Coffee House Shots
What's next for Suella Braverman?
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I think we're probably best placed given not too much change since Friday in terms of, you know, we're expecting some immediate savings when she gives us an announcement, but largely laying the groundwork for tax rises in the autumn too to delve into that post statement. So I think we'll come to that later. In terms of, I think, the Tory leadership, now the deadline is early afternoon. It feels as though there are six candidates borrowing, you know, any huge surprises with Katie Baidnot the latest to declare. She actually handed in her form of her nominations. I think, you know, last week, as soon as they opened, but unlike Robert Janrik chose not to do a big announcement. And I think this goes to the fact that she is seen as the front runner in the leadership race. She has broken with tradition and given an op-ed to the times, not the telegraph, which, you know, most of the candidates were going telegraph because it seemed to be the paper that has the highest number of Tory members who, of course, get to vote. She's opted for the times. And in that piece, she talks about how she, you know, wants to focus on 2030 as the first full year, the Tories could be back in government, but she also talks about how her party shouldn't, you know, make themselves feel a bit better by trying to talk down, you know, we didn't actually do too badly because of X, which I think relates to the vote share. Instead, actually, the Tory party needs to think about what it stands for, saying if the Conservative party was fulfilling all its duty, we wouldn't have the reform party, and voters moving towards reform. So I think it's a pitch whereby she is trying, obviously, to signal that she can get reform voters back. She talks a bit about how I think the need for a smaller state, which I think most candidates will do in this race, but ultimately saying, if you want public services, you know, some won't recover at all, you know, fully from the pandemic. Actually, where the Tory party needs to get to is perhaps, you know, government does a bit less, but the things it does, it does well. And I think in terms of where her campaign goes, we are expecting her not to be hugely out about in the first next couple of weeks. And I think because you are front-running, you're trying to work out how to keep up your momentum of others probably feeling more urgency to establish themselves or when more supporters ahead of the knockout rounds in September. I think you'll hear lots of campaign knock supporters out and about, but perhaps when the woman herself, I think it might be, you know, more towards the end of August, closer to September, that she really starts to emerge. And how sustainable that is that C, but in terms of, you know, reaching those knockout rounds. And then I think the other probably big development is the fact that Suella Braveman has said that she is not running, said she had 10 nominations, so we don't know who they are or what school they go to, but she did not have the support, and she didn't seem too happy about it, did she, James? No, she didn't. She quits about at the race. It was written up as being bowing out, but it was more of a blast, I think, at the others, basically saying, "My party regards me as mad bad, and I wouldn't want to leave them anyway." Look, she wrote in this article for The Telegraph. She said that she'd had thousands of members getting in touch with her, asking her to stand, but she wouldn't do so, and that she did have 10 MPs, but we don't know any of them publicly to date. I think the danger for Suella Braveman was always in a much smaller party. Someone who only managed, I think, 32 MPs at the zenith of her career two years ago was always going to struggle to get the 10 names necessary. I think, you know, going around Parliament, I was struggling to find people, even of those kind of survivors of the new Conservatives who back to last time, who were back at this time. Lots of her team were now gone to kind of Genric, Robert Genric, the one-time person whom she served as his boss in the home office. And so, I think that, you know, it was her basically saying that the party isn't really enlisting mood, doesn't want to listen to what I have to say. I have to say, I think that, you know, a lot of people who have some sympathy with her message, I think it's the messenger who's the problem. And so, she now leaves the race where we're interested to see if she makes any further interventions, not least of course, because I think of the six candidates, four of them, I believe, have served in the home office at one stage or another, meaning that migration and, obviously, whom had responsibility for what decision it went, might play a large part in this race. I think what really did for Suellar-Bravman is Robert Genric, effectively just coming in. Once her junior minister in the home office has now effectively usurped her when it comes to wooing the Tory right, you have people who work for Suellar-Bravman privacy now working on the Robert Genric campaign, and then you have the MP base, particularly, as James says, you know, in a reduced smaller party, fewer MPs to go around, and lots of her traditional supporters you would expect, Danny Kruger others, in the German camp, which meant that she didn't really have a pill to take too many MPs from. So, while I think she can say, "Oh, my party wasn't ready to hear my ideas," and there was always going to be an anti-Suellar-Bravman faction, in a sense, as she had entered the race, there'd be a stop Suellar movement, but the thing that really stopped her is the fact that someone actually got her turf, got ahead of her, seemed to get more organised and had more success, and it's almost, I think, a right versus right, that has meant that she has not gone to the stage, as opposed to the one nation Tories blocking her. And I think that Kimmy Badenock and her team would be very careful not to give the impression, even though we've known for years she would run again once the election if it had happened. I've actually not been, the place, not be jockeying too publicly, taking it easy with this endorsement, not very showy, or showing you've got 10 names, unlike Suellar-Bravman, who by a colleague certainly was interpreted as jockeying for that position for several years, and I think that's put some of them off. On Suellar, quite quickly after the election, she drew controversy at some of the comments that she'd made, and now, not entering the leadership race. Is she seen as a fringe character within the party now? Where does Suellar go from here, basically? So already getting reports that the Tory grassroots are unhappy, so the conserved democratic organization, which was effectively created as, I think, a pro-borist Johnson vehicle, you