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PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Labour & Reform Manifestos


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In this episode of Brokonomics, we take a look at the remaining Labour and Lib Dem manifestos, and I give my thoughts on what I think of them. I also talk about the Reform and Labour manifestos.

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00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome again to Brokonomics. Now in this episode I thought we'd have a look at the
00:00:05.460 remaining manifestos of note, that being of Labour and reform. Last week of course you watched me
00:00:11.500 being absolutely tortured by myself reading the Conservative and Liberal Democrat manifestos.
00:00:18.900 Now that was a week ago, I've already forgotten what was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto,
00:00:23.660 I think it was probably a whole load of 600 pages of eco-twattery. The Conservative one,
00:00:28.820 in reflection, I should have given a summing up at the time, but the Conservative one,
00:00:33.320 it was just managed to climb, wasn't it? I mean there was nothing, there was no energy in it
00:00:38.800 whatsoever, it was defensive, it was okay you know everything is falling apart and we vaguely
00:00:46.720 recognise that some of these things are falling apart and we're going to put a sticking plaster
00:00:51.280 over it and not actually do anything about the underlying problems. So I mean it was just a
00:00:57.140 it was just a woeful, weak, managerialist, you know, let's smooth out the decline, no energy,
00:01:05.140 awful manifesto. So it was absolute bloody torture, but I mean they won't be winning anyway.
00:01:10.200 Got some more fun ones today, because Labour are almost certainly going to win this election,
00:01:15.400 so we need to find out what's in their manifesto and of course reform. Reform are gunning for the
00:01:20.300 opposition, they probably won't get it this election, but their manifesto, I'm hoping,
00:01:25.640 when we have a look at it, is going to move the window, I would hope. It will start to shift us
00:01:34.880 in the right direction. So yes, let's dig into those and I'm on the podcast after this to give
00:01:43.860 my reactions on the reform manifesto, so you may have seen some of my thoughts already, but that's
00:01:49.700 in the future for me and the past for you and, you know, stuff. Right, so the Labour Party manifesto,
00:01:56.380 let's have a look at their top pledges, shall we? All adults to receive a genuine minimum wage
00:02:02.460 no matter your age. Yeah, we covered minimum wage last week in the Lib Dem manifesto, and in fact
00:02:09.000 also the Tory one, because they're in favour of it now. A minimum wage does not mean you get paid more,
00:02:13.660 a minimum wage means it is illegal to have a job if your labour isn't worth over a certain threshold,
00:02:18.760 and all it does is it drives automation or offshoring for stuff, or faster adoption of AI,
00:02:24.440 or whatever it is. So I don't even know what a genuine minimum wage is, presumably that is a higher
00:02:31.260 one, but that is not going to create any jobs, that's just going to speed up, like I say,
00:02:36.120 automation or offshoring, so that's a bad idea. Right, increase NHS appointments by 40,000 per week,
00:02:43.660 funded by cracking down on tax avoidance. Jesus, right, okay. An extra 40,000 appointments per week
00:02:54.440 in the scale of the NHS isn't actually that high. I don't have a figure for what the total amount of
00:03:00.180 appointments in the NHS is, but it's a number that looks big that isn't proportionally that big.
00:03:04.840 But in terms of cracking down on tax avoidance, can I just point out that tax avoidance is legal?
00:03:09.480 It's tax evasion, which is illegal, but tax avoidance is just you avoid paying tax that you
00:03:16.560 don't need to, which basically everybody should be doing, including Labour MPs. So, I mean,
00:03:23.100 and the definition is, of course, because tax avoidance is legal, but you're just not choosing
00:03:29.200 to arrange your affairs in a way that means that you end up paying the maximum possible amount of
00:03:34.340 tax that you conceivably could. What even qualifies on that? So, I do like two or three
00:03:40.660 days a week here, and I don't work the rest of the week, so am I avoiding tax by not working those
00:03:48.520 extra days? I have a lot of money in an ISA, which is a tax wrapper, maybe equivalent to your 401ks
00:03:56.360 if you're in America. Is that tax avoidance? People putting money in pensions, is that tax avoidance?
