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The Chancellor of the Exchequer. Getting a lesson from the Shadow Chancellor on how to balance the books is like getting a lesson from Dracula on how to look after a bloodbath. Ed Balls. As steady as she goes budget. What kind of ship does he think... Welcome to EMQs from Political Currency. With Ed Balls and George Osborne.
So hello and welcome to another episode of Ex Finisters Questions, EMQs. We are so grateful for all the questions, particularly the voice notes you send in. And let's be honest, we're also grateful for your votes because we are still... basking in the glow of being. And let's be honest, for me, and especially for George, the first time ever, we are the people's choice.
Well, I think we were the people's choice of various elections, weren't we? But I agree. We weren't expecting to win, were we? And of course, we are now the current holders, which is something we can say for the next 51 weeks of the year. Maybe we should start every one of our episodes by just reminding people. When you buy a TV, it's like, you know, Best Buy is a 2025 TV.
Yeah, but don't also forget, you know, Norwich City won the Milk Cup in 1985 and we still go on about it. I mean, you know, you can go on about your victories for quite a lot of years. Exactly. Beat Sunderland 1-0. There we are. Well, good on you. Now, listen, I want to start actually with a bit of sad news. I mean, really sad news. There's a wonderful, wonderful man called Milburn Talbot, who was a doorkeeper at the House of Commons.
And he has sadly died. And his widow, Christine, who I know very well, and I much love them both, alerts me to this. And he was one of the, so the doorkeepers, you know, they're the people in those magnificent outfits, the kind of tailcoats and they, essentially they are, you know, they've got a really important job to do, which is.
protect the house of commons the kind of last line of defense if anyone's trying to run in there or cause trouble there and you know he was a wonderful guy i used to chat with him as i went in and um and we used to laugh about things and so I just wanted to use the opportunity to say to Milburn, if he listens to us up this podcast somewhere up there in heaven, thank you for looking after a young Tory MP who turned up.
and needed some guidance. And thank you for being such a good friend over the years. Now, I know Milburn... you know, loved this podcast because he also loved politics. Of course, the people in the House of Commons, they're, you know, they've got to be totally neutral and everything, but they're keeping an eye on all the conversations that are going on. And so he would have wanted us to get on with the show.
question comes from fergus from abuja hi and george fergus here calling from abuja nigeria where I'm working on a foreign office funded development project, supporting the Nigerian government with infrastructure and power sector policy reform. My question... is what role does international development funding play in the new world order? Do you think that Britain will recommit to 0.7% of GDP funding for international development?
in this government or the next? And do you think that the Department for International Development will be re-separated from the Foreign Office like it was during both of your governments? Well, that is a cracking question from Fergus. And also, we were talking last week about our international audience, scores of countries around the world with listeners. And to get one from Abuja this week is excellent. I've been to Abuja.
a few times in my life when I was a young Financial Times journalist. I did a lot of work in Nigeria, amazing country. Good to see, Fergus, that you are helping them with development and infrastructure. I'm going to answer the question. quickly and then see what George says. I'm going to say, first of all, at a time when the world is becoming more integrated and we're dealing with problems in our climate or because of migration.
which are often, um, driven by events in other parts of the world, and those pressures are going to keep rising, I would say that if anything, for countries like ours in the coming decades, there will be more self-interest for us as a nation. do more on this kind of development spending. So I'm not sure whether it's about getting back to 0.7. I wonder whether in the decades to come, we're not going to be needing to spend more than that rather than less.
I think it's unlikely to be portrayed as aid in the old sense of, you know, we are simply doing that in order to, you know, for altruistic reasons to help other countries develop is much more likely to be seen as.
an arm of foreign policy or security policy or climate policy. And so in saying this, I know I'm going to upset Gordon Brown and quite a few other people, but I think the International Development Department was... really important in its time, but I would think it now being part of the Foreign Office is likely... to be where it stays, because we will see that international spending, that aid spending in that sort of broader foreign security climate context.
