Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Welcome to this live edition of voter Nomics, the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: podcast where politics and markets collide. This year, we noticed
Speaker 2: voters around the world we're going to have the ability
Speaker 2: to turn markets, countries, and economies like never before. So
Speaker 2: we created this series to help you make sense of
Speaker 2: it all. And we're kind of in the final stretch now,
Speaker 2: not many more elections to go, but quite a big one.
Speaker 3: Come.
Speaker 2: I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of Economics and Government at Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: I'm Adrian Woodridge, an opinion columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, and.
Speaker 5: I'm alegra Stratton and I write the readout newsletter that
Speaker 5: goes out every day at five o'clock.
Speaker 2: And we have with us for this whole episode. John mcilthwaite,
Speaker 2: Editor in chief of Bloomberg, Thank you delighted to be here.
Speaker 2: We've allowed John in as an interloper for this morning's proceedings,
Speaker 2: which we are holding in Bloomberg's wonderful headquarters in London. Well,
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, we're looking at the final stretch the
Speaker 2: last two months of this pivotal US presidential race, and
Speaker 2: we're also sitting here at the end of the first
Speaker 2: two months of the new UK Labor government, which has
Speaker 2: its critical first budget coming up in just seven weeks
Speaker 2: time I was thinking on the tube here. One common
Speaker 2: theme on the both sides of the Atlantic the last
Speaker 2: few days has been that the honeymoon is over, so
Speaker 2: over for Kamala Harris. If you believe the latest polls
Speaker 2: from the New York Times this week, and in fact,
Speaker 2: to some extent our own swing State pole that we've
Speaker 2: been running every month since November, her momentum as a
Speaker 2: new candidate appears to have stalled. That could all change
Speaker 2: if she knocks it out of the park in the tonight.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about all of that plenty in
Speaker 2: the second half of this show, But first I think
Speaker 2: we should talk about the UK and John. Ever since
Speaker 2: it came in, the government's not stop talking about tough choices,
Speaker 2: hard times to come. Is it overdoing it? Is it
Speaker 2: making the right tough choices?
Speaker 6: It look like I think it's possibly overdoing the hard
Speaker 6: times because the British economy is growing quite quickly. I think,
Speaker 6: on the other hand, it does seem to run into
Speaker 6: sort of problems at both ends on them. You've got
Speaker 6: the winter fuel vote tonight, which obviously doesn't look as
Speaker 6: if it's going to go particularly well. Even if they'll
Speaker 6: win it quite sort of easily, it'll still it's still
Speaker 6: caused a lot of sound and the other end, perhaps
Speaker 6: more represented in this room, that there is everything to
Speaker 6: do with the budget and fears of an exodus of
Speaker 6: entrepreneurs and all those people. And I think it's interesting
Speaker 6: the way that if you wander around places like the
Speaker 6: city or you spend time with entrepreneurs, there has suddenly,
Speaker 6: i think been over the past month roughly a fantastic
Speaker 6: rethink about Starma. It's not quite sure exactly what it's
Speaker 6: based on, but a whole series of people who voted
Speaker 6: very casually for Starma or didn't really care when he
Speaker 6: came in. I think we had a conversation about this
Speaker 6: here and now deeply frightened, and people are talking about
Speaker 6: the number of people just before he are going to
Speaker 6: the United Arab Emirates, going to Italy, going to other
Speaker 6: places in Europe latest i've now heard today with Cyprus anyway,
Speaker 6: all these places have suddenly come up, and the idea
Speaker 6: that Starmer's government is going to hit the growth part
Speaker 6: of the British economy is something that I think has
Speaker 6: suddenly become a new part of the debate.
Speaker 2: Adrian, Do you think that? I mean, I guess the
Speaker 2: big thing that's changed is he's now Prime Minister, and
Speaker 2: people tend to like people less once they're actually in
Speaker 2: power doing things.
Speaker 4: No, I think the big thing that's changed is that
Speaker 4: an illusion has disappeared. The illusion was that the Labor
Speaker 4: Party in power would basically be like the tour is
Speaker 4: only sane and they're not like the Tory. He's actually
Speaker 4: a socialist, by which I mean that he doesn't want
Speaker 4: to nationalize the means of production, but he does want
Speaker 4: to introduce a quite a significant redistribution of wealth in society.
Speaker 4: He's significantly to the left of Tony Blair. He thinks
Speaker 4: that the rich have made out a bit like bandits
Speaker 4: over the last couple of decades and that the poor
Speaker 4: have been squeezed, and he is systematically or will be
Speaker 4: systematically redistributing wealth away from the rich towards poorer people.
Speaker 4: You can see that in the pay deal for train drivers.
Speaker 4: You can see it in the pay deal for doctors.
Speaker 4: We'll see it's in significant raises in taxes for people
Speaker 4: with disposable income. And you can see it most dramatically
Speaker 4: in the eighty on private schools. He basically thinks these
Speaker 4: are not hard working people trying to do the best
Speaker 4: for their children. He thinks they're basically que jumpers, and
Speaker 4: they should be charged a decent whack for for jumping
Speaker 4: the que if they're allowed to do it at all.
Speaker 4: So I think he's he's a left wing figure and
Speaker 4: will continue to be a left wing figure throughout the
Speaker 4: next five years. This is not just a bit of
Speaker 4: pain that we'll get through and when we reached and
Speaker 4: then reached the sunny uplands, this is his belief.
Speaker 2: Allegra, Do you think he's revealing himself to be a
Speaker 2: rabbit socialist?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 4: Rabbit, I didn't use the word.
Speaker 5: So I think to a certain extent, we are all
Speaker 5: being played as someone who was.
Speaker 7: No well.
Speaker 5: I had to do the strategic comms for the Treasury
Speaker 5: during some of Rishie's time as Chancellor, and you definitely
Speaker 5: approach these big fiscal events by putting out the very
Speaker 5: worst of what you were going to do, and then
Speaker 5: in the end what you ended up doing was vanilla
Speaker 5: or vanilla with a little bit of spice on top.
Speaker 5: So that's classic playbook staff and I suspect don't know,
Speaker 5: but I mean some of the things I'm hearing are that,
Speaker 5: of course it won't be CGT going up to the
Speaker 5: top rate of income tax. There's some kind of confusion
Speaker 5: as that, you know, they perhaps they've got in to
Speaker 5: the treasury in number ten and things aren't quite as
Speaker 5: easy as they would like it to be, which we'll
Speaker 5: get on too later about house building and the like
Speaker 5: and what they're going to deliver in five years, but
Speaker 5: certainly in this early period they have to manage expectations.
