This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘‘Let’s be more normal’ — and rival Tory strategies’
Lucy Fisher
Stephen, George, one word to describe the mood at Tory conference this week.
Stephen Bush
I’m gonna go with delusional.
Lucy Fisher
(Laughter) George.
George Parker
If I could have two words, I’d say light and delusional. (Laughter)
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Lucy Fisher
Hello, I’m Lucy Fisher and this is Political Fix from the Financial Times. Coming up, “Let’s be more normal”. That was the soundbite this week from the Conservative party leadership candidate James Cleverly. But his rivals have other ideas. Plus, the latest in Sir Keir Starmer’s “freebiegate”. And we’ll discuss what the prime minister got up to in Brussels this week. Did his visit change anything in EU-UK relations? Joining me in the studio are Political Fix regulars Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen.
Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
And political editor George Parker. Hi, George.
George Parker
Hello, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
So I don’t know if you two have recovered yet from the four-day jamboree in Birmingham from Sunday to Wednesday this week. But George, I was expecting something of a sort of funereal tone after this party suffered its worst-ever election defeat. It was strangely upbeat, wasn’t it?
George Parker
It was very odd. I mean, you arrived at the conference centre, the skies were grey. It was pouring with rain. And you thought this is gonna be a funereal atmosphere for four days in Birmingham at the International Convention Centre. In fact, as you say, the opposite was true. As one former Tory MP put it to me, Anthony Browne, he said that we had our low point three months ago at the election and we’ve reconciled ourselves to be in opposition. But the Labour party don’t seem to have reconciled themselves to being in power, which was quite an interesting way of putting it. And yeah, I mean the mood was light. There was a certain amount of schadenfreude going on about the difficulties that Keir Starmer’s endured, finding being in government is actually quite a tricky thing to do. But at the end of the day, you know, was it delusional? You know, you sort of lock yourself away from the real world, don’t you, at the party conference and you couldn’t help feeling there was a sort of slight sense of unreality throughout the whole event.
Lucy Fisher
Stephen, what was your take?
Stephen Bush
My main take was it gave me an overwhelming sense of déjà vu to the Labour conference of 2010 and the Liberal Democrat conference of 2015, where obviously in both cases you had a party that had been sharply rejected by the voters. And in both cases there was a surprisingly upbeat mood, in both cases because the new government was struggling a bit in its first couple of days in the way that new governments tend to do.
It felt to me that the weird thing about these conferences is you have a governing party which is suddenly going, oh God, this is really quite difficult and an opposition which is both enjoying the government finding things difficult, but also enjoying the fact that it’s not having to do the difficult stuff and kind of having a sort of wilful blindness to the damage to the party brand. The fact that for all Labour’s difficulties, we are yet to see an opinion poll in which the Labour party is not ahead of the Conservatives. And broadly speaking, although Keir Starmer’s numbers have collapsed quite a bit, the one thing that they are still higher than is all of the alternative candidates for the leadership.
Lucy Fisher
It did feel like they were enjoying being untethered from the realities of governing in some senses and indulging some of their more radical instincts on policy. So, George, this was, of course, a sort of beauty parade for the four candidates — four days of speeches and fringe events, and Q&As on the main stage. Let’s talk first about James Cleverly. I think we all agree from conversations we’ve had before the pod and probably in line with the general commentariat that James Cleverly had a great conference. He seemed to crescendo throughout and his speech on the final day definitely met with the biggest standing ovation in the hall, didn’t it?
George Parker
Yes. I don’t think that will come to any great surprise to listeners of Political Fix because we’ve been buying stocks in James Cleverly for quite a while. But yes, I mean, look, he looked the part, he plainly enjoys party conferences, he plainly enjoys the company of party members. He was a former party chairman. And sometimes his critics say he gave the speech of a party chairman rather than a leader saying what the party membership wants to hear. I don’t really agree with that. I thought he sounded like he understood what the problem was. And his diagnosis I thought was interesting. He sort of talked about Ronald Reagan, the optimism, new morning for Britain, sounding optimistic about your country.
And as you mentioned earlier, we need to be more normal. And he didn’t quite say it in those terms, but it reminded me a bit of Tim Walz’s, you know, sort of talking about some of the Republican leadership sounding a bit weird. And he didn’t say that, but I mean, that was the implication. And we’ll come on to some of the things that Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick was saying during the course of the week.
