Keir Starmer: Things can only get worse | The News Agents

the news agents there is a budget coming in October and it's going to be painful we have no other choice given the situation that we're in those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heavier burden although Oasis might be back together oh you B that's the line I was going to use we're not on a bit of a cown from the DNC are we are we by any chance as I was saying although Oasis might be back together if there were any clearer sign that it ain't 1997 anymore Dorothy it was Kama giving his first major speech in the Downing Street Rose Garden this morning where his message to the electorate was despite the fact that we have a majority of 100 70 seats the labor government is going to oversee at least for a time a period where things aren't going to get better they will get worse yes and you go back to the Oasis period and of course labor song in '97 was things can only get better it was downbeat it was depressing actually it was Gloom mongering are things really as bad as Kia starma says they are not so much cool britania as GRL britanna and that ladies and gentlemen is a pro he always gets there in the end welcome to the news agents even though I have to suffer leis goodle it's John it's a very offended Lewis it took 30 seconds before you swore at me in this new week 30 seconds if that in this podcast we said we would take you behind the curtain frankly we've taken you into the dressing room and the locker room for some chat that really shouldn't have been put out but anyway I don't know much about Ed knows better I don't know much about football but I I think that there must be dressing rooms of of Premier League football clubs that have better language and less than this bloody Studio but there we go here we are anyway so K stama gave this much vaunted speech and I kind of think there's I think probably both of us I I dare to speak for Lewis that we are quite on amicable terms really there's a bit of whip Clash after the DNC which was so kind of almost absurdly upbeat optimistic Feelgood to a speech in the Rose Garden which was just pure feel bad about the state of Britain about what the labor party has inherited about how difficult it is to do anything about any of the problems that Britain now faces and it's going to take 10 years of misery before we might might start to smile again and it just seems such a kind of GL glaring contrast to what we had last week in Chicago yeah I mean it was a profound profound difference um and I don't know whether that was just the balloons and the tick a tape and it's always the case that American political culture um is uh generally more sort of panglossian and optimistic in tone than British politics but it was a glaring difference that we might talk about a little bit more in terms of st's future but in terms of taking a step back and thinking what was St trying to do I mean this was it seems extraordinary really considering his nearly two months in but this was his first major speech apart from on the door of Downing Street on July the 5th that he's made and obviously a lot has happened since then not least the riots far riot riots that that we saw in Britain a few weeks ago and starmer I think was trying to do a few things he was trying to set the terms of politics and it was a very political speech highly political to the point actually you almost wondered whether it was appropriate doing it in the Downing Street because there's no policy to it at all it was pure politics and he was setting the sort of tone and the prism through which he wants us to see politics in the next few months and it was building on themes that he's already established which is naturally you would expect with a new government blaming the Tores for the woes that Britain has he was threading a narrative adding to that narrative stuff about the riots saying that um Britain and the British state was less capable than it should have been or it had been in 2011 for example when he was director of public prosecutions in dealing with the riots again as a result he says of Tory fecklessness and he was trying to prepare us for a budget which is clearly as he said in his words going to be painful that builds on what Rachel Reeves told you and Emily a month or so ago where she said that there would be tax Rises and this was therefore an attempt as I say to sort of set the term terms of political trade for the next few months going up to Christmas I think what I would say that was good about it is the manner in which he was trying to frame political debate which is to get away from the populism that has infected British politics over the past seven eight years I mean since brexit frankly when the default position has been to say it's easy ah you know we'll get brexit done and everything will be better to use your word panglossian this sense that it's just there are easy solutions to difficult problems we can do it don't you worry the boosterism of Boris Johnson I think it was V's word orig I think that you know just from the boosterism of Boris Johnson we've now got someone who's saying you know what life is complicated and I kind of have long thought that actually on a whole range of issues there needs to be a more grown-up debate I mean immigration being the classic one where you want to say yeah illegal immigration bloody awful it's got to be stopped but a lot of immigration is actually contributing to the British economy and to the the well-being of the country um and if Kama wants to frame the debate in that way then fine I would thought it was very interesting that he said the people with the broader shoulders have to bear the burden