Speaker 1: Welcome to Vota Nomics, where politics and markets collide, and
Speaker 1: especially today it is Wednesday, the twenty second and May,
Speaker 1: and we've just in the last few minutes heard Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Richie Sunak announced in the pouring rain a general
Speaker 1: election will be held in the UK, haven't we Adrian,
Speaker 1: haven't we Stephanie.
Speaker 2: So we have gathered gathered, thanks Kenny, to talk about
Speaker 2: it briefly before also recording this week's regular episode. But
Speaker 2: we felt like there were things to say, There.
Speaker 1: Were and wasn't that tricky for him in the pouring rain?
Speaker 1: With things can only get better blurring for I'd say
Speaker 1: eighty percent of it right.
Speaker 2: Which as you and you're sitting there as like former
Speaker 2: broadcast hands, you sit there thinking, okay, so it's very
Speaker 2: hard to have a clip on the main news. And yes,
Speaker 2: he's looking more and more wet, especially when he turned round.
Speaker 2: And I guess the more sort of fundamental thing is,
Speaker 2: which I'm sure everybody will you know, it's hard to
Speaker 2: resist the sort of metaphor that this has been a
Speaker 2: prime minister who has had to just carry on as
Speaker 2: quite a lot of things were falling about, you know,
Speaker 2: quite a lot of noises off but also just many
Speaker 2: things kind of falling apart behind him. I mean even
Speaker 2: that song. When you look back to ninety seven, you know,
Speaker 2: ninety seven the idea that things could only get better
Speaker 2: was much less resonant than now. Funnily enough, because you
Speaker 2: actually had quite a strong economy that the labor then inherited.
Speaker 2: Now labor do have this quite strong line which I
Speaker 2: think resonates with voters, which is nothing's got better since
Speaker 2: twenty ten. Or name a public service that has actually
Speaker 2: got better. Now, that's of course also you know COVID,
Speaker 2: many many things have combined to that is not just
Speaker 2: down to the Conservatives, but it is, it is quite resonant.
Speaker 3: I think that's true to some extent. But in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety seven, labor had a vision of the future. They
Speaker 3: had a story to tell about the future, and Kirs
Speaker 3: Starmer has not told a story about the future. What
Speaker 3: we're going to have is an election which is really
Speaker 3: about fourteen years of Tory miss. It will be an
Speaker 3: election about the Tories in which I think people will
Speaker 3: vote against. The tour is not in favor of Starmer.
Speaker 3: They don't know what someone but what labor.
Speaker 2: But even things can only get better? Is a very
Speaker 2: negative message, right. That's why it feels resident because it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: there has to be something better than this, not really
Speaker 2: knowing what the something.
Speaker 3: Is in that sense. But they did have we did
Speaker 3: have new Labor and it did have an agenda. And
Speaker 3: we don't have new Labor. We have a Labor party
Speaker 3: that's better than Corbyn's party.
Speaker 1: So just to be for a second, I mean they
Speaker 1: will be. They will be inside number ten right now.
Speaker 1: I would imagine, thinking back to when I was in
Speaker 1: the Treasury with issue, they will be furious that it
Speaker 1: is as you alluded to at the top of their stuff.
Speaker 1: It's really you know, you do these moments outside to
Speaker 1: get the clip for the news at the six o'clock news,
Speaker 1: which is what in sort of forty minutes whenever, and
Speaker 1: then the ten o'clock news, which will be watched by
Speaker 1: many millions of people. So firstly, you're trying to set
Speaker 1: your narrative immediately, and I don't I really There was
Speaker 1: a long period at the top of Rishi's un next
Speaker 1: comments that were about COVID, which we can discuss in
Speaker 1: a second, because I thought that was an interesting strategic
Speaker 1: choice to go in on that at rather than inflation,
Speaker 1: for instance, which is today's today's peg for one assumes
Speaker 1: this decision. So firstly, there's very there's not a clip,
Speaker 1: so it's very difficult I think for them to be
Speaker 1: able to set what they would like the narrative to be.
Speaker 2: Although, funnily enough, without dwelling too much on it, the
Speaker 2: new that the music actually faded just as he turned
Speaker 2: to the challenge, making a similar point to Adrian on labor.
Speaker 2: So in that sense, you know, maybe that will be
Speaker 2: the clip of him sort of throwing down the gortlant
Speaker 2: to to labor. And but you know, I think you're right.
