Speaker 1: Welcome to in the City bloom most podcasts connecting you
Speaker 1: to the conversations and the stories shaping the world of finance.
Speaker 2: I'm Francine Laqua and I'm David Merritt, and we have
Speaker 2: a bonus episode for you this week. Dave I hosted
Speaker 2: this all star Bloomberg panel in Westminster at the Unheard
Speaker 2: Club and we talked about the autum Statement, the economy,
Speaker 2: and frankly, why things should be better.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was sat there in the front row, standing room
Speaker 1: onely at the back at the beautiful Unhurt Club, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. It was an all star lineup, wasn't it.
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a little bit daunting, but you know, we
Speaker 2: had our usual co host that like Ras Stratton, we
Speaker 2: had our editor in chief, we had opinion columnist Adrian
Speaker 2: Woolrich who's very very, very funny, and our head of
Speaker 2: Economics and Government, Stephanie Flanders, and it was kind of
Speaker 2: it was just good banter. They disagreed, they made up,
Speaker 2: they disagreed again.
Speaker 1: Made friends.
Speaker 2: We had we had, you know, some blueprint of how
Speaker 2: to take it forward. We had this Autumn Statement. There
Speaker 2: was a lot in it and at the same time,
Speaker 2: not that much. There were tax cuts, but actually we're
Speaker 2: still seeing a lot of the taxes at well, the
Speaker 2: highest in a long time. And it was probably meant
Speaker 2: to you know, set out to dividing put dividing lines
Speaker 2: between the opposition labor priorty ahead of the general action.
Speaker 2: So what did you see in it, Stephanie.
Speaker 5: I No, I saw an interesting combination. I want to see.
Speaker 6: The challenge for the Chancellor was to not do anything
Speaker 6: obviously political and irresponsible with the economy with him and
Speaker 6: as you say, a very narrow range of options and
Speaker 6: ideally do a little bit of good that some people
Speaker 6: would notice, while also leaving a thorny challenge for the opposition.
Speaker 6: And I think he's though it's all you know, you
Speaker 6: can see his workings, and it was pretty clear that
Speaker 6: what was going on, especially once people had zeroed in
Speaker 6: on that very big squeeze to public services, which had
Speaker 6: in effect paid for the heady tax cuts. But terms
Speaker 6: of the individual measures sort of over one hundred very
Speaker 6: mostly quite boring measures, some very expensive measures to forting
Speaker 6: business and giving that tax cut on national assurance. You know,
Speaker 6: I think he picked a lot of things that did
Speaker 6: look responsible, did look broadly kind of technocratically helpful for
Speaker 6: the economy while also leaving that challenge for the opposition.
Speaker 6: So I think, you know, within his own, as you say,
Speaker 6: extremely narrow constrained landscape, which I'm sure we'll talk about,
Speaker 6: does not bode well, particularly for next year's election. I
Speaker 6: think he did a decent job, and I think he
Speaker 6: achieved something else which I sort of noticed repeatedly through
Speaker 6: the day, which is to make people forget that it
Speaker 6: wasn't actually a budget. It was an autumn statement. But
Speaker 6: I think we've already referred to it as a budget,
Speaker 6: and I suspect all of us will refer to it
Speaker 6: as a budget for the rest of the evening and
Speaker 6: the pedants in the audience will just have to shut up.
Speaker 2: Adrian, You're a great student of history. Where does this
Speaker 2: side of statement fit? Who does it make a difference to?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 7: I think one of the interesting things about this statement
Speaker 7: is that we're basically back to Cameronism.
Speaker 8: That Cameron and.
Speaker 7: George Osborne were focused on cutting the state as much
Speaker 7: as possible. There were essentially small government conservatives, left wing,
Speaker 7: leftish on social policy, but really quite right wing on
Speaker 7: economic and social policy. Then we had this long period
Speaker 7: of disruption in which you had the return, the supposed
Speaker 7: return of big government conservatism, the idea that the Conservatives
Speaker 7: could incorporate more working class voters by having a more
Speaker 7: active state, bigger public spending, which called Bob Boris Johnson
Speaker 7: was in favor off And now we see we're going
Speaker 7: back to a world in which the Conservatives basically stand
Speaker 7: for a smaller state. They want to cut taxes as
Speaker 7: much as they can, and they are allowing inflation to
Speaker 7: do the work of cutting the states. The state this
Speaker 7: is a big constraint the size of a lot of
Speaker 7: spending departments. They're taking a lot of money out of spending.
Speaker 7: So it's a very classic conservative camera and style conservative
Speaker 7: policy versus quite a classic sort of labor party policy
Speaker 7: in which they say they want to have a more
Speaker 7: active state, but not yet, they can't afford it. Now
Speaker 7: they want to be responsible. So it's almost as though
Speaker 7: this intervening period of Brexit disruption a change in the
Speaker 7: nature of parties. Corbinism Johnsonism have been written out of
Speaker 7: history and we're back.