00:04:02.480 There's a whole bunch of things that could come under that. So, that is just a vague, woolly, nothing,
00:04:08.820 nothing. Okay. Create a new border security command to tackle criminal boat gangs using counter-terrorism
00:04:16.440 prevention laws. Now, that actually, I believe the Labour Party might do. The reason being is, I remember
00:04:22.220 the last Labour governments, and they used terrorism legislation for pretty much everything, including,
00:04:29.640 in some cases, if you took the wrong bins out on the wrong day, they would use counter-terrorism
00:04:33.320 legislation to crack down on you. So, I actually believe that they will start using these powers
00:04:38.840 willy-nilly for things that they were not originally intended for. So, I believe that one.
00:04:44.640 No increase in national insurance, income tax rates, or VAT. Yes, again, another one that I believe.
00:04:50.520 This is the whole Blair playbook of when he came in 1997. For the first, was it two? It was either
00:04:59.360 the first two years or the first parliament, they kept the Tory tax levels and total spending
00:05:06.880 commitments. Now, because the economy had been trending in the right direction, because those
00:05:13.840 were back in the days when we actually had a Tory party that believed in conservative things,
00:05:18.340 the first term of the Labour government in 1997 was probably the best this country has ever had it.
00:05:29.220 Unironically, it was good. The proportion of the state as a share of GDP fell to its lowest level.
00:05:35.440 The tax burden was quite manageable. Deficits were minimal. There was a deficit, but it was... No,
00:05:41.020 actually, the deficit was virtually nothing at that time. There was a bit of debt, but again,
00:05:46.540 it was perfectly manageable. So, again, I believe them on this one, but they will keep it the same.
00:05:51.440 And the reason they do that is because Labour have historically got a very poor track record
00:05:55.780 when it comes to tax and spend, as you saw these in the later stages of the last Labour government.
00:06:01.040 By the time we got into Gordon Brown being the Prime Minister, I mean, tax and spend was way up.
00:06:05.240 But I actually believe that they will keep the tax levels where they are to begin with.
00:06:12.580 But, of course, they're planning on multiple years in government.
00:06:17.000 Cap corporation tax at 25% throughout the Parliament.
00:06:21.460 Actually, it should be lower. It should be lower than at least Ireland on 12.5%,
00:06:24.800 so we get that inward investment. But, OK, at least they're not going to raise it.
00:06:29.320 Launch great British energy with a windfall tax on oil and gas giants. 1.00
00:06:33.520 Oh, God, OK, this is stupid. So the reason this is stupid is because the oil and gas companies 1.00
00:06:39.940 basically work on the commodity cycle where over a 10-year period, at some point they're losing money, 0.99
00:06:47.760 at some point they're raking it in. And you have to sort of look at it over the whole commodity cycle
00:06:53.820 to assess where they are. And what happens is every time they are in an upswing,
00:06:58.600 most recently because we did silly things with Russia by cutting them out of the energy markets,
00:07:04.860 or at least we're cutting them out of our energy markets, which we didn't.
00:07:08.380 Actually, we just let the Indians buy it off them and then sell it to us at a markup. 0.99
00:07:13.320 But anyway, so the energy prices got out of hand.
00:07:15.860 As a result of that, because the price of energy went up,
00:07:18.740 the energy companies looked like they were doing very well and Labour started talking about a windfall tax on them.
00:07:25.720 You can't look at it in any isolated year because you need to take into account there is that lull in the middle.
00:07:31.920 And also, the other reason why the energy companies are doing well is because they're not reinvesting
00:07:37.020 into new exploration and new site production.
00:07:40.900 So it used to be the case that the energy companies would spend a large proportion of their profits
00:07:47.580 prepping, discovering and prepping new sites to bring online.
00:07:52.380 Government, Western governments in recent years have said to them,
00:07:54.460 stop doing that because we're going to run down the production of fossil fuels.
00:08:01.160 So they've basically been told that there's nothing that you can do with the profits that you'll generate.
