TRIGGERnometry - ＂Andy Burnham Is Away With The Fairies＂ – Andrew Neil

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00:01:03.820 it's the people who blame uh it's british attitudes to blame because the british people

00:01:12.040 think they can have scandinavian levels of cradle to the grave welfare on kind of mid-atlantic

00:01:22.040 taxes. And here's the thing, you can't. Although if people vote in a way that results in a right

00:01:28.180 of center government that might not deliver on all these things, if the country does vote

00:01:34.220 for the Andy Burnham prospectus, that's it. We are a socialist tax and spend future. There's

00:01:43.720 no going back from that. He believes that a bigger state means more growth. I hope he's

00:01:49.520 he's away with the fairies. 1.00

00:01:51.560 But that's his belief. 0.99

00:01:53.200 Why don't you think it's going to work?

00:01:54.820 Because I don't see anywhere in the world where it ever has.

00:01:59.180 So a crisis in the bond markets

00:02:01.160 could force this government into doing things it doesn't want to do.

00:02:05.280 I think we are heading for some really tough times.

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00:02:34.440 Andrew Neal, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:36.340 Lovely to be here in the heart of Westminster.

00:02:38.360 Exactly. Thanks for giving away our location.

00:02:41.260 Thank you. Now we're going to get doxxed and protested and attacked.

00:02:44.420 Westminster's a big place.

00:02:45.740 Yeah.

00:02:46.360 And we're right next to Pimlico, as you know.

00:02:48.320 Exactly.

00:02:49.640 Thank you.

00:02:50.660 Strong star.

00:02:51.840 Andrew, what a pleasure.

00:02:53.140 We've been meaning to have you on for a long time.

00:02:56.100 We want to talk to you about the BBC later on.

00:02:58.940 But actually, I think with your experience

00:03:01.880 and with the sort of serious commentary you provide,

00:03:05.340 we'd love to just hear a very broad sweep of your thoughts

00:03:08.660 on actually what is happening in our country.

00:03:11.860 Okay.

00:03:12.580 Well, there's a lot happening, but not much of it very good.

00:03:16.840 I mean, I think politics has gone through a major change.

00:03:20.460 The story of 2025 was the rise of the insurgents on the left and the right.

00:03:26.740 Reform doing well, taking a lead in the polls.

00:03:29.820 The Greens coming up fast, causing Labour palpitations, overtaking the Lib Dems.

00:03:35.740 And so by this time last year, the Greens are well ahead of the Lib Dems.

00:03:40.380 Labour's really worried about them.

00:03:41.940 and reform is ahead in the polls, over 30%.

00:03:45.680 And when they get over 30%,

00:03:47.660 a lot of seats start to fall their way.

00:03:50.660 And that was then.

00:03:51.660 Now, here we are a year later,

00:03:54.200 and it's gone into reverse.

00:03:57.000 The Greens have had a bad year,

00:03:59.060 though not as well covered

00:04:00.920 as the bad year that reformers had.

00:04:03.500 And Mr. Farage, in particular,

00:04:05.160 and the problem with a one-man band

00:04:07.300 is if the one man has a bad year.

00:04:09.140 Well, if the one man is out of tune,

00:04:10.540 The whole band's out of tune, and that's been a problem for reform.

00:04:14.700 So you've seen, to my surprise, in a way, the re-emergence of the two legacy parties.

00:04:22.840 Labour has had a new lease of life under Andy Burnham.

00:04:26.620 They're now ahead in the polls, though not by much.

00:04:29.020 They're still in the 20s.

00:04:30.700 Kemi Badenoch, I think, has come through as a formidable Conservative leader.

00:04:33.920 Her problem is to get her growing popularity to rub off on her party, which is a very tarnished 0.99

00:04:42.540 brand. And that hasn't happened yet. But it is now down to Reform, Labour, Tory, the three. They're 0.91

00:04:50.000 all almost, with Labour that bit ahead, but they're almost all within statistical shouting distance of

00:04:56.280 each other. And that's a big change. And that's a return to a more familiar politics. In the

00:05:02.880 meantime, as that political change has been going on, the British economy has turned out to be much

00:05:09.180 more resilient in the face of Trump's war than I thought it would be. Nothing to write home about,

00:05:14.820 but then there's no economy was writing home about with the possible exception of America before the

00:05:20.220 war. And we've done not badly, just that the growth rate is redone again. I think that's about as good

00:05:26.300 as it's going to get. I think we are heading for some really tough times. I think this is going to

00:05:31.820 be a difficult winter, a winter of discontent, not in the old-fashioned way of strikes, but in terms

00:05:38.460 of we head into winter with rising inflation, rising interest rates, rising mortgages, no end

00:05:45.180 in sight with Trump's war, a new cost-of-living crisis coming down the pike with energy bills,

00:05:51.620 and with a political system that really doesn't know how to handle this. We're speaking in the

00:05:58.140 week of the Labour Party conference, in which neither the new Chancellor, John Healy, nor the

00:06:03.080 Prime Minister, Mr. Burnham, had anything to say about the winter in Storford. Nothing. It was all

00:06:10.720 about the next manifesto. And oh, looking back, I've got a miner's lamp on my shelf. And, you know,

00:06:17.820 this curious mixture of nostalgia and folklore that still dominates the Labour Party. And

00:06:25.480 how to deal with the cost of living crisis,

00:06:28.840 how to deal with other things that are going to be difficult,

00:06:31.460 what's rising interest rates,

00:06:33.020 how are you going to ever hit your housing target

00:06:34.940 if mortgages are rising?

00:06:36.740 None of that was done.

00:06:38.460 So we still, to me, clearly have major economic problems

00:06:41.120 in the political system

00:06:42.180 that is not up to providing the solutions.

00:06:44.860 Well, like you said,

00:06:45.480 there was a lot of very pleasant-sounding optimistic promises

00:06:49.060 about things that will be done primarily after the next election.

00:06:52.820 So it didn't seem like there was much of substance.

00:06:55.000 But the one thing that was completely missing, and appears to me to be completely missing more broadly from the conversation outside of a few people, is the debt and the deficit, which is continuing to increase it, and the fact that the yields are now higher than they were under List Trust, if I remember correctly.

00:07:13.300 They are, indeed.

00:07:14.020 So we are now in a position where we're spending huge amounts of money paying off the interest on the debt we already have, continuing to borrow more.

00:07:22.640 And now you have a prime minister who says we must undo everything that was done in the last 40 years, which means to go back to bigger government and more government intervention.

00:07:32.480 What does that mean for us economically?

00:07:34.160 It means that we're in trouble, and that it means he wants a bigger state and higher taxation

00:07:40.280 at a time when we have the highest tax burden in peacetime already, and the state already

00:07:47.300 accounts for about 45% of our GDP, which is also high by modern times.

00:07:52.420 So he wants to go, instead of saying, well, taxes are too high, the state's too big, it's

00:07:58.140 not very good at what a lot of it does, let's pare it back, let's have lower taxes, let's

00:08:02.680 have a state which concentrates on doing what the state can do and do it well rather than trying to

00:08:08.360 do everything he wants to move in the opposite direction and no politician is very keen in

00:08:14.760 talking much about the national debt or about the budget deficit which every year adds to that debt

00:08:21.400 because they don't know what to do about it i mean in america fiscal conservatism is dead

00:08:26.600 no one talks about it on the republican or the democrat side and their national debt is now 40

00:08:31.720 trillion, $40 trillion. Nobody even knows what that means. I just think it's a lot.

00:08:38.360 Ronald Reagan once said to me, he said, you know, Andrew, a billion here, a billion there,

00:08:44.040 it soon adds up to real money. Well, it's now a trillion here, a trillion there. And we've got

00:08:50.220 a developing fiscal crisis on the other side of the channel, Francis. Got some real problems at

00:08:55.240 the moment which haven't been much covered. So Britain's not alone in this, but Britain is

00:09:00.640 peculiarly vulnerable to it. We still pay a moron premium thanks to the brilliant work of Liz Truss 0.98

00:09:09.380 during that short period that I call the cluster truss. I could call it something ruder, but I know 0.97

00:09:15.080 this is a family show. So I think the cluster truss will do. And rather than take steps that

00:09:21.300 would recognize that, Rachel Reeves, a Starmer, and now Mr. Healy and Mr. Burnham are going to

00:09:29.260 add to that. They're going to add to the amount of spending. They're going to add to the amount

00:09:34.800 of debt. And that's a pretty dangerous thing to do, because at the moment, the bond markets,

00:09:41.660 which is where governments go to borrow, are pretty skittish about everybody, which is why

00:09:47.440 there has been a global rise in the price you have to pay if you're a government to get your

00:09:53.580 debt away. The 30-year bonds in America this year just reached a new record, the highest since 2002.

00:10:00.940 This year, our 10-year bonds, the government yesterday in Britain borrowed another 4 billion

00:10:06.360 and it had to pay, it's a 10-year bond, it's a guilt as they're called in Britain, it's a 10-year

00:10:13.040 guilt, and we had to pay the highest interest rate since 1999. So you can get the debt away,

00:10:20.900 But you're having to pay more.

00:10:22.300 And of course, down the road,

00:10:23.960 you have to pay more on debt interest all the time.

00:10:26.440 And it's already $110 billion.

00:10:28.940 If debt interest was a government department,

00:10:31.160 it would be the third biggest government department in Britain.

00:10:33.820 And you have to pay it.

00:10:35.300 And you have to find the money for it.

00:10:37.460 And we're particularly vulnerable

00:10:39.260 because the bond markets are already making us pay more for our debt

00:10:44.060 than any other G7 country.

