This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘New chancellor, new rules’

Lucy Fisher
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Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Coming up, the prime minister and the chancellor are on their travels in a big week pre-Budget. Starmer is in Samoa fending off allegations of election meddling in the US and trying to stop calls for reparations from overshadowing the Commonwealth summit. Meanwhile, Reeves is at the IMF in Washington and has unveiled changes to the UK’s fiscal rules.

With me here in the FT studio to discuss all this and more are my FT colleagues Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Anna Gross. Hi, Anna.

Anna Gross
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
So as I said, Stephen, it’s a big week. We know that the chancellor will be crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s of her Budget. She’s made this slightly unusual move to confirm publicly what frankly, we’ve all thought has been coming for some weeks now — rolling the pitch, which is changes to her fiscal rules. Explain the changes she’s going to make.

Stephen Bush
So essentially she’s going to redefine the measure of government debt in a way that will increase the amount that she can borrow for infrastructure spending.

Lucy Fisher
And Anna, how are markets going to react to this, do you think?

Anna Gross
Well, I think this is part of the reason that she’s taken, as you say, the unusual step of coming out and being really clear about what she’s gonna do ahead of the Budget, because there were already and already have been some jitters about what’s happening. So there’s been reporting that she’s gonna be borrowing about £40bn-£50bn more.

And what we’ve seen already is the yield on bonds, which is essentially the cost of borrowing, go up. And they shot up quite considerably from between September, when the FT first reported this, to October. And they went up a bit more on Thursday. So essentially, I think she’s hoping that will be the extent of it now that it’s all out there. And what she’s really trying to fend off is a major shock to the markets and the bond markets like we saw after Liz Truss announced her “mini” Budget.

Lucy Fisher
Now, Stephen, Jeremy Hunt has come out of the traps quickly to say, well, look, this is why we never did it as the Conservatives when we were in government because it is going to push up the cost of borrowing. That will mean mortgage misery for millions of Britons. And we have seen this Treasury analysis come to light, haven’t we, that suggests that for every 1 per cent of GDP, of so-called fiscal loosening, that interest rates may go up between 0.5 and 1.25 percentage points. That is significant, isn’t it? So that’s the argument against it. What is the argument for her doing this?

Stephen Bush
Well, the argument for her doing it is that the United Kingdom has been for a very, very long time a laggard internationally in terms of the amount we spend on capital. So, you know, we might employ lots of doctors. The British state employs more doctors in a way that, say, Germany or France do not employ. Those employees, lots of physical capital, but is very bad at, you know, rebuilding new hospitals, investing in infrastructure, roads, transport, High Speed 2, datacentres, etc, etc. So the argument is that you unlock higher economic growth, better outcomes in terms of public services if you tweak your fiscal rules in a way which means that you can’t do what British chancellors of all parties tended to do, which is to cut capital spending to give themselves more flexibility on day-to-day spending.

Now, the thing is, both of these things are true. You borrow more for infrastructure, you spend more on infrastructure, you do get some benefits, but you also do ultimately end up with a high rate of interest on government debt and a higher rate of interest, you know, in the rest of the economy as a whole.

This is one of the reasons why their tax pledges limit their flexibility even with this exchange because there are two reasons to increase income tax and national insurance. One is that it gives you more money to spend on day-to-day spending, but it also reduces consumption. And one of the things we kind of need to do as an economy is transition the amount we spend on consumption into investment. But if you have this self-denying ordinance of going, well, I’m not gonna touch any of the major taxes, then you well, broadly speaking, the way you do that transfer is probably within an uncontrolled way, a slightly higher interest rate, slightly higher inflation.

Anna Gross
And just to add to that point, I know Hunt has come out this week and said, you know, we don’t support these moves, that senior Tories have told us that they did kind of look quite seriously at this last year. And at that point, you’ll remember that interest rates were really high. So potentially increasing them a little bit more could have been very, very damaging. Now, interest rates have come down considerably and therefore they’re forecast to come down more. So a slight increase is just a lot more palatable.

