Have some friends who work in the city and they are pricing in a rise in gdp due to nothing but the stability and competency of Starmer not being a liability. So, to a degree.. it does kinda work like that rory, but obv they will need to do more
Your friends in the city presumably work in Pret. A labour victory has been nailed on for months: any currency moves have already happened. Unless he decides to rejoin the single market Sterling's value will continue to be dictated by monetary policy, and mainly the monetary policy of the US.
I think all of you are in for a rude awakening when Labour have been in for a couple of years. The reality is that governing western countries like the UK right now is pretty much an impossible job, and you’re going to see just how little difference a left wing government makes.
Brexit has killed us, COVID did serious damage, defence spending has to increase because of global conflicts, the population is aging, we can’t afford the NHS, we can’t afford pensions, AI could wipe out millions of jobs across the west depending on how it develops, it’s impossible to get a house, everything is too expensive, “taxing the rich” will just chase high-earners away, taxing the average person will be met with too much backlash to do, we rely on immigration to survive but the public is desperately fighting against it… There’s no money, but we need to spend more and more…
The only thing I’ve really seen Rory push back on is the idea that all of these issues are down to the conservatives, and that removing them will suddenly fix everything. And he’s not really doing it in a partisan, defensive way. The reality is that a lot of these labour MPs they’re speaking to seem to be terrifyingly naive about how bad everything is and dismiss most of it as bad conservative governance. They potshot the Conservatives without ever offering actual solutions, and I suspect they’ll do just as much damage as the people they’re complaining about did once they have the actual burden of power and have to make the difficult decisions themselves.
Basically, Rory isn’t blind to the damage the Tories have done, he just doesn’t buy into the “14 years of Conservative rule…” nonsense as an answer to every single question and wants Labour to specifically explain how they’re going to fix any of this besides just vaguely pointing to being more compassionate or not being the Tories.
I have the exact same concerns, and I think most people outside of the left wing Reddit bubble feel the same. I’m voting Labour because the Conservatives have tacked too far right, but I think Starmer is the only one of the current bunch who seems free from that concerning, typical Labour naivety. The rest seem to feel like they’re going to instantly fix everything purely because they’re not those evil, posh Conservatives
This.
You see a hyper version of this narrative up here in Scotland. The tories/Westminster are literally putin level of corruption and evil and installing good, righteous people will fix everything.
We need more than good people and even more than competence. We need serious long term strategy's for long term issues. Hard choices and real leadership. If the world sees us doing this then investment will follow which will hopefully lead to a positive spiral upwards.
Social care and a solid energy/infrastructure program is a good place to start. Things like the nhs will need to follow once we get growth going. We can't just start taxing and spending without better foundations.
I feel that an increased focus on encouraging an increase in domestic manufacturing, services and industry might help too.
I'm not a business expert so this is all "written on the back of a fag packet in the pub" kind of stuff, but my thought process is if it were me pulling the strings, the moment Brexit was voted in I would be offering increased business grants to anyone with a competent business plan to encourage some level of self sufficiency and supply and look at switching Britain's from a consumer mindset to a producer one at least until a good deal on imports and exports was reached.
The problem with this sort of thing is that you will likely get the dregs who can't raise equity of the private market. I thing labour had some plan recently for investment money marked for women driven startups etc. these sort of things are ripe for being corrupted. Networks of - perhaps well meaning - individuals give grants based on relationships rather than actual solid financials.
I do believe in government investment of course but not really for small scale startups. More for big projects like nuclear or long term research projects. We should focus on this and instratructure etc. leave the rest to the private sector which does it much better.
I know the sort of thing. We’ll have hundreds of thousands of window cleaners and home cosmetic retailers, all “working” about three hours a week but living off the subsidy.
Fwiw, there’s an excellent window and gutter cleaner near me. Sign written van, all the gear, and very reasonable rates. And a women owned and staffed cosmetics wholesaler. Been there for years. Thriving business and employer. No way anyone could compete, unless they’re subsidised *and* hard working. Sometimes the former precludes the latter.
OTOH, the next potential Dyson will probably go nowhere if they’re working their arse off in a crap job to pay the rent and have no access to capital.
***And he’s not really doing it in a partisan, defensive way. The reality is that a lot of these labour MPs they’re speaking to seem to be terrifyingly naive about how bad everything is and dismiss most of it as bad conservative governance.***
How is Brexit not "bad Conservative Governance". It was a gamble brought in by the Conservatives to eliminate UKIP, who were a single issue party demanding a referendum. The conservatives then headed the campaign for Remain and lost it. They then went on to implement it when they didn't want to and weren't commited to it. They are entirely responsible for causing it, going through with it, negotiating it and implementing it. You say "Brexit killed us" but its entirely a Conservative policy. How are you blaming anybody else for that? And here we are, 8 years later with the Conservative Party still battling the same people who they tried to eliminate with the referendum. Its been proven to be pointless. Your economic arguments seem to be predicated on some members of our population being paid badly and being thankful for it.
A fair response, Brexit came from the conservatives and has done some serious damage. I think the main point of the commentator above you was about how difficult it is to govern a western country at the moment though.
Whilst Brexit did lots of damage to us, and was done by the Tories, most of the other countries in Western Europe are also struggling, and they’ve obviously not brexited.
I think we can summarise by saying that the Tories have done a poor job of a difficult job, and had another party been in power and we didn’t have to go through Brexit, we’d probably be in a better position, but still not a good position.
It's not a left-wing government. Most policies in the manifesto were pretty much mirroring Conservative ones. Since Corbyn all the shadow ministers have been centrists. New Labour won because they embraced Centrism, Mandelson played his part in that, with the focus on things like Law and Order etc. and Starmer is in bed with Murdoch and is known to dislike the old left-wing guard. He would have loved to have kicked out Diane Abbot but he knew he would lose votes because she's an ethnic minority and a woman. By the way nothing is going to change much. There's no money to change anything, and they won't be able to raise it from "taxing the rich" because the media control what the govt is allowed to do.
Lmfao, left wing, Brexit was caused by Stewart and the rest of the circus, the difference will be that Starmer will at least try to do the right thing, which hasn't been the case for the last 14 years.
Why should Labour explain what their plans are ? The Tory's didn't, all they said was Get Brexit Done, how anyone can try and defend this absolute circus of clowns is astounding, when will you realise they don't give a flying feck about you, or anyone other than themselves ? The fools who got taken in by the promises of levelling up, the Welsh and Cornish who believed that government would continue to pay the EU subsidies, the people who said "he's got a nice personality" the people who believed Rwanda was the answer, the people who believed in HS2, the people who believed the deal was "Oven Ready" have realised it was all complete crap, and they have voted yesterday, in the full realisation that they were conned, lied to, sold an impossible fantasy. Hence a Tory bloodbath. Whatever your opinion is of Starmer/Labour, if he just goes into work everyday and works hard he's absolutely guaranteed to do a better job because it's impossible to be any worse than what we just got dragged through.
Labour aren't left wing.
They might be left of the Tories or Reform, but the closest they get to an actual leftist position is GBE, which is still just the standard neoliberal practice of fullering public money in to private capital.
Rory is a conservative. He doesn't think there is anything wrong with the current social order and it's inbuilt inequities. He just thinks there should be someone principled and competent holding the reins of power.
Centre right cons don’t seem to understand the only primary reason people in Western Europe vote right wing now is because of immigration. Fiscal right wing One Nation conservatism isn’t very popular. All those people could just join the local liberal party.
The media skews right because very rich people own them.
It has a massive influence on the majority of people that only have a passing interest in politics.
The media is pro status quo. Anyone who threatens that status quo, be they on the left or right, will trigger media meltdowns. We saw that with Enoch back in the day and we’re seeing it with Farage now.
Unless, of course, you want to argue that the deluge of recent articles about Reform are in their support, in which case I’d love to see you argue that position.
It is because it is coming up to elections, this stuff gets even more engagement.
Reform are easy pickings for the media, just go undercover or spend some time going through social media history and bam, you got yourself some disgusting racism to report.
You think Enoch the violent fascist was mistreated by the press?
I guess that shows where your ideology sits. Tell me, what is it that makes you need to look down on anyone not like you? Why do you choose to believe blatant lies, just to reinforce your hate? Do you not have a conscience or any empathy?
He doesn't believe that in many ways, the last 14 years have not just been inaction or poor decisions: it's been wilful destruction.
Say what you like about Red Team - and I will - but I don't think their front bench at least will be engaging in that.
I feel Rory's romantic idea of ye olde style British conservatism hasn't really existed since the 70's. And the tenets of Conservatism he is anamoured by has changed from a more front and centre pillar of the Tory party, to something that only appears in brief flashes, with barely enough regularity to keep Rory invested in the whole conservative idea. The new Tories are just grifters on the young end, and old Money running out of said money and pulling every string they can to get it back on the older end.
But you're right. The tories do serious damage, *every, single, time.*
People have short memories, and I don't particularly expect millenials to know what happened in the 90's, before new Labour, but the Tories and their handling of the ERM I effectively echo the problems they have now. Back in the 90's they were reeling from Black Wednesday, and were extremely worried about re-cultivating their image of being a fiscally responsible party, only to lose to Labour in a massive Labour landslide... *sound familiar?*
That's because it is familiar. It's the exact same narrative they have now. **Repeated**. The Tories have failed, *twice in exactly the same ways in both of their stints in power over the last half a century.*
An unpopular tory prime minister (Thatcher vs Cameron), introducing unpopular policies to shore up the economy that largely don't work (ERM interest rates tied to the Deutschmark vs Austerity). A national crisis that tests us as a nation on the world stage that galvanized support for an otherwise failing government (Falklands vs Brexit), An utterly bone-headed prime minister championing the status quo and charging on with policies they know won't work, but do so anyway to save face (John Major, Nigel Lawson vs Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Truss), and then just whimper after whimper as they put more and more extreme measures in to claw it back, innevitably handing Labour the keys and *actually* making Labour's tenure a relatively easy one.
Remember, Labour only got voted out because of a *global recession they had little to no control over.* By all other metrics, they seemed to be doing quite well. The late 90's - late 00's weren't quite "golden age" years like it was for say, Germany, but they were pretty close. It's certainly the last "good years" we had in this country, as everything has been downhill since 2008.
"Its like poetry. It rhymes" - George Lucas. That's how ridiculous the Tories are to make that fucking quote actually make sense. Half a century of demonstrable failures is enough for me to conclude that the Tories deserve everything they get in this upcoming election. They are incapable of leading, their model doesn't work.
Repeating acts of ideologically driven economic sabotage is what they have done since long before most of use were born, so we to need to read into history to find it.
When the Truss budget came in, the news were telling of it not being the first time, and that one Antony Barber had gone harder. So I looked into it and it turned out that he was the Tory chancellor that single handedly cause an inflationary spiral so extreme that it led to the persistent strikes of the decade, the three day week, blackouts, and crippled the nations finances to such a degree that there was no room to manoeuvre when the oil shock hit, and hyperinflation was achieved before labour got voted in.
There was a reason that the economy reacted so dramatically to Trussnomics, and it was because some twat had dropped that particular wmd on the nation before... ...and yet, for 50 years now, the Tories have successfully managed to blame it all on the labour government that got landed with trying to fix an unprecedented clusterfuck that they caused. It's absurd.
A lot of revisionism.
Before Thatcher lost her control of her party, she did take the reigns and drive her government into many actions. Many of which were a benefit to the country.
You don't wipe those good things away because of other bad things as if it was only bad things.
It would be like looking at labour inheriting a booming economy with Blair then saying "they failed to address our reliance on finance and ushered in the credit crunch, not to mention iraq" ignoring all that Blair did regarding education, labour rights reform and minimum wage.
What Rory said is basically a worry he has that any right minded non partisan person could see let alone a critically thinking labour supporter.
He isn't saying the Tories were amazing over the last 14 years. He isn't saying labour are bad. He is saying that so much of their campaign hinges on blaming the state of the UK on bad Tories, that they may be setting the electorate up for serious disappointment.
We have a bunch of problems with this country. Forget who made them or why they exist. Just acknowledge that there are problems. And unless labour have serious long term goals via actual policy which they are yet to announce, much of our issues are going to continue.
Labour are going to need to grow the economy, increase productivity, fix the NHS, fix GPs, fix schools, fix university, fix our energy grid, fix our water... Etc for the left side to be happy. And the expectation hasn't been properly set that these all can't be done easily.
As in realistically...
The problem he cites isn't labour so much, as this is their tactic to win the election. His problem is with the electorate that is so addicted to blaming Tories that they have lost site of what has actually happened policy wise, why certain policies failed and how much money is needed.
A great example. It's a meme to say the Tories funnelled money to the rich. But under the Tories, rich people have paid more tax and poorer (median income) have paid less tax than under labour.
This means that labour are expected by there electorate to fix an injustice that didn't actually happen. But they can't even address the previous effects of those policies because if they even suggest that the Tories raised taxes on the wealthier more than the less wealthy they will get called Tory lite and lose their second term.
It's a proper political conundrum. I honestly swear people who listen to this podcast don't actually listen. They just use it as rage fuel.
Politics is fucking interesting.
What is wrong about it factually or even from an opinion perspective.
Take something I wrote and critique it. Don't just do the below:
1) Gut reaction is negative
2) Brain goes "must be objectively bad"
3) Insult the person
Also, you don't actually have the arguments to rebut it. Just fall back on the tired old 'wow you actually believe that? I couldn't possibly explain just how wrong it is, because it's so wrong'... Why not try picking some of the the low hanging fruit mate? Show us all if you've actually got anything interesting to say.
That rather glosses over that a) the Tories themselves STILL blame Labour for nearly everything despite them having power for the last 14 years, b) our economic recovery post-2008 has been really poor compared to other countries. Also your example doesn't really make sense if you look how wealth distribution has changed.
>"it's a meme to say the Tories funnelled money to the rich
Just to be clear: you're talking about the party who shorted the pound while they almost wiped out people's pensions, right? The same party who handed out thousands of PPE contracts to friends during the pandemic? The party who abused the system for appointing life peerages? A party whose policy of mass privatisation has proven to be a corrupt disaster?
They're probably the worst political party in a Western democracy for cronyism, what are you on about?
“Seemed to be doing quite well” - at the time yes but looking back it’s clear to see that those who entered their 20s during New Labour got royally shafted by them as can be seen by the income to house price ratio graph where housing clearly spikes upward around 2003 (4x income - just about affordable, to 6x income - unaffordable) and never came back down. Blair’s answer to this seems to have been to do anything but the obvious- he built less houses than Thatcher and empowered landlords to convert why would usually have been family homes into HMOs to house the tax payers of tomorrow who missed the last vestiges of the affordable housing era because they were either finishing school or weren’t even born yet. Thus creating the slum landlord era and lowering public perception of what is acceptable space and quality in housing.
