Coffee House Shots
Coffee House Shots live: the Starmer supremacy
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I think it's important to when we look at the size of a Labour majority, you can see so in the right, right, 63% of the seats. That's pretty much as high as anybody has come in any post-war parliament, but look at the share of the votes, 34%. That is lower. A lower share of the votes than has been seen by any governing party since the war. So when we talk about the Star Wars supremacy, we have to remember that it looks like a supremacy in the House of Commons, there's 410 seats. But when it comes to public support, public opinion, it's a lot less fragile than the majority suggests. Now, if you ask me, I think our first past the post-system works, it delivers firm but unfair results, but nonetheless, if you're a pure starmer, you're not taking very much for granted because of that. In a way, he didn't quite seal the deal during the campaign, in my opinion, and he thinks he has to do it in government. So that's where he is right now. Now, this is the, you can see so far, we've had a fairly standard trajectory of favourable to unfavourable. So he's going back to his honeymoon capital has been spent pretty quickly. But when you look at all prime ministers, they start high satisfaction that basically go down. So everybody has starts with the capital, which effectively they squander or spend, shall we say, as their time in office continues. Everybody starts above water if they actually win an election. Those who start without having won an election, like Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, start with a net negative popularity rating. It's very difficult really to go because that is, you pretty much start at your best point. If you start at a negative position, that's not great. But then have a look at where a pure starmer has started, relative to Theresa May, Cameron, Brown, Blair, it's still quite low. So again, this is a man who has needs to prove himself. He did win an election, but not by a terribly convincing amount, and that is reflected in the satisfaction rating so far. Now, next we're going to look at the opinion polls. We can see that Labour has already lost a reasonable amount of ground. The Conservatives have gained quite a lot of ground. So that's huge opinion poll and Liz that Labour had during the campaign has now reduced. We are years away from next general election. And given how wrong the opinion polls were anyway, I think they gave Labour a 20-point lead and average. Labour ended up 10 points ahead. There is a monumental error margin with this. But nonetheless, it's still interesting to see, see that in the periods where we've heard almost nothing from the Conservative party, the ratings have gone up quite a lot. So I think what we're looking at over here, this is peak Cinec, right, the last couple of months. Now into Labour's promise. One of them, of course, is to tax the private schools 20% on VAT, and they're going to get 6,500 more teachers. If you're expecting the 6,500 teachers to make that much of a difference in a system that's got almost half a million teachers, I'm not sure. We'll see. Now the next challenge awaiting him is the budget next month. Now we've heard a lot about the Black Hall. Remember the Black Hall is in the 20 billion Black Hall. It sounds like a lot until you remember that this government takes in about a trillion pounds in tax right now. Off at 20, you can see the breakup of this right now. And a lot of this Black Hall was basically made by the pay rises, which are voluntary. This wasn't really a Black who we discovered. It is a gap between what the government's spending, what the government's getting in taxes. Now, in my humble opinion, this doesn't quite justify the pain that we're at all to expect in the next budget, or rather, it doesn't justify the switch from being told during the campaign. But there weren't going to be any tax rises. I mean, told now that there will be because of that, although I might stand corrected by Jonathan Nash for later on. But just when you look at the breakup of that, it's not the most convincing narrative, and it needs to be put in the perspective of the one trillion pound tax hall this government makes at the moment. But about the campaign, we've heard Ed Miliband tell us about how he's going to cut 300 pounds of energy bills. We now find energy bills are going to go up because of the off-gen cap. We've been told about great British energy, a company that would stand in comparison to some of the Scandinavian equivalents. We now learn it's going to be based in Aberdeen. That's the good news. The bad news is there isn't going to be a company. It's just a name being given to various investment techniques. So right now, we've got a 2030 agenda to make Britain's domestic electricity carbon neutral. But we haven't got the first idea how to do it. So a very big promise, which during the campaign, he wasn't particularly held down to say how he's going to do it. Now he's giving us the answer. I'm not entirely sure we see much of an answer there. But then again, the election is some time away. But we're beginning to see the pressure points, which could be pressed if there was no position to press them, which I don't think there is right now. So I wonder, Katie, if you can tell us a little bit about what's happening on the other side of the bench because you've been sitting in a lot of these Tory leadership hustings. Yeah, well, I spent a lot of time in the corridor trying to listen into the hustings because the journalists aren't allowed in the hustings. So we all just sit on the committee corridor in Parliament and actually physically sometimes put her ear to