Is that the sort of thing that voters will thank the government for? I mean, is it a big enough move?

I think it will be something that is appreciated by them.

But obviously, we don't yet know how much exactly it's going to go up with the energy price cap announcement in a few weeks' time.

I think it does show, though, that it's demonstrably something the government can do.

John Healey tried to paint himself... as a realist in his speech, he said, look, most people in the country don't expect the government to solve all their problems, but we can give them some breathing space.

And I think that theme of breathing space was very much the one being emphasised.

I have to say, I mean, in that whole speech, which lasted just under an hour, I would say, there were very few surprises.

What did you make of that?

Is that the sort of thing that voters will thank the government for? I mean, is it a big enough move?

I think it will be something that is appreciated by them.

But obviously, we don't yet know how much exactly it's going to go up with the energy price cap announcement in a few weeks' time.

I think it does show, though, that it's demonstrably something the government can do.

John Healey tried to paint himself... as a realist in his speech, he said, look, most people in the country don't expect the government to solve all their problems, but we can give them some breathing space.

And I think that theme of breathing space was very much the one being emphasised.

I have to say, I mean, in that whole speech, which lasted just under an hour, I would say, there were very few surprises.

What did you make of that?

Is that the sort of thing that voters will thank the government for? I mean, is it a big enough move?

I think it will be something that is appreciated by them, but obviously we don't yet know how much exactly it's going to go up with the energy price cap announcement in a few weeks' time.

I think it does show, though, that it's demonstrably something the government can do.

John Healey tried to paint himself... as a realist in his speech, he said, look, most people in the country don't expect the government to solve all their problems, but we can give them some breathing space.

And I think that theme of breathing space was very much the one being emphasised.

I have to say, I mean, in that whole speech, which lasted just under an hour, I would say, there were very few surprises.

There was nothing really there.

What did you make of that?

So it's perhaps actually not worth getting too many Bs and too many bonnets.

I would say, Patrick, that you're still about trick or treat.

I mean, they're most hoping in the Treasury, I think, to avoid an October surprise.

Really, this budget, I think, has been dubbed by critics like Robert Jenrick, the Mignogna budget.

There's actually going to be not much in it.

And I think that it's been quite striking that the announcements over the weekend, I mean, what was all that talk about no budget leaks? We see...

A couple of days full of budget rabbits and headlines, etc., are fairly worthy initiatives, but not particularly exciting ones, I would say.

Who at the moment seems happier? Who might be unhappy?

First up, here's James Yule.

What's so frustrating about the last three or four months is you might have got the impression of chaos, but actually it's far from it.

It is 8.30am and Nigel Farage is 30,000 feet in the sky, clutching a bacon roll and expanding his battle plans.

Napkin tucked in like a bib, the reform MP wields a bottle of brown sauce as he bids to get back on the Frankfurt.

with him on the ten-seater plane are his two most prized tory defectors robert jenrick and danny kruger trilby in hand blotting the day ahead to-day it is plymouth where a third of the council seats are up for grabs in may on the hoe we stroll admiring the statues drake farage exclaims my house at school He looks out to the waves to the Edison lighthouse beyond.

I think I might be scattered at sea.

His schedule is the usual mix of meet and greets for a speech to 450 locals.

First up, here's James Heale.

What's so frustrating about the last three or four months is you might have got the impression of chaos, but actually it's far from it.

It is 8.30am and Nigel Farage is 30,000 feet in the sky, clutching a bacon roll and expanding his battle plans.

Napkin tucked in like a bib, the reform MP wields a bottle of brown sauce as he bids to get back on the front foot.

with him on the ten-seater plane are his two most prized tory defectors robert jemrick and danny kruger trilby in hand plotting the day ahead to-day it is plymouth where a third of the council seats are up for grabs in may on the hoe we stroll admiring the statues drake farage exclaims my house at school he looks out to the waves to the eddiston lighthouse beyond i think i might be scattered at sea His schedule is the usual mix of meet and greets for a speech to 450 locals.

Making work pay is the theme of his remarks, but Anne Widdicombe at Altra Plymouth is at the forefront of his mind.

His voice drains when he speaks of her.

How did he see it?

Yeah, I did start the day by saying I was a rare journalist who was not undercover when with the reformed press team.