Lucy Fisher
I think that’s certainly the case and a counterfactual we can never prove is what would the Tories have done if they’d won the election? And we’ve spoken to some who indicated they might have pursued this themselves. Another sort of reason for doing this is trying to crowd in private investment, right? You know, this idea that private sector likes to invest alongside the government because it reduces risk.

Anna Gross
Yeah, I think that’s certainly the ambition. And we saw at the investment summit the announcement of £63bn. Starmer said just this week he’s expecting even more after the Budget. But I think there are lots of variables that investors look at when they decide where they’re gonna invest. And I think just seeing the government putting money in is not the only thing.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. I think also it’s worth remembering that the £50bn is the total amount that should increase her headroom. She’s not going to use all of it, not least because it’s not like going to the shop and buying potatoes. You can’t, you know, you can’t just like go out and be like, oh, don’t worry, the government’s just gonna build some infrastructure. So it would take a lot of time to ramp up, even if you were crazy enough to want to use all of that headroom in one go, which she obviously isn’t.

Lucy Fisher
And we think, what, she’s gonna do about £20bn of it, right?

Stephen Bush
Yeah, about 20. I think the other thing to watch here is whether or not they are actually able to deliver as much public investment as they’d like even before the question of whether or not you can crowd in as much as you’d like if you are at the same time making it harder to hire people who work in construction, harder to hire people who work in engineering because you’ve decided that you want to train, you know, to grow your own, which obviously takes a lot longer. You can argue about whether all that’s good or bad, but that does have implications for how quickly you can scale up national investment in, you know, various projects.

Lucy Fisher
I think that’s a good point. And also the fact that frankly, inward migration, you know, record levels of it in recent years, have hugely contributed to the sort of even though it’s been paltry GDP growth we’ve seen, and that may even have been disguising a recession. So bringing those numbers down, you know, could affect growth if the government doesn’t take action elsewhere.

Let’s just talk about a couple of other stories we’ve had, scoops we’ve had in the FT about what to expect in the Budget. Anna, George Parker, our colleague and regular on Political Fix, he broke the story that Rachel Reeves is likely to keep the freeze on income tax thresholds for another year past 2028, ’29; worth about £7bn to her. It’s often called a stealth tax. Will the public really care about this?

Anna Gross
It’s a good question. I think this falls into the category of taxes that the public don’t fully understand and they don’t fully appreciate that it’s gonna, that it impacts them. I think when you hear about an income tax raise, when you hear about a national insurance raise, those are things that really resonate with the public.

But polling suggests, or at least polling that I looked at last year when these funds were frozen by the former government, suggested that it wasn’t something that particularly resonated with them.

Obviously, it does leave the Labour government open to attack, which they’ve already received for being quite slippery because they said they weren’t gonna be raising tax. We heard them say it again and again and again on working people. And it is a tax rise on working people.

Lucy Fisher
It’s also hypocritical in a sense, right, because Rachel Reeves attacked Hunt for doing exactly the same thing and accused him of picking the public’s pockets.

Stephen, what do you think? If we get to the end of this parliament and, you know, teachers, nurses find themselves into this kind of higher level of income tax through the fiscal drag phenomenon, will they be annoyed to be treated like the government as sort of high earners?

Stephen Bush
Well, it’s really hard to say until it happens. So there are two precedents to bear in mind here. The first is from 1997-2001, the big weight in Gordon Brown raised taxes was through fiscal drag. And similarly, you had people dragged into the higher rate of tax who were very much not what Nigel Lawson had envisaged as higher-rate taxpayers when he redesigned the tax bands. And obviously they were re-elected heavily.

However, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt did exactly the same thing from 2022-24 and they were not re-elected heavily, to put it mildly. Now, it could be, of course, that if you are pairing that increase in taxes with improvements in the public services, people go like, oh I see what I’m getting out of this. Or you have a bit of a feelgood factor because yeah, maybe you get growth going, etc, etc.

