Britain’s intergenerational unfairness: reality or myth?

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Britain’s intergenerational unfairness: reality or myth?’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Miranda Green
You know, if the Tories can’t have a good story to tell of some sort in the run-up to the election, they’re absolutely toast.

Lucy Fisher
Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. You heard there my colleague Miranda Green talking about the government’s need for some good economic news. More from her later. This week was a tale of contrasting generational fortunes. Rishi Sunak pledged to keep in place the government’s mechanism for increasing pension payments. Meanwhile, students saw a record fall in top grades as England’s exam board sought to curb the grade inflation seen during Covid. We’ll unpick the implications. Plus, we’ll look at the deepening crisis over the data breach at the Police Service of Northern Ireland. To sift through all that I’m joined, of course, by Miranda Green.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Stephen Bush, writer of the FT’s Inside Politics newsletter.

Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
So thanks both for joining. To kick off then, Miranda, what’s caught your eye this week?

Miranda Green
Well, interestingly, the government decided to abandon most of its cancer targets for the NHS and reduce them in number. And although that was actually welcomed by some cancer charities and advocacy groups because it was felt that there were so many targets, it was actually kind of confusing and some of them were less helpful than others. It kind of was presented as a bad news story for the government because it also turned out this week that more than a million patients in the English NHS have been waiting either for diagnosis or for treatment, you know, or for something at the front end of their cancer experience, which you really would not want to do in that sort of health situation. I suppose it just sort of highlights the fact that even a well-meaning and probably quite useful reform in the NHS at the moment, like rationalising your targets, starts to look like a sort of climbdown or an admission of failure by a government that sort of lost control of a public service.

Lucy Fisher
It’s a pretty damning indictment of the government’s health week. That is the key takeaway.

Miranda Green
Pretty sad, yeah.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, how about you?

Stephen Bush
Well, so my moment is sort of also about health week in some sense, but it’s Steve Barclay’s media round on the Monday morning. Partly I was attuned to it because I was also in Millbank doing a TV hit at the same time. So I was watching it kind of unravel as I was blearily being made up to make me look presentable to go on TV. And he obviously wasn’t having to answer any questions about health because you’re having to answer questions about small boats, the subject of the last week.

Now, I think one of the reasons why the government’s had this slightly odd communications strategy of basically having not one but two weeks on issues which they won’t want anywhere near the election campaign — problems in the NHS, problems in the immigration system — is actually, Downing Street’s not that powerful compared to most centres of government (inaudible) in most of our European peers. And the only ways that Downing Street controls the departments are one, through PMQs, where you go, we’ve got to be on top of this because otherwise I’ll have to answer a difficult question. It’s one of the reasons why Thatcher decided to take all of them herself rather than before, when the prime minister could be like, actually, that’s the question for the so-and-so secretary.

And the other way is you used your own grid to go, well, look, you’ve got to get on top of this because this week is health week or this week is small boats week. But as you know, Steve Barclay, who I think actually is in terms of government media performance a fairly safe pair of hands, as Steve Barclay discovered, no amount of Downing Street going, we need to grip this, can compensate for the fact that they ain’t gripped it.

Lucy Fisher
Yes. It’s weird in a way, isn’t it, that they’re thinking that they’re trying to use this system of gridded weeks during recess to take responsibility for areas even when they’re not delivering?

Stephen Bush
Yeah. And also like ultimately, the reason why summer is a hellish time for politicians is that in every other point of the year, there’s a fire break of something, right? There’s something else for people to write about and to talk about. If something goes wrong for you in August, it can just keep going wrong until September, which is why usually governments shut up in August, and that usually means that what we all start doing is we start writing, you know, are Labour far enough ahead, what do Labour stand for, etc, etc. And in some ways, the story of this summer thus far is a Labour party which in many ways I would say is still slightly undercooked, has managed to avoid having any of that usual like opposition summertime sadness because instead the government has had it.

Lucy Fisher
Well, that brings me on to my moment of the week, which is more frivolous, but speaks to the spectacle of political parties trying to make hay during the longueurs of summer. And that is the Lionesses’ kick-ass thrashing of the Matildas to get into the final on Sunday. And it’s just glorious to see Rishi Sunak manically tweeting about this success. He’ll be hoping for a win on Sunday to bring this morale boost to the nation. And then just Labour and the Lib Dems opportunistically leaping on the back of the possible success, demanding an extra bank holiday that they know the government is never going to agree to, given that I think the Treasury already blames the extra bank holiday for the King’s coronation is dampening productivity this year.