But I thought he struck the right tone. He looked like a leader. He’s gonna come under a lot of pressure over the next few days. The dirty tricks are gonna start against him, the briefing wars will start. He’s largely remained above that stuff until now because he’s been seen as a rank outsider. Now, if you look at the betting odds, he’s the second favourite behind Robert Jenrick and closing the gap very quickly indeed. So I think over the next few days we’ll see a lot of criticism of James Cleverly, including incidentally, a story you’ve been writing about, Lucy — the decision to hand back sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a negotiation of which started when James Cleverly was foreign secretary, and that is being used already by his opponents to target him.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah, really good point. I mean, Stephen, I thought it was quite brave of Cleverly to tell his party we need to be more normal. He also used the word relatable as well as, you know, enthusiastic, talked about selling conservatism with a smile. But telling your party membership, you know, they’re at risk of looking a bit weird. I mean, that is quite a bold thing to do, isn’t it?
Stephen Bush
Yeah. I mean, look, the easy thing to do in this type of contest is to do what Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick both did in their speeches, which was basically stand up and go, we lost because we weren’t rightwing enough, right? And instead he said, well, I’m afraid I think anyone who was at that conference who’s not a dyed-in-the wool Tory could observe, which is a problem that although there are a large number of Conservative MPs for whom this is not true, there is a problem in both their parliamentary party and their grassroots and there are people who say deeply odd things who appear to hate the country that they wish to govern and who say things that are far removed of the things you would need to win.
I mean, to go for one of them, Kemi Badenoch speculating out loud about the national minimum wage. William Hague in 2001 did not go into that election suggesting the minimum wage was up for grabs, right? It is both politically mad and negligent to even to allow both the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats to credibly attack you as having opened that issue. I think, you know, it was a brave thing to say, it was the right thing to say. I think it was speech and in addition to being well-delivered, showed that he gets the essential diagnosis of what that party needs to do in order to be a viable governing force again.
Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s move on to Kemi Badenoch then, Stephen. I mean, she entered this contest as the favourite. She did have a few kind of moments of controversy, didn’t she? You mentioned the minimum wage trial. Also on maternity pay, she seemed to ricochet several times between suggesting that it was excessive, it had gone too far, was too much of a burden on business, then claimed it was her rivals or the media that was misrepresenting her and then seemed to repeat her initial point. And I just lost track of where she was on it. Also, comments on the NHS. Where do you think she ended up at the end of the conference?
Stephen Bush
I think Kemi Badenoch has had a pretty disastrous conference. I think in terms of the question marks Conservative MPs had about her, you know, is she too combative? Also, does she actually have a serious grounding? You know, would her leadership just be one controversy after another? The fact that she said she wandered into a row about statutory maternity pay, she then acted as if she’d somehow been tricked into this. Then, in defending herself, both wandered back into it and decided to go like, oh yeah, let’s bring the minimum wage into it as well, suggested the idea that, you know, maybe we should at some point consider charging for the NHS. I mean, why would anyone think that was a good idea for an opposition politician four years out from the next general election debacle?
Oh like, hey, guys, you know, I think would be really great for the Conservative party, for the Labour party to be able to credibly say the Conservative leader — leader — has said that they might charge for the NHS. I mean, that’s bonkers! And that has deepened the fear among some Conservative MPs, including the ones who backed Mel Stride, who are, of course, the ones who will, one way or the other, shape the final shortlist now because those are the votes that are up for grabs, that she would be a bit of a liability. So, yeah, I think she’s had a pretty awful conference, all things told.
Lucy Fisher
I wouldn’t go as far as you. I’m interested in your take, George. I mean, we were in the hall for the speeches. She was getting a lot of love when she was talking about her hardline views on transgender issues, describing herself as a net zero sceptic. And there was a lot of kind of rhetoric about how she was gonna stand up and fight leftwing nonsense. That got a lot of applause. I mean, there is something about her analysis. You know, she claims it’s a Blair-Brown conspiracy almost still persists in society — Blair’s rewriting of the legal system, Brown’s Treasury rules. She’s got this big prospectus of starting from first principles, and there are some on the right to whom that’s really attractive.