the door and just hope her policeman isn't walking up and down the corridor because then they tell you off. But whether my ear was close to people texting on my phone, I think today we've had the first knockout round in the Tory leadership contest. And that means in this very, very, very long leadership contest that's going all the way to November, we're now down from six to five candidates. Pretty Patel has been knocked out. When I think in a way, what was more interesting was seeing where the different candidates were because it was the first public showing of their support. And our plug, we have a list online, which says, you know, the number of public backers. But of course, there's a lot of spin to who's willing to come out publicly, whereas this we saw all the MPs bar free votes. Now, Robert January is out in front. He has the highest number of MP backers. Then you have Kemi Baejanock in second place. And then James Clavity, just one MP behind Kemi Baejanock in third. And I think it means when you think ahead to the next knockout round next week, then it's the four and they have a whole month in their party conference, it's probably a fight between Tom Tugenhatt and Mel Stride to make the final fall. Does anyone here like the look of Mel Stride as a future Tory leader? Yes, he's currently getting 2% on Tory membership polling. Can we just do a quick poll here? Anybody like Vidya and Kemi Baejanock? Hands up for her. Hands up for... Robert Janrich. Okay. Not so much, actually, for someone who is actually seen as probably the book he's favourite. So I'd say that's about four times bigger for Kemi than go. And then James Clavity. Okay. James Clavity's second at the moment. And then we have Tom Tugenhatt. And I'll just try one more time in case anyone's come round. Mel Stride? Okay. Okay. Sorry, Mel. Mel is very confident though he'll reach the final fall. So I think it's the battle between those two. And then I think what we're probably heading to is the situation where Robert Janrich will try to reach the final two in a situation where I think his team and probably all the teams would like to stop Kemi Baejanock reaching the final two because she always comes out top on the membership. And from the numbers today, I think she has a path to the final two but it's by no means guaranteed because some people... And Kemi Baejanock is a former colleague of ours and so this isn't my view but some of her current colleagues find her a little bit abrasive which can make the MP charm offensive a bit harder. So she really needs to be very charming to MPs in the coming days or at least show at party conference that the membership like her so much MPs feel bad not to give her to the membership as an option. If she is not in the final two, then I think it's quite a wide open race and it could be James Clavity or Robert Janrich really. Baejanock, you've seen that there was a conservative home mentor this morning, the polling conservative activists, they had Kemi way ahead and something like twice as many as them. And Jen Rickin second, she was still quite comfortably ahead. So is it your feeling that if she gets to the final two, she wins? I think if she gets to the final two and the whole thing we try to stop it a bit Boris Johnson's style, if you think about his critics, she has a really good chance but it's a very long contest. So I think there is plenty of times for, you know, as Boris Johnson would say, you know, opportunities and disasters and disasters have become opportunities and vice versa. And so I think, you know, does a candidate have a chance they could blow up? I think Kemi Baejanock is probably the type of character he could imagine having a moment that either means everyone says this is the answer to everything or actually. So I think if she can get to the final two, very likely to be leader, but Robert Janrich has quite a sophisticated campaign team. He's had probably the most active summer. He did not take the Kemi Baejanock style holiday that she has defended. And I think I suspect you're going to see at party conference a whole load of efforts. You know, you have very sophisticated campaigning. I think it's going to be about getting really long lines of Tory activists outside the room you're in to try and suggest that you are the most popular, just three physical numbers. And I think all the other council would be trying to say, well, look, you know, Robert and James have had a very long queue. And so did Kemi. So she's really so far ahead. So I think there'll be a lot of that. But if she can get to the final two, it's very much hers to lose. Now, Kate, we've got a budget coming next month. The Rachel Reeves has particularly told us to expect nothing but blood, toil and tears. What do you think is going to happen? So it's just under eight weeks away. And we're getting to that very frustrating point in the budget process, particularly when it comes to commentary, where if you were to ask a labor minister, certainly the chancellor and anybody in the treasury, you know, what about this tax? Are you considering that tax? If you were to say something so outrageous as, are you going to tax blinking? Are you going to tax breathing? They'd be more inclined to say, I'm not going to write the budget in front of you than they would to actually rule it out. So you're just hearing wilds rumors at the moment about what kind of tax hikes are coming. And they're getting more and more wild because you can put almost anything to them and they're not going to rule anything out. It's silly because Rachel Reeves has been extremely clear that she's using the office for budget responsibility to its max. This means that the budget is pretty much already written. There will, of