The FT’s Inside Politics newsletter joined forces with the Political Fix podcast for a special FT Live event answering FT subscribers’ questions ahead of the UK’s general election. Political Fix host Lucy Fisher was joined by Inside Politics’ author Stephen Bush, political editor George Parker and columnist Camilla Cavendish for a discussion and Q&A.
[Music] hello and welcome to this ft live event exclusively for subscribers on the upcoming UK general election and Beyond I’m Lucy fiser whiteall editor and host of the political fix podcast and we have a stellar lineup of Ft colleagues today to answer all your questions on the future of British politics I’m joined by Steven Bush columnist associate editor and writer of the award-winning inside politics newsl letter at the financial times Camila Cavendish contributing editor and columnist at the ft and George Parker political editor at theft I’m thrilled so many hundreds of you have registered to tune in to today’s webinar and for all the fascinating questions you’ve submitted in advance you can of course continue to submit your questions throughout today’s hourong event and we’ll be uploading this online if you want to watch it back later and since this is a collaboration between the ft’s inside politics newsletter and the political fix podcast we’ll be putting this out as a special audio edition of the Pod later this week well we’re meeting uh just after the dramatic development that a second Tory MP in as many weeks has crossed the floor of the commons defected to the labor party Natalie elfi making that move just before pmqs and I’m sure we’ll get into that but we also um organized today’s event to happen the week after the local elections that produced pretty dismal uh results for the conservatives now I’ve had a lot of questions in advance um from subscribers asking you to pause the uh results a little bit so um Stephen can I ask you just first off a question from Christopher rol which local Authority election results you’ve been watching for that you think really gives some hints about what to expect in the general election um so I think you know that the the ones which are the most interesting are your classic marginals redit non Eon bedworth canuk Chase uh and then harow now the thing which is different about harow to those first three is the labor party won those first three um at a Canter confirming all of the indications we have that the labor party is going to win the next election and their Coalition has returned from its quite wasteful yeah I don’t mean that to make any kind of other J but but under Jeremy Corbin in particular and also under EDM Miller ban they did very well at adding lots of extra graduates in seats they already held um what they what they are clearly doing under K stor is they are gaining they are losing some of those votes had gained uh under Corbin and Miller Band uh in the city centers and they are gaining lots of additional votes in marginal constituencies with one quite interesting exception which is and I’m sure some people who are in har would get very annoyed say this in out of London both its actual political B um boundaries but those places which actually when you think about it they are firmly within London’s economic orbit most of the people who live in them work in London or are you are you know economically linked to the capital in some way um and I think that to me has been the really interesting thing about this election confirming the extent of the labor lead but also confirming a kind of fascinating pattern of some geographical exceptions to that lead interesting and Camila there’s been some questions about what the results and the loss of 475 odd counselors by the Tories means for the party Gwyn bevon asks what impact do you think the loss of conservative councilors will have on the party’s organizational capability to get people to come out and vote in the general election well he’s sort of answered his own question brilliantly because that is the I mean there are two major impacts one is clearly morale for the party and we know that sunak has seen off a leadership challenge partly just because it would have been absurd to have yet another prime minister Who Was Not Elected but the the really core issue here is exactly what you just mentioned which is the counselors in the conservative party are the people who get the vote out they’re the people who put the leaflets through the doors and they are the Machinery on the ground and this route of counselors will make a real difference to their ability to do that in the general election and George there’s been many questions um put most succinctly by Anil Patel when is the general election going to be off the back of last week’s results everyone knows that um well I think the one thing we could be sure of it’s not going to be in the summer before the summer break there was a scenario where if the results had been so bad that there have been some sort of conservative Mutiny Uprising against rushi sunak and the rushi sunak might have dashed to the Palace to call an early election to head off this complete breakdown in his party that didn’t happen the the re Rebellion fizzled and spluttered out on on the Friday morning actually of the elections neither was there sufficient uh glimmers of Hope in the results if any at all for that matter to encourage him to go early in July so the assumption’s got to be it’s going to be an Autumn election um people talk about October my hunch is still it’s more likely to be November um they will play it out as long as they possibly can hoping that interest rate Cuts begin at the bank of England we’re expecting some better economic news this week in terms of the economy moving out of a technical recession we’re also expecting later this month inflation to return to 2% and there are hopes in the treasury that interest rates will start to be cut either in June or in August so they see hoping that might be a psychological moment that happens mini budget at the beginning of September Party Conference at the beginning of October as a rally effectively and then into an election campaign can I just say there’s one other factor that that might influence this which is these party conferences if I was advising Risha sunak I would ADV him to go in September and the reason is because labor will raise a huge amount of money at their party conference they did last year their Party Conference will be the galvanizing moment you talked about it will not be that for the Tory party Rak is not that leader so actually in terms of money and don’t forget money is quite an important issue in the elections I think there’s an argument that he might go in September although I generally agree that it’s more likely to that would involve campaigning over the summer holidays would well if you went at the end of September you could still knock the question is you know you could knock out Labor’s Party Conference which I think is a significant Milestone and given how shrewdly starma has played it he will be able to play that to the max he will have every business will be there we saw that last year it is that is where the party is Galvanized and getting momentum from the business Community yeah okay so Camila you think uh R might ruin our summer holidays um well I’m hoping not but I just say that’s one thing will be suggesting one possibility and Stephen you think he might yet still ruin our Christmas days yeah I mean I think yeah I agree with I think the scenario just say is very much the central scenario I think although I think yours right then what ought to be happening is someone going actually we have a strategic advantage of knocking out the conference yeah one of the reasons why parties when they start losing tend to you know tends to get worse before it gets better is they often aren’t set up for someone to go hey boss have you noticed and your opponent is quite good at some things and so it’s really hard to admit then you would actually be better off not having your conf but the other lot would be better at having theirs because that’s to admit then there are some things that you the other the other