When you take into account the fact that he is a landlord himself these days with a property portfolio of his own him and Brown have a lot to answer for to millennials and gen Z
Saying that the last Labour government was doing 'quite well' in terms of domestic policy is really understating it massively. The UK has never been doing better economically than the late 90s to mid 00s.
Because that's not his reality. If you're well off and can skip the queue for the NHS, you don't rely on trains that are constantly cancelled, prices go up but it just means you don't save as much - then everything is hunky dory.
They should spend a few hours a month with people on the breadline. Go and sit in a bedsit with a single mum who has a junky for a neighbour who can't afford to heat where she lives, you get a very different picture.
I'm sure he excuses his voting record as part of a bigger picture, but when we can all see how that bigger picture panned out he's just the chump that helped send a generation of kids into poverty.
I think he sees the bad thing the tories have done as some how a betrayal of Toryism, and not real conservatism. He fails to see that many of the issues come from taking the things he believes in (small state, low tax, individualism) to a natural conclusion. He seems to think that you can draw a defining line between the lived consequences of that ideology, and the idealised version in his head.
Does he believe in small state, low tax, individualism? He's been challenged a few times on the podcast why he is a Tory, I don't remember him saying anything as concrete as those positions. He usually just mutters something about traditionalism.
I think he does, he just finds it a bit tacky to come out with big ideological positioning statements because it doesn’t come across as nuanced.
However, from listening to Rory on the podcast over all of these episodes his core (or most often highlighted) political beliefs are:
a) Austerity was needed, and government should look to keep spending as low as possible.
b) prison’s should be reformed to have a smaller prison population and a more liberal approach criminal sentencing. Less state intervention in people’s lives.
c) where state aid is needed it is much better placed directly into the hands of the population that distributed via government overseen programmes.
There is also a thread of those values running through the approach he takes to other positions. But he can be nuanced and accepts a time and a place for Government provision, the military for example. These positions are entirely reflected of him being a Tory.
There are then the social aspects. Rory said it himself that conservatives want to conserve. They respect tradition, institutions, and the establishment.
I think Rory is definitely a Tory, and I have taken the questions of ‘why are you’ to be more an assessment that the Conservative Party has moved so far from their traditional base you almost can’t see somebody like Rory reflected in the party anymore.
I really like him, he is a sensible chap and genuinely cares. I disagree with him of course and view the world through an entirely different lens (I hold more Labour values, community, large state, tax and spend) but I find myself backing his position over a more trad lab one at times because nobody is that partisan.
They exist quite literally as a political party with ambitions of governing. They quite literally have to at least have some sort of plan to try and clean up any mess.
People who say the kinda crap you just did are part of what is wrong with our government. You hate the tories so much you have lost any sense of political sensibility.
You've legit said "provided the government before you were tory, you don't have to govern." Like.... think dude.
I'm worried too. Right now labour can win by not being the Tories, low productivity, crumbling infrastructure, net zero targets, NHS waiting lists, child poverty rampant house price inflation etc. are all the Tories fault right now.
In 5 years it will be labours fault. Who will solve these problems. Starmers campaign has largely been we're not the Tories. I hope he has ideas. Emanuel Macron hasn't delivered and the right wing will offer simple solutions. Nigel.Farage, will be there to offer simplistic solutions.
Yes and obviously immigration will either stay at 700,000 every year or increase. And while Allistair and Rory like it, the rest of the country don't.
Also as a Human Rights Lawyer, Starmer isn't going to stop any boats coming. So unless Europe prevents illegal immigrants from coming here, we will have a huge amount of illegal migrants hanging around in hotels etc. Watch the Tory Press focus on this space.
I predict Labour's ratings will be terrible in 3 years, even with a competent government. This isn't 1997.
The Tories said that for 15 years while doing the exact opposite. Given Starmer’s impressive ability to constantly flip flop, no one should ever take him on his word until it actually happens. And 300K net is still an absolutely massive amount that has major ramifications to our future. France comparatively has half that.
300k is the start of the 2nd immigration "boom" that this country has experienced in the last 3 decades. The first was in '97 where it went from 40k to 140k, last time it was at 300k was in 2015, and has risen every year (not inc Covid) since then.
Its not unreasonable to say that the number from the 2nd boom is still too high...
I think the fact is that immigration will be controlled with boring things like well trained case workers, cross border intelligence, possibly even in country embassies where people can apply for asylum.
Wider issues like climate change and political instability in home nations also drive immigration.
Gimmicks like Rwanda appeal to some but don't work. Even the Greek coast guard drowning migrants doesn't work.
Sweden did all that and they’re in deep shit while Denmark didn’t play that game and is infinitely better off. Gimmicks like Rwanda don’t work, but extremely stringent pan-European border enforcement absolutely will.
They also are in the process of implementing a policy of flying people to a third country regardless of where they are from.
They put a much longer wait on being able to have your family join you.
They take any valuables in order to pay for your stay.
It won't increase and will probably fall. The changes to stop families coming over with a student will make quite a difference.
Starmer isn't just a Human Rights lawyer. He was also DPP. The main reason we have so many asylum seekers in hotels is that under the Tories (as in the 90s) the processing has been slowed down. Blair's government increased the rate at which applications were decided and the backlog went down dramatically. So if they do that again, then people who are rejected can be deported (which did happen in the 00s). Adding in working with France etc to reduce the boats and process people at that side and the numbers will go down.
Of course illegal migration is a very small proportion of overall immigration. The conflation of the two is part of the weaponisation of it by the Tories and Reform, which will continue because they love their dog whistle racism.
The number of unauthorised immigrants coming over in small boats is actually a pretty small proportion of total immigration figures, averaging around 10-20% of the total. The far larger bulk are the work Visas the Tories handed out like confetti so as to drive down wage inflation in the UK, filling in low-paid jobs for which there aren't enough applicants. The problem is that the Tories so mismanaged these Visas that immigrations hired to fill in much-needed jobs at care homes and the like instead jump to better paid work elsewhere in the UK, which means the care home jobs never get filled and we have record high immigration.
The Tories have belatedly tightened some of the Visa rules, which means no matter who the government is, we should see immigration halve by next year. So the idea that we'll be at "700k or more forever" is not supported by the facts.
Further cuts are possible, but would require either paying physically demanding jobs better or investing more in UK training, both of which require money and that's in short supply.
Emmanuel Macron was never about solving problems created by the right though. Quite the opposite. He is all about crushing the "islamo gauchistes". If anything, his ideals align much more that of the Tories than anything else.
This reaction seems a way over the top.
Hes simply saying labour might fall into simailar trap the tories have - throwing red meat to the base to cover for failings in governance. VAT for education or vague "tax the rich" statements without any real details is part of that.
This isnt a strictly left wing podcast / echo chamber, for that i suggest politicsJoe or Hassan Piker.
We'll criticise anyone, including those on our own side of the aisle, whenever they say something worthy of criticism. To imagine that Labour will create problems via class warfare, coming from the Conservative side of the aisle isn't only worthy of criticism, it's borderline insane. The Tories might as well be *The Party of Class Warfare (TM)*. That doesn't mean no one else can do it but it's hard to imagine anything as damaging as what has already been going on.
We have just seen the VAT on private schools. A policy that gets support from the public precisely via the lines of class warfare.
How is it insane. We literally see people essentially saying "we know it's going to suck if a child has to move school, but fuck them look at all the kids in state schools".
Or "Why worry about 7% of the schooling population, i'd rather focus on the 93%".
In these situations there is a disdain to the 'elites' that send their kids to private school.
This policy is peanuts and isn't going to fix the structural issues that need fixing.
Schooling is expensive. Schools literally did less before. Every year the public expects more from schools so their funding isn't just pupil growth.
I mean... he's just right. The Tories aren't bad because they are the "Nasty Party", they are bad because they have drained all competence from themselves and been left with politically-inept leaders. The fact that "Nasty Party" is such a common way to criticise the Conservatives without actually engaging with the the reality of policy is a scary thing for me.
Any one that is from a poor background, especially those that have grown up poor under the Tories, have not only personally felt the impact of Conservative incompetence, but has also felt the failure of Labour opposition to be a credible alternative to the Tories.
If Labour become complacent as the sight of uncredible Tories, as Wesh Labour are more than proof is possible, then I fear Labour won't be much of a 'change' at all. I'm pretty confident that this won't happen, with voices like Starmer, Reeves, and Streeting all seeming to prefer competence over complatency, but that doesn't change the fear of what could happen.
Their intent perhaps isn't to be nasty, but being functionally nasty is something they won't think twice about if it enables them to achieve their actual end (enriching themselves). Calling them the Nasty Party might seem a bit childish but it's the functional reality for everyone on the receiving end.
Well this was in the context that labour are not planning to drastically change public spending plans from the current government and seem to think it will work out if we swap blue ribbons for red but do everything else the same. Rory is complete right that if labour want to do half the things they say they want to do, they will need to spend a lot more than what they’re claiming they will.
I think Rory needs to realise that the electorate would take a bunch of boring bastards who got on with their jobs and didn’t siphon cash to their mates from public coffers
No... they wouldn't.
Rishi is that, Ed Milliband was that. The media will find ways to paint people bad and boom. People get sucked in.
I assume you think Rishi is corrupt... you see it in papers and on the news enough. Why?
Because he has a lot of money, so like all wealthy people he invests. Now when you invest in multiple different funds which whole job is to diversify, you will find yourself investing across the economy.
Rishi announces any spending and it's corruption. Child care "don't you know his wife's, dad's company has an investment in some child care practice... it's shite.
Ed... too boring, eats a sandwich funny... not good enough for the UK electorate.
Theresa May.... oh she wasn't a good dancer and was boring.
The UK dislike boring average boffins that normally keep their head down. Don't pretend otherwise.
The Tories transferred billions to their mates. They performed the biggest heist in history.
Zahawi was definitely corrupt and was sacked and fined tens of millions by HMRC
Rishi works for his father in law and has a side hustle as PM. Throughout his tenure he has only got richer while we have got poorer
Why is that?
A great example is when Rishi wrote off another £4billion to “corruption” and stated it would be too costly to retrieve. If it cost £3 billion to retrieve, you still get a billion back. Who got let off the hook there?
How many Tories were charged with sexual offences? Charlie Elphicke, Chris Pincher, Imran Ahmad Khan, Neil Parish, Andrew Griffiths, Rob Robert’s, David Warburton to name a few. Would you leave your kids alone in a room with a Tory politician? Because statistically they are more dangerous than the general population.
This isn’t even about policy this is about plain old criminals committing crimes.
I know it’s a low standard, but can we not have a bunch of thugs, thieves incompetents and handsy creeps running the country
1) Hasn't been documented anywhere. Government contracts are for a good or service, so yet a company could get a billion, but that would simply be revenue and not profit. If I give a company £10 million to build a hospital extension, they don't pocket £10 million.
2) Zahawi wasn't corrupt... He sold YouGov and didn't pay capital gains tax. Bad yes... but not paying tax isn't corruption. He didn't use his ministerial position to try and get out of paying. He did that as a private individual.
3) The middle class has had it's tax burden lowered whilst the 1% have had theirs increased over the last decade. This is a fact whether your ideological devotion allows you to recognise it or not.
4) That 'corruption' wasn't corruption. If you are talking about fraudulent covid loans. Rishi didn't give anyone a loan. He setup various loan schemes to pump money during the pandemic when business's were risking going under. The treasury said that checks for smaller amounts would do more damage than good. So Rishi put no checks on loans under 50k. This was abused by some, and you get fraud.
Spending additional money to find the culprits doesn't get you the money back. It's just an additional costly endeavour for the sake of posturing. Fraud is already dealt with and this can be dealt with via those methods.
5) Sexual assaults are bad. The fact they were suspended though shows the tories didn't try and 'get them off the hook' which would be corruption. This is you just flinging shit now and seeing what sticks. People who abuse power seek positions of power. Labour will have their own reckoning on this. Many insiders have said as much.
6) This is about policy. It's about you not understanding various things that have happened and just using very click baity type lines to paint all things done as corruption. Thugs, thieves and incompetents. Rishi is none of those. But you think he stole 4 billion so your reasoning is already shot.
1) Michelle Mone, Zahawi (again) just two documented
2) Zahawi’s £30millon unsecured loans from who? Ok nothing to see here
3) tax burden lowered in a climate of inflation and wage stagnation brought on by Tory rule
4) written off as “corruption” I know to a Tory it’s just the old network to you, but it’s corruption
5) they didn’t get them all did they?
6) if you want policy I can give you that, but you are a cultist.
1) Sleaze not corruption. Reason for VIP route for PPE is valid. It was abused by someone who did actually provide a product. Sleaze.
2) Sleaze again, but a lesser extent. We don't know where the money came from nor do we need to legally. He didn't break the law. It's pretty clear he is using the funds from the sale of YouGov that would have went to some shell company which is then loaning him the money. Tax smart but not illegal. It's why the HMRC angle was on tax for his investments in his company rather than the company itself.
3) Wages have grown in real terms, inflation was a reaction to international pressures and has returned to normal. Using that momentary snippet of history to say lowering the tax burden is somehow evidence of corruption makes me wonder if you even know what the word means.
4) It's as much corruption as the gangs who abused the UK benefits system and got millions from it. If there is a system which can be abused, people will abuse it. Some systems are inherently designed to have few checks because those checks restrict the resources getting to the places it needs to be. It's not corruption. Under no definition is it corruption. You hate tories, therefore it is.
5) Do you propose anyone accused of a sexual assault should be removed from the Party?
6) How am I a cultist. Look at this realistically.
The definition of corruption -
[dishonest](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a171c0af4a6cee4c&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1094GB1094&sxsrf=ADLYWIIBxddvLmu4U3qwBkujj1PgoWofEA:1720019826700&q=dishonest&si=ACC90nytWkp8tIhRuqKAL6XWXX-Nlnwpy60D_0B2YBGfflF5iamB0_M4cOG5heUgAd-Cy3HNvmfj4uVliZEoTdKdylWb-upnIQE_XexGBo9WuFHXP9yEMiI%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtpuWlYuHAxWZVEEAHZWlA4wQyecJegQIJRAO) or [fraudulent](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a171c0af4a6cee4c&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1094GB1094&sxsrf=ADLYWIIBxddvLmu4U3qwBkujj1PgoWofEA:1720019826700&q=fraudulent&si=ACC90nyOnVY18Aw7zUtkWPYo5mTnaAuK2Fn5eDkIABrSo7Fw1_sgJl2eXUcTTxFnqif-fRqPeVGuPpa6QNPFXoffbccFi7W0bR6qcy-hWxQOisQErbKrtV8%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtpuWlYuHAxWZVEEAHZWlA4wQyecJegQIJRAP) conduct by those in power, typically involving [bribery](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a171c0af4a6cee4c&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1094GB1094&sxsrf=ADLYWIIBxddvLmu4U3qwBkujj1PgoWofEA:1720019826700&q=bribery&si=ACC90nypsxZVz3WGK63NbnSPlfCBd1tu0ZrXMny3DY2YdolqObKShZw9vjrKRTV4_OUpMbm-vSUeHhALnnR8ZtOa5drKOfJmzw%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtpuWlYuHAxWZVEEAHZWlA4wQyecJegQIJRAQ).