However, I think the risk Labour have taken is that yes, people do notice on Budget day when you do a rise or a cut of income tax or national insurance by a penny. But actually, in terms of people’s own take-home pay, it doesn’t affect them very much. People, there’s never a moment where the government turns you up and goes, hey, by the way, you’re now a higher-rate taxpayer. Congratulations. But it does have a fairly big impact in people’s individual pay packets over time. And so, yeah, it could go either way.

The concern for me, if I were a Labour strategist, would be that although people won’t think they’re angry because of the tax rise, they will feel angry because they have less money.

Anna Gross
Yeah. Our colleague Chris Giles wrote this week saying that, you know, a lot of people don’t realise that Labour saying we want the people with the broader shoulders to face the greatest pain at this Budget. But actually, his analysis shows that’s basically anyone who has pre-tax income above £69,600. So a lot of people who they’re hearing, oh, it’s gonna be the ultra-wealthy. But, you know, a lot of people are gonna be hit by that. And his analysis shows that they’ll be hit by about £10,000 a year, which is a lot.

Lucy Fisher
That’s significant, for sure. And let’s just talk about one other area, which is we’re expecting a cut to the amount of development cash which is being spent on overseas aid. I think it really surprises people to learn that almost 30 per cent of the international aid Budget isn’t spent overseas at present. It’s spent here at home on asylum hotels for refugees and asylum seekers.

The Tories had topped that up in order to try and offset and compensate some of the money being spent there. But it looks like Rachel Reeves isn’t going to do that.

Anna, it’s a real hit to the UK’s reputation, once a really proud reputation for being leaders in international development. If there isn’t this top-up, we’re not expecting there to be. We could see the level of aid actually spent overseas plunged to 0.36 per cent of gross national income next year, right down from that 0.7 per cent target that David Cameron introduced. What do you think of that as a look for Labour?

Anna Gross
I think it’s a terrible look and I think also it feeds into Labour wants just domestic issues at home as well because the aid budget is also really important for supporting communities that are in foreign countries that are in conflict, and thereby preventing mass migration to Europe. And so you’re really shooting yourself in the foot by you’re quite literally kind of paying for the problem only when it comes to your shores when ostensibly they’re saying they want to, you know, be solving this at structural level.

Lucy Fisher
Isn’t that right, yeah, Stephen? It goes against what Starmer has been saying about trying to do more upstream.

Stephen Bush
Well, actually, the evidence is that richer countries migrate to each other more, right? But so yeah, you know, so that’s one of the arguments then and I very much include myself in the ranks of people who support the 0.7 target. That’s one of the arguments advocates for 0.7 like but it’s, to be honest, not really true.

However, the big risk for Labour here is yes, you know, cutting aid spending so we spend more at home is poppy, you know, in the electorate as a whole. Labour MPs hate it. Many, many, many Labour MPs, you know, have come up through working in international development themselves. And the way that the government will try and sell this to MPs is, well, the reason why we don’t need to do what Jeremy Hunt did is we are actually going to get this money back from the Home Office and so that money will be spent on this than internationally.

Now, it’s possible that they can pull that off. However, the history of successfully clawing money back from a department once you put it in is mostly one of failure. And I think that the real risk in terms of the party politics, this is gonna be something which causes a lot of division and upheaval in the Labour party.

Lucy Fisher
We’ll be back next week on Friday with a live webinar looking in-depth at everything that has come out of the Budget. So do register and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes if you want to join us live, or we’ll be putting that out as a special episode of Political Fix later on Friday afternoon.

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So while Rachel Reeves has been putting the final touches to her Budget, Keir Starmer finds himself yet again having to jet off on foreign affairs business. I think he’s spent far more time outside the UK than any comparable recent prime minister in their first few months, and much more than he would probably want to do so. He’s in Samoa for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (CHOGM).