guys doing better than yours the thing is is January is like the non-decision decision right it’s the thing which involves upsetting no one in the party it involves not going earlier when the polls are bad now while it would be a catastrophically stupid idea to go in January often when parties are in trouble the non-decision is the one which gets made so although I think George is right the the thing which frightens me in terms of ruining my own social plans is a Christmas dominated by an election but it’s also the mccoba theory right I mean if you are in number 10 and you want to remain in number 10 question does seem like actually want to remain in number 10 I’m assuming he does but he’s having a pretty tough run of it then you just hope something will turn up now what I was interested in in the in the scores of questions we had is almost everyone assumed that we are heading for a labor government of some flavor uh before we get to the questions about what a labor government might look like uh and what might happen to the conservatives after a defeat um Taha doad Waller asked what last dis ditch effort will the Tories pull to stay in power and is there any chance it could work George it’s interesting that in the immediate aftermath of last week’s elections they sent out Mark Harper the transport secretary to deliver the message which is the message of Isaac lavido the conservative election strategist campaign Chief which is we have to have a plan we have to stick to the plan and we deliver on what people care about now it doesn’t sound very exciting but Isaac Leo is convinced that throwing out gimmicks at this stage is a completely waste wasteful exercise you basically stick to what you’re doing so I mentioned some of their better economic news they’re hoping for they’re hoping to have a an Autumn statement of fiscal event in the beginning of September where if the economic circumstances allow they’ll cut National Insurance by another two p in the pound which would mean they could claim they’d hared National Insurance contributions in the space of a year and that would be a down payment uh other than that of course we we’ve talked a lot about everyone’s talked a lot about the idea of flights going to Rwanda with migrants now um we expect that to happen before the summer holidays uh the problem for the conservative course then is we have an August where lots more people come over the channel it doesn’t have a deterrent effect and people just say what on Earth is the points of this vastly expensive policy um but beyond that we’ we’ve they’ve done defense spending they’ve done Crackdown on welfare they’ve done all the things you could kind would kind of expect a conservative government to do going into an election um beyond that I think the that waiting L will come down hospitals but time’s running out Camila Hannah Marshall asks a related question what factors and events do you think are most likely to affect the outcome of the UK general election and are there any plausible scenarios in which the predictions are wrong and labor don’t win is there a plausible scenario I mean there are implausible scenarios it’s really unusual this one isn’t it I mean it’s unusual and it’s also quite dispiriting way for everyone in politics because when you feel the weight of this it’s it means that the opposition doesn’t really have to be clear about its own policy and the government gets into this Tail Spin where they’re not actually thinking for the long term and it is actually quite a dispiriting moment I think after 13 years in power I don’t think any political party has ever won another term after 13 years so I mean for me forget about ignore the incompetence and the political instability we’ve had just the sheer weight of years to me means it really is inevitable that a government led by starma I wouldn’t say this of Jeremy Corbin is is really very likely to to win um and I don’t actually see either the liberal Democrats or the greens or the SNP doing particularly well um I think you know the local elections yes the greens had a bit of a surge the libdems have done quite well in the southwest but actually not as well as I would have expected them to do even in the local elections and I think ly enough the prime minister’s attempt to suggest there’ be a hung Parliament is far more likely to make voters actually turn out and vote for labor just to make sure they get in I mean I thought that was a very weird tactic because to be honest the tor’s best Hope was probably that everyone would assume they’ be a labor government and they wouldn’t bother to vote um in fact what this is doing is is meaning that anyone who really does want to get the conservatives out will show up so now I don’t personally think they are any plausible scenarios although you know you may have other ideas well do you I mean Stephen let’s just um turn to some of the smaller parties Camila mentioned lots of people wanted to know um Emma Buckmaster asked are people taking the green party seriously enough Paul Kenny asked how significant will the snp’s travails be to the outcome of the UK general election or do you think as Camila um suggested there will be this consolidation of the vote on the left because Rishi sunak has told people it’s going to be really close yeah I mean I think look the the big lesson of these local elections and the one before and actually even the ones before that when the conservative party was doing better wasn’t broadly speaking once voters uh in this Parliament have made the switch from conservative to any of the other choices they then seem to be treating them as pretty fungible right then they’ll they’ll vote libdem if that’s how they defeat the Tes they’ll vote labor if that’s how they defeat the tourist green voters are slightly less willing to vote tactically than live them or labor voters but I emphasize the word slightly less we’re really talking about the difference between you know being 70% likely and 60% likely so still more likely than not I think it the greens in particular have a problem then um because Rich shak’s messaging almost could have been written by labor HQ you know it’s not a done deal oh there could be a hung Parliament these are all of the things that labor wants to be able to say to people who are supporting one of the smaller Progressive parties think you for the lib dams you’ll come to the election and there are loads and loads of seats in which they are the natural anti-conservative lever I think the problem for the greens is that actually when you get to that point there are only two seats and they are the viable Challenger two and those are both battles with the labor party battles where I think they are quite likely to win both Brighton Pavilion and Bristol Central but other than that they are the party which has the most to lose from the perception that the conservatives do have a way out of this now personally I can’t see how they would and I think one of the other things we saw in this local election campaign is this was the campaign and Rich sonak wanted to fight there actually weren’t that many disruptions or noises off and the ground that he wanted to fight it was I would say fairly obviously not a good idea and it was wor they got a worse set of local election results than than last time so I would say if anything the conservatives will probably surprise to the downside in this in this general election not the upside just I’ll pick up on the question about the SNP because the projection uh from the national equivalent vote that Michael Thrasher the elections expert made which projected from a series of local elections onto what might happen to a general election which lots of election experts said was a completely meaningless exercise and and bad it was a very bad way of projecting the general election one of the things it did was it excluded Scotland because there there were no local elections in Scotland so his model assumed that label was going to win one seat that’s right in Scotland which is what they did in 2019 where if you speak to labor people looking at the problems the escalating problems of the S&P they’re hopeful