George Parker
I think that’s true. I think, you know, we were sitting in the hall and I think we agreed, Lucy, that James Cleverly was the standout performer in the speeches. But Kemi Badenoch came second. See, I thought she gave a good speech and it was well-received in the hall.
But interestingly, there was some work done by More in Common, the think-tank, which did a focus group of people who previously voted Conservative but had switched to either Labour, Reform, or the Liberal Democrats. And they found that the overwhelming view was that Kemi Badenoch was the standout performer. They found her sparky, interesting, engaging and so forth. So I don’t think it was as disastrous for Kemi Badenoch as Stephen was suggesting.
But this is the really fascinating bit. The next round next week is a matter for the Tory MPs, and what they will be looking at is not so much how she performed on the stage, but some of the things that Stephen was discussing. The “perma gaffe” that every time she was in front of the microphone she said something which could be exploited by her opponents and she ends up spending the whole week trying to explain herself and claiming she has been misrepresented. It was no coincidence that she wasn’t allowed to do media rounds during the election campaign because they, the Tory leadership, couldn’t trust her.
And the question for the Tory MPs next week is do we trust putting Kemi Badenoch on to a shortlist of two, which then goes to the membership, where she could win? And if she does win, what does that mean for the party? And I think that’s a huge decision for Tory MPs next week. And my guess is in the end, they might balk at that and they might keep her off that shortlist.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, to be clear, I completely agree that in terms of the membership, what she’s saying, lots of them would love to reopen the conversations that she reopened and then claim she hadn’t reopened last week. But there are still a lot of Conservative MPs among the 121 who do, broadly speaking, get what the party needs to do to win. And they understand that speculating out loud about charging for the NHS, implying that you think statutory maternity pay is too generous . . .
George Parker
Or jailing civil servants. Ten per cent of civil servants have to be in prison. We forgot about that one.
Lucy Fisher
Fifty thousand-odd less civil servants.
Stephen Bush
They understand that these are not things that would serve the Conservative party’s interests electorally, and they also understand that if Kemi Badenoch gets out to the membership round, she will certainly win. And I think that she has done enough to stiffen the resolve of Conservative MPs who kind of went into this week looking for a reason not to put her before the members. You know, her big problem has always been the parliamentary stage. If they let her out, of course, yeah, it is a slam dunk.
Lucy Fisher
So let’s be fair to Robert Jenrick. So he’s topped the first round of two rounds of MP ballots. George, he wasn’t entirely gaffe-free. You know, he made this extraordinary claim that UK special forces are killing rather than capturing terrorists because European law is hemming them in, refused to back down on that claim, essentially accusing UK special forces of murdering people, which drew a lot of condemnation both from James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, who’ve both served in the armed forces previously. What did you make of his conference overall?
George Parker
I thought that was a really bad mistake, you know, to find yourself being criticised by the armed forces for making wild assertions like that. It’s all the kind of populist rhetoric that you might expect at a Republican convention in the US, to be honest. I thought it’s a bad conference for Robert Jenrick. I think even his supporters would admit that he didn’t knock the ball out of the park, to put it mildly, in that crucial final speech on Wednesday. He suffered from coming on straight after James Cleverly put in a barnstorming performance. He didn’t grab the audience right from the start. He said, I’m from Wolverhampton and there was chill silence in the hall than what he expected.
It felt to me like a slightly lazy speech rehearsing some of the things we’ve heard him say repeatedly during the course of the contest so far. And he just failed to ignite the hall. And you could see in that. In fact, we spent some time after speaking to people coming out of the hall, and it was very easy to find people who’d come into the Birmingham conference at the start week thinking they were gonna support Robert Jenrick who had switched on the basis of those appearances, switched. In fact, all the people I spoke to had switched from Jenrick to Cleverly.
And I think, you know, there’s even some suggestions that, you know, he maybe won’t even make it on to the final ballot. I think that’s unlikely. I think Jenrick, up until that point, his campaign has been the most slick. He looks like he really wants to win. And that’s important, I think, for the party. So I think he will go through to the final two, but I think it’s gonna be much tougher than for him than many people thought a few days ago.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah, I mean, Stephen has a small kind of aside on style. I felt he was unlucky to have to go after James Cleverly, who’s tall, has a sonorous, you know, voice and a great sense of timing, a great sort of speaker, whereas Robert Jenrick, quite short, has a reedier voice, not a lot of presence on stage even if he did try and pull off the David Cameron trick of learning his speech off by heart. He was the only one not using a teleprompter. What did you make of his performance?
