Coffee House Shots
Labour's Kamala Harris problem
get three months of the spectator for just three pounds. Go to spectator.co.uk/trial. Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shot's Aspectator's Daily Politics podcast. I'm Katie Bools and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and James Hill. So just before 7pm on Sunday night we had the news that many were expecting, that Joe Biden has dropped out of the race. Fraser, can you just bring us up to speed on how Joe Biden made this announcement and what we can expect now? I think it's been inevitable for some time even though Biden himself was kind of resisting it, but it was clear to the democratic machine that he wasn't going to work as a candidate. But it seems what they have been doing instead is stitching it up for Kamala Harris. So when Biden dropped out it was just a question of when, not whether, most of the publications already had their pre-writes as we call them where the stories were all ready to go, just the button pressed waiting for when. What we didn't expect was that Biden and Bill Clinton would immediately go in behind Kamala Harris as with lots of American donors. Now in the US the donors have got huge influence so if they all think it should be Kamala then it should be Kamala. And then when Gavin Newson, the governor of California, to my mind the only real sort of credible alternative when he backs Kamala Harris then it's over. So I think the debate in Britain hasn't quite caught up with this. You're reading lots of runners and riders who could succeed Biden. I think we have the answer to that. So barring some kind of calamity between now and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, then we are going to have Kamala Harris and the debate now turns to her running mate. Now this of course I think has got huge implications for British politics. Kamala is the sort of, obviously she's naturally a kind of pro-labor candidate. So how on earth will Starmer manage to keep his front bench in line during summer? How is he going to stop them liking or tweeting or basically taking sides in the sort of virtuous Kamala versus vicious Trump dichotomy? Which will be radicalizing progressives and social democrats throughout Europe. As David Lamy found out last time it's quite difficult to keep quiet when them chumps up for election. Lamy had no end of things to say about Trump from them being a snowflake because he's worried about assassination to being generally a sort of vile human being. Now of course Lamy himself will be quiet now and through Ben Juda his advisor they've been spending quite a few weeks sucking up to the Trump camp. Also Trump picking J.D. Vance's vice president shows that Trump will forgive those who used to call him Hitler and even worse things back in the day. But I think for Starmer this, given that Trump is still likely to win this scenario and that the special relationship being good is remains Britain's number one foreign policy tool. We don't have much apparatus ourselves nowadays but we do have influence with America and the influence needs to be kept at all costs. How Starmer will keep himself neutral in this campaign and keep his team neutral will be very interesting to watch. Yeah I do wonder if we might end up in the place where you get members of the front bench saying it would of course be good if you had the first ever female president as a way of saying something which is in a grey area. James you just come back from the Republican conference. What do you think the reaction amongst Republicans is going to be to Kamala Harris if she is picked as expected to be Joe Biden's replacement? Do you think there's any trepidation or do you think it's seen as a bit of a walkover? Well I think they were pretty confident coming out of this convention. It was the first time in 20 years you had a Republican national convention that took place with the party ahead in White House poll in the Democrats so they went in there. I think the Trump assassination attempt really bolstered his standing with the kind of evangelicals in the party and actually talking to a lot of delegates there were people who were saying you know were variations at the theme of he's had divine intervention he's had God's backing things like that so I think there was a real sort of strong bond coming out of that convention between Trump and his party off that brush with death. So they were excited to take on the fight to Biden they knew Biden they knew the enemy they were kind of looking forward to avenging 2020. I think a lot of them would feel pretty confident about taking on Kamala you know they see the blunders she's made they see the fact that you know she's had the issues around the border that was one issue but delegates that was the issue that kept going out of the border the southern border migration crisis. So there is that sort of confidence on the other hand there is of course the novelty factor and if it was interesting Trump's initial response to the social post when he was almost quite peevish in his response and he said that you know we've done a load of adverts all on Biden and now we've got to start all over again of that Kamala. So I think there's a sense perhaps that it wasn't as many years much of a sort of done deal they're still confident of victory I think but it's about kind of recalibrating his attacks and choosing what he focused on. I thought it was quite a funny Trump's response because he at the convention I don't know Jim you were there and I wasn't but I think his attempt was to try to sound like a conciliator a unifier etc. So the gracious thing to say would be Joe Biden has served his country I understand why he's standing down we may disagree on certain points but I think we're both agree that he's not the right man you know that there are ways of doing it while trying to salute his record but he was absolutely excoriating saying with his guys with a disaster the worst president in history really sort of going back to what I regard to the Trump default which isn't a unifier at all it's every single situation his preference is to give the American carnage narrative as it is as an augeration which should have been another attempt to to conciliate so it seems that his