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. Missy mother Bromwyn Winfield was given legal advice
Speaker 1: just before she disappeared in nineteen ninety three that she
Speaker 1: was entitled to a significant share of assets from her
Speaker 1: failed marriage. Husband John Winfield was the last person to
Speaker 1: see Bromwin alive, but he says she chose to leave
Speaker 1: him and be young daughters. He's never been charged and
Speaker 1: denies any wrongdoing. It's all part of the gripping cold
Speaker 1: case investigated in The Australian's new podcast Bronwyn, available now
Speaker 1: at bronwynpodcast dot com. Compulsory national service for all eighteen
Speaker 1: year olds, that's the bold policy. UK Prime Minister Rishi
Speaker 1: Sunac is staking his future on It's the Billionaire versus
Speaker 1: the Silk. As Barrister kirs Starmer tries to bring labor back.
Speaker 1: Stay with us.
Speaker 2: Over the next few weeks. I will fight for every vote.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Region.
Speaker 1: As Sunak drenched, a nearby loudspeaker started playing the opposition's anthem,
Speaker 1: things can only get better.
Speaker 2: China is looking to dominate the twenty first century by
Speaker 2: stealing a lead in technology, and migration is being weaponized
Speaker 2: 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 3: I have to say I took the slightly more conventional
Speaker 3: view that whoever and Reshisunac's communications team didn't bother to
Speaker 3: 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 3: That would have worked that scene of him in the
Speaker 3: rain if it had been a stronger speech, but it
Speaker 3: was not a strong speech. It was pretty flat. He
Speaker 3: looked like a dejected man who knew he was going
Speaker 3: to lose an election in a landslade. People in his
Speaker 3: cabinet had no idea he was going to call an election,
Speaker 3: and it was a surprise he called it, considering he's
Speaker 3: 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 3: He had taken a day off, to which the jok
Speaker 3: had become well, this might be a bad day for
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Quit tonight, one of the Prime Minister's most senior cabinet
Speaker 2: ministers is calling it a day, Michael Gove, an influential.
Speaker 3: Then Reshisunak came out with a blinder of a policy
Speaker 3: which is compulsory Nash no service for everyone aged eighteen
Speaker 3: in Britain. Basically they will get to choose between twelve
Speaker 3: months in the military or their weekend doing volunteering firefighter
Speaker 3: ambulance that kind of thing. So that would be the
Speaker 3: first time since the early fifties that they have national service.
Speaker 3: I mean, he needs something, so he might as well
Speaker 3: try a couple hail mary's.
Speaker 1: The other idea Sunac 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 3: Richie Sunac himself one day one which didn't help his
Speaker 3: bad campaigning streak, said that there would be no flights
Speaker 3: to Rwanda before July the fourth, when the election will
Speaker 3: be held. He says it will only happen if a
Speaker 3: Conservative government wins, so he won't have the image of
Speaker 3: sending anybody off. But the problem he was going to
Speaker 3: have is what if flights left in September to Rwanda,
Speaker 3: but the small boats just kept on coming cross the
Speaker 3: English Channel. Couldn't resk the policy being seen as 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 3: The British people have spoken and the answer is we're out.
Speaker 3: And I think the almost seven years of his premiership
Speaker 3: 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 1: The warnings this building was a fire trap apparently went unheard, but.
Speaker 2: It was impossible to miss the screams of those begging
Speaker 2: to be saved from it.
Speaker 1: And she couldn't get her own MPs to agree on
Speaker 1: how the EU breakup should be handled.
Speaker 3: She just didn't have the charisma and she didn't have
Speaker 3: the control of her party to succeed, and it was
Speaker 3: 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 3: He was definitely the most consequential of those five prime ministers,
Speaker 3: Claire and probably the most consequential prime minister definitely since Blair,
Speaker 3: although you could make a very strong argument since Thatcher.
Speaker 3: He got them out of the European Union, he led
Speaker 3: them through the coronavirus pandemic. I think there's no doubt
Speaker 3: that Boris and had extraordinary leadership when it came to
Speaker 3: backing Ukraine in the months leading up to the war.
Speaker 2: This hideous and barbaric venture of Vladimir Putin must end
Speaker 2: in failure.
Speaker 3: Boris Johnson is a hero and U train and rightly so.
Speaker 3: But then there was the other side of Boris Claire.
Speaker 3: There was the struggle with the truth, there was the chaos.
Speaker 3: He shut up a bit night during lockdowns. It turns
Speaker 3: out that his entire staff and Downing Street were constantly
Speaker 3: having parties when other people, you know, couldn't go to
Speaker 3: the funeral of their parents.
Speaker 2: Mister Speaker I wanted to apologize.