Yes, I kind of half agree with you. So I don't think that anyone is going to recreate the Department for International Development. And if there was ever going to be a moment, it was, of course, the change from the Conservatives to the Labour government. So Keir Starmer could have... reintroduced DFID but didn't and so therefore I think there's now a cross-party consensus you should keep it keep aid and
other aspects of foreign policy and relations with other countries together in one department for the reasons that you precisely set out. And I think actually the fears which I shared at the time about... Ditching DFID have been a bit overblown and we have probably a bit more coherence about how we approach countries now. So that's the first point. Second, yes, you're right that we should be...
looking to deploy British financial power and soft power around the world in conflict prevention and tackling the causes of illegal migration and so on. I guess I'm less optimistic than you are that we're ever going to get back to... point seven percent or more you know already that the target was come off by the conservatives by i think rishi sunaka's chancellor was the person who did it and you know
evoked the ire of david cameron at the time and i was pretty cross because we achieved it you know even in a period of austerity it was a big big achievement of the cameron coalition government that we reached 0.7 which of course is the un target that everyone had signed up to i don't think we're going back
And if anything, of course, it's become a kind of Whitehall game because loads of domestic spending now on things like housing asylum seekers is counted as international development assistance. I think, you know. It's important we don't lose sight of the altruistic goals, the sustainable development goals. That's what they're called. Because ultimately you can't provide food and clean water and opportunities for women and the like. Then you do create these societies.
which are dysfunctional, which lead to the migration flows that cause such disruption in Europe and in our own country. And so, yes, let's have a pragmatic department in Whitehall. Let's be realistic about spending. Let's not lose sight that there's a reason for doing this that's both in our own interest, but ultimately also just in the interest of being good citizens of the world. There you are, Fergus. Very good answer there from George. I think he sort of...
He leapt over me with his internationalist altruism. Not for the first time. Maybe not for the last time. Our next question is from Judith. Hi, Ed and George. I love your podcast and look forward to hearing your views. Please can you tell me if you think that the political parties can work together in essential areas in order to get good results for the whole country instead of thinking that it's a good idea when in government.
then say it's not when in opposition, for example, the NHS and social care. Many thanks, Judith. So Judith, look, we've said this before, every reform which lasts... only lasts because it becomes cross-party, bank independence, the minimum wage. Quite often they're contested at the time. You don't have to have agreement for something to end up being agreed. On the other hand, there are times when...
agreement is really important and that can be about issues of national security. We've talked before about agreeing on the royal finance reform. I would say on something like social care, very hard to really start to drive change unless you feel as though... all parties are agreeing. I wonder though, at the moment it feels as though that's harder. You know, if I look at the Conservative leadership facing reform on their right flank.
I sort of feel as though it's a bit harder for them to agree with Labour because if they do, they leave themselves vulnerable to an attack from reform. I wonder whether, even on national security at the moment, it kind of feels as though they don't... want to agree if they can possibly avoid it. Heathrow is a test case. Social care is a test case. Is it in Kemi Badenoch's political interests ever at the moment to agree?
with Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, or does that just leave her vulnerable to reform to the right? Well, I would say all oppositions are pretty ruthless in the pursuit of what is in their interest and is going to help them get into office.
Really smart oppositions work out that sometimes agreeing with the government is actually a better thing to do than opposing the government and is likely to make people think, oh, you'll be a more sensible and serious government. One of the things that Tony Blair did... when he was opposition leader, was he was the first Labour opposition leader not to vote against the renewal of the prevention of terrorism legislation, which...
The Thatcher government had introduced and a succession of Labour leaders had always voted against on sort of civil liberties ground. And the fact he changed his tune on that.
back in the 1990s, was like, oh my God, this guy's actually pretty serious. And he's also learned from, you know, the mistakes that Labour made in opposition. And the Cameron opposition, you know, quite deliberately after a period when... all the previous story opposition leaders had just like opposed the things that Labour.
had done in government. He supported Tony Blair on academy and trust schools. Ruth Kelly was the education secretary at the time. And he also supported Tony Blair on the renewal of Trident, which I guess was...
relatively easy thing to do as a Conservative leader, but nevertheless was sort of showing he could act in the national interest. So, you know, there's often a political advantage for smart oppositions in doing that. And to be fair to Kemi Baidnock, she seems to have said she'll support Heathrow. But do you think she would support on... terror legislation at the moment well i don't know because you know i remember michael howard had been a pretty tough
Home Secretary, leading me and many other backbench Tory MPs at the time into the opposition lobbies against some of Tony Blair's terrorism legislation and David Blunkett's terrorism legislation. Often oppositions are sort of seduced by the kind of civil liberties argument in these cases.