course, be some changes. Now, there's certain things you obviously don't want to announce ahead of time. But you are going to have to float some of your ideas with business, with Trussler, not the very, very tough way. And you're going to want to give market some indications to where you're going. Now, where are the strongest indications so far, changes to capital gains tax, potentially changes to inheritance tax, although that would be very bold from labor. It's one of the least popular tax rises that you can touch. There's discussion about pension reform. They're the things that they've already announced, which is VAT on private school fees, bigger windfall taxes. And what these things do fundamentally have in common, though, is that they're not massive revenue razors. There was a report out very recently from the Treasury, which showed that changes to capital gains tax actually by the end of this parliament could lose two billion pounds worth of income a year. It could be a loss, even if it's not, even if you do get some of the money, even all of the money that labor thinks could be raised from these taxes. These are not massive revenue razors, as Fraser says, when we're talking in trillions, a couple billion here or there, massive, massive sums of money, but in the grand scheme of things may not be enough for what labor wants to do. And labor have indicated two major things in July, which I think are very interesting and people will respond to in very different ways. One is planning reform. That genuine pro-growth agenda goodness knows the UK needs it. It's been a long time coming and is incredibly welcome. If they can pull it off, we still don't have the full details there. The other has been to give into some major public sector pay raises, inflation busting pay raises. And that indicates that labor wants to reform, it wants to grow, and it also wants to spend a lot of money. And I think one of the curious things about this 22 billion pound figure, which Fraser showed, is that half of that money is money that labor managed to spend in about four days. The other half, it's interesting, we don't have the full details because the treasury won't give them out. They're saying that the reserve fund has been completely depleted by the Tory party in the first couple months of the fiscal year, but they won't say specifically on what. It's going to be very interesting to see the details of those figures, but it's just clear that labor wants to raise more money and probably to spend money on things that it has in mind. We know that they want to get rid of the two-child benefit cap. We know they want to give out bigger pay raises to the public sector. There's probably still more money in that area to come. GPs are now on strike. They want to find money. And I think they're going to be in in some ways for a rude awakening. And you don't want to overstate this. This is a party with a mandate. But being so quiet and so deliberately vague about what they were going to do on tax ahead of the election, trying to frame it as the Tories being responsible for these tax rises could land. It could also severely backfire. I had a former Tory minister say to me not too long ago, and they're going to learn this the hard way. We, the Tory party, in their words, had the best reason to raise tax this century, and that was a pandemic, and we were still punished for it. So it's going to be a tough sell to say that these tax raises, even if they're for things that people might like the money spent on, are going to be the responsibility of a Tory government. But that is what the Labour government is trying to do. Frame it as economic disaster, something akin to the mini budget, but the issue being that a lot of those issues were fundamentally solved and have been solved for a long time since Labour came in and say that you had to do it to save the economy. Are people going to buy it? Are they going to be happy about the tax announcements when they easily could have been announced ahead of an election, because it's quite clearly, but had an indication of what it wanted to do. And then he's going to be held responsible. I think those are the big questions going into Labour's first budget. And Jonathan, again, thank you so much for joining us this evening. And I can ask you quickly to turn your head to your old brief and welfare. We haven't discussed it so far, but it seems to me as if of all the kind of legacies that this government's got. The welfare is probably the most challenging. We've got a case load, which is going up, I think 1,000 people a day are going to join disability allowance between now and the next five years. The cost to that in human life is bad enough, let alone the cost to the exchequer. We haven't heard anybody talk very much about what they're going to do. Is this going to be the battle which hasn't been mentioned yet? Yes, but can I just start by thanking you, Fraser, for inviting me to this event this evening, particularly after that presentation. I do feel like, Daniel, into the lion's den. But no, but quite frankly, when your party wins a landslide victory and you lose your seat, you're grateful for any invitation, because frankly it gives you something to do. No, but in all seriousness, it is a pleasure to be here as a supporter of our new socialist governments, and I have to warn you, if any of you are going to nip out for a cigarette, you will be arrested and sent off to an overcrowded prison. In all seriousness, this government does face fundamental challenges. I do strongly believe it faces significant challenges on the public finances. I do believe the public finances are effectively a burning skip. The economy has been hit by a number of shocks, obviously