Miranda Green
Yeah. So having worked for politicians in a previous life, I can tell you one thing that I really don’t miss is having to put out those slightly fake football-related announcements or press releases expressing solidarity either with the local team or something that’s happening to the England team. I mean, it’s absolutely ghastly. I am one of those people who loves it when there’s a football story in the news because it’s relaxing. I have no idea what people are talking about. I just go into my own little dream world or get on with my work. Even I have noticed that the Lionesses (laughter) is setting quite well. But I agree with you completely the kind of, you know, the fake, fake authenticity . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Miranda Green
Of politicians trying to express sporting solidarity is just such an utter cringe, and I would tend to say that they should shut up about it completely. But of course, they wouldn’t be allowed to because then they would, you know, have people on the phone saying, why are you alone not with the nation supporting our gallant lasses? So they have to.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Well, being the Financial Times, we’d better start off this week talking about the economy. We’ve had a raft of economic data, labour market statistics on Tuesday, then inflation data on Wednesday. The Office for National Statistics showed annual growth and regular pay shot up by almost 8 per cent, a record amount in the second quarter of this year. It’s ostensibly good news for workers, but it’s also raised questions about the government following through on its vow to raise the pension by that huge amount. And it’s also likely to fuel the Bank of England’s concerns about inflation. The latest data on that front, released on Wednesday, showed a sharp fall in the rate of price rises in Britain. Inflation has slowed to 6.8 per cent last month, down from 7.9 per cent the month before. So there’s a lot to unpick here. Stephen, starting with you because you’ve written about this this week, Sunak projecting a lot of optimism. In an interview with The Times, he said, you know, people are gonna feel better this time next year. Quite a bold claim to make. You’re pretty sceptical of that. And while you think the inflation target he set out for this year, halving it is silly. You still think it matters?

Stephen Bush
Yeah. So the reason why I think it’s silly is essentially, ultimately, don’t have targets for things you can’t control. The inflation target is very much not in the control of Rishi Sunak. OK, there are some levers he could pull which he’s not going to, but they would all explode his coalition and his party, right? You can make a very strong economic argument that we should be having some income tax rises to further dampen down inflation. So he’s made a promise he can’t control. But crucially, because it’s the promise where we get these monthly updates on how it’s going. I think the question of in, next year, in this very long election campaign we’re having, are we gonna have a backdrop of well, you, mate, you missed your promises, so why should we believe anything else you say? Or is he going to be able to say, a lot done, a lot more to do. And broadly speaking, he’s clearly not gonna, you know, spoiler alert, he ain’t gonna stop the boats. But I think, actually, the inflation target, if the bank does manage to halve the rate, it will really change the mood music from the broadcasters in particular about the Conservative election campaign. Now I don’t think that in of itself is going to be the difference between success or failure. But, you know, the problem is broadly speaking, if you look at the polls, the focus groups, and when I, you know, go around constituencies knocking on doors, bothering people, what people think the inflation pledge means is essentially we’d have very sharp deflation.

Lucy Fisher
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Bush
You know, then prices would be back where they were, you know, at the start of the invasion of Ukraine. And obviously that isn’t going to happen. So in addition to it being a promise he can’t control, that isn’t really his responsibility. I don’t think it lands very well to most people if you say it’s all fixed because actually, it’s still very painful and it’s not the thing people think halving inflation means.

Miranda Green
Yeah, I think that’s a really interesting point. I mean, when you were talking earlier, Stephen, about them letting the small boats conversation get so out of control that it’s spreading across health week, it occurred to me that actually, on some of these pledges, of which having inflation is one, they’re actually sort of falling into a kind of accidental masochism strategy, which is something that governments only do when they realise they’ve got failures on their hands, when they have to kind of brazen this out and admit that it’s not all going to plan. But actually on the economy and therefore on this inflation pledge, they can’t do that. You know, if the Tories can’t have a good story to tell of some sort in the run-up to the election, they’re absolutely toast. So I think on this one pledge and on this broader story of the economy, they will have to come out fighting.

Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, I mean, there are also reports that Sunak wants to set out a new economic vision this autumn, wants to talk about education reform, perhaps bolstering the skills agenda. Does he really have any sort of wiggle room to do that?