I would say a slightly different point, though, also to Judith, which is, you know, politics is not a bad thing. And, you know, parties being motivated by their self-interest can create quite a kind of competitive market where the best ideas are thrashed out where genuine differences in society are articulated. You wouldn't want a parliament where everyone agrees the whole time because you would get a kind of soggy consensus where real differences were not aired.
And in my view, it's the best ideas. that achieve that cross-party consensus. We actually have a huge amount of cross-party consensus, that we should have an NHS, that we should have state-funded education, that we should have an army, that income tax should exist. And so these things were very controversial in their time.
believe it or not, when they were introduced in different ways, and consensus emerged. And we argue at the margins, really. It doesn't feel like that because they're the current issues, but we argue at the margins about things. And even in recent years, big controversial issues like should students pay... tuition fees that's become consensus no one's arguing about getting rid of that anymore should we have a minimum wage as ed mentioned that's not controversial anymore
Should we have auto-enrollment into pensions? That's not controversial anymore, even though it's a tax effectively on many people. Should we have an increase in the pension age, something that's controversial in many European countries? Not in Britain. So there's quite a lot of consensus that's emerged, but it's...
sense is driven fundamentally by the self-interest of parties thinking what's in the best interest for them to advocate and sometimes that is i'm going to agree with the other guy great question judith and um we're going to come back with a question about um which is going to be a bit nostalgic for george and i question from Matt. But before we do, let's have an ad break.
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Good morning George and Ed. Loving the political currency programme, regular listener every week and just joined as a gold member. I would like to know your thoughts on what it was like to be interviewed by Andrew Neil. and why such a brilliant interviewer, on top of all the facts and details, holding politicians to account, has not got his own primetime interview slot. Thank you.
I've no idea why he's not got a BBC prime time slot. I always really liked being interviewed by Andrew Neil. What did you think? Well, it was a really tough interview. I actually tried to avoid it generally when I was chancellor, but I did do it during the referendum and it was an interview I put on a lot of preparation. And it's interesting, Andrew, by the way, is sometimes disobliging about me at the moment and my role in the sale of the Daily Telegraph.
Because I remember you and I being on his show on Channel 4 for a year or so. I don't mind. It was great. I don't mind. He's very entitled to his views and it doesn't... change my view that he yes he's a very good interviewer but i i think the kind of answer to matt's question is in some ways he's too good an interviewer so bat
and it wasn't that long ago, back when Ed and I were frontline politicians, you know, if you didn't do the Andrew Neil interview, or if you didn't do the Today programme interview at ten past eight, or if you didn't do Andrew Marr on Sunday morning as it was for us back then, or...
Laura Koonsberg as it became, you know, you were sort of seen to be kind of ducking the challenge. And also you were missing a big opportunity to get your message out. And now I think a lot of politicians say, well, why am I going to bother with that, frankly? You know, I mean, certainly.
We've had politicians like Boris Johnson who took that view because they said, look, you know, I can reach my supporters through my social media accounts. I can talk to the voters directly. I don't need to be mediated anymore. by someone giving me a hard time on television or the radio. And it's a big, big challenge, not just to the broadcasters, but...
sort of more broadly to the way the kind of democratic system of interrogation works. And it means that interviewers fundamentally have to sort of, some of them, I don't think you're going to get a new sort of generation of Andrew Niels.
Because fundamentally, they're not going to get people who turn up on their show. And that's what I think ultimately did for Newsnight as the sort of big evening political show. It became sort of too much of a kind of... all these politicians why is this lying politician lying to me now questions and the politician said well i don't need to put up with this anymore i'm gonna go find some other outlet so you know i think
It's probably an age that is passing. I would say one thing, though, Ed, of course, you know, Channel 4 cancelled Andrew Neil's show, which we were both regulars on. And at the time, I think we were very disappointed, and Channel 4 did it, I think, for reasons of budget cuts, not because they didn't think the show was good. It was, however, the making of this podcast, wasn't it?