Speaker 4: Some people might want it to be.
Speaker 7: To a pre Brexit world in which this Conservative party
Speaker 7: sees its job as shrinking the state not incorporating working
Speaker 7: class voters very much appearing to its base. And I
Speaker 7: think another interesting thing that happened today was these migration figures,
Speaker 7: you know, very significant increase in migration, almost seven hundred
Speaker 7: thousand people. Again, it's as though Brexit never happened. You know,
Speaker 7: we voted in Brexit. People voting in Brexit for more
Speaker 7: money for the NHS and control of immigration.
Speaker 8: We have a squeeze on spending departments, not.
Speaker 7: Necessarily the NHS, but the NHS is obviously in big
Speaker 7: trouble and quite a lot of a lot of immigration.
Speaker 7: So it's almost as though the politicians aren't listening to
Speaker 7: what they were told in twenty sixteen. So I think
Speaker 7: it's a weird you know, returned to twenty ten, and I.
Speaker 4: Slightly disagree.
Speaker 9: Credit in that it's both, which is, they cannot afford
Speaker 9: to not take or try to take some of the
Speaker 9: red Wall with them, because if they do that then
Speaker 9: they've got an electoral problem. Just mathematically first, for all
Speaker 9: the politics is learned to can.
Speaker 8: I think they've got an electoral problem whatever happened, Yes.
Speaker 9: But in order to try and try and answer the
Speaker 9: exam question that is the next election, they have to
Speaker 9: and bring both those bits of their new coalition post
Speaker 9: of twenty nineteen, and you see did see an attempt.
Speaker 9: You saw a number of policies like the Freeport deduction
Speaker 9: going from its five years to ten years. That's a
Speaker 9: Tea side, you know, the heartland of the Red Wall.
Speaker 9: The Red Wall has a lot of older voters, so
Speaker 9: that pretty generous triple lock pension boost was partially aimed
Speaker 9: at those groups of people.
Speaker 4: There were a number of efforts.
Speaker 9: I was interested in that because obviously when you see
Speaker 9: the David Cameron appointment, you do wander, you do think like,
Speaker 9: is this to your point, Adrian, you know, is this
Speaker 9: a sort of retrenchment.
Speaker 4: To the Blue Wall. It can't be. They've got they've
Speaker 4: got to try and do both.
Speaker 9: And I think you did see yesterday in Jeremy Hunt's
Speaker 9: comments elements that were aimed at that constituency.
Speaker 4: Obviously the full expensing.
Speaker 9: You know, when I was a TeV reporter and would
Speaker 9: spend a lot of time, indeed in a December election expensive,
Speaker 9: I couldn't possibly comment on that bit. Certainly going around
Speaker 9: the Red Wall in December. God helped me in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 9: I think it was visiting lots of factories. You know
Speaker 9: that the full expensing, Well.
Speaker 4: Right, we'll have a role there, So I know what
Speaker 4: you mean.
Speaker 9: About, you know, oh, especially with the sort of prognosis
Speaker 9: for the next few years on the finances, it looking
Speaker 9: like it feels very twenty ten on Coreen, but I.
Speaker 4: Think it has to be.
Speaker 9: You cannot ignore what has happened in the last seven
Speaker 9: years in terms of that sort of realignment is what
Speaker 9: we called it at the time.
Speaker 3: Done well, I'm trying and discrete Adrian two just on
Speaker 3: the basis of twenty five years are doing that. But
Speaker 3: the basic starting point I came in this morning from America.
Speaker 3: If you if you look at it from that point,
Speaker 3: if you really this difference between labor and conservative. I
Speaker 3: get back to what's definitely said about constraint is I
Speaker 3: think the rest of the world and they look at it,
Speaker 3: they feel somewhat reassured. You've had a budget which looks
Speaker 3: kind of grown up fine. You've had a response from
Speaker 3: the opposition, which again looks grown up fine. From the
Speaker 3: point of the rest of the world and Britain, I
Speaker 3: think through those eyes, and maybe this is reflected to
Speaker 3: tiny bit in those migration things just looks as if
Speaker 3: it's slightly returning to normal and that yes, there is
Speaker 3: a difference between the two parties, but most people outside
Speaker 3: this country think Starmer Suna that there isn't. Yes, there's
Speaker 3: a bit there, but the constraints they're both offer operating under,
Speaker 3: and the fact that they're both relatively boring men at
Speaker 3: a certain age means that most people look at it
Speaker 3: and think this wild era is over, which that bit
Speaker 3: I do agree on, but I don't think it's a
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like such a massive ideological divide that
Speaker 3: was before.