But yeah, it was a huge amount of access.

Very, very grateful for that.

And I got to the airport at eight in the morning, bent on the jet down to Plymouth and then spent a day around Nigel Farage and his team.

He brought with him Danny Kruger and Robert Jenrick.

And then we flew back in the evening.

Is that something reform are on board with or are they wanting more whole hog state owned industry?

But I'm not sure he won the big picture argument, did he? I mean, she was sort of making the point that, you know, just saying you want to do something about social care isn't necessarily doing anything about it.

No, I mean, I think that, you know, just to be clear, I don't think it was like a 3-0 thrashing, a kind of 8-2 Man U Arsenal result.

I thought this was, you know, a 2-1 win for a team that's been struggling.

Andy Burnham's garrison has cost him in previous weeks.

He was fairly tight today.

He actually launched a few good attacks, I thought, on the Conservatives.

And in the Sun context, he basically had already preempted the arguments.

I mean, that would be one of those things that if you really wanted to be popular with the left, you might actually want to do.

James, who are the big winners and losers, do you think, from the last two months?

Well, for my sins, I went to all five.

So I can give you a sort of comprehensive overview of what they were like.

I think that, first of all, we had the reform conference, which was going to be the moment when I think some reform got that momentum.

They did desperately need to get back going again.

But of course, it was a bit upstaged by the Channel 4 undercover investigation.

So I think that they were able overall to kind of get a bit of a score draw, maybe a win on penalties if you're feeling generous.

But James, I don't know if you sort of agree with that.

Let's tax the banks." And as I say, I think that could backfire.

I think I remember discussing this on the podcast in 2023 when Rishi Sunak cut this in that budget.

Look, I think that this is, uh, some simple way that they can raise taxes.

It's not gonna affect many Labor voters.

They're looking for at least painless taxes.

This would appear to be one of them.

And this is the kind of emblematic of the approach to British economy we've had over the past few years.

Um, how fair is it to take the piss out of him for this?

A- and our ability to get our way or work with allies to try and bolster Zelensky is dramatically reduced by our own failure to get our house in order.

I agree with that, and I think that, you know, one of the reasons why we've been failing to kind of have as much influence is because the investment.

Where do we exer- exert influence? One of the pieces is, um, on intelligence services.

But why? Because we properly fund our intell- intelligence services, and that's been very important in the Ukraine conflict, particularly in the run-up to that and the subsequent revelations about Putin sort of maneuvering there.

But, so partly it's about the defense point, which is going to be a sort of an original sin for this chancellor, because obviously John Heath resigned on the issue of defense spending, and everything's going to come back from the Tories is, "Why aren't you spending more on defense?" The other point is all these conflicts are interconnected, and often it's about fuel prices, which obviously in terms of Iran is backlashing on Donald Trump, but in conversely to that, he's trying to then intervene in Ukraine.

So I think what the Labour government needs to appreciate is two things.

Number one, that these can't be siloed, you know.

And there is nobody in the British government now who has anything like that.

Billericay

... except, but, or some such thing.

All the political phrases.

Billericay, there you go.

Tim's, as usual, got the better lines.

And the Conservatives can say they finally got back to what they want to.

My point of skepticism would be, and I've noticed this across the conference, there is only one event about winning back the North.

And they obviously don't wanna repeat that mistake again, so they're gonna keep reminding us of what is currently on the table, and that will be a theme I imagine going forward.

Up first, James Heale.

After Andy Burnham's speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday, one veteran factionalist declared, we're all Burnhamites now.

Romantics love the rhetoric, cynics respect the ruthlessness.

Game recognises game, says one Labour figure.

The Prime Minister's address was pitched at a wounded party seeking support.

Emotive and personal, yet also intensely political, it showed a keen awareness not just of Labour's values, but of its interests too.

Right to buy, which attracted legions to the Tory ranks, will be halted for new homes.

Subscribe to The Spectator and get 12 weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, unrivaled books and arts reviews, and so much more, all for just 12 pounds.

Not only that, but we'll also send you a 20 pounds Amazon gift card absolutely free.

Go to www.spectator.com/voucher to claim this offer now.

Up first, James Heale.

After Andy Burnham's speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday, one veteran factionist declared, "We're all Burnhamites now." Romantics love the rhetoric, cynics respect the ruthlessness.

