... to have, to have told a slightly, you know, sugar-coated the CV.

Yeah.

And, and you know, a, a sad truth about nonfiction publishing as an industry is that it is littered with memoirs that would be more appropriately marketed in fiction.

I mean, James Frey famously wrote his first book, uh, I think it was Ten Thousand Little Pieces, uh, turned out to essentially be untrue.

And then the second and the third book, despite normally being in the same trilogy, were explicitly marketed as fiction.

Angela's Ashes, famously his, his own mother disputed it and said that it was a lie, as has his, some of his neighbors disputed elements of it, but it, you know, won a Pulitzer and again, was the first of a trilogy.

So that, that aspect of it was f- is fairly common.

You, you haven't mentioned, and we haven't mentioned yet, his skin color, and that seemed to be a very big part of why there was this intensity around the coverage.

Stephen, what about you? If Jason Arday was communicating to reporters that he was experiencing significant distress, should that have influenced their decision over whether to publish certain stories?

It's one of a number of factors which should be considered.

Charles used a very important word, which we then actually didn't hear for most of that, the section since, which was he talked about the questions that Cambridge had to answer, and I will also add the questions that Liverpool St. John Mo-- Liverpool John Moores, his awarding, uh, university have, had to answer.

Well, the question of whether or not Professor Arday was non-verbal or not as a child is not a question for Cambridge or, or for Liverpool John Moores.

It's simply, to be honest, a s- a question now that he is...

Well, yeah, once he had resigned, became irrelevant gossip.

There are legitimate questions to be asked of institutions, appointments, and about the use of, at times, a, um, threat of legal action to deter legitimate reporting.

And Stephen, you were wanting to come in.

So I think questions should be asked about are th- are certain things newsworthy or not?

I think the judgment call always when we cover the story of someone who is in a role that they should not be in is that when the story breaks through and they lose that job, that is a moment of incredible personal loss and difficulty.

And therefore, when as there still are legitimate further questions to be asked of the institutions that employed them as well, you know, the extent to which they were the co-commissioners or, uh, or merely the, the victims themselves of, of, of a, of, of a fabulist.

Um, there is a judgment call that you can't solve.

I mean, I think regulation is not compatible with being a liberal democracy, but I think, um, there isn't a regulatory solution to getting that balance right.

When we think back to, to MeToo, some people facing legitimate questions about, uh, sexual harassment did go on to, uh, die by suicide.

Um, that did not make those inquiries illegitimate.

Stephen, what about you? If Jason Arday was communicating to reporters that he was experiencing significant distress, should that have influenced their decision over whether to publish certain stories?

That's unusual for me.

So the house view in the Labor Party about DSIT had come to be that it was a, a department of boosterism, right? That it, it was not able to be, uh, remotely critical of AI, which I think is a misread.

And so if you think about the people who've been appointed to it, you know, like, y- if you make Peter Kyle your Secretary of State for somewhere, you're gonna get a booster.

Uh, and then if you, um, if you undercut someone's welfare reforms and then sort of essentially shatter their confidence, you are then gonna get the kind of, you know, the eight months of kind of Liz Kendall's PTSD where she didn't really seem to be doing very much.

And then, yeah, exactly as Sienna outlines, Kanishka's very much the, "Oh, the sector's unhappy about losing their department, but they like Kanishka, so why don't we have him be attending cabinet?" I, I think Of course, one of the reasons why we've ended up with this slightly messy bit of Whitehall reorg is that, um, they didn't, they, they needed to be able to create this additional post for Number 10 North, and the, uh, civil service has successfully won the argument for the idea that that should come back into the center at the Cabinet Office, which is your kind of, your classic cabinet secretary land grab.

On the one hand, I think you're right that there is a, that there is a genuine engagement with the economy than we actually have and how it actually exists.

He did, for example, acknowledge the importance of universities to Manchester's transformation, which is a huge step forward on the Labour government that's just gone, which really did seem to want to exactly recreate the 1979 Labour electoral coalition and economic offer.