Speaker 5: That is what they're doing that, and they're doing it
Speaker 5: well because all of us are having this conversation now
Speaker 5: about how willflick could end up being And then you know,
Speaker 5: if they end up doing three percent on CGT, the
Speaker 5: commentariats say, oh, you know, it wasn't too bad in
Speaker 5: the end. I think there are some nonetheless some bits
Speaker 5: that I think discern kind of unwise choices. I think,
Speaker 5: you know, on the vat point on school fees, yes,
Speaker 5: they were very clearly were going to do it. Yes,
Speaker 5: they don't care that people don't like it. Where I
Speaker 5: think they sort of reveal a weakness is around this idea,
Speaker 5: it's vindictive to do it. In January, I think around
Speaker 5: the union settlements. Again, they were quite clear, we're going
Speaker 5: to settle this. Why haven't people settled it? Why has
Speaker 5: ri she not settled it? It's so easy, why not
Speaker 5: stick some reform in there? They didn't stick reform in there,
Speaker 5: and then linked to that with winter fuel payment. You're
Speaker 5: saying times are tough, but you've done these big and
Speaker 5: these are choices that they are revealing that I think,
Speaker 5: even in their own terms of kind of wanting to
Speaker 5: redistribute and so on, are revealing, you know, a kind
Speaker 5: of callousness, slash perhaps kind of disregard for their own
Speaker 5: MPs that might in the end be a problem.
Speaker 2: And just because of your experience, do you think the
Speaker 2: winter fuel payment, at least the timing of it, if
Speaker 2: not the decision itself, possibly both, is just a mistake
Speaker 2: to allow that to be the one thing we could
Speaker 2: focus on before the budget. I think air with the
Speaker 2: public sector pay deals rather than have it all.
Speaker 7: Be part of a big budget.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and giving and you know this, this this argument
Speaker 5: they're making now, which just let the triple locks inflating
Speaker 5: your income. Pensioners chill out, you know you're going to
Speaker 5: be met up. Is the wrong way around to make it,
Speaker 5: make that argument. It should have been by the way,
Speaker 5: we're going to need to take this away. But you've
Speaker 5: done quite well if that's an argument you're going to make.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's something you know, you've got the leader
Speaker 5: of the Welsh Stories coming out and saying it's cruel
Speaker 5: and unnecessary. You know, it's it's it's a bit topsy turvy.
Speaker 5: And there are other things you know, this room doesn't
Speaker 5: need mean to tell. You know, there are other aspects
Speaker 5: of revenue raising they could have gone for.
Speaker 7: First.
Speaker 5: I mean, the government was going to do another expensive
Speaker 5: cut on national insurance. You know, did they necessarily have
Speaker 5: to do that? Would that have been something given the
Speaker 5: last government? The Conservative government are probably going to find
Speaker 5: that difficult. Could they have found something creative there?
Speaker 2: John, I'm interested. I sometimes think that a government can't
Speaker 2: win on these things because there's a particular criticism around
Speaker 2: the amount of uncertainty around the capital gains tax changes,
Speaker 2: potential inheritance tax changes, even the details of some of
Speaker 2: the non dom changes which they might they might build
Speaker 2: on what the previous governments did. Because on the one hand,
Speaker 2: we tend to say, well, that uncertainty is terrible. All
Speaker 2: these people are going to leave, and then they might
Speaker 2: find out it's better than they thought, but they will
Speaker 2: have already left. But on the other hand, we usually say,
Speaker 2: if these changes are rushed, they come in quickly with
Speaker 2: no consultation and no discussion. You know that that's foolish
Speaker 2: as well, because they'll have lots of hidden coment quinsies.
Speaker 2: Given that they have, there's a presumption that then there
Speaker 2: is going to be some increase in wealth and asset taxation,
Speaker 2: which many economists would have said was justified given the
Speaker 2: balance of taxes. How could they possibly have struck this
Speaker 2: balance right for the kind of people in the city.
Speaker 7: That we hear about.
Speaker 6: A useful comparison is to go and look at Blair
Speaker 6: human when Blair came in again, another sort of left
Speaker 6: center guy who came in with the reputation for being
Speaker 6: having moderated a party. He came in, He did the bank,
Speaker 6: he did big sort of signature things. He's still you know,
Speaker 6: he still did he did some stuff which people would
Speaker 6: regard as.
Speaker 2: Being on the left.
Speaker 6: What Starmer's problem is is that just at the moment
Speaker 6: when when Britain.
Speaker 2: Is absolutely desperate for growth, he's.
Speaker 6: Definitely opened up some possibility of growth in terms of
Speaker 6: what he's doing on on planning, what he's doing on
Speaker 6: environmental stuff. I think that, you know, there's definitely growth there.
Speaker 6: You could argue that if he really wanted growth, the
Speaker 6: obvious place to do it is to come up with
Speaker 6: kind of deal with Europe, which I suppose would be
Speaker 6: the area which I would I would have gone for.
Speaker 6: And I think if he'd done that, I think that
Speaker 6: would be that that would give him a little bit
Speaker 6: more room with playing around with capital gains tags. I
Speaker 6: think the problem is that he's suddenly hitting if you're
Speaker 6: looking for growth, the one thing you don't want to
Speaker 6: do as a left wing government. You don't want to
Speaker 6: be Francoislon. You don't want to be the people who
Speaker 6: come in and make us one big left wing thing
Speaker 6: which scares away capital. That strikes me as mad. There
Speaker 6: are other ways. I think the school fees thing will
Speaker 6: make a little bit of difference to that that it's
Speaker 6: not going to scare away exactly the most mobile people.
Speaker 6: So I think there is I think there is a
Speaker 6: genuine worry that just at a time when there was
Speaker 6: quite a good story to tell the British economies growing.
Speaker 6: You've got a moderate, as Adrian pointed out, sane government,
Speaker 6: and we shouldn't forget that a lot of these things
Speaker 6: were were set up or traps were set up by
Speaker 6: the less sane members of the Tory Party, including definitely
Speaker 6: the Europe stuff. But now coming in at this precise moment,
Speaker 6: you don't want to send a message to international capital
Speaker 6: that actually or not this nice pragmatic person, you're this
Speaker 6: person who doesn't.
Speaker 4: Like we're also closing down one particular post Brexit option.
Speaker 4: One particular post Brexit option was that we would go
Speaker 4: for the Singapore or the old Hong Kong model of
Speaker 4: being a deregulated free markets haven for mobile capital, for entrepreneurship,
Speaker 4: of all of those things off the shore of Europe.
Speaker 4: Now we're definitely going through it. I think that was
Speaker 4: a real option. I think if let me.
Speaker 2: Just you said that years ago, that we've got rid
Speaker 2: of that option. I mean, would you really think the
Speaker 2: last few government, the last few conservative governments the Singapore option.
Speaker 4: I don't think they were I don't think they knew
Speaker 4: what they were doing. They were partly pursuing the Singapore option.
Speaker 4: They're partly pursuing a different sort of option. They're partly
Speaker 4: pursuing a leveling up option. But if we go for
Speaker 4: the set of policies that start arm is putting into place,
Speaker 4: we're definitely not going to go for that option, or blairized.
Speaker 5: You're referring to the regulation on workers' rights and so on.
Speaker 4: Referring to that, I'm referring to heavier taxes on capital.