Game recognizes game, says one Labour figure.

The Prime Minister's address was pitched at a wounded party seeking support.

Emotive and personal, yet also intensely political, it showed a keen awareness not just of Labour's values, but of its interests too.

And I think unless Labour want to address that side of re-industrialization, then any kind of re-industrialization project is just fantasy politics.

I thought it was an interesting speech.

Uh, I think that a lot of this speech, it was quite a long one first of all, 38 minutes, was about introducing John Healey to a more general audience.

And combining that introduction, he was talking about his wife who met at the Labour Party.

It was also selling him as a Labour chancellor in the sense that he was not some kind of creature of the Treasury.

He was talking about about Gordon Brown.

He was talking about his own constituency.

And would you say this speech was very much paving the way for this big argument that Andy Burnham will make to the country for three years if he doesn't call an early election, for less if he does, about the need for tax rises to pay for his big spending projects?

What did you make of the revelations?

I think the challenge is gonna be for Andy Burnham, how is this such an important defining issue for our time, and yet supposedly we're not having a general election until 2029? How is on one hand social care so important, so seismic, so totemic of a, you know, the way in which he's gonna conduct his premiership, and on the other hand, "Well, actually, we're gonna kick it into the long grass for the next two and a half years or so," which may lead some people to conclude that there's going to be an election prior to 2029 despite what Andy Burnham did say this week.

I thought the other thing that was interesting was when Andy Burnham was talking very much about what he wanted to be as prime minister.

He was suggesting that he wanted to kind of bring the country together in some ways.

And I think that goes back to the point about it's not gonna be a conference for hard reckoning.

You see the slogans everywhere that says, "Hope again." This is a party that needs some good cheering up after the past two years or so.

And you talk about sort of return to Labor themes.

And, you know, you're getting towards that general election in 2029 before you start to see any benefit from this stuff.

James, this sounds like it's gonna be a, a big headline policy, but of course, the first question that anybody's gonna ask is, how the hell are they gonna actually afford this?

Well, quite, Oscar, and also the timeline for this because, you know, Andy Burnham was very passionate, very emotive, uh, very coherent there when he talked about the need for social care.

I think we can all buy the need for change.

The question is, how do you get there? And he said that he would be doing the vision, setting the vision out on Tuesday, but the how will be done by Dame Louise Casey, who you may recall set up the social care project on this.

Uh, was commissioned by Keir Starmer to look into it, but she was not due to initially report till 2028.

That's now gonna be 2027.

We don't quite yet know.

Where do you think are going to be the fault lines this year? Is it gonna be Gaza as it has historically, or questions around North Sea drilling, et cetera?

What's your assessment?

Well, I think it's very much still up in the air.

We had Andy Burnham speaking at the UN General Assembly at the beginning of the week and he was very much talking about how Britain intends to approach this attitude.

He effectively wants to have some kind of norms and ethics, but did not want to sign up to the Finnish proposal, which would do just that.

And I think that's because we are very much sort of in between a rock and a hard place in the sense that we obviously want to encourage our AI industries.

Britain is seen by most commentators as basically a third power in this behind the US and China.

But the other point, of course, is that the Americans very much do not want to regulate AI.

And even less what might be done to mitigate, you know, the potential risks of

Quite.

I have the literary talents of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Everyone comes into contact, suffers some hideous fate.

But I think Lara is totally right.

I think the key political challenge and achievement in some ways that Burnham has done since coming to office is uniting that kind of left block around him.

You're seeing the Green support deteriorate in the polls.

I'm expecting everyone I speak to in the Labour Party and one or two in the Greens think that the Labour are going to win the Hobart and St Pancras by-election over Zach Polanski.

I mean, is this just the political reality now that every American politician has to sort of grapple with this odd online oversharing?

Quite.

I have the literary talents of Tutankhamun's tomb.

Everyone comes into contact, suffers some hideous fate.

But I think Lara's totally right.

I think the key political challenge and achievement in some ways that Burnham has done since coming to office is uniting that kind of left block around him.

You're seeing the green support deteriorate in the polls.

Right.

I mean, is this just the political reality now that every American politician has to sort of grapple with this sort of odd online oversharing?