Speaker 3: There's no good clip.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: It all seems to be all too apt about this,
Speaker 3: this this government and Snaxt period in power. It's just
Speaker 3: been a series of problems.
Speaker 2: Should we dwell a little bit on this time in question?
Speaker 2: Because until quite recently, although there'd been a lot of
Speaker 2: sort of fluttering in the sidelines about a possible summer election,
Speaker 2: which hadn't completely died, there was you know, usually the
Speaker 2: conversation would end with, you know, MP's one to have
Speaker 2: six more months or have you know, several months more
Speaker 2: of pay and looking for jobs, even if they think
Speaker 2: they're on the way out. You don't give up as
Speaker 2: a government because that just feels like you're walking away
Speaker 2: from the top job, and that you, you know, the
Speaker 2: lack of leadership we had, you'll be able to do
Speaker 2: an autumn statement which gives more tax cuts. I mean,
Speaker 2: all those arguments seem to have just disappeared. I mean
Speaker 2: we get into the economics, because I think there probably
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been any text cuts. Maybe that is. I
Speaker 2: do think there's some big economic reasons. But let's just
Speaker 2: think about why why do you think it's now?
Speaker 1: Because I think, as I've written in the read out,
Speaker 1: I think that politics doesn't often give you clear moments
Speaker 1: where you can say tick. And I think that inflation
Speaker 1: being down to two percent is it has a two
Speaker 1: at the front. It has a two at the front,
Speaker 1: and it was expected to be two point one and
Speaker 1: it's now two point three, and that is higher than expected,
Speaker 1: and it will have an impact on whether or not
Speaker 1: there's a rate cut in June, which i'd you know,
Speaker 1: I think the number today suggests won't now happen. But
Speaker 1: even if the number had been one point nine, the
Speaker 1: bank would have been quite norvius about doing it. Because
Speaker 1: they didn't know when they did.
Speaker 2: But you are right, then it's low twos kind of
Speaker 2: that feels like jobs.
Speaker 3: So I think it's this any compelling reason for doing
Speaker 3: it now, I really don't. I feel that it's a
Speaker 3: feeling that they've just run out of road, that they've
Speaker 3: been bleeding to death in public and why go.
Speaker 1: But you can flip that, which is they want a mandate,
Speaker 1: and that is what you've just said. But it's the
Speaker 1: other way of saying it, which is we need to
Speaker 1: get Richie Sunak needs to go to the public and
Speaker 1: get them to say, yeah, we'll have a bit more
Speaker 1: of you thanks, so he can then because one of
Speaker 1: the biggest problems for him has been the sort of
Speaker 1: you know, unruly party, and he needs to have his
Speaker 1: own mandate, not Brois Johnson's mandate.
Speaker 3: Not They're not going to get a mandate. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the economists, the economists seat predicted pole, whether
Speaker 3: it is sliding pole that they do all the time,
Speaker 3: gives the Tories a one percent chance of winning. He's
Speaker 3: just annoyed the entire journal stick community and the entire
Speaker 3: MP community political community by by forcing them to reschedule
Speaker 3: their holders, including me what.
Speaker 1: You were doing.
Speaker 2: Do you think you could get quite quite a lot,
Speaker 2: get quite a lot of But.
Speaker 1: Those core cohorts were not they weren't Besies, right, So
Speaker 1: it's not it's not that you know, suddenly you've lost
Speaker 1: people that were, you know, cheerleaders. So I think, you know,
Speaker 1: in politics, you don't get very many clear.
Speaker 3: Moment more staunching the flow of blood. Every week you
Speaker 3: were getting a Tory defecting to the other time. Every
Speaker 3: time week you were getting some Tory doing some weird
Speaker 3: thing about photographing their genitals and and and and publicizing.
Speaker 3: Every week there was just some sort of terrible disaster.
Speaker 3: I think you just had an.
Speaker 2: I think and there is there's there's an economic piece
Speaker 2: of this. It's partly a legras point that you've now
Speaker 2: got You've had an unexpectedly strong growth number. You've got
Speaker 2: inflation looking like it's kind of under control, even if
Speaker 2: the interest rate picture is not clear. I think fundamentally,
Speaker 2: you know, we saw it earlier this week, there's another
Speaker 2: ten billion at least going out the door. Finally, with
Speaker 2: the compensation for the victims of the contaminated blood scandle.