00:08:05.220 You can't reinvest them for the future. You have to either pay them out in dividends or share buybacks.
00:08:09.620 So again, it's giving this elevated look of what the profitability in the sector actually is.
00:08:14.640 And it's not realistic to just cut them out over the phase that they've been talking about cutting them out on. 0.83
00:08:19.780 So that one is a bit silly.
00:08:22.940 Crack down on anti-social behaviour with more police and youth hubs.
00:08:27.720 OK. I don't particularly mind more police,
00:08:32.800 but the problem we've got police is they're all graduates now.
00:08:36.520 It used to be the case where a lot of people coming out of the military would then go into the police
00:08:41.720 and the Conservatives, who are not Conservative in the slightest and must be destroyed zero seats,
00:08:46.920 decided to get rid of the army personnel coming in
00:08:50.320 and instead just have a bunch of washy, wishy graduates. 0.91
00:08:54.600 And they don't know anything and they've been indoctrinated into left-wing thought and they're awful. 0.87
00:09:00.680 So I don't mind in principle more police as long as they're not a bunch of these wet graduates. 1.00
00:09:08.320 And youth hubs.
00:09:09.840 Yeah, isn't going to make any difference.
00:09:11.920 The problem is we have a different mix of young people in our cities 1.00
00:09:18.040 and the New Britons like to stab people, which is probably all I can say on that one. 1.00
00:09:22.980 Right.
00:09:23.380 Hire 6,500 new teachers by ending tax breaks for private schools.
00:09:30.480 You should get more tax breaks for sending your kids to private schools
00:09:35.500 because it alleviates the burden on state schools.
00:09:39.520 Why can't you just take what the government would have spent on a state education
00:09:45.380 and get that off your tax bill if you're going to a state school?
00:09:47.320 In fact, they're doing it the other way around.
00:09:48.640 So all it will mean is at the margin, more people will not do...
00:09:52.820 Because 20%, VAT is 20%.
00:09:54.740 So it's a significant...
00:09:56.520 I mean, and you might have school fees of like 30 grand a year.
00:09:59.620 So you add 20% onto that.
00:10:03.400 You're going to get a lot of people who are like,
00:10:05.480 OK, no, we can't afford this anymore.
00:10:07.460 Especially with the debasement that we've experienced as well.
00:10:10.020 So you're just going to get people moving over to the state system and greater burden there.
00:10:14.000 So you'll need to hire those teachers anyway and you'll get a net sum result. 0.90
00:10:18.800 So, yeah, that is a bit silly.
00:10:20.800 Voting age of 16 for all elections.
00:10:23.660 This is on the assumption that young people vote left wing. 0.98
00:10:28.300 And as we covered last time, if we're going to be doing stupid stuff like national service 0.98
00:10:32.680 or we have a global elite who is desperate to get us into war with Ukraine, 0.94
00:10:37.740 then actually there's a good argument that everybody should have the vote.
00:10:41.100 I mean, why not 12-year-olds?
00:10:43.620 Because if we get into a world war, it's going to affect them.
00:10:46.720 Of course, in isolation, votes for 16-year-olds is silly because 16-year-olds don't know anything,
00:10:51.360 as we covered last time.
00:10:52.720 But it might not go the way that they think it's going to go.
00:10:57.400 Because it didn't with Germany, the German elections recently, the Euro elections there.
00:11:02.020 A lot of the younger people voted for the more, what they would consider far right.
00:11:07.980 So, yeah, well, anyway, that's in the manifesto.
00:11:10.700 Right, introduce free breakfast clubs into every primary school.
00:11:13.980 OK, so breakfast clubs are where basically you can drop your kids off at school like an hour or two early
00:11:22.720 so that you can then go off to work.
00:11:25.560 That's not the direction we want to be going in.
00:11:28.060 I mean, and so free breakfast clubs.
00:11:32.500 So school budgets are incredibly tight and often the only way they can make the budgets add up
00:11:37.020 is with their after-school activities.
00:11:39.400 So if you make them free, you're cutting off a revenue source for the schools.
00:11:44.680 And also, if you make them free, a lot more people are going to attend them.