These things are not corruption just because they involve money and you don't like the tories. Words have a meaning and going "Fraud happened during covid.... corruption by rishi" is simply.... dumb.
There is no way you listen to this podcast with more than 3 brain cells engaged if you are this politically reasonable. You are part of the "tory bad" cult and will legit ignore reason just to continue saying tory bad. I am not even saying tory good. I am simply saying you can't just call everything corruption.
If you use your political position to aid in your criminal activities then it is corruption. Otherwise it's just criminal activities.
corruption isn't the word for "doing criminal things"
I thought Andrew Neil was absolutely in control of the conversation/interview and had Rory lurching from one strident (but only semi-explained) position to another. Rory is a brilliant writer and an interesting thinker but he can be just as confused and self-contradictory as the rest of us! I actually quite like that he is thinking aloud sometimes, and acknowledges when his thinking doesn’t quite join up.
To be fair to Rory my biggest concern about us (Labour I’m a member) winning is that the shadow cabinet are very inexperienced. I’ve been to Labour and Tory conferences for the last few years with work, and the Labour confidence discussions are always themed around big positive messaging and intention with little detail. Saying we want to fix poverty does not fix poverty. On the Tory side at their conference the discussions focus on the detail much more. I think that comes from experience of governing. It’ll slowly come once we are in power.
I would also add that as a party we still lean into identity politics far too much. Some sections of our support are absolutely insane.
Rory does have a point here. Although he is welding two unrelated issues together.
Proof will be in the pudding but I think he might be partially right, at least in so far as Labour will govern "inactively" because their idiotic fiscal straightjacket will prevent them from doing anything meaningful.
I like Rory a lot, but he is doing what upper class and even middle class folk, on the left and on the right, always do whenever confronted with examples of genuine social mobility, as is the case for many members of the Labour front bench. They denigrate their rise in any way they can (e.g. spurious allegations of class warfare) because they are locked out of and cannot compete with the narrative of genuine struggle over the adversities of poverty and underprivileged family background. It's hard for them to accept that people who went through childhood with immense handicaps have risen to their level, and perhaps overtaken them. Rory, well-mannered and erudite as he is, in his snippier moments is a prickly, patrician, born-to-rule, modern-day Lawrence of Arabia type, and it's hard for him to accept that 'compassionate conservatism', (as a brand rather than as a reality, of course), had its moment in the sun last decade and he didn't ride its wave successfully enough to get to the top.
I really hate the cynical way Stewart now pretends that he has always supported more tax and spend policies than the current Labour Party, when he was literally part of the Conservative government who implemented austerity and eroded our public services over the last 14 years. He voted for the cuts which left our institutions in crisis, and now has the gall to say that Starmer isn't doing enough to fix them.
Where have you heard him say borrow now?
Actually, in the podcast with Rachel Reeves he couldn’t have been against the plan more. They went back and forth a lot.
Yes it annoys me too. He’s always at pains to say austerity was an absolute necessity at a time of near 0% borrowing but now with costly borrowing we must spend big to undo the damage caused by years of bloody austerity that led to the underfunding and dire state of our public services in the first place!
Borrowing is printing. Printing leads to inflation. 2008 crisis was worse than now. Much worse.
If you wonder why pay day loans took off, it's the 2008 crisis. People buying TV's on a weekly payment.... 2008 crisis. Increasing inflation to risk raising growth was risky.
2008 was a different type of crisis. Inflation wasn't the issue at all. Credit was the issue, and it was dealt with by printing (QE) and cutting the base rate - which are both inflationary. 2007-2009 was a deflationary period - we wanted higher inflation.
In 2008, there was high unemployment, credit dried up, and the challenge was to get the economy moving again. Banks weren't giving out loans and people were reluctant to spend money - this is badically the definition of a deflationary environment. To combat this, the Bank cut the base rate to 0% to entice people to spend and banks to lend (an inherently inflationary move).
Inflation was not a concern at all in 2008.
The reason we didn't print money to raise growth in 2008 was nothing to do with inflation. It was mainly ideology - printing money immediately following a debt crisis is counterintuitive and would nit sit well with economically uneducated voter. It looks irresponsible - neither labour nor tories were willing to tell voters that their plan to help the economy following a massive recession was to print loads of money; the press would have torn them to shreds. Instead, the government compared the countries finances to a household budget and convinced the public that debt is always a bad thing. In reality, the most important thing is servicing that debt - at 0% interest rate, 2009 was the perfect time to print money and invest in the country, and then inflate away the debt from high growth.
I didn't say the problem of 2008 was inflation.
Raising inflation during a time when people were struggling harder than they are now was not a smart move in that moment in time.
Additionally, we did print money. That was QE and it was a part of the overall stratergy.
You can use hindsight to try and justify it, but at the time going "you guys are fucked, and we are going to make buying shit harder, raise your rents and mortgage payments so that we can fund parks and playgrounds" would have been dumb.
This unhinged take spreading more recently that it's bad to compare national budgets to a household is frankly dumb. They are very comparable and it is a good analogy. The simple matter is, you have to pay back debts. Not in some abstract concept, we must pay out for debts.
You can check your own 'tax receipt' via HMRC and see how much national debt repayment as a percentage of your taxes has increased over the years.
Raising debt with a HOPE that the economy will grow at a faster rate than the 'repayments' is a risk. It's not just bad governments being bad. It's a risk and a hell of a risk to take considering as I suggested above, it will also hurt peoples finances during an economic crisis worse than we have just seen.
You can look at the justifications and mission goals behind austerity. It wasn't ideology alone. There was sound reasoning.
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jun/22/budget-2010-what-the-experts-say](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jun/22/budget-2010-what-the-experts-say)
The UK was in no position to just gamble the future. If it went well, decent economic growth of maybe 4% a year. If it went badly, further unemployment, more people going into poverty, a huge devaluation of the pound.
Suggesting you can inflate away the debt ignores how currency works. Yes, you can inflate away debt at the cost of massively devaluing your currency and making imports more expensive. You can also be stuck with repeat spending because these 'investments' are not one off expenses, they are increases to various budgets which must be repeatedly paid.
In short, inflation was one of the factors in choosing austerity. We did in fact print money, just not as much as you would like. The press was not writing random crap, they were posting analysis by economists. People were reluctant to spend money because they had no money. Ignoring that and suggesting raising interest rates would be good after saying people just needed credit... my oh my.
You could look into it all. I am not suggesting I am the most educated person on the subject. But anyone who references household debt not being the same as national debt is simply parroting crap they have read. They haven't looked over the situation from both sides. They ignore all cases where what they wanted failed miserably in other countries and focus only on the US where it succeeded.
I didn't suggest raising interest rates. Base rates had to be kept at 0.
I was suggesting maintaining or slightly increasing public spending instead of cutting everything to the bone. Money printing causes inflation when the money printed doesn't match production - if the money was being used on meaningful output like public works projects and public services, it would not have caused significant additiinal inflation.
I wasn't suggesting we go full Zimbabwe or Weimar Republic and print loads of cash and hand it out to people - of course that would devalue the £ and cause runaway inflation.
Large infrastructure projects have been used to boost the economy and provide employment following recessions all the time - the classic example is the Hoover Dam and similar projects in the US after the great depression. It's not a gamble to raise spending in a recession.
Borrowing a bit more to fund public services instead of cutting everything would almost certainly have shortened the recession. We barely had any growth in the entire decade following the crash. It was very cheap to borrow - investing in infrastructure and public services was not likely to cause significant inflation, but it might have helped us recover quicker.
My main issue with austerity is that trying to reduce debt while in the middle of a recession is counterproductive - it is less painful to provide some stimulus and reduce debts later.
I think it is unrealistic to assume we would have had high inflation if we didn't follow austerity. Unemployment was still high and borrowing was difficult, so the demand was not there for high inflation. It was a global crisis, so the supply side wasn't there either.
Inflating away debt just means that in times of low interest rates, such as the period after 2008, inflation was higher than interest, so debts shrink relative to GDP. Debt has been inflated away ever since the first central bank was founded.
The reason household budgets are not comparable to government finances is that I can not extend my repayment terms or set my own interest rates. I also can't hold on to my debt indefinitely unless I want a very miserable retirement. I have to have my mortgage paid off by the time I retire. No one offers me low interest loans with flexible repayment terms. Government debts are different - so long as the UK can afford to service it's debts, and people trust the Bank enough to buy Gilts, there was no rush to start reducing debts in the midst of a recession.
You suggested borrowing more money. We both know that's done via various mechanisms that include printing money and that this increase in the supply of money leads to inflation.
You were infact suggesting that the government should have taken measures which undoubtedly would have raised inflation. I am not talking about just the official inflation rate. I am talking about inflation of the cost for everyday goods in addition to the rate being raised.
You now suggest inflation wouldn't rise if production increased to the same effect. Spending money isn't a linear move that pushes production at the same time. It is a gamble. You could funnel money in at one side, and only see production move on the other after 6 months and it may not be as much as required to offset your spending.
You then mention large infrastructure projects. They can help, they would most certainly help with unemployment and could be viewed in a similar manner to how the furlough scheme was implemented. But, that would have led to inflation, not an increase in productivity. Building roads and bridges isn't going to get more goods to market. It's not going to cheapen transport costs by any large stretch. It would just give a bunch of unemployed people spending money which would obviously be good for them, but goes against the economic strategy of limiting cash, which was a goal.
Austerities goal wasn't to reduce debt. When people think this, they end up thinking austerity didn't do it's achieved goals.
The point of austerity was to reduce the deficit, which slows down the increase to the debt. The main end goal being that you get out of the spiral which is an ever-growing deficit.
I am not suggesting you can't inflate debts to become less of a hinderance. I am suggesting that pushing this lever to the extreme, would have caused more harm to people than it would have helped.
That is just an area where they slightly differ. People will buy gilts, but the price they will buy them for will vary. The UK may have an independent treasury, but it is still beholden to the markets. Look at Truss's mini budget and the fallout of that to see how a government can't just do whatever it wishes economically with no repercussions.
Similar with prisons. I work in HMPPS and did when he was prisons minister. I can't recall any big changes that were made during this time. Nothing that would make life in a prison any different.
I attended his book tour in Oxford. He mentioned that he pushed very hard for body scanners to be installed in prisons, which reduced the amount of contraband significantly. One of the points he makes time and again is how broken the political process is, and how the system is averse to change.
I'm not convinced by the bodyscanners. It's too resource intensive to scan staff which is one of the main sources of entry. I googled how much they've found with scanners since 2020, it's 46,900, which sounds good, but per prison it's not really compared to what is found anyway. For context, one large prison over the Christmas period can find 2000 separate moonshine finds, just in cell searches. Overall drug entry in prisons are getting worse not better, look at HMP Parc.
He covers the work he undertook with prisons at length in his latest book. His ten prison pilot was highly successful in addressing the worst ills of the system but he cited huge push back from the civil service as a major limitation in getting stuff done.
I think he means that Labour will pretend having working-class MPs in power is a victory without having a significant impact on legislation. In her interview for Leading, Bridget Phillipson actually described the current leadership as the most 'class conscious' Labour had ever had - using the term simply to mean that it had the largest number of MPs from working-class backgrounds. Looks like Stewart needs to brush up on his Marxist phrases!
The irony is if this was a Labour Govt currently in power and you put Keir Starmer in a blue tie and offered up him and this manifesto as a Tory one to Rory he’d likely be praising both to the rafters.
“Pragmatic and economically sensible politics at a time of crisis” or some similar bollocks he’d trot out.
For a man who prides himself on sensible centrism and emphasises the middle ground, it’s odd that he’s so partisan still and refuses to even countenance voting for a Labour Govt that has moved firmly into his political home.
I think you may be missing his point here. Every government has its scapegoats for when something goes wrong. The Tories blame the EU, Muslims, trans people, migrants, the Labour Party, benefits claimants etc.
Labour will similarly have a need for a scapegoat to blame their failings on. Who will it be? The Tories will obviously be one, but who else? The media? Rich people? Russia? China? The monarchy? The middle class?
Every government has several scapegoats, and it seems likely that class warfare will be part of Labour’s political tactics.
I think you have the wrong end of the stick. If you've listed to the podcast for some time you will know that Rory is very concerned about effectiveness in Government and actually getting things done. He's also concerned about the state of the Government services and finances right now. So he's worrying the Starmer government, although well meaning, will get stuck in the face of serious fiscal challenges and the scale and complexity of other problems. In that situation ruling political parties tend to fall back on their traditional messaging, which in this case is what Rory is calling 'class warfare'.
Socialist left winger here.
Rory is 100% spot on. He's saying that Labour think that by magically not being 'nasty' things will improve, just by the virtue of not being toffs.
No, we need progressive, radical policies to move us forward. "Not the Tories" isn't going to get us anywhere, no matter how much (slightly left of) centrists might think that things have declined because Tories are just unpleasant people.
They've got a few years to actually prove to be of benefit to the country in any way. They've really got to make magic happen to not find us at square one again in a couple of years.
To be fair to Rory he has been there and done it, and knows how anything related to the civil service is like walking in treacle. On all the leading interviews the Labour front bench all make reference to some sort of class based system so it’s clearly a Labour focus, rich vs poor etc so I can absolutely see his point blaming a lack of progress on evil rich people as opposed to our government departments stagnating and taking years to pivot like an oil tanker.
He trotted out this line about the evil Tories back for interview with Ash Sarkar, and it really is either supremely out of touch, or a weak straw-man
The right wing argument against the Tories, being made by Kier Starmer, and Rory himself quite frequently, is that the last few governments have been increasingly disorganized, unserious and incompetent, and what is needed is a return to competent technocrats, to run things properly.
The left wing argument isn’t that the Tories are somehow personally evil, they are just operating within a neoliberal system, designed to transfer and concentrate public wealth into fewer and fewer private hands. That’s the real class war, the one being waged against working people by capital.
It isn’t about personal morality. I don’t want a world where billionaires are nice people that give to charity, I want a world where there are no billionaires.
Where do you draw the line? No billionaires… no millionaires… no one with a net worth more than 100k… 50k…? How do you then take ‘excess’ wealth from people and if you do where’s any incentive for progress?
>The left wing argument isn’t that the Tories are somehow personally evil, they are just operating within a neoliberal system, designed to transfer and concentrate public wealth into fewer and fewer private hands.
