Sam Coates

Tomorrow, I think John Healy will cling on to the argument that actually relative to some of our big kind of partners, our growth figures have been you know more resilient than they could have been the imf endorsement will no doubt hear about from the dispatch box tomorrow um and the bond markets are more likely to turn to places like france and even they've been playing footsie with the us with a greater degree of worry so i think the chancellor will try and present us despite our incredibly high debt pile as a bit of a bastion of stability i'm sure the tories will argue with that But one Treasury figure who listens to this podcast described it knowingly with that audience in mind as a glass half full situation, insisting there were reasons to be to be cheerful.

They've been listening to you very carefully in your metaphor, Sam Coates.

This morning, there is a telling intervention from someone we haven't heard from before, I think, in public, and that's Keir Starmer's former policy chief, Stuart Ingram.

Now, he plunges into the argument in a piece in The Telegraph about whether this government should pitch itself primarily as helping with the cost of living.

In the sort of, uh, Scandinavian or Nordic social democracy, it sort of brought the workers, the trade unions together with the middle class, farming interests, and then brought businesses into the fold.

In Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, it brought labor, intellectuals, Southern Democrats together, and then brought in some small businesses as well.

Same thing in the UK.

And industrial societies created a natural pathway for one of the most important promises of liberal democracy, which is shared prosperity, meaning that that progress that I was talking about is really broad-based progress.

It doesn't just favor one group or a few people or leave behind large segments of society.

Those two dots that, that cause, uh, c-cause a lot of us to have to, uh, study German for so many years.

Um, but, but a very, very brave attempt, Sam Coates.

Um, so the, the heart of this visit, if you like, a kind of maypole around which everything turns is the 2025 Kensington Treaty.

That's the, the treaty promising deeper cooperation on climate, on business, on security, including a commitment to come to each other's aid in the event of an armed attack.

[upbeat music] I'm Sam Coates.

And I'm Anne McElvoy.

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[upbeat music] Good morning.

It's Wednesday, October 7, and this is the Brussels Playbook Podcast.

I mean, it's...

But I really-

Same, same with Whitman, by the way.

Huh?

Same with Walt Whitman, even going further back, just like today.

That...

Isn't it weird? Like, don't we learn anything?

Yeah.

I mean, I've got to take you somewhere else, Sam, because I spotted someone who looks remarkably familiar to this podcast, actually quite handsome.

Could it be Sam Coates?

Yes, I am one of, I don't know, half a dozen journalists who appears to have been depicted a little bit thinner than perhaps real life.

I'm told that it's the Tory party press office that decided who gets to be included.

And then he was backed up, albeit Vicky Slade, another of our MPs, didn't personalise it in terms of Ed, but she made clear that she disagreed with what he had said.

And then I think Sam Coates of Sky News has been handed a dossier which made clear that the Lib Dems had two options about their response to this issue, one of which was to do what Ed Davey has done and kind of pick fault, and the other was to support what Andy Burnham had said.

So it gives a little bit of the Boris Johnson's of, you know, am I going to come out and say that I'm for Remain or for Brexit.

And a lot of people are saying that this is the beginning of the end for Ed Davey, which I would personally welcome, given that at party conference I did four interviews calling for him to go.