Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, May twenty seven. An embarrassing defense secret is
Speaker 1: out in the open. Australia had almost no submarines available
Speaker 1: to defend the country between twenty oh nine and twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: even as China was aggressively expanding its navy. That's an
Speaker 1: exclusive live right now at The Australian dot com dot
Speaker 1: a u.
Speaker 2: C.
Speaker 1: Missing mother Bromwin Winfield was given legal advice just before
Speaker 1: she disappeared in nineteen ninety three that she was entitled
Speaker 1: to a significant share of assets from her failed marriage.
Speaker 1: Husband John Winfield was the last person to see Bromwin alive,
Speaker 1: but he says she chose to leave him and their
Speaker 1: young daughters. He's never been charged and denies any wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: It's all part of the gripping cold case investigated in
Speaker 1: The Australian's new podcast Bronwyn, available now at bronwynpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Compulsory national service for all eighteen year olds, that's the
Speaker 1: bold policy. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunac is staking his
Speaker 1: future on It's the Billionaire Versus the Silk. As Barrister
Speaker 1: kirs Starman tries to bring labor back. Stay with us.
Speaker 3: Over the next few weeks. I will fight for every vote.
Speaker 3: I will earn your trust.
Speaker 1: Standing outside ten Downing Street getting soaked in the rain,
Speaker 1: stoically refusing to hold an umbrella or even wear a raincoat.
Speaker 1: That's the image Rishi Sunac created for voters as he
Speaker 1: announced Britain is going to the polls on July fourth.
Speaker 1: It's his bid to extend the Conservative's fourteen year rain
Speaker 1: for one more term. As Sunac he got drenched, a
Speaker 1: nearby loudspeaker started playing the opposition's anthem things can only
Speaker 1: get better.
Speaker 3: China is looking to dominate the twenty first century by
Speaker 3: stealing a lead in technology, and migration is being weaponized
Speaker 3: by hostile states to threaten the integrity of our borders.
Speaker 1: You might have thought sopping Sunak looked resilient or just
Speaker 1: a bit of a drip.
Speaker 2: I have to say I took the slightly more conventional
Speaker 2: view that whoever and Reshisunac's communications team didn't bother to
Speaker 2: look at the sky or their weather app should be sacked.
Speaker 1: Richard Ferguson is the Australian's National Chief of Staff as
Speaker 1: you can hear he's also a Scotsman and he's spent
Speaker 1: a lifetime immersing himself in British politics.
Speaker 2: That would have worked that scene of him in the
Speaker 2: rain if it had been a stronger speech, but it
Speaker 2: was not a strong speech. It was pretty flat. He
Speaker 2: looked like a dejected man who knew he was going
Speaker 2: to lose an election in a landslide. People in his
Speaker 2: cabinet had no idea he was going to call an election,
Speaker 2: and it was a surprise he called it, considering he's
Speaker 2: about fourteen to twenty points behind in the polls.
Speaker 1: Richard is a politics junkie and he likes things to
Speaker 1: be done properly, so he was horrified when it emerged
Speaker 1: over the weekend Sunak had broken the first rule in
Speaker 1: political campaigning, resting look.
Speaker 2: He had taken a day off, to which the jok
Speaker 2: had become well, this might be a bad day for
Speaker 2: labor because Reshi Sunak has an out campaigning making mistakes.
Speaker 1: He's had a tough first week. He was photographed in
Speaker 1: front of an exit sign. He visited the shipyard where
Speaker 1: the Titanic was built, prompting lots of gags about sinking ships,
Speaker 1: and he watched scores of his own MP's quit tonight.
Speaker 1: One of the Prime minister's most senior cabinet ministers is
Speaker 1: calling it a day, Michael Gove and influential.
Speaker 2: Then Reshisunak came out with a blinder of a policy
Speaker 2: which is compulsory NASH service for everyone aged eighteen in Britain.
Speaker 2: Basically they will get to choose between twelve months in
Speaker 2: the military or their weekend doing volunteering firefighter ambulance that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. So that would be the first time
Speaker 2: since the early fifties that they have national service. I mean,
Speaker 2: he needs something, so he might as well try a
Speaker 2: couple hail Mary's.
Speaker 1: The other idea Sunak really needs to work is migration policy.
Speaker 1: He wants to send illegal immigrants who attempt to enter
Speaker 1: the UK via the English Channel to Rwanda.