Because you and I said, it's such a shame the show's been cancelled. We quite enjoyed this sparring with each other and discussing issues with each other. Why don't we do a podcast? So every dark cloud has, in this case, an enormous...
you know, award-winning silver lining. Thank you, Channel 4. Sorry, Andrew Deal. And look, the truth was, it was a bit of a pain going down to record it on a Sunday morning every week. But then, you know, a bit like... going on news night um at 10 30 quarter 11 at night was a bit of a um a pain it was on quite late i actually think um
The unusual thing about Andrew Neil, by the way, the one thing I never liked with Andrew Neil ever was being interviewed by him down the line, you know, where you are not in the studio, but off in some other location, because he was really bad at sort of, you know, sparring with the other people in the room to kind of...
have a go at you that was the only thing I never liked about his interviewing but I what he was was an interviewer who knew his stuff listened to what you said never let you get away
with simply using prepared lines and soundbites. It was genuinely a conversation. But I think you are right that if there is choice and other outlets, and you simply go for... being very heavy and aggressive, people aren't going to go on your show, but somebody who's not being heavy and aggressive, but listening and asking difficult questions, but letting you answer them and using that as a way of allowing you to really explain.
You know, I think that's a great kind of interview to do. And I think the Andrew Neil of 20 years ago, the Andrew Neil of the Jeremy Paxman era... maybe even the Andrew Neil of your period as Chancellor, was more aggressive interrogating. And as time went on, I think he did. kind of give people the space to answer because he knew that he had to give people the kind of interview they were willing to come on and do. But any politician who comes on to do a Patsy interview isn't worth...
worth their salt. And part of being a good politician is being able to answer the difficult questions. You can answer the difficult questions from Andrew and Neil if you wanted to. And to be honest, the interviews I found the hardest were the interviews from somebody who didn't listen to what...
you say and they would ask questions completely out of left field totally unrelated to what you've just said and you would sit there thinking what where did where did that come from and so uh i always i'd like to be interviewed by jeremy paxman and
Andrew Neil I thought they were great interviewers and you know I still like to you know I don't agree with everything in Andrew Neil's comment columns in the the newspapers but I think he's a top class broadcaster but we don't mind being interrogated by our gold subscribers do we and we don't we don't mind being targeted by all of our lists so as a result on to the next question hi ed and george uh sarah from london here
I always look forward to political currency and love hearing your anecdotes about your time in office. In one of your earlier podcasts, Ed referred to a... professor at harvard telling him to think the unthinkable and that stuck with me particularly as politics is so turbulent around the world at the moment and my first thought and question is has democracy failed
And my second question is related, depending on your view of Trump. What happens if Trump's policies are a huge success? Would he become more extreme? And would his success make Farage more popular here? with the possibility of reform obliterating the Tory party and taking many seats from Labour in the next general election. Thanks, I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Shall I have a first go at this?
So first of all, I'm not sure democracy has failed, Sarah, at all. I mean, quite the opposite, actually. I think in the United States, we had a peaceful transition of power from one administration to another. And in Britain, the same thing happened after many years of the Tory government.
And even in India, where people were expecting Prime Minister Modi to have somehow kind of rigged that massive democracy, maybe I'm being unfair in him, but that he had such a sort of grip that he would get a big majority, actually that... amazing, vibrant democracy, reduces majority a little bit. So I think democracy is functioning, but of course, it's under huge challenge from lots of alternative models, such as you find in Russia and China and elsewhere in the world.
As for the United States, I mean, I'm going to say something which you probably don't want to hear, Sarah, which is don't we want Trump's policies to succeed? I mean, it's in all of our interests that the U.S. economy grows. It's in all of our interests. that the sort of bitter arguments about immigration in the United States are somehow resolved. And if he says he can resolve them, you know, fine. We'll see.
When I say resolve them, achieve some kind of consensus that the government's got to control immigration. In Ukraine, here's probably the most controversial thing. I mean, you know, no one wants... people to go on dying in a war if he can find some kind of solution that guarantees ukraine's security going forward don't we want that to be the case i mean i think the trouble of being a kind of anti-trumper is you end up saying
Or rather, a never-Trumper. You could be totally against him. You can say, I'd never ever vote for him. You may not like his personal methods. But if you want him to fail, he is going to fail as the President of the United States.