00:10:46.420 and we still have more inflation built into our system

00:10:51.920 than Europe or the United States.

00:10:55.140 And it's that inflation that nudges up interest rates

00:10:58.840 because, you know, if inflation's 3%

00:11:03.240 and you're being asked to lend the government money,

00:11:06.480 you're going to want a lot more than 3% to get...

00:11:08.760 I mean, 3% just keeps it...

00:11:11.680 You don't make any money out of that at all.

00:11:13.580 And so that combination of our past record, the size of our debt, the size of our deficit, and the fact that inflation is kind of built into the system in Britain now means that the bond markets have us in the crosshairs more than anybody else.

00:11:34.940 So come the budget, this government better be very careful what it does.

00:11:38.240 If it tries to fiddle or be smart with the fiscal rules, they will pay a big penalty.

00:11:44.700 And as will we all.

00:11:46.300 But I think it's inevitable that they will do that, given what we've already talked about,

00:11:50.760 the tack towards more government, more spending, etc.

00:11:54.100 And I've been a bit of an accelerationist in all of this for a while,

00:11:59.340 which I think it seems to me the British public are not willing to make the adjustments

00:12:03.560 that we're going to have to reckon with the massive debt and the deficit.

00:12:08.760 And a Burnham-led fiscal crisis is, as far as I can see,

00:12:13.900 the only way that we're ever going to get back to some sanity.

00:12:16.560 Is this a bad theory, a good theory?

00:12:19.520 Well, I think you're right that no one's going to do very much without a crisis.

00:12:26.180 And people are only going to tinker.

00:12:28.700 Yeah.

00:12:29.700 And although the government claims that the deficit is on a downward trajectory, not quite

00:12:37.840 clear that it is.

00:12:38.840 I mean, we've already overborrowed in the first five, six months of this fiscal year.

00:12:43.880 And we could end up borrowing as much this year as we did last year, which would be about

00:12:47.700 $130 billion on top of the $3 trillion.

00:12:50.880 So that doesn't send a great signal.

00:12:53.500 And no one's got much appetite to do it because they're all between a rock and a hard place.

00:12:58.460 cutting public spending seems to be beyond the pale for this government,

00:13:03.460 even though that would be a natural way to start.

00:13:06.300 Their own backbenchers won't let them.

00:13:07.580 They won't let them, because you kill Starmer.

00:13:09.460 Tried in a minor way, one of the reasons why he's no longer prime minister.

00:13:13.700 British government now spends about £1.4 trillion a year,

00:13:18.140 but we're not going to touch spending.

00:13:20.020 And there was no mention at the Labour conference of any kind of spending cuts at all.

00:13:26.140 So what do you then do?

00:13:27.400 borrow more, the scope for borrowing more is going to be very, very limited, if anything,

00:13:34.400 because it's not a case that you can't borrow. But the more you borrow, the more the markets

00:13:40.440 will demand a risk premium. So you'll end up paying more and more and more interest in your

00:13:46.400 debt service costs will rise and rise. So where does that leave? Well, it leaves tax.

00:13:51.300 And at the moment in the Treasury, they're scampering around trying to find various ways

00:13:58.340 of increasing taxes because the government has ruled out an increase in income tax, VAT,

00:14:05.200 and national insurance contributions of employees. These are by far the three biggest tax revenue

00:14:11.260 sources. So if you haven't got access to them, you start to look at all sorts of other things

00:14:16.920 and it's the worst possible way to handle taxation

00:14:20.980 because small tax rises by definition don't raise much

00:14:26.260 and they're nearly all bad.

00:14:28.540 They nearly all screw things up in ways you didn't foresee.

00:14:31.720 They complicate what's already the biggest tax code in the world.

00:14:36.220 Our tax code is longer than anybody else's.

00:14:39.240 An accountant who wanted to print it out and bring it to you

00:14:41.900 would need a wheelbarrow.

00:14:43.340 That's how big it is.

00:14:44.540 So the more tax cuts you have, small tinkering here, there, mansion tax.

00:14:50.160 Remember George Osborne's pasty tax and all the rest of it.

00:14:53.960 It's the worst possible way to raise money, but they have no money.

00:14:57.060 They won't cut.

00:14:57.860 They can't borrow.

00:14:59.160 And so that's what we're going to have.

00:15:00.600 And that will set the economy back even more.

00:15:03.800 So there may come a point.

00:15:05.680 I don't think it'll be triggered in Britain, but it could be triggered by a loss of faith

00:15:10.000 in America or by a bond crisis in France.

00:15:14.540 and that will wave up against us.

00:15:17.440 And just as the IMF forced the government into drastic cuts in 1976

00:15:23.260 when we last had a tax and spend Labour government,

00:15:26.960 so a crisis in the bond markets could force this government

00:15:30.400 into doing things it doesn't want to do.

00:15:32.360 And Andrew, we went around at the time of the last one.

00:15:35.200 What does that look like for ordinary people?

00:15:37.860 People watching this and listening to this,

00:15:39.960 what does that mean will happen for them?

00:15:42.680 What happened last time was that the British government ran out of dollars.

00:15:49.240 In these days, it borrowed in dollars.

00:15:51.500 We don't have that problem today.

00:15:52.920 We borrow in pounds, so there's no exchange rate exposure.

00:15:56.860 But it borrowed in dollars, the pound collapsed, and it couldn't raise the dollars to pay back

00:16:01.180 in dollars.

00:16:02.100 So it had to go to the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, essentially American, run

00:16:07.580 for a dollar loan, which was about three billion pounds worth of dollars to pay back the dollar

00:16:15.320 loans. But the price the IMF said for that was that we want major cuts in public spending

00:16:22.900 right across the board. And so it was two things. It was humility, humiliating that here was one of

00:16:30.980 the great countries, great economies of the world having to go to the IMF to borrow. IMF was meant

00:16:37.020 for third world countries and places that needed help in difficult times.

00:16:42.900 And that at foreign demand, we had to take huge chunks out of the budget.

00:16:49.480 It was a very, very humiliating time for the country, for the Labour government,

00:16:55.720 and it never really recovered from it.

00:16:57.880 It never really recovered.

00:16:59.940 I mean, look, we can blame politicians all we want,

00:17:04.160 But there's the adage, which we all know,

00:17:06.960 is that you get the politicians you deserve.

00:17:09.780 How much do we all have to take responsibility for this?

00:17:12.980 Because we all know that Burnham,

00:17:16.280 it doesn't matter who it is in charge,

00:17:17.900 once they start implementing these kind of cuts

00:17:21.040 and the state starts shrinking,

00:17:22.460 there's a very real risk they'll get voted out.

00:17:25.020 Exactly.

00:17:26.720 It's the people who blame.

00:17:28.820 It's British attitudes to blame

00:17:30.600 because the British people think

00:17:33.400 they can have Scandinavian levels of cradle-to-the-grave welfare

00:17:39.940 on kind of mid-Atlantic taxis.

00:17:44.620 You know, higher than America, but a lot lower than Europe.

00:17:51.500 And here's the thing, you can't,

00:17:53.620 particularly once you've run out of space for borrowing.

00:17:56.840 And in a way, the European left has always been more honest

00:18:00.020 than the British left.

00:18:01.500 The European left has always said,

00:18:03.280 look, if you want all this welfare, that's fine.

00:18:05.840 We're in favor of that.

00:18:07.220 But everybody's going to have to pay higher taxes,

00:18:09.840 not just the rich.

00:18:11.780 Everybody's going to pay higher taxes

00:18:13.540 from low to middle earners onwards,

00:18:16.680 because that's where the real money is.

00:18:18.780 The British left says, no, you can have all of that

00:18:21.480 and we'll only tax the top 5%.

00:18:23.920 Even Jeremy Corbyn, he said,

00:18:26.140 we'll just tax the top 5%. 1.00

00:18:27.740 We'll just get the non-toms.

00:18:30.020 Well, just get these rich millionaires that don't pay any tax.

00:18:34.240 And two things, or three things, the problem with that is,

00:18:38.100 one, the affluent in this country actually pay a lot of tax.

00:18:42.900 The top 1% account for almost 30% of income tax receipts.

00:18:49.880 So they're already paying quite a lot.

00:18:51.380 And the top 10%, I think 60%.

00:18:53.020 That's right.

00:18:53.540 so if you tax them too much and they walk out the door

00:18:59.860 and there is nobody more mobile

00:19:01.420 than a well-educated English-speaking professional

00:19:04.380 they walk out the door, your tax base walks out the door with it

00:19:08.100 we have a tax base more skewed to the rich paying tax

00:19:11.940 than any economy in Europe

00:19:13.660 so that's your tax base that you risk walking out the door

00:19:18.520 And yet we think that it can all be financed by not us paying more tax. Somebody else would pay

00:19:28.500 more tax. And it's become a kind of free ride. Plus, there's been a psychological change.

00:19:35.180 We've fallen back in love with big government. You know, it took Mrs. Thatcher quite a while to

00:19:43.420 shake the government's addiction, of the people's addiction to big government. But she did it in

00:19:51.060 the end. And Blair and Brown built on her legacy. And they did not increase the size of the state

00:19:57.260 by very much at all. And they didn't increase taxes by very much. They didn't increase income

00:20:02.720 tax rates at all until Brown decided to leave a little bomb for the incoming government in the

00:20:08.360 last minute, but that's not what we've done now. I think two things happened in recent history.