winning 2530 on a good good night even more than that in Scotland and just pick up on the lipm point Kim said she thought they could have done better I thought it was actually quite a good night for the liberal Democrats they they won more seats than the conservatives which I think they they sort slightly undersold it themselves I thought it was a very strange way the LI Dem were talking about as if nothing’s much to see here but in fact they won Dorset Council which is a big really strong Tory area that’s ominous I think for the um for the reason Steven pointed out that across what you might called the near Southwest not the far Southwest where I used to work which used to be lipd stronghold brexit effect is still playing out down there Devon and Cornwall but the further you come up towards London Dorset Somerset Wiltshire gloustershire and then further in towards London place like wokingham um the libdems are doing quite well I was looking at this situation in woking it’s a big libdem Target there’s not a single conservative counselor on woken Council anymore tumbridge Wells that the liberal Democrats seize control all of those things are setting alarm bells ringing in central office there’s an interesting dynamic in the farming Community where the conservatives seem to have lost the farming vote which is a pretty basic component of the conservative vote and that is partly because post brexit they have just not been able to make up their mind on what the deal was going to be for farmers and actually K starma has been reaching out to Farmers quite effectively it’s very very interesting watching where he’s spending his time and where he’s going to well that’s good STW in the Wind on that go was on the local elections was about the the labor party won in York and North Yorkshire rak’s own constituency and it’s you know very well healed Villages pretty prosperous Farms as well up there in that part of the world for the labor party to win there was extraordinary I don’t really think the conservatives saw that coming no well let’s also um Talk briefly about the Reform Party lots of interest in how they did in the local elections but also what happens after the general election if the Tories lose um Peter Capel asked will the UK right finally split into a farist ultra white right-wing party and a moderate right of Center party should it split Stephen well the problem is is under our electoral system which given than it doesn’t look like Labour’s going to rely on another party to govern is not going to change anytime soon the parties have to be these kind of broad slightly unwieldy tribes otherwise they just get wed wared by first pass of the post to the extent that reform has any political effect in the next election and indeed to the extent they had any affec in these uh local elections they they merely sort of accelerated the trend of the conservatives losing because they took extra votes to them for their right I actually think in some ways it’ll have the reverse effect that you even saw this in this election right where you had many many seats where the reform vote only made a difference to the labor candidate’s ego right the labor candidate was going to win anyway but thanks to that reform vote they went oh wow I’ve won by loads but it will be this sort of Spectre in the conservative party of oh well look if only we’d got that five or 4% from the re formed party then we would have got 30% of the vote not 25 I mean but that you if we think about how how many sort of you know kind of convoluted reasons the labor party came up for why it didn’t have to be interested in in winning conservative votes that will be the main effect of Reform it’ll be to allow the conservative party to go actually we don’t need to change we just need to be more born like ourselves and that will allow us to win these faragi votes George what what what kind of threat do you think reform poses to the Tory party well if he looks at the pattern of local election results they didn’t stand in all that many seats Stephen was it about one in six one in six but where they where they did stand you could see the conservative vote coming down um and obviously the the other Spectre that stalking Tory thoughts is Nigel farage the idea that he makes a return to the fry in the run up to the general election itself I mean they plainly do pose a threat but dealing with it is a massive trap for the conservative party isn’t it because that you know we’ve we heard this in the immediate aftermath of the elections people like SEL bravman or Robert genrich um two former home office ministers saying we’ got to be much tougher on immigration leave the ECR all these things seem to me false prospectuses in terms of actually trying to short up your position because every time s bravman or Robert jri says stuff like this you know loads more votes are switching across to the Lim column or the labor column in other parts of the country where you have more moderat Tory voters I think one of the lessons of the local elections the people the conservative candidates that did the best were people who tended to be of the moderate Oney frankly in the case of Ben hon who won in the teas Valley someone who benef benefited massively from the big state big state funding of t-port civil servants being moved into a treasury campus in Darlington you know Andy Street an incredibly inclusive moderate conservative he lost but only just you know defying a national Trend those seem to me to be or Hollow actually another good example where Dan s a young leader of the council very moderate very highly regarded those seem to me to be the kind of people who win for the conservatives but the danger of fending off reform UK is you end up going down an electoral cold St in my view let’s talk a bit about the um the campaign we’re likely to have whenever the UK general election is and I was struck that many subscribers wanted to know about how the international um milia might affect that um Tim beel um asks uh who’s based in Belgium asks will the outcome of the European Parliament elections next month he says likely to increase in hard and far-right votes and the campaign for the US presidential election Trump’s focus on identity Politics influen the buildup to the UK general election Camila I don’t know as the answer um I mean I think the EU is really wrestling with the problems of immigration and that is sort of the unspoken issue it is the is it is one of the issues in this election um you know I totally agree with what you’ve both said about reform and that the Tory party would be very foolish indeed to move further to the right but I think it does reflect the fact that there are quite a number of people in this country who do not feel they are represented and you now have a labor party that is much more University educated big city Liberal Party and immigration consistently polls as one of the top three things people care about illegal immigration particularly um which is of course why riches got himself onto the hook of the small boats because they could see that that was what people care about because they feel they haven’t taken back control um so to the extent that the European parliamentary elections reflect that and what you’re saying Lucy is that they probably will because you’re suggesting they’ll move to the right um that may play a bit into our politics um I mean we do know I mean I think you know we know that some of the discussion that’s going on in the UK which sounds outlandish for example leaving the e are is also going on in many many countries in Europe and this question about sending people to a third country is also going on in many many countries so it may I would thought that’s probably the main the main issue that might feed across Stephen what do you think I mean paor Melly asks will any international issues affect the UK election Peter Jenkins asked whether the war in Ukraine will have any impact well in some ways the war in Ukraine is sort of the one of the most import this the most important external event in this election right like what what was the beginning of the end of Boris Johnson’s Premiership