And as failing as the President of the United States, that means the rest of the world is going to suffer as well. Very interesting. I don't know whether you saw, Sarah, that there was a poll in the Times last week, I think, asking Gen Z what kind of outcomes they liked from politics. And rather...
striking proportion and thought dictators might be quite a good thing. So I'm not sure what that tells you about the state of democracy, but it certainly means that democratic elected politicians need to do well and persuade people that they can do well if we're not going to see more dictatorial style of politics. But last week we talked, I was asking whether we'd reached peak Trump.
and wondering whether the reality of decision-making would work in his favour. And then, of course, we had those huge kind of freezers cancelling of federal funds. There's going to be rather a lot of Americans relying for jobs or for services.
on federally provided services from funds which have suddenly been curtailed. He'll be now thinking, how is this going to affect my life? And I think this then goes into the way it works from a reform point of view. If Trump is successful... having thought the unthinkable, cancelled federal funding for this or that, done very tough things around.
tariffs or immigration and forced repatriation and then is successful then you are right that is destabilizingly empowering on the other hand if you see big restrictions in healthcare or rises in the price of drugs or the stock market falls, or you have sort of trade wars, which are bad news for the global economy, then maybe the shine comes off. So I think from a reform point of view... They need people to feel as though his policies have succeeded rather than simply him announcing.
policies which they would like to announce here and um who knows if that's how things are going to turn out look obviously i want the american economy to succeed in the next few years but um i don't know if it's uh going to and you know as i'm answering that question i can hear the young osborne kids the voters of the future
laughing and playing in the background. They're clamouring for bath time. They're getting bored of their dad being on this podcast. I think we're almost done, aren't we? Is there one more question to do? We'll take an ad break and then have one more question. During which George is going to get some order in the Osborne. I've had a few. Jimmy was my first. He was gorgeous and gave me so much space. Then there was Lorenzo. He was exciting, but also reliable.
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is from Malcolm. And I know Malcolm well, but I'll explain why after this. Hello, George. Malcolm Goodrum here. In my former life, an advisor to Conservative MPs and Ministers. and in my second life an advisor to investors about economic and policy risk for a firm based in london called elgin advisory so i have a couple of things you and ed may want to reflect on first
While the announcements and headlines may succeed in changing the economic narrative for this week, will they change the economic and political fundamentals for this parliament, or does Rachel Reeves face Groundhog Day? Second, and specifically, Given the next economic and company news coming through, can the OVR credibly keep to their growth forecast of 2% to 25? And what is the fallout for HMG if they do downgrade the growth number and or?
forecast a breach in the so-called stability rule over to you well malcolm was one of the smartest people who worked for Tory governments in the past and I benefited enormously from working with him and the kind of forensic questions he's firing at us, exactly the kind of forensic questions he used to fire behind the scenes to us and say, have you got good answers to these questions? He used to do it both in opposition and in government, and I'm sure it's business.
his business clients are benefiting from it now. So first of all, the question about the Raytory's growth speech, we did unpack quite a bit of this in the Political Currency regular podcast, didn't we? And I think we both said it's fine and it's got a lot of good things in it, which I personally support, but they're not going to bring anything of immediate benefit to the British economy other than maybe a bit of a change of sentiment towards the government.
And she's still got the huge problems of the state of the public finances, the decisions she's going to face on budget cuts, as you pointed out, Ed, in our podcast. The fact these big tax rises on business are coming in and big employees. as I say they're going to cost jobs so these things you know she can't get away from the kind of
you know, meat and drink of the job as Chancellor, which is trying to make the sums add up and the state of the economy. And therefore, that brings me to the second question, which is, yes, one of the absolute key OBR judgments is going to be, did they stick with the forecast, I think, of 2% growth this year?
which a lot of other people are saying is unrealistic. And once they change that so that people understand what that means for the government, it means that the OBR will say, well, as a result, you're not going to get as much income tax, you're not going to get as much VAT because the economy is...