more and I kind of immediately thought well is he going to break one of the election pledges which is that there will be no increase in income tax National Insurance or vat I mean the easiest way to make those with the broish shoulders bear more of the burden is to increase the top rate of tax for people earning over wherever you choose to set the market 150,000 200,000 whatever you happen to do but I don't think he's going to do that so it's worth kind of considering I think for a minute what he might have in mind if his words are to be taken seriously on that it's clear that he and Rachel Reeves are now considering a whole range of different potential tax changes the difficulty with that as you say John is that they've excluded the three main levers through which you will raise significant Revenue which is income tax vat National Insurance so what does that leave you with I think it's very likely we're going to see a change on capital gains tax I think it's very likely that we'll see changes in the way the state deals with pensions and taxes pensions perhaps there'll be a form of extra wealth taxation on the table maybe some changes in inheritance tax the difficulty is as I say these are all things that race some money but not loads of money and what starmer is saying I mean obviously there's a political problem here as well that's the policy problem how do you actually rais the money to the the political problem is that of course labor in the election not only ruled out those things but said that they had no plans to increase taxation now of course as we said at the time and and everyone would say when a politician says they have no plans to do something don't think that precludes them from doing it it just means they're not planning to do it at that exact moment but it is a political problem in the sense that the conservatives you know ran their entire election campaign on the premise that labor would increase taxes and indeed it seems that despite denying it at the time labor are going to do that and they're doing it for a very specific reason which is an interesting one right which is that starma and Reeves are claiming that the reason they're having to do this is because the situation with the public finances and the British sort of State more generally is even worse than they thought that it would be and so we have to think about whether that's accurate right now I think it is true up to to a point in the sense that we know as was covered at the time that the OB the office of budget responsibility did not know about some of the overspends that Rachel Reeves has described in the last month or so which are quite significant and are going to put a significant strain on the public finances so that's true as far as it goes I think it is difficult for labor to say though that they wouldn't have had a good idea of the overall Contours of not only the state of the public finances but the economy overall right or the public State the state overall because actually you can argue that labor coming into government had a better idea of these things than any incoming government before why because they did have the obr I mean previously incoming governments would only have treasury statistics to rely on which were often doctored that was the whole point the Obi was set up by George Osborne in the first place so they definitely had a better although probably imperfect idea of where they were going and in terms of the economy and the British State overall labor party had been arguing for certainly under the whole period the starma leadership and before that that basically was Britain was on its knees so it is hard to kind of it's hard to sustain the idea that they believed it was that much worse or found it that much worse than they believed it was going to be well I think the other thing that was said by um kmer in this speech today was to talk about the values that marked the conservative Administration and the values that uh will mark his administration he did this in the Rose Garden and he made reference to that particular location as a way of drawing a contrast this is a government for you a garden and a building that were once used for lockdown parties remember the pictures just over there of the wine and the food well this garden and this building and now back in your service it's not just that the last government relied on easy gimmicks and bad ideas those things happened precisely because the government itself lost its focus on the hopes and Ambitions of working people see I think there is a really big problem that needs to be tackled at the heart of our politics if it's to regain the legitimacy and the support of the people and that is for voters to think that actually they do have confidence in what politicians are doing that this lot is different from the last lot not that oh bloody hell they're all the same and I mean it's very early days in this Administration but there are one or two little things that have happened which I think people are right to Arch and eyebrow about I mean the fact that wahed Ali you know we're talking about K brania who was one of Blair's people back in the 1990s you know had this past to get into Downing Street which apparently has now been vote that a senior civil servant was appointed at the treasury someone who had previously given money to uh Rachel Reeves now I happened to know the person involved and I spoke to a senior treasury person who said look here's absolutely what the treasury needs we need somebody who knows about business who knows about the outside world who has worked in those worlds but the question is does it pass the smell test of saying well hang on what someone