it was when the cost of living crisis started to make itself felt on the conservative party standing and the in the polls and the war in Ukraine is a big part of that inflationary shock and I think in many ways the impact of most foreign policy and most politics outside of these shes will be that indirect thing where it’s it’s not how it plays out on the Telly but when you think about it you go oh right there’s a link there so let’s take the europe-wide sort of not just shift to the right but the shift in the composition of the right in Europe that will lead quite a lot of conservatives to go oh you look the future is Frederick Ms the future is actually I mean a conservatives to say to me recently they thought the future was Sebastian kurts which I thought well tell you tell me you don’t follow Austrian Politics as closely as you should without telling me etc etc but that that will just explain to to you’re talking so he he uh was the the leader of the of the Austrian right who’ kind of very successfully remolded the Austrian right to move it in more radical and populist uh Direction this youo young young telegenic uh Austrian right right- winger sort of being able to kind of successfully keep the respectable traditional right and the rising radical right yeah together in his his Coalition and and to govern fairly successfully on those terms um there will be a lot of conservatives pointing at that kind of result and going well look they’re doing better than us like you know whatever happens in the US presidential election Donald Trump will get a considerably higher percentage of the vote than than well actually than either party because it’s a different system but but people will nonetheless want to read across from that kind of thing so so all of that will add to the pressure to move to the right but the central problem exactly as Camila says about being on this hook of the small boat isn’t the conservative party have made a bunch of impossible promises on immigration as a result they’re not trusted on immigration and they’re kind of they’ve become like a you know a junky looking for their fix you know like oh I know I just need more more promises than I can’t keep on immigration you know stop the boat so you know a Bo a plane flight will save us and it’s and you know the problem with an addiction is it always ends in the same way crash and a painful withdrawal it’s funny that today we’ve seen Robert jenrich the former immigration Minister suggesting the home office needs to be separated into a separate migration uh Department um not a proposal I expect any government of the future to take up um George what about uh UK EU relations we know that Labor’s talking about a broad-based security pact with the EU that they might interpret in a very um wide way to sort of boost economic links um Jan Blart from the Netherlands asks whether this issue of a potential closer relationship between the UK and the EU will play any role in the upcoming general election and whether it could determine the result at all I think the answer to the second point is no and no I don’t think the EU will feature very prominently in the general election campaign frankly because as we’ve report for it quite a lot on the FD there’s no interest of any of the main British political parties to talk about the EU or brexit um it’s too painful uh for the national psyche um the conservatives don’t want to talk about it because frankly it hasn’t worked out very well and labor and the liberal Democrats don’t want to talk about it because they’re trying to win back people who voted for brexit I thought liberal Democrats I thought it was almost the only liberal Democrat policy going back into the year isn’t it uh not in the short term or even the single Market uh it’s a it’s a longer it’s a longer term objective I mean you’re right it’s it’s but not in but you don’t hear the liberal Democrats talking about no I mean you don’t actually hear them talking about it but if you talk to candidates they do seem to say that’s why they’re standing for Liberal Democrats because there actually as you say there was complete silence and on the part of the other parties exactly it’s a sort of a longer term objective that isn’t to say that I think there’ll be some interesting things going on if labor win the next election with the EU relationship it’s obviously going to be tough because K starma is sticking to the same red lines that Boris Johnson stuck to and if you stick same details into the computer you like to get the same answer out the other end which is no cherry picking and so forth there’s also an interesting subplot going on and we’re talking about the European elections that as the European European countries move to the right and in a more Euros skeptic direction we’re about to elect a center left pro-european party potentially in the UK so we could end up with Britain having one of the more pro-european governments outside of the European Union but on the specific question of what K starma might do there is an Acceptance in labor circles that the original thinking was that there’s a review of the trade deal that Boris Johnson Str scheduled in 2025 2026 which might be an opportunity to revisit some of this stuff there’s now an Acceptance in labor circles that the EU really isn’t interested in a massive overhaul of that trade agreement it’s done and dusted the European Union frankly as we’ve just been discussing have got a lot of other things on their plate including um the war in Ukraine they don’t really want to get involved in a major new negotiation but the labor party does see some scope of exploring this idea of a defense and security pact with the EU which would have a number of effects you could broaden that out Beyond British participation in European Security in a more structured way when we do have along with France the most effective armed forces in in Europe and the best security um and sort of apparatus more generally um but they want to broughten out beyond that to other aspects of security including energy security border security including migration so it will be a way in which you can start to see British politicians re-engaging with European Union politics in a way they simply haven’t been doing for the last seven or eight years can I just say I mean I think this is an area where labor actually have more policy than they’re willing to talk about and some of the other areas they haven’t got much policy at all um but they talk about it a lot and and as you say George it’s all under the radar so starma has essentially ruled out rejoining a customs Union or single Market um partly of course as you say because we’ve already done bilateral trade deals with which which that Miss but but this concept I mean having built the orust deals and to be fair actually terish seemed like he has massively improved the relationship with the EU I mean the last 18 months yeah have been a complete Vault fast in terms of the UK’s um relationship so I we shouldn’t knock him too much on that um he’s coming obviously from a from a low base but I do think the Yus deal on submarines is really fundamental with the US brought in as well I think the EU can see that defense is absolutely critical in that sense it may turn out the British government’s been rather lucky that there has been a war in Ukraine I mean it’s fact the only upside you could imagine because strategically as you say we are needed the the question is going to be how shrewdly do laor and David Lamy play that hand because we have no we really have almost no cards and we know that Brussels is not interested but there are some really good people inside the low party thinking very strategically about this which has got to be encouraging I think we do have more cards than we think I mean you mentioned security and so on I mean there is certainly an interest in European Union countries having better access for their students to British universities and stuff so yeah that’s but that’s not a deal any British government will want to do George because we don’t want to let them get away with only paying 9,000 pounds that’s that’s I mean there