00:20:14.580 One was that the previous Conservative government, under Mr. Cameron and then the shambles of

00:20:20.820 Prime Ministers that followed, actually lost faith with the Thatcher legacy and began to move

00:20:28.280 away from it, began to leave less in markets, to leave less in competition. I mean, they stitched

00:20:35.000 up the energy market, so it's effectively run by government. That was done under them now.

00:20:40.480 And then COVID came. And COVID is like a war. War equals big government. It's the only way you can

00:20:47.240 win. COVID was the same. It's a pandemic. We need big government. We need a scheme to pay people

00:20:54.560 when they're not working. And then Ukraine came. And that was a war. And that had a huge energy 0.99

00:21:00.360 crisis, more big government, now subsidies for household energy bills. Boris Johnson was a big

00:21:06.680 government conservative. Donald Trump is a big government conservative as well. And so suddenly

00:21:11.800 big government is fashionable again. But the thing the British don't seem to realize, they rather

00:21:16.580 like big government. They don't say, you're doing too much. They say, well, you're doing that. Why

00:21:20.680 can't you do that? Why can't you do that? That's become the culture. And the problem with that is

00:21:26.760 that in the end, government tries to do too much, and it ends up doing almost everything badly.

00:21:34.780 And the idea that government should do only what government has to do and do it well,

00:21:41.280 which is a kind of Thatcherite, Jeffersonian view of government, that's gone by the board.

00:21:48.020 And yet, although as night follows day, high taxes follow big government, in the end, you

00:21:56.260 can't have one without the other. But we don't seem to accept that. We think, no, we can have

00:22:02.580 big government, but only that rich guy around the corner. He needs to pay more tax. I don't need to

00:22:07.760 pay more tax. Why should I pay? I'd pay a lot of tax already. And so I think the whole cultural

00:22:13.120 attitude of the country is out of kilter for taking whoever's in power, of taking the right

00:22:20.460 decisions that would get us back onto an even keel. I assumed selling the merch would be the

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00:23:09.400 trigger. And it also strikes me that there's a real politics of envy going on. You see it

00:23:16.840 online, there's a real hatred of the top 1%, as if the rest of the people feel that they've

00:23:22.960 been cheated by people earning more money than them. It strikes me, actually, as quite un-British.

00:23:30.560 Well, it's un-British, and it's kind of stupid as well, because there's a kind of 1.00

00:23:34.400 implication that this person has only become a billionaire by screwing you. Well, where's 0.99

00:23:41.780 the evidence for that? You know, in a way, you would want more billionaires if they're creating

00:23:45.920 more jobs and investing and creating more people.

00:23:49.360 I mean, we're boasting at the moment because our high-tech sector is a lot better than

00:23:54.760 we think it is because we're always so down on ourselves.

00:23:57.680 I mean, we have more unicorns, which is a high-tech startup worth a billion.

00:24:04.440 We have more unicorns than the three biggest unicorn markets combined in Europe, more than

00:24:11.600 the three biggest combined.

00:24:13.600 That's a success story.

00:24:14.860 But the culture doesn't treat it as a success.

00:24:17.820 The culture is, well, why are you so rich?

00:24:19.480 Why am I not?

00:24:20.920 But then we have politicians who pander to that.

00:24:23.620 And previous Tory governments have pander to that as well.

00:24:26.880 You want more wealth.

00:24:28.160 I mean, it's very interesting that in Andy Burnham's speech,

00:24:32.320 there wasn't a single word about wealth creation

00:24:35.300 or what generates wealth.

00:24:38.200 Not a single word about promoting enterprise.

00:24:40.920 Not a single word about encouraging businesses

00:24:43.520 and getting more competition.

00:24:45.640 Everything that gives you the revenue, the resource

00:24:49.280 to then spend on schools and hospitals and better roads

00:24:53.740 and a better health service and so on.

00:24:56.880 And we've got a political culture now

00:24:59.400 which is obsessed with cutting up the cake.

00:25:02.880 You can have just that bit.

00:25:04.040 I'm going to have this bit.

00:25:05.320 You can have anything.

00:25:06.120 You've got enough.

00:25:07.220 Rather than a set of policies that will say,

00:25:12.700 hey, how do we make this cake bigger?

00:25:15.400 And then there'll be more to go around for everybody.

00:25:18.260 I mean, there's one thing that we're ignoring here.

00:25:20.560 And there's plenty of people who are watching this

00:25:22.460 who are on the left.

00:25:23.660 And to be fair, they've got a point.

00:25:25.380 And they're going to go, Andrew, come on, be fair.

00:25:27.960 What about the economic crash 2008?

00:25:30.380 That was a really devastating effect on our economy.

00:25:34.420 Wages haven't really grown since then.

00:25:37.200 That isn't people's fault.

00:25:38.680 They're still going out.

00:25:39.600 They're still working hard.

00:25:40.680 I think that's true.

00:25:42.700 And I think the long tail, the long shadow of the great financial crash of 2008 has been

00:25:52.360 seriously underappreciated.

00:25:54.660 You see, the great fear in 2008 when this crash took place was that that crash, as in

00:26:04.020 1929, would morph into a Great Depression, as it did in the 1930s.

00:26:11.380 America lost a quarter of its GDP, 25% of the labor force.

00:26:15.840 America unemployed.

00:26:17.680 Times of huge hardship in this country, in South Wales, Clydeside, and north of England.

00:26:25.700 And so all of the policy work went into trying to stop that from happening.

00:26:32.560 And the solution, and it was the right solution, was QE, quantities of easing,

00:26:37.920 the printing, electronic printing of money.

00:26:40.920 Not helicopter money that you just drop

00:26:43.100 and you never get back,

00:26:44.800 but money in a way that you put into the system

00:26:46.940 and then when it's done,

00:26:48.280 you begin to take it out again.

00:26:50.080 It was a very sophisticated way.

00:26:52.300 Ben Bernanke, who'd written the definitive book

00:26:55.260 on the crash of 1929,

00:26:57.560 we were lucky he was chairman

00:26:59.180 of the Federal Reserve at the time.

00:27:01.360 That was the right thing to do,

00:27:03.300 but it had a consequence.

00:27:05.180 Because all that money,

00:27:06.460 let's just take Britain.

00:27:07.380 The Bank of England bought £875 billion worth of bonds from the banks and other institutional

00:27:20.340 investors.

00:27:21.540 It put these bonds onto its balance sheet and it put the money onto the bank's balance

00:27:27.600 sheet.

00:27:27.980 So the theory that they'll lend more, they'll get the money into the system.

00:27:32.160 Now, it stopped the Great Depression, and that should not be underestimated.

00:27:36.500 but that money had to find a place to go. And of course, where does it go? It goes into assets.

00:27:43.600 It goes into stocks and shares and property and companies. And who has these assets? People who

00:27:50.980 are already pretty well off, who've already got a big house in London, have already got a stock

00:27:55.480 and share portfolio. And you had a situation where, to put it bluntly, a little bit unsophisticated,

00:28:02.300 but it's good enough. The people who had caused the crash, the big financial institutions,

00:28:09.620 were suddenly doing incredibly well again, with all this money was now on their balance sheet.

00:28:14.720 They had to spend, you had a 10 million pound house in London, it was now 14 million, 15 million.

00:28:20.900 And the people who'd done nothing to cause the crash, the workers, people on a wage,

00:28:26.600 were seeing their wages not rising at all, and they were living week to week or month to month.

00:28:32.300 So, of course, resentment was about to burn.

00:28:34.560 They were right.

00:28:35.920 And we didn't see this happening quickly enough.

00:28:38.880 We dined out on the fact,

00:28:40.040 we've stopped a great recession.

00:28:42.540 Thank God.

00:28:43.280 Isn't that a great achievement?

00:28:44.640 We've done better than the 30s.

00:28:46.240 We didn't see the consequences for quite some time

00:28:50.700 of the resentment that was building up

00:28:54.320 among those who hadn't caused the crash,

00:28:57.740 but were suffering,

00:28:59.360 looking at those who had caused the crash,

00:29:02.300 and doing better than ever before.

00:29:06.300 And then you add in mass migration on top of that,

00:29:11.140 which made life more difficult for blue-collar workers as well,

00:29:15.020 and helped to depress wages,

00:29:17.640 which were already depressed badly enough.

00:29:20.860 And you had a situation where the politics of it turned sour.

00:29:26.820 And ordinary people begin to think,

00:29:28.900 hey, nobody's listening to me anymore.

00:29:30.500 Why am I being penalized?

00:29:31.860 And I believe that if it wasn't for that long tail, that dark shadow of the great crash, there would not have been Brexit. We would not have voted to leave in 2016. And Donald Trump would not have won in 2016.

00:29:49.580 Both these votes were the revenge of what my old mentor, Alistair Burnett, who was editor of The Economist, used to call, with reverence, plain folk in the nicest sense of the word, the plain, decent people of this country.

00:30:04.360 They were the rebellion of the plain folk of this country against the elites who had caused so many of our problems, but were still doing so well.

00:30:16.160 And it has continued since, and it explains the rise of the National Rally of Le Pen in France and also of the AFD in Germany, of the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, not the Social Democrats, the Sweden Democrats, of Madame Maloney's party in Italy.

00:30:33.480 It's had an enormous political impact,

00:30:36.500 which is not over yet, which is still there.

00:30:39.680 Well, as you say, I mean, it's clear we're living

00:30:41.740 in the age of populism, both left and right,

00:30:44.060 across the European continent.