Does the weather fit the mood for the Lib Dems?

I think sunny, but with the prospect of, uh, clouds on the horizon would certainly sum up what I'm hearing.

Look, I mean, two years ago we were here in this exact venue, and the Liberal Democrats were delighted.

And I think maybe that is at the back of everyone's minds when we compare to today.

So at that conference, they were having a sort of extended election party.

They'd just won, um, 71 MPs.

They'd obviously had their best ever haul in 100 years or so.

But Lib Dem figures would sort of say back to me, "Well, if you look back at the local elections earlier this year, you know, it might not have got as much attention, but the Lib Dems did increase their councilors, they did increase their councils even if it was modestly." You know, is that something that will give, that will have given Lib Dems in areas like Michael's comfort despite the polls?

How are they gonna spend it?

So this is two 36 million pound donations.

First was given by crypto entrepreneur, if you want to call it that, uh, Christopher Harborne, second by Ben Delo.

And essentially what they're gonna do now is they're bringing in lawyers this week to look at how they're gonna spend this.

Uh, they want to make sure that kind of no one has a sort of Bruce's Million star scenario where they all run a bit mad and spend it on all sorts of stuff.

Uh, my understanding is they're gonna start by sort of funding those campaign managers, which I've written about for The Spectator before, dozens of those across the country, and it comes as Reform is sort of overhauling its branch network.

Previously, they had regional directors, now they've kind of made those clear that those are just dealing with the administration of those branches, and the campaign manager does purely the campaign side.

Mm.

James, could you just describe what the state of the law is at the moment and why the Prime Minister wishes to change it?

So this all goes back to, um, Victorian times, and on the statute books, it means that, uh, anyone involved in the appointment of these bishops has to be a member of the Church of England.

And at the time of the law was changed, obviously, that put a prohibition on Catholics and Jews.

And it all comes down to, um, the Prime Minister's role in advising the monarch, because obviously the monarch appoints bishops in his or her capacity as head of the Church of England, Defender of the Faith, as well as, of course, being the Sovereign.

Now, in modern times, most prime ministers have taken very little interest in the appointment of bishops.

Um, one of the exceptions was Harold Macmillan, who, uh, famously had a row, I think, with, uh, Geoffrey Fisher about the appointment of his successor, um, and he said, "Well, I know all about him.

I was his headmaster at Repton." He said, "You might have been, um, Bishop Ramsay's headmaster, but you're not mine."

[laughs]

James, could you just describe what the state of the law is at the moment and why the Prime Minister wishes to change it?

So this all goes back to, um, Victorian times and on the statute books, it means that, uh, anyone involved in the appointment of these bishops has to be a member of the Church of England.

And at the time of the law was changed, obviously, that put a prohibition on Catholics and Jews, and it all comes down to, um, the Prime Minister's role in advising the monarch, because obviously the monarch appoints bishops in his or her capacity as head of the Church of England, defender of the faith, as well, of course, being the Sovereign.

Now, in modern times, most Prime Ministers have taken very little interest in the appointment of bishops.

Um, one of the exceptions was Harold Macmillan, who, uh, famously had a row, I think, with, uh, Geoffrey Fisher about the appointment of his successor.

Um, and he said, "I know all about him.

I was his headmaster at Repton." He said, "You might have been, um, Bishop Ramsey's headmaster, but you're not mine."

[laughs]

James, could you just describe what the state of the law is at the moment and why the Prime Minister wishes to change it?

So this all goes back to, um, Victorian times and on the statute books, it means that, uh, anyone involved in the appointment of these bishops has to be a member of the Church of England.

And at the time of the law was changed, obviously, that put a prohibition on Catholics and Jews, and it all comes down to, um, the Prime Minister's role in advising the monarch because obviously the monarch appoints bishops in his or her capacity as head of the Church of England, Defender of the Faith, as well as of course being the Sovereign.

Now, i- in modern times, most prime ministers have taken very little interest in the appointment of bishops.

Um, one of the exceptions was Harold Macmillan, who, um, famously had a row, I think with, uh, Geoffrey Fisher about the appointment of his successor, um, and he said, "Oh, I know all about him.

I was his headmaster at Repton." He said, "You might have been, um, Bishop Ramsey's headmaster, but you're not mine."

[laughs]

...