Anna, the summit got off to a bad start after it was snubbed by Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, and Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa, who chose to go to Russia instead for a rival summit.

Anna Gross
It’s a very kind of challenging backdrop. And then it’s been made even worse by the fact that Starmer, he was asked about the question of reparations, which has again massively overshadowed this whole summit. You know, he went out there saying this is not a topic that we’re gonna cover. This is not something that we’re interested in. This is not what this is about.

And then behind the scenes we’re learning that a lot of the Commonwealth leaders are pulling together and have drafted this, a communiqué basically calling for reparations. And Starmer’s now kind of having to backtrack. So it promised to be potentially quite a positive reprieve from a lot of the Budget speculation but actually has been overshadowed by two of these things.

Lucy Fisher
I mean, Stephen, it is kind of doubly awkward for Starmer, right? As well as not wanting to give up cash and any reparations could presumably run into billions, he’s also trying to present this modern kind of image of the UK as being just one member of the club, not the colonial overlord any more. And yet his technique stumbling into this to try and stonewall the topic about reparations has completely backfired.

Stephen Bush
I’m gonna slightly depart from the consensus here, right, which is in an odd way that in a way, what we’re living through is the embodiment of that new reality that we all just a member of the club when actually, the most important member of the club, India, has decided well, actually, it’s gonna go to the Brics summit because that’s well within its interest, so it’ll send a more junior-ranked person. And a reality of just being a member of the club is Caricom, which is the Caribbean grouping of nations, where they have organised to get their debate on reparations. And that is going to be a big theme of it.

But no British prime minister is ever going to go, oh yeah, reparations. We’re definitely gonna open that particular door. So they’re always gonna have an awkward time when it comes back. But, you know, he’s avoided the central problem, which would be to come back with some clip of him saying something like, oh yeah, of course we’ve got to do it or something. It would play badly for him in parts of the British electorate.

But broadly speaking, this Commonwealth summit underlines that we live in an era of shifting power and that actually, I think, quite easy to imagine a situation in which the Commonwealth might endure without the United Kingdom as a member, right, because lots of countries in it find it a useful talking shop, but we no longer shape the agenda of it. We’re not going to shape the agenda of it again and that results in slightly awkward summits from time to time.

Lucy Fisher
And some of our key allies also don’t seem to find it that useful. I should also mention that Canada’s Justin Trudeau decided not to bother turning up. He sent his high commissioner to London. And even more sort of tense is the fact that Starmer’s plane had to stop in Canada, in Winnipeg on the way, and Trudeau from pictures we can see from the plane and reports from our colleague Jim Pickard, who’s on it, sent some doughnuts to the people who were making that round-the-world trip.

So, Anna, it is this sort of ragtag bag of nations without terribly much in common, in some senses, isn’t it? You do have these very developed economies like the UK, like Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Then you have these rising middle powers — India, superpower of the future. Then you have some of the kind of more developing nations, including in Africa as well as the Caribbean, and even some members like Rwanda or Mozambique, who aren’t even former British colonies. So is there a point of this club still existing when it’s such a disparate group?

Anna Gross
I think there’s a kind of sentimentality about the Commonwealth in Britain and amongst the British public that is not shared by, you know, the Canadian population, by the Indian population, South African population. But I agree. I think it creates a very challenging backdrop. And then when a lot of those developed countries show or developing countries, the more powerful countries, as Stephen is saying, don’t really show up. It puts a huge amount of focus on the UK and what the UK can offer when it comes to reparations, when it comes to aid, when it comes to support.

Stephen Bush
I mean, I guess I would push back at this. Clearly, it’s not just a sentimental club because Rwanda didn’t join the Commonwealth because they thought, oh, you know, actually it would’ve been much better to have been a British colony than a French one. Let’s join the Commonwealth so we can pretend we were. They’ve joined it, and this is true of several African countries, because they find it a useful forum to discuss African issues outside of the African Union, outside of Ecowas, outside of their various regional lots.