there are many there’s a cost yes there’s an enormous cost to that one there is that is certainly true but but I mean this is I think the point we’re both making it’s gonna be very transactional as and yes but but but the big prize is can we reconnect our supply chains because the other side of this is both political parties know the only way out of Britain’s Doom Loop is economic growth in my view neither party has sufficiently explained a compelling argument for how they’re going to reach that and reversing some of the of brexit is critical to that yeah and the fact that it’s not being debated in the political conversation is really outrageous to be honest because it means that we’re just having to take the claims of both sides at face value and and investors are while investors are I think happier if they get some form of political stability after the next election um it’s still not clear how these Supply chains are going to reconnect you can understand the labor party’s position on this can’t you they don’t want to talk about this in such a hostile and unforgiving media environment before an election because the moment you talk about it you on the front page The Daily Mail being pillared for undoing the benefits of brexit I think you’re right I agree but I think if you look at where the where the polls are I mean look at the moment I we can all you may different views I mean k starma is playing it unbelievably safe he’s carrying the Ming vs slowly across the floor to Victory a lot of people La party still can’t quite believe they’re going to win I mean it is quite extraordinary and they’re very nervous but equally I think they know that there isn’t a full throated excitement about voting for K St in the way there was for Tony Blair in 97 and I do actually think I I totally understand what you mean I’m not saying they should completely show their hand but I also do think that the polls show buyers remorse people want some pragmatic solutions to the cost of living crisis and and the the problem of anemic economic growth I think the problem is that people who think like that are probably already voting labor Liv Dem or green I think that’s the the bo of political calculation but I think the key point is that in power I think they will do more interesting stuff and Beyond the security P I should have said they are are talking about breaking down some of the barriers for example having a Veterinary agreement which would break down some of the more but the tiny compared to the the deal we just I mean you know we’ve just started what four weeks ago you know finally having to pay these import chairs I mean small businesses this is the creep creep creep of what’s going on isn’t it and we’ve you know the Ft has covered this very well I mean you know we every every inch of ground that now has to be given up is really hitting business yeah and that is again that is not a conversation that is going on for the reasons that you explained well let’s broaden out this question I mean foran Shake asks what do you think will be Labour’s agenda or or first 100 days will look like if they’re elected Stephen well to be honest the labor party doesn’t quite know what its first 100 days will be oh this is one of the um you know one of the big Rous is maybe putting it too strongly but one of the the you know the the most important person in the labor party in terms of the 100 days and probably most people won’t have heard of or if they’ve heard they might not have thought about her for a while is Lucy pal the shadow leader of the house because her big job job is is talking to you know talking to Shadow ministers about what they want to do and going okay what do you have then is actually something that could go through the house of par Houses of Parliament in those first 100 days and so all of that is still pretty up in the air don’t forget for example that things like the right to Rome which lab brought in in 1997 they weren’t expecting to be part of the 100 days but the shadow deer team um under Jack Cunningham I think it was just did have a pretty compelling set of well thought through policies they wanted to be able to show they’ done something and it became something so I think at the moment it’s impossible really to tell who’s going to come through but I think the teams that the leaders office feel are really on it are you know Shaban M the shadow Justice secretary so I think there’ll probably be something about criminal justice in the first 100 days simply because that’s one of the Shadow teams that is considered to be uh making the running and doing quite impressive things interesting and of course some of the most radical proposals the government is legally obliged to consult on isn’t it so it can’t just bring forward legislation straight away um George Elizabeth Foster asks given the labor party has committed to sticking with the conservatives spending plans what do you expect will be the big changes to the UK economy and business sector under a labor government well it’s a good question from Elizabeth and just picking up what Stephen said about the first 100 days one of the things they’ve promised to do is to bring forward legislation um on workers rights and I think they will they will do that though that will be subject to Consultation business will be involved we’ve written a bit about the watering down that’s been going on for the last few months and we’ll carry on I’m sure but that will be one of the things that will be brought through I think they’re going to bring forward a Devolution Bill they’ve promised to a um take give back control is that what it’s called Bill something like that so there’ll be something something along those lines and then coming to Elizabeth’s question about the economy we would expect that to be a a budget fairly quickly after the after a labor election Victory they’re going to have to do a very quick spending review You’ve been writing about this Lucy um the current spending totals run out next April so they’ll need to address that and then there’ll be faced immediately with the consequences of adopting conservative spending plans the fact that we all know the pressures on public spending whether it’s on the Aging population or defense or decarbonization which then puts a huge amount of pressure on unprotected departments like justice for example the home office local councils so are they gonna have to everybody knows what normally happens is parties go to elections saying that they’re going to and I wrote about this this morning actually the extent to which Rachel Reeves and Jeremy Hunter’s economics policies have converged after the election it might be a slightly different picture because all governments come in and they say they’ve looked at the books Heaven Heavens even worse than we thought all governments put up taxes straight after an election um who knows whether the labor party has a tax bombshell that we don’t know about but it seems to me quite lightly if you’re going to put up taxes that your first budget will be the time you do that um and I guess they will then sort of try to you know the key thing I think for all political parties coming in and Tony Blair has been turning this to K St As you move quickly do the difficult things early on in your lifetime of your government didn’t Tony Blair say right I think it was maybe in his last conference speech so when he when he came in he had no he had huge amount of political Capital but didn’t know he was doing oh but by the time he knew what he was doing what his political Capital had gone this very much influenced David Cameron George Osborne in 2008 I mean Tony Blair said it in his Memoirs and actually they were absolutely focused on that realization that they and they drew up very detailed what they called at the time business plans for every Department that they wanted to implement in the first 100 days it’s become ever since this kind of formula that every government as you say the most power you ever have is on day one hm that when you’re the Prime Minister day one is when you have far more power actually because first of all you have the power of patronage and