Speaker 4: Now I did something terrible for my sin jest. I
Speaker 4: actually read the Dragi report, and the Drugi Report is
Speaker 4: quite an interesting document, all five hundred pages of it,
Speaker 4: because it makes it clear that Europe, if DRUGI gets
Speaker 4: his way, is going to go for a very focused
Speaker 4: industrial strategy version of Europe with consolidation of industries, with
Speaker 4: a degree of self protectionism, with a degree of coherence
Speaker 4: of policy. So it's going to double down on Europe
Speaker 4: as it were. Now, that creates a strategic opportunity for Britain,
Speaker 4: but it also creates threat for Britain. The strategic threat
Speaker 4: is we're not part of that big block. So you've
Speaker 4: got a world divided into the United States as a
Speaker 4: big block, China as a big block, and Europe is
Speaker 4: a big block and Britain offshore there.
Speaker 2: That's that's the threat.
Speaker 4: The opportunity is that we we go for a different model,
Speaker 4: for a more flexible model, but we're going to be
Speaker 4: trapped in this middle position of a highly regulated, redistributed economy,
Speaker 4: shut out from the European market, or large junction of
Speaker 4: the European market. So we lose on all fronts.
Speaker 2: So we need to have a bit of a reality
Speaker 2: check here. I mean, I'm just listening. Firstly, they have
Speaker 2: five years and they've only been in office for two
Speaker 2: months actually done anything yet that would sort of figure
Speaker 2: in any history.
Speaker 4: First impression, and these impressions are very bad.
Speaker 2: First impressions may maup, but when we talk about doing
Speaker 2: big things, that suggest that you're on a path to
Speaker 2: a very socialist future and you're going to scare away
Speaker 2: all of all of business. You know, in the last
Speaker 2: fourteen years, we had Brexit, which did more clear economic
Speaker 2: damage to the economy but also to the city's basic
Speaker 2: position and with regard to Europe, than any single action
Speaker 2: of any government. We had corporation tax, the key signal
Speaker 2: to corporate to businesses around the world go down, but
Speaker 2: then dramatically up. In the course a few years, we
Speaker 2: had consistent instability and actually higher taxes on rich people consistently.
Speaker 2: So it seems odd to me. We talked in the
Speaker 2: campaign a lot about the importance above all of stability,
Speaker 2: of sort of a basic commitment to a strategic economic model.
Speaker 2: It seems a bit on. It may be that they're
Speaker 2: going to screw up, but they really haven't done very
Speaker 2: much yet on a drastically different.
Speaker 4: First of all, the fact that the previous government did
Speaker 4: a bunch of stupid things is not an excuse for
Speaker 4: this government.
Speaker 2: They haven't done that many stupid things.
Speaker 4: But secondly, I think that it's not creating stability. They're
Speaker 4: not creating stability, they're actually beginning to create instability. We
Speaker 4: heard just before we came in this room from a
Speaker 4: distinguished figure who said that twenty percent of his friends
Speaker 4: were thinking of moving out of the country. You don't
Speaker 4: think of moving out of the country because it's a stable,
Speaker 4: welcoming blaze.
Speaker 6: Just just as a pole in this room, anyone put
Speaker 6: their hand up who has met someone who's just who
Speaker 6: is thinking about going. I think just for those people
Speaker 6: who are listening on the radio, I would say, virtually
Speaker 6: everybody has their hand up.
Speaker 7: That's not what.
Speaker 2: Are they leaving because they actually think that the UK
Speaker 2: is going to grow more slowly and have a less
Speaker 2: stable future, or because they are concerned about their personal
Speaker 2: tax situation, which is not a bad reason to leave.
Speaker 2: What I'm saying that is the main three reason people
Speaker 2: are leaving. It's not because they actually think the UK
Speaker 2: is going to the dogs.
Speaker 4: Well, that's wealth creation. These are a bunch of wealth
Speaker 4: creators leaving the country and leaving the country with your opportunities.
Speaker 7: Can I can I?
Speaker 5: Can I move it on to talk about your five
Speaker 5: year point that we're two months into five years, which
Speaker 5: is if you look back at the Boris Johnson government
Speaker 5: that had a similar mandate and it had didn't have
Speaker 5: as thumping a majority as Kistarma has, but it had
Speaker 5: you know, there was a similar vibe when he came
Speaker 5: in of wow, we can you know we have we
Speaker 5: have an ability to do what we want and he
Speaker 5: was going to do leveling up and in Kissed Armer's case,
Speaker 5: it is build, build, build. I think inside number ten
Speaker 5: and eleven they will be aware that it isn't just
Speaker 5: two months into five years that you have to start
Speaker 5: to have an idea of how you break down these
Speaker 5: systemic reasons why we haven't done this historically. So I
Speaker 5: suppose I just want to be a corrective to the
Speaker 5: yes they have five years. And one of our reporters,
Speaker 5: who was talking about the Build Build, Build a gender
Speaker 5: on the in the City podcast the other day, was saying,
Speaker 5: you know, he suspects that that one point five million
Speaker 5: of housing being built, well, probably a lot of it
Speaker 5: will be at the back end because the systemic problems
Speaker 5: that have stopped us building hitherto are real. Probably Rachel
Speaker 5: Reeves and Kissed Armor are looking at them and getting advice,
Speaker 5: which is it is not going to be that easy
Speaker 5: to shift this. Otherwise other people would have done And
Speaker 5: I think if you look back at the Johnson government,
Speaker 5: there was a sense of like crumbs, how we're going
Speaker 5: to do leveling, How we actually going to do this?
Speaker 5: Is it going to take two terms? How we're going
Speaker 5: to build these forty hospitals and so on? COVID came along,
Speaker 5: so we actually didn't see that. The pandemic quite early
Speaker 5: into his turn meant that there was a number of
Speaker 5: other things he was judged by, but had it not
Speaker 5: come along. I think you would have seen it sort
Speaker 5: of how do we level up the country? Can we
Speaker 5: break down these vested interests? And I think that that
Speaker 5: is now true for Starma and I think the one
Speaker 5: question I would ask over and above can you take
Speaker 5: on Nimbi's and so on, is do we have the
Speaker 5: workforce to do what you want to do?
Speaker 7: A llego.
Speaker 2: I love that you've taken us to that because we
Speaker 2: are going to have to move on to the US.
Speaker 2: And I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: brilliant to have a good argument about it. Rare that
Speaker 2: we can summon up such disagreement and voter nomics. But
Speaker 2: I think my concern is that the government we end
Speaker 2: up focusing on quite small things instead of the very
Speaker 2: big challenges that they highlighted themselves in the campaign and allegory,
Speaker 2: you're quite right. I mean six months time, if we're
Speaker 2: still talking about all the things that we've just been
Speaker 2: talking about, not talking about how they are tackling that
Speaker 2: supply side agenda, and particularly things like housing supply planning,
Speaker 2: unlocking in in the grass roots, not just what's going
Speaker 2: on here in the city and with high paid accountants.