Stephen Bush
Well, as a fellow member of the guild of people with nasal voices, I feel I should probably stand up for Robert Jenrick. (Lucy laughs) I mean, look, it wasn’t very good, was it?
The thing which is sort of fascinating about Robert Jenrick’s campaign is it’s so slick and well put together, but it’s kind of ironic given he’s one of the few Conservatives who was very pro-building. He’s kind of a supply side crisis made flesh in that he sees that there’s this unmet demand in the Conservative leadership election and it works really well when it’s the videos and the kind of controlled stuff. But occasionally he does something I think, and that speech was an example, where the cynicism of it is just a little bit too obvious. It just was so cynical and artificial and you could kind of feel the oxygen coming out of the campaign as he spoke.
George Parker
That little video beforehand where he was having a chat with a bloke from Bolton in a café. It was so sort of contrived.
Stephen Bush
And yeah, this kind of weird thing where he’s like pretending that his parents were less successful than they were, and I just don’t really get that because it’s like, mate, you know, to the Tory party, you know, you’re a West Midlands success story. You’re the heart of like what makes that party what it is. Why are you being so weird? I mean, this is the thing, he is the weird candidate in lots of ways.
He had the misfortune of going after the best performer, someone who is comfortable in their skin. But also, we all know what we should be normal is a coded reference to. So when you have a bravura speech where someone goes, let’s for goodness sake be normal, and then you have this — I’m allowed to say it because again, I’m also nasal — this nasal weird speech. It was just a terrible moment for him. And I think it did do him some damage. Of course, he does have the advantage that the argument he’s making is very, very seductive and very powerful to parties who have just been defeated, that the argument he’s making, albeit one he articulated poorly in his speech, usually wins most leadership elections for defeated parties.
Lucy Fisher
And that is a rightwing argument and his particular focus has been on migration, right? He’s the only candidate of the four who has said he’d outright he would definitely take the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights and replace that in UK law with a new British bill of rights. And he’s one of two candidates along with Tugendhat who said that he would cap inward net legal migration at 100,000 a year. I think we spend just a tiny amount of time on Tugendhat. It’s probably instructive we barely mentioned him. I mean, he’s a bit of a busted flush now, is he, George?
George Parker
He is, I’m afraid to say. I thought he was actually very good in the question and answer format on the Monday. I thought he was actually probably the best in that format, that conversational style I thought was very good. He, you know, you can laugh about the way he mentions his military service in every other sentence, but he always did it quite deftly, I think, on Monday. But by the time he came to the speeches on Wednesday, it fell very flat indeed. And his odds have drifted out. And given the fact that Tom Tugendhat is, you know, fighting from the centre in this campaign, you can see some of those people supporting him will now move across into the Cleverly camp in the next few days.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, essentially, Tom Tugendhat’s problem is not that he’s done anything wrong. It’s what James Cleverly has done right. They’re existing in a similar bit of the marketplace, as it were, and one or the other of them was going to come out of this conference carrying a wound. I think simply his problem was that his speech was not as well delivered or as effective as James Cleverly.
Lucy Fisher
I just wanted to touch on one other thing, which obviously this was all playing out against the backdrop of huge developments on the world stage in the Middle East. You know, conference started on the Sunday after we had the news that Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hizbollah, had been killed by Israeli air strikes in Lebanon. And then, of course, on the Tuesday night, we saw that Iranian barrage of missiles fired into Israel. And the sort of strange spectacle of people at the conference, you know, watching the screens of some of the broadcasters who’d set up shop in the exhibition hall. George, it just struck me as very interesting that Israel was quite like a theme during the conference and almost became a test of rightwing credentials. All four candidates were really at pains to stress how pro-Israel they were; Robert Jenrick wearing that quite remarkable hoodie saying Hamas are terrorists.
George Parker
Yes, I mean, in that respect, it felt a bit like an American political convention as well, the sort of out-and-out support for Israel and to be honest, in the Tory leadership contest, there’s only one side to be on in this conflict. You know, you’ve got the rightwing government in Jerusalem versus Hamas and Hizbollah, two organisations that are designated as terrorist organisations, role in Iran, you know, autocracy, dictatorship, whatever you want to call it. It’s fairly obvious where they’re going to come down.