Stephen Bush
It’s a really good question. I think he has to try, right, because, OK, look, the government has loads of problems. Some are the fault of the Conservatives, some of them global, but actually, basically, none of them are Rishi Sunak’s fault. But one of the few things he can control is just the general perception that this is a dead government which doesn’t really do anything in which essentially the only bit of government that has much activity coming out of it is whatever we’re calling local government this week, which is handing out lots of devolution deals. So actually, just the prime minister going, hey, look, there’s proof of life (Miranda laughs) is some, because otherwise right, what’s . . . 

Miranda Green
It’s a low bar.

Stephen Bush
What’s their plan to kind of like lurch into this election having, like, done nothing other than be like, hey, here’s a hot button cultural topic we’re talking about this week. While, you know, the Labour party goes around the country going, 13 years, 13 years, time for a change. And we know that broadly speaking, the most powerful thing you can attach to your brand, whether you are a political party or a fizzy drink, is the word new. So he’s got to do something. He has two choices: he can talk about a new agenda for some kind of new economy, or he might as well, if he’s not gonna do that, go on air and be like, I, too, am planning to vote Labour. (Laughter)

Miranda Green
Absolutely. I mean, he can’t be the quiet-quit prime minister, can he? So presumably the autumn is gonna be full of all sorts of kind of Sunak resets. You know, he’s a former chancellor, he’s a prime minister without a personal mandate. He’s gonna have to fight the election on the economy. He better tell us what his plan is.

Lucy Fisher
Well, at a time when the public finances are tight, what we’ve heard from the PM this week is that given the high earnings growth statistics, he was asked whether he was going to stick with the pensions triple lock, which, quick reminder to listeners, is the mechanism which is a manifesto pledge from the Conservatives and it is in law that sets out that the state pension must be uprated each year by whatever is highest of inflation, wages growth or 2.5 per cent. So given wages growth has reached almost 8 per cent, that could mean an extra £10bn spent on the state pension next year on top of a whopping £124bn bill for it this year. Miranda, are you surprised that Sunak is cleaving to that or is it just a sort of it’s something he’s got to do, given we’re an ageing society with more older voters and the older voters can be more relied upon than the young to turn out to vote?

Miranda Green
Well, I mean, I think that is the core of it, isn’t it? You know, that the grey vote is incredibly powerful, reliable and skews to the Tories. So he doesn’t want to disappoint them. You know, there have been a lot of attempts to unpick the triple lock.

Lucy Fisher
Can Labour do it?

Miranda Green
It’s very tricky. It’s very tricky. I mean, look, there is something that we should be proud of as a nation, which is that we don’t have the kind of pensioner poverty that we did have in previous decades and generations. And, you know, the pensions triple lock when introduced was not just a cynical political manoeuvre. You know, you don’t want old ladies en masse living on cat food. So we don’t want to sort of unpick it to the point where incomes amongst the oldest really, we know would fall to very low, difficult levels. I mean, the state pension is not that generous, particularly in the older age groups, you know, sort of just over £10,000 for some pensioners. And so I think I think there is a sort of narrative based on very, very solid evidence that younger people are kind of economically discriminated against. But when that narrative gets out of hand, you sort of get the idea that all pensioners are sort of being clover, and so the pension triple should be immediately unpicked. I mean, I think personally that there’s scope for a sensible conversation about, you know, around other pensioner benefits, other ways of means testing pensioners, making it fairer. I think that triple lock, you know, trying to unpick it in the run-up to a general election is gonna be pretty difficult.

Lucy Fisher
Mm-hmm. There is the sense, isn’t there, among younger people that, you know, housing policy, you know, has left them out in the cold, the tax burden that focuses on income rather than wealth, you know, attacks, sort of the working age young.

Stephen Bush
I do think actually a bit of a bubble narrative.

Lucy Fisher
OK.

Stephen Bush
And then actually, like, you know, when you look at the polling on the triple lock, most voters of all ages support it, right? I . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Take it away from the triple lock, you know, and how that the economy at large works or it doesn’t work (overlapping talk).

Stephen Bush
But I think actually in general, most voters don’t buy this intergenerational stuff.

Lucy Fisher
OK.