Speaker 2: It's definitely what does it actually mean for the economy
Speaker 2: going forward? And it wasn't great news in terms of growth, no.
Speaker 6: And actually what was striking about it? So of course
Speaker 6: you've got the householding. There's a lot of discussion around
Speaker 6: the sort of first Parliament where householding comes would have fallen.
Speaker 6: There's some very depressing numbers of The Resolution Foundation has pointed
Speaker 6: out that there's about nine million younger working age Britains
Speaker 6: who've nactually never lived in Britain that had sort of
Speaker 6: rising average wages. We're not going to be back to
Speaker 6: the sort of pre cost of living crisis, real living
Speaker 6: standards until twenty twenty seven according to those numbers.
Speaker 5: So it's all pretty bleak, I think.
Speaker 6: The interesting thing and maybe it feeds into some of
Speaker 6: the conversation around you know, whether this was a set,
Speaker 6: whether there were elements of this that were setting up
Speaker 6: or at least preparing the way for a spring election,
Speaker 6: is even on the economics, the idea that things are
Speaker 6: going to feel better in a year's time, it's not
Speaker 6: entirely clear. This may be almost and it certainly the
Speaker 6: political risk in yesterday was this sense of we're turning
Speaker 6: a corner. And as everyone's aware, you know, there's a
Speaker 6: risk there because a lot of people in Britain will
Speaker 6: not feel its turning a corner, and worse than that,
Speaker 6: they may actually feel worse next year. And if you
Speaker 6: look into the details of the forecast, you know, there's
Speaker 6: one sort of basic fact about this. We've had this
Speaker 6: whacking great interest rate rise, and there's been some sort
Speaker 6: of questioning of you know, how come the economy. You know,
Speaker 6: we haven't had the kind of immediate hit to the
Speaker 6: economy that some were expecting. Part of that, certainly on
Speaker 6: the consumer side, is that the sort of good news
Speaker 6: associated with higher interest rates, people getting more savings income
Speaker 6: has been quite quite quickly realized, and we even discovered
Speaker 6: in the States, if you're not getting a higher interest
Speaker 6: rate from your bank, you now found it easier to
Speaker 6: go to another one. And yet the really bad news
Speaker 6: that we all know is coming for millions of households
Speaker 6: is actually we're barely halfway done in terms of the
Speaker 6: resetting of mortgages. So if you're a sort of wily
Speaker 6: person thinking about actually what's going to affect the way
Speaker 6: people feel today about their finances, many millions more people
Speaker 6: will have set their mortgages, you know, in October than
Speaker 6: in April or May.
Speaker 2: It was the ittem statement inflationary or did they kind
Speaker 2: of get away with not?
Speaker 6: I think, now this is one thing that I should
Speaker 6: have got more into the weeds of. But I was
Speaker 6: quite struck by the Jeremy Hunt's assertion that the OBR
Speaker 6: was said it was the measures in the autumn statement
Speaker 6: were not inflationary, And I think the way he had
Speaker 6: managed to get round that potentially was with some of
Speaker 6: those duty changes which actually reduced the headline inflation rate. Now,
Speaker 6: so there'll be people in the audience, you will be
Speaker 6: able to quickly check this.
Speaker 7: It's inflationary in the sense that it's using inflation to
Speaker 7: do the dirty work of the government. So you're using
Speaker 7: inflation to squeeze the spending departments, and you're using inflation
Speaker 7: to bring more people into the tax system and therefore
Speaker 7: increase your tax revenoruy war pretending to be reducing.
Speaker 5: Well, it's accepting inflation and it's making money from.
Speaker 8: The inforcation, using exploiting inflation. If you think about cynical
Speaker 8: political ends.
Speaker 5: But given before before the.
Speaker 6: Autumn statement, given the freezing of how the thresholds, we're
Speaker 6: going in a really exciting direction.
Speaker 5: You're really up for this. We're going to go right
Speaker 5: into the weeds.
Speaker 6: But before before Jeremy Hunt did anything, you actually were
Speaker 6: obviously raising the tax take taking money out of people's pockets,
Speaker 6: and in that sense it was there would have been
Speaker 6: a sort of disinflationary effect. What's happened is he's taken
Speaker 6: he's actually put some money back into people's pockets, or
Speaker 6: at least given them money that they would otherwise not
Speaker 6: have had with this national insurance. So you could say
Speaker 6: that was inflationary. I think what is interesting is I
Speaker 6: wonder how hard it will be potentially. You know, politicians
Speaker 6: are very easy, find it very easy to live with
Speaker 6: inconsistency one five. But we have had months and months
Speaker 6: of these debates over a public sector pay and strikes
Speaker 6: where we have the Chancellor has said, not entirely accurately,
Speaker 6: we can't give more money to the NHS nurses. We
Speaker 6: can't do this because it's inflationary. Yet it's okay, you
Speaker 6: can't let you can't say that. You can't say that
Speaker 6: and then also say you're putting lots of money into
Speaker 6: people's pockets. So I think there is a bit of
Speaker 6: a dissonance there, But I'm sure on the technicality he
Speaker 6: was speaking the truth when he said it was not
Speaker 6: overall an inflationary autumn statement.