00:30:46.080 What's interesting to me about what you were just talking about

00:30:48.180 is the cyclical nature of things,

00:30:49.440 because people say that great financial institutions

00:30:51.880 caused the crash, but I think it's clear

00:30:54.560 that it was the repealing of Glass-Steagall in the US

00:30:56.840 and also some of the laws around financial regulations

00:30:59.820 in this country that meant that they were able

00:31:02.360 to do the things that had been previously been illegal. And those things were brought in after

00:31:07.580 the 1929 crash. So we seem to go around in circles. And to me, this leap into, I mean,

00:31:14.980 the left used to deny they won socialism, but I think now they're openly championing it. And that's

00:31:20.840 what you saw at the Labour conference. Oh, I don't think there's any doubt about that. I mean,

00:31:24.180 Andy Burnham laid out the most explicit tax and spend socialism of any Labour leader.

00:31:32.360 other than the brief Corbyn interregnum,

00:31:34.600 and he never really spelled out very well.

00:31:37.320 I think you have to go back to the 1970s,

00:31:39.240 and even the 1970s, they weren't so explicit about it.

00:31:44.200 And I think you can like it or dislike it,

00:31:46.840 but the one thing you can't say is that we don't know what he stands for.

00:31:50.920 We now know what he stands for, it's quite clear.

00:31:52.840 We now know what he meant by rolling back 40 years of neoliberalism.

00:31:57.080 It was kind of unclear if that was just a buzz phrase.

00:31:59.480 What the hell is neoliberalism?

00:32:00.920 Andrew, have you worked out what that means yet? Because I hear a lot of people saying

00:32:04.200 neoliberalism. What does it mean? It means the end of the Thatcher settlement.

00:32:08.900 Right. So Thatcherism was neoliberalism in that conception.

00:32:12.340 Well, that's what he's called. No one called it that at the time. I mean, nobody other than

00:32:16.980 policy wonks call it that at any time. But neoliberalism is meant to be an updated version

00:32:23.580 of 19th century liberal economics,

00:32:26.360 of free markets, limited government, and sound money.

00:32:32.500 And it gets neo because in a modern sense,

00:32:35.920 it's always going to be that bit different

00:32:37.440 in a sophisticated modern economy.

00:32:40.100 And he was quite explicit.

00:32:42.580 Today, he wants the state to control housing.

00:32:46.880 I don't quite know how you do that,

00:32:48.320 but he wants the state to control housing.

00:32:50.000 Do you mean rent controls by that?

00:32:51.920 No, well, he may. 1.00

00:32:53.580 But I think he means more council house building, but more control of private landlords. 1.00

00:33:02.800 If you're a private landlord they don't like, then they want the right to come and take your property away.

00:33:08.520 He said that explicitly in his speech.

00:33:12.600 He wants to control energy, for the state to control energy.

00:33:16.260 He wants the state to control water and other utilities.

00:33:22.380 And at the same time, he wants the state to grow in size.

00:33:26.560 And he knows that taxes will have to rise to pay for that.

00:33:29.580 So it's a quite, it's a big change.

00:33:33.000 Now, the fact is that Thatcherism and the way it was consolidated

00:33:37.120 under Blair and Brown, very cleverly, I think,

00:33:40.380 was already beginning to erode, ironically,

00:33:43.100 under the previous Tory government.

00:33:45.540 They had lost faith in it.

00:33:46.660 And Boris Johnson, in particular, when he came along completely,

00:33:49.800 You know, he was just obsessed with big government.

00:33:52.760 I mean, was he wanting to build a tunnel under the Irish Sea at one stage?

00:33:57.340 You know, I mean, it was all because someone had to tell him

00:33:59.960 there's a really deep ditch in the Irish Sea.

00:34:02.120 It's not quite easy to build a tunnel.

00:34:04.740 So that was already underway, the flight from a largely market-led economy

00:34:12.460 with huge social underpinning.

00:34:15.040 Nobody denies that.

00:34:16.100 Social market economy is the best way to describe it.

00:34:19.800 And Andy Burnham wants to finish the job.

00:34:23.180 He wants a bigger state in everything.

00:34:24.960 He wants the state to be the guiding light.

00:34:27.660 He believes that a bigger state means more growth.

00:34:30.960 That's his theory of growth.

00:34:33.100 He doesn't have a plan for growth, but he has a theory of growth.

00:34:36.620 He believes that a combination of more state intervention,

00:34:42.020 ideally of state ownership, where he can't afford that,

00:34:45.480 like the water companies, then more state control.

00:34:48.840 uh more state control more state ownership coupled with a dash of burnham type devolution

00:34:57.040 where you empower not just the central state but the local mayors or whatever the government is

00:35:03.860 that's his theory of growth he believes that will bring growth back my own view is he's away with 0.99

00:35:11.560 the fairies but that's his belief why don't you think it's going to work because i don't see 0.97

00:35:18.240 anywhere in the world, where it ever has. Indeed, the whole lesson of social democracy 0.93

00:35:24.460 in continental Europe of the late 20th and early 21st century is that social democracy

00:35:35.420 works really well in encouraging business and enterprise and of spreading the wealth

00:35:44.240 through the country, provided you don't let the state get too big. You don't let the state become

00:35:51.760 ubiquitous. You don't try to control everything. I mean, if you look at the history of the Swedish

00:35:57.920 Social Democrats, they did gangbusters as long as they didn't let the state get too big, and then

00:36:03.820 they lost it. And the state got bigger and bigger and bigger. They started talking about taking over

00:36:09.020 companies and giving unions a stake in companies and controlling them. And the whole thing fell

00:36:15.740 apart in the 80s and 90s. So I don't know anywhere. And look, I look at a country like France,

00:36:23.440 where the state is much bigger than it is. The state accounts for 56% of France's GDP.

00:36:28.760 It's still only 45 in hours. And I look at Germany, where the state is big as well.

00:36:33.900 And if state ownership and state control equaled economic growth,

00:36:41.860 Germany and France would be booming.

00:36:44.520 And they're not even growing.

00:36:46.680 They're growing even more slowly than we are.

00:36:49.060 So I see no correlation, unlike Mr. Burnham's theory of growth,

00:36:55.680 between more state control, more state ownership,

00:36:59.320 a bigger state in economic growth.

00:37:02.200 Indeed, I see the opposite, that there comes a time when the state is so big, it's a dampener on growth.

00:37:08.720 It becomes a hindrance to growth, and that's where we are now.

00:37:15.720 And what that leads to, as we've touched on before, is the rise of populism.

00:37:19.840 Now, you know, before you could sort of dismiss it, maybe it was just one person here or one person over there.

00:37:26.740 But you're looking at Europe, and there's a very real chance.

00:37:32.040 I mean, the AFD are going to do very, very well.

00:37:35.260 Well, they've already won two state elections.

00:37:37.660 So there may be a chance of them getting actually into power,

00:37:41.660 significant, real power.

00:37:43.080 Harder to see, because you can't form a government in Germany

00:37:46.080 without doing a coalition, and nobody will deal with them.

00:37:49.200 But it doesn't mean to say they will not.

00:37:50.880 If an election was held tomorrow in Germany,

00:37:53.600 they would have almost the same number of seats

00:37:58.560 as the social democrats and the christian democrats combined

00:38:01.880 and although there would be nobody to deal with them to form a government

00:38:05.400 they would have huge influence on whoever the government was

00:38:08.680 so they are a rising power

00:38:10.020 and not just in the east which is their traditional heartland

00:38:13.960 so that's what's happening in europe

00:38:15.460 sorry andrew we'll just go back to with the afd

00:38:18.840 can you just because i don't know and i want everybody says they're far right

00:38:22.060 what actually are they

00:38:23.380 Although, you know, people throw around the words hard right in all sorts of things.

00:38:28.540 Reform in this country is called hard right.

00:38:31.280 Le Pen's national rally in France is still called hard right.

00:38:35.080 Maloney sometimes in Italy is still called hard right.

00:38:39.160 The AFD is hard right.

00:38:41.000 That is a hard right party.

00:38:43.520 Can you define the term for us, Andrew?

00:38:45.500 Because here, like you say, I hear conservative politicians being described as hard right.

00:38:49.440 It's ethno-nationalist.

00:38:51.580 It basically wants to round up people

00:38:53.640 who weren't born in Germany and get rid of them.

00:38:56.340 It's an ethno-nationalist party 0.71

00:38:58.260 with the added tweak of being very pro-Kremlin.

00:39:02.440 Quite remarkable that the right,

00:39:04.740 the populist right, has this soft spot

00:39:06.620 for Mr. Putin's Russia.

00:39:08.740 You know, you saw a bit of that in reform.

00:39:11.420 Le Pen's party was pretty close.

00:39:14.220 I mean, she's managed to get away from that.

00:39:17.860 Mrs. Maloney in Italy

00:39:19.520 has not done that.

00:39:22.040 She's been very solid for Ukraine.

00:39:24.420 But her party, the Brotherhood of Italy party,

00:39:28.200 is very pro-Kremlin on that.

00:39:30.960 But the bigger issue,

00:39:32.540 coming back to this era of big government,

00:39:35.040 is that the populist left and the populist right,

00:39:40.520 they both believe in big government.

00:39:42.260 They don't go out left, right, in a horizontal line.

00:39:47.180 They come in a circle.

00:39:48.120 though, if you look at the economic policies of Le Pen in France and of Mélenchon, who's the

00:39:54.760 populist left equivalent, who seems to have been around forever, they're not that different. They

00:40:00.700 want big government. They don't like big business. They want protectionism. So that means that even

00:40:07.580 the populists, you know, in the old days, the radical right meant Reaganite or Thatcherite,

00:40:13.080 and that would take on big government. That would cut taxes, reduce government,

00:40:16.340 get the enterprise animal spirits going again. It's not the populace, right?