Trump the unifier hasn't lasted long yeah and there's always this all an element of pity with this kind of um attacks on Joe Biden say oh it's such a terrible shame he's so old etc he's just not up to it sort of almost sort of um faux empathy which is put on republic because obviously can't do that now with Kamala the other thing of course is that in the great the great skill of politicians is being able to kind of paint your opponents lines as being divisive and your own stance as being a unifying one and that's what Trump did very well now of course he's been sort of one up by Biden and we're standing down so it's about how they kind of reposition after this whole week of talking as though they're the moderates and how they're going to rebalance that and have to launch a lot of attacks very quickly on Kamala now on the subject of the end of unity back here in the UK we have the two child benefit cap row and we also have public sector pay recommendations that have been made they were sitting on various Tory ministers desks the labor have now inherited them Fraser we got strong hint from Rachel Reeves over the weekend that she is minded to perhaps take the above inflation recommendations on pay for teachers and elsewhere she was making the point that there is a price to not accepting them in terms of potential strike action though of course nothing's confirmed yet she was a bit cold on the fact that she could not really concede to demands for own party on the two child benefit anytime soon because it'd be about three billion pounds but we have brityard Phillips in today saying that the new child poverty task force is going to be looking at lifting the two child benefit cap do you think Rachel Reeves can afford to do both without borrowing or tax rises no she can't i think already she's getting herself into a dangerous situation if she's even hinting that there are prices to be paid for not doing the pay rises because they're going strike that means that she responds to pressure in which case she will get a lot more pressure she will get more threats for strikes because if unions are there to get their members maximum pay deal and if they think that they get maximum pay deal by threatening disruption that's what they will keep doing have you unspoken part of a two-child pay cap is that it is also popular i think 60 percent of the public support for notion that you shouldn't get extra benefits if you have more than two kids if you're on welfare so labor though we say oh we can't do this because of the money's too tight they also know this puts them immediately on the wrong side of public opinion and that is that the necessarily work your summer wants to go given that only 20 percent of the electorate voted for him i mean 36 percent of the devoted voted for him but when you actually look at those who abstained you will not find a post-war prime minister who had a smaller proportion of the country actually casting a vote for him so i can see lots of reasons for them to be careful and also i think they're already starting to get pressure from the way that the the groups like the resolution foundation will come up with these you know these crude and quite deceptive ways of child poverty suggesting that if you give somebody 10 pounds more a week the child is somehow lifted out of poverty of course it's not the case but this is the sort of language which they can trap themselves in so already i'm quite interested to seeing the various labor tribes putting the old school labor pressure on a labor chancellor who right now seems to be wobbling and James when it comes to the row of the two-child benefit cap we know that there'll be an amendment put forward this week it's not yet clear Lindsay Hall will accept the amendment and while you might vote for an amendment if it doesn't pass and we don't expect to pass the other option would be to vote down a finance official confidence issue and as a few labes i mean quite bold for labor MPs in the first couple of weeks try and bring their own government down it seems unlikely but how do you think this is going to play out in terms of pressure on kierstammer and how much of a problem is it having labor-backed benches who are very unhappy about this position even if the public opinion is in a different place i think the two-child benefit cap is the long-running sore for kierstam's labor i mean a few months ago before the election was called i number one PLMP meeting when it was in the headlines and afterwards coming out was rosy duffield is one of the big critics of this measure and loye russelm oil now of course the two MPs loye russelm oil is no longer an MP of course but at the time was you know very very divided on the issues ran transgender people in single-sex basis but these two MPs from very different wings the party in some sense is coming together to both attack the child benefit cap and remember that was very striking this has continually been an issue for kierstammer it really sort of strikes that kind of what labor-cool labor value so i think it's going to be a key fault line obviously in this case given the circumstances of what three weeks after a landslide general election victory he's going to be finally thinking seeing off any kind of pressure on this but i think it's a reminder of how we're going to see over the next five years or so the main sort of tension and opposition with empowerment will be within the parliamentary Labor Party itself and so i think managing the parliamentary Labor Party is going to be the key to kierstammer's successes and you wonder perhaps you know in the kind of past two weeks we've seen an initial bounce in popularity more people think the country's going the right direction the wrong direction right now what we see a similar situation to what happened with albanese in australia which is that he got elected go on an initial bounce and thereafter he's now had a subsequent slump and so perhaps what we see the same thing over the next year or so has labor has to make these difficult decisions they're in the meantime kierstammer can bask in the fact that he has had a post election bounce in the polls going up quite significantly in the weeks since thank you Fraser thank you james and thank you for listening