Speaker 2: Richie Sunac himself one day one which didn't help his
Speaker 2: bad campaigning streak, said that there would be no flights
Speaker 2: to Rwanda before July the fourth, when the election will
Speaker 2: be held. He says it will only happen if a
Speaker 2: Conservative government wins, so he won't have the image of
Speaker 2: sending anybody it off. But the problem he was going
Speaker 2: to have is what if flights left in September to Rwanda,
Speaker 2: but the small boats just kept on coming across the
Speaker 2: English Channel. He couldn't resk the policy being seen as
Speaker 2: a failure.
Speaker 1: There have been five Conservative pms since twenty ten and
Speaker 1: they've instituted immense reforms through education, to health and social policy,
Speaker 1: but they've stumbled by seeming entitled and out of touch.
Speaker 1: First David Cameron, who gambled and lost on Brexit, Britain's
Speaker 1: departure from the European Union. Cameron called the referendum pleading
Speaker 1: with Britons to stay in the EU.
Speaker 2: The British people have spoken and the answer is we're out.
Speaker 2: And I think the almost seven years of his premiership
Speaker 2: were kind of flown away.
Speaker 1: In that one instance, Cameron quit and Theresa May stepped up.
Speaker 1: But May was slow to respond to the dreadful twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen Grenfell Tower public housing fire, where seventy two people died.
Speaker 3: The warnings this building was a fire trap apparently went unheard,
Speaker 3: but it was impossible to miss the screens that those
Speaker 3: begging to be saved.
Speaker 1: From it, And she couldn't get her own MPs to
Speaker 1: agree on how the EU breakup should be handled.
Speaker 2: She just didn't have the charisma and she didn't have
Speaker 2: the control of her party to succeed, and it was
Speaker 2: left to Boris.
Speaker 1: Boris, the brilliant, deeply flowed scruffbag who had successfully convinced
Speaker 1: the British that EU was to blame for all their problems.
Speaker 2: He was definitely the most consequential of those five prime ministers,
Speaker 2: Claire and probably the most consequential prime minister definitely since Blair,
Speaker 2: although you could make a very strong argument since Thatcher.
Speaker 2: He got them out of the European Union, he led
Speaker 2: them through the coronavirus pandemic. I think there's no doubt
Speaker 2: that Boris and had extraordinary leadership when it came to
Speaker 2: backing U train in the months leading up to the war.
Speaker 3: This hideous and barbaric venture of Ladimir Putin must end
Speaker 3: in failure.
Speaker 2: Boris Johnson is a hero and you train, and rightly so.
Speaker 2: But then there was the other side of Boris Claire.
Speaker 2: There was the struggle with the truth, there was the chaos.
Speaker 2: He shut up a bit during lockdowns. It turns out
Speaker 2: that his entire staff and Downing Street were constantly having
Speaker 2: parties when other people, you know, couldn't go to the
Speaker 2: funeral of their parents.
Speaker 1: Missus speaker I wanted to apologize.
Speaker 2: His operation was chaos, and so he was steamrolled by
Speaker 2: his party. Basically he was only left with a couple
Speaker 2: of ministers and he had to go. But a lot
Speaker 2: of those ministers now say they wish they'd never done it,
Speaker 2: because then they got Liz Truss.
Speaker 1: You'd be forgiven for saying who, because Liz Truss's prime
Speaker 1: ministership only lasted fifty days and featured a wildly ambitious
Speaker 1: economic plan that crashed markets and sent interest rates soaring.
Speaker 1: Perhaps her most memorable moment was visiting Queen Elizabeth I
Speaker 1: at home in Balmoral and posing for what turned out
Speaker 1: to be the last formal photo of the Queen.
Speaker 2: I think there's a great irony, Claire, that the late
Speaker 2: Queen's first prime minister was Winston Churchill, maybe the greatest
Speaker 2: Breton who ever lived. Definitely the greatest British prime minister,
Speaker 2: you know, the man who won the Second World War
Speaker 2: and stopped Tler. And we shall fight in the fields
Speaker 2: and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills,
Speaker 2: we shall never surrender. And then her last prime minister
Speaker 2: was the shortest serving. I'd probably the worst Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Breton ever had.
Speaker 1: We import two thirds of ar cheese. That is a disgrace.
Speaker 2: She's written in her recent book that you know, she said,
Speaker 2: why is this happening to me? To which point most
Speaker 2: prime minister's globis is actually an incredible opportunity to lead
Speaker 2: your nation, and you know, kind of darkness. But she
Speaker 2: did it very woodenly. She had no charisma. She had
Speaker 2: radical policies that most of her party fought went way
Speaker 2: too far. It's okay to do Reaganomics if you're the
Speaker 2: world's currency, but it doesn't really work when you're written
Speaker 2: in you're about number seven.