00:40:22.720 If you own gold, you probably bought it for the same reason I did, because you looked at what

00:40:27.400 central banks are doing to currencies and decided you wanted something they can't print. Good

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00:40:37.220 sitting there. It's not doing anything. You're paying to store it. You're paying to insure it.

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00:41:42.780 Well, it's interesting because I don't know what your opinion on this. It'd be interesting to

00:41:46.820 discuss this in terms of this country being perhaps the exception, because certainly the

00:41:50.740 people at the top of reform, the populist right-wing party in this country, we've had them

00:41:55.880 all on Nigel Farage, Soella Bravham, and Robert Jenner. And I've always asked them this question

00:41:59.840 because to me this is fascinating about the difference between all of them

00:42:04.260 who are clearly Thatcherites and believe in small government and low taxes

00:42:07.300 and a lot of their newly acquired voter base

00:42:10.820 who are far to the left of them on economics.

00:42:13.640 On economics, that's right.

00:42:15.360 Right.

00:42:15.980 So the question is, are we perhaps the outlier

00:42:19.140 in that we do actually in this country have a populist right-wing alternative

00:42:23.300 which believes in small government still?

00:42:25.940 I'm not sure it does because although you're quite right,

00:42:28.520 Nigel Farage is basically a Thatcherite.

00:42:31.240 I think Richard Tice, I think he's the deputy leader,

00:42:34.300 he's basically a Thatcherite.

00:42:36.240 But they come up against the people whose votes they need.

00:42:39.560 And so you end up, these Thatcherites saying,

00:42:42.340 well, actually, I think we should abolish

00:42:45.020 the two-child limit of welfare.

00:42:48.840 And Farage came out in favour of abolishing it,

00:42:51.000 which is what Labour did.

00:42:52.860 You've seen here the triple lock,

00:42:54.460 which Andy Burnham has had the guts to do something about.

00:42:57.360 Oh, no reform is attacking that.

00:42:59.380 You know, they say they're Thatcherite,

00:43:01.000 but they're actually the party of big welfare

00:43:02.720 because the Red Wall,

00:43:04.300 they're worried that the Red Wall's in favor of welfare,

00:43:06.640 so they don't want to do anything to piss off the Red Wall.

00:43:09.340 So although our populist right,

00:43:12.660 first of all, is nowhere near as right as anything like the AFD.

00:43:16.300 I mean, I think for that,

00:43:17.360 you have to go more to restore parties like that.

00:43:21.060 And it isn't as right on economic.

00:43:22.720 I think you are right.

00:43:23.680 It's not as obsessed with the big government

00:43:26.280 as the populist right in continental Europe.

00:43:30.220 But it's, and it's instincts of what you say they are,

00:43:33.340 they are more small government.

00:43:35.100 But at the end of the day,

00:43:36.060 it looks as if it's potential constituency,

00:43:37.920 and so you don't get the benefit of that.

00:43:39.540 Well, this is where we come back

00:43:40.540 to both my and France's point,

00:43:42.140 which is it's ultimately up to the people of this country

00:43:45.380 who want big government.

00:43:46.680 And it looks to me like they're going to get it good and hard.

00:43:49.860 And until we all learn the lesson

00:43:51.820 of what happens when you do that,

00:43:53.800 we're going to be trapped in the situation.

00:43:55.440 Well, we're in an interesting time. We've just come out of the Labour Party conference in Liverpool. And the Tory party conference in Birmingham is going to open in the upcoming weekend and go into the earlier part of next week.

00:44:11.120 And I think now the interesting thing we see, how do the Conservatives position themselves?

00:44:17.120 They are now up against a clearly tax and spend socialist government.

00:44:24.380 So do they now say this is our chance to rediscover our Thatcherite roots?

00:44:31.520 And of course, bring them into a modern setting and modern issues, which I would guess is

00:44:37.640 probably came a bit in North's instincts, but can she bring the party with her? Is she prepared to

00:44:44.120 take unpopular decisions, even unpopular policies that might not in the short run have a lateral

00:44:51.620 advantage? But I think sometimes you have to have the courage and the faith in your own convictions

00:44:59.880 and in your own analysis. And if you think that given the size of government in Britain already,

00:45:07.640 and the size of the tax burden and the scale of the borrowing,

00:45:12.760 then attempting to do more of the same on a grand scale,

00:45:17.980 which is now the Burnham strategy, 0.86

00:45:20.120 if you think that's the route to going to hell in a handbasket,

00:45:23.160 then you need the intellectual courage to lay down the markers,

00:45:31.520 to explain why this is going to happen,

00:45:33.880 to explain what the alternative is,

00:45:37.000 to have the policies ready with the alternative,

00:45:40.680 and to be ready to move when you are proved right.

00:45:43.980 Because after all, that's what happened in the 70s.

00:45:46.400 I mean, I was with The Economist in the 70s.

00:45:49.560 It was my first main job out of university.

00:45:53.160 And a lot of the work that was done in the 1970s

00:45:56.400 developed, rediscovered the market,

00:45:59.260 invented the concept of privatizing a lot of state-owned services and state-owned industries,

00:46:08.060 of providing a tax system that would incentivize individuals and companies and entrepreneurs.

00:46:17.140 Now, for a while, and also predicting that what labor was up to would end in tears, in disaster,

00:46:24.880 and, in particular, what had to be done about the unions.

00:46:30.580 That was the single biggest problem in the 70s.

00:46:35.660 Without tackling the unions, you could do almost nothing

00:46:39.460 to build an alternative agenda.

00:46:41.760 Now, for a long time, we kind of felt we were tramping away

00:46:47.740 in the vineyards and many people taking notice of us

00:46:52.140 or of it ever coming our way, but it did.

00:46:56.900 We were vindicated by the IMF coming in 76.

00:47:00.260 We were vindicated by a winter of discontent.

00:47:03.880 You go back to the 70s, we were told,

00:47:05.340 the only reason the unions are on strike

00:47:06.880 is because it's an evil Tory government

00:47:09.360 and if only we had a Labour government,

00:47:11.360 we wouldn't go on strike.

00:47:12.460 Well, last time I looked,

00:47:14.080 there was a Labour government in 78, 79

00:47:16.060 when we had the winter of discontent.

00:47:18.380 And so all that was blown apart.

00:47:19.940 And here, bit by bit, it wasn't just the economists, but it played a major part.

00:47:24.280 There were other think tanks, not a thousand miles from where we are.

00:47:28.680 They had the courage of their convictions.

00:47:30.540 They did their homework.

00:47:32.080 They were proved right.

00:47:33.440 And they had an alternative agenda to take advantage of that.

00:47:38.920 And I think that's what the Tories have to do now and be ready to move when they're proved right.

00:47:44.940 look the problem with the Tories is they're so tarnished correct they're so tarnished there are

00:47:52.940 lots of people particularly working class conservatives more than anyone who will look

00:47:58.620 at the Tories and look at what they have done particularly when it comes to immigration

00:48:03.820 and go I'm not I'm just not doing it and you can't blame them I don't blame them because

00:48:09.900 they're right. And I think that is the problem. I mean, it's almost unheard of for, given the

00:48:17.240 thumping they got in July 2024, it's unheard of for any party like that to recover for the next

00:48:26.580 election. I mean, if you look when Labour lost in 79, it was 97 before they got back in. You know,

00:48:34.660 when the Tories lost in 97, it was 2010. And even then, they only got back in with a coalition with

00:48:41.880 the Liberal Democrats. There, you look, again, when Labour lost in 2010, it was 24 before they

00:48:50.360 got back. Normally, when you get thumped, you don't recover. And the Tories were royally and

00:48:55.780 deservedly thumped in July of 2024. And they did let their own supporters down. They let them down.

00:49:03.220 You take the immigration thing above all else.

00:49:07.040 They knew that immigration was a really big issue

00:49:10.960 for their blue-collar supporters.

00:49:13.700 They knew it was causing real anguish and pain,

00:49:16.560 not just economically, but for many socially as well.

00:49:19.660 It was changing the nature of the societies

00:49:22.240 that they were brought up in.

00:49:24.180 They said, vote Brexit and we'll put it right.

00:49:26.980 We'll get it right.

00:49:28.080 People said, right, we'll vote Brexit.

00:49:29.600 it. And then in 2022, 21, under the great Boris Johnson, we had a net migration of half a million.

00:49:39.960 That wasn't bad enough. We had a net migration of almost a million the next year. And if that

00:49:44.860 wasn't enough, we had a net migration of another million the following year. Mr. Johnson, the only

00:49:52.920 politician ever to have an immigration wave named after him. The Boris wave. You don't recover from

00:49:59.860 that quickly. You just, and ironically, the Tories eventually did put things in place

00:50:08.200 which have had a major impact on net migration. I mean, this year it'll be about 170,000.

00:50:15.160 Takeout students is already closer to 100,000 now. And of course, Labour, who opposed all these

00:50:20.680 changes, is getting the benefit of it. So I think you're right. I don't, I think Kemi

00:50:26.300 Badenoch, who, as I say, I think has emerged as a leader of some distinction, but I don't think

00:50:32.780 she, she doesn't rescue the Tories by the time of the next election. And Andrew, you mentioned

00:50:38.100 Brexit. The current Labour government are now talking about reversing it and they haven't

00:50:42.860 as going as far as reversing it. Yeah, it's one of the options, Mr. Burnham says.