who's given to Rachel Reeves private office when she was campaigning to be cellor is now appointed a senior civil servant in America no one would bat an eyelid because America politics is so much more transactional but that's not the way we do things here and I think that starma has to be careful that those sort of things don't lead to a narrative from the Tories of saying actually labor you're no different from us and you were just stinking Hypocrites when you called us out on this stuff I think there's two things about that the labor think right one is that um some of the people of I mean starma when he was asked about this basically replied with this that he was was going to take no lectures from these people who over saw this this cronyism I mean some of the people who are calling this out most volubly online I have to say are some of the most significant Hypocrites going because they were people who we know oversaw in lots of ways the politicization of the Civil Service um and who were uh you know involved in all sorts of ways with with cronyism that doesn't excuse it but what it does do is it explains this cycle which is labor see it where in they're in their opposition and then they think they attach themselves they get the levers of power and they say well now we're in office and we get the spoils of power and we get to give these jobs to our friends that that is how it has worked that doesn't excuse it all it shouldn't work that way but I think it's fair to say that the conservatives who did not let's say have an unblemished record with regards to cronyism or with regards to let's say the propriety in the public realm necessarily have the highest pedestal on which to stand that is what lb think the second thing that they think is that um much as the conservatives used to say when these issues come up that the public overall don't care about this stuff that they just don't notice it's just noise which is probably true again it doesn't excuse it or make it right or excuse impropriety if that has happened or is perceived to have happened but that is what they think the other thing I felt about listening to stama today was a s I hesitate to use the word but of helplessness and helplessness that what can we do I mean what can I do it it is what it is and you're the prime minister of the country now that doesn't mean you're all Mighty and all powerful and omniscient but you do have quite a lot of levers you can still pull as the prime minister of a country for a start you could raise fuel Duty hasn't been raised since 2010 probably about 40 to 60 billion pounds of lost Revenue that in that time if you're looking for 20 20 billion you could do that as a stroke now they don't want to do it for polit political reasons but that is just one example of what you're talking about John which is a government which has a is overseeing a 2 to three trillion pound economy is never powerless and I think there is a real danger for labor and for starma there is a diff there is a fine line I think between smashing the Tories and appearing powerless right I mean what is clear is that labor are learning and have at the center of their mind George Osborne and Osborn ISM right George Osborne in 2010 was extremely successful in laying the foundations for a political strategy which worked for years which was to blame labor for all of the difficult things they were to do that could well work as a political strategy the question is does it work longterm as a policy remedy right in the sense that one of the differences between there's always been and this goes to the one of the contradictions or the paradoxes of starmar ism I think and it's always been there which is that starma has always had two cont intentions one is that as we've already said the British state is on its knees and the state of the economy the state of British Society all needs transformation he talks really big but there's a danger that he acts small right there is a mismatch and it always has been between the the diagnosis and the prescription because what is starma saying he's done in the first seven weeks with a majority of 117 okay we've had the summer recess so we're still in very early days but you know he's talking about planning reform he's talking about Great British energy he's talking about a sovereign wealth fund all laudable things in their own different ways does it over the long term really shift the dial in terms of the shape of the British economy and the model that we have I'm not sure that it does and so you need to if if if your diagnosis is Right which is that you need transformation in the public services and you need transformation of the British economic model which has always been the sort of starma contention then you need some really big prescriptions really big ideas for how to do it and it isn't really clear despite that big majority that they're there and because at the moment indeed what starmer is doing is basically as I say recycling the kind of you know osbor ISM but the difference was as well that George Osborne believed that lower investment or less money for public services not only could but would make them more efficient would make them better labor doesn't no one in the labor party really believes that so there is a mismatch between the political strategy that they're adopting which is basically osbin ISM and actually the kind of long-term remedies that the labor party thinks the economy in the British State needs and I think sooner or later that is going to run out of road or become a contradiction that looms larger in the in the way this government is perceived I suppose a simpler point is that you wonder how much how how big