00:11:48.860 And therefore, you're going to have to have a lot more staff in because you've got ratio requirements,
00:11:53.200 especially with primary school children.
00:11:55.220 So what you're doing there is you're depriving primary schools of revenue
00:11:59.580 and the marginal bit of revenue that can make the difference because their budgets are very tight.
00:12:05.280 And you're pushing up their wage bill substantially.
00:12:08.860 So that is going to mean, well, that's going to be an unfunded promise then, isn't it?
00:12:13.940 Because that's going to need extra money.
00:12:16.380 Remove hereditary peers' voting rights and set a mandatory retirement age of 80 in the House of Lords.
00:12:24.360 Well, the hereditary peers, I mean, there's not many of them left in the chamber anymore anyway.
00:12:29.320 And the ones that are left are genuinely quite sensible in most cases.
00:12:34.020 And in fact, far more than the average member of the House of Commons.
00:12:37.720 So if anything, it should be the other way around.
00:12:39.400 Get rid of the House of Commons and just keep the hereditary Lords.
00:12:42.500 I mean, I think I'd rather that.
00:12:44.140 But anyway, so they're the top promises.
00:12:46.620 All right, now let's whiz through the rest of it, shall we?
00:12:49.800 Security and defence.
00:12:50.600 Absolute commitment to the UK's nuclear deterrent.
00:12:55.240 Fair enough.
00:12:56.560 Apply a NATO test to major defence programmes.
00:12:59.980 Well, I don't know what a NATO test means in this context, but I can tell you what NATO is.
00:13:03.800 A lot of people think it's a security alliance.
00:13:06.460 Really, it's more of a buyer's club.
00:13:07.800 So when you join NATO, you have to basically standardise your gear to NATO standard, which means you have to buy all new rifles, ammunition, a whole bunch of things need to be brought onto the NATO standard.
00:13:23.780 So part of the reason why NATO has expanded so much is because of the lobbying effect of the defence contractors who supply the NATO gear.
00:13:34.280 And whenever a new country comes in, they then have to start spending billions on this buyer's club to get their gear compatible to the NATO standard.
00:13:44.700 So an expansion of NATO is absolutely not what we should be talking about.
00:13:51.800 And a NATO test to major defence programmes.
00:13:55.860 Yeah, again, that's just meaning that we're channelling more money to a handful of defence contractors who will then lobby for that.
00:14:01.600 So, no, not a fan of that.
00:14:03.500 What else have they got?
00:14:04.180 Create a new border security command funded with the Rwanda funding.
00:14:07.580 Well, the Rwanda funding is absolute...
00:14:10.460 I know that's a Tory thing, but it's bollocks.
00:14:12.860 So what is it?
00:14:14.040 We spent £300 million on it and we sent two volunteers out.
00:14:19.360 And they got paid to go.
00:14:22.480 So the Rwanda scheme is just a complete dud. 0.72
00:14:26.760 Whether you could create a new border security force for that, whether you could reclaim that £300 million, I don't know.
00:14:33.060 But don't hate that one, actually.
00:14:35.580 Right.
00:14:36.000 Secure a new security arrangement with the EU for real-time intelligence access.
00:14:40.360 What's the motivation here?
00:14:44.580 Is it for terrorism? 0.99
00:14:46.820 Is it for all of the new Europeans who are coming in from places that end in Starn and now want to run around chopping our heads off and stabbing us? 1.00
00:14:56.420 Is that what it's about?
00:14:57.500 Or is it about going after people who disagree with the EU leaders politically, people like us?
00:15:05.640 Because it's probably both, isn't it?
00:15:07.900 So, yeah, no suspicions of that one.
00:15:09.700 Right.
00:15:10.380 Establish a new returns and enforcement unit with a thousand additional staff.
00:15:17.180 Returns and enforcement.
00:15:19.000 So is this re-migration?
00:15:21.960 Okay.
00:15:22.480 Well, I like that then.
00:15:24.980 Needs more than a thousand staff.
00:15:26.880 I mean, we should get the whole British Army working on that.