Speaker 3: His operation was chaos, and so he was steamrolled by
Speaker 3: his party. Basically he was only left with a couple
Speaker 3: of ministers and he had to go. But a lot
Speaker 3: of those ministers now say they wish they'd never done it,
Speaker 3: because then they got Liz Truss'd.
Speaker 1: Be forgiven for saying who because Liz Truss's prime ministership
Speaker 1: only lasted fifty days and featured a wildly ambitious economic
Speaker 1: plan that crashed markets and sent interest rates soaring. Perhaps
Speaker 1: her most memorable moment was visiting Queen Elizabeth at home
Speaker 1: in Balmoral and posing for what turned out to be
Speaker 1: the last formal photo of the Queen.
Speaker 3: I think there's a great irony, Claire, that the late
Speaker 3: Queen's first pre minister was Winston Churchill, maybe the greatest
Speaker 3: Breton who ever lived. Definitely the greatest British prime minister,
Speaker 3: you know, the man who won the Second World War
Speaker 3: and stopped Haler. And we shall fight in the fields
Speaker 3: and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills,
Speaker 3: we shall never surrender. And then her last pre minister
Speaker 3: was the shortest serving I'd probably the worst prey Minister
Speaker 3: Breton ever had.
Speaker 1: We import two thirds of archeese. That is a disgrace.
Speaker 3: She's written in her recent book that you know, she said,
Speaker 3: why is this happening to me? To which point most
Speaker 3: prime minister's globilis is actually an incredible opportunity to lead
Speaker 3: your nation and you know, kind of darkness. But she
Speaker 3: did it very woodenly. She had no charisma. She had
Speaker 3: radical policies that most of her party fought went way
Speaker 3: too far. It's okay to do Reaganomics if you're the
Speaker 3: world's currency, but it doesn't really work when you're written
Speaker 3: in you're about number seven.
Speaker 1: And that led us to Rishie Sunac, who shares with
Speaker 1: his wife a fortune of just over one billion Australian dollars.
Speaker 3: I think that Richie Sunac deserves a lot of credit
Speaker 3: for fixing a lot of the economic mess he was
Speaker 3: left with by Liz Trust in such a short period
Speaker 3: of time. Inflation has come down to target band just
Speaker 3: in the past week, which is why some people think
Speaker 3: 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 3: He has a reputation for being quite catchy and for
Speaker 3: not really getting away. Everybody doesn't love them. It's just
Speaker 3: 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: a new podcast, Bromwn. It's a new cold case from
Speaker 1: the journalist who created The Teacher's Pet. Episodes one and
Speaker 1: two of Bromwin are free to listen for registered users
Speaker 1: right now at bromwynpodcast dot com.
Speaker 3: Excuse me not at that you not only get.
Speaker 1: Better, things can only get better by d Ring. That
Speaker 1: was UK labor theme song for the nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: election when Tony Blair swept to power. Now there's a
Speaker 1: new labor hope, so Keir Starmer. Casey a former Crown
Speaker 1: prosecutor and human rights barrister, the son of a nurse
Speaker 1: and a factory worker.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the last four years, we've changed
Speaker 2: the Labor Party, returned it once more to the service
Speaker 2: 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 3: I think our cousin at The Thames The Great Thames
Speaker 3: columnist Daniel Finkelstein put it really well recently, in which
Speaker 3: she said Keir Starmer's message at this election as Breton
Speaker 3: has broken, 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 3: He has really brought them back to the center, you know,
Speaker 3: saying that they would stick by, for example, Tory's spending rules,
Speaker 3: which would lead to some big cuts in the future.
Speaker 3: He's you know, repaired the relationship with business. He has
Speaker 3: really done a fantastic job of making the Labor Party
Speaker 3: an electable alternative of the classic centrist kind of hot
Speaker 3: keating Clinton Blair kind of way. Gaza has been the
Speaker 3: big problem for Keir Starmer. You know, he has done
Speaker 3: so much clear to try and separate his party from
Speaker 3: the Party of Jeremy Corbyn, which had some of the
Speaker 3: worst conspiracy theorist Anti semits you could imagine kind of
Speaker 3: near his center of power. But there's a lot of
Speaker 3: British Labor MPs with huge Muslim constituencies who feel very
Speaker 3: strongly on the issue of Palestine. Because he's so far ahead,
Speaker 3: it hasn't really made a problem in opposition, but I
Speaker 3: think it will become a huge problem for him in government,
Speaker 3: especially if he gets a large majority where he has
Speaker 3: a lot of left wing MPs that essentially act as
Speaker 3: the real opposition about like Tony Blair faced during the
Speaker 3: Iraq War when left wing MPs were constantly voting against
Speaker 3: him on the Iraq War. But he does have this
Speaker 3: general problem that he's basically trying to say nothing in
Speaker 3: order to not scare the horses and get in and
Speaker 3: 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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