Speaker 2: I mean I should rephrase my question for agent. Is
Speaker 2: it going to complicate the job of the Bank of England.
Speaker 7: No, I mean I think the point about a safe
Speaker 7: pair of hands is correct. I think there's a general
Speaker 7: confidence in amongst the economists and the sort of the
Speaker 7: great and the good about about what's going on here.
Speaker 7: But I just want to make a sense of the
Speaker 7: camera in comparison, going back to the camera era, because
Speaker 7: I think there's more truth in it than my colleagues.
Speaker 2: Thing.
Speaker 8: But one thing is that the.
Speaker 7: Camera in era was in many ways an era of
Speaker 7: sort of optimism. They thought that they could squeeze the state,
Speaker 7: but the private sector would expand and take over and
Speaker 7: people would get richer. Then we had all the pictures
Speaker 7: the big society, that the charities could take over things.
Speaker 8: Then we had all these these.
Speaker 7: These eruptions because of the Brexit thing, and what have
Speaker 7: we got? Now We've got a situation which they're continuing
Speaker 7: to squeeze the state, public, public, the spending departments, the
Speaker 7: big spending departments, apart from the NHS. They're trying to
Speaker 7: continuing to squeeze that. But there's new and they can
Speaker 7: they look trying to do something about our dismal productivity,
Speaker 7: but there's no real optimism there. What you have behind
Speaker 7: all this is a stagnant economy that's failed to solve
Speaker 7: its productivity problem, an aging population and need to suck
Speaker 7: in lots of poorly educated foreign workers to add to
Speaker 7: the you know, to look out after all people and
Speaker 7: to do lots and lots and lots of service jobs.
Speaker 7: So whereas the camera and era was an era of
Speaker 7: I think disguided but a real optimism. This is basically,
Speaker 7: you know, trying to make do make the best with
Speaker 7: a pretty awful economic outlook, and trying very belatedly to
Speaker 7: do a little bit about productivity whilst still relying on
Speaker 7: cheap labor.
Speaker 9: Let me agree with you, then, okay, if you didn't
Speaker 9: have me disagree with you, Yeah, right it so, yes,
Speaker 9: it does look like whoever wins the next election is
Speaker 9: going to be doing austerity mark two or mark three,
Speaker 9: however you cut it.
Speaker 4: I think the thing that.
Speaker 9: We want to reflect on looking back at twenty ten
Speaker 9: is whether that austerity was the right austerity, if that's
Speaker 9: a sort of particularly helpful way of thinking about it. Certainly,
Speaker 9: when I was a TV reporter, most of the reporting
Speaker 9: I ended up doing was around the fact that they
Speaker 9: did these sort of invisible cuts, pushed them out to the
Speaker 9: local government, and actually the huge crises we then went
Speaker 9: to have put to Brexit to one side for a second.
Speaker 9: We were around drugs, were around violent crime, were around
Speaker 9: old people, and about sexual care. So actually I had
Speaker 9: this period of optimism I don't remember as a reporter.
Speaker 4: I don't remember it feeling very optimistic.
Speaker 9: I remember, you know, a lot of kind of anxiety
Speaker 9: about that huge reduction that they did.
Speaker 4: Of course that phrase fix the roof while the summer shining.
Speaker 4: I think that they do.
Speaker 9: They think that actually building up that sort of war
Speaker 9: chest enabled them to go into the pandemic and then
Speaker 9: go into the war in Ukraine and then spend down
Speaker 9: on and so on. So I think there is a
Speaker 9: sort of complexity to all of this. Yes, they are retrenching.
Speaker 9: If they win the next election, label will have a
Speaker 9: similar job on their hands. But they think it's because
Speaker 9: of this sort of you know, the big bazooka of
Speaker 9: the Hoover, Dawn and dorsh that went out to use
Speaker 9: Boris Johnson's phrase of the time, you know, when they
Speaker 9: spent on furlough, when they spent on sea bills, bounce backloads,
Speaker 9: eat out to help out the law, you know, propping
Speaker 9: up theaters, all of that extraordinary amounts of spending. So
Speaker 9: there is a kind of there is a sort of
Speaker 9: question around, you know, once you have spent that much
Speaker 9: on those sorts of things, paying people's wages for so long,
Speaker 9: paying people's energy bills.