And the UK, I think, does gain something from having this convening power in terms of its foreign policy objectives. Of course, we’re not gonna look back in 2020 and go, ah yes, of course, the reason why Keir Starmer was re-elected or not re-elected was because of something that happened in (inaudible). But I think, you know, it is an example of the UK soft power. There is a reason why the various countries in it choose one another.

And yes, not everyone is gonna send their head of government, but they have all sent a high commissioner or a foreign minister. And I think it’s always a risk to, you know, be too keen sometimes in this country to sort of enjoy this idea that we’re a fading power and nothing we do has any relevance or purchase in the world, or there is a reason why these countries continue to join the Commonwealth.

Lucy Fisher
To push back, what would be the areas and where it is useful? I mean, climate change, environmental protection? Are there others? Kind of social mobility, inclusion . . . 

Stephen Bush
Social mobility and also just the fact that it is a place where countries which can be in dispute about other things can talk about other things. I mean, I remember talking to several people at the, shameless plug, the FT’s Africa Summit last year and people talking about, well, actually, you know, there is a value to be able to have these conversations in a — someone described it as a de-risked talking shop — to quote someone who, you know, was in the Commonwealth when it mattered. Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.

Lucy Fisher
I would also say to my mind a sign of kind of waning interest in it as a club is the sort of lack of interest around the Commonwealth Games. We learnt this week that Glasgow next year is gonna be stripped back to 10 sports — you know, hockey, badminton, squash — all racket sports left out. And there’s no host yet for 2030, with suggestions that they are really struggling to find anyone who wants to host it. So the kind of prestige angle that kind of has perhaps gone.

Anna, you talked about the sentimentality of it as it’s seen through a kind of British lens. In particular, it’s the kind of the royal element, right, and some of the kind of imagery that’s been coming out of King Charles III wearing kind of interesting garlands and so forth and meeting the public there. That’s a big part of it for the British public, right? And it feels to me that, you know, the late Queen spent a lot of capital trying to ensure that Charles succeeded as the head of the Commonwealth, which was by no means a given. It’s not a hereditary role.

Anna Gross
No, absolutely. And you’re right, there’s a huge amount of sentimentality about the royal family here in Britain and about their role in the Commonwealth. And I think the sense I get is that was more widely shared across Commonwealth nations, not unanimously at all. You know, a decade ago, I think that from my understanding, that commitment, that loyalty to the royal family has dissipated. And we had when Charles first went out there, there was a case where an Indigenous MP or Indigenous politician heckled the King and said, you know, you’re not our King. And I think that there is in some quarters a growing antipathy towards the monarchy and the role that it continues to have.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, whilst in Samoa, the PM has been trying to defuse a tricky situation in UK-US relations after the Trump team filed a complaint against the Labour party, alleging interference to help opponent Kamala Harris. Lauren Fedor is the FT’s US political correspondent and deputy Washington bureau chief and joins us now. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren Fedor
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
So tell us exactly what the Trump campaign has alleged.

Lauren Fedor
They take issue with two main things. One is the fact that several advisers to Keir Starmer flew to Chicago over the summer and participated in the Democratic National Convention there. They also take issue with a LinkedIn post that was posted and then deleted suggesting that as many as 100 or more Labour party members, activists, staffers were coming over to the US to canvass and campaign for Kamala Harris in this final stretch of the US presidential election.

The argument that they make is that this support or advice amounts to kind of contributions in kind to the Harris campaign and are therefore violating campaign finance laws which do not allow for overseas citizens to be contributing to campaigns. But we usually think about that in financial terms, like writing a cheque.

Lucy Fisher
And is there any plausibility that they could have fallen foul of the rules, do you think?

Lauren Fedor
Well, we haven’t seen a complaint like this in the past. And to be honest, I would be very surprised if this complaint goes further and the FEC kind of takes up the issue. But never say never. If President Trump wins, he may want to pursue this further.