appointments but your power pretty much runs fairly thin from that time onwards and I think the labor party are extremely conscious of this but as you say they’re still working things out now some things are Costless to the treasury so the workers’s rights package which I actually don’t believe is being worter done very much I think this is a really open question um is Costless to the treasury now May cost business quite a lot in the long term but it’s cost there and I think there will be a number of things like that you look desperately for something that doesn’t if ideally doesn’t need primary legislation but also doesn’t actually mean you have to spend lots of money um as you’ve written Lucy I mean clearly they will do the spending review they will have to find I suspect bit more money and tax but they are slightly helped by the conservatives who have already pushed up the spending envelope on the NHS and on defense so actually the the the commitment from the conservatives to NHS costed Workforce plan which is an enormous unfunded spending commitment does make it slightly easier for them because in fact you know the architecture is already set um the question is then can they afford to uh borrow more what what decisions will Rachel Reeves make about borrowing versus tax and we don’t yet know actually one thing I should mention which is that camil’s point about ta uh costree policies is planning reforms which they are attaching a awful lot of importance to now whether whether it actually amounts to what they say it to or whether it works in practice is a potentially a different question but given the amount of push back there will be from nimes across the country they would be wise to do that very early on I would thought in there and that’s a really interesting one isn’t it where on the one hand they want to force local councils to build more houses on the other hand they want to give local councils more power I I I don’t know how they’re going to square that Circle and I I also think you know from the policies without a fiscal impact we might see things like you know aing the hereditary from the House of Lords maybe some Nanny status red tape measures on um Sugar by tills to sort of help the NHS without really giving it more money um perhaps the ethics regime overhaul that K has also promised around um raising standards in public life um but many subscribers are still uh concerned about the fiscal policies and the tax Rises um someone Anonymous has just um who’s watching now has sent in a question Stephen do you think Rachel Reeves will have to set up some sort of tax on assets to fund ambitious investment plans and I guess the flip side is that’s been asked by quite a few people is around really are we going to see any significant improvement in our public services in a first labor term given the tight public finances yeah I mean I think yeah and everyone should read George’s piece about Hees ISM I think we we we all know that um both parties are running on a set of fiscal promises that obviously just can’t be kept right because they couldn’t be kept in this Parliament so what what do we think’s changed the difference is is we know what the conservatives not keeping their promises looked like we don’t know what the labor party not keeping the same set of promises will look like I think the nowon reader is right to Guess that assets will be one of the areas that the labor party looks because in some ways what did the conservative parties do when they went oh wait we we can’t keep these promises on tax and spending they went oh let’s raise taxes on working age people who don’t vote for us anyway what is the group in the economy it’s asset Rich pensioners so my guess would be if you’re Rachel Reeves and the first thing you do is like is there a way I can get more out of the 25 to 30 to 32% of the country that’s going to vote conservative at this coming election uh so yeah I think taxes on assets will be part of of how labor seek to get out of this straight jacket than they’ve kind of ended up uh putting themselves in George um constantinos keres asks would a single term be enough for a new government to address existing economic challenges in the country and that reflects quite a few questions about just the scale of change we should or shouldn’t expect from the next government well the simple answer is no a single term isn’t long enough and um it’s one of the reasons why K starma talks about a decade of renewal which sounds presumptuous but privately you speak to labor party people who are thinking about in terms of winning two terms and a second term would open up I think a more interest more interesting question about relationship with the European Union I think probably we’re too close to brexit for a big transformational change in the relationship but I think that’s something we could be talking about and they will hope that the kind of supply side reforms they put in place will start to bear fruit and allow them in the second term to increase spending on our you know pretty threadbear Public Services the there’s an interesting question about whether the economy comes to their rescue or not now if you speak to I spoke to Ken Clark the former conservative Chancellor the other day said this will be the worst set of economic circumstan any governments inherited since the Second World War I spoke to Nick Nick mcferson who was the permanent Secretary of the Treasury for 10 years and he said he thought this would be a good election to win but in the end economies grow and you always get when there’s a change of government especially change of Government after a long time that it’s a reset moment and people and investors look at the country in a slightly different way and what are these new guys like what are they about and you know if there is a bit of a a l if if the labor going to win if labor wins there will be a moment where people maybe start to look at the country in a slight different way and you know if you get growth nudging up by a quarter of 1 perc or half of 1 percent that makes a big difference actually in terms of the amount of money you can spend on public services so their hope will be that halfway through the next Parliament there’ll be to start turning on the tax on public spending not quite to the extent that Gordon Brown did of course back in two 199 2000 um but something along those lines and um and G from there can I just address the reform of Public Services question because I think this is so important and certainly on the NHS I’m I’m pretty confident that labor will bring A Renewed Energy to the problem that West streeting really has got his head around the detail of the NHS and that he will be pretty uncompromising actually in being able to challenge some of the vested interests within the NHS and I think there is enormous scope for reform of Public Services if you think back we basically haven’t had a government that’s interested in reforming Public Services since 2016 Boris Johnson was absolutely not interested Boris Johnson’s entire prospectus was just throwing money at things and we really have as a result got I think a number of Public Services that work for the producers rather than consumers now simultaneously we know that K St has hired Sue gray to advise him on the White Hall Machinery which I think also really does need a radical research and I think some of that you can do with a bit of a wing in the prayer because you come in with a new energy and let’s face it I mean after 13 years in the pandemic the conservatives are exhausted the labor party will have at least a new energy possibly an idealism maybe some naivity but certainly with health I think there are people in the Health Service who who are hopeful that maybe something will happen and things like technology are vital to transforming the Health Service the life sciences industry and so on and we have been really really sluggish despite conservative attempts to do that because they have simply been blocked by the v’s interest within the Public Services I think West treating is a really interesting person to watch in this context as you were saying there