Speaker 2: I think that will be a real indictment of the
Speaker 2: government if we're still looking at these symbolic things, and
Speaker 2: then I will start to side more with Adrian. But
Speaker 2: we do have there are five years to go. Set
Speaker 2: your clocks. People come back here in January. But we
Speaker 2: do have. We have five years. And in the meantime,
Speaker 2: of course, all those very smart labor strategists that got
Speaker 2: labor aware of all of this, we have been quickly
Speaker 2: getting out of Dodge to go and help somebody else,
Speaker 2: and we have. We had a story this weekend that
Speaker 2: was talking about how the labor strategists are going over
Speaker 2: migrating to the US at least temporarily to lend their
Speaker 2: help to the to the Kamala Harris campaign, to join
Speaker 2: us to talk about the US election. In this kind
Speaker 2: of final straight we have the head of Bloomberg Opinion,
Speaker 2: Tim O'Brien, who's also the author of Trump Nation, The
Speaker 2: Art of Being the Donald. Tim, happy to have you here.
Speaker 2: That you've set yourself up this week. You're going to
Speaker 2: have to stay up really late to watch the debate.
Speaker 7: It'll be an all nighter.
Speaker 2: Just just let's all talk about the debate briefly, and
Speaker 2: then maybe then talk about this sort of last stretch
Speaker 2: of the broader campaign out of being the Donald. Which
Speaker 2: Donald do you think we'll see tonight?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 8: I think nasty Donald. I think you know, at the
Speaker 8: RNC and Milwaukee, they wanted unifier Donald, and he had
Speaker 8: every reason to do that. You know, he went into
Speaker 8: the RNC in Milwaukee with incredible momentum. Biden had belly
Speaker 8: flopped the convention eight in June, and there been the
Speaker 8: failed assassination attempt, and he had a very good convention.
Speaker 8: I was there at that convention. There was great energy
Speaker 8: on the ground for the Republicans. And then he got
Speaker 8: up on the stage and he spent about fifteen minutes
Speaker 8: talking about being shot and sort of retold the tale
Speaker 8: and then immediately went into division. And all of his
Speaker 8: advisors were saying, talk about unity, bring the country together.
Speaker 8: You have this advantage, you have all this momentum behind you,
Speaker 8: and he couldn't do it because that's not who he is.
Speaker 8: And I think his advisors are recommending tonight that the
Speaker 8: kind Donald be on the debate stage. But I think,
Speaker 8: like his speech of the RNC, you may get about
Speaker 8: five minutes of kind Donald, and you'll get eighty five
Speaker 8: minutes of nasty Donald.
Speaker 2: But it's kind. And remember that It's worth remembering that
Speaker 2: speech because it was while it was while Joe Biden
Speaker 2: was still in the race, he was absolutely looked like
Speaker 2: he was going to be sailing to November. I think tonight.
Speaker 2: I mean, along with being kind, I think his advisers
Speaker 2: are telling him to sort of stick on message, talk
Speaker 2: about if he talks about policy, there's plenty that he
Speaker 2: can take on about Karmala Harris. But I did hear
Speaker 2: someone joke that was like asking him to stick on messages,
Speaker 2: like asking your cat to do string theory.
Speaker 8: He also doesn't believe it works. Just at his core,
Speaker 8: he believes that when you're on the attack, you're winning.
Speaker 5: Will not be nervous that he's taking on a woman
Speaker 5: who is younger than him.
Speaker 8: Well, I think what he's nervous about is she has
Speaker 8: authentic charisma and star power. And Biden was a catatomic zombie,
Speaker 8: and I think that he I think he wasn't he
Speaker 8: wasn't worried yet, but you know, cool. And I think
Speaker 8: the Trump campaign had positioned itself as even though Donald
Speaker 8: Trump is seventy eight years old, he was the young
Speaker 8: man in the race. And he was the vital player,
Speaker 8: and he compared favorably to Biden in that regard, And
Speaker 8: so they were campaigning at like a thirty five thousand
Speaker 8: foot level. It really was this cult of personality a
Speaker 8: on Trump. They were going to do it through social media.
Speaker 8: They have a horrible ground game. We can get to that.
Speaker 8: I think that might catch up to them. But they
Speaker 8: really didn't care in Milwaukee in July because everything was
Speaker 8: in their favor. And then the Democrats pulled off this
Speaker 8: amazing reversal of fortunes and put a new candidate in
Speaker 8: play who is younger, is dynamic, has star power. And
Speaker 8: Trump is a student of very little, but he is
Speaker 8: a student of celebrity. And I think he recognizes this
Speaker 8: in her, and he's afraid of it. You know, he's
Speaker 8: already raised whether or actually's really a black woman a
Speaker 8: number of times. I think if he says that on
Speaker 8: a debate stage tonight, independent voters in Swaying States, which
Speaker 8: is where the twenty twenty four election is going to
Speaker 8: be won, they don't want to hear that. They want
Speaker 8: to hear about the economy.
Speaker 2: John, I mean, I was tending expectations too low. I mean,
Speaker 2: if you go back to that debate with Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: You could argue that Donald Trump was actually very disciplined
Speaker 2: in that in the debate.
Speaker 6: He was disciplined. I was there with Tim and Milwaukee,
Speaker 6: and it was extraordinary. The whole thing was around being nice.
Speaker 6: It was already soft focused. There were lots of people
Speaker 6: coming in and degree of celebrities, everything like that, and
Speaker 6: then every time a Trump came on stage, but particularly Donald,
Speaker 6: it just went veering off. You know, there was a
Speaker 6: teleprompter and it was like watching one which he was
Speaker 6: meant to be following. And to begin with it was
Speaker 6: going around quite calm, but in the then it hit
Speaker 6: it hits.
Speaker 2: With the debate with Biden, he wore the debate with Biden,
Speaker 2: he was the same setup he was, actually he did
Speaker 2: so that the convention he went slightly crazy, but actually
Speaker 2: the same circumstances and with the mics again going to
Speaker 2: be silenced at least some degree. Are we as setting
Speaker 2: expectations too low? I mean, if he's as disciplined as
Speaker 2: he was against Biden.
Speaker 7: I also wanted to watch.
Speaker 4: We've just had two disastrous months for Trump in which
Speaker 4: the nasty Trump has been totally and completely dominant, which
Speaker 4: the media has been ecstatic about Camilla, in which she
Speaker 4: has actually done much better than any of us expected.
Speaker 4: And there's still level pegging in the polls.
Speaker 8: Well, remember, though there's been a swing States, there was
Speaker 8: a huge gap between Trump and Biden right prior to
Speaker 8: Harris coming into the race, five to six points beyond
Speaker 8: the margin of aeron most poles. So she's closed that gap,
Speaker 8: but she hasn't bridged it and gone beyond him. But
Speaker 8: you know, she's within two points of him in Florida.
Speaker 8: If Donald Trump loses Florida, the race is over. I
Speaker 8: think the other dynamic that's going on is that the
Speaker 8: Poles don't really capture voters who are still turning out.
Speaker 8: Democrats have had thirteen offices open in North Carolina since January.