Lucy Fisher
What should we make of what this means for kind of UK-US relations if Trump does return to the White House? I think there have been this real sense of relief in Downing Street after the dinner in Trump Tower last month, which I think lasted for over two hours, and Starmer also brought Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who’d said all manner of incredibly critical things about Trump in the past and I think in the UK. And they were hoping great, you know, done, dusted, that’s all water under the bridge. We can work with the Trump administration.

Lauren Fedor
Look, I think with President Trump, you’re in when you’re in and you’re out when you’re out. He’s both fiercely loyal and also has been seen to drop people quite quickly when he wants to. So I would say there are no guarantees in this relationship. I know that’s not necessarily reassuring to people, but I think the same goes for other diplomatic relationships that President Trump would be pursuing with other allies should he become president.

You know, he also loves to kick up a bit of a media firestorm. And I would say that the letter to the Federal Election Commission as well as the kind of statements that his campaign put out around them showed you that he was having a bit of fun with all of this. There were a lot of American Revolution jokes and we’re gonna have another 1776 so he might be hamming it up a little bit here too.

Lucy Fisher
Let’s bring in Stephen and Anna. I mean, Stephen, to my mind, there’s been quite some surprising noises in the UK about whether this is a story at all — Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former director of communications, suggesting it’s all a load of all-nothing. I mean, it is quite a big deal, isn’t it, that the next president of the USA called the Labour party far-left and has accused them of illegal election interference?

Stephen Bush

Yeah. I mean, so the grain of truth in what people like Alastair Campbell are saying is that of course, members of the Democratic party, members of the Labour party, indeed some members of the Conservative party, members of the Liberal Democrats, have been doing exchange trips on each other’s campaigns to, you know, come and help out with data entry and to learn from one another, you know, since time immemorial, right? So that bit is not news.

But of course, it is news that a candidate who has a 50-50 chance of becoming president of, again, the most important democracy in the world, is someone who’s describing the government of the day as far-left is someone who, you know, he still refuses to accept the outcome of some of the primaries he lost, let alone the 2020 election.

So it is a reminder of how chaotic a relationship it would be. It’s a reminder that, yes, Keir Starmer and David Lammy left that dinner feeling it had gone well. It’s a reminder of the thing that, you know, you’d hear all the time from people in Boris Johnson’s Downing Street and Theresa May’s Downing Street of just how much, to quote someone who was in Downing Street in that time, as you know, a nightmare is how they would describe it. You know, they felt Boris Johnson in particular could make the right noises to move him into a slightly better place on something like, you know, tariffs or in that case, not the Ukraine war, but when that period when he was effectively trying to gain leverage on Ukraine, to say nasty things about Hunter Biden.

It’s a reminder of how difficult all of that will be but with the added problem that if you’re the Labour party, you don’t really have anyone who you can deploy as like your ambassador to Planet Trump. You have a situation in which most party activists will be very obviously displeased. Loads of MPs who have a Green or Lib Dem or SNP challenge in their constituency will feel that they need to say things to politically distance themselves from the various things that will happen in the event of a Trump second term.

And it is just, you know, it’s an important story because of that diplomatic issue now. But it’s also important for me because it is a reminder, to the extent people needed to be reminded, of the fact that a Trump second term is going to be really uncomfortable for Europe in general and the Labour government in particular.

Lucy Fisher
I mean, Lauren, I’m interested in what your take is on how Americans view Brits coming over to campaign in the election. And I know we shouldn’t overstate the numbers. I think it’s only 100-odd Labour figures, Labour activists planning to come and try and help the Harris campaign in swing states.

But I was struck by Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, saying that she thought it was a sort of odd bad idea. She wouldn’t like it if Yanks were coming over here knocking on doors, trying to tell her how to vote. She’s not sure that it’s sort of helpful for Brits to go over to the US and do the same there. Is there a backlash at all? Is it getting any pick-up in this sort of final frantic period of the campaign?