Kim I mean he’s talked quite a lot about AI hasn’t he in the prospect he’s he’s embraced it drinking at the The Well of Tony Blair obviously it’s also pushing this AI can transform Public Services agenda he’s the shadow Health W Shadow health health it’s not even AI George I mean sorry the NHS can’t even share your medical record from your GP with your hospital so we’re not even we’re not even into Stratus for we are back in we are 1970s it systems are running our Public Services just to be clear AI is great but I mean we could do the basics I mean it’s so but what’s interesting I think about West streeting is that he’s for subscribers who don’t know much about him he’s a he’s a young sort of blairite I suppose being broadly a modernizer but the interesting thing is his own experience of Britain’s National Health Service is fascinating he had he had cancer I think was it liver cancer it was it was quite it was quite serious he had first class treatment once he was on the operating table the NHS has the best surgeons in the world but the whole process from the diagnosis through to the um getting going through the bureaucracy get to get to that point was appalling for him and it’s an experience that we shared by millions of people across the country and’s point about it being a run for the producers the old adage in British politics is only the labor party can reform the National Health Service so I think we have to be hopeful about that the Tories did try didn’t they under Andrew lamy’s reforms back in the early 2010s which didn’t work Frank they didn’t work and but then actually what happened was that Jeremy Hunt subsequently unpicked those and did start a whole new system of restructuring but I think the I think the strikes in the NHS have been really crippling to the service and the government and I actually think though that in terms of what people in this country say consistently they really care about it is not being able to get a GP appointment and sitting on an NHS waiting list and if you’re talking about the first 100 days if labor can’t show that it’s going to make inrad into those things it will be a very different kind of government than the one it’s hoping to be well someone uh watching has just um messaged in to ask are the defectors from the Tories to labor genu genuinely at odds with the party or as I suspect are they just thinking of themselves first and looking to retain their seats actually um I think we should point out that na Natalie Ali who’s crossed the the floor today and Dan pter who crossed last week um they are not actually standing for labor at the next election they’re already Labor candidates in place but is this about saving their own skin their own reputation Stephen uh I don’t think so to be honest I mean like candidly you know Westminster is a very cynical town and I think if anything Natalie alix’s reputation has probably been harmed a bit by her defecting because you know she hasn’t been an MP for very long uh you know lots of people uh you know journalists MPS in both parties will will privately say oh isn’t this about you know doing damage to R sonak I think what’s interesting about those two so there’ have been three defections from conservative MPS the first Christian W for happened quite early on in the Parliament and lots of people were going that’s stupid you know he’s he’s he’s was going to hold that seat now he’s not now he looks like he’s probably made the right decision but that was a defection which was clearly treated as an act of principle and so it landed very differently uh in in Westminster I think particularly this most recent this third defection of Natalie Eli um yeah I can’t see inside anyone’s mind so I’m not going to say I don’t think that it’s it’s sincere but I I think um that does mainly reflect uh what’s going on in the conservative party but you know actually let let’s be open-minded about it it is also true to say that rishy sonak is pitching the conservative party in a considerably different place to the territory than Boris Johnson F the 2019 election well that’s that’s certainly true um George Neil Triton asks how few seats will the Tories win and that was reflective of many questions that asked is there a flaw could this be extinction level event like the Canadian conservatives suffered in the 1990s where they practically disappeared in an electoral cycle it’s a really good question and obviously you do meet some conservative MPS who do talk about things in Fairly apocalyptic terms um it’s very hard to find conservative MPS I think anything other than it’s going to be a very very bad election for the conservatives um just being in the last 48 hours or so um whether it’s sort of uh a sort of Extinction type type election I think depends a lot on what happens between now and polling day and whether the conservative party pulls itself together and determines that it wants to fight an election so that at least it’s going to be in a competitive position for the election after this one which basically means buttoning their lips getting in behind the Prime Minister hoping the economy comes through and then campaigning as best as they can on what what they’ve delivered on the economy and so forth It’s you know you might argue it’s a flimsy perspectus but that is their best hope the alternative scenari you got a whole load of things like the defection we saw today at Prime Minister’s question time the whole sense of Decay setting in people like me and you Loosely writing stories about people Hawking their CVS around the city of London um just the general sense that this party is completely broken people hate the division they hate people they hate this sort of internal fighting that’s going on that’s the thing that really has really winding voters up um if they go into a kind of Doom spiral between now in the election then all bets are off the only thing I’d say is that we’ve and people like me have had our fingers burned making predictions about elections a lot recently whether it was the brexit referendum or the one that really haunts me was the Theresa May campaign in 2017 where everybody she was up against a useless candidate we all thought Jeremy Corbin and she was riding High there was empirical evidence that she was going to win a massive majority she won a byelection in Cumbria a few months earlier she’ just done incredibly well in local elections all all the actual evidence and the opinion pulse gester was win by Landslide and she ended up losing her majority now this is a different situation we’re talking about government which is K was saying exhausted after being in power for 14 odd years but the electorate is fickle it’s not the elections used to be decided by 5% of Voters moving one way or the other now it’s much more much different but anyway just kind long story short it’s it looks at this stage like it’s going to be very bad but I hesitate to predict how bad for the tours can I push either of you Camila or Steven on numbers or any more substantive sense of how bad it could be someone I don’t have their name asked whether it could be as few as a hundred seats for the Tories Stephen you’re the numbers Guru well obviously it could be as few as a 100 look the most alarming thing about these local elections for the conservatives is that they finished third on seats behind the liberal Democrats but they were not third on vote and that you that is I would say it’s not the only problem with our electoral system but but the thing about our electoral system is when a party becomes really unpopular and the type of targeted uh tactical voting against it becomes as intense as it clearly is to the conservatives and when its main opponent becomes as efficient in El in you know you know getting its votes in the right place as all of the evidence suggests the lab parties you like quite apocalyptic results become possible now because also British voters as GE CH have become much more volatile much more willing to uh to shop around I I’m not saying there’s not some event of P moment that can somehow mean that the conservatives win but yeah that’s kind of like a one in 99 one in 100 chance