00:50:47.200 Francis and I both voted Remain, but we were outraged by some of the way that unfolded from there,

00:50:57.340 where people wanted to unilaterally overturn a democratic vote that they didn't agree with.

00:51:02.220 What would happen to this country if Labour tried to take this country back into the European Union?

00:51:08.480 I think if they tried, at the moment, they think it's going to be a piece of cake,

00:51:13.120 because the polls say that most people want to rejoin.

00:51:17.200 and that they've got buyer's remorse and that they wish they'd never voted for Brexit in the

00:51:23.480 first place. And there is an element of that which is true. But that changes the moment you start to

00:51:31.140 have the debate. That changes the moment you start to talk about the issues. That changes

00:51:37.160 the moment you're presented with the price of rejoining the club, which will be enormous. I

00:51:43.620 I mean, even Germany this week is rebelling against the size of the next European budget,

00:51:51.140 which is, I think, now over a trillion, of which Britain would have to pay a big share.

00:51:57.960 This time with no rebate.

00:52:00.820 If that's a rebate, that's never coming back, baby.

00:52:03.780 That's gone.

00:52:04.700 That's history.

00:52:06.000 So that's the price of entry.

00:52:07.720 That would be 20, 30, 40 billion a year.

00:52:11.460 We don't know.

00:52:12.580 A lot of money.

00:52:14.340 And then we'll be raising the issue, well, what about the euro?

00:52:19.000 Are you going to join that?

00:52:20.480 Because we think you should.

00:52:21.680 New members should join the euro.

00:52:23.840 And although we could probably get around that,

00:52:28.140 we'd be under pressure to give some kind of indication

00:52:31.060 that we're prepared to join the euro at some stage and revisit that.

00:52:35.560 And then you've got Schengen.

00:52:39.300 Well, new members have meant to join Schengen.

00:52:42.400 This is free movement.

00:52:43.220 It's free movement with bells on.

00:52:46.480 And you start to add all that up and you begin to say,

00:52:51.220 maybe this isn't such a good idea after all.

00:52:54.400 And then the debate will come out because, you see,

00:52:57.280 the argument at the moment, my view is that there were

00:53:01.300 actually very good economic arguments for not voting too easy.

00:53:08.600 And it's just a pity that Remain didn't make them.

00:53:11.560 I mean, the Remain fought an appalling, negative, complacent campaign, and did for many Remainers

00:53:20.860 like the egregious Alastair Campbell and so on.

00:53:23.120 They only started fighting after they'd lost.

00:53:25.940 And we had that in a lifetime of covering British politics.

00:53:31.240 That period between 2016 and 2019, the Theresa May period, was the most miserable time I

00:53:39.060 can remember in British politics.

00:53:41.320 It was just, we were rudderless.

00:53:43.920 We were being buffeted by the Supreme Court on one side,

00:53:47.300 Keir Starmer's second referendum on the other,

00:53:50.000 Theresa May clueless about what to do regarding Brexit 1.00

00:53:53.920 as a problem to be managed rather than the only proper way forward 1.00

00:53:58.360 whether you were for or against it, an opportunity to be seized.

00:54:01.740 It was a terrible time.

00:54:04.640 And the one thing I'll give Mr. Johnson credit for

00:54:06.900 was winning that December election in 2019,

00:54:10.080 which kind of ended that bit. You put Europe back on the agenda. That comes back. That miserable

00:54:17.720 time all comes back. And it sucked the bandwidth out of British politics. It meant the final,

00:54:25.660 the end of that decade of the Tory government towards 2020. It had run out of any purpose,

00:54:32.640 of any agenda of other than to get Brexit over the line in some way. It was humiliating. The

00:54:41.020 Europeans gave us a punishment beating for having the audacity to even think of leaving and to also

00:54:49.060 to make sure that no one else thought of following us. And they won. No one else has

00:54:54.500 followed us. Even the AFD in Germany, which used to be an exit party, doesn't want to do that.

00:55:01.820 Like Le Pen used to be no more.

00:55:03.780 She doesn't even want to leave the euro.

00:55:05.460 So you bring all that back.

00:55:08.580 And then other people will say,

00:55:10.400 well, the argument is,

00:55:12.780 this is how we get growth back into the system.

00:55:15.740 If we can join the single market,

00:55:17.400 join the customs union,

00:55:19.220 we'll get that economic growth.

00:55:21.060 And in theory, that may be the case.

00:55:24.380 But if it is the case,

00:55:26.440 why are Germany, Italy, and France

00:55:29.380 growing more small and slowly than we are.

00:55:32.640 Of course, last time I looked,

00:55:33.680 they didn't leave the customs union.

00:55:35.200 They didn't leave the single market.

00:55:36.980 So I think it starts off with something we're good.

00:55:39.200 And I think it's something that they think,

00:55:41.260 hey, we can do this.

00:55:42.700 The rank and file of Labour, the Lib Dems, 1.00

00:55:45.120 the Greens, the media, the chattering classes, 0.88

00:55:48.740 the metropolitan white collar public sector workers 0.65

00:55:52.400 who are now Labour's natural base.

00:55:55.200 They're going to love it.

00:55:56.380 Let's do it. 0.99

00:55:57.080 and it is, to use a technical term, has all the makings of a shitshow. 0.88

00:56:03.220 And there will come a point, if they get that far down the road, 0.87

00:56:07.080 that Burnham will be saying, why did I ever do this?

00:56:10.220 Why did I go down this road?

00:56:11.880 Because I've now got no time to do anything else.

00:56:14.300 I'm knackered trying to get this over the line.

00:56:17.140 And there's all these other things I wanted to do,

00:56:18.880 and I've got no time for them.

00:56:21.360 Do you think, and a lot of people have said

00:56:24.240 that the next general election in this country is existential.

00:56:27.880 Would you share that opinion, or do you think that's hyperbolic?

00:56:30.620 We always say that because we want people to take notice of what we're saying.

00:56:34.980 It depends on what it's fought on.

00:56:37.600 It depends on what the dividing line is.

00:56:40.740 Now, if it's fought on a dividing line,

00:56:44.240 and this could involve conservative and reform on one side,

00:56:49.860 maybe a little closer than they'd like to make out,

00:56:52.480 because it's dawned on them that divided they fall

00:56:56.760 and some kind of accommodation will have to be reached,

00:57:00.680 but it is another matter.

00:57:02.460 But if it's a choice between returning to a more market economy,

00:57:10.100 more enterprise-driven, more business-friendly,

00:57:14.620 more lower tax, smaller government,

00:57:17.580 versus the Andy Burnham prospectus, which is the opposite,

00:57:22.480 then yeah, that's a big choice.

00:57:24.600 Because although if people vote in a way that results in a right-of-centre government

00:57:29.200 that might not deliver on all these things,

00:57:33.120 if the country does vote for the Andy Burnham prospectus, that's it.

00:57:37.920 We are a socialist tax-and-spend future.

00:57:43.620 There's no going back from that if it votes for it.

00:57:46.340 And with a coalition, he may not get an overall majority,

00:57:50.380 even with a coalition of Lib Dems, Greens, SNP,

00:57:55.340 giving them moral support when he needs it.

00:57:57.620 You have locked the country in

00:58:00.180 to a tax-and-spend socialist future in the 2030s.

00:58:06.180 The people who watch this show have generally done more thinking

00:58:09.740 about how governments operate the most,

00:58:11.940 but there's a difference between understanding the problem

00:58:14.940 and having actually built insulation against it.

00:58:18.200 That's the world Mikel Thorup operates in. He's been living as an expat for over 25 years,

00:58:23.060 visiting more than 110 countries and calling nine of them home. He founded Expat Money nearly a

00:58:28.680 decade ago to help others do the same. When he helped someone build an international plan B,

00:58:33.300 the knowledge he brings is entirely firsthand. Every recommendation comes from something he

00:58:38.380 has already done himself. Expat Money works specifically with freedom-minded families

00:58:43.600 and investors who want to reduce their exposure on any one government or any one system.

00:58:49.340 Second residencies, second citizenships, offshore banking, international real estate,

00:58:53.980 legal structures that spread your life across borders.

00:58:56.820 Mikkel has put together a free report called Plan B Residencies and Instant Citizenships.

00:59:02.320 It covers five routes to a second passport, including one that almost never gets discussed.

00:59:07.320 How a foreign residency functions as genuine political insurance,

00:59:10.760 which countries actually make sense

00:59:13.060 depending on what you're trying to protect

00:59:14.680 and what it realistically costs.

00:59:17.360 Go to expatmoney.com slash trigger

00:59:19.580 or click the link in the description of this episode

00:59:22.180 to download the report.

00:59:23.920 There's no charge, no catch.

00:59:25.820 That's expatmoney.com slash trigger.

00:59:29.300 Andrew, one other thing I wanted to touch on

00:59:31.360 before we head to questions from our supporters

00:59:33.140 is the BBC.

00:59:34.340 You were a stalwart for many, many years.

00:59:36.800 Many years.

00:59:37.520 Many years.

00:59:38.100 At a time when I would say it was a great institution that I really admired, but for many of us, it doesn't feel like it has remained one since. Do you share that analysis?

00:59:49.520 Yes, I do. The BBC still does many great things, but I think the BBC's biggest weakness is the idea it can just carry on as it is.

00:59:59.380 You know, the BBC business model, if I can put it that way, was invented when Lennon was in the Kremlin and Warren Harding was in the White House.

01:00:13.400 And I forget, and I think it was maybe Baldwin was forming his first government.

01:00:19.000 I can't remember in the early 20s because the government was probably born of law or something like that.