00:15:29.340 So, no, I don't hate that one either.
00:15:31.460 Right.
00:15:32.120 Economic policy.
00:15:33.860 The first line is move the current budget into balance.
00:15:39.960 Right.
00:15:42.760 So we're spending about 1.2 trillion at the moment.
00:15:46.820 What's that in billions?
00:15:47.860 It's 200 and maybe 200 and...
00:15:51.520 No, 1,230 is about what we're spending at the moment.
00:15:56.620 And we're collecting about 1.14.
00:16:03.420 So there's a gap of about 90.
00:16:05.800 90 billion is roughly the deficit that we're on at the moment.
00:16:09.480 So they're going to move to a balanced budget, aren't they?
00:16:13.280 With a deficit of 90 billion.
00:16:15.520 How are they going to do that?
00:16:19.220 Well, I mean, let's just look at it like this.
00:16:22.800 NHS, biggest line item.
00:16:24.580 About 180 billion.
00:16:27.620 Are you going to cut that by 80 billion?
00:16:30.100 No, I don't think you are.
00:16:32.500 Education, that's about...
00:16:33.340 Actually, education is 80 billion.
00:16:34.760 So you could cut that out.
00:16:36.360 What else is there?
00:16:37.320 Defence, relatively small.
00:16:38.840 It's like 30 billion.
00:16:40.160 So it's probably not going to come down to that.
00:16:44.740 Pensions.
00:16:45.200 Pensions are 140 billion.
00:16:46.400 So do you want to get rid of a bit over half of that?
00:16:53.320 Probably not.
00:16:54.140 I don't think that's what they're advocating.
00:16:56.680 Universal credit, that's about 90 billion.
00:16:58.620 So there you go.
00:16:59.160 You could get rid of universal credit.
00:17:02.580 That's one.
00:17:03.180 Or all other welfare is another 90 billion.
00:17:08.320 So you could get rid of half of the...
00:17:10.820 Get rid of all of the disability stuff and all of that stuff. 1.00
00:17:14.420 You could just get rid of that.
00:17:15.880 Or universal credit.
00:17:17.820 And either would get you there.
00:17:19.640 Or, like I say, education.
00:17:22.160 And then everything else.
00:17:23.160 I mean, those are the big line items.
00:17:24.300 So if you're going to move the budget by 90 billion,
00:17:28.060 those are the things you need to go after.
00:17:32.460 I don't think they're going to do any of that.
00:17:35.020 So how are they going to, as they say,
00:17:38.500 move the budget into balance?
00:17:40.060 Well, yeah, but you're not, are you?
00:17:42.460 You're not.
00:17:43.320 You're going to put spending up.
00:17:45.680 I bet you are.
00:17:47.180 So no, don't believe them.
00:17:48.460 Don't believe them at all.
00:17:50.440 Second point.
00:17:51.040 Ensure debt is falling.
00:17:52.200 Yeah, not a chance.
00:17:52.960 Not under a Labour government.
00:17:54.740 Debt is not going to fall.
00:17:57.240 And also, as we talk about on Brokeconomics a number of times,
00:17:59.560 we have an expansionary debt-based fiat money system,
00:18:03.300 which cannot tolerate a shrinking money supply.
00:18:08.420 And the primary factor of that is debt.
00:18:10.140 So no, that is just no.
00:18:13.440 Right.
00:18:14.080 Retain the 2% inflation target.
00:18:17.980 On paper, yeah, maybe.
00:18:20.460 Actual inflation is going to be well above that.
00:18:23.520 I mean, we might get interim periods of a low inflation print,
00:18:28.900 but the whole name of the game,
00:18:31.620 if you remember my Brokeconomics on liquidity,
00:18:34.280 the whole name of the game at the moment is debasement.
00:18:37.040 How can we debase the money supply as quickly as possible
00:18:40.120 without causing a revolution?
00:18:43.000 And in turn, shrink the real value of our debt.
00:18:45.080 So no, you're not going to keep the inflation target.
00:18:49.580 Well, you might keep the target, but you're not actually going to do it.