is the window for blaming the conservatives for everything how much longer can you keep saying well we wouldn't have to do this if the Tores hadn't left it in such a mess well we would have been able to do this if only there was more money left in the in the kitty and it was interesting I thought that you know while sorne used to say we're going to fix the roof while the sun shines which I think is a phrase that goes back to John F Kennedy uh you had him today saying we're repairing the foundations of the house it's not just the roof that's a bit leaky the whole bloody thing is crumbling and therefore we've got to do the foundations and you just think that there must be a time where you say okay we've been the government now for X number of months years we take responsibility for it and I don't think that it felt like this was a speech that was still in campaigning mode rather than we are now the government I think they think and maybe as I say this is true that you know the blame notor element I mean it could last years I mean it did for Osborne although of course there is a there is a difference with the labor government which is that the conservatives have the much of the Press on their side that is a line that the Daily Mail the son and others will happily kind of regurgitate sort of day after day which influences the way the whole media thinks about it labor will have far less of that with with the conservative supporting press I think there's another thing which I thought about it though which is I think if you're a voter and you're listening to starm today and you're hearing that things are going to get worse before they get better you would be forgiven for thinking bloody hell I can't remember a time when a politician said things were going to get better virtually perhaps with the exception of the boosterism of Boris Johnson although maybe that's part of the reason it was successful albeit for a short time you can argue we have had again 14 years of obanite kind of political strategy that constant talk of pessimism before at some point things will get better in the in the longer term and I just don't know how much bandwidth the country still has for that for constantly hearing that kind of Doom I mean Ernie Bevan obviously one of the great figures of of of Labor history who was foreign secretary and minister of Labor during the war he once said that he hoped to be the minister of Labor until 1990 and obviously he didn't mean that literally he meant that he would have a political strategy and transform industrial relations in the country during the second world war which would last for half a century sometimes it feels like George Osborne is going to be Chancellor until 2050 that that there has not been a Chancellor or prime minister who have had the sort of political now or strategy to move away from the way he thought about potic politics and the economy and yet it is clear that in so many ways osbin ISM austerity kind of that kind of political strategy in so many way has failed and yet for lots of reasons some structural some political some I think through sheer lack of imagination prime minister and Chancellor including even this labor one or this labor pair keep finding themselves pulled back into the orbit of it and I just think that for a labor government and you know that strategy for a labor government that is predicated on the idea that we will get reelected and see off the forces of populism through improvements to the public services I think osbor ISM osbor ISM as a strategy will only take you so far and it will need far greater imagination from the heart of the labor government to think how are we actually going to improve the public realm and think big and translate that into a politics which resonates because as I said this will get them so far I don't think it will get them that far you know it's so interesting isn't it I mean look we said in the introduction about the kind of Oasis thing and it takes you back to 1997 and cool Britannia one of the things that I have heard from a lot of the people who were the architects of new labor when they look at kir stama now no one can take away the majority that he won in the general election and he's the first person to win a labor majority since Tony Blair did in 1997 is the lack of ambition is exactly what you're saying not just a lack of ambition but also a lack of thought about what are our big Ideas how do we we see the future of the British State what is the relationship between the state and the economy and what the Public Services should be and growth in the economy and how do we set the balance on taxation so that we are encouraging entrepreneurialism um but we're still looking after the most vulnerable in society and on that you just get a slight sense that they don't want to address big fundamental questions you know Tony Blair at the end was talking about how the forces of conservatism with a small CA you know he had the scars on his back from trying to change things in the way the relationship between various bits of the British State and it looks like K starm doesn't want to go there I think that's quite intrinsic to him actually I I think he you're comparing with someone like Ed millerand for example who was very interested in ideas Antonio Blair as well you very interested in sort of big picture ideas abstraction it's not how he thinks he considers himself a sort of fixer and um is suspicious of these big kind of programmatic kind of visions of politics but again that's why I think there is a mismatch because on the one hand he is talking about these massive kind of problems that Britain and the British state has whilst coming up with