We were talking earlier about the idea that in the past Tory party we had quite a strong Arabist streak you don’t hear so much about any more. That was what feels to me like a sort of different generation, people who, you know, come through the Foreign Office, which had that very strong Arabist ethos about it. But things have changed and you know, the Conservative party is now out-and-out pro-Israel.
Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, do you think it’s become more of a dividing line between the left and the right that Labour have, you know, in ways we’ve discussed on the podcast recently, have overhauled the UK’s foreign policy on Israel with some decisions, most recently suspending some arms export licences to Israel, whereas the Tories are kind of more uniformly pro-Israel?
Stephen Bush
Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because if you, if you look at the text of what David Cameron was doing and saying before the election, that joint op-ed he had with his German counterpart, broadly speaking, the UK has been fairly within the mainstream of European politics on this, and has continued to be under Labour.
But now the Conservatives are in opposition. They are able to occupy a more maximal position, which I think reflects a number of things. One, I think it reflects on the part of many activists and MPs in the party a sincere political belief, but also it’s sort of the ambient view as well of life. If you’re a Conservative who’s not that into foreign policy and you just don’t want anyone to shout at you, you know what your position on this conflict is. It’s fascinating historically, because exactly as George says, for a very long time, the Conservative party was much the less pro-Israel of the two political parties.
I mean, Margaret Thatcher, it’s a fascinating sliding-doors moment. Margaret Thatcher came very close to losing her seat in 1974. She herself was very pro-Israel’s right to defend itself in ’73; Ted Heath was not. It took a lot of backbench pressure and pressure from the Labour opposition led by Harold Wilson, who particularly, you know, asserted himself to force the Labour party into that position.
But it’s, I think, also partly about a consequence of who lost their seats and who kept them. You know, the voice of the Conservatives, which might have been saying things like, oh no, we need a ceasefire is no longer in the hall. And so all of that creates this drift towards that being the kind of house opinion in the same way that, you know, being pro-European was the house opinion in New Labour in the noughties, even among people who when you ask them follow-up questions, clearly didn’t know anything about it.
And that was one of the amusing things I thought about, some of the Q&A, was once Kemi Badenoch was put on to the question of Israel (inaudible), she was like, oh well, you know, there are some issues around the occupation. And visibly just like, what are those issues, Kemi? (Laughter) Like, she . . . you know, obviously she just didn’t know, right? You know, which is, you know, it’s fine. Not everyone has to be into foreign policy. But yeah, it’s historically interesting, I think.
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Lucy Fisher
Well, on another subject of foreign policy, we saw the first meeting this week between Keir Starmer and Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday in Brussels to discuss the big UK-EU reset. And we’re joined now by the FT’s public policy editor, Peter Foster, to discuss it. Hi, Peter.
Peter Foster
Hi.
Lucy Fisher
So you’ve written an interesting newsletter this week questioning whether it’s even really right to call this a reset at all. Tell us how important this moment is and if we’ve really learned anything more about how close the relationship can get under the new Labour administration.
Peter Foster
Right, you don’t wanna be churlish. It is an important moment. It builds on what happened with Rishi Sunak during the Windsor framework agreement. Relations have been much better, and to have Keir Starmer go to Brussels and say that Ursula von der Leyen, the commission president, and I have decided we can work together, we can do better stuff.
So on that sense, it’s a moment. And there’s gonna be summits from 2025 onwards. Although lots of countries have summits with the EU — Canada and Brazil, etc. So let’s not overstate that. You know, the thing about whether it really is a reset or not, that wasn’t something that I raised. Actually, member states raised that. If you have no single market, no customs union, no free movement, well, those are the same red lines — Keir Starmer’s red lines — that actually led to the Boris Johnson trade deal that Labour likes to deride.
You know, that’s what happens if you take those red lines to the European Commission, put them in their machine and wind the handle, what drops out the bottom is the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement. So Labour says it wants to tear down the barriers to trade, but actually what it’s asking for is gonna do nothing of the sort.