00:18:52.280 Right.
00:18:52.420 No increase in national insurance, income tax rates, or VOT.
00:18:55.540 Yeah, we covered that above.
00:18:57.240 Abolish non-dom status. 0.89
00:18:59.540 They've got to be in their bonnet about this.
00:19:01.560 No, you don't want to do that.
00:19:02.500 So this is people who are quite wealthy
00:19:06.920 and they are considered non-domicile,
00:19:11.660 so they don't live here, 0.98
00:19:13.520 or at least they live here for only a proportion of the year
00:19:17.060 and they spend most of their year somewhere else,
00:19:20.060 but they spend a decent chunk of time here.
00:19:22.180 They want to get rid of that in the thinking.
00:19:25.500 And this is always Labour things.
00:19:26.940 If you just, Labour always think,
00:19:28.400 if you just put up taxes, people will pay the taxes.
00:19:30.420 They might do, but quite often they just say,
00:19:34.560 okay, well, I won't come to the UK anymore.
00:19:36.180 Or I just come as much as a tourist does,
00:19:37.920 maybe like 20 days a year or something. 0.97
00:19:40.300 So yes, a bit of a silly one there.
00:19:45.240 Right, close the loophole on private equity capital gains tax.
00:19:49.940 Yeah, so I don't like capital gains tax
00:19:53.560 because what it does is it causes capital to become static
00:19:58.840 rather than move around to where the innovation is occurring,
00:20:02.040 where the interesting things are happening
00:20:03.220 because people would rather hold on to a substandard investment
00:20:06.800 rather than pay the tax on it.
00:20:10.620 So if you didn't have capital gains tax,
00:20:12.360 what would happen is much quicker
00:20:15.120 when there was a better investment,
00:20:16.900 a more innovative solution to something,
00:20:19.240 then capital would flow to it
00:20:21.320 rather than being stuck where it is.
00:20:23.640 And private equity is a method of doing that.
00:20:26.300 Now, I'm no fan of private equity,
00:20:27.840 so I mean, I'm fair enough.
00:20:30.640 But again, they're taking the wrong approach on this.
00:20:33.600 Right, modernise the HMRC and tackling tax avoidance.
00:20:36.940 Well, as we talked about, tax avoidance is perfectly legal.
00:20:41.880 Right, support businesses for a stable policy environment.
00:20:45.180 Well, that actually has merit, yeah,
00:20:46.520 because business does like to see
00:20:49.860 that the rules aren't going to change all the time
00:20:51.640 so that they can plan for the future.
00:20:53.940 So I like the idea,
00:20:56.340 but I remember the last Labour government
00:20:58.560 and they just brought in loads of stuff
00:21:01.420 and they couldn't stop adding to the policy environment
00:21:04.400 and I can't see what's going to be any different this time.
00:21:06.520 Right, establish a national wealth fund
00:21:10.340 and promote a pro-business regulatory framework.
00:21:14.800 What wealth?
00:21:16.520 How are we going to have a bloody national wealth fund?
00:21:20.560 We don't have any wealth.
00:21:22.500 What are you going to put in it? 0.95
00:21:25.680 What a load of nonsense. 0.96
00:21:30.100 Don't even know what to say to this one. 0.98
00:21:32.140 You can't have a national wealth fund
00:21:33.380 if you don't have any wealth.
00:21:34.840 We're running a deficit. 0.99
00:21:36.780 So, yeah, don't be silly. 0.78
00:21:38.900 Right, invest in tech, ports, gigafactories, 0.94
00:21:43.020 steel industry, yep, liking this.
00:21:44.820 Carbon, oh.
00:21:46.520 Carbon capture and green hydrogen manufacturing.
00:21:51.140 Yes, okay, so let's deconstruct this one a bit.
00:21:54.880 Investing in tech, well, that's not the job of the government,
00:21:57.640 but you can set up a low corporate tax rate environment
00:22:02.140 that makes people want to innovate here and reduce capital gains tax
00:22:06.840 so that capital can be deployed here so that tech organically grows in this country.