the pandemic, because of the way in which we import energy and energy shock, 15 years ago we had a financial services shock, but I believe another shock, if I can put it in these terms, is that we have a problem with labor supply, and unlike our G7 competitors, we have not recovered our employment rates since the pandemic. We've got increasing numbers of people who are out of work, called economically inactive. It's a completely ugly, horrible, policy-wank term, but what it effectively means is people out of work, not expected to look for work, who are out of work, often for reasons of sickness, and look, you know, if you are sick, you should be treated. But increasing numbers of people are out of work, who could benefit from being in some form of employment, because particularly if you're out of work for reasons of low-level depression, anxiety, finding the routine of employment can help you manage your condition. And I think it's absolutely unacceptable that the previous government refused to tackle this. And at the moment, I'm not sure whether our government are putting in place the plans needed to tackle it. I mean, this Kendall is a great friend of mine. She's talking about reforming job censors. We definitely need to reform job censors. We do need to put more careers advised into job censors. That's right and good. But there's more that we can do. And I think there was a very interesting report yesterday for the Census of Social Justice. And I, perhaps unexpectedly, as a Labour spokesperson, a Labour politician did a lot of work with the Census for Social Justice. They had a really, really good report yesterday on some of the reforms that can be put in place, the universal credit, to something what we call employment support, devolving more of this to local areas to really tackle this economic inactivity problem. We've got to do it, because if we do not do it, we are writing off a generation to a life on the margins, which is unacceptable for them, but it's bad for the economy as well. Okay, well, now we move straight to your questions then. We'll try to take as many as we can. So, do we have a roving mic? Yep. There's been talk about the Conservatives in Labour, but I just wondered what you think Starmer's relationship is going to be with the Liberal Democrats? And is this going to be the Parliament that she's wide-ranging electoral reform? It's actually a really good question. We can't deal with it quickly. My personal view is that if Starmer needed a coalition, he might need to deal with little Dems. He's got 410 MPs, what little Dems? He doesn't do anything he wants. Would you want to change your system about just giving you the mother of all majorities as of 35% votes here? Jonathan, any thoughts? And the answer is no. This is, as you say, Starmer has got a huge number of MPs well over 400. He's got a majority in Parliament. He is not going to worry too much about Parliament, for example. There is going to be a difficult vote next week for the Labour Government on Winter Fuel Payment, whatever the rights and wrongs of the policy, that is the first sort of vote where these new Labour MPs are going to feel under pressure, where the rubber really hits the floor on that, but it hits the road on that. But the reality is the vote will go through. He's not going to have to worry too much about Parliament. I mean, every Prime Minister has a limit on their power. I worked as an adviser in the Tony Blair-Godden Brown Government. Clearly, limits on down the street then were the Treasury. There were limits on the previous Conservative Government because the majorities were unstable. The Theresa May Government had to rely on the DUP. Every government has a limit on its power. Parliament is not a limit on this government's power. It's got a big, big majority, and I do not think it will be contemplating electoral reform as a consequence. Okay, another question from the bank, please. We've heard about the economically inactive, and we've heard about the bloated NHS. Do we agree with Douglas Murray that it's only a Labour Government can actually take the hard decisions? Or are we going to see them cave in next week about the Winter Fuel and everything else that follows? Okay, good. Let's take another couple, because there was some many of you to get through. Yeah, I doorsteped our new Chancellor before the general election, and Katie was on the train guarding her, and she was discussing about the fence cuts here, and John Healy has as well. I mean, we're an outlier with our allies. We're not having a lot of capability, and I'm rather concerned that we should be looking at where we're wasting our money on the fence and other public spending areas, rather than just having certain equipment cuts just to make some way means. I'm interested in some of your ideas on that. Thank you. I have a positive and a negative response to the first question about are there just certain things that Labour has to do, and they'll benefit the country, and the Tory party needs them to do them as does everybody else? I think quite simply, yes, especially when it comes to NHS reform, but I think one of the reasons, so Labour can do it because they'll have the trust of the public to do it. Labour can do it because they have an incredible political capital budget to spend right now, and I hope they spend it on NHS reform. They've indicated they want to, but they need to spend it on planning as well. I think one of the reasons they can do it is because it's not going to be about rolling back money for the NHS. The NHS is going to continue to receive pay increases in real terms. It's about spending the money well. It's about spending the money and letting it follow the patient. It's about making