Lucy Fisher
And what Labour said in its manifesto — it’s three quite concrete discrete things it wants — aren’t hugely ambitious, as we’ve discussed before on the podcast: veterinary deal, professional qualification recognition and easier access for musicians to tour on the continent. We’ve heard from your news stories that EU figures, diplomats, they want Keir Starmer to spell out more clearly what he’s willing to trade away to get there.
Peter Foster
Yeah, indeed. You know, there’s always a horse trade in Europe and actually one of the things people miss is that there’s like a tripwire clause in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement trade deal, which says that unless there’s a new deal negotiated on fishing rights from June 2026, there won’t be another deal on energy exchange, right?
So what you’re seeing there is that EU member states are saying, look, there’s not gonna be any cherry-picking here. We’re still in a situation where the foundations of our relationship are this Trade and Cooperation Agreement, which is frankly an inadequate agreement for a €1tn trading arrangement.
But it is what it is. It’s a reverse trade agreement, the TCA, and Labour, as you said at the top, Labour’s ambitions for resetting it are incredibly shallow. It’s not a reset, it’s a bit of sanding round the edges, a bit of tinkering.
But that’s not a reset. A reset would be saying, actually, we don’t want what Boris Johnson asked for. We actually do want a customs union. We do want, you know, some kind of better mobility arrangement. But actually, if you listen to Keir Starmer, he says we want the same as what Boris Johnson asked for.
George Parker
The other thing that he wants to talk about and he does talk about a lot is this idea of a defence or security pact between the UK and the EU. I just wonder what you thought, Peter, about how significant that could be, because we know they want to move beyond just security questions into energy, into migration and so forth. Could that be a useful mechanism?
Peter Foster
I think one of the laws of Brexit is you can’t parlay security into single-market access into trade.
George Parker
Yeah.
Peter Foster
Actually, you know, most security already happens. It happens via Nato, happens via the G7, sanctions co-operation happened in the peak of the Brexit stand-off. You know, before Rishi Sunak got there.
So, you know, do we really get some massive dividend out of security co-operation? I’m not sure that we do. I think we can show willing. So we can rejoin Operation Althea, as it’s called, which is the EU operation, the Balkans, you know, that would show willing. Send some advisers to that. Maybe in the context of Ukraine, etc we could start to join things like the European Defence Fund.
But that’s about us putting money in and saying to the EU, we now want to be part of wider European defence procurement, which is part of Ursula von der Leyen’s second-term agenda. But does our defence establishment want to start putting money into potentially reasonably inefficient burden-sharing structures in the EU? I’m not sure that it does. You’d know better than me, Lucy, on that.
But nonetheless, the danger here is that actually we get stuck in this very narrow negotiation talking about fish and free movement ability and lose sight of the fact — and I think there are diplomats who are worried about this — lose sight of the fact that we are in a real inflection point strategically. You know, you’ve got migration pressures, you have obviously Putin menacing Europe in Ukraine, etc. This should be a moment where the UK and EU really do harness their strategic co-ambitions.
The trouble is that history tells us that trying to look past fish and free movement and we’re not giving any freebies, etc is really difficult. And that’s why these summits could become just a talking shop, essentially a buffer to allow us to say, oh, we’re all still friends, but nothing really material comes out of them.
Lucy Fisher
And Peter, what difference might Donald Trump re-entering the White House make to the way that kind of strategic inflection point is viewed by both the UK and the EU not only in terms of sort of security and defence in sort of an increasingly polarised world, but I don’t know — Trump can be so unpredictable on all range of manners. Would that sort of shake up thinking at all, you know, in a wider sense, do you think?
Peter Foster
I mean, it might do, but we have forums for that., you know, in the G7, in Nato, etc. And clearly, an erratic Donald Trump presidency is gonna change the calculation. Does it mean that suddenly the EU are gonna start to go soft on fish and start gonna give us mutual recognition, professional qualifications deal? I’m not sure that it does.
Stephen Bush
I suspect, if there is a Trump presidency, then that will be the thing which becomes the excuse for many people in the Labour party to say what they want to say anyway, which is, look, there’s an unpredictable president talking about tariffs; let’s go back into the customs union. Look, there’s a bleak defence situation; let’s go back into, yeah, like let’s align on energy, let’s align on X, Y, Z.