Almost nobody in Parliament thinks he actually wants to be prime minister, therefore, what are we doing here? [laughs] Um, but yeah, they's, they're really, they're really positive about this, and they, they think this is all very good news for them, and I, I can see their, their logic.

What do you think?

Yeah.

So, um, in England, we are one of the most centralized countries in the world.

Almost everything is run from Westminster, um, which I don't think, to be honest, works very well for-- I, I don't even think it works very well for London, to be honest.

And, uh, it's not...

You know, actually, it would be much better if ministers were focusing on foreign policy, national projects.

But where I think your question, um, uh, is really important is a lot of the time it does sometimes feel like Andy Burnham's mental map of the United Kingdom is London, the South, which he kind of caricatures as being only rich, only prosperous, and then the North.

[clapping]

[laughs]

Look, no, I'm, I'm not joking.

Look, as, as a millennial, right, obviously a lot has gone wrong since the mid-'00s for my generation.

And it's an exciting reminder of a time when, you know, we had economic growth, we were in the EU.

It's also a terrifying journey back to a time when we had an ill-advised war in the Middle East.

But, you know, not everything's perfect.

[laughs]

I lo- I always f- find it weird when the Tories get involved in anything trendy.

Do you agree, Stephen? Do you think that, I mean, there's unlikely to be much appetite in the Labour Party, presumably to shift from spending money on welfare to spending on defence, even as Ben points out, it's not as direct a shift as that.

If we look historically at all democracies and we think about what the average Western state provided to its citizens during the last period of heightened defense spending, Cold War states gave their citizens a lot more stuff than post-Cold War states did.

Even, it's top of mind because here in the office you've got his memoir being used, I assume, as a way to hold up.

But Nigel Lawson's, what we think of as the giveaway budgets during the Lawson boom, right? They increased defence spending, but they also increased spending across the board and handed out some pretty chunky tax cuts.

I just don't believe that any government in a democracy can will ever be able to get away with spending more on defense where, broadly speaking, no one wakes up in the morning and goes, Thank God the government stopped me being bombed today.

Right.

They quite rightly see that as the sort of the floor standard of government service.

And given the government's wider agenda around royalties and rolling those out and so on, do you see this changing? Do you see there being a willingness and an impetus within government to give more powers to local government and to the royalties to take on these sorts of responsibilities?

Do you have much faith that any of this work will get done? I feel we've heard so much about big efforts to tighten up the ethics and probity regimes, and, and nothing really much has seemed to happen since Labour's come to power.

Well, so I think some of it will get done from a it will be implemented perspective.

But I guess my cause for cynicism/concern/is this really any use is I think Jim was exactly right earlier when he said, "Look, you looked at it, you go, oh, Palantir.

Okay.

They are a really important provider of services to the British government, and they're a client of Peter Mandelson.

Shell, they're obviously a hugely significant company and player in energy security." Like the vetting procedure as it already existed was good enough for a prime minister able to even think around one corner to go, "Mm, I'm not sure this is worth the candle." And I think one of the real blind spots of Keir Starmer's approach to government is to go, "Oh, this is an issue of process," which can sometimes lead to him making a better decision than his opponents, for instance, on the war against Iran.

But a lot of the time leads to this kind of, oh, something's gone wrong.

And therefore, I think this will have an impact on the UK's already diminishing status on the world stage and with allies in the region.

But he will not walk away, so.

I think this is what I admire about Keir Starmer, to be honest, in that part of his problem is that he's someone who, faced with, I was about to say pressure, any conversation at all, basically like, [audience laughs] "What, what can I promise to this person to make them go away? Doesn't matter if it's incompatible with the last thing I promised someone to make them go away." And, uh, now he's in government, and those various promises are coming home to roost, which is why he's under pressure.

And even his I'm going to stay on is a promise he obviously can't keep.

[audience laughs] He, even if, I mean, let's imagine that he were to turn it around and the, he would, were to become a successful prime minister shortly after we start using flying cars.

[audience laughs] Um, he will at some point stop being prime minister, right? He is at some point going to walk away.

Even at this stage, [audience laughs] he's still making impossible promises.