Lauren Fedor
You know, I haven’t heard of any backlash necessarily on the doorstep. But I’m inclined to agree with Thornberry a little bit here. You know, I’m not sure that for a swing voter, an undecided voter — and believe it or not, there still are undecided voters in the United States right now — that someone showing up from overseas and making the case for Kamala Harris would go down particularly well.

You know, that said, it’s not just door-knocking and I think Steven alluded to this. There’s plenty, plenty of work that needs to be done by volunteers on these campaigns, whether it’s phone banking or posting leaflets or data entry or all these other kind of, you know, less glamorous things that I’m sure the Democratic party would welcome the volunteer effort and support.

Lucy Fisher
Now Anna, one of the things that Starmer has said to try and defuse this row is, look, this is no one on official business. This is people on their own time and using their own money. I think the latter part is crucial to ensure that no one is breaking federal rules on getting involved in campaigning in the US.

But it doesn’t quite stack up when it comes to the example of Morgan McSweeney, does it, who at the time, back in the summer, was his political strategist in Downing Street, whom the Labour party did fund to attend the Democratic National Convention. And although now Labour is saying, well, he didn’t provide any advice to the Harris team, that seems to be a little bit at odds with some of the briefing at the time that led to lots of puff pieces across the press in the UK saying McSweeney jets in as part of delegation to advise Team Harris.

Anna Gross
Yeah, absolutely. It does seem as though, and especially at that time, there was briefing that there were all of these people from there were three or four Labour MPs, there was Morgan McSweeney, there were people from Labour Together, the Labour affiliated think-tank, and we were told that they were going over to advise the campaign because of Labour’s huge success in the election campaign.

And I think, you know, it’s important in these times to do the kind of . . . to flip it round and just imagine, you know, what the reaction would be here if we heard that the Republican party was funding people to come over and support Reform UK, which is probably the closest allies to the Republicans here in the UK at the moment, at least. And if we heard that they were funding people to come over and, you know, advise Nigel Farage and his campaign ahead of the election. I think there would be quite serious concern. So I do understand where they’re coming from on that point.

Lucy Fisher
Can I just, as a side note, I don’t want to get too sidetracked on this, but Stephen, I’m interested, you know, several papers splashed on the McSweeney news. I think the FT was the first to kind of carry it. Is he at risk of becoming like Sue Gray — such a household name that any story that involves him gets kind of pick up and becomes a distraction for the Starmer administration?

Stephen Bush
No, I don’t think so. One, because Morgan McSweeney is so important to Keir Starmer’s operation than . . . In some ways, Sue Gray’s problem wasn’t that she’d become a household name and she’d become the story. It was that she was the chief of staff, ie the chief of the political staff, ie the special advisers, who broadly speaking had lost the confidence of most of the special advisers and that the government was drifting politically. So I don’t think he has a problem there.

Anna Gross
Can I just comment on one point, which is just on the US-UK relations, because I’m a little bit sceptical that there’s gonna be kind of a major impact from this post-election. I just think it was a really sort of smart move by the Trump campaign. It blunts charges of foreign interference by Russia in the Republican campaign. It feeds this argument that the electoral playing field is kind of in favour of the Democrats.

And also, it just got two days of headlines splashed across the UK press, which kind of feeds into Trump’s narrative that, you know, he’s extremely powerful on the geopolitical stage. So yeah, I think that come election day and beyond, I really doubt that it’s gonna have any impact.

Lucy Fisher
It may not do, but I think it is a sign of how Stephen pointed out, like back in the kind of Theresa May-Boris Johnson era, just how Trump could ricochet day by day almost between treating the UK as friend or foe, just these unpredictable interventions and a very heavy-handed approach to diplomacy. Lauren, let’s come back to you for the final word on this. To put you on the spot, we’re a couple of weeks out now from the election. How’s it looking?

Lauren Fedor
A week and a half to go at this point, not like anyone’s counting. And look, I would be foolish if I were to make a prediction here and now. The reality is this is an incredibly close election. Every single major poll shows these two cabinets within the margin of error, virtually tied in some cases, in the seven swing states that will decide who wins the White House.

