Thank you.

How we counter Labour's idea of nationalisation and greater public ownership is the answer.

I mean, look, the facts will be our friend.

People are already starting to see that their trains didn't mythically improve, that some money was spent on some repaint jobs so the Labour ministers could have their photo taken next to them, and their services promptly got worse.

They'll see over time that nationalising British steel hasn't changed the fundamentals of the ruinously high cost of energy or the high levels of manning in steel.

But what it has achieved is doubling the amount of money that taxpayers are tipping in every single day over the last 12 months.

So the facts will be our friend.

What's the sort of Tory message of hope in that sort of increasingly negative climate?

A- and there's no doubt amongst my viewers and listeners, she as an individual cuts through, but it must be frustrating at the same time as well that many would say that the brand is still toxic to many, and you and your colleagues have a fight on your hands on that front, to be fair.

Uh, well, we're...

It's a fight we're up for, I can tell you that.

And, uh, how do we do that fight? Well, we come and talk to you and your listeners.

Uh, we put forward the sort of policies we've been talking about today that's gonna save people £50,000 on the price of a new home from scrapping outdated gold-plated environmental and net zero, uh, regulations, get Britain building, get our infrastructure working again, fully swing behind a Heathrow third runway, a national embarrassment that we can't get our global hub airport, uh, to expand, a lower, simpler tax system.

So we get out there, tell the message, and we show how the Conservative Party has changed.

You mentioned, uh, Kemi Badenoch's publication of The Right Way, but also, look, it's about how do we have Conservative candidates so that if people vote Conservative at election, they know that when they get to Westminster, they're gonna vote for Conservative measures, and going right to source on a lot of the problems in our society, uh, things like our membership of the ECHR.

What would be the first thing the Tories would do to, and I think this is really important, just generate amongst working people, you know, whatever their level of work, that, that they're appreciated and you're giving something back? How can you afford that, my friend?

How could it be that Andy Burnham is still penciled in to win the next election?

Well, look, I have to control what we can control.

Can we as Conservatives make the Conservative Party a home fit for people to come back to who were fed up with the infighting or felt that we weren't a true Conservative Party in our policies? That is the work that Kemi, I and the team are engaged in.

And you can see we are once again a tax cutting, fiscally responsible Conservative Party.

We are happy.

to reform an out of control welfare system.

But we're also on the side of people who work hard.

genuine industrial scale effort to grow our economy to the point that other Western democracies look at us and go, wow, whatever they're doing over there in the UK, let's do some of that over here.

And the truth is we are spending billions and billions and billions of pounds servicing that debt, which could otherwise be spent right now on cutting taxes or public services.

Exactly.

That's exactly right.

I mean, we've got nearly three trillion pounds of debt.

Our debt interest bill is more than over 100 billion.

That's more than twice what we spend on defence.

Look, I was a finance director.

You stayed in the government until Liz Truss quit herself.

We took a temporary credit crunch and we turned it into a permanent credit crunch for

businesses.

Recognising the moral virtue of wealth creators, of the private sector, and recognising that we're only going to get the growth we seek, we're only going to end the great stagnation if we can harness those animal spirits in our economy.

So please, ladies and gentlemen, congratulate and join me in welcoming the Shadow Chancellor, Andrew Vick.

Daniel, thank you so much.

And I do count myself now.

I counted myself in the past.

And if I were ever to be your Chancellor, I would count myself then as a deep friend of the Institute for Economic Affairs.

What's wrong with this picture? Why is this a mistake?

I mean, so many, so many reasons why going back to the 1970s and having to teach ourselves once again some very expensive lessons about what it really looks like when the state takes those decisions away.

And we're starting to see that already with what should be the Department for Business being an independent arbiter because they now effectively own large parts of the steel production sector are applying tariffs on steel so that they're much larger and in many ways more important steel manufacturing sector that are doing some very high-end work whether it's an aerospace or defense they are now being made less competitive versus international competitors to the extent that some are moving offshore so on the back of trying to protect steel, which is fundamentally unprofitable if Ed Miliband is deciding your cost of energy.

It's not all him, but he's definitely taking it in the wrong direction.

And if your energy for a commodity, steel is mostly a commodity product, if your energy in the UK is twice, three times, four times higher than making the same steel bar, in a different country, that is not a structurally profitable basis to compete, no matter how many tariff barriers and other things the government pumps in.

So that is bad.

The idea that the government should be doing more of that is a folly.

What do you say to them that would make them think, actually, I should vote for this party?

What are the safety challenges that you face, if any?