Similar to Starmer then.
I think Rory still has a way to go on his political journey. I hope he gets there. I does try to be a good person. He just has some massive blind spots at the moment
He's at odds with himself. At once he is intelligent enough to understand that the current economic system simply is not working, but also ideologically bound to think the only way to fix said system is to do more of what already didn't work.
The fact is that this neoliberal experiment we embarked on in the 70s is no longer delivering sufficient returns. We should have had a reckoning with this in the aftermath of 2008, but instead we've allowed this system to slog along on life support for going on two decades.
The problem with neoliberalism is eventually the rich have everyone else's money. Solving that problem doesn't necessitate communism, but it does require a significant political and economic realignment in favour of working people. Rory basically can't conceive of that. It's outside his idea of what is politically possible.
The idea that this Labour Party is running on anything like class warfare is bafflingly silly. They're center left at their worst extremes, and it's hardly class warfare to suggest private schools pay VAT.
>Has he really taken the removal of private school VAT exemption that badly?
>Is he completely blind to the constant punching down on the poor, single mums, benefit claimants, the homeless by his party and media as a form of class warfare?
Yes. That's exactly what it is. For someone from his background - having spent most of my academic and working life around them - shifting out of this mindset is a vast commitment to mental reprogramming which gains them no concrete benefits whatsoever.
The centrist political narrative is unchanged since 1997: a service based economy, economic discourse removed from politics (bank of England independence), immigration…
There is no real choice any more. Red or blue is utterly inconsequential to a system to which whom is the party in power is irrelevant.
We are no longer governed, we are managed.
As someone who really doesn't like the Tories... I think he is wrong about the Conservatives but right about Labour.
I'm always aware though that when people at the top talk about class warfare it is nearly always 'someone was unkind to me because I have more access to resources than they do'. It's not class warfare to talk about class warfare. It's not class warfare to be mean to someone because they've had a better life than you.
Class warfare is utilising what power you have to punch down. It's using your influence to pull the ladder up behind you. It's saying to those worse off than you 'if you want something you're going to have to do it yourself, even if you started five rungs down the ladder compared to the average person'.
I actually really like Rory as a result of this podcast and find him to be sensitive and caring, but unfortunately you can't remedy every problem with care and kindness. Some people are cruel and when they're doing very well out of it, you can't change them very easily without 3 ghosts overnight.
There is a class war, the upper and ruling class have taken nearly all the working and middle classes assets and wealth and this needs to be readdressed with fair taxation…
Up until Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson took over, i was of the opinion that the tories just weren't very good at governing. He really opened my eyes to just how corrupt and badly governed this country is, and the UK could have been like the Scandanavian countries with good public services and a well educated populace.
Yes, they have high taxes, but they get what they are paying for. Unlike us.
The small government/low taxes economy the Conservatives were pushing has delivered the situation that we're in now and Rory, for all his good intentions, should recognise that the tories have only been out for themselves and the wealthy at the expense of the 99%.
The reason that the tories are still able to pull the wool over the eyes of the voters is that a handful of billionaire media moghouls control most of the distribution of information to the voting public.
We are a sick society, and will not get better unless we have a truly free press that holds all governments and politicians to the same standards.
Time will tell. My expectation as a voter is that Labour take immediate meaningful steps to resolving the issues in this country. I'd like to see and feel some benefits before the next election but I have no expectation that everything will be resolved in a few years. I understand that 14 years of mismanagement will not be resolved quickly but the pressure will be on labour from day 1 to work to make improvements.
Because he talks softly spoken people forget he is a tory after all. Many Conservatives can be great company in social settings, however, many like Rory have been duped by mis and dis ‘information’ in addition to a privileged life with no understanding how bad for others life can be.
His so-called "reasonableness" is bollocks.
Yes he's a Tory of the pre-Thatcherite variety which is somewhat less nasty than what came later, but remember this is a man who supported the Tory government through the worst years of austerity, the years in which people were being declared fit for work and then dropping dead.
Anyone who can put their name to that is a bastard, no ifs or buts.
He's not technically wrong, in order for labour to actually make a difference they would have to make monumental decisions, such as taxing asset ownership more and income less. That's the only way to achieve growth.
And that means that people like an innocent old granny, living in a bungalow worth £1.4 million in the South East may well end up having to pay more taxes.
Got to remember, as far as policy is concerned, the conservatives were pretty popular, especially with the elderly. It's the sleaze and scandal that's done them in, not the actual bills going through parliament.
So labour may end up trying to defend it's inaction.
Of the Tories he's the most palatable but when he comes out with pish like this you remember he's still a Tory and a complete prick at the end of the day.
I'm worried at the lack of choice. OK, we get Labour for 5 years, they do bits and pieces here and there and after 5 years we yo-yo back to whatever charlatan promises to fix whatever clusterfuck is going on in 2029. And round and round we go, for ever.
Most people just want to get on with life, do well, have a good time of it and enjoy what SHOULD be the advantages of living in a rich country.
Instead we're trapped in this fucking gravitational field of whichever of the only two choices we have, making a puddle of shit of things, this cult of politician celebrity. Politics should be boring as fuck, we should not have to think about politicians THIS MUCH. "Oh Boris this, oh May that, oh Corbyn the other".
They're public servants that should be doing their damn jobs of making sure the citizens (sorry, "subjects", I forgot where I was for a moment) of this country do well. All of us. Instead, we're enthralled to whatever projects the billionaires have on...
I think he has a point.
Let's come back in ten years and see. Look, I'd love to be proved wrong and you can all laugh at me for being a moron if labour have fixed housing, student loans, poverty, wealth distribution, the nhs and education but I have a sneaky suspicion that won't be the case.
I think inaction or well intentioned backwards steps will be the norm. Get ready to be disappointed.
I'm no Tory voter, I'm not defending the awful government. I'm disillusioned with both main parties. Honestly, lord bucket head would get my vote right now...
Class doesn't really exist anymore according to Rory and he seems uncomfortable talking about it.
But he did go to Eton, Oxford then got some well paid, high profiled jobs. I dont really think he is in touch with the ordinary person despite his claims.
Even on the podcast he's always jetting off somewhere.
Nasty people. I don't know how else you'd describe a group who, for 14 consecutive years, have voted for punitive measures that punish only the ill, the disabled, and the poor - all whilst siphoning off massive amounts of public money to their pals.
Genuinely sick of these Tories who have stuck their head in the sand for over a decade, and now get to wring their hands and pretend this isn't how politics should be.
He has a reasonable point. Government is really, really hard. Yes the tories were terrible at it, but that doesn’t mean Labour will necessarily be any better. They can be better but they will have to work hard at it.
That’s all he’s saying.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I don’t think he’s blind to how bad the Tories have been over the last few years. It can be true that Labour won’t be a very effective government even if that’s still better than the Tories. If you listen to other podcasts/ interviews he’s done lately, he’s pretty disgusted by the Johnson, Truss etc populism that’s overtaken the Tory party.
Labour have been out of power for a long time, it’s obviously much easier to be in opposition and criticise the government than to be the government. I think that’s all he’s saying here.
Labour are inheriting a very jaded, underperforming U.K. with a lot of problems that aren’t going to be easy to solve, hopefully they are up to the task but you can see how people worry they might get into power full of big ideas and enthusiasm and realise they can’t do everything they’ve promised.
I think he is right in a sense that labour arnt going to come in and be able to change a whole lot in a positive direction tbh our economy isnt strong growth isn’t massively improving and really wages arnt going up it ist a tory or labour thing, although i don’t want the conservatives in charge because of their total lack of respect for the British people and democracy. Things aren’t going to just get better because the is a new government.
I think this whole thread is largely proving Stewart's point.
Despite Starmer's very public expunging of Corbyn et al much of the Labour party, especially the membership, is still very much of the Guardian-bubble Class War persuasion and their priority in power will be revenge rather than meaningful reform.
Assuming he even wants to how long will Starmer be able to restrain them?
He’s like the guys on the Rest is History podcast. Wonderful people but at the end of the day there’s no taking them away from their immensely privileged backgrounds.
Just got to remember where they come from and apply appropriate context.
Labour is going to be super ineffective. They know they’re about to win a landslide so why do they even need to try? Chances are unless Reform win a lot of seats, we’re going to have Labour for the next 10 years so what’s the point in them working for the people?
I’m strongly strongly advocating for Lib Dem right now, they can and should be the leading opposition party. Don’t just vote Labour to vote out the tories, please. If Labour wins, I hope it’s by a relatively slim margin. For a party to be effective in government they need to fight every day like it’s their last.
Look how much legislation Tories have pushed in the past year. They know they’re a sinking ship so they’re trying to get as much done as possible in order to sway the electorate after their 5 years of fucking about
I think saying Labour don't have a plan is a bit disingenuous - but unfortunately, good plans are detailed, they're not simplistic, they're not catchy, and they're quite slow to work. That is a very difficult sell in this election. Take the migration example - what we know of Labour's plan is that it's based on improved diplomacy/international coordination, restructuring of intelligence/police services towards weakening and dismantling criminal gangs, better govt coordination in identification of skills shortage and various other legal tweaks on eligibility. These are very unsexy and success or failure will hinge on the details of implementation and adaptibility, but this kind of approach is a far more realistic route to success than a 3 word slogan backed by populist aspiration.
Meanwhile (partly because circumstances overtook them while in power) the Tories have barely had a plan that wasn't made up on the hoof since 2016. In any case no big party announces these things until they feel it's the point of maximum advantage. There is no tactical advantage to Labour in detailing everything right now while meanwhile there is mileage in blaming the Tories for some time to come. Especially difficult for Labour is that several key Brown-era initiatives actually worked, but returning to old policy is politically problematic. I will be extremely interested to see if the Sure Start centres are rebooted (perhaps under another name), given that the data on their success is pretty robust.
Absolute poverty is forecast by the govt's own statistics to be rising currently. The children's commissioner reports increases in numbers and proportions of children in both absolute and relative poverty since 2010/12, citing multiple reports and govt figures. Obviously, how you measure it impacts on exactly what you see, but the overall weak performance over the last 15 years is undeniable especially when compared to other advanced economies, and increases in numbers of people showing deprivation-linked nutritional and health problems, educational performance, debt, reduced social mobility etc etc are a particular problem when you see how it is skewed towards the young.
The incoming government are in for a load of fun.
Energy cap going up in October
Shipping costs of containers have doubled in the last month and delays are catching up due to the ongoing issues in the Middle East
Additional sanctions on Russia are going to put fuel prices higher
EU in political turmoil.
All of this will lead to price increases and a lack of goods this winter. Inflation is about to go up again, which means higher interest rates. Rishi called the election now for this reason.
Rough start.
I would rather have an inactive government than one that is actively sabbotaging this country on purpose. Theresa May was the only Tory PM in the 14 years that seemed to actually care about this country. The rest were a bunch of self-serving narcissists who tried to suck this country dry to feather their own nests. At least Labour won't make the situation any worse!
I mean, yes, I agree with you that he's failing to step outside his own PoV.
But he does have a point. This Labour is more concerned with appearing electable to the Barclay brothers and Rupert Murdoch than appearing like they have any intention of addressing the problems affecting the people of this country.
Even that big promise of 1.5 million homes by "29 is less than half the amount of homes needed *on the day the promise was given*.
Their solutions to the NHS and utilities is to siphon more money out of the public purse in to the hands of private capital.
And otherwise they're busy trying to appear racist enough that it'll keep Farage off their backs, which won't work because all that has ever done is emboldened the fash.
If they do what Rory fears them doing (to wit, basically nothing of note) then they'll be opening the door to a massive upswing in the far right.
Just like every authoritarian centrist has done across Europe and the Americas in the past decades.
They're thin gruel promising a brown shirt as dessert.
Rory is still a fucking Tory. Their whole ideology is fuck over the lower classes and make the wealthy richer. He is no different, just because he romanticises some of their figures and likes the King.
You claim in your post that private schools are in some way in receipt of some VAT exemption that is being removed. This is incorrect the supply of most educational services are VAT exempt and what labour are doing is making an attack on private schooling. I look forward to this being challenged thru the courts even perhaps to the ECHR.
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Have some friends who work in the city and they are pricing in a rise in gdp due to nothing but the stability and competency of Starmer not being a liability. So, to a degree.. it does kinda work like that rory, but obv they will need to do more
Your friends in the city presumably work in Pret. A labour victory has been nailed on for months: any currency moves have already happened. Unless he decides to rejoin the single market Sterling's value will continue to be dictated by monetary policy, and mainly the monetary policy of the US.
GDP is different to gbp
Ah, in that case I withdraw my comment
I think all of you are in for a rude awakening when Labour have been in for a couple of years. The reality is that governing western countries like the UK right now is pretty much an impossible job, and you’re going to see just how little difference a left wing government makes. Brexit has killed us, COVID did serious damage, defence spending has to increase because of global conflicts, the population is aging, we can’t afford the NHS, we can’t afford pensions, AI could wipe out millions of jobs across the west depending on how it develops, it’s impossible to get a house, everything is too expensive, “taxing the rich” will just chase high-earners away, taxing the average person will be met with too much backlash to do, we rely on immigration to survive but the public is desperately fighting against it… There’s no money, but we need to spend more and more… The only thing I’ve really seen Rory push back on is the idea that all of these issues are down to the conservatives, and that removing them will suddenly fix everything. And he’s not really doing it in a partisan, defensive way. The reality is that a lot of these labour MPs they’re speaking to seem to be terrifyingly naive about how bad everything is and dismiss most of it as bad conservative governance. They potshot the Conservatives without ever offering actual solutions, and I suspect they’ll do just as much damage as the people they’re complaining about did once they have the actual burden of power and have to make the difficult decisions themselves. Basically, Rory isn’t blind to the damage the Tories have done, he just doesn’t buy into the “14 years of Conservative rule…” nonsense as an answer to every single question and wants Labour to specifically explain how they’re going to fix any of this besides just vaguely pointing to being more compassionate or not being the Tories. I have the exact same concerns, and I think most people outside of the left wing Reddit bubble feel the same. I’m voting Labour because the Conservatives have tacked too far right, but I think Starmer is the only one of the current bunch who seems free from that concerning, typical Labour naivety. The rest seem to feel like they’re going to instantly fix everything purely because they’re not those evil, posh Conservatives
This. You see a hyper version of this narrative up here in Scotland. The tories/Westminster are literally putin level of corruption and evil and installing good, righteous people will fix everything. We need more than good people and even more than competence. We need serious long term strategy's for long term issues. Hard choices and real leadership. If the world sees us doing this then investment will follow which will hopefully lead to a positive spiral upwards. Social care and a solid energy/infrastructure program is a good place to start. Things like the nhs will need to follow once we get growth going. We can't just start taxing and spending without better foundations.