Stephen Bush
I think, you know, the intergenerational stuff has been a very useful rhetorical shield, both at the start of the times the Conservatives (inaudible) the pinch this way of cutting the state. And now it’s kind of this way of going, hmm, is the problem that since David Cameron stopped being prime minister we haven’t shown any interest in public policy? Or is the problem that the boomers are greedy? Actually, like the average person quite rightly goes, hmm, who helped me get on the housing ladder? Oh, it was my granny. Or they go, hmm, who do I not want to, like, live in poverty, my grandfather, etc, etc. So actually, I think this intergenerational stuff has a huge amount of purchase within Westminster across all of the political parties. But in the country as a whole, I think people quite rightly understand that like, you know, their grandson’s interest is their interest, their great aunt’s interest is their interest, and actually doesn’t have a purchase.

Miranda Green
Yeah, I think I pretty much agree with that. I’m always a bit suspicious of that as a sort of rhetorical device. But at base, the intergenerational problem is the UK housing crisis, isn’t it?

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Miranda Green
So really, I think it’s a sort of conversation that deflects when it actually should be a conversation about how to free up access to better housing and for people to be able to move so the housing market’s more flexible so that people can move to better jobs, move to better themselves, etc, you know, so I sort of agree with that. And I think that some of the coverage around the pensioners’ benefits and the triple lock is not that helpful.

Lucy Fisher
I’d agree. It’s maybe not helpful to attack the triple lock, but I think that there is an issue with the way that public policy treats young people versus old people. And I don’t think that younger people from whom I include anyone sort of forties downwards, I don’t think people look upwards towards their own generation, their own families and feel angry. I think they feel angry at a government that has allowed wealth to accumulate among boomers without being adequately taxed; anger at the government for a planning system that hasn’t, you know, deregulated and allowed more housing, certainly affordable housing, to be built. And I was also struck with data that came out on Thursday showing that the birth rate in England and Wales dropped to its lowest level in two decades last year, which to my mind smacks of the squeeze on the cost of living, of working people of childbearing age. But that might just be speculation.

Miranda Green
No, I think there’s a lot in that. You know, the burden falls back on the working-age population, and that’s often a time of massive outgoings. And that’s a huge problem. I think we’re back to Ed Miliband’s squeezed middle (Lucy laughs), aren’t we, almost. We’ve gone on a bit of a circle back to 2015.

Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean ultimately, although I think there are very reasonable questions about whether or not Ed Miliband had the correct answers, he had identified something which is, you know, essentially people who can afford smaller houses than their parents are less likely to have children than their parents. I also think if you don’t as a political party have a strong sense of who your working-age voter is, whether it’s, you know, a nice liberal in Notting Hill or someone with a kitchen island in the West Midlands. If you don’t have that person, then you don’t have a political economy, you don’t have a sense of what you’re trying to achieve. And it is a bit of a problem, not electorally. The Conservative party will be able to keep winning elections without the support of voting-age voters for some time, I think. But it is a problem politically if you don’t have that sense of what person are we in favour of and how would we like to create more of them. And precisely, as you say, the birth rate stats showed that people aren’t creating more of anyone.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. Well, let’s stick with the issue of fairness and the young, because Thursday was A-level results day for students in England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

[AUDIO CLIP]

Headteacher
Gentlemen, it is eight o’clock. Ladies. Alphabetical by surname, As to Zs.

Student 1
OK, that’s not great.

Student 2
It’s not a great start.

Student 3
Oh, my God, I got a C.

Student 2
I got a B.

Student 1
I completely fumbled that.

Student 4
I got into where I want to go.

Student 5
A*, AB.

Lucy Fisher
Well, mixed emotions from pupils there. This year, the exam boards have been determined to tackle grade inflation. It’s clearly easier to tackle than price inflation, though potentially still painful for those who’ve missed out on top grades. So Miranda, you know a lot about education. Take us through what’s happened this year regarding the proportion of A* and A grades.

Miranda Green
So essentially, there’s been a big fall in the proportion of A-level students who got that A or A star. But what it is, in fact, is a course correction back to the usual practice. This is the instructions from Ofqual, which is the exams regulator, saying you have to go back to pre-pandemic exam grade boundaries. So whereas last year it was 35.9 per cent getting As or A*, it’s down to 26.5. And in fact, that is broadly in line with where we were pre-pandemic. But what you do have is within the sort of younger age group, you’ve got a couple of years worth of students with much, much better A-level grades than their near contemporaries, which is gonna cause a bit of a sort of ongoing anomaly even after they finish their university for employers looking at CVs because there are gonna be the Covid years will look very out of line.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. And Stephen, the fall was considerably steeper in England for these top grades than Wales and Northern Ireland and pupils in the North East did worse than pupils in London and the South. So it’s not a strong one-nation picture, is it?