Well, look, the first thing is obviously we're talking about Anne Widdicombe and I think we're all being very responsible, not speculating.

That was what the police have asked to do.

But that's obviously something that's in the front of our minds.

And thank you for your your tribute to Anne I heard the other day.

I think the past comes authorities deserve a lot of credit.

Actually, I've been an MP for six years in that period.

Andrew Griffith.

How have the sort of macro and the micro come together in your role as a Member of Parliament, serving geographically quite a big area with sort of dispersed populations?

Really good question.

You're right.

So I was elected in December, had a quick break over Christmas, and then we were pretty much into an unprecedented global pandemic lockdown.

As I was trying to learn the ropes of being an MP, tens of thousands of people were sort of reaching out and contacting me because their world was melting down, whether it was access to health care, their kids being excluded from school or the school shutting down, just to bring it to life.

You know, in terms of the economy, I discovered, forgive me, the wedding supply chain, you know, and what you discovered was all these informal groups.

So they're big guys in life, the businesses and things and the public sector generally can look after themselves.

How do we ensure that the kind of places you represent don't get left behind in big conversations about growth?

And how's this for irony, Andrew? Andy Burnham is gonna be left with a black hole by Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer, the exact size of which he accused you lot of leaving him when he took power just two years ago.

Oh, you took the words right out of my mouth, Jeremy.

I mean, having made her reputation on the back of a phantom black hole, which she then used as justification to spend another seventy billion pounds a year, uh, there's no doubt whatsoever that Rachel Reeves is leaving a huge black hole.

For...

To be quite honest, I can't wait to see the back of them.

I- we'll see what happens next.

But Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have failed in their respective first duties.

But the one thing that's coming through is, is the plans that you guys have are costed, and that's massive.

What do you think should happen now?

Um, let's just go back for one second, um, for your viewers and listeners.

I mean, developed vetting is done on a very small number of people who have access to the most secret documents in government.

Troop movements, intelligence sources, diplomatic relations between heads of state is the very highest level, uh, of security.

Many, many people in government do not have developed vetting.

So it is done for a purpose, and it's done to keep us all safe.

It's not easy, I would contend, for someone who's been a cabinet minister, for who's someone who's a privy counselor to fail developed vetting anyway.

Do you believe the Prime Minister didn't know about this?

... let's not think of the downsides of doing something.

Correct.

I think the, the, the political class, if you like, to broaden the point, are sort of slightly world-class at spotting the political risks.

You know, they might get into trouble on the Today program.

You know, they might be seen not to act too quickly.

Um, when I was in Number 10, you know, not for very long, but when I was in Number 10 as business advisor, you know, you saw things like Bury Football Club, you know, went, went bankrupt.

You know, bad, incompetent, maladministration, whatever.

Was it 'cause he didn't believe the things you believed or, or do we go back to what you said a few minutes ago, which is there's something in the system of politics that makes people defer, default to, if you like, a bigger state?

And do you not think that, uh, Brexit has had something to do with this?

Um, look, I, I hope not.

Um, I, I, I don't see particularly why that would be the case.

I mean, notwithstanding Brexit, um, we've still got one of the most permissive regimes, something that's not been fully reciprocated by the European Union in terms of people's ability, uh, to come here.

Uh, I think personally it's a little bit more about, uh, some of the economics, about where there are more job openings, uh, where people feel they've perhaps got more chance of, uh, finding an affordable rent or a property to purchase, uh, and a little bit about the general vibe of, uh, opportunity.

I think it's sad.

I think people leaving, um, are not necessarily fully appreciating the enduring strengths of the UK, which will prevail, uh, almost despite whichever government is in power.

And I think that's got a lot to do with this, that people don't see that in this country anymore.

But ta- take us through how it came about.

Um, look, I mean, we, we were all asked to submit ...

I mean, we've actually done a lot of policy work over the last year, and you know, I think, you know, that, that, I mean, it's been well-rehearsed that the sort of, the arc of this government hasn't, um, worked out as n-, or the, of this Parliament hasn't, hasn't worked out as usual largely because of the genuinely unprecedented collapse of Labour, which has left a lot more people casting around, uh, for alternatives.

So, so quite a lot of us have done quite a lot of policy work in our areas.

Uh, we, we all pitched that in.

I'm sure many of us pitched ideas for, um, uh, tax in, uh, but it was kept very tight.

I have to be very clear.

As her first leader's speech, she could have wiped the slate clean if she'd begun with a sincere apology to the whole country for the perceived or otherwise incompetence of Conservative governments in the past 14 years and say she wants to be a new broom." What's your reaction to that?