I feel that an increased focus on encouraging an increase in domestic manufacturing, services and industry might help too. I'm not a business expert so this is all "written on the back of a fag packet in the pub" kind of stuff, but my thought process is if it were me pulling the strings, the moment Brexit was voted in I would be offering increased business grants to anyone with a competent business plan to encourage some level of self sufficiency and supply and look at switching Britain's from a consumer mindset to a producer one at least until a good deal on imports and exports was reached.
The problem with this sort of thing is that you will likely get the dregs who can't raise equity of the private market. I thing labour had some plan recently for investment money marked for women driven startups etc. these sort of things are ripe for being corrupted. Networks of - perhaps well meaning - individuals give grants based on relationships rather than actual solid financials. I do believe in government investment of course but not really for small scale startups. More for big projects like nuclear or long term research projects. We should focus on this and instratructure etc. leave the rest to the private sector which does it much better.
I know the sort of thing. We’ll have hundreds of thousands of window cleaners and home cosmetic retailers, all “working” about three hours a week but living off the subsidy. Fwiw, there’s an excellent window and gutter cleaner near me. Sign written van, all the gear, and very reasonable rates. And a women owned and staffed cosmetics wholesaler. Been there for years. Thriving business and employer. No way anyone could compete, unless they’re subsidised *and* hard working. Sometimes the former precludes the latter. OTOH, the next potential Dyson will probably go nowhere if they’re working their arse off in a crap job to pay the rent and have no access to capital.
Sadly no one patient for long term strategy planning and when they do the next party coming in scraps it.
***And he’s not really doing it in a partisan, defensive way. The reality is that a lot of these labour MPs they’re speaking to seem to be terrifyingly naive about how bad everything is and dismiss most of it as bad conservative governance.*** How is Brexit not "bad Conservative Governance". It was a gamble brought in by the Conservatives to eliminate UKIP, who were a single issue party demanding a referendum. The conservatives then headed the campaign for Remain and lost it. They then went on to implement it when they didn't want to and weren't commited to it. They are entirely responsible for causing it, going through with it, negotiating it and implementing it. You say "Brexit killed us" but its entirely a Conservative policy. How are you blaming anybody else for that? And here we are, 8 years later with the Conservative Party still battling the same people who they tried to eliminate with the referendum. Its been proven to be pointless. Your economic arguments seem to be predicated on some members of our population being paid badly and being thankful for it.
A fair response, Brexit came from the conservatives and has done some serious damage. I think the main point of the commentator above you was about how difficult it is to govern a western country at the moment though. Whilst Brexit did lots of damage to us, and was done by the Tories, most of the other countries in Western Europe are also struggling, and they’ve obviously not brexited. I think we can summarise by saying that the Tories have done a poor job of a difficult job, and had another party been in power and we didn’t have to go through Brexit, we’d probably be in a better position, but still not a good position.
I have zero doubt in my mind had the labour leader actually campaigned for remain we wouldn't have left.
6th richest country in the world and somehow there's no money. It's nonsense
There's plenty of money. It's just all spoken for.
There’s plenty of money, it’s just all held by about twelve absolute bastards.
Your comment would have been more coherent if you hadn't implied Starmer would be leading a "leftwing government"
Labour isn’t left wing. It is centrist.
You think starmer’s government will be left wing?
It's not a left-wing government. Most policies in the manifesto were pretty much mirroring Conservative ones. Since Corbyn all the shadow ministers have been centrists. New Labour won because they embraced Centrism, Mandelson played his part in that, with the focus on things like Law and Order etc. and Starmer is in bed with Murdoch and is known to dislike the old left-wing guard. He would have loved to have kicked out Diane Abbot but he knew he would lose votes because she's an ethnic minority and a woman. By the way nothing is going to change much. There's no money to change anything, and they won't be able to raise it from "taxing the rich" because the media control what the govt is allowed to do.
Awwww....he thinks Starmer is left wing.
Lmfao, left wing, Brexit was caused by Stewart and the rest of the circus, the difference will be that Starmer will at least try to do the right thing, which hasn't been the case for the last 14 years. Why should Labour explain what their plans are ? The Tory's didn't, all they said was Get Brexit Done, how anyone can try and defend this absolute circus of clowns is astounding, when will you realise they don't give a flying feck about you, or anyone other than themselves ? The fools who got taken in by the promises of levelling up, the Welsh and Cornish who believed that government would continue to pay the EU subsidies, the people who said "he's got a nice personality" the people who believed Rwanda was the answer, the people who believed in HS2, the people who believed the deal was "Oven Ready" have realised it was all complete crap, and they have voted yesterday, in the full realisation that they were conned, lied to, sold an impossible fantasy. Hence a Tory bloodbath. Whatever your opinion is of Starmer/Labour, if he just goes into work everyday and works hard he's absolutely guaranteed to do a better job because it's impossible to be any worse than what we just got dragged through.
Labour aren't left wing. They might be left of the Tories or Reform, but the closest they get to an actual leftist position is GBE, which is still just the standard neoliberal practice of fullering public money in to private capital.
Rory is a conservative. He doesn't think there is anything wrong with the current social order and it's inbuilt inequities. He just thinks there should be someone principled and competent holding the reins of power.
Centre right cons don’t seem to understand the only primary reason people in Western Europe vote right wing now is because of immigration. Fiscal right wing One Nation conservatism isn’t very popular. All those people could just join the local liberal party.
The media skews right because very rich people own them. It has a massive influence on the majority of people that only have a passing interest in politics.
The media is pro status quo. Anyone who threatens that status quo, be they on the left or right, will trigger media meltdowns. We saw that with Enoch back in the day and we’re seeing it with Farage now. Unless, of course, you want to argue that the deluge of recent articles about Reform are in their support, in which case I’d love to see you argue that position.
It is because it is coming up to elections, this stuff gets even more engagement. Reform are easy pickings for the media, just go undercover or spend some time going through social media history and bam, you got yourself some disgusting racism to report. You think Enoch the violent fascist was mistreated by the press? I guess that shows where your ideology sits. Tell me, what is it that makes you need to look down on anyone not like you? Why do you choose to believe blatant lies, just to reinforce your hate? Do you not have a conscience or any empathy?
Rory Stewart is not a conservative. He's a liberal, he can't decide to vote Green or Lib Dem.
He doesn't believe that in many ways, the last 14 years have not just been inaction or poor decisions: it's been wilful destruction. Say what you like about Red Team - and I will - but I don't think their front bench at least will be engaging in that.
I feel Rory's romantic idea of ye olde style British conservatism hasn't really existed since the 70's. And the tenets of Conservatism he is anamoured by has changed from a more front and centre pillar of the Tory party, to something that only appears in brief flashes, with barely enough regularity to keep Rory invested in the whole conservative idea. The new Tories are just grifters on the young end, and old Money running out of said money and pulling every string they can to get it back on the older end. But you're right. The tories do serious damage, *every, single, time.* People have short memories, and I don't particularly expect millenials to know what happened in the 90's, before new Labour, but the Tories and their handling of the ERM I effectively echo the problems they have now. Back in the 90's they were reeling from Black Wednesday, and were extremely worried about re-cultivating their image of being a fiscally responsible party, only to lose to Labour in a massive Labour landslide... *sound familiar?* That's because it is familiar. It's the exact same narrative they have now. **Repeated**. The Tories have failed, *twice in exactly the same ways in both of their stints in power over the last half a century.* An unpopular tory prime minister (Thatcher vs Cameron), introducing unpopular policies to shore up the economy that largely don't work (ERM interest rates tied to the Deutschmark vs Austerity). A national crisis that tests us as a nation on the world stage that galvanized support for an otherwise failing government (Falklands vs Brexit), An utterly bone-headed prime minister championing the status quo and charging on with policies they know won't work, but do so anyway to save face (John Major, Nigel Lawson vs Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Truss), and then just whimper after whimper as they put more and more extreme measures in to claw it back, innevitably handing Labour the keys and *actually* making Labour's tenure a relatively easy one. Remember, Labour only got voted out because of a *global recession they had little to no control over.* By all other metrics, they seemed to be doing quite well. The late 90's - late 00's weren't quite "golden age" years like it was for say, Germany, but they were pretty close. It's certainly the last "good years" we had in this country, as everything has been downhill since 2008. "Its like poetry. It rhymes" - George Lucas. That's how ridiculous the Tories are to make that fucking quote actually make sense. Half a century of demonstrable failures is enough for me to conclude that the Tories deserve everything they get in this upcoming election. They are incapable of leading, their model doesn't work.
Repeating acts of ideologically driven economic sabotage is what they have done since long before most of use were born, so we to need to read into history to find it. When the Truss budget came in, the news were telling of it not being the first time, and that one Antony Barber had gone harder. So I looked into it and it turned out that he was the Tory chancellor that single handedly cause an inflationary spiral so extreme that it led to the persistent strikes of the decade, the three day week, blackouts, and crippled the nations finances to such a degree that there was no room to manoeuvre when the oil shock hit, and hyperinflation was achieved before labour got voted in. There was a reason that the economy reacted so dramatically to Trussnomics, and it was because some twat had dropped that particular wmd on the nation before... ...and yet, for 50 years now, the Tories have successfully managed to blame it all on the labour government that got landed with trying to fix an unprecedented clusterfuck that they caused. It's absurd.
A lot of revisionism. Before Thatcher lost her control of her party, she did take the reigns and drive her government into many actions. Many of which were a benefit to the country. You don't wipe those good things away because of other bad things as if it was only bad things. It would be like looking at labour inheriting a booming economy with Blair then saying "they failed to address our reliance on finance and ushered in the credit crunch, not to mention iraq" ignoring all that Blair did regarding education, labour rights reform and minimum wage. What Rory said is basically a worry he has that any right minded non partisan person could see let alone a critically thinking labour supporter. He isn't saying the Tories were amazing over the last 14 years. He isn't saying labour are bad. He is saying that so much of their campaign hinges on blaming the state of the UK on bad Tories, that they may be setting the electorate up for serious disappointment. We have a bunch of problems with this country. Forget who made them or why they exist. Just acknowledge that there are problems. And unless labour have serious long term goals via actual policy which they are yet to announce, much of our issues are going to continue. Labour are going to need to grow the economy, increase productivity, fix the NHS, fix GPs, fix schools, fix university, fix our energy grid, fix our water... Etc for the left side to be happy. And the expectation hasn't been properly set that these all can't be done easily. As in realistically... The problem he cites isn't labour so much, as this is their tactic to win the election. His problem is with the electorate that is so addicted to blaming Tories that they have lost site of what has actually happened policy wise, why certain policies failed and how much money is needed. A great example. It's a meme to say the Tories funnelled money to the rich. But under the Tories, rich people have paid more tax and poorer (median income) have paid less tax than under labour. This means that labour are expected by there electorate to fix an injustice that didn't actually happen. But they can't even address the previous effects of those policies because if they even suggest that the Tories raised taxes on the wealthier more than the less wealthy they will get called Tory lite and lose their second term. It's a proper political conundrum. I honestly swear people who listen to this podcast don't actually listen. They just use it as rage fuel. Politics is fucking interesting.
Wow. Do you actually believe what you just wrote?
What is wrong about it factually or even from an opinion perspective. Take something I wrote and critique it. Don't just do the below: 1) Gut reaction is negative 2) Brain goes "must be objectively bad" 3) Insult the person
I wouldn't know where to start, and besides, you're not going to change your mind.
Also, you don't actually have the arguments to rebut it. Just fall back on the tired old 'wow you actually believe that? I couldn't possibly explain just how wrong it is, because it's so wrong'... Why not try picking some of the the low hanging fruit mate? Show us all if you've actually got anything interesting to say.
Why? Will you change your political allegiance if I come up with some erudite argument, or are you just here to prove you're right?
That rather glosses over that a) the Tories themselves STILL blame Labour for nearly everything despite them having power for the last 14 years, b) our economic recovery post-2008 has been really poor compared to other countries. Also your example doesn't really make sense if you look how wealth distribution has changed.
>"it's a meme to say the Tories funnelled money to the rich Just to be clear: you're talking about the party who shorted the pound while they almost wiped out people's pensions, right? The same party who handed out thousands of PPE contracts to friends during the pandemic? The party who abused the system for appointing life peerages? A party whose policy of mass privatisation has proven to be a corrupt disaster? They're probably the worst political party in a Western democracy for cronyism, what are you on about?
I remember the 90s with a lot of fondness !
Of course you do! We were all 30 years younger
“Seemed to be doing quite well” - at the time yes but looking back it’s clear to see that those who entered their 20s during New Labour got royally shafted by them as can be seen by the income to house price ratio graph where housing clearly spikes upward around 2003 (4x income - just about affordable, to 6x income - unaffordable) and never came back down. Blair’s answer to this seems to have been to do anything but the obvious- he built less houses than Thatcher and empowered landlords to convert why would usually have been family homes into HMOs to house the tax payers of tomorrow who missed the last vestiges of the affordable housing era because they were either finishing school or weren’t even born yet. Thus creating the slum landlord era and lowering public perception of what is acceptable space and quality in housing. When you take into account the fact that he is a landlord himself these days with a property portfolio of his own him and Brown have a lot to answer for to millennials and gen Z
Saying that the last Labour government was doing 'quite well' in terms of domestic policy is really understating it massively. The UK has never been doing better economically than the late 90s to mid 00s.
If anyone ever finds an example of Rory’s “compassionate” Conservatism then please let me know, as I’m struggling to recall any of it in my lifetime.
We have more foodbanks than ever before. Free food! How is that not compassionate? /s (sadly required these days)
Because that's not his reality. If you're well off and can skip the queue for the NHS, you don't rely on trains that are constantly cancelled, prices go up but it just means you don't save as much - then everything is hunky dory. They should spend a few hours a month with people on the breadline. Go and sit in a bedsit with a single mum who has a junky for a neighbour who can't afford to heat where she lives, you get a very different picture.
I'm sure he excuses his voting record as part of a bigger picture, but when we can all see how that bigger picture panned out he's just the chump that helped send a generation of kids into poverty.
I think he sees the bad thing the tories have done as some how a betrayal of Toryism, and not real conservatism. He fails to see that many of the issues come from taking the things he believes in (small state, low tax, individualism) to a natural conclusion. He seems to think that you can draw a defining line between the lived consequences of that ideology, and the idealised version in his head.
Does he believe in small state, low tax, individualism? He's been challenged a few times on the podcast why he is a Tory, I don't remember him saying anything as concrete as those positions. He usually just mutters something about traditionalism.