Stephen Bush
No, although partly that is because education is devolved to, you know, to risk getting a lot of hate mail actually is a good thing that Ofqual is successfully unpicking that grade inflation. So broadly speaking, if I were a government minister in any of these countries, I wouldn’t step out and say this is great news. And it isn’t great news at an individual level, but it is a good thing policy-wise, that we are successfully, you know, as you allude to, doing a better job of fighting grade inflation than inflation inflation.

Miranda Green
But also, you know, those teacher assessments which were relied on in the absence of the normal formal public exams during the Covid years because of lockdowns and, you know, schools not being open, etc. They created a lot of weird anomalies internally as well. You know, we know from the process of kids applying to university in normal times that teacher approximations of what individuals can achieve A-levels are way out of line and are subject to all sorts of kind of social class biases and things. So actually that was also bonkers. So to go back to, you know, to the system as was pre-pandemic, Stephen’s right, is the right thing, but it does throw up difficulties for this cohort. And also, you know, just on a human level, you have to be really compassionate about kids who never sat formal GCSEs.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Miranda Green
This is some of their first formal public exams. And then they’re also faced with results that perhaps compared to people who they know who left school last year look a bit disappointing.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Miranda Green
Really tricky for them as individuals.

Lucy Fisher
So Stephen, Gillian Keegan has weighed in, the education secretary, to say, look, no one’s going to be looking at your A-level grades in 10 years’ time, basically saying they don’t really matter. What do you make of that take?

Stephen Bush
Well, it’s true but — and listeners will go, Stephen, you unctuous hypocrite. Literally seconds ago you basically said the same thing — it’s true. But it’s not a helpful thing to say to somebody, right? You know . . . 

Miranda Green
Particularly for the education secretary.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. But I think, you know, when I think about, you know, my own cohort of school friends, you know, one of my best friends got DUED at the time and if you’d turned to him and said, well, don’t worry, in redacted years’ time, you’ll have two beautiful children and one not-so-beautiful child. I’m just kidding. (Lucy laughs) I know he listens to this podcast. You know, then he would you know, he would not have thanked you. And so it’s just not —

Lucy Fisher
Helpful.

Stephen Bush
It’s not helpful. It doesn’t help the student who’s proud of their grades. It doesn’t help the student who’s worried about their future. It helps no one.

Miranda Green
But do you not also think that, you know, the government at the moment has got this such an overwhelming desire to talk down the academic path through education that it, that sort of trumps any other consideration, because it was very notable that the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, was keen to move the conversation on to apprenticeships off academic qualifications almost (overlapping talk).

Stephen Bush
Which I actually think is exactly the wrong, like, ultimately apprenticeships, we are never going to get the take-up of skilled apprenticeship routes that we need in this country if the only time politicians talk about them is don’t worry if you’ve failed your first option, apprenticeships are a plan B.

Miranda Green
Also, I think one thing we should focus on, though, is that what did come out of the A-level results was that unfortunately Covid has had, again, a very disproportionately bad effect in some areas, geographically. The North East, prosperous areas, those good grades, those pass rates are still way up in comparison. So that deleterious effect of the lockdowns and of learning loss, as it’s called in the educational jargon, is unequal.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ll have to return to education more widely on the podcast soon. Well, let’s turn now to the seismic data breach at the Police Service of Northern Ireland this month. Joining us to discuss the deepening crisis is Jude Webber, the FT’s Ireland correspondent, who covers all developments in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Hi, Jude.

Jude Webber
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
So take us back to what happened earlier this month. What was the ultra-sensitive data released and how did it get into the public domain?

Jude Webber
Embarrassingly, for the police service, it got into the public domain because they put it there. There was a freedom of information request, which is a fairly normal standard thing to happen. But it was made via a public website, a website that specialises in freedom of information requests. So that meant that the answer was posted to that same website and could be viewed by the world and his wife. And what happened is that in answering that freedom of information request, whoever pressed the button Send and sent the information didn’t spot that embedded in the answer was a second tab on the Excel spreadsheet, which actually contained quite a lot of personal detail, enough to identify almost 10,000 people. So, you know, obviously massively embarrassing, catastrophically. I mean, it could have been worse if they had put people’s first names as well. But obviously it was a tremendous cock-up.