01:00:24.220 And I've ventured to suggest that this is a different world

01:00:27.360 and that that business model just can't play.

01:00:31.120 Look, I don't think young people today,

01:00:36.020 given the huge choice of streamers and YouTube

01:00:40.740 and the endless channels on Sky,

01:00:44.000 which I'm proud to have started and launched,

01:00:47.440 are going to pay for something they don't watch.

01:00:50.420 I mean, it's just beyond their cultural recognition.

01:00:55.120 Well, I have to pay for it, but I never watch it.

01:00:56.820 Yeah, but you still have to pay.

01:00:58.760 And until the BBC gets off that model,

01:01:01.060 I think it's cruising for a bruising.

01:01:03.600 Now, it'll be given a new lease of life by this government

01:01:07.020 because this government, its nostalgia is not just

01:01:13.860 for heavy industry and trade unions and miners' lamps

01:01:17.900 and gravy and chips or whatever it is Andy Burnham

01:01:22.460 eats instead of biscuits.

01:01:25.020 It still thinks there's a Fleet Street Tory press

01:01:28.680 that matters, which, of course, there isn't

01:01:33.120 in the way it did.

01:01:34.720 In the days when The Sun sold four million copies,

01:01:38.260 had 12 million readers,

01:01:40.500 there isn't a Tory press like that anymore.

01:01:42.740 It's a shadow of its former self.

01:01:45.640 But it doesn't see that.

01:01:47.900 And it sees the BBC as a bulwark against that Tory press.

01:01:53.580 So this government will be kind to it in whichever way it renews it.

01:01:59.520 But I don't think, and I think the BBC is a bit of a death wish too,

01:02:05.100 because as it cuts its cloth to meet its budget,

01:02:10.860 it seems to me almost everything it cuts is actually the public service bit

01:02:15.240 that you could say, well, actually, I'm glad the BBC does that

01:02:18.840 and not the stuff that the market would do.

01:02:22.300 I don't need to be, I've never watched Strictly come dancing

01:02:24.540 or whatever it's called, but I don't need the BBC

01:02:26.880 to provide me with Strictly.

01:02:28.320 I think the market's pretty capable of doing that.

01:02:30.980 I don't, that recent commercial of what's the BBC ever done

01:02:34.920 for me kind of thing, a piece of propaganda,

01:02:37.480 which I think it ran in the middle of the World Cup

01:02:39.400 in this country, right.

01:02:42.400 It never mentioned, it was all the things

01:02:45.060 that, you know, East End does.

01:02:46.500 Well, it's a soap opera.

01:02:47.520 Markets can do soap operas.

01:02:49.540 You know, there are plenty of, you know,

01:02:50.520 Coronation Street, I think that's ITV.

01:02:53.860 And it never mentioned,

01:02:55.040 even in the middle of the proms,

01:02:56.700 which we had just started,

01:02:57.840 it never mentioned the proms.

01:02:59.360 One of the great celebrations of music in the world,

01:03:04.600 of which the BBC is an integral part.

01:03:06.620 News got a passing glance.

01:03:09.040 News has got like three seconds,

01:03:11.360 whereas, you know, proper public service news,

01:03:13.340 It's not necessarily the one we have at the moment.

01:03:16.060 So it seems to me it's lost the plot.

01:03:18.320 So there is a Neil plan for the BBC.

01:03:21.380 Do you want to hear it?

01:03:22.160 Sure.

01:03:22.920 Neil plan is simple.

01:03:24.640 You divide it into two.

01:03:28.280 The bit that's free to air,

01:03:31.480 available on all platforms,

01:03:33.300 is BBC Core.

01:03:36.360 That's the public service broadcasting element.

01:03:40.260 It is, you turn the Arts Council,

01:03:42.440 into the Council for Arts and Broadcasting.

01:03:46.360 And you channel about a billion pounds

01:03:49.700 through that council to the BBC

01:03:52.440 to pay for the things that are genuine public service broadcasting

01:03:58.140 and that national events are carried there.

01:04:02.300 Everybody can watch them.

01:04:04.120 The nation comes together.

01:04:06.420 Even, you know, quite challenging drama,

01:04:08.680 giving new directors a chance to fail and so on.

01:04:12.220 things the market would be a little bit wary about. It does that and everybody gets it and

01:04:18.500 nobody has to pay for it. And I reckon you could do all of that for about a billion. Everything else

01:04:24.200 is the British HBO. If the programs are that good and people want to watch them and they're that

01:04:30.980 popular, fine, subscribe to the BBC subscription and pay for it. And then I think, you know, if

01:04:40.600 the BBC is right in how great its programs are, people would pay for it. And I wouldn't make it

01:04:49.300 a private company. I'd make it kind of like a John Lewis sort of company, a mutual fund.

01:04:56.440 But because it was now a separate entity from the state, still be regulated by Ofcom, obviously,

01:05:02.460 and so on, couldn't take advertising. It would be a subscription-led channel,

01:05:06.800 regulated, but it could go to the market and it could borrow money to make more programs

01:05:14.720 and do deals with other foreign commercial broadcasters. At the moment, two things are

01:05:21.460 killing the BBC in terms of drama. One is it just can't afford the per-episode cost now.

01:05:29.000 I mean, the streaming has made per-episode cost around $10 million an episode now, BBC.

01:05:36.600 The Night Manager, which is the most expensive BBC drama

01:05:39.620 for a long while, was about three million pounds.

01:05:42.160 That's a ton of money.

01:05:43.520 They can't afford to make that many of them.

01:05:47.960 So that's it.

01:05:48.480 And the other thing is that to get its drama off the ground,

01:05:51.960 and The Night Manager is another good example of that,

01:05:54.580 they need to do co-production deals,

01:05:56.600 usually with Americans or other big broadcasters,

01:05:59.300 to which they sell all the international rights.

01:06:02.180 So they don't get that stream of income

01:06:04.260 coming in from international rights.

01:06:06.740 This would free them up to do it.

01:06:09.040 And hey, look, if the BBC is wrong

01:06:11.780 and they can't get many people to subscribe,

01:06:15.040 well, you should never have been forcing me

01:06:16.500 to pay in the first place.

01:06:17.900 The market has spoken.

01:06:19.740 But if they're right,

01:06:22.020 then I think a future more suited

01:06:26.100 to the environment we're in.

01:06:28.080 And let's not forget that although the BBC

01:06:30.720 is obviously in some trouble

01:06:32.600 and it's cuts, cuts, cuts.

01:06:35.680 And I can't remember when it last made a decent drama

01:06:37.960 I wanted to watch.

01:06:39.760 Let's not forget that the streamers

01:06:41.440 have been a godsend for Britain.

01:06:43.440 I mean, we're so used to talking ourselves, Diane.

01:06:46.460 This country is an audiovisual superpower.

01:06:52.560 Last year, we made more Hollywood blockbusters

01:06:56.260 than Hollywood.

01:06:58.180 We have more in that final segment

01:07:01.440 of the M25, as you look at the map,

01:07:05.320 the final segment from the M4

01:07:07.600 through to glorious downtown Watford.

01:07:11.080 There is now more studio soundstage space there

01:07:17.840 than in the whole of greater Los Angeles.

01:07:21.000 12 billion pounds spent on production,

01:07:24.880 movie and TV in this country last year.

01:07:27.860 World beat us.

01:07:29.000 Look at the streamers.

01:07:29.900 Everything from adolescence to slow horses to black doves to the agency, which, interestingly, the American version of the French Triumph Liburo, they're actually based in London.

01:07:44.100 And we have the skills, the skill base, the technology.

01:07:48.660 Our CGI is world-beating.

01:07:50.840 We're not as highly unionized.

01:07:52.500 I'll tell you the difference if you go.

01:07:55.700 I mean, they're even shooting Batman again in Glasgow.

01:07:59.460 In Glasgow, Batman.

01:08:01.140 Well, it is similar to Gotham.

01:08:02.460 Exactly.

01:08:04.840 Let me assure you, it's much more dangerous.

01:08:09.880 I mean, Batman turned up and said, screw this.

01:08:13.200 A violent crime-infested city.

01:08:15.580 Batman turned up and said, screw this.

01:08:16.400 I'm getting out of here.

01:08:17.720 There's nothing I can do about this place.

01:08:21.140 And so we make all these things.

01:08:24.280 I mean, Game of Thrones and Titanic is now a major tourist asset.

01:08:29.460 for Northern Ireland.

01:08:31.720 So we're a huge success in these things.

01:08:35.320 And the BBC's played a part in that.

01:08:37.320 And if it was freed from the current constraints

01:08:40.720 and stopped having to do a lot of nonsense

01:08:42.840 that it doesn't have to do,

01:08:44.800 then I think it could flourish.

01:08:47.060 If it doesn't flourish,

01:08:48.520 people have spoken with their words.

01:08:50.920 Well, and you make sense because there's no reason

01:08:52.860 these two things should really be tied together.

01:08:54.860 Current affairs in particular is where I think

01:08:56.920 the BBC lost a lot of people,

01:08:58.580 particularly in the last 10 years.

01:09:00.460 And look, there used to be this critique of the BBC

01:09:03.700 that it's not actually impartial in the way that it claims to be.

01:09:10.280 And look at you.

01:09:11.500 I mean, you're clearly sort of centre-right,

01:09:13.660 but there were Conservative election candidates

01:09:16.760 who were terrified of you when you were interviewing them.

01:09:19.460 Including Boris Johnson.

01:09:20.380 That's right.

01:09:22.500 He came on this podcast later and we grilled him too,

01:09:25.960 but not nearly as hard as you would have done.