00:22:12.300 To give you an example, back after I retired and I was kind of knocking around,
00:22:21.240 I ended up helping out my local universities on some business advice
00:22:26.380 for the tech companies that were coming out of the universities.
00:22:29.460 And to a man, every time one of them got some serious traction,
00:22:34.120 they just immediately pissed off to California
00:22:35.920 because that's where all the capital is
00:22:37.820 and a more, remarkable saying this,
00:22:42.560 but a more friendly regulatory environment than we have here.
00:22:46.400 So you need to tackle those issues if you want to encourage tech here.
00:22:54.200 Ports, yeah, never say no to a bit of port infrastructure,
00:22:58.440 but that port infrastructure will probably be used to ship in Chinese TAT to here
00:23:04.940 rather than us doing any manufacturing because you're not addressing that.
00:23:08.000 Gigafactories I like, big factories, they basically just mean,
00:23:13.040 but how are we going to incentivise people to base their manufacturing here?
00:23:21.400 I would have done that for the corporation tax thing.
00:23:23.540 Steel industry, I can't see that
00:23:26.520 because steel and chemicals require vast amounts of energy.
00:23:34.900 So they're highly dependent on cheap energy.
00:23:38.000 And this is why Germany was predominant in manufacturing and steel
00:23:42.260 for the last 30-odd years
00:23:43.900 because they had access to very cheap Russian energy.
00:23:47.280 In fact, even before things like Nord Stream,
00:23:53.600 they had old Soviet-era pipelines supplying gas into Berlin and places like that
00:23:58.780 that meant they had access to cheap energy
00:24:00.720 and therefore they could do things like steel and chemicals.
00:24:03.440 Now the Green Party have come along,
00:24:05.000 the Nord Stream pipeline bombing has come along
00:24:07.000 and Germany is now incredibly suffering in this.
00:24:09.620 How are we in the UK with our high price of energy
00:24:12.260 going to do steel when we've got a high energy cost
00:24:16.780 and we are deliberately trying to increase energy costs
00:24:20.700 for your net zero nonsense?
00:24:22.520 So I just don't believe that's viable.
00:24:25.840 And that's for carbon capture and green hydrogen manufacturing.
00:24:29.840 Bollocks.
00:24:30.900 Not touching that.
00:24:32.500 Undertake a review of the pension landscape and do what?
00:24:38.020 Yeah, pensions are unaffordable.
00:24:40.560 Demographics, time bomb is in the process of blowing up at the moment.
00:24:45.880 We can't afford it.
00:24:49.900 So you're going to review it.
00:24:51.460 Okay, fine.
00:24:52.920 And then do what?
00:24:54.760 No detail.
00:24:56.940 I wonder if that's going to be a theme in this
00:24:58.600 because this is a very slim manifesto,
00:25:02.440 which is an interesting point in itself actually
00:25:04.860 because Labour clearly expect, like the rest of us, to win.
00:25:12.100 So they could have gone the way of having a bumper manifesto
00:25:16.460 to get a mandate for all of this stuff.
00:25:18.760 And that is helpful because then when you want to push something through,
00:25:23.540 it's much easier to get it through the press, public opinion
00:25:28.240 and the House of Lords and any other sort of jurisdictional challenges
00:25:33.040 or judicial challenges that might come along if it's in the manifesto
00:25:36.220 because you can just say, look, I've got a mandate for it.
00:25:38.500 I'm going to do it.
00:25:39.220 They've gone the other way and they've gone through
00:25:40.480 what is clearly a very light manifesto.
00:25:42.940 And I don't think that they are light on things that they want to do.
00:25:51.220 They're just light on things they want to tell us about.
00:25:53.920 And that line is an example of it.
00:25:55.420 They're going to undertake a review of the pension landscape
00:25:57.260 and then do what?
00:25:58.840 What is it that you're going to do?
00:25:59.880 I mean, if it was consistent with your point about tax avoidance,
00:26:02.620 you would stop people putting money into ISIS and personal pensions.
00:26:06.700 So is that what you mean?
00:26:08.240 I don't know.
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