Speaker 8: The Republicans just opened their first, and they did it
Speaker 8: with emergency funding from Elon Musk, And they're panicked about
Speaker 8: North Carolina, and ground games are where elections are won.
Speaker 8: You know, vibes reflect momentum, vibes reflect people's political biases
Speaker 8: and affinities. But at the end of the day, the
Speaker 8: really tough work of campaigns is door knocking, direct mail advertising,
Speaker 8: and phone banks and the Democrats and all the swing
Speaker 8: states have more robust operations than the Republicans right now,
Speaker 8: and polls don't capture those voters. It's sort of hockey sticks.
Speaker 8: You don't see them in like the last three to
Speaker 8: five weeks of a campaign. They suddenly appear. You know
Speaker 8: that surprise Mitt Romney in twenty twelve when the Obama
Speaker 8: people were in Florida and they were door knocking, and
Speaker 8: the Romney people were surprised at the end that they
Speaker 8: lost Florida. But the Obama people knew it all along.
Speaker 4: But Trump, but Hillary Clinton had a much better gown
Speaker 4: game than eventually.
Speaker 8: I would argue that she did. I think she was
Speaker 8: absent in Michigan and Wisconsin, for example, and that cart
Speaker 8: through the race, and they actually thought they were going
Speaker 8: to flip Georgia and Florida and that's where she was,
Speaker 8: and they needed to actually shore up the blue wall
Speaker 8: in the Upper Midwest. So I don't actually think her
Speaker 8: ground game was top drawer.
Speaker 2: That is very true. And it was interesting that the
Speaker 2: director of the battleground campaign for the Democrats actually came
Speaker 2: to one of our Bloomberg ground tables in Chicago at
Speaker 2: the Democrat convention, and I asked him what what the
Speaker 2: other side had of all the kind of apparatus that
Speaker 2: had or the infrastructure on their side that he would
Speaker 2: like to have.
Speaker 7: He said nothing.
Speaker 2: He said there was no there was nothing that he'd
Speaker 2: like to have on their side. But it is true
Speaker 2: that the polls in twenty twenty turned out to be
Speaker 2: much closer in those swing states than expected. So although
Speaker 2: Joe Biden won, he won by much smaller margins in
Speaker 2: some of those states, and I think that has got
Speaker 2: people spooked, even with the ground game that they have.
Speaker 6: I think you're facing a very basic thing. If you
Speaker 6: ask people, when you get away from media bubbles, conventions things,
Speaker 6: you ask people what they care about. You've got the economy,
Speaker 6: the US Trump on that, immigration they trust Trump on that,
Speaker 6: and stuff to do with how America is strong in
Speaker 6: the world. So if what you said at the beginning
Speaker 6: I think is right is if he can stop being nasty,
Speaker 6: stop being weird, and just focus on the policies, then
Speaker 6: he's actually better or worse and not a bad position.
Speaker 2: Bin Alega, do you think she has done or what
Speaker 2: more do you think she needs to do on the economy,
Speaker 2: because it is absolutely true it came through an our
Speaker 2: swing Staatephole by a wide margin. The most important issue
Speaker 2: for people is the economy, and they do still favor
Speaker 2: Donald Trump by a wide margin on the economy. The
Speaker 2: only substantive speech with a generous use of the word substantive,
Speaker 2: that she's made has been on the economy.
Speaker 7: But she's done enough.
Speaker 5: It's tricky because it's quite like it was for Richie Sunak,
Speaker 5: where you are trying to evaluate how you talk about
Speaker 5: the economy. On the one hand, you're coming out of,
Speaker 5: you know, in the broad sweep of things, the pandemic
Speaker 5: and then the inflation and cost of living crisis, so
Speaker 5: you have done a job objectively if you look at
Speaker 5: sort of the last you know, medium term period. But
Speaker 5: people are still feeling it. People are still feeling the
Speaker 5: effect of everything being exceeded in expensive. So it's very
Speaker 5: tricky for It was very tricky for Sunak to talk about.
Speaker 5: I promise you'll get onto to Kamala Harris, but it's
Speaker 5: very tricky for him to talk about. You know, do
Speaker 5: I say, look at me pat on the back, have
Speaker 5: done really well or do I feel their pain and
Speaker 5: talk about that? And you can see that she is
Speaker 5: struggling with how to talk about On the one hand,
Speaker 5: I've done a good job, Pat me on the back
Speaker 5: and tell me if I'm wrong. But then she's also
Speaker 5: talking about cost of living, price gouging with grocery shopping
Speaker 5: and so on, So it's trying to connect while also
Speaker 5: say hey, we didn't do such a bad job.
Speaker 7: It's really tricky.
Speaker 5: I covered as a TV reporter, I covered the Democratic
Speaker 5: primaries in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 7: I wasn't that impressed with her.
Speaker 5: She was in the TV debates then she was the
Speaker 5: worst performer most of the time. So you know, I'm
Speaker 5: interested to see this evening the extent to which she
Speaker 5: you know, we know Talsea Gabbard is advising Trump. Tulsi
Speaker 5: Gabbard was in those TV debates and she absolutely and
Speaker 5: died a couple of blows. So it'd be interesting to
Speaker 5: see any effect that she has as an advisor in
Speaker 5: that kind of question that the Trump's team must surely
Speaker 5: be having, which is, to what extent do you go
Speaker 5: in for the jugular or do you let her as
Speaker 5: he did with Biden? Do you let her kind of
Speaker 5: on some of these flip flops, do you let her
Speaker 5: sort of reveal her own problems.
Speaker 4: I also wonder, contrary to what Tim's saying, whether nasty
Speaker 4: is necessarily a bad thing with him, because you Richard Nixon.
Speaker 4: Richard Nixon once said, never underestimate the amount of evil
Speaker 4: there is in people. Yeah, and you know, he won
Speaker 4: two elections.
Speaker 7: Tim, people, I wonder, I'm sure he won one election.
Speaker 7: And he's last every he's last every when people look.
Speaker 5: Back at the Trump Hillary Clinton debates, TV debates, there's
Speaker 5: a New York Times report Trump Sorry, who went through
Speaker 5: all of them this weekend? She watched all of them,
Speaker 5: and she said he comes across this free wheeling, chaotic
Speaker 5: and crazy. But actually actually he probably had the last
Speaker 5: laugh in a number of fronts. So she's meticulous. She
Speaker 5: lands blows, And I just wonder whether you know.
Speaker 8: Well, but remember the polling after all three of those debates,
Speaker 8: she was perceived by a large margins and one and
Speaker 8: all three, and she went on to lose the election.