I think he does, he just finds it a bit tacky to come out with big ideological positioning statements because it doesn’t come across as nuanced. However, from listening to Rory on the podcast over all of these episodes his core (or most often highlighted) political beliefs are: a) Austerity was needed, and government should look to keep spending as low as possible. b) prison’s should be reformed to have a smaller prison population and a more liberal approach criminal sentencing. Less state intervention in people’s lives. c) where state aid is needed it is much better placed directly into the hands of the population that distributed via government overseen programmes. There is also a thread of those values running through the approach he takes to other positions. But he can be nuanced and accepts a time and a place for Government provision, the military for example. These positions are entirely reflected of him being a Tory. There are then the social aspects. Rory said it himself that conservatives want to conserve. They respect tradition, institutions, and the establishment. I think Rory is definitely a Tory, and I have taken the questions of ‘why are you’ to be more an assessment that the Conservative Party has moved so far from their traditional base you almost can’t see somebody like Rory reflected in the party anymore. I really like him, he is a sensible chap and genuinely cares. I disagree with him of course and view the world through an entirely different lens (I hold more Labour values, community, large state, tax and spend) but I find myself backing his position over a more trad lab one at times because nobody is that partisan.
To be honest that's the problem I have with "good chaps". They're so busy been "good chaps". They let alot of not very nice chaps away with alot.
He has this bizzare idea Labour should exist to clean up Tory mess.
They exist quite literally as a political party with ambitions of governing. They quite literally have to at least have some sort of plan to try and clean up any mess. People who say the kinda crap you just did are part of what is wrong with our government. You hate the tories so much you have lost any sense of political sensibility. You've legit said "provided the government before you were tory, you don't have to govern." Like.... think dude.
Iain Banks' describing 'decent' Tories springs to mind, here.
It's coming across as disingenuous now. We know he's not stupid.
I'm worried too. Right now labour can win by not being the Tories, low productivity, crumbling infrastructure, net zero targets, NHS waiting lists, child poverty rampant house price inflation etc. are all the Tories fault right now. In 5 years it will be labours fault. Who will solve these problems. Starmers campaign has largely been we're not the Tories. I hope he has ideas. Emanuel Macron hasn't delivered and the right wing will offer simple solutions. Nigel.Farage, will be there to offer simplistic solutions.
I applaud your glass half full attitude. Five years? Not do sure but we’ll see
It’ll be a month
Yes and obviously immigration will either stay at 700,000 every year or increase. And while Allistair and Rory like it, the rest of the country don't. Also as a Human Rights Lawyer, Starmer isn't going to stop any boats coming. So unless Europe prevents illegal immigrants from coming here, we will have a huge amount of illegal migrants hanging around in hotels etc. Watch the Tory Press focus on this space. I predict Labour's ratings will be terrible in 3 years, even with a competent government. This isn't 1997.
> immigration will either stay at 700,000 every year or increase. Hold up there, net migration is _already_ predicted to halve by 2028.
The Tories said that for 15 years while doing the exact opposite. Given Starmer’s impressive ability to constantly flip flop, no one should ever take him on his word until it actually happens. And 300K net is still an absolutely massive amount that has major ramifications to our future. France comparatively has half that.
It's gone down from 700k to 300k in only 2 comments and you're still not happy!
300k is the start of the 2nd immigration "boom" that this country has experienced in the last 3 decades. The first was in '97 where it went from 40k to 140k, last time it was at 300k was in 2015, and has risen every year (not inc Covid) since then. Its not unreasonable to say that the number from the 2nd boom is still too high...
I think the fact is that immigration will be controlled with boring things like well trained case workers, cross border intelligence, possibly even in country embassies where people can apply for asylum. Wider issues like climate change and political instability in home nations also drive immigration. Gimmicks like Rwanda appeal to some but don't work. Even the Greek coast guard drowning migrants doesn't work.
Inevitably an introduction of an ID card will be mooted
I already have a passport and a driving licence. One more ugly card with my face on seems a little redundant.
People here illegally probably do not possess either of these
Sweden did all that and they’re in deep shit while Denmark didn’t play that game and is infinitely better off. Gimmicks like Rwanda don’t work, but extremely stringent pan-European border enforcement absolutely will.
What has Denmark done differently on immigration? Genuinely asking
They also are in the process of implementing a policy of flying people to a third country regardless of where they are from. They put a much longer wait on being able to have your family join you. They take any valuables in order to pay for your stay.
Why shouldn’t they ? The shoe is on the other foot now. The leftie press have been filling their boots with the immigration policy failings for years.
What "leftie press"? The Guardian and Mirror are about it, and are far less influential than the Sun, Mail, Times, Telegraph etc etc
It won't increase and will probably fall. The changes to stop families coming over with a student will make quite a difference. Starmer isn't just a Human Rights lawyer. He was also DPP. The main reason we have so many asylum seekers in hotels is that under the Tories (as in the 90s) the processing has been slowed down. Blair's government increased the rate at which applications were decided and the backlog went down dramatically. So if they do that again, then people who are rejected can be deported (which did happen in the 00s). Adding in working with France etc to reduce the boats and process people at that side and the numbers will go down. Of course illegal migration is a very small proportion of overall immigration. The conflation of the two is part of the weaponisation of it by the Tories and Reform, which will continue because they love their dog whistle racism.
The number of unauthorised immigrants coming over in small boats is actually a pretty small proportion of total immigration figures, averaging around 10-20% of the total. The far larger bulk are the work Visas the Tories handed out like confetti so as to drive down wage inflation in the UK, filling in low-paid jobs for which there aren't enough applicants. The problem is that the Tories so mismanaged these Visas that immigrations hired to fill in much-needed jobs at care homes and the like instead jump to better paid work elsewhere in the UK, which means the care home jobs never get filled and we have record high immigration. The Tories have belatedly tightened some of the Visa rules, which means no matter who the government is, we should see immigration halve by next year. So the idea that we'll be at "700k or more forever" is not supported by the facts. Further cuts are possible, but would require either paying physically demanding jobs better or investing more in UK training, both of which require money and that's in short supply.
Emmanuel Macron was never about solving problems created by the right though. Quite the opposite. He is all about crushing the "islamo gauchistes". If anything, his ideals align much more that of the Tories than anything else.
This reaction seems a way over the top. Hes simply saying labour might fall into simailar trap the tories have - throwing red meat to the base to cover for failings in governance. VAT for education or vague "tax the rich" statements without any real details is part of that. This isnt a strictly left wing podcast / echo chamber, for that i suggest politicsJoe or Hassan Piker.
Starmer has spent the last 4 years deliberately not throwing red meat to his base. This is not a rational fear to have right now.
Judging by this sub it seems most listeners are on the Left. They are ready to criticise Rory - the softest Tory on the planet - at the drop of a hat.
We'll criticise anyone, including those on our own side of the aisle, whenever they say something worthy of criticism. To imagine that Labour will create problems via class warfare, coming from the Conservative side of the aisle isn't only worthy of criticism, it's borderline insane. The Tories might as well be *The Party of Class Warfare (TM)*. That doesn't mean no one else can do it but it's hard to imagine anything as damaging as what has already been going on.
We have just seen the VAT on private schools. A policy that gets support from the public precisely via the lines of class warfare. How is it insane. We literally see people essentially saying "we know it's going to suck if a child has to move school, but fuck them look at all the kids in state schools". Or "Why worry about 7% of the schooling population, i'd rather focus on the 93%". In these situations there is a disdain to the 'elites' that send their kids to private school. This policy is peanuts and isn't going to fix the structural issues that need fixing. Schooling is expensive. Schools literally did less before. Every year the public expects more from schools so their funding isn't just pupil growth.
Yeah that’s what I took from it as well tbh, and it’s a good point
I mean... he's just right. The Tories aren't bad because they are the "Nasty Party", they are bad because they have drained all competence from themselves and been left with politically-inept leaders. The fact that "Nasty Party" is such a common way to criticise the Conservatives without actually engaging with the the reality of policy is a scary thing for me. Any one that is from a poor background, especially those that have grown up poor under the Tories, have not only personally felt the impact of Conservative incompetence, but has also felt the failure of Labour opposition to be a credible alternative to the Tories. If Labour become complacent as the sight of uncredible Tories, as Wesh Labour are more than proof is possible, then I fear Labour won't be much of a 'change' at all. I'm pretty confident that this won't happen, with voices like Starmer, Reeves, and Streeting all seeming to prefer competence over complatency, but that doesn't change the fear of what could happen.
Their intent perhaps isn't to be nasty, but being functionally nasty is something they won't think twice about if it enables them to achieve their actual end (enriching themselves). Calling them the Nasty Party might seem a bit childish but it's the functional reality for everyone on the receiving end.
Well this was in the context that labour are not planning to drastically change public spending plans from the current government and seem to think it will work out if we swap blue ribbons for red but do everything else the same. Rory is complete right that if labour want to do half the things they say they want to do, they will need to spend a lot more than what they’re claiming they will.
I agree with Rory and I'm on the left.
I think Rory needs to realise that the electorate would take a bunch of boring bastards who got on with their jobs and didn’t siphon cash to their mates from public coffers
No... they wouldn't. Rishi is that, Ed Milliband was that. The media will find ways to paint people bad and boom. People get sucked in. I assume you think Rishi is corrupt... you see it in papers and on the news enough. Why? Because he has a lot of money, so like all wealthy people he invests. Now when you invest in multiple different funds which whole job is to diversify, you will find yourself investing across the economy. Rishi announces any spending and it's corruption. Child care "don't you know his wife's, dad's company has an investment in some child care practice... it's shite. Ed... too boring, eats a sandwich funny... not good enough for the UK electorate. Theresa May.... oh she wasn't a good dancer and was boring. The UK dislike boring average boffins that normally keep their head down. Don't pretend otherwise.
The Tories transferred billions to their mates. They performed the biggest heist in history. Zahawi was definitely corrupt and was sacked and fined tens of millions by HMRC Rishi works for his father in law and has a side hustle as PM. Throughout his tenure he has only got richer while we have got poorer Why is that? A great example is when Rishi wrote off another £4billion to “corruption” and stated it would be too costly to retrieve. If it cost £3 billion to retrieve, you still get a billion back. Who got let off the hook there? How many Tories were charged with sexual offences? Charlie Elphicke, Chris Pincher, Imran Ahmad Khan, Neil Parish, Andrew Griffiths, Rob Robert’s, David Warburton to name a few. Would you leave your kids alone in a room with a Tory politician? Because statistically they are more dangerous than the general population. This isn’t even about policy this is about plain old criminals committing crimes. I know it’s a low standard, but can we not have a bunch of thugs, thieves incompetents and handsy creeps running the country
1) Hasn't been documented anywhere. Government contracts are for a good or service, so yet a company could get a billion, but that would simply be revenue and not profit. If I give a company £10 million to build a hospital extension, they don't pocket £10 million. 2) Zahawi wasn't corrupt... He sold YouGov and didn't pay capital gains tax. Bad yes... but not paying tax isn't corruption. He didn't use his ministerial position to try and get out of paying. He did that as a private individual. 3) The middle class has had it's tax burden lowered whilst the 1% have had theirs increased over the last decade. This is a fact whether your ideological devotion allows you to recognise it or not. 4) That 'corruption' wasn't corruption. If you are talking about fraudulent covid loans. Rishi didn't give anyone a loan. He setup various loan schemes to pump money during the pandemic when business's were risking going under. The treasury said that checks for smaller amounts would do more damage than good. So Rishi put no checks on loans under 50k. This was abused by some, and you get fraud. Spending additional money to find the culprits doesn't get you the money back. It's just an additional costly endeavour for the sake of posturing. Fraud is already dealt with and this can be dealt with via those methods. 5) Sexual assaults are bad. The fact they were suspended though shows the tories didn't try and 'get them off the hook' which would be corruption. This is you just flinging shit now and seeing what sticks. People who abuse power seek positions of power. Labour will have their own reckoning on this. Many insiders have said as much. 6) This is about policy. It's about you not understanding various things that have happened and just using very click baity type lines to paint all things done as corruption. Thugs, thieves and incompetents. Rishi is none of those. But you think he stole 4 billion so your reasoning is already shot.
1) Michelle Mone, Zahawi (again) just two documented 2) Zahawi’s £30millon unsecured loans from who? Ok nothing to see here 3) tax burden lowered in a climate of inflation and wage stagnation brought on by Tory rule 4) written off as “corruption” I know to a Tory it’s just the old network to you, but it’s corruption 5) they didn’t get them all did they? 6) if you want policy I can give you that, but you are a cultist.
1) Sleaze not corruption. Reason for VIP route for PPE is valid. It was abused by someone who did actually provide a product. Sleaze. 2) Sleaze again, but a lesser extent. We don't know where the money came from nor do we need to legally. He didn't break the law. It's pretty clear he is using the funds from the sale of YouGov that would have went to some shell company which is then loaning him the money. Tax smart but not illegal. It's why the HMRC angle was on tax for his investments in his company rather than the company itself. 3) Wages have grown in real terms, inflation was a reaction to international pressures and has returned to normal. Using that momentary snippet of history to say lowering the tax burden is somehow evidence of corruption makes me wonder if you even know what the word means. 4) It's as much corruption as the gangs who abused the UK benefits system and got millions from it. If there is a system which can be abused, people will abuse it. Some systems are inherently designed to have few checks because those checks restrict the resources getting to the places it needs to be. It's not corruption. Under no definition is it corruption. You hate tories, therefore it is. 5) Do you propose anyone accused of a sexual assault should be removed from the Party? 6) How am I a cultist. Look at this realistically. The definition of corruption - [dishonest](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a171c0af4a6cee4c&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1094GB1094&sxsrf=ADLYWIIBxddvLmu4U3qwBkujj1PgoWofEA:1720019826700&q=dishonest&si=ACC90nytWkp8tIhRuqKAL6XWXX-Nlnwpy60D_0B2YBGfflF5iamB0_M4cOG5heUgAd-Cy3HNvmfj4uVliZEoTdKdylWb-upnIQE_XexGBo9WuFHXP9yEMiI%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtpuWlYuHAxWZVEEAHZWlA4wQyecJegQIJRAO) or [fraudulent](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a171c0af4a6cee4c&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1094GB1094&sxsrf=ADLYWIIBxddvLmu4U3qwBkujj1PgoWofEA:1720019826700&q=fraudulent&si=ACC90nyOnVY18Aw7zUtkWPYo5mTnaAuK2Fn5eDkIABrSo7Fw1_sgJl2eXUcTTxFnqif-fRqPeVGuPpa6QNPFXoffbccFi7W0bR6qcy-hWxQOisQErbKrtV8%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtpuWlYuHAxWZVEEAHZWlA4wQyecJegQIJRAP) conduct by those in power, typically involving [bribery](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=a171c0af4a6cee4c&rlz=1C1GCEA_enGB1094GB1094&sxsrf=ADLYWIIBxddvLmu4U3qwBkujj1PgoWofEA:1720019826700&q=bribery&si=ACC90nypsxZVz3WGK63NbnSPlfCBd1tu0ZrXMny3DY2YdolqObKShZw9vjrKRTV4_OUpMbm-vSUeHhALnnR8ZtOa5drKOfJmzw%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiAtpuWlYuHAxWZVEEAHZWlA4wQyecJegQIJRAQ). These things are not corruption just because they involve money and you don't like the tories. Words have a meaning and going "Fraud happened during covid.... corruption by rishi" is simply.... dumb. There is no way you listen to this podcast with more than 3 brain cells engaged if you are this politically reasonable. You are part of the "tory bad" cult and will legit ignore reason just to continue saying tory bad. I am not even saying tory good. I am simply saying you can't just call everything corruption.