It's not going to be as big as you thought it might be. And then you're not going to be getting as much money in. And by the way, some of the costs of things like unemployment benefit might be higher than you thought as a result. And so you're going to have a bigger hole in your public finances.
why these sums are very hard to second guess. They'll also be saying, but as a result, maybe the Bank of England will cut rates more and therefore the government might not have to pay as much for its debt and that might stimulate the economy. a bit more than we expected, and so maybe we'll tick up growth in the year after, and there'll be some catch-up growth, which we hadn't anticipated.
In other words, it's really hard to predict what the OBR is going to do. And I remember in the Treasury, even though a lot of people who work in the OBR used to be in the Treasury or are going to come back to the Treasury at some point, it was really hard to second guess their judgments. And it's even harder if you're outside the Treasury.
That's right. I'm going to return to a theme which we've both been on for the last year and a half, which is we don't really understand this desire for new chancellors to say they only want to have one fiscal event a year. Not least because the law says you have to have two officer budget responsibilities.
forecasts a year and in the run-up to your budget the OBR is preparing its forecast of the economy and the public finances you're preparing your budget you have the option to do direct and big things in that which will directly affect the OBR's forecast. So there's an iteration. There's what the OBR is forecasting.
and what you're going to do. And chancellors will calibrate what they do in the light of what they think the OBR is going to forecast. And the OBR's forecast will partly be affected by what the chancellor says they're going to do in that budget. But we're in a situation between now and the March forecast where there's no budget coming because the budget's not until the autumn. There's only one fiscal event a year. And so there is very little that Rachel Reeves can do in a substantial way.
to have any influence over the OBR forecast. As we said last week, speech had lots of good stuff in it, but none of that is stuff which the OBR didn't know and it's going to affect their calculations and forecasts for this year. and next and because there's no fiscal event coming in March there's no government action for them to take into account in a budget wasn't she hinting Ed that she might have some kind of event
She has not ruled out taking corrective action to meet the public finances, which I think is the right thing to do. But she could if she chose to do it a lot. more than that. And at the moment, the only things which are going to affect the OBR's judgment between now and March are things which are outside of her control. What the statistics say...
what's happening in the rest of the world. At the moment, she's denied levers between now and the OBR forecast. And I just wouldn't put myself in that position if I was her. I would want to have it. two OBR forecasts a year and two fiscal events. And one of them could be a budget and one of them could be a pre-budget report. One of them, you know, you don't have to have two finance bills a year, but you can have something where you're saying we're looking forward, doing some immediate stuff.
some stuff to be ready for the finance bill at a later stage. I think one finance bill a year is fine, but if it was me, I would have two macroeconomic and fiscal events alongside two OBR forecasts. That may be where she ends up, but she said that... that's not what she's doing
And I don't think that's in their interest. Well, I used to call it the autumn statement, partly because I just wanted to change it from what Gordon Brown had called it and get back to what it sort of had been called before him. But she could take a leaf out of quasi-kwarteng.
actually because he had a fiscal event that he called a mini budget well i think it became known as a mini budget it wasn't actually a budget and it was probably the most consequential budget in the last 20 years of british history at least and So, but he did things the other way around. We're saying...
Don't have an OBR forecast without a budget event. He had a budget event without an OBR forecast. And that was his absolute downfall. Definitely don't do that. Okay, don't do that. Anyway, Malcolm, I think you and I, because I used to do a job not unlike... Malcolm's when I was in my 20s.
And I think we can both say, thank God we weren't having to brief that one out. That is all we've got time for this week because everybody else needs to get on with their lives and George needs to go on and get on with bath time. Thank you again for all of your amazing... amazing questions and don't forget to send them in and voice notes by emailing questions at politicalcurrency.co.uk yeah and don't forget that if you're one of our political currency gold subscribers and especially our
kitchen cabinet members you get special dibs you on the questions i we're more likely to choose your questions and of course you get to hear the whole episode early And a whole load of other goodies for the kitchen cabinet members in particular. So be sure to check out our show notes for more info on what you get by sitting around our cabinet table. That's right.
more stuff from us, the inside view of the awards, a crazy video we did, but also some really substantive briefing, which we get to read every week. And we'd like to share with you all for Kitchen Cabinet members. Be sure to check out how to sign up. our show notes in the meantime we'll see you next thursday for our main show see you then Thanks for listening to Political Currency. This has been a Persephoneca production.
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