sure you actually get access to good health care, and I think that something Labour can probably do. Where I'm much more negative is there is a looming question in the UK and, frankly, every Western country that I don't think Labour wants to face, I don't think any political party wants to face, and that is the fact that we are at the limits of what we can offer the public in terms of public spending. GDP ratio for debt at nearly 100%. The promises for the future, around health care, around the state pension, they are fundamentally unaffordable, and I ask myself, what does the smoking ban outdoors and the crackdown on ticket totes, and the 22 billion black hole, fiscal black hole, all have in common? And on the surface, not very much, but what they have in common is a political party that doesn't want to face the reality that something's got to give on spending, and I don't just target this at Labour, the Tories wouldn't do it, and, you know, can we all get together to tackle the deficit? Well, nobody wants to tackle the deficit. I mean, the Institute for Fiscal Studies throughout the election kept saying, please acknowledge that you don't have any of this money to spend, and every political party went, "Sorry, we can't hear you." Nobody wants to level with the public about the state we're in, and I fear that Labour's early indications are that they're going to continue to try to use as much as their fiscal headroom as possible, be right upon the edges of what's allowed, and, you know, another five years will pass, and maybe another five years will pass, and we won't have to grapple with the harsh realities of this, but at some point, something's got to give, and every time a new government is elected, we are only getting closer to having that blow-up moment and that blow-up conversation, and if we keep pushing it off, it's only going to be worse. I see no indication that Labour is ready to tackle the public finances, and I agree with Jonathan that the state of the finances is a disaster, but that is decades in the making over multiple parties and multiple prime ministers. I'm not optimistic about that whatsoever. Maybe you have some problems. Well, I just wanted to make a point on the NHS, the point which I dare say will probably not be popular in this room, but I always think about the NHS, and I used to be the Shadow Health Secretary for many years for the Labour Party, so welfare reform and health reform are my big two policy predictions. On the health, I always think it was useful to think about health as a classic supply and demand issue. So if you think about the supply of health care, can it be delivered more efficiently, most certainly? I mean, it is ridiculous that the National Health Service is still one of the biggest users in the world of fax machines, and it's still one of the biggest purchasers in the world of pages, would you believe it? If any of you used a page of the 20 years, well, they're still used in the National Health Service. There is no question that the way in which money is spent in the health service, and the way in which the health service is organised, it could be vastly improved to provide a more efficient service to patients and to raise productivity. I mean, very, very simple things, like just knowing what beds are empty in a particular hospital would radically improve the flow of a patient through a hospital. Often when people are trapped in A&E, it's often because they do not know what beds are available, because that's internal systems are not as efficient as they should be. So no question, there is more that can be done. And I think you are right, a Labour government in the way to use the cliche, Nixon goes to China, can probably make some of these reforms in the way in which a Tory government couldn't, because there's always suspicion about the Tory government. But here's the bit where you are, no doubt, will disagree with me. You've also got to think about demand on the NHS, and how do you lower demand? And I made the joke about the smoking joke at the beginning, but the whole point there that the Labour government is thinking about is, how do you decrease demand on the NHS? Because we do as a country, we are very sick as a country, we smoke too much, we drink too much, we eat too much food, which is high in sugar and salt, too much high energy food. Now, given the type of readership or the spectator, I am sure many of you will want to make a libertarian argument and tell me that is a decision for individuals. Well, maybe it is, but those individuals in making those decisions are increasing demands on the NHS, and the way in which you deal with it is a population-based approach. So that is the thinking behind the Labour government when it's talking about smoking bans, otherwise I suspect none of you will agree with me. But, Jonathan, on that, do you think by that logic, because the smoking ban was originally Rishi Conex, and obviously Keir Stalin has decided to put a cherry on it, and ban smoking outside too. But his logic of trying to reduce the demand on the NHS for our lifestyle choices couldn't use it to then justify a further obesity crackdown, junk food crackdown, potentially at some point an alcohol crackdown. I'm just trying to work out how much to adjust my expectations of my lifestyle in the coming years. Well, I mean, look, the Labour government, well, it was actually Matt Hancock. I shadowed him who introduced various restrictions or put on the statue book restrictions around junk food advertising. Yeah, we weren't thrilled about it. Florian in the water supply, a very, very paternalistic interventionist health policies, Matt Hancock, bottom of the statue book. I don't think they've been enacted, but I mean, you'll