And in an odd way, it's kind of endearing, [audience laughs] the kind of like, you know, like, like the gambler in the casino.

Is that correct, do you think?

Stephen, just to broaden it out a bit, the fact that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are so unpopular, I think we can all agree they've made some serious mistakes, they wasted their first year in office, you know, like all politicians they've done some dumb things, but the fact that they are individually the (laughs) least popular prime minister in history and the least popular chancellor in history, does that tell us something about the way that mainstream politicians are operating at the moment, and the way the public view them?

Yes, because I think part of the reason why they are, in large parts of the country really hated in a way which is hard, I think, if you sit down and look at their actual mistakes and the scale of the inheritance they had, it- it's hard to feel that that is proportionate, is that if you've had a series of dodgy builders, right, let's say something has gone wrong with your bathroom, right, by the time of the fifth plumber who you thought was going to fix it, you are angry not just with them, but they have all of the cumulative anger.

And ultimately, the big picture problem with British politics is we had the global financial crisis which hit us particularly badly because financial services were one of our real jewels in the crown, we had an energy price spike after the invasion of Ukraine which was particularly bad for us because gas sets the price of our energy, and we've had slow and sluggish growth, and we've had, since 2016, a series of failed prime ministers.

And I think one of the reasons why there's so much genuine hatred for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves out in the country is because people had invested so much hope in the idea of, "Oh, well, now the corner's going to be turned."

(laughs)

Yeah, the sums don't add up, but it doesn't matter because we all know she's not actually going to be the next prime minister.

Now that might be enough for her to lead the Conservatives into the election because the remaining Conservative MPs mostly do not want the party to shift further to the right, which we pretty much all think is what would happen if there were a change of leader.

Then Robert Jenrick would win that leadership election, the current shadow justice secretary, and move them even further towards the nativist right.

The thing you can say is he is making the political weather in the UK at the moment, and I think the two main parties are responding to Nigel Farage in different ways.

I think Katy's exactly right there, in that the thing about first term oppos- well, the thing about both first term government and oppositions is, and they both go through a learning curve.

It's easier to go through your learning curve in government when you have the machinery of the government and the civil service behind you as your sort of training wheels.

And we are seeing a fairly classic first term government kind of, you know, face-planting in its first 100 days.

Now, apparently, it's decided the problem is the comms.

Now, apparently, it's some of the advisors in Downing Street.

Maybe it'll be some members of the cabinet.

Or do you think that's a bit over-egged?

Stephen, talk us through the politics of all this.