Speaker 8: I think we forget.
Speaker 9: Any government is going to find it difficult to move
Speaker 9: on from that if it is the case that we
Speaker 9: are going to go into a period where the next
Speaker 9: parliament is lower spending and we assume that they will
Speaker 9: ring fence in HS, they will ring fence in education.
Speaker 9: Difficult choices for the Labor Party as well. What is
Speaker 9: the right way to do it? Bearing in mind as
Speaker 9: well that those those local government cuts have happened already,
Speaker 9: So that so that kind of there's the low hanging fruit,
Speaker 9: to use the horrible phrase, you know, it is not
Speaker 9: on the tree anymore.
Speaker 5: What do you do next?
Speaker 4: And you know what what I think?
Speaker 9: Rachel Breeze was asked about it this morning on the radio,
Speaker 9: and what do you do?
Speaker 2: John? How do you see the blueprint? I mean if
Speaker 2: you look at the UK and how it grows, If
Speaker 2: it grows, like, how would you compare it with the
Speaker 2: US in three four years?
Speaker 3: I think the world basically there's a kind of there
Speaker 3: is a kind of basic comparaicony you look at the US.
Speaker 3: What's amazing about the numbers is that the private sector,
Speaker 3: Adrians should written about. There's a private sector is doing
Speaker 3: amazingly well. It's doing staggering well. That the public sector,
Speaker 3: going back to my earlier point, is a complete mess.
Speaker 3: So you have the Trump versus Biden scenario and everything
Speaker 3: around that. The politics of America have seldom more dysfunctional.
Speaker 3: Congress running out, people worried about the debt in a way,
Speaker 3: if you think Britain splurged a bit, it's nothing a
Speaker 3: bed with the money it's being pumped out recently in America.
Speaker 8: So all those things have happened.
Speaker 3: But the basic idea of productivity of the private sector
Speaker 3: pushing ahead, even the slightly ludicrous row open AI is
Speaker 3: a memory or a reminder about how much further ahead
Speaker 3: America is in these things and other places. So I
Speaker 3: think it is there is America has got this way
Speaker 3: of saving itself, which is that private sector.
Speaker 5: And just but to push back a bit.
Speaker 6: As you know, there's quite a lot of sort of
Speaker 6: critique of that view of the US, like through the
Speaker 6: through the decades where they're very good at taking leave
Speaker 6: well for private sector to take the credit for things
Speaker 6: that actually had involved quite a lot of public sector investment.
Speaker 6: You know, every failure is public sector, and any success
Speaker 6: is immediately owned by the private sector.
Speaker 5: And there's lots of.
Speaker 8: The American public sector as well.
Speaker 6: So I'd explained the politics as being a total shit
Speaker 6: show if you don't mind.
Speaker 5: But but it's.
Speaker 6: Not that slightly different from the public sector and the
Speaker 6: money that's going in If you look at Biden's you know,
Speaker 6: there may turn out to be an enormous amount of
Speaker 6: waste involved in the infrastructure build of chips or the IRA,
Speaker 6: but that is actually money that's largely going into private investors'
Speaker 6: hands and manufacturers who are actually you know, and innovators
Speaker 6: who are going to take that money. As I say,
Speaker 6: some of it will turn out to be in the
Speaker 6: wrong place because they've been they have quite an ambitious
Speaker 6: way of trying to push that money into different parts
Speaker 6: of the country, but it is almost entirely going to
Speaker 6: the private sector and giving a lot of this dynamism
Speaker 6: and momentum. I mean, just to make you feel a
Speaker 6: little bit worse. Two point six percent growth I think
Speaker 6: the US maybe this year versus zero point four for
Speaker 6: the UK. And what's really striking about the difference is
Speaker 6: that you've also got two point six or thereabouts growth
Speaker 6: in productivity output per head as well as.
Speaker 5: The growth in output.
Speaker 8: Productivity is going down.
Speaker 6: No, no, in the US. Yeah, in the UK it
Speaker 6: was actually the last number was negative. But I'm just
Speaker 6: going to round that to zero. But yeah, some of
Speaker 6: that is a Biden money.
Speaker 3: There's definitely also saying if you look at green jobs,
Speaker 3: particularly Legos very good on this. You look at the
Speaker 3: amount of money that Biden has just chucked at Green
Speaker 3: that is the IRA and all the various different bits
Speaker 3: of that your brilliant private Yes, but it's also laid
Speaker 3: down a chalnel to the European Union, they responded, and British,
Speaker 3: I think the amount of money Hunt put in this
Speaker 3: week looks culturally.