Speaker 2: And there's also an increasing feeling when you look at
Speaker 2: the underlying numbers from the last few years. You know,
Speaker 2: even the very tight fiscal forecast that Jeremy Hunt would
Speaker 2: have been playing with in trying to find a bit
Speaker 2: more money for tax cuts rely on actually what is
Speaker 2: considered to be a very optimistic forecast for UK growth
Speaker 2: based on a rather optimistic forecast for productivity growth. You know,
Speaker 2: output per head in the UK is expected in these
Speaker 2: official forecasts to grow twice as fast as it has
Speaker 2: in the last ten years, and if it doesn't, there'll
Speaker 2: be another hole of forty billion pounds in the budget
Speaker 2: which might yet might easily get revealed in the next
Speaker 2: quote unquote fiscal event, because the Office for Budget Responsibility
Speaker 2: might decide, look, we've got to follow the Bank of
Speaker 2: England many other city forecast is in sort of accepting
Speaker 2: the reality of UK growth.
Speaker 3: I think that ten billion number is quite significant. Is
Speaker 3: a lot of money suddenly to lose. So I don't
Speaker 3: think there's anything good that was going to happen to them,
Speaker 3: and probably a lot of bad things they're going to
Speaker 3: happen to them over the summer.
Speaker 2: Also, I was looking at the date and July fourth,
Speaker 2: one would hope that England will have got through at
Speaker 2: the group stages and the first round of the first round.
Speaker 2: After that, of the years, they won't have lost yet
Speaker 2: because they won't have gone to the quarterfinals finals, and
Speaker 2: he'll be able to go to the Games.
Speaker 3: Having been quite grumpy already, i'd like to be grumpy
Speaker 3: again about Rish's announcement, which I thought was wrong what
Speaker 3: he says said. He started off by saying, we live
Speaker 3: in a dangerous world and you need somebody you can
Speaker 3: rely on, somebody who will defend us against the Russians
Speaker 3: and the Chinese and the Iranians and all of these people.
Speaker 3: And I think that business of playing politics with the
Speaker 3: issue of defense is very, very questionable. I think that
Speaker 3: the Labor Party, it's not Corbyn's Labor Party, it's a
Speaker 3: pretty sensible labor party. And I think these defense issues
Speaker 3: are so important that we should be agreeing upon them,
Speaker 3: and we should collectively be agreeing to be spending a
Speaker 3: very significant amount of you know, three percent rather than
Speaker 3: two point five percent, not rolling around in mud about them.
Speaker 3: So I didn't like that. I can see that his
Speaker 3: choice is limited, but I don't think he should be
Speaker 3: trying to present the label.
Speaker 2: Also, you end up looking at quite a contrast with
Speaker 2: Keir Starmer as well, because he's been made such a point,
Speaker 2: certainly in the Middle East. He's made such a point
Speaker 2: of being, you know, at cost to his unity, and
Speaker 2: his party has made a point of unity with the
Speaker 2: government in order to show a sort of statesman.
Speaker 3: As the Labor Party keeps saying, when they were in
Speaker 3: power in twenty ten we spent two point five five
Speaker 3: we're now spending lesson.
Speaker 2: I think, to be fair, I think it started in
Speaker 2: ninety seven, it started at three, so it went down
Speaker 2: hard to.
Speaker 1: The cathartic point that now we can have these or
Speaker 1: rather they the leaders will do TV debate after TV debate,
Speaker 1: and they can thrash exactly these arguments out, whereas before
Speaker 1: there's been this phony war where it's been somebody making
Speaker 1: a speech about the topic they want to make it,
Speaker 1: you know, asserting something that you know you're uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: or whatever. But actually now Starmer will get the opportunity
Speaker 1: to respond directly and and and the electorate will hear
Speaker 1: and be able to make their own mind up. And
Speaker 1: that personally, I find that is there's a sort of
Speaker 1: breath of fresh air coming.
Speaker 3: I know, I think that's that that that's a reasonable point.
Speaker 3: But I don't think that the the the week on
Speaker 3: defense point necessarily sticks. I am and I'm still uncomfortable
Speaker 3: about about politicizing what all to be a sort of
Speaker 3: national effort to to deal with these unprecedented threats from
Speaker 3: from from from Russia and Jina and Iran all at
Speaker 3: the same time.
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, it is interesting that a number
Speaker 2: of people have responded, even on the left, you know,
Speaker 2: who've probably wanted to have an election, but have now
Speaker 2: sort of said, oh, this just shows terrible, you know,
Speaker 2: failure of leadership that he's given up, which I think
Speaker 2: you can't have it both ways. I think there's an interpretation.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that this has driven him, but there's
Speaker 2: an interpretation that says this is better for the country.