Right. So the, the politics of this are essentially there are a bunch of measures that broadly speaking, people in the Labor Party, disability rights campaigners, and critics of the current system have all been calling for for a long time. Broadly speaking, to end this very unhelpful binary, because the other aspect of this unhelpful binary is, let's say you, you know, you have a post-viral condition, which means that you can't work for a year, and then after a year you think, "Oh, do you know what? I, I want to see if I can do six hours a week." The previous system essentially meant then if you then did six hours, you then, A, lost all of your benefit, and your benefit for seeking work is about half of, of being u- unable to work. So that's a huge financial disincentive. But also, of course, lots of people who think they are well and w- ready to go to work, I mean, we all experience that occasion when we have a cold, right? You go like, "Oh, I think I am capable of going back into the office today," and then you realize at the end of the day that you have absorbed absolutely nothing in a kind of feverish... Um, so getting rid of those, those very binary, very hard stops increasingly, um, the generosity of UC, which is the benefit for everyone who's in some form of illne- also fixes that cliff edge. So that's the stuff that Labor MPs will like. Then you have a bunch of, like, these, these points changes which are, to be honest, very hard to defend intellectually, right? Just, like, it's not obvious why whether or not you can wash your upper or your lower half of your body, for example, should give you a higher or lower point score between the two. It's just one of those things where I, I don't think for a moment that a minister could on television explain why it is that if you can't wash your knees, you have less need than if you can't wash your elbows. That stuff is the kind of thing which will make Labor activists very angry, Labor MPs very unhappy, and will be the kind of thing that people will struggle to defend. The third part of the politics, of course, is that although the Labor Party has wanted to reform the functioning of Universal Credit from coming into office, it was in their manifesto, et cetera, et cetera, the added dimension is then because of the deterioration of the British economy, Rachel Reeves' headroom against her fiscal rules has vanished. So they are incentivized to do things that not only they think will save money, but then the OBR thinks will save money. And of course, although we're better off having a watchdog than we were in the pre-2010 situation where the chancellor of the day could go, "Oh, this is a bit tricky, I'll just fiddle my growth figures to get myself out of a hole," the OBR has consistently believed that things will, that will reduce welfare spending wh- yeah, and just haven't, right? Yeah, they've gone like, "Oh yeah, that will create..." Yeah. The reason why we have this weird situation where we spend about as much as a share of GDP as we did in 2007, but we have more destitution and basically a less effective system overall, is because of attempts to have these, these savings, uh, later do- you know, savings that haven't materialized. And the political challenge is, is if you are the government, you are ha- you know, can you with a straight face defend the social misery caused by some of the spending cuts, the effectiveness of... You know, in some ways the proposed spending cuts move the problem that the spending increases are meant to fix, and it will of course put further pressure on the other bits of government spending that the government is doing less of. So for example, what is the alternative if you are a young person, it's to be in employment or training, what has this government consciously done? It's increased the cost of employing young people by equalizing the minimum wage. It's cut further education to meet pressures in the education budget. And so you suddenly go like, "Okay, so what's your proposed thing that you'd like a, a school leaver to do?" A- and also, it's not bailing out universities, right? So, so, so the politics of, okay, how you justify some of these spending cuts are gonna be quite tricky for the Labor Party.

They're not looking great. They're looking probably even worse than when we, you know, first said that the headroom was gone at the start of the year because of increased, uh, borrowing costs in the, in the gilt markets. Although those have recovered slightly, she's had worse news in the... In January, the economy contracted. Um, just yesterday, the OECD have downgraded forecasts for, um, for Britain's growth. It's inevitable that the OBR will make a similar assessment and th- those growth figures going down would further dent what you have there in, in the headroom. And I think it's, it's interesting what Stephen said about OBR policymaking or OBR sort of driven policymaking because one of her ironclad rules is this one about getting, uh, debt as a share of income falling at the end of the forecast period. And I think that's partly why some of these measures don't come in for a few years because it ef- effectively gives them the room to say, "Right, this is gonna happen in a few years to the OBR, costs are gonna come down, that can have an impact on the national debt." But then you've actually got time before then to change the measure or dare I say it, not do the measure at all.

Yeah, because the... A neglected political subplot is that Rachel Reeves has her Council of Economic Advisers, one of whom is a very respected economist who many people expect will win a Nobel at some point, this guy called John van Rheenen. And one of the reasons why he's there is, A, to help with the growth agenda, but also effectively to be the person who convinces people who work at the OBR that the things that they, the, the government thinks will change the UK's growth and the state of the public finances will have that effect, right? Because ultimately, with all of... With any labor market intervention, so you know, where economic liberals like me look at what they're doing on the labor market and go, "Okay, yeah, y- you might move money around by doing this, but you're not going to increase the growth rate." Obviously, the labor... If someone from the labor government were here, they would go, "No, that we... We will all, we will all do better because of these changes." And the OBR then has to take a view and that's what creates, um, creates your headroom or in this case, creates your lack of headroom. The government believes in the changes it's making to welfare, will reduce the welfare bill. And it has a bunch of changes which the OBR believes will reduce the overall. If Michael's exactly right, then what they will hope will happen is in 2027, they will have been, they will either have been validated or they will at least have convinced the OBR that they've been validated. And then like these other changes, they can go, "Oh, well, we don't need to do those anymore because the out of work benefits bill will fall." I mean, for example, none of us know how effective West Streeting's plans to reform the NHS will actually be. If it turns out that the fall-in waiting list continues, you would assume that that will naturally reduce the out of the, you know, the people, number of people claiming on sickness benefit because people will have their NHS procedures.