Speaker 7: One of the striking things about the response the Labor
Speaker 7: Party's response to the Autumn State was how petty or.
Speaker 8: Silly it was really or not quite silly, but petty difference.
Speaker 7: Rachel Reads came back from Washington a few months ago
Speaker 7: talking about secure inomics and the Green New Deal and
Speaker 7: spending lots of money to you know, the active states
Speaker 7: with lots of money around, you know, to to generate growth.
Speaker 7: And now the Labor Party is no longer talking about
Speaker 7: that because quite simply, the reason the money around they
Speaker 7: can't use. They can't do that sort of thing. So
Speaker 7: whatever Biden has has been doing, and he's been doing
Speaker 7: very very big spending or party won't be doing that.
Speaker 7: So one of the things that this budget does, is
Speaker 7: this mortem statement does is confirm the fact that the
Speaker 7: Labor Party doesn't really have very much room to maneuver.
Speaker 8: It's going to come into power at some point next.
Speaker 7: Year or early in the following year, and it's going
Speaker 7: to have a whole bunch of spending departments which are
Speaker 7: being squeezed. It's going to have the highest tax take
Speaker 7: since since the nineteen fifty is, it's going to be
Speaker 7: in a desperately poor situation. Is a very interesting comparison
Speaker 7: between when Blair came into power the Conservatives basically left
Speaker 7: him an extremely good legacy on which you could build
Speaker 7: and the tour that the Labor Party is not going
Speaker 7: to come into power with a dismal economy, dismal productivity figures,
Speaker 7: dismal public spending figures, an incredible feeling of gloom.
Speaker 8: Across the country.
Speaker 7: And now you know, as far as I can see,
Speaker 7: you're going to have two mainstream parties that are going
Speaker 7: to look played out. And I think a big surge
Speaker 7: in the right in terms of the sort of fargest right,
Speaker 7: and I think Corbyism, Corbynism returning against a sort of
Speaker 7: stagnant and failed labor.
Speaker 2: You have to stick up for you there.
Speaker 9: Well start, so let's get onto the rise of the
Speaker 9: right in a second. I think Rachel Reeves is probably
Speaker 9: doing in in case I'm not doing what they need
Speaker 9: to do right now, which is if they were tempted
Speaker 9: to say we're going to we're going to do ira
Speaker 9: ira ira. I've learned if if we were going to
Speaker 9: do that, it would be it would be a trap.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I'm sure she you know, you.
Speaker 9: Saw this debarkler over the twenty eight billion, and lots
Speaker 9: of people in the climate world, you know, saw this
Speaker 9: is the kind.
Speaker 4: Of great, great, great green hope.
Speaker 9: And then even the Labor Party with even Ed Miliband
Speaker 9: at the forefront of this movement was having to say, well, no,
Speaker 9: we won't spend it immediately, we'll do it in the
Speaker 9: middle of Parliament when we've got the money if we can,
Speaker 9: and boring cass come down.
Speaker 4: And also we'll do it. We'll see it.
Speaker 9: Well, we'll be the seed money and the pro finance
Speaker 9: will do the rest. So very different really and not
Speaker 9: not not not wrong, but are very different prospectus. But
Speaker 9: that's because if she goes any further on on you know, spending.
Speaker 9: She she immediately brings up that kind of gray hands
Speaker 9: as was back then Tory chairman attack that they are,
Speaker 9: that they are going to waste people's money. And to
Speaker 9: Stephanie's point, you know, do you really want any government
Speaker 9: spending twenty eight billion when the private sector might might
Speaker 9: actually have a better idea on how to grow some
Speaker 9: of this this this low carbon tech. So that so
Speaker 9: that I think to be fair to them, you know,
Speaker 9: whether they immediately get into power and say ha, only
Speaker 9: joke joking, I don't think they can do that either
Speaker 9: or not only joking, but you know what I mean,
Speaker 9: you know, we didn't mean.
Speaker 4: It, and we'd think there's I think that's endible either
Speaker 4: because there's a there's a trust, there's a trust thing there.
Speaker 9: So it's going to be what they say, which is
Speaker 9: middle of any labor Parliament, they'll they'll inch up to
Speaker 9: spending it. I think on your there's obviously many more
Speaker 9: things for but on your point about the right, because
Speaker 9: we talked about this earlier and we've obviously seen the
Speaker 9: results in Holland in the last twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: Let's just think this through though.
Speaker 9: You know, if the Tory Party lose the next election,
Speaker 9: it will depend on which.
Speaker 2: All right, in your.
Speaker 9: Scenario, when the Conservative is the next election, who they
Speaker 9: have left? So what is the nature of the rump
Speaker 9: MPs that are left, because that will determine you know,
Speaker 9: are they red, well, are they blue? Will are they both?