whereas I think there is probably about a 30% chance particularly given that R sonak does not campaign well that he CH you know his final argument in this set of Elections was that they were paying an failed Asylum Seeker from Africa three grand to make a new life in Rwanda I mean that if he wanted to design a policy to upset liberals authoritarians yeah I mean like and that was his chosen closing closing argument so so the very real possibility that he’ll I don’t know he’ll he’ll end end with you know like you know special FasTrack border policy for criminals in the in the general election shouldn’t be ruled out and voters are volatile so so under a 100 is possible I think something that looks a bit like 1997 is probably the central scenario right about now what’s that about 200 yeah about yeah 200 100 I think they got 160 in 1997 um so so so it it the central forecast is really bad what happened to them last week was really bad um and voters are volatile so you know n Canada 1993 is possible and if we uh assume the polls are right the Tories are um headed for a spell in opposition um Camila that probably means a new leader um I thought Tom mcclin asked it uh the question about who that might be in an interesting way assuming labor win who would prime minister starma like or not like to see as the new leader of the opposition and why goodness well a great question um and by the way just on the other point I do think turnout will matter in this election I think the danger for the conservatives that there are a lot of apathetic conservatives who don’t vote at all is quite High um and that won’t help them um who would starma least like or most like to face I mean to be quite I have to be honest I can’t see anyone on the current roster that he should be particularly worried about I think KY badok is probably the most exciting and feisty of the possible candidates um she’s very straight talking and she might be able to stand up to him on certain sort of cultural issues um clearly there is the sort of Spectre of a Boris Johnson comeback I always think that’s overdone I think Boris Johnson just likes every now and again to get attention um by dangling these things I don’t believe he has any interest in coming back um he you know he’s he’s actually quite a good performer for he’d be you know in that sense in the in the House of Commons he’d be quite difficult but his record is so shocking and it’s one of the reasons why so many conservative voters have turned away from the conservatives so I think at the moment he’s got a pretty open field but remember that we’re going to see a huge number of new MPS after the next election I mean I we’re going to see an absolute SE change a lot of conservatives are standing down anyway labor is is heavily vetting a whole new swaye of candid it’s going to be a very very I we’re going to have to do a big job on getting to know all these people and there there will be new characters there are one or two people who probably will win conservative seats who might be Future Leaders but they are not in the current lineup being considered that’s interesting and just just pressing that Camila do you think that someone coming in and there have been characters who are well known in Tory circles if not necessarily among the general public people like rert Harrison former Chief of Staff to George Osborne Nick Timothy former Chief of Staff to Tim th in May are these people who could potentially Corral enough support to win a leadership election just as they become new MPS or was it much down line I these are very both very good examples Lucy um I wouldn’t compare the two in terms of ability but I won’t go there but um they are good examples um I mean I think you know um do I I don’t think I think it’s very very rare for somebody to come in however seasoned both of those individuals were in terms of being advisors I think it’d be very likely for the party to swing behind one of them um Rupert Harrison would represent much more of a moderate One Nation Tory Group which would be very attractive to people like me sitting in the center ground um I suspect the conservative party is going to go through five years of moving to the right um despite all the sage arguments we’ve had I I think that’s where the the gravity of the party probably will be after the next elction and remember that also matters so who wins and loses their individual seats makes an enormous difference and that’s obviously what happened in 2019 I mean the conservative party lost a lot of their moderates it swung in parliamentary terms increasingly to the right in terms of those red wall SE now they’ll lose a lot of red wall sees which means some of those people will be lost you two probably know better than me how the arithmetic works there but it really depends on where the center of gravity is where the majority of MPS are sitting along that Spectrum my guess is the center of gravity will move slightly back towards the center for the reason you just gave the loss of the red wall seats and the fact that richy sunak will be putting people into seats parachuting people in seats the last minute who will be a bit more like him but I don’t think it will be moved it mov the center of gravity near enough back to the center to make a massive difference to the outcome one interesting example so is Richard Walker so Richard Walker some of you may know runs Iceland supermarkets he’s a really impressive businessman in my view he’s a very good communicator he does a lot of TV um he wanted to be a conservative EMP he the conservatives have rejected him and he is now standing for the labor party now for me that is a parable of how the conservative party has moved um Richard Walker pioneered various environmental initiatives at Iceland that really whatever you think about it are very impressive I think that is an absolute Centrist clearly Centrist able candidate yeah and you know the conservative party effectively have pushed him into the arms of the LI po that’s not great I think the central in terms of the question of what what would be a problem for K starma in addition to you the biggest problem would be his own failure to deliver an office but the the problem would be for the conservative party to get back to offering policies like the ones they offered in 2019 right and the central problem the Tory party has had in over the course of this Parliament is they took the country souring on Boris Johnson’s character almost as a oh what what what you liked was the incompetence the you know it’s almost like the problem was he didn’t party enough um and then they basically you know they’ve moved away from you know where they were on net de where they were on public services um the leveling up they’ve moved away from where they and yeah look and then look at where they did best like Ben Ben hin ran on the Boris Johnson position you know the actually existing Andy Street and the actually existing Boris Johnson government were much closer together so you look at that and you go James cleverly someone who worked with Boris Johnson has that same kind of bloky good humor than in terms of the voters they compete with and also in ter of the things that maybe K St himself not that comfortable doing in the chamber might but but is the conservative party going to do that I think they then in some ways there’s a problem that the that they imagine this much more right-wing version of the Boris Johnson government which didn’t really exist would not have got the majority it did but it that’s become such a powerful imagined force in the conservative party and it’s so hard for for moderates to claw it back at the moment I think that’s the sort the answer to the question is that for K St would like someone to be as far right as possible sorry to interrupt you uh George it’s been a fascinating discussion but that’s all we have time for today so George Parker Camila Cavendish and Steven Bush thank you very much for your uh insights and just to remind everyone watching that the next subscriber webinar is on June the 12th that’s on the European parliamentary elections and you can register at ft.com webinar [Music]