Speaker 2: You know, if you look at how much the civil
Speaker 2: service everybody was parading, was not just you know, by
Speaker 2: the prospect of a new administration, but also the sheer
Speaker 2: uncertainty of the date. And I found myself thinking, as
Speaker 2: when I was watching Prime Ministers questions earlier today and
Speaker 2: he was asked about the rumors, and I'd have to say,
Speaker 2: at that time I thought it was fairly unlikely that
Speaker 2: we'd have an election. I wasn't necessarily believing it, but
Speaker 2: I just wanted someone to ask him, what is the country,
Speaker 2: you know, what is the benefit to the country of
Speaker 2: having these several months more uncertainty of whatever the result,
Speaker 2: uncertainty about the date, with no one able to plan policy,
Speaker 2: no one able to plan things. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: it's possible that that may have you know, that may
Speaker 2: have been one of the things because you can't there's
Speaker 2: no statesmanlike reason for holding out, and certainly and certainly
Speaker 2: for keeping it uncertain, you know, for not saying you
Speaker 2: could say the debate dates November fifth, and there's actually
Speaker 2: quite a lot of benefit from stating a date, but
Speaker 2: it does it just used to have policies too, to
Speaker 2: be to be sort of holding everyone in suspense.
Speaker 3: What do we think about the possible results, And do
Speaker 3: we think that that it really matters that we were
Speaker 3: we're likely to change government?
Speaker 1: I think I think if you are as you are, Adrian,
Speaker 1: assuming the Conservatives lose, the question of what degree they
Speaker 1: lose to obviously is relevant to firstly who next, but
Speaker 1: not just and who next is determined by the type
Speaker 1: of seats that are left. And then there is the
Speaker 1: one percent chance, as you say earlier, one percent who
Speaker 1: says the economist, And I think John Curtis has said
Speaker 1: one percent as well. The John Cursi is the very
Speaker 1: famous sophologist. So if so, I think it matters in
Speaker 1: terms of what next with the Conservative Party, I would
Speaker 1: also say, though you'll both laugh at me and chuck
Speaker 1: me out the ediit sweet shortly. While things happen in
Speaker 1: election campaigns. We've we've all covered enough. Elections matter and
Speaker 1: they really matter, and the TV debut debates will matter,
Speaker 1: and I remember very vividly covering the TV debate where
Speaker 1: David Cameron lost it and Nick Clegg had played a
Speaker 1: blinder and it really affected the election results. So I
Speaker 1: think we all know that things can happen that are
Speaker 1: that are not predictable right now. But equally on your
Speaker 1: central question, the sort of does the result matter? It
Speaker 1: matters to what happens to the Conservative Party next.
Speaker 3: It matters, but what sort of labor party. Let's assume
Speaker 3: that we get a labor victory, what sort of labor
Speaker 3: party are we going to have? Remember that it wasn't
Speaker 3: that long ago that this was a semi Marxist Party
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen in the last election. What's happened to the
Speaker 3: Labor Party since then?
Speaker 2: I mean we have seen clearly Keir Starmer get elected
Speaker 2: in a party that was still very corbonite and obviously
Speaker 2: that's allowed. You know, it's some of the things that
Speaker 2: he said he would do in order to get elected
Speaker 2: in that election, you know, get thrown back at him
Speaker 2: by the Prime Minister repeatedly. He has pulled it as
Speaker 2: far as you can back to in this day and age,
Speaker 2: to a much more blair eyed party, including some key
Speaker 2: individuals coming back who have experience of the Blair era.
Speaker 2: But you know, we all know it's a different world
Speaker 2: and it is. You know, everything's changed, including leaving the EU,
Speaker 2: but the economics have fundamentally changed for this country and
Speaker 2: arguably more broadly in terms of how one expects the
Speaker 2: global economy to proceed.
Speaker 1: That was a snap podcast for you from the Votonomics team.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. On Friday, we're going to bring
Speaker 1: you a conversation with Taiwan's former Digital Minister, Audrey Tang.
Speaker 1: This episode was hosted by me alegra Stratton, Adrian Woodridge
Speaker 1: and Stephanie Flanders. It was produced by Samasadi with help
Speaker 1: from Chris Martlou and Julia Mann's editorial direction from Victoria Wakeley.
Speaker 1: Sand designed by Moses and Brendan. Francis Newnham is our
Speaker 1: executive producer. Sage Bowman is Head of Podcasts. H