Speaker 9: So that will determine some of that. And then secondly
Speaker 9: for you shaking your head.
Speaker 6: Is you know, I'm just looking for the various people
Speaker 6: who are hoping to be or at least one person
Speaker 6: who's hoping to be in the.
Speaker 8: Rump said, then you've.
Speaker 9: Got if you've if you've got the Conservative Party, then
Speaker 9: in opposition, they will probably at this point be having
Speaker 9: to go further to the right if they feel that
Speaker 9: that is the space that has been vacated for them
Speaker 9: by the then new labor government, maybe even coalition government
Speaker 9: of a different sort. So I just don't think we
Speaker 9: can say for certain, especially given part of what the
Speaker 9: Dutch result is about is about wanting a Brexit. I know,
Speaker 9: you know, it's a difficult, it's you know, most people
Speaker 9: in this room, i'm sure think Brexit was wrong, but.
Speaker 4: That is what that's what that result is.
Speaker 7: The migration figures we took in seven hundred thousand people,
Speaker 7: enough people to fill Glasgow or Newcastle. That's a hell
Speaker 7: of a lot of people in a country that voted
Speaker 7: to bring immigration under under control. I just think we
Speaker 7: are creating the basis for enormous social discontent and this
Speaker 7: narrowing of the political focus of these two parties that
Speaker 7: John has a representative of the global oligarchy, is creating
Speaker 7: a huge amount of potential frustration in the political system.
Speaker 9: It would be completely true if you didn't have the
Speaker 9: government talking about stopping the boats.
Speaker 8: Now, you are right, they're not sure.
Speaker 9: But it is not the case that you have a
Speaker 9: sort of vanilla beige centrist establishment loving and there's.
Speaker 4: Nobody trying to do anything on this front. You are
Speaker 4: right that they aren't. They are right now struggling and
Speaker 4: it is yet to.
Speaker 9: Be seen how they actually accomplish their aim to stop
Speaker 9: the boats. And that is where your oxygen for this
Speaker 9: movement will come from. But at the moment you can't.
Speaker 9: You know, another panel would be saying they're two right
Speaker 9: wing on immigration.
Speaker 7: Now what I'm thinking of legal migration figures, you know,
Speaker 7: which are very big because basically, because we have a
Speaker 7: low skills, low productivity, aging economy, which is sucking in
Speaker 7: large numbers of.
Speaker 8: Immigrants who work that.
Speaker 7: The indigenous people will not do, and that is creating
Speaker 7: a very unstable But they're never political basis for the
Speaker 7: political system.
Speaker 9: The Brexit vote was not about no immigration. The Brexit
Speaker 9: vote was about controlling immigration.
Speaker 7: Now I agree, and the people who voted control vot
Speaker 7: I don't mind if it's seven hundred thousand a year.
Speaker 8: I don't think that's true.
Speaker 9: So actually, if you spoke to Boris or Michael Gove
Speaker 9: at the time, and I think I think it is,
Speaker 9: it was a a I remember thinking at the time
Speaker 9: it was a problem that they were not being clear
Speaker 9: enough that they because they're economic liberals. Okay, they shape
Speaker 9: shift too, but but at the time they were it
Speaker 9: was about control. It wasn't about reducing, especially something like
Speaker 9: Michael Gove. Now I agree that that was not and
Speaker 9: I remember thinking at the time, this is not being
Speaker 9: clearly expressed. And you will have a problem when people
Speaker 9: have interpreted this election result as.
Speaker 5: One thing.
Speaker 4: When when when when the establishment is interpreting it.
Speaker 7: But if you take you're not building houses and you're
Speaker 7: not building struct you're creating an enormous state.
Speaker 5: Can I ask you this?
Speaker 2: And then I want to put the same question to John.
Speaker 2: The UK still has a lot going for it, and
Speaker 2: I guess there is money from a broadway to be
Speaker 2: deployed with the stable government. What does the UK in
Speaker 2: your eyes right now compared to the rest of the world,
Speaker 2: And you're what does it have going for it? Me?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm one question.
Speaker 7: I think we're appalled productivity, stagnant country. I think we
Speaker 7: have a very good universe, a very good university sector,
Speaker 7: a very good creative sector, a well educated at least,
Speaker 7: a financial system that was good. But all of those things,
Speaker 7: you know, we have a concentration of wealth and creative
Speaker 7: activity in a very small chunk of the country amongst
Speaker 7: the very small group of people. The great question is
Speaker 7: how to disperse, disperse and spread.
Speaker 8: That that that that wealth and opportunity around. We failed
Speaker 8: to do that.
Speaker 7: We're going back to Cameronism, I say, which which pours
Speaker 7: money into the into the rich, squeezes the welfare states
Speaker 7: and creates ultimately a populist explosion.