So I think actually the significance of a Trump return is that it gives the excuse to people who want to try and push the Labour government who already know that they can and they know they’re not still pushing an open door, but they know that there’s not an angry dog behind the door, as it were, which there definitely was under the last government.
Peter Foster
And do you think that changes Starmer’s calculation on the hero voter and concerns about Reform? Do you think that makes it easier for him to move? The pressure is sort of already there.
Stephen Bush
I think in many ways, Keir Starmer’s a sort of reset to Labour’s default and Labour’s default is best characterised by what Jim Callaghan said when he came into the Foreign Office in 1974. The permanent secretary said, they tell me you care a lot about Europe. That’s OK as long as you remember that I really care about the Labour party. And essentially, Keir Starmer’s European policy will always be based on, you know, no votes lost for Europe. But if you have a situation where a bunch of liberal voters are scared about Trump, the Lib Dems maybe feel more able to be more vocal about Europe.
Then of course, Labour’s no-votes-lost-for-Europe position moves. And ditto, if you have a situation where Trump doesn’t come back but there’s an eruption of a migrant crisis in Europe because of the war in the Middle East continuing to expand, then suddenly Labour’s no-votes-lost-for-Europe position moves in another direction. And really in some ways actually, what Keir Starmer thinks I think is kind of the least significant part of EU-UK relationship. It will all be defined by what is the minimum electoral cost that the Labour party has to pay.
Lucy Fisher
Final word to you, Peter. What’s the next staging post on these talks and negotiations?
Peter Foster
So I think there is a plan for another meeting in the autumn that will start to scope out what the first round of talks, if we’re gonna have a round of talks, is gonna look like. You know, we don’t actually really know whether this is gonna be one big fat negotiation or lots of siloed negotiations. That veterinary deal you mentioned, is that gonna be carved out separately from the TCA? Is it gonna be part of the 2026 review of the TCA? All of that is to be decided.
And a lot of that, I think, will depend on how the Labour government can resolve its own internal differences about where it wants to set the cursor on Europe. And it’s, you know, not entirely clear that it’s really decided, to Stephen’s point about the calculation, where that cursor should be. And that is annoying Europe, you know, one of the very large European countries, their ambassador said to me, they just need to tell us what they want.
Lucy Fisher
Peter Foster, thanks for joining.
Peter Foster
Pleasure.
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Lucy Fisher
Well when Keir Starmer should have been enjoying headlines about his reset meeting with Von der Leyen and a big press conference in Brussels, just about that time Downing Street decided to drop out the news that Starmer has decided to repay £6,000 worth of the gifts he has accepted in freebiegate. George, I have no idea what Number 10 were thinking. Just when we thought the story had finally died, they gave it new legs.
George Parker
It’s just incredible the way this is being handled. And you have to wonder what the mastermind is coming up with this media strategy to, you know, he’s in Brussels talking about something he wants to talk about and have to answer questions about free tickets to Taylor Swift concerts. I mean, it’s extraordinary. And obviously he thinks now having not really given much consideration at all to how this might look before the election. Now he’s caught in a real problem because you’ve juxtaposed the idea of him being somebody who’s living the high life of freebies and taking painful decisions. That’s why it’s really hit Keir Starmer.
So having not really thought about it very much now, now he’s probably thinking about it a little bit too much and he’s setting the bar extremely low for what ministers can accept as part of their ministerial jobs, you know? I mean, if you look at someone like David Lammy, for example, who will now be under pressure to pay back the value of the gift he received going to sit in the Tottenham Hotspur executive box. He’s a Tottenham MP, he supports Tottenham. But, you know, a lot of people sitting around the cabinet table would now be totting about how much money they’re gonna have to repay because of what Keir Starmer’s just done.
Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, it seems quite arbitrary, doesn’t it, that he’s gonna pay back the gifts he’s accepted since July when he became PM, but that’s only about 5 per cent of the gifts he’s accepted since 2019, even though he was an MP. And it also prompts the question, does he accept he’s done something wrong? He’s paying the money back, clearly he accepts he shouldn’t have taken these gifts in the first place and therefore is gonna face questions about whether, you know, he admits this is an error of judgment on his part.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, I think the underlying problem here is that for whatever reason, the new Downing Street could not quickly get to a point of what do we need to do to kill this story? And you can see that in lots of, you know, more trivial ways than they still haven’t got a grip on how to manage the grid and that you know, they had a day in which they had speech by Lisa Nandy on culture policy, speech by Ed Miliband on energy policy and Keir Starmer’s big intervention on border security.