Speaker 8: So I think that debates ultimately don't turn elections, but
Speaker 8: they do they do clarify and solidify people's sense of
Speaker 8: the person pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the economy in the grassroots is figuring very prominently
Speaker 2: because there's the legacy of inflation, which just is is
Speaker 2: still there in people's minds. But on the big picture
Speaker 2: macro policies, feels like remarkably little concern about the macroeconomic
Speaker 2: mix that Donald Trump, you know, still probably the most
Speaker 2: likely winner of this election, is promising for the next
Speaker 2: few years. And I was particularly struck he gave this
Speaker 2: speech to the economic worst speech just had a discussion
Speaker 2: that involved just him at the Economic Club of New
Speaker 2: York last week to a pretty luminous, you know, almost
Speaker 2: as important audience as the one we have here at
Speaker 2: Bloomberg and barely sort of turning ahead as he talked
Speaker 2: about policies that would explode the deficit and potentially also
Speaker 2: push up inflation quite dramatically. I mean, we know that
Speaker 2: the increase in tariffs alone would push inflation back well
Speaker 2: over a target next year. So I mean, Timm, are
Speaker 2: you surprised by how little focused there is on that
Speaker 2: in the business community, which actually seems to be quite
Speaker 2: sort of resigned to a potential Trump presidency.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, I think for good reason, the business
Speaker 8: community wants less regulation. I think the business community also
Speaker 8: wants lower to tax taxes, and often I think the
Speaker 8: business community can look through those narrow prisms as the
Speaker 8: foundations for good macroeconomic growth without thinking long term about
Speaker 8: other things like the availability of labor or investment capital.
Speaker 8: I don't think Donald Trump talked about policy in New York.
Speaker 7: It was gibberish.
Speaker 8: I mean, calling it policy is a polite a polite word.
Speaker 8: He explained what he well, he hasn't thought through any
Speaker 8: of this stuff. And I think he was taken by
Speaker 8: surprise about a question about childcare and how do you
Speaker 8: fund childcare? And rather than talk about, you know, a
Speaker 8: child tax care credit or an earned income tax credit
Speaker 8: or direct subsidies, he grabbed for the tariff straw, which
Speaker 8: you know, Donald Trump's not a conservative, He's an anarchist.
Speaker 8: And when you say you're going to impose twenty percent
Speaker 8: across the board tariffs and fifty percent tariffs on China,
Speaker 8: it's inflationary, it's bad for global trade. And what he
Speaker 8: believes then is he gets several trillion dollars of money
Speaker 8: come into the White House in a bag, and then
Speaker 8: he gets to spend that on various programs, one of
Speaker 8: which is childcare. So it's sort of like painting with numbers.
Speaker 8: He hasn't thought it through, and I think he was
Speaker 8: somewhat panicked by the question, so he went into word
Speaker 8: salad and spun it along and then said, yes, I'll
Speaker 8: use tariffs to play for childcare.
Speaker 6: I think I think it's interesting though, that I think
Speaker 6: Trump sorted through. There are two extraordinary things to me. One,
Speaker 6: there's this group of people who do genuinely think that's
Speaker 6: slamming on tariffs at this level, it's doing a million
Speaker 6: people back across the border will actually it's the right
Speaker 6: thing to do, and not just the right thing to
Speaker 6: do economically, will cause growth. They are very much at
Speaker 6: the fringe of Stephanie would regard as economics.
Speaker 2: But Milwaukee, you met these people.
Speaker 6: They are it's a pattern of thought which is tied
Speaker 6: together and which they think makes sense. So even if
Speaker 6: he and I think he is a bit like the
Speaker 6: kind of child who's been sitting in sitting around the
Speaker 6: dining table, hearing a few things, but he does tend
Speaker 6: you know, the earliest things he ever did was to
Speaker 6: back Tariff's opos N after all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 6: so it does chime with him. The second thing, which
Speaker 6: in this case, I'm more like Stephanie feels about rich
Speaker 6: people in Britain. I'm generally staggered by the number of
Speaker 6: kind of capitalists in America who sort of think that's
Speaker 6: okay for exactly the reasons that Tim said. They just
Speaker 6: tend to think of it's lower taxes were sought out
Speaker 6: of the rest with Trump, but this time it could
Speaker 6: be a lot more difficult.
Speaker 5: Are they're worried about vendettas as well if he becomes
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 6: His Tim is a target of many familiar with.
Speaker 8: I think that John, you know your point about this
Speaker 8: time around, they're evangelical about it is important because they
Speaker 8: they went to school in his first administration and now
Speaker 8: they know how the lots on the doors work. And
Speaker 8: he's bringing in people. He's not going to have the
Speaker 8: gym Mattises of the world, you know, or the tailor
Speaker 8: Sins of the world. It's going to be people who
Speaker 8: are more movement Trumpists. And I think he wants to
Speaker 8: pull the US out of NATO for example. We're going
Speaker 8: to see some of these sort of things happen on
Speaker 8: the foreign policy front. They want mass migrations of migrants.
Speaker 8: I don't think they've thought about.
Speaker 2: How to do that, mass deportation.
Speaker 8: Deportation. Yes of immigrants. It's all very trumpst without being economically,
Speaker 8: democratically or rationally sensible.
Speaker 4: Well, wait a minute, in terms of being sensible or
Speaker 4: not being sensible, between about nineteen twenty four and the
Speaker 4: early seventies, America pursued many of these policies in terms
Speaker 4: of very restrictive policies on immigration, in terms of a
Speaker 4: very nationalist set of policies with high tariff protectionism in
Speaker 4: the rest of it, particularly in the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 4: nineteen thirties, which wait a minute, which which was very
Speaker 4: bad for the world economy. For a while, it was
Speaker 4: quite good for the American economy, as nineteen twenties America
Speaker 4: had the biggest boom that he's ever had. So I'm
Speaker 4: not sure that Trump's policies and the businessmen who support
Speaker 4: Trump's policies would in the short term be catastrophic for America.
Speaker 4: I think it'd be bad for the world. I think
Speaker 4: in the longer term it would be bad for America.
Speaker 4: But I think you could follow a Trump reelection with
Speaker 4: some of the policies that he's talking about with a
Speaker 4: Trump boom.
Speaker 8: So are you disappointed with the rapid GDP growth, wage growth,
Speaker 8: and job growth that's already happened over the last four years.
Speaker 4: I would say that a lot of what Biden was
Speaker 4: doing was consolidating big changes that Trump had been put
Speaker 4: into place. I think we're moving from a world in
Speaker 4: which prosperity obviously flows from free trade policies to one
Speaker 4: in which certain countries, powerful countries, America being one of them,
Speaker 4: can you used industrial strategy, industrial policy, tariffs actually to
Speaker 4: boost its domestic economy. So I would say that Trump
Speaker 4: is the break, Biden is the continuation of Trump, and
Speaker 4: that a further Trump presidency I think disastrous in the
Speaker 4: long term, but might in the short term be very
Speaker 4: good for American business, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 4: why American business likes it. It doesn't like it because
Speaker 4: it's stupid. It likes it because it sees real benefits
Speaker 4: for the US economy.
Speaker 2: You heard it here. First, we should be partying like
Speaker 2: it's nineteen twenty seven, nineteen twenty eight. That's what we're
Speaker 2: going for.
Speaker 4: As I said it, long term disaster.