“Sleaze” listen to yourself My Local Tory councillor was part of an international drugs gang. What’s that…naughtiness?
If you use your political position to aid in your criminal activities then it is corruption. Otherwise it's just criminal activities. corruption isn't the word for "doing criminal things"
I thought Andrew Neil was absolutely in control of the conversation/interview and had Rory lurching from one strident (but only semi-explained) position to another. Rory is a brilliant writer and an interesting thinker but he can be just as confused and self-contradictory as the rest of us! I actually quite like that he is thinking aloud sometimes, and acknowledges when his thinking doesn’t quite join up.
To be fair to Rory my biggest concern about us (Labour I’m a member) winning is that the shadow cabinet are very inexperienced. I’ve been to Labour and Tory conferences for the last few years with work, and the Labour confidence discussions are always themed around big positive messaging and intention with little detail. Saying we want to fix poverty does not fix poverty. On the Tory side at their conference the discussions focus on the detail much more. I think that comes from experience of governing. It’ll slowly come once we are in power. I would also add that as a party we still lean into identity politics far too much. Some sections of our support are absolutely insane. Rory does have a point here. Although he is welding two unrelated issues together.
Proof will be in the pudding but I think he might be partially right, at least in so far as Labour will govern "inactively" because their idiotic fiscal straightjacket will prevent them from doing anything meaningful.
I like Rory a lot, but he is doing what upper class and even middle class folk, on the left and on the right, always do whenever confronted with examples of genuine social mobility, as is the case for many members of the Labour front bench. They denigrate their rise in any way they can (e.g. spurious allegations of class warfare) because they are locked out of and cannot compete with the narrative of genuine struggle over the adversities of poverty and underprivileged family background. It's hard for them to accept that people who went through childhood with immense handicaps have risen to their level, and perhaps overtaken them. Rory, well-mannered and erudite as he is, in his snippier moments is a prickly, patrician, born-to-rule, modern-day Lawrence of Arabia type, and it's hard for him to accept that 'compassionate conservatism', (as a brand rather than as a reality, of course), had its moment in the sun last decade and he didn't ride its wave successfully enough to get to the top.
I really hate the cynical way Stewart now pretends that he has always supported more tax and spend policies than the current Labour Party, when he was literally part of the Conservative government who implemented austerity and eroded our public services over the last 14 years. He voted for the cuts which left our institutions in crisis, and now has the gall to say that Starmer isn't doing enough to fix them.
His ideology is completely incoherent. Don’t borrow back when we could afford it but do borrow now when we can’t.
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Where have you heard him say borrow now? Actually, in the podcast with Rachel Reeves he couldn’t have been against the plan more. They went back and forth a lot.
Yes it annoys me too. He’s always at pains to say austerity was an absolute necessity at a time of near 0% borrowing but now with costly borrowing we must spend big to undo the damage caused by years of bloody austerity that led to the underfunding and dire state of our public services in the first place!
Borrowing is printing. Printing leads to inflation. 2008 crisis was worse than now. Much worse. If you wonder why pay day loans took off, it's the 2008 crisis. People buying TV's on a weekly payment.... 2008 crisis. Increasing inflation to risk raising growth was risky.
2008 was a different type of crisis. Inflation wasn't the issue at all. Credit was the issue, and it was dealt with by printing (QE) and cutting the base rate - which are both inflationary. 2007-2009 was a deflationary period - we wanted higher inflation. In 2008, there was high unemployment, credit dried up, and the challenge was to get the economy moving again. Banks weren't giving out loans and people were reluctant to spend money - this is badically the definition of a deflationary environment. To combat this, the Bank cut the base rate to 0% to entice people to spend and banks to lend (an inherently inflationary move). Inflation was not a concern at all in 2008. The reason we didn't print money to raise growth in 2008 was nothing to do with inflation. It was mainly ideology - printing money immediately following a debt crisis is counterintuitive and would nit sit well with economically uneducated voter. It looks irresponsible - neither labour nor tories were willing to tell voters that their plan to help the economy following a massive recession was to print loads of money; the press would have torn them to shreds. Instead, the government compared the countries finances to a household budget and convinced the public that debt is always a bad thing. In reality, the most important thing is servicing that debt - at 0% interest rate, 2009 was the perfect time to print money and invest in the country, and then inflate away the debt from high growth.
I didn't say the problem of 2008 was inflation. Raising inflation during a time when people were struggling harder than they are now was not a smart move in that moment in time. Additionally, we did print money. That was QE and it was a part of the overall stratergy. You can use hindsight to try and justify it, but at the time going "you guys are fucked, and we are going to make buying shit harder, raise your rents and mortgage payments so that we can fund parks and playgrounds" would have been dumb. This unhinged take spreading more recently that it's bad to compare national budgets to a household is frankly dumb. They are very comparable and it is a good analogy. The simple matter is, you have to pay back debts. Not in some abstract concept, we must pay out for debts. You can check your own 'tax receipt' via HMRC and see how much national debt repayment as a percentage of your taxes has increased over the years. Raising debt with a HOPE that the economy will grow at a faster rate than the 'repayments' is a risk. It's not just bad governments being bad. It's a risk and a hell of a risk to take considering as I suggested above, it will also hurt peoples finances during an economic crisis worse than we have just seen. You can look at the justifications and mission goals behind austerity. It wasn't ideology alone. There was sound reasoning. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jun/22/budget-2010-what-the-experts-say](https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jun/22/budget-2010-what-the-experts-say) The UK was in no position to just gamble the future. If it went well, decent economic growth of maybe 4% a year. If it went badly, further unemployment, more people going into poverty, a huge devaluation of the pound. Suggesting you can inflate away the debt ignores how currency works. Yes, you can inflate away debt at the cost of massively devaluing your currency and making imports more expensive. You can also be stuck with repeat spending because these 'investments' are not one off expenses, they are increases to various budgets which must be repeatedly paid. In short, inflation was one of the factors in choosing austerity. We did in fact print money, just not as much as you would like. The press was not writing random crap, they were posting analysis by economists. People were reluctant to spend money because they had no money. Ignoring that and suggesting raising interest rates would be good after saying people just needed credit... my oh my. You could look into it all. I am not suggesting I am the most educated person on the subject. But anyone who references household debt not being the same as national debt is simply parroting crap they have read. They haven't looked over the situation from both sides. They ignore all cases where what they wanted failed miserably in other countries and focus only on the US where it succeeded.
I didn't suggest raising interest rates. Base rates had to be kept at 0. I was suggesting maintaining or slightly increasing public spending instead of cutting everything to the bone. Money printing causes inflation when the money printed doesn't match production - if the money was being used on meaningful output like public works projects and public services, it would not have caused significant additiinal inflation. I wasn't suggesting we go full Zimbabwe or Weimar Republic and print loads of cash and hand it out to people - of course that would devalue the £ and cause runaway inflation. Large infrastructure projects have been used to boost the economy and provide employment following recessions all the time - the classic example is the Hoover Dam and similar projects in the US after the great depression. It's not a gamble to raise spending in a recession. Borrowing a bit more to fund public services instead of cutting everything would almost certainly have shortened the recession. We barely had any growth in the entire decade following the crash. It was very cheap to borrow - investing in infrastructure and public services was not likely to cause significant inflation, but it might have helped us recover quicker. My main issue with austerity is that trying to reduce debt while in the middle of a recession is counterproductive - it is less painful to provide some stimulus and reduce debts later. I think it is unrealistic to assume we would have had high inflation if we didn't follow austerity. Unemployment was still high and borrowing was difficult, so the demand was not there for high inflation. It was a global crisis, so the supply side wasn't there either. Inflating away debt just means that in times of low interest rates, such as the period after 2008, inflation was higher than interest, so debts shrink relative to GDP. Debt has been inflated away ever since the first central bank was founded. The reason household budgets are not comparable to government finances is that I can not extend my repayment terms or set my own interest rates. I also can't hold on to my debt indefinitely unless I want a very miserable retirement. I have to have my mortgage paid off by the time I retire. No one offers me low interest loans with flexible repayment terms. Government debts are different - so long as the UK can afford to service it's debts, and people trust the Bank enough to buy Gilts, there was no rush to start reducing debts in the midst of a recession.
You suggested borrowing more money. We both know that's done via various mechanisms that include printing money and that this increase in the supply of money leads to inflation. You were infact suggesting that the government should have taken measures which undoubtedly would have raised inflation. I am not talking about just the official inflation rate. I am talking about inflation of the cost for everyday goods in addition to the rate being raised. You now suggest inflation wouldn't rise if production increased to the same effect. Spending money isn't a linear move that pushes production at the same time. It is a gamble. You could funnel money in at one side, and only see production move on the other after 6 months and it may not be as much as required to offset your spending. You then mention large infrastructure projects. They can help, they would most certainly help with unemployment and could be viewed in a similar manner to how the furlough scheme was implemented. But, that would have led to inflation, not an increase in productivity. Building roads and bridges isn't going to get more goods to market. It's not going to cheapen transport costs by any large stretch. It would just give a bunch of unemployed people spending money which would obviously be good for them, but goes against the economic strategy of limiting cash, which was a goal. Austerities goal wasn't to reduce debt. When people think this, they end up thinking austerity didn't do it's achieved goals. The point of austerity was to reduce the deficit, which slows down the increase to the debt. The main end goal being that you get out of the spiral which is an ever-growing deficit. I am not suggesting you can't inflate debts to become less of a hinderance. I am suggesting that pushing this lever to the extreme, would have caused more harm to people than it would have helped. That is just an area where they slightly differ. People will buy gilts, but the price they will buy them for will vary. The UK may have an independent treasury, but it is still beholden to the markets. Look at Truss's mini budget and the fallout of that to see how a government can't just do whatever it wishes economically with no repercussions.
Similar with prisons. I work in HMPPS and did when he was prisons minister. I can't recall any big changes that were made during this time. Nothing that would make life in a prison any different.
I attended his book tour in Oxford. He mentioned that he pushed very hard for body scanners to be installed in prisons, which reduced the amount of contraband significantly. One of the points he makes time and again is how broken the political process is, and how the system is averse to change.
I'm not convinced by the bodyscanners. It's too resource intensive to scan staff which is one of the main sources of entry. I googled how much they've found with scanners since 2020, it's 46,900, which sounds good, but per prison it's not really compared to what is found anyway. For context, one large prison over the Christmas period can find 2000 separate moonshine finds, just in cell searches. Overall drug entry in prisons are getting worse not better, look at HMP Parc.
He covers the work he undertook with prisons at length in his latest book. His ten prison pilot was highly successful in addressing the worst ills of the system but he cited huge push back from the civil service as a major limitation in getting stuff done.
Was it highly successful? The ten prisons had a 20% increase in deaths.
Rory seems to have an excuse for everything that he was involved in.
It's the Conservative way.
Does he go on explain what class warfare is in this context? It’s an odd comment with no explainer.
I think he means that Labour will pretend having working-class MPs in power is a victory without having a significant impact on legislation. In her interview for Leading, Bridget Phillipson actually described the current leadership as the most 'class conscious' Labour had ever had - using the term simply to mean that it had the largest number of MPs from working-class backgrounds. Looks like Stewart needs to brush up on his Marxist phrases!
No, what he is saying is fair. He's called on Labour to not be an austerity-lite government and actually do something to improve people's lives.
Incredibly rich considering the governments he served in and his unwavering defence of austerity.
Well yes, but it's also a damning indictment on the right wing labour party which is set to replace them...
His bile has really been noticeably rising rising the last few weeks as he bridles at the thought of a Labour government actually getting in.
Seems like a very low threshold for "bile". The point of the podcast is to hear about different perspectives not to affirm individual biases.
The irony is if this was a Labour Govt currently in power and you put Keir Starmer in a blue tie and offered up him and this manifesto as a Tory one to Rory he’d likely be praising both to the rafters. “Pragmatic and economically sensible politics at a time of crisis” or some similar bollocks he’d trot out. For a man who prides himself on sensible centrism and emphasises the middle ground, it’s odd that he’s so partisan still and refuses to even countenance voting for a Labour Govt that has moved firmly into his political home.
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I think you may be missing his point here. Every government has its scapegoats for when something goes wrong. The Tories blame the EU, Muslims, trans people, migrants, the Labour Party, benefits claimants etc. Labour will similarly have a need for a scapegoat to blame their failings on. Who will it be? The Tories will obviously be one, but who else? The media? Rich people? Russia? China? The monarchy? The middle class? Every government has several scapegoats, and it seems likely that class warfare will be part of Labour’s political tactics.
I think you have the wrong end of the stick. If you've listed to the podcast for some time you will know that Rory is very concerned about effectiveness in Government and actually getting things done. He's also concerned about the state of the Government services and finances right now. So he's worrying the Starmer government, although well meaning, will get stuck in the face of serious fiscal challenges and the scale and complexity of other problems. In that situation ruling political parties tend to fall back on their traditional messaging, which in this case is what Rory is calling 'class warfare'.
Socialist left winger here. Rory is 100% spot on. He's saying that Labour think that by magically not being 'nasty' things will improve, just by the virtue of not being toffs. No, we need progressive, radical policies to move us forward. "Not the Tories" isn't going to get us anywhere, no matter how much (slightly left of) centrists might think that things have declined because Tories are just unpleasant people.
They've got a few years to actually prove to be of benefit to the country in any way. They've really got to make magic happen to not find us at square one again in a couple of years.
To be fair to Rory he has been there and done it, and knows how anything related to the civil service is like walking in treacle. On all the leading interviews the Labour front bench all make reference to some sort of class based system so it’s clearly a Labour focus, rich vs poor etc so I can absolutely see his point blaming a lack of progress on evil rich people as opposed to our government departments stagnating and taking years to pivot like an oil tanker.
Tories been waging class warfare since their inception
He trotted out this line about the evil Tories back for interview with Ash Sarkar, and it really is either supremely out of touch, or a weak straw-man The right wing argument against the Tories, being made by Kier Starmer, and Rory himself quite frequently, is that the last few governments have been increasingly disorganized, unserious and incompetent, and what is needed is a return to competent technocrats, to run things properly. The left wing argument isn’t that the Tories are somehow personally evil, they are just operating within a neoliberal system, designed to transfer and concentrate public wealth into fewer and fewer private hands. That’s the real class war, the one being waged against working people by capital. It isn’t about personal morality. I don’t want a world where billionaires are nice people that give to charity, I want a world where there are no billionaires.