have to get West Street in here, but I would not be surprised if he is supportive of some of that legislation. Alcohol is slightly different, because, I mean, for those of you who don't know, my dad was an alcoholic, and I've done a lot around addiction. I think we do have an addiction problem in society. Addiction is a real example of, I believe, social decay, and we've got to deal with addiction. I am not personally persuaded of the evidence around minimum unit pricing. I think we've got to have more interventions for people who have drink problems and substance misuse problems, no question, because increasing numbers of people in the UK are dying from drink abuse, substance misuse, and actually suicide as well is a problem. Personally, I'm not convinced about the evidence of minimum unit pricing on alcohol. Can we conjure Matt Hancock for a second and remind ourselves when he was on that screen as health secretary and you had health staff? Hang on, what image are you asking us to remember here? Go with me on this. Yeah, there were a lot of recordings at the time from memory. The one I'm thinking of was at the start of the pandemic when he was on this big screen, I mean, really Orwellian stuff, and you had health staff and Westminster staff all watching him on the screen at the head of the pandemic. And the messaging was, stay home, protect the NHS, save lives. And the question is, outside of the pandemic, moving into the post-pandemic era, do we take this idea of protecting the NHS at all costs with us? Do we recognize, must we recognize that you can't say that you have a functioning healthcare system when people's entire lifestyles are being cracked down on a pie by the state in order to make sure it can still run? That to me is not an indication that the individual is bad. It's an indication that the health system doesn't work. You can't have people living for their healthcare system. The healthcare system has to be serving the individual. The irony of all this being that if we all live very long and healthy lives, we're going to cost the NHS so much more money. I mean, that's the really unpopular opinion. That's what's going to get me in trouble, right? But it's true, if we all live really long and healthy lives to 100, that's when the NHS goes bankrupt. Right, let's see what great debate your questions about here. Okay, let's take some more. We have, let's actually start a good lady at the front here. Does the Labour Party think that the elderly perhaps pass their sell by date? No, I don't think so. What is the, I wouldn't say so at all. There's obviously a reason why you've asked that question. Do you want to expand on it a little bit for me? Winter fuel, possibly people living on their own. There's a rumour that the council tax single occupancy might come into beings, all sorts of things that might affect the elderly. Should we just go away? No, you mustn't, you know, you mustn't go away. You're asking your question about winter fuel? Well, I think it's about, is the Labour government anti-pensioner? Because the measures we've had so far, it does feel as though obviously public sector workers, and potentially the young in terms of it has a getting something, but the trade of his pensioners are getting things that they weren't told about during their action campaign. Well, if a member of the Cabinet were sat here, and I have the advantage of being deprived of that honour of being a member of the Cabinet, I think they would argue that they've got to take tough decisions because of the state of the public finances. I think there would also be a second argument that the Winter fuel payment was introduced at a time when the pension was only upgraded in line with prices, with inflation, and it was also a period of low inflation, the late 90s and early 2000s. So you only got very small up ratings in the value of the state pension. So in order to compensate pensioners, the Labour government at the time introduced the additional Winter fuel payment top up to help pensioners at Christmas. Since then, the pension now rises in line with either earnings, inflation, or 2.5%, whichever is the highest. The consequence of that is that the pension every year is ratcheting up in value relative to the incomes of the rest of society, and therefore, you pensioners are getting big increases in that pension, I think it's about 700 pounds a share, and I think it's going to be 400 pounds next year. So in that context is a Winter fuel payment going to every single pensioner the most efficient use of that money. That is what a cabinet minister or a Labour minister would say to you, but I'm not a Labour minister anymore, but I'm just giving you the argument that Labour puts you. Okay, let's take two over here in the right time. By the way, hands up if you agree with drawing the Winter fuel payment allowance, and if you disagree, so more people agree, way more people agree and disagree. And by the way, the spectators the marginal agrees with that as well. So you're in good company here to not everybody's against what you guys are doing. Do you think the Tories will be able to regain the voters that he lost at last election, and what part do you think a formal play in the next parliament? We'll play some. Okay, good, yep. And sir, did you agree? I just wanted to come back on the NHS. I mean, I respect the point about reducing demand, I respect the point about efficiency savings, but to my mind, the problem is far bigger than that. Isn't the whole system whereby we try to fund the NHS out of taxation, which I think is completely different from what most countries do? Isn't that the fundamental problem? And isn't the Labour party the only, if the real bold thing will be to address