Speaker 1: And that led us to Rishi Sunak, who shares with
Speaker 1: his wife a fortune of just over one billion Australian dollars.
Speaker 2: I think that Rishi Sunac deserves a lot of credit
Speaker 2: for fixing a lot of the economic mess he was
Speaker 2: left with by Liz Trust in such a short period
Speaker 2: of time. Inflation has come down to target band just
Speaker 2: in the past week, which is why some people think
Speaker 2: he called this election.
Speaker 1: It's a huge gamble. Will Briton's thanks Sunac for fixing
Speaker 1: the mess, punish him for the years of chaos.
Speaker 2: He has a reputation for being quite catchy and for
Speaker 2: not really getting away. Everybody doesn't love them. It's just
Speaker 2: not that good at politics.
Speaker 1: Coming up the man who's carrying Labour's hope of kicking
Speaker 1: out the Tories. If you haven't already caught Headley Thomas's
Speaker 1: new podcast, Bromwin. It's a new cold case from the
Speaker 1: journalist who created The Teacher's Pet. Episodes one and two
Speaker 1: of Bromwyn are free to listen for registered users right
Speaker 1: now at bromwynpodcast dot com.
Speaker 2: Excuse me not at that cannot only get better?
Speaker 1: Things can only get better by d Ring. That was
Speaker 1: UK labor theme song for the nineteen ninety seven election
Speaker 1: when Tony Blair swept to power. Now there's a new
Speaker 1: labor hope, so Keir Starmer. Casey a former Crown prosecutor
Speaker 1: and human rights barrister, the son of a nurse and
Speaker 1: a factory worker.
Speaker 3: Over the course of the last four years, we've changed
Speaker 3: the Labor Party, returned it once more to the service
Speaker 3: of working people.
Speaker 1: Starmer wants to slash public health waiting times, create a
Speaker 1: new border security command, set up a publicly owned green
Speaker 1: energy firm paid for by a tax on oil and
Speaker 1: gas and recruit thousands of new teachers. But so far
Speaker 1: there's no big vision for sweeping change.
Speaker 2: I think our cousin The Thames The Great Thames columnist
Speaker 2: Daniel Finkelstein put it really well recently, in which she
Speaker 2: said Keir Starmer's message at this election as Breton has broken,
Speaker 2: let's do nothing about it.
Speaker 1: Starmer stumbled over the issue of the trans community, struggling
Speaker 1: to answer questions like what is a woman? All the
Speaker 1: while he was battling to get rid of the forces
Speaker 1: of former Labor lator Jeremy Corbyn, a hard core left
Speaker 1: winger who'd promised to rip up the Bricksit deal and
Speaker 1: nationalize the railways.
Speaker 2: He has really brought them back to the center, you know,
Speaker 2: saying that they would stick by, for example, Tory's spending rules,
Speaker 2: which would lead to some big cuts in the future.
Speaker 2: He's you know, repaired the relationship with business. He has
Speaker 2: really done a fantastic job of making the Labor Party
Speaker 2: an electable alternative of the classic centrist kind of hot
Speaker 2: keating Clinton Blair kind of way. Gaza has been the
Speaker 2: big problem for Keir Starmer. You know, he has done
Speaker 2: so much clear to try and separate his party from
Speaker 2: the Party of Jeremy Corbyn, which had some of the
Speaker 2: worst conspiracy theorist Anti semits you could imagine kind of
Speaker 2: near his center of power. But there's a lot of
Speaker 2: British Labor MPs with huge Muslim constituencies who feel very
Speaker 2: strongly on the issue of Palestine. Because he's so far ahead,
Speaker 2: it hasn't really made a problem in opposition, but I
Speaker 2: think it will become a huge problem for him in government,
Speaker 2: especially if he gets a large majority where he has
Speaker 2: a lot of left wing MPs that essentially act as
Speaker 2: the real opposition about like Tony Blair faced during the
Speaker 2: Iraq War when left wing MPs were constantly voting against
Speaker 2: him on the Iraq War. But he does have this
Speaker 2: general problem that he's basically trying to say nothing in
Speaker 2: order to not scare the horses and get in and
Speaker 2: that doesn't always work, especially in an election campaign.
Speaker 1: Richard focus On is The Australian's National chief of Staff.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on the front. If you like
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