ideas ideas which seem small by comparison particularly when you consider he has a majority of 170 he can do what he wants he's the king of British politics right now when you've got a majority of 170 you can pretty much do anything that you want to do so there is a tension between basically talking about all of the things that you can't do and all of the constraints that you have some of which are real of course and the fact that in terms of political space if he wanted to he could push British politics in any direction he chooses we will be back after the break with some of the Practical measures that actually K St is thinking about of reform within the labor party so as discussed K stama obviously wants to draw a contrast between how he will go govern and how the Tor governed and one of the things he's apparently looking at right now is changing the rules by which you change a party leader when the party leader is also the Prime Minister uh brackets remember Liz truss close brackets the fact of the matter was that the Tory membership chose Liz truss to be the Prime Minister even though she couldn't Master the support of half of her MPS and so Kama is looking at changing the rules by which labor will elect a leader and it obviously looks like self-interest if you're going to make it harder to depose the Prime Minister uh who's the Prime Minister oh it's Kama um but there is a sort of sense in which I think actually it makes you know there's logic to it yeah I mean people forget now that you know this would actually be a reversion to what was historic Norm yeah exactly before uh the 1980s in the labor party's case and the early 21st century 2001 in the conservative parties's case it was only the MPS on both sides who would choose who the leader was so for example when Jim kalhan took over from Harold Wilson it didn't go to the party members it went to the PLP the Parliamentary labor party and likewise when John Major took over from Margaret Thatcher in 1990 it was it was conservative uh MPS and it was only as I say in the 80s in the Labour's case and in 2001 for the Tories that this idea of the importance of internal party democracy came to be seen as very very important I.E that you would have Labor members or trade unions as it was in that case choosing the leader and this this obviously reach in the labor party's case reached its kind of climax in 20145 because there used to be in the labor party's case well it used to be called The Electoral College I.E a third of the votes for leader went to the membership a third went to the Trade union ions and a third went to the PLP um that was changed by Ed milleran in 20145 to make it one Member One vote which totally inadvertently no one saw it coming led to the election of Jeremy Corbin and as far as Kama current proposals or ideas and thinking a concern when they're talking about a Liz truss lock of course what they probably really mean is a Jeremy Corbin lock I the the starma project has always been as much about the country as about the labor party and it has always been about the right of the labor party ensuring that the near-death experience as far as they're concerned of a left-wing takeover of the labor party which so nearly reached fruition never ever happens again and so I'm not surprised at all that they're coming up with this idea whether it passes Labour Party Conference I think is another matter entirely because I do not see the unions particularly some of the more leftwing unions going for this idea because they would see it as a dilution of their power this is of the reasons why the changes in the 80s were brought about in the first place they would see it as a dilution of their power to influence who the labor leader or prime minister was going to be but then it's a really interesting political calculation that K starma has to make look just before the break leis you were saying uh the thing about K starma is he's King right now he can do whatever he likes he's got a majority of 170 if he comes forward with a proposal that he then fails to get through a Labour Party Conference he looks very much less king-like he looks like a man who's there in title in office but not in power if he can't get his own party to agree a rule change uh like that do you think this is just flying a kite seeing which how the wind is blowing I think there are elements of the labor party on the right of the labor party and doubtless around starma who would love to do it but I mean you need some it hasn't been floated before and you need some pretty serious political leg work to get this done within the labor party because you have to it's not like the conservative party with the conservative leader can just basically do things by dict tap more or less there are some processes but you know the labor party you have to score wear off all the competing yeah you know it's like you go to labor Party Conference you're discussing composite 14 subsection three you know like it is a bantine bureaucratic process you have to square everybody off so although there are lots of elements of the labor party that would dearly like to do it it would be a big risk conversely if you really are serious about doing it as you said John in terms of the political Dynamics this would be the time to do it whilst his authority is greatest he just won this 170 majority I mean leaving aside the the practicalities of it I mean just philosophically constitutionally I mean I think it would be a good idea just for pure constitutionality of it it was always that awkwardly within the British constitution that you could have a situation where the Prime Minister who remember is supposed to be the man or woman who can