Speaker 2: Long term, it's like three years. I think it's very
Speaker 2: good to have a range of perspectives, but I think
Speaker 2: we probably all agree that there does seem to be
Speaker 2: a slightly short term perspective of many of these businesses
Speaker 2: looking at the mix of policies, and I can't As
Speaker 2: an economist, I find it very painful, just precisely what
Speaker 2: Tim was identifying, this idea that you can raise an
Speaker 2: enormous amount from tariffs and also create enormous numbers of
Speaker 2: import competing manufacturing jobs in the US, because if you
Speaker 2: raise a lot of money, that means you've completely failed
Speaker 2: to reduce imports because you're making lots of money on
Speaker 2: the tariff. Just to say, I wish I could just
Speaker 2: tell him, okay, questions, you get to have your say.
Speaker 2: And I think that actually the hand here was the
Speaker 2: first one to go up.
Speaker 9: So absolutely fascinating, just picking up what Tim and Adriam
Speaker 9: we're talking about, and picking up on what the head
Speaker 9: of the CIA and m I six was saying last
Speaker 9: week about this being the most dangerous point since the
Speaker 9: end of the Cold War. Will a Trump presidency, how
Speaker 9: serious will it be globally? We've heard a lot, but
Speaker 9: not so much about the global picture.
Speaker 2: We might take one other one, just take them in
Speaker 2: in pairs.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. I was slightly surprised. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know you can't cover everything, but no mention was
Speaker 1: made of climate action and changes that are needed for
Speaker 1: economy in the positions of the different players, and also
Speaker 1: the potential social unrest that we've seen in the UK
Speaker 1: and how that might play out after the election in
Speaker 1: the States, and obviously all these things are absolutely crucial
Speaker 1: to the economy. That's what you want to focus on,
Speaker 1: thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the rest of the world, dangerous for the
Speaker 2: rest of the world, and climate, which of course are
Speaker 2: too related, But allegra, do you want.
Speaker 5: To And clearly Trump is concerning for the climate agenda.
Speaker 5: I think he's more likely to unwind the regulations in
Speaker 5: the US around environmental protection than necessarily. You know, Ira
Speaker 5: was very cleverly, brilliantly constructed by the Biden administration to
Speaker 5: see a lot of Republican areas benefit in terms of
Speaker 5: jobs and investments. So hopefully he gets that and leaves
Speaker 5: that alone. But on the sort of points about coal
Speaker 5: and so and spewing forth lots of pollution, I think
Speaker 5: that's the sort of REGs that will go. And then
Speaker 5: more broadly the international agenda, the cops and so on.
Speaker 5: People are telling me to not worry too much that
Speaker 5: there's still sort of logic he's not going to copy
Speaker 5: this year is of course, straight after his election, a
Speaker 5: lot of people forgive me if he wins, a lot
Speaker 5: of people saying if he wins, he's unlikely to do pyrotechnics,
Speaker 5: immediately pull out, not go, because of course he pulled
Speaker 5: out of the Paris Agreement back in his last term.
Speaker 7: Wait and see.
Speaker 5: I think Ira protects the agenda somewhat because it's been
Speaker 5: so focused on Republican areas.
Speaker 6: I think very quickly on the going to Milwaukee that
Speaker 6: the two things you could say if you're a Republican speaking,
Speaker 6: no matter how boring, to encourage things was one talk
Speaker 6: about transgender stuff and people girls and boys, teams and
Speaker 6: things like that. And the other thing was just to
Speaker 6: mention the word energy, and the whole room would burst
Speaker 6: into drill baby drills.
Speaker 7: Been quite a lot of that as well. So yes,
Speaker 7: but it's.
Speaker 6: Still that SA on that side, I would be worried.
Speaker 6: Notwithstanding what Legra said on the on Anthony's point about
Speaker 6: the wider world, I think there is the transactional. I mean,
Speaker 6: is Trump going to cause as problems? Yes, I'm nati.
Speaker 6: I'm not as sure as Tim but I'm worried about that.
Speaker 6: I think you have to admit though with Trump he's
Speaker 6: very transactional, so I think, and he's transactional and he
Speaker 6: doesn't want to be seen to be a wimp. So
Speaker 6: if you take a problem like Ukraine, for instance, I
Speaker 6: think it's possible to imagine Trump quite quickly trying to
Speaker 6: come to some kind of deal with Putin that we
Speaker 6: might all disapprove of, but might vaguely set the borders
Speaker 6: where they are at the moment and sort of let
Speaker 6: Ukraine come into a NATO version of NATO. But that
Speaker 6: sounds why the Ukrainians know. Would that satisfy people who
Speaker 6: support them? No, but it's pay Putin? Probably not, but
Speaker 6: it might be a way out of it. So I
Speaker 6: think there's on China. I think it's the same kind
Speaker 6: of dynamic. Trump is so blown up with his own
Speaker 6: sense of ability to be able to talk to people,
Speaker 6: but again, he would be looking to try and do
Speaker 6: deals at the end of it. He is an American firster. Well,
Speaker 6: that's been his entire strategy. That has terrible consequences sometimes
Speaker 6: for based like Europe. But it does mean that he
Speaker 6: doesn't want to give in to things He doesn't want
Speaker 6: to look too weak. Again, Tim knows more about it.
Speaker 2: And I think that the sort of pivot away from Europe,
Speaker 2: although it would be more extreme under Trump, I think
Speaker 2: you'd have to expect it that at some level that
Speaker 2: is a structural shift. Yes, absolutely, A couple more questions. Okay,
Speaker 2: So for this side, maybe we take these two.
Speaker 10: On this side, Adrian's written brilliantly on meritocracy. One threat
Speaker 10: is that inequality of income and wealth feeds through into
Speaker 10: inequality of opportunity. What are the redistributionist policies in Britain
Speaker 10: therefore that you would support me? Yes, you, it must
Speaker 10: be something you would support on redistribution if it's going
Speaker 10: to enhance equality of opportunity and support the meritocracy that
Speaker 10: you've defended.
Speaker 4: I'd be much more concerned with broadening opportunity. Has happened
Speaker 4: under Blair, and I would say that the ways to
Speaker 4: do that would be to extend access to private schools
Speaker 4: by making it easier to pay, by increasing the number
Speaker 4: of scholarships available, by having a substantial investment. Again, has
Speaker 4: happened under Blair in early opportunities for deprived children. So
Speaker 4: I would focus more on opportunity more on creating avenues
Speaker 4: of upward educational mobility. On the issue of transferring wealth
Speaker 4: down the generations, I'm in two minds, but I think
Speaker 4: at the moment, given what's happening in the rest of
Speaker 4: the world in terms of a sort of the consolidation
Speaker 4: of big trading economic blocks, I don't think Britain's interest
Speaker 4: lies in being less welcoming to wealthy people.
Speaker 3: I think in the US campaign at some point Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris talked about rent controls. I think in the UK,
Speaker 3: previous Conservative government tried to regulate football clubs and debate
Speaker 3: whether we have a right to have a local football club.
