven’t done the policing stuff.

Miranda Green
Levelling up, levelling up.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, that we haven’t levelled up. That is incredibly rare. I think, however, the problem for Labour will not be them breaking any of the letter of what’s in that manifesto. But look, the spirit of the manifesto is, if you call an ambulance, it will arrive. If your bike is stolen, the police will actually, you know, at least make a token effort to catch the criminal. You will stop having to buy bottled water because the stuff out of the tap isn’t safe, and people expect a general improvement in the condition of Britain.

And the policy promises Labour have made have largely been about tangible things that you can pick up and touch, because they’re designed to put on a leaflet. Look, I don’t wanna dismiss the importance of NHS dentists. They are, of course, really, you know, really important that if you can’t get one it is a pain in the neck. But in terms of the big problems of the NHS, is that dentist pledge going to fix it? Probably not. So I think Labour will keep pretty much all of the promises in their manifesto, but will it achieve the kind of, the feeling of change?

Robert Shrimsley
Another one I sort of wondered about . . . Sorry, go on.

Miranda Green
No, no, I was just gonna say before we had these amazing results, I would have said perhaps on some of the immigration-tightening pledges, because, you know, this trade-off between economic growth and cracking down on immigration is really considerable. I mean, we talked about the social care crisis. The visa awards for social care have fallen off a cliff. You can’t have an immigration crackdown and starve your public services and have growth in the economy. However, of course, what we’re now looking at is, you know, Reform in second place in 98 seats, the Labour party a bit spooked about how they respond to that. Anyway, I wonder if that sort of set of promises around keeping immigration low is gonna have a lot of scrutiny on it, and then a lot of terror about breaking those pledges.

Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ve only got a few minutes left. But Carolina Saludes says, “Love the pod. You guys are the best politics team around”. So thank you . . . 

Miranda Green
What a good question.

Lucy Fisher
 . . . Carolina, for the vote of confidence. But she wants us to do a little bit of crystal ball-gazing and asks: What do you think we, as in public discourse, will be talking about in 12 months’ time? Stephen?

Stephen Bush
We’ll be talking about some kind of crisis in a bit of the public realm. Maybe it’ll be prisons, maybe it’ll be a university keeling over and asking for money. But there will be some form of unexploded bomb in the public realm, and the Labour party will be going, we inherited a mess and we couldn’t possibly have known about it. The Conservatives under their new leader will be going, oh, it’s your fault, you’ve mismanaged it. You know, this is what always happens with Labour. And the parts of the media will be taking different sides. I think it will be . . . Yeah, it’ll be some form of crisis in the public realm.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda?

Miranda Green
Maybe some terrible, you know, crisis in our diplomatic relations with America. You know, if Ukraine looks bad again, if Trump wins the presidency and American support for the Ukraine war, if it starts to crumble, I think that could really start to dominate. And defence spending. You know, there’s no money and we have to try and ramp up defence spending because of the changes in the world around us. I think that’s gonna be huge.

Lucy Fisher
Robert?

Robert Shrimsley
Yeah, Miranda slightly (inaudible) I think Trump. What we’re gonna be talking about is Trump. You know, it really does begin to look like he’s going to win the US election. And that’s going to change everything. And it’s going to dominate western politics and it’s going to throw up all kinds of odd, you know, bombs for the Labour party because A, all of its members hate him and yet British government policy is to find a way to work with America. And at the same time, Britain will find itself in a mid-Atlantic position — neither in the European Union nor all that comfortable with its major Atlantic ally. So I think Trump is gonna dominate the discourse in 12 months.

Lucy Fisher
George?

George Parker
I agree with Robert on that, but I think probably, I think it was Stephen’s point. Public sector pay, I think, is gonna be something, you know, in a year’s time, you know, probably heading into not this winter but the one afterwards. You know, public sector unions thinking that the incoming Labour government owes them something after years of being nailed down by the government. So I think there’s that.

And I think probably in a year’s time, there will be discussions going on between London and Brussels about some kind of improved deal to make good some of the botching of the Brexit deal of Boris Johnson, as Keir Starmer likes to put it. In that case, I sort of dread to sort of think we’ll be back into that whole sort of thing of sort of detailed line (inaudible). But our colleague Peter Foster of course will love this. (Laughter) He will like no story more than that. I think the Labour party got to manage that carefully, ‘cause I don’t think the public wanna hear about it. They wanna see some results, but they don’t want it on the front pages of newspapers every day.

Robert Shrimsley
I’ll tell you one other, I will mention, and it’s absolutely in their manifesto, so it’s tricky for them to get out of it. But the votes for 16-year-olds, I just wonder if they’re gonna look at the . . . I mean, they’ve explicitly said they’re going to do it. So I guess they are. But I just wonder how many of their MPs are gonna look at the results this week and go, hang on, do I want to give the vote to people who are likely to vote Green, or maybe can be seduced by Reform’s TikTok policies? I just wonder if they’re gonna have any second thoughts on that.

Lucy Fisher
Interesting.

Miranda Green
Lucy, what do you think?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Well, I’m saved by the clock. (Overlapping speech) tell me we’ve got 30 seconds left, so we will come back to all these questions or more every week on the Political Fix podcast. Stephen, daily you’re grappling with your incredibly insightful and well-researched columns for your Inside Politics newsletter. But for now, my thanks to George Parker, Robert Shrimsley, Miranda Green, and Stephen Bush. Join us again soon for the next FT live webinar.

And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Audrey Tinline and Manuela Saragosa. Mix by Odinn Ingibergsson with original music by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll be back in your feeds on Tuesday lunchtime.

[MUSIC PLAYING]