Speaker 2: Under different policies with more more stable.
Speaker 3: It's usual there is basically from the point of the
Speaker 3: oligoistic outside investor, the basic point about investing is you
Speaker 3: have choices, you decide, you decide where to put your
Speaker 3: money at the moment.
Speaker 5: You look at the.
Speaker 3: Continent at the moment, you look at problems in Germany,
Speaker 3: you look at the problems in many other places, and
Speaker 3: actually Britain.
Speaker 5: It's totally true.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone who invests money anywhere in the
Speaker 3: world thinks that Brexit was a great idea, but there is.
Speaker 3: I think there's been a much quicker realization outside Britain
Speaker 3: than there is inside it. That actually, look give or
Speaker 3: take some other things. If you've just come back from
Speaker 3: New York, you've come back here, you think the subway
Speaker 3: is safer, you think that the culture, things are cheaper.
Speaker 3: You've got you'll see a lot of enthusiasm for people
Speaker 3: their immediate starting point is, well, Britain would be a
Speaker 3: good place to start. It doesn't mean we are so
Speaker 3: fixated by this debate, which is very easy to have.
Speaker 3: Is that we could have been so much better if
Speaker 3: Brexit hadn't happened. If you're looking at it from that
Speaker 3: wonderful class of people which Adrian's decided I represent, then actually,
Speaker 3: if you're deciding where to put money at the moment,
Speaker 3: Britain still got a lot of attractions, partly for the
Speaker 3: reasons that Adrian outlined all those different sectors which were
Speaker 3: quite good at but also just in comparison, you are
Speaker 3: still you look at what's happened the Netherlands, you worry
Speaker 3: about that in other countries in Europe, and you think, well,
Speaker 3: actually this is not a bad place that I was
Speaker 3: in Asia just before. Again, the first site if you're
Speaker 3: coming from China, you're coming from Singapore, you're coming from
Speaker 3: Hong Kong, the first place you look is here. So
Speaker 3: we do, yes, we are right to brate all the
Speaker 3: fact that we could be doing better than we are,
Speaker 3: but there is still actually a degree of basic attraction steada.
Speaker 6: Obviously we are in the top two exporters of services
Speaker 6: in the world. I know, that's continued to grow. There's
Speaker 6: quite a lot of very lucrative It's not just you know,
Speaker 6: we think of the sort of service sector as being
Speaker 6: kind of cheap, imported labor whatever. Of course, there is
Speaker 6: there is some of that in hospitality and other sectors,
Speaker 6: but it's we're all, you know, it is also finance,
Speaker 6: cultural industries where the journalism, God help us, there's a
Speaker 6: you know, there's a range of things where we could.
Speaker 6: I think Adrian has identifies the key problem that this
Speaker 6: very successful, very lucrative, not just the elite businesses are
Speaker 6: producing I don't know, seventy percent of their value added
Speaker 6: is in the southeast and then actually very close to London.
Speaker 6: So that is that is the key challenge for any
Speaker 6: new government or old government is how if you want
Speaker 6: to double down on that.
Speaker 5: You can't suddenly become Germany.
Speaker 6: But how do you make our other big cities, maybe
Speaker 6: just just a few, you know, Birmingham or Manchester actually
Speaker 6: have some of the same some productivity of London, you know,
Speaker 6: And I think that's where you know, I'm quite I'm
Speaker 6: quite interested in the sort of decentralization agenda. I think
Speaker 6: on a lot of economic and social issues. Actually they
Speaker 6: are that that is the only sort of thing lever
Speaker 6: left to pull is to give more power to local
Speaker 6: governments who have so little of it and certainly very
Speaker 6: little power over money in this country relative to other countries.
Speaker 6: But I think even when you're talking about leveling up,
Speaker 6: you also have to be honest that this kind of
Speaker 6: growth that we're talking about is going to come from
Speaker 6: big cities, from a handful of big cities. It is
Speaker 6: not going to come from as Boris Johnson tried to
Speaker 6: tell all these these left behind, all the hell back towns,
Speaker 6: we can bring jobs to your terms. You know, their
Speaker 6: their strategy has to be based on their connectivity with
Speaker 6: a big city, and if we're kind of honest about
Speaker 6: that and then empower those cities and the people around them,
Speaker 6: you never know could work on that note.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you so much. Thank you to the panelist.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to this bonus edition of In the City.
Speaker 2: This episode was hosted by me Francine Laquas. It was
Speaker 2: produced by Summersaudi. Additional editing by Blake Naples. Special thanks
Speaker 2: to our co host Alecra Stratton, John Nichols Waite, Adrian Woolridge,
Speaker 2: and Stephanie Slaunders.