So, yeah, I mean, I think part of the problem is isn’t Keir Starmer doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. He, you know, he has a very sort of well, I followed the letter of the rules, so therefore it’s fine perspective. But he, they can read the same polls we have. I’m sure that Morgan McSweeney and Adam Ludlow, the party’s head of strategy and insight, will be looking at their own focus groups and going, we’ve got a problem here. Fix it, fix it, fix it. And so you end up with this weird halfway house.
Now, I think where the government will get to is, we did these things because they were in the rules, we accept that was wrong. We now have a new modern gifting policy that will look, broadly speaking, like the gifting policy that all of us, most of our listeners, will recognise from their own workplaces.
That is going to, I think will have quite an interesting knock-on effect throughout parliament. Now for most of the newly elected MPs, that will be the only gifting policy they’ve had to work under, so that’ll be fine. But imagine that you’re a Labour MP elected in 2005 or 2010 who’s grown used to a very generous gifting policy. You kind of know that if you’re not on the front bench or you’re not a select committee chair now, you are never, ever going to rise under Keir Starmer.
George Parker
And you’re not going to get freebies either.
Stephen Bush
And you’re not gonna get your free tickets. But just as that was that coterie who became particularly difficult for Boris Johnson of men elected in 2010 who kind of started to feel that they were going nowhere and so they became a bit grumpy, I think the long run consequence of this story is gonna be some parliamentary difficulties for the Labour party.
But I think the interesting thing about this story as well has been watching Conservative MPs who’ve never known opposition before, who’ve only known the stricter rules that ministers operating under have said things where I’ve looked at that and gone, are you sure you want to put the bar there? Because I suspect the way that freebiegate will eventually die off will be a freebies regime that is very strict and will be very strict in ways that make it more difficult for the opposition, who of course have fewer resources, than it does for the government.
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Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ve just got time left for Political Fix stock picks. George, who are you buying or selling this week?
George Parker
Well, I think my portfolio is already well loaded up with Cleverlys, otherwise I would be adding to it. So I’m gonna go for something a bit left field here, Lucy, which is Mel Stride, who’s the former work and pensions secretary, who did extremely well earlier on in this leadership contest and stayed in the contest much longer than people expected. He gave a very combative speech in the House of Commons on winter fuel payments. And I think, you know, how he goes and whether he endorses a candidate or how he operates behind the scenes I think will be important. I think we can see quite a big role for him in future on the front bench for the Tory party, whoever wins this leadership contest.
Lucy Fisher
Stephen, how about you?
Stephen Bush
I similarly feel I have more than enough James Cleverly in my portfolio, so I’m going to hold on that one. I am actually going to do a defensive acquisition in some Robert Jenrick. Yes, he’s had some slightly difficult moments at this conference, but I just feel like it’s what parties usually do. It’s Ed Miliband, it’s Michael Foot, it’s William Hague beating Ken Clarke. And I just think history does tend to repeat itself. So yeah, I might as well buy some Jenricks as a hedge against history repeating itself. Who are you buying or selling?
Lucy Fisher
I’m gonna buy Kim Leadbeater, who is a Labour MP who has topped the ballot for the private members’ bills. And she has decided to take forward a bill on legalising assisted dying. So we know that Keir Starmer has supported the idea of this getting time this parliament to be debated. It’s going to be kind of unwhipped. It’s a matter of private conscience and I think we’re gonna hear a really, really interesting debate and I feel good on Kim Leadbeater for being the person to bring it forward. George, you and I were talking to a senior Labour figure who was warning that, you know, they feel whoever brought this bill forward is potentially in line for a lot of abuse. But Kim Leadbeater is a tough cookie. She’s taken on George Galloway before, so probably the right woman to do it.
Well, that’s all we’ve got time for this week. George, Stephen, thanks for joining.
George Parker
Thanks, Lucy.
Stephen Bush
Thanks, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, please do leave a review or a star rating. It really helps spread the word via the algorithm.
Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Clare Williamson. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. The broadcast engineers were Rod Fitzgerald and Andrew Georgiades. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio.
We’ll meet again here next week.
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