know, you've had figures involved in that saying MPs have once again stopped us from having our candidate. There was the poll, which I think when they polled there, you know, just a couple of thousands of people fooled this poll. They found that Suellar-Bravman was the most popular, and then Kimmy Badenock was in the second place. I don't think it feels quite as though, you know, if MPs have stopped Boris Johnson entering the race or, you know, getting, you know, they hadn't got behind him to enter the race back when he was running for the leadership for 2019, I think that would have been more shocking. I think Suellar-Bravman obviously has some supporters, but it doesn't feel currently he'd look at the various membership polling, like, as though she was the clear, clear, clear favourite, and they've stopped that because lots of polls can be Badenock in front. I think there's a question as to what does Suellar-Bravman do now, because the repeated rumour has been she could defect to reform. Now, those close to have denied that, but I think you do want to, you know, once you're in a situation as she is, she's now in a path where she's publicly said her party doesn't, is an interest in her diagnosis and thinks that, you know, Mad and Bad. And therefore, I think, despite what they might say about how she would go to the reform party, what is her future in the Tory party? I think a Tory leadership candidate potentially could be asked, "Would you expel Suellar-Bravman?" It wouldn't be that popular with the membership, but there will be an idea of, you know, if people say things that are, you know, viewed as particularly divisive, or out there, then there'll be some in peace saying, "Why don't you show authority from day one?" And, you know, there aren't many of us anyway, "What does one fewer make the difference?" And, actually, so where she goes would be interesting, because she could choose to go to reform. I also think there's a question, it's like, if she uses this time, there may be more LBC shows, but if she uses this time to make increasingly bold statements, that will create internal pressure in the Tory party to put distance between them and an MP that some believe her rhetoric has home secretary hurt them in lots of, you know, those Tory liberal emcees. And these groupings within parliament, you know, they can often be vehicles for change, but you also see people basically trying to vie for leadership through them, and we've seen the emergence of a group like that within Labour over the weekend. The Labour growth group, Katie, do you want to tell us more? Yeah, so this is the first, I think, new Labour groups since they've obviously anti-parliament, and therefore on the Labour side, there's a letter going around to the prime minister. It's got the signature of over 50 Labour MPs, and they are ultimately urging the prime minister to stick to his plans to go for growth. Now, in the Tory party, normally if there was a growth group, particularly a research group, it tended to mean a headache for the whips. I think there's a little bit more to this than meets an eye in the sense that this group is effectively saying, prime minister, we have your back, if your supply side reforms and planning policies start to get backlash, we're willing to take some heat in the short-term and things. So it's effectively a group just being pro the Labour agenda they were picked on. I think some Labour MPs say, "Oh, there's a group. Why wasn't I asked to be in this group?" So already you're getting a frision amongst the parliamentary party of what's going on. But I don't think for now it looks too dangerous, and actually you have someone left at the party suggesting that this is actually almost like a starmer stooge group as opposed to rebellion group, which tells you a bit about the Labour leaders' authority at the moment. Yeah, I see this in terms of historically backbench groups as akin perhaps to the free enterprise group, which let's trust set up with quasi-quatang, Prudipitala and others back at the beginning of the coalition government. And this was seen as an outright a group, enabling people to go further and pushing the government's message, encouraging the government to do certain things, free market changes at that time. And of course, all the leaders of that group constantly happen to go on and have very illustrious cabinet careers, people like Dominic Raab, Accenture, a whole senior post. So I can think that looking at this list, I'm sure Katie will agree, there's names in here. Well, I think they're going to be ministers, probably cabinet ministers in the future. People like Josh Simmons, a very bright man, have set up Labour together. They're kind of pro-starmer think tank. And really, it's, I'm not sure what it is, which is that you're taking the kind of think tank model and putting it inside government. Of course, this has been done traditionally throughout the past few decades, and policy and personal loyalty overlaps. So if you look at the 1983 election, you thereafter had the no turning back group. That was really important because it was a Praetorian guard for Margaret Thatcher, encouraging her to go further with Thatcherism reforms, and also being personally loyal to her. So when she was brought down in 1990, it was members of the no turning back group who were there. So these people are personally loyal to Keir's dharma and politically loyal to his agenda. So I think we can hear a lot more from the Labour growth group. And it's a statement of intent at the beginning of this parliament saying, hey, you've heard a lot about Thatcherism, Tory, the five families, the socialist campaign group, this is our chance to show we're loyal to our new leader. And just finally, is this just a case of Labour playing politics much better than they have done over the last couple of years? Well, I mean, I think any group which signs up and says how fabulous the new leader is and how great the agenda is, is a good sign for them. I think it's just a different in terms of the Tory faction than the last few years we've seen, which is that this is basically people who read the letter are all being very kind of positive in the growth message. And I think it's also just clearly aligned with the Rachel Reeves, you know, economic mission over the next five years, which is that they know that if they don't get the growth, they're not going to be able to pay the public services on which back of which they've pledged to get in and reform. So I think it's basically Labour being united at the start of this. And of course, it comes as a nice kind of optics for us in the commentary, which is that just the Tories having a Tory leadership contest, Labour there supposedly all 50 of them in this group saying how wonderful everything is. Thank you, James. Thank you, Katie. And thank you for listening. [Music]