command a majority command the confidence of the House of Commons could theoretically be installed by 100,000 200,000 maybe half a million people in the labor party's case people in the country who have nothing to do with the House of Commons but are connected with the labor or conservative parties and that has undoubtedly led to instability within the British constitution in recent years we saw that reach its climax with the labor party in in 2016 you remember when just after the brexit referendum Jeremy Corbin was perceived by labor MPS rightly or wrongly to have failed the party and failed the remain campaign and expressed emotion of no confidence overwhelmingly I can't remember the exact margin but I think it was you know 170 labor MPS something like that he said no I'm staying on because I don't get my authority from you I get it from the membership Within the party now that was just ended up being s sitting completely awkwardly I.E you had a clash between internal labor party democracy and our parliamentary democracy because again the leader of the labor party or the leader of the opposition is supposed to be the person who commands the support of the biggest group in opposition and it just led to instability like wise with li trust she did not get a majority of conservative MPS but she was put there by the membership so it always I mean she would often talk about wouldn't she no one was respecting my mandate let's trust what mandate what mandate you got a mandate from like 60,000 people in the conservative party in the country so what I also do think that in the political instability that we saw in 2022 and that carried on and contributed towards the conservatives massive defeat uh in July was not just the 49 days of Liz truss's premise ship awful though that was it was as much to do with the mechanism by which she was elected which I think gave such a sense of a democratic deficit that the British people had been shut out again from who the Prime Minister should be and I just think the British people thought this is ridiculous and how is it that less than half of the available conservative party membership voted for her because you know a lot of people abstained or didn't bother to fill in their forms so she got less than half of the conservative party membership voting for her and she's the new prime minister and I just think it gave this sense that something is rotten so for you know for Kama to do something something about it so that it's not just a bunch of hacks and activists who are choosing but at least they are the representatives in Parliament then that makes total sense well who also know these people I mean that was our whole point about Liz trust for example a lot of conservative MPS would say you know if we'd had a choice we wouldn't we wouldn't have voted for it because we knew her we knew how mad she was and and and how swiveled she was but of course even the membership in the country don't know in the same way and let's not forget who the membership are either right these are people who've just paid a few quid month or whatever it is to basically have a vote I mean again that's not very Democratic when you can basically choose to pay into a system it's like the old rotten burs you can basically pay to have a vote in one form or another that's not very Democratic I tell you one one thing for Kama though he may if he does do it he may have cause to regret it this was actually quite a helpful system for party leaders in one sense which is that if you were in trouble particularly if you're the Prime Minister it's less of a problem if you're in opposition but if if you're if you're the Prime Minister one sort of Ace you could have up your sleeve was to say well we can't possibly have a leadership election that'll take months because it'll have to go to the membership you know we'll plunge the country into chaos you really think that would be a good idea right now we're at 20 points in the polls or 25 points in the polls you think that would be a good idea although it didn't work so well in the end for Boris Johnson or Liz trust it did enhance their power because that was something they're able to say if you go back to a system where basically the PLP can get rid of you and then replace you in a week which is what happened to Margaret thater of course prime minister who had been there for 11 and a half years gone in a week because of a vote of conservative MPS at that time it does empower I'm sure you do it does empower your MPS because you are getting you are again you're you're centering all of your Authority and your legitimacy rightly but potentially problematically with your MPS rather than the Mandate you receive from the party at large we will be back in a moment with a bit of cool britania and Oasis and the best British group [Applause] is [Music] oasis it's a hat trick of Brits of course for Oasis best video best album and now best British group and um how are they going to [Applause] celebrate is it anyone there we not got a lot to say that but the end of the day it's all a fakeess sping right and we knew we were going to do it anyway so um that is it can I say h hello Mom and Dad o there are seven people in this room tonight and were're giving a little bit of Hope to young people in this country that is me our kid bone head GGY Alan white Alan McGee and Tony Blair and if You' all got anything about you you get up there and you take Tony Blair's and man he a man power to the people so that was N Gallagher speaking in 1996 um encouraging people to vote for that priest of High cool Tony Blair because he was going to do something about young people and of course this was um part of the kind