that? I mean, the assurance systems are available, for example. Right. I am. Okay. I know that there are so many things we could discuss all evening, but that's such a good point. I'll ask Jonathan to answer it quickly. He's basically talking about, you know, you can look all around, not just America, but all around the world. Nobody funds a health service quite like us. Do you think there is, in West Street, he's been to Singapore, he's been to Australia, and seeking new ideas over those countries of funding systems, as you say, sir, very different to ours? Do you think, in West Street, he's blue skies thinking, there is any prospect of looking at the funding model? No, no, and I'm afraid I would disappoint you, but they are behaviour politicians, even if deprived from frontline politics, so you would expect me to disappoint you. I believe that a taxpayer-funded model is still the more equitable, the more efficient way of funding healthcare. I don't believe West Street is looking at changing that model, but the question is, how would you introduce reforms within that model? As it happens, some of the quasi-market reforms that the latter Labour government introduced, some very much associated with Alma Milburn and Tony Blair, was actually the last Tory government that dismantled them. We've actually gone back to, for those of you who are sort of NHS policy wonks, a system which is equivalent to old district health authorities that we used to have in the 1970s, and I'm not sure that system is actually going to deliver the quality care that we need. When the last Labour government brought down waiting lists in the NHS, they had a very different internal financing system, but the broader funding of the NHS, why the taxpayer, I believe is the right approach, and this government is not going to change it, and if they did, I would be astonished. Katie, the point about reform in the UK, were they a flash in the Farijist pan, or do you think they're there to make life permanently more difficult than George? So, I don't think they're a flash in the pan that can be completely dismissed, because you have the yes, five are small in the grand scheme of things, but you do have five reform MPs. You're in Parliament a lot, often in the strangest bar, but definitely, they're a lot. And Nigel Farij is obviously very much a force of nature, somebody who makes his presence felt, but also actually Lee Anderson and others. I mean, I think that group, what they're finding difficult is, if you're on a small grouping in Parliament, you just have fewer opportunities to make your voice heard. So, I mean, there was a point a few weeks before the polling day, when some Tories were worried they weren't going to be the official opposition, and the Lib Dems would sneak in, and at that point, you suddenly have to work so much harder to get these opportunities. Reform aren't allowed to be on the select committees, or they don't get guaranteed places. It's hard to get a question at PMQs, so they have obstacles, but I think you look at any of the polling at the moment, and it's really hard to dismiss them. Yes, in some of the polling, we saw the Tories have gone up a couple, but from the polls I've seen, and yes, early days, the most consistent trend is points going down from Labour, reformers going up. And when you speak to some members of the Cabinet, who are in those seats in the north, they will talk about reform as their biggest problem in their seat at the moment, if there is a threat, because in lots of those Labour red wall seats, in the supposed realignment that didn't quite stick around for the Tories, it's now reformed, it could be the main challenger. So I think what's going to be a real test will be the local elections next year, because I think partly because Labour has made some unpopular decisions, and is suffering a bit in the polls, and partly because a Tory leadership contest gives you a bit of a sense of, oh, we're still getting intentional as a party. Those people still want to know, and actually, once it's over, I think there'll be a little bit less attention on the Tories. And all those things, I think, are making maybe a bit of a false sense of security for the Tory party right now, that things aren't as bad as they are. And how low can you go? I think there is a chance, actually, the Tories have not hit rock bottom. These local elections last taken at the Boris Johnson High. Reformers' plan, though they won't say it publicly, is to win more cancer seats than the Tories. If you can start to do that, and then you get to the Welsh and Scottish elections next year after, then they have a base in Wales, they have parts in these. That's when they start to think they're going to be a serious party. And my colleague James Hill, who's in the audience tonight, he has just interviewed the new Reform Party Chairman in this week's magazine, and this is, you know, a multi-million businessman. He was trying to do the problem reform and all the other versions have had Brexit party, Hugh Keffers. They've always struggled to professionalise, always becomes inviting, can't quite get the act together and it collapses, and then they are flashing the path. This man has been hired by Nigel Farage trying to stop that. So I recommend the interview for many reasons, but also, you know, whether or not they can stick around and professionalise, I think, is what will decide if they are just a permanent problem that actually makes it really hard for the Tories to come back anytime soon. So I don't think you can dismiss them at all at the moment. We'll take two more rounds of questions. We haven't taken any from the side voice. You got somebody? I think it's fair to say that the media did not give the