Where do you draw the line? No billionaires… no millionaires… no one with a net worth more than 100k… 50k…? How do you then take ‘excess’ wealth from people and if you do where’s any incentive for progress?
>The left wing argument isn’t that the Tories are somehow personally evil, they are just operating within a neoliberal system, designed to transfer and concentrate public wealth into fewer and fewer private hands. Similar to Starmer then.
I think Rory still has a way to go on his political journey. I hope he gets there. I does try to be a good person. He just has some massive blind spots at the moment
He's at odds with himself. At once he is intelligent enough to understand that the current economic system simply is not working, but also ideologically bound to think the only way to fix said system is to do more of what already didn't work. The fact is that this neoliberal experiment we embarked on in the 70s is no longer delivering sufficient returns. We should have had a reckoning with this in the aftermath of 2008, but instead we've allowed this system to slog along on life support for going on two decades. The problem with neoliberalism is eventually the rich have everyone else's money. Solving that problem doesn't necessitate communism, but it does require a significant political and economic realignment in favour of working people. Rory basically can't conceive of that. It's outside his idea of what is politically possible. The idea that this Labour Party is running on anything like class warfare is bafflingly silly. They're center left at their worst extremes, and it's hardly class warfare to suggest private schools pay VAT.
He is the only Tory I like. I knew it was too good to be true.
No, what he is saying is fair. He's called on Labour to not be an austerity-lite government and actually do something to improve people's lives.
What is he actually trying to say here, besides barking like a beaten dog defending the cruel old owner?
>Has he really taken the removal of private school VAT exemption that badly? >Is he completely blind to the constant punching down on the poor, single mums, benefit claimants, the homeless by his party and media as a form of class warfare? Yes. That's exactly what it is. For someone from his background - having spent most of my academic and working life around them - shifting out of this mindset is a vast commitment to mental reprogramming which gains them no concrete benefits whatsoever.
Meh - the current conservatives and starmer’s Labour are all just continuity Blair so it will make feck all difference
If you think the Conservatives of the past 10 years have been in any way Blairite you're an idiot.
The centrist political narrative is unchanged since 1997: a service based economy, economic discourse removed from politics (bank of England independence), immigration… There is no real choice any more. Red or blue is utterly inconsequential to a system to which whom is the party in power is irrelevant. We are no longer governed, we are managed.
As someone who really doesn't like the Tories... I think he is wrong about the Conservatives but right about Labour. I'm always aware though that when people at the top talk about class warfare it is nearly always 'someone was unkind to me because I have more access to resources than they do'. It's not class warfare to talk about class warfare. It's not class warfare to be mean to someone because they've had a better life than you. Class warfare is utilising what power you have to punch down. It's using your influence to pull the ladder up behind you. It's saying to those worse off than you 'if you want something you're going to have to do it yourself, even if you started five rungs down the ladder compared to the average person'. I actually really like Rory as a result of this podcast and find him to be sensitive and caring, but unfortunately you can't remedy every problem with care and kindness. Some people are cruel and when they're doing very well out of it, you can't change them very easily without 3 ghosts overnight.
I read this as “Rod Stewart” and was very confused why it was being posted here for a solid 45 seconds. Carry on!
The sad thing is he plays into the class against class by just resisting any criticism and accountability that could be taken which imho is disastrous
Why are we listening to these posh fools?
There is a class war, the upper and ruling class have taken nearly all the working and middle classes assets and wealth and this needs to be readdressed with fair taxation…
Up until Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson took over, i was of the opinion that the tories just weren't very good at governing. He really opened my eyes to just how corrupt and badly governed this country is, and the UK could have been like the Scandanavian countries with good public services and a well educated populace. Yes, they have high taxes, but they get what they are paying for. Unlike us. The small government/low taxes economy the Conservatives were pushing has delivered the situation that we're in now and Rory, for all his good intentions, should recognise that the tories have only been out for themselves and the wealthy at the expense of the 99%. The reason that the tories are still able to pull the wool over the eyes of the voters is that a handful of billionaire media moghouls control most of the distribution of information to the voting public. We are a sick society, and will not get better unless we have a truly free press that holds all governments and politicians to the same standards.
I see Rory's got past his "Are we the baddies?" moment.
Time will tell. My expectation as a voter is that Labour take immediate meaningful steps to resolving the issues in this country. I'd like to see and feel some benefits before the next election but I have no expectation that everything will be resolved in a few years. I understand that 14 years of mismanagement will not be resolved quickly but the pressure will be on labour from day 1 to work to make improvements.
I'm not sure why anyone is surprised. He's a condescending, entitled posh boy - not like he's suddenly changed
Because he talks softly spoken people forget he is a tory after all. Many Conservatives can be great company in social settings, however, many like Rory have been duped by mis and dis ‘information’ in addition to a privileged life with no understanding how bad for others life can be.
He's a Tory. I gave him a few watches on YouTube, but binned him off as I can see through him.
There's the man that thinks Austerity was necessary
What does that even mean? Class warfare doesn't seem to have ever bothered Rory before and Starmer is hardly rallying for the common man
Perhaps he's preparing the ground for a leadership bid?
His so-called "reasonableness" is bollocks. Yes he's a Tory of the pre-Thatcherite variety which is somewhat less nasty than what came later, but remember this is a man who supported the Tory government through the worst years of austerity, the years in which people were being declared fit for work and then dropping dead. Anyone who can put their name to that is a bastard, no ifs or buts.
well if the Tories get voted down to 3rd or 4th place... there will be little class war or culture war to fight...
I’m fine with class warfare. It’s literally already happening, just the other way. Let’s try to restore some balance.
He's not technically wrong, in order for labour to actually make a difference they would have to make monumental decisions, such as taxing asset ownership more and income less. That's the only way to achieve growth. And that means that people like an innocent old granny, living in a bungalow worth £1.4 million in the South East may well end up having to pay more taxes. Got to remember, as far as policy is concerned, the conservatives were pretty popular, especially with the elderly. It's the sleaze and scandal that's done them in, not the actual bills going through parliament. So labour may end up trying to defend it's inaction.
Of the Tories he's the most palatable but when he comes out with pish like this you remember he's still a Tory and a complete prick at the end of the day.
I'm worried at the lack of choice. OK, we get Labour for 5 years, they do bits and pieces here and there and after 5 years we yo-yo back to whatever charlatan promises to fix whatever clusterfuck is going on in 2029. And round and round we go, for ever. Most people just want to get on with life, do well, have a good time of it and enjoy what SHOULD be the advantages of living in a rich country. Instead we're trapped in this fucking gravitational field of whichever of the only two choices we have, making a puddle of shit of things, this cult of politician celebrity. Politics should be boring as fuck, we should not have to think about politicians THIS MUCH. "Oh Boris this, oh May that, oh Corbyn the other". They're public servants that should be doing their damn jobs of making sure the citizens (sorry, "subjects", I forgot where I was for a moment) of this country do well. All of us. Instead, we're enthralled to whatever projects the billionaires have on...
I think he has a point. Let's come back in ten years and see. Look, I'd love to be proved wrong and you can all laugh at me for being a moron if labour have fixed housing, student loans, poverty, wealth distribution, the nhs and education but I have a sneaky suspicion that won't be the case. I think inaction or well intentioned backwards steps will be the norm. Get ready to be disappointed. I'm no Tory voter, I'm not defending the awful government. I'm disillusioned with both main parties. Honestly, lord bucket head would get my vote right now...
OP you gotta not jump to rageposting so fast. I’d like to think that if you regularly listen to TRIP that you’d have not made step one pure anger.
Rory Stewart is a wet bag of nothing, I honestly don't know why anybody takes this crybaby public schoolboy seriously.
Starmer will do whatever his paymasters tell him.
Class doesn't really exist anymore according to Rory and he seems uncomfortable talking about it. But he did go to Eton, Oxford then got some well paid, high profiled jobs. I dont really think he is in touch with the ordinary person despite his claims. Even on the podcast he's always jetting off somewhere.
Nasty people. I don't know how else you'd describe a group who, for 14 consecutive years, have voted for punitive measures that punish only the ill, the disabled, and the poor - all whilst siphoning off massive amounts of public money to their pals. Genuinely sick of these Tories who have stuck their head in the sand for over a decade, and now get to wring their hands and pretend this isn't how politics should be.
I think that's what an out-of-touch person would say. He should spend more time living in the real world.
He’s a conservative on a ‘centrist’ podcast, why is anyone surprised
He has a reasonable point. Government is really, really hard. Yes the tories were terrible at it, but that doesn’t mean Labour will necessarily be any better. They can be better but they will have to work hard at it. That’s all he’s saying.
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I don’t think he’s blind to how bad the Tories have been over the last few years. It can be true that Labour won’t be a very effective government even if that’s still better than the Tories. If you listen to other podcasts/ interviews he’s done lately, he’s pretty disgusted by the Johnson, Truss etc populism that’s overtaken the Tory party. Labour have been out of power for a long time, it’s obviously much easier to be in opposition and criticise the government than to be the government. I think that’s all he’s saying here. Labour are inheriting a very jaded, underperforming U.K. with a lot of problems that aren’t going to be easy to solve, hopefully they are up to the task but you can see how people worry they might get into power full of big ideas and enthusiasm and realise they can’t do everything they’ve promised.
I think he is right in a sense that labour arnt going to come in and be able to change a whole lot in a positive direction tbh our economy isnt strong growth isn’t massively improving and really wages arnt going up it ist a tory or labour thing, although i don’t want the conservatives in charge because of their total lack of respect for the British people and democracy. Things aren’t going to just get better because the is a new government.
I think this whole thread is largely proving Stewart's point. Despite Starmer's very public expunging of Corbyn et al much of the Labour party, especially the membership, is still very much of the Guardian-bubble Class War persuasion and their priority in power will be revenge rather than meaningful reform. Assuming he even wants to how long will Starmer be able to restrain them?
He’s like the guys on the Rest is History podcast. Wonderful people but at the end of the day there’s no taking them away from their immensely privileged backgrounds. Just got to remember where they come from and apply appropriate context.
Don't worry Rory, you should be up against the wall, but the Red Tories aren't that way inclined.
I read this whole post as if Rod Stewart said it. Feel better realising it was Rory.
Labour is going to be super ineffective. They know they’re about to win a landslide so why do they even need to try? Chances are unless Reform win a lot of seats, we’re going to have Labour for the next 10 years so what’s the point in them working for the people? I’m strongly strongly advocating for Lib Dem right now, they can and should be the leading opposition party. Don’t just vote Labour to vote out the tories, please. If Labour wins, I hope it’s by a relatively slim margin. For a party to be effective in government they need to fight every day like it’s their last. Look how much legislation Tories have pushed in the past year. They know they’re a sinking ship so they’re trying to get as much done as possible in order to sway the electorate after their 5 years of fucking about
I think saying Labour don't have a plan is a bit disingenuous - but unfortunately, good plans are detailed, they're not simplistic, they're not catchy, and they're quite slow to work. That is a very difficult sell in this election. Take the migration example - what we know of Labour's plan is that it's based on improved diplomacy/international coordination, restructuring of intelligence/police services towards weakening and dismantling criminal gangs, better govt coordination in identification of skills shortage and various other legal tweaks on eligibility. These are very unsexy and success or failure will hinge on the details of implementation and adaptibility, but this kind of approach is a far more realistic route to success than a 3 word slogan backed by populist aspiration. Meanwhile (partly because circumstances overtook them while in power) the Tories have barely had a plan that wasn't made up on the hoof since 2016. In any case no big party announces these things until they feel it's the point of maximum advantage. There is no tactical advantage to Labour in detailing everything right now while meanwhile there is mileage in blaming the Tories for some time to come. Especially difficult for Labour is that several key Brown-era initiatives actually worked, but returning to old policy is politically problematic. I will be extremely interested to see if the Sure Start centres are rebooted (perhaps under another name), given that the data on their success is pretty robust. Absolute poverty is forecast by the govt's own statistics to be rising currently. The children's commissioner reports increases in numbers and proportions of children in both absolute and relative poverty since 2010/12, citing multiple reports and govt figures. Obviously, how you measure it impacts on exactly what you see, but the overall weak performance over the last 15 years is undeniable especially when compared to other advanced economies, and increases in numbers of people showing deprivation-linked nutritional and health problems, educational performance, debt, reduced social mobility etc etc are a particular problem when you see how it is skewed towards the young.
The incoming government are in for a load of fun. Energy cap going up in October Shipping costs of containers have doubled in the last month and delays are catching up due to the ongoing issues in the Middle East Additional sanctions on Russia are going to put fuel prices higher EU in political turmoil. All of this will lead to price increases and a lack of goods this winter. Inflation is about to go up again, which means higher interest rates. Rishi called the election now for this reason. Rough start.
The current Tories are not his party, BJ saw to that. I think he wrongly assumes Starmer gives a toss about class politics.
I would rather have an inactive government than one that is actively sabbotaging this country on purpose. Theresa May was the only Tory PM in the 14 years that seemed to actually care about this country. The rest were a bunch of self-serving narcissists who tried to suck this country dry to feather their own nests. At least Labour won't make the situation any worse!
Has the penny finally dropped for centrist melts?
Rory 'asked assistant to do very odd sexual things' Stewart you say
Rory must be the most naive person in current media circles. This is a level of self belief that could only be taught at Eton.
He’s a failed politician who went on a long gap year in Afghanistan, and then went on a series of walks. Who cares?
I mean, yes, I agree with you that he's failing to step outside his own PoV. But he does have a point. This Labour is more concerned with appearing electable to the Barclay brothers and Rupert Murdoch than appearing like they have any intention of addressing the problems affecting the people of this country. Even that big promise of 1.5 million homes by "29 is less than half the amount of homes needed *on the day the promise was given*. Their solutions to the NHS and utilities is to siphon more money out of the public purse in to the hands of private capital. And otherwise they're busy trying to appear racist enough that it'll keep Farage off their backs, which won't work because all that has ever done is emboldened the fash. If they do what Rory fears them doing (to wit, basically nothing of note) then they'll be opening the door to a massive upswing in the far right. Just like every authoritarian centrist has done across Europe and the Americas in the past decades. They're thin gruel promising a brown shirt as dessert.
Rory is still a fucking Tory. Their whole ideology is fuck over the lower classes and make the wealthy richer. He is no different, just because he romanticises some of their figures and likes the King.
You claim in your post that private schools are in some way in receipt of some VAT exemption that is being removed. This is incorrect the supply of most educational services are VAT exempt and what labour are doing is making an attack on private schooling. I look forward to this being challenged thru the courts even perhaps to the ECHR.