Speaker 3: The reaction to the Oasis tickets was to regulate ticket Master.
Speaker 3: Even the winter fuel allowance. You know, there's actually no
Speaker 3: meta debate about whether it's the role of government to
Speaker 3: be sort of create little pots of money we hand
Speaker 3: out for winter fuel. Is there anyone, in part from
Speaker 3: maybe Kemy Badenoch, who actually thinks in both these countries
Speaker 3: that government perhaps should do less but do it better.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I mean, I do think it's
Speaker 2: very striking. In the US, you've had this sort of
Speaker 2: much discussion around the polarization of the electorate and the
Speaker 2: dramatic sort of moved to the right of the Republican
Speaker 2: Party and the move to the left of the Democrats,
Speaker 2: but they've almost never been so close on many of
Speaker 2: the sort of key elements of the key instincts of
Speaker 2: economic policy. You know, we both sides have moved a
Speaker 2: long way from the sort of new Democrats slash free
Speaker 2: market era that many of us kind of started our
Speaker 2: careers in. I think that's less obvious in the UK,
Speaker 2: but I do think, you know, to our further discussion,
Speaker 2: I think we're probably exaggerating how dramatic some of these
Speaker 2: socialist tendencies are in the Labor Party.
Speaker 5: Just to respond to your question, people say, you know,
Speaker 5: it's a good strap line in a TV hustings, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure Kenny, you know, says it to a great
Speaker 5: effect and indeed probably lives.
Speaker 7: Trust would be the other one who thinks it.
Speaker 5: But the problem is that once they are in government,
Speaker 5: possibly she's in government, or whoever wins it is in
Speaker 5: government in five years time, possibly when there is then
Speaker 5: something that is on the front pages and it runs
Speaker 5: and runs and runs. In reality, the prime minister's official
Speaker 5: spokesman because person gets asked about this, They get asked
Speaker 5: about it at PMQ's just the nature of our political
Speaker 5: system demands that people are on the hook. And until
Speaker 5: you have a political class that is happy to say
Speaker 5: nothing to do with me, take the selsewhere, which we
Speaker 5: don't have. We don't have a media class that is
Speaker 5: prepared to think that that's an acceptable response either.
Speaker 4: Slightly on us too, but a lot of this is
Speaker 4: just performative, isn't it. We didn't end up regulating the
Speaker 4: football market. We're not going to regulate the price of
Speaker 4: a rated tickets. We just say a few things and
Speaker 4: then everybody forgets about it.
Speaker 8: I mean, you know, I think to Sebastian's question too
Speaker 8: about redistribution, when we start to talk about the tax structure,
Speaker 8: you know, we sometimes just frame this solely where our
Speaker 8: income taxes. Obviously this is of great interest in the
Speaker 8: UK right now, but I think in the UK only
Speaker 8: about ten percent of government revenue comes from corporate income
Speaker 8: taxes and about twenty percent comes from personal income taxes.
Speaker 8: In the US, about fifty percent of government revenue is
Speaker 8: from personal income taxes and only ten percent from corporate taxes.
Speaker 8: And I think there's this sort of veil around this
Speaker 8: discussion in which we don't really just get it's sort
Speaker 8: of the core basic foundations of how the government creates
Speaker 8: and draws in revenue, Whether there's an equitable balance between
Speaker 8: a corporate tax and a personal income tax. I would
Speaker 8: say that the personal income taxes as a percentage of
Speaker 8: the pie in both countries is wildly out of skew
Speaker 8: relative to the corporate tax rates. And then what's the
Speaker 8: proper role for the government with that pot of money
Speaker 8: and a well run government, and it helps create economic opportunity,
Speaker 8: I think first and foremost, and there's a strong role
Speaker 8: for that, and I think that's where public policy should
Speaker 8: be geared towards, and it should be geared towards opportunity.
Speaker 7: To go back, the inflation debate in.
Speaker 8: The US is a small facet of a larger affordability debate.
Speaker 4: Just to go quickly back to, I think we do
Speaker 4: have a very interesting model in Europe which we could
Speaker 4: in this country be moving closer to, which is the
Speaker 4: model that they have in Sweden, whereby you're allowed to
Speaker 4: use state money to send your children to private schools.
Speaker 4: You have a market, you have a vouch, your system,
Speaker 4: you have no inheritance tax whatsoever. You actually, I think
Speaker 4: to Sweden has twice the number per capita of billionaires
Speaker 4: that the United States has, and yet there is a
Speaker 4: great sense that this country has lots of upward mobility.
Speaker 4: So I think it is possible to combine these two things.
Speaker 4: It's just that we in Britain are determined to go
Speaker 4: down exactly the wrong road.
Speaker 5: And also, to answer Sebastian's point, I don't know how
Speaker 5: many of you here at watching Freddie Flinn toss Field
Speaker 5: of Dreams, but certainly I recommend it.
Speaker 7: You recommend it.
Speaker 5: It's amazing and he goes to press them where he
Speaker 5: grew up, and he actually acts like he teach them
Speaker 5: cricket and a lot. But he is a youth worker
Speaker 5: and we cut them that service to smithereens during the
Speaker 5: last ten to fifteen years of the last Conservative government.
Speaker 5: And I think that's something that a lot of Conservatives
Speaker 5: would look back on and regret. And if you talk
Speaker 5: about social mobility, you know, it's one thing to talk
Speaker 5: about it in London and the southeast, but think about
Speaker 5: it in those incredibly poor towns and cities, towns mostly
Speaker 5: in the north, where kids don't have an adult.
Speaker 7: Figure to look up to. How on earth you're.
Speaker 5: Going to get any meritocracy going in those areas if
Speaker 5: you don't have a figure. I mean, they can't all
Speaker 5: have Freddie Flintoff, who is an electric character, but.
Speaker 7: They can have and they did have.
Speaker 5: And I think that's possibly because we had the pandemic
Speaker 5: and then the cost of living song. We haven't reflected
Speaker 5: on deficit reduction and whether it was done in the
Speaker 5: right way if you agree with it, A lot of
Speaker 5: people don't agree with it. But if you do agree
Speaker 5: with it, did they do the right cuts? And they
Speaker 5: cut youth services, they cut drug services, they cut social care.
Speaker 5: A lot of things became the crises of the last
Speaker 5: five years.
Speaker 2: I think that is one of the great challenges, is
Speaker 2: whether you can shift from not just the focus on
Speaker 2: when we think about investment, not just physical infrastructure, but
Speaker 2: social infrastructure. I think social infrastructure has been so neglected
Speaker 2: on both sides of the Atlantic, and I think Allegria,
Speaker 2: you're quite right, we're coming to an in now. I
Speaker 2: think to take us back to the success of the
Speaker 2: labor government is going to be partly about how it
Speaker 2: manages to narrow some of those gaps with the broader country.
Speaker 2: Whatever we might be thinking in the city, and certainly
Speaker 2: the result in November will have a lot to do
Speaker 2: with what those parts of America that we don't spend
Speaker 2: very much time are thinking about the future.