And they, polls, one of the many remarkable things about them this cycle is that they’ve been pretty much immutable since Kamala Harris took over at the top of the ticket. We’ve seen very, very little movement. And I, you know, speak for myself personally, but I also think a lot of people covering this campaign and involved are ready to rip the Band-Aid or rip the plaster off and just head to the polls and see what happens.

Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ll have to have you back on once we’ve got the results. Lauren Fedor, thanks for joining.

Lauren Fedor
Thanks for having me.

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Lucy Fisher
We’ve just got time left for Political Fix stock picks. Stephen, who are you buying or selling this week?

Stephen Bush
Good question. I am gonna buy — OK, it’s an obvious purchase, but like many people on this podcast, I’ve got to repair my Tory portfolio. I’m just gonna buy Kemi Badenoch. (Laughter)

Lucy Fisher
You think she’s a slam dunk now.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I think, I mean, you know, I spoke to several Conservatives about, you know, about how they, you know, about how they were feeling about it; people who perhaps don’t have any particular joy about this outcome, but have a real aversion to the idea of Robert Jenrick, who were feeling quite bleak couple of weeks ago, who spent time in their associations feeling quite chipper speaking to allies of Kemi Badenoch, who are similarly feeling quite chipper.

I just think she’s incredibly well-placed to become leader. She’s done a very good job of avoiding, you know, gaffes or things, and ultimately, if you are the frontrunner, you won’t be able to hide as much as possible. She’s done a very good job of doing that without obviously being hiding in a fridge. So yeah, I’m gonna buy Kemi Badenoch.

Lucy Fisher
Anna, how about you?

Anna Gross
I was also thinking about being boring and buying Kemi but I won’t do that.

Lucy Fisher
Guys, this is like when people try to win. Oh, have I got news for you. That’s like not the point. (Laughter)

Anna Gross
I’m gonna go very niche and I’m gonna buy Bridget Phillipson, who is the education secretary. And that’s partly because I’ve just had several conversations with kind of senior Labour officials, and they just speak so highly of her. I think she’s got a very, very, very good reputation in this government. And there were the negotiations around the spending review over the past couple of weeks. And hers seemed to have gone by very smoothly with the Treasury. So I think that she’ll get brownie points for that as well as just generally being a good operator.

Stephen Bush
And Lucy, who are you buying?

Lucy Fisher
I’m actually going to outniche you Anna by buying Cat Little, the permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, who has this week reintroduced the target for civil servants to spend at least 60 per cent of their time in the office. So it’s a big row back in the day, I think it was November last year when the Tories introduced this kind of new target post-pandemic. It followed, frankly, quite a vociferous campaign from the likes of the Daily Mail, the Telegraph kind of basically accusing the blob of being kind of work-shy homeworkers.

And ever since Labour came in, interestingly, the public monitoring data about Whitehall working patterns was stopped, that wasn’t being published. It is now restarted this week. There was a lot of sense that Labour was relaxing the rules, was more content with people to be working flexibly. And of course we had Jonny Reynolds, the business secretary, last month, say that, you know, flexible working would boost productivity. Labour was against a culture of presenteeism. So anyway, this week it’s the civil service reasserting that office working is back. A majority of the time has to be spent at your desk.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, that’s all we’ve got time for. My thanks to Anna Gross and Stephen Bush.

Anna Gross
Thanks, Lucy.

Stephen Bush
Thank you.

Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. Don’t forget to sign up for free to a Political Fix live Budget webinar on Friday the 1st of November, which I’ll be hosting. There’s links and details in the show notes.

Also there, you’ll find articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners as well as a link to Stephen Bush’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And if you want more on the US election, I’d recommend listening to the FT’s podcast, Swamp Notes.

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. Petros Gioumpasis and Ben Marino were the studio engineers. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio.

We’ll meet again here next week.

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