01:09:27.220 He ended up hiding in a freezer.

01:09:30.660 I was shouting, lock the door.

01:09:32.940 You were as impartial as a person can be, I think, from the outside.

01:09:37.060 But what you've seen since the BBC has started losing a lot of its key presenters is they've

01:09:42.320 all gone on to have their own podcast.

01:09:44.500 And the claims that people made about these people not being impartial have all been borne

01:09:48.360 out by the fact that these people are now radical leftists, basically.

01:09:51.320 I'm afraid this is true.

01:09:53.420 And, you know, the BBC is not alone in that.

01:09:55.760 there is something about public service broadcasting.

01:09:59.420 There's something about broadcasting in general,

01:10:01.300 probably because it's all metropolitan-based.

01:10:04.640 And big metropolises these days are left-wing.

01:10:07.620 That's a change from times gone by.

01:10:10.200 You know, there was a time when Liverpool or Glasgow

01:10:13.460 had as many Tory MPs as they had Labour.

01:10:15.660 You're not going to fight that now.

01:10:17.220 So they're all big.

01:10:18.140 And it's why I thought it was always a joke

01:10:19.520 that, oh, we move the BBC to Manchester,

01:10:22.420 then that'll change itself.

01:10:23.800 Excuse me, it's even more left-wing than London. 0.74

01:10:26.600 It's all nonsense.

01:10:27.840 So I think there's something kind of systemic

01:10:29.640 that's so difficult.

01:10:31.060 And you hire young university graduates

01:10:33.360 who live in metropolitan areas,

01:10:36.740 who come from middle-class backgrounds.

01:10:39.800 Remember, the one thing of which diversity

01:10:41.660 is not allowed in the BBC is class.

01:10:44.980 Everything else can be diverse, 0.97

01:10:46.600 but we're not going to help poor kids 0.99

01:10:48.900 from poor backgrounds get on that.

01:10:51.440 So there is something,

01:10:53.180 And it's true of ABC in Australia, it's true of ZDF in Germany, it's true of Entendu in France, or of PBS in America.

01:11:04.780 There's just something that public service broadcasting on the news leans to the left.

01:11:10.140 Which means in the Neil scheme of the BBC, on the billion pound public service broadcasting core, of which news would be the crown jewel, you would have to have special, special emphasis on restoring impartiality.

01:11:31.200 and a really tough internal regulation

01:11:34.960 to investigate every breach

01:11:37.800 and to penalize those who breached it

01:11:39.700 and to keep it real and keep it impartial

01:11:42.780 and keep it honest.

01:11:44.600 Because if you're using my tax money,

01:11:48.880 nevermind at the moment my tax money,

01:11:50.320 to provide a news service,

01:11:52.860 you have no right to make it biased.

01:11:55.220 If you aren't biased, you know, watch Sky

01:11:56.920 or Channel 4 News.

01:11:58.400 That's not my tax money.

01:11:59.940 Or in America, Fox News, tax money.

01:12:02.680 MS Now, tax money.

01:12:04.780 So if you're using my money,

01:12:06.140 and I don't object in principle

01:12:07.500 to the use of this for a country Britain's size

01:12:10.780 in which BBC News is a world brand,

01:12:14.280 I can see that there's a role

01:12:15.500 for government to help prevent that.

01:12:17.540 But you have an obligation

01:12:18.700 to make sure it is the most impartial service in the world.

01:12:23.040 And here's a thought.

01:12:24.480 Every piece of media at the moment

01:12:27.460 is looking for a unique selling point.

01:12:29.480 USP

01:12:30.620 in an overcrowded market

01:12:32.680 what makes us different

01:12:35.020 oh here's something to be different

01:12:36.800 you can trust us

01:12:38.320 in fact we are

01:12:40.820 going to fact check

01:12:43.080 all the fake news

01:12:44.760 if it goes mainstream

01:12:46.480 we are the people

01:12:47.880 not BBC verify

01:12:49.780 it just reinforces the existing

01:12:52.640 ethos and culture

01:12:53.860 we are going to be

01:12:55.440 it's our very

01:12:58.140 reason for existing and i think that would be a great selling point and the british and you could

01:13:06.100 sell that around the world by the way people would love more and more people are thinking well

01:13:10.440 what is true what can i who can i trust these days so that's the new plan and it will never happen

01:13:17.220 on that happy note yeah andrew final question always the same what's the one thing we're not

01:13:24.760 talking about that we really should be right at this stage right now being a newsman let's deal

01:13:29.680 with the news the the really scary thing coming down the pike right now is the prospect of donald

01:13:37.440 trump into introducing a diesel a ban on diesel exports because if he does that

01:13:44.820 it'll be very bad for Europe, but a potential catastrophe for Britain.

01:13:54.400 Why do I say that? I'll just give you the facts. America is now the biggest exporter of diesel in

01:14:02.020 the world. 1.5 million barrels a day of diesel. They refine the oil and it comes out as the

01:14:09.240 refined product. We used to be self-sufficient in diesel, but our politicians, brilliant,

01:14:17.200 brilliant move, closed all of our refineries bar four. These are politicians that talk about

01:14:23.120 the re-industrialization of Britain while they're closing the refineries. So we only have four

01:14:28.260 refineries left that can produce diesel. And that means that 55% of what we, of our diesel needs

01:14:37.740 are now imported. And a third of that comes from America. We are the biggest importer

01:14:45.940 of American diesel in the world. Europe imports two, but we import more. And here's the other

01:14:53.660 difference. In closing the refineries, our re-industrialization-obsessed politicians

01:15:00.180 closed our storage.

01:15:03.960 We have 42 days of diesel storage.

01:15:06.420 We have diesel stored that would compensate

01:15:10.920 for 42 days of imports.

01:15:13.800 France, 250.

01:15:15.520 Germany, 280.

01:15:17.140 Italy, 320.

01:15:19.040 We have 42.

01:15:20.240 So basically a month.

01:15:21.820 Basically a month.

01:15:23.800 So we are wide open.

01:15:25.340 And there is no question in my mind.

01:15:27.300 If Trump was to do it,

01:15:28.480 and the midterms are going so badly for him

01:15:30.780 and he doesn't care about anything else,

01:15:33.480 I wouldn't rule out that he does it.

01:15:35.780 In my view, even for America,

01:15:38.280 it would be economically wrong

01:15:39.460 because I don't think it would.

01:15:40.720 The idea is you stop exporting,

01:15:42.780 you can flood the American market with diesel

01:15:45.640 and the price will come down.

01:15:47.380 And it's particularly hurting in those Midwest states

01:15:50.060 that he's in danger of losing.

01:15:51.800 So I see the political logic of it,

01:15:54.460 but he hasn't quite worked out

01:15:56.220 with the oil in downtown

01:15:57.740 is that there is no national network of pipes in America.

01:16:01.120 It's regional markets.

01:16:03.100 And California is short of diesel.

01:16:05.280 And when you flood the market,

01:16:06.440 you couldn't get the diesel to California

01:16:08.280 from the coast, to the Gulf Coast,

01:16:11.340 where the refineries are.

01:16:12.140 So I don't think it would work,

01:16:12.880 but that won't stop him from trying to do it.

01:16:14.980 And if he was to proceed in doing that,

01:16:17.860 this country will be in recession by Christmas.

01:16:21.900 And we're not talking enough about this.

01:16:25.080 I was speaking to the business secretary.

01:16:27.740 John Healy never mentioned in his speech, Andy Burnham was too busy with his hopey-changey thing to realize we should be building up.

01:16:35.640 Because here's the problem. There's no time to.

01:16:38.520 The reason why there's such shortage of refining capacity at the moment is that Ukrainian drones have taken out a third of Russian diesel.

01:16:47.640 We used to import our biggest chunk of diesel from Russia.

01:16:52.300 Well, Russia's now importing diesel from India

01:16:54.840 because it can't produce enough itself.

01:16:58.700 And there's not anything like enough diesel getting out of the Gulf.

01:17:03.420 That was the other thing.

01:17:04.420 I mean, the Gulf used to add value to its crude oil, these Gulf states.

01:17:07.800 They would refine the crude oil.

01:17:10.040 It's worth a lot more as diesel.

01:17:11.980 Comes as jet fuel.

01:17:13.020 Jet fuel now selling for $180 a barrel in Asia at the moment.

01:17:18.100 So they said, right, but it's not getting out.

01:17:20.440 So we went to America as the big source.

01:17:24.220 And if Trump stops that, we have nowhere else to go.

01:17:28.380 Our farming, our construction industry,

01:17:32.080 our road haulage is entirely dependent on diesel.

01:17:37.920 And these three things, in many ways,

01:17:40.140 are the backbone of our economy.

01:17:42.260 Andrew Neil, thank you so much for coming on.

01:17:44.300 We should mention, of course, you are now a fellow YouTuber

01:17:46.520 and we encourage everybody to...

01:17:47.680 I joined the elite.

01:17:49.860 How far the mighty have fallen, I would say.

01:17:52.100 The digital elite.

01:17:53.740 Andrew, great to have you on.

01:17:55.100 Thank you.

01:17:55.640 And thank you for your time and for your questions.

01:17:57.420 And head on over to triggerpod.co.uk

01:18:00.420 where Andrew is going to answer your questions.

01:18:05.000 Which has been the worst government

01:18:06.980 you've had the pleasure of holding to account

01:18:09.000 and where does the current one rank?

01:18:19.860 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - October 03, 2026

＂Andy Burnham Is Away With The Fairies＂ – Andrew Neil

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