of phenomenon at that time which became known in retrospect I think it was a Time Magazine cover that dubbed it cool Britannia and it kind of reached its climax that period when Tony Blair shortly after becoming prime minister invited so many of the kind of denisen of cool Britain and arts and culture into Downing Street to celebrate all of this and I've just found out that the coolest of them all uhhuh was there and that was John soel I wasn't in Downing street of that party but I was at n the 1996 Brit Awards oh right even cool you were too cool for the 97 party they would have been able to get I've been there done it but yeah it was a really extraordinary period it was a period of great optimism and I think it was also partly a coming up to the Millennium and a new start and you know Blair would be the face of this kind of New Millennium starting and Blair really loved it and it worked very well for him that he wanted to be with sport Stars I mean I remember him doing heading tennis with Kevin Keegan and actually did it pretty bloody well when Blair went to the White House on his first trip at the beginning of 1998 uh I was on that trip and you know he was giving a Lifetime Achievement Award to Elton John in the white house and they didn't haveed yeah really they they hadn't organized the film crew actually if you want the full story on this they hadn't organized the film crew they asked to borrow ours so I went along to film this clip of Blair giving the Lifetime Achievement Award to Elton John in the White House in the White House and you had at president and you had at one end of the room Bill Clinton watching and at the other end of the room not acknowledging the president Hillary Clinton because this was the height of the Monica Lewinsky Affair and it was just painful and your eyes were darting from one end of the room to the other as Sor seems to be the hardest word yeah exactly as as Blair gave this award to Elton John but that is what Blair kind of Lent into and it worked very well for him you know in the first two or three years and he seemed pretty Untouchable at that point the Millennium Dome didn't work so well no when they were singing Old Lang Zion with the queen well we've gone full cycle now as we were saying at the full circle with the um as we were saying at the top of the show because Oasis are back together are you excited John yeah I am i' I'd honestly really love to get tickets do you think any politician could recreate that now sort of cool britania sense or do you think it was unique that I think I think it was I think there's too much cynicism I think that it would be very hard to lean into that but politicians still try I mean for goodness sake you know we we had camea Harris last week where you know we were thinking is Taylor Swift GNA turn up is beyon it was credible they could mean they didn't all they didn't they didn't all last but there were plenty of people who were quite cool about around American Sport and American Media and American Arts who will lean into the ca Harris campaign yeah in a way that they never would have done with Biden because he just didn't have the Vibes for it right and in a way that Kama didn't use any there was no it wasn't a celeb campaign in July was it I mean he wasn't leaning heavily on those sort of people to sort of circle back to sort where we started I do think that um I mean it's it's difficult because I am aware you as you say John you allude to we do live in a very cynical age and I've sat in enough focus groups and talked to enough voters to know that um and so I kind of like get the starma approach and his team's approach to you know promise little and try and overd deliver so I get all that but there is something in me nonetheless that still believes on some level that the electorate does yearn or does want some sense of forward momentum of some optimism and that they will in some sense that will resonate with people as we are seeing at least to some extent Harris trying do I mean Harris is making this bet and we saw that all of last week she is making a bet that the Democrats can be as they kept referring to themselves happy Warriors that they can kind of thread together a political narrative based around optimism and contrasting it with Trump's deep deep pessimism about the sort of country that America has been and is and is likely going to be and it does feel really jarring with everything that that we heard today and yes sta is in government it's a completely different sort of set of political Contours but it does feel that there there could be and probably should be some infusion of optimism and a happy medium or at least a kind of moving of The Notches to try and give that sense of momentum in British politics because we have not had it for such a long time I mean that is the Harris BET right the bet is is that you can still motivate people with hope and optimism that is an empty space in British politics right now and has been for a very long time when I was in America some you say what what's the food like and I'd say well sweet food is sweeter and the salty food is saltier because they put so much more sweetness into things and I thought that at the Democrats last week it was so sweet there was so much Sweetness in it that that you would never get away with that in British politics but by God we could learn something about the upbeat nature about rallying cry about things can get better um in the way that we do our politics and the way that we sell our message about who we are and what we are as a country on that uplifting note I'm voting soal we'll be back tomorrow see you then 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