Labour Party's policy offering in the last election really effective scrutiny. Do you think the media will be able to overcome their antipathy to the Tory party and actually provide some effective critical scrutiny of the Labour government now? And I asked that in particular because it looks as if political opposition to the Labour party isn't going to be particularly effective over the next couple of years. Okay. That's a good question. So how do you think this new government will deal with the housing crisis, which is affecting young people specifically, and how will they deal with nimby councils? Okay. It was just, obviously, we've had the past week, we've had the formation of an independent group in Parliament, including the MP that defeated you, I think, Jonathan. Obviously, a small enough group for the parliament to ignore in Parliament. But what is Labour's plan really to deal with this sectarianism that is becoming more and more entrenched in our politics? Or is it just going to, as Jess Phillips appears, be doing brushing it under the carpet and ignoring it? When do you pick up some questions there? Look, on the question about children in schooling, I think the answer is always to give parents more options, right? Parents should be choosing the type of school and where their children are learning. I think that's almost always the default answer. I'm not so worried about the next generation being extremely left wing. If you look at Gen Z right now, their polling trends are much more right wing than the millennials, and they're probably only going to go more right wing. There's a huge backlash against my generation by people who are 20 saying we're not so sure we agree with all of this. I'm much more worried about them growing up with fewer freedoms and growing up with under more authoritarian lens on the left or the right. I really don't think it's helping that to bring in the housing question. We're telling them that when they're 18, they can't legally buy a cigarette, but it's also impossible for them to grow up and get on the housing ladder. I mean, what are we teaching them? These are incredible mixed signals. No, don't have a cigarette, but also don't even dare to dream to have a family. I mean, what's going on? I think that if this government were serious about staying in power for another 5 to 10 years after this election, it would get very quickly more serious about its planning reforms because they've announced that they want to do it, but what they're actually going to have to roll back in terms of regulation is substantial. How do you get more young people on the housing ladder? You build more homes. Whenever you want to know how you get a certain group on the housing ladder, how we deal with this housing issue, how we get more affordable housing, you build more homes. We need a million homes yesterday, and if labor can deliver that, not only would they win the next election, they probably should. I would just say very quickly on the media question. So probably, obviously, I perhaps would also defend my profession, but I think scrutiny is always good and there can always be more scrutiny, and in the election, there definitely could have been more scrutiny. But I would slightly say in the defense, it was quite hard because labor would just not say they would do anything. I remember John is then going to one of your press conferences. Do you remember? And you were talking about... My weekly press conference. Yeah, you did them every Monday, it was a tradition. And you talk about Tory's bad spending plans. I remember the Q&A saying, "Look, Jonathan, is it the case that you're going to say no tax rises now, and then labor's going to come in, say everything is worse than you expected, and then I'll say that we need a doctor's mandate, and launch a whole rate of tax rises." I didn't get a straight answer from you. I gave you a very detailed... It was quite a long answer. I just don't know if it was an answer. So, look, always more can be done. I do see the point, but I think perhaps it's now... So, I think more from Jan that she asked, but it's probably for voters to decide if they're convinced by labor's kind of pivoting on that. And there was only so much I think we could have done that election, but have you discussed that? I'll always say, as I was touring TV studio after TV studio and not spending time in my constituency, I certainly felt I was put under scrutiny. All I would say to you, sir, if you were to attend a podcast in front of a live audience put on by a rival publication of a center-left magazine, you'll get people asking questions as to why don't the journalists properly scrutinize Tory politicians and why do they give labor politicians at a hard time? I'm sure you'll violently disagree with that person asking that question, but I tend to think that if there's an issue with scrutiny of politicians, it applies to all of us. And those politicians just have to put up quite rightly with journalists asking those questions. But in my experience, everybody thinks that the politicians that they support and their rivals get unfair scrutiny in television interviews, and I sort of personally think in the end it's all broadly six of one half a dozen of them afraid. But governments always get more scrutiny of an opposition and quite right too. So I think perhaps to answer your question to over tables were a turn, now the labor is in government. I don't think what they're saying about housing, for example, is a lot more relevant what the conservatives are saying about housing. But Edward Johnson, nobody can say you haven't been giving us three answers tonight, so thank you for joining us and please join me in thanking all of our guests. [Applause]