And then it was compounded the very next day by the Police Service having to announce that, well, actually, yes, they’d also had another data leak more than a month earlier, which they hadn’t known about fully at the time and hadn’t talked about, hadn’t reported at the time, which happened when a private car, which reportedly belonged to a police superintendent, was stolen. And in that stolen car was a laptop in it, a smaller spreadsheet and a police radio. And it seems that this police superintendent just nipped to the shops, left all his stuff in the car, the car got nicked (laughter) and there we are. So two very embarrassing own goals by the police there.

Lucy Fisher
And beyond the embarrassment, which, as you say, is sizeable, how serious is the security risk to officers and staff? What’s the reaction been among those affected?

Jude Webber
First of all, the reaction has been substantial. I mean, it’s a lot of police. Your first reaction might be, well, how bad is this really? Because perhaps a lot of, you know, bobbies on the beat, as it were, already have the name badges on and are known. But in Northern Ireland’s quite different to policing in other parts of the UK and in other countries. There are still an awful lot of police officers and police staff who don’t tell close friends and family where they work. And this is because despite this being 25 years since a landmark peace agreement, the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the three decades-long Troubles in Northern Ireland, there are still small, quite small groups, Republican groups, which are opposed to the peace process and have targeted police and security forces in the past.

And so the fear was, and it was quickly confirmed, the fear was that this information would fall into their hands. And within a couple of days, the chief constable came out and said, well, yes, that has actually happened. And so, you know, I’ve spoken to police who, you know, they feel that a target’s on their back, in a sense, and Northern Ireland remains a very, very divided society. A lot of things are very segregated. Education, for example, is pretty segregated between, you know, unionists/Protestants on the one hand and nationalists/Catholics on the other.

And the police force was overwhelmingly Protestant unionist at the time of, you know, at the turn of the century, the Police Service of Northern Ireland was born in 2001 to take over from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which had been the police force up until that time. And up until 2011, they had a policy to recruit, to have a 50/50 recruitment policy between Catholics and Protestants basically, and they made good progress and they got up to about 30 per cent. But then it stalled in the last few years and the policy was ended and recruitment hasn’t increased.

And the problem really now is that Catholics feel very, very much more exposed, and that’s because they might be living in areas in nationalist areas where, you know, resentment against the police force runs deep still even 25 years on, so they feel even more vulnerable.

Lucy Fisher
And Jude, what’s your take on the reaction of the UK government in Westminster to this? How quick to react, how seriously do they seem to have taken it from where you were standing?

Jude Webber
Not very. Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, you know, came out immediately and said he was very concerned and all the rest of it, but there has really been nothing beyond that. I think behind the scenes the police are being supplemented by experts from other forces and, you know, other security sort of branches in the UK. But the government hasn’t said anything apart from Chris Heaton-Harris’s comment. One of the MPs for the Democratic Unionist party, which is the biggest unionist pro-UK party in the region, called for parliament to be recalled to discuss this, which would be, I think you know, quite catastrophic in England, you know, if this had happened.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Jude Webber
And that’s just sort of fallen on deaf ears completely. So I think for a lot of people it’s very stark illustration of really how much people in England think about Northern Ireland at all.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, well, I want to bring in Stephen and Miranda here. It hasn’t ridden high in the headlines over here, has it?

Stephen Bush
No, I mean, policing across these islands has not had a great couple of weeks. But it’s had less attention, I would say, in Westminster than, you know, the Greater Manchester Police’s response to the wrongful conviction and long-term detention of Andrew Malkinson. Or indeed to, like, Mark Rowley’s slightly laughable suggestion that smartphone companies need to do even more to help them crack down on mobile phone theft, which does show, at least I think the essential problem for the union, right, is that if you don’t have a sort of concern for what public services across the United Kingdom are doing, then you don’t have a very good offer for people who do not feel strongly about the constitution.

Miranda Green
I was just thinking back to, it was actually the 25th anniversary of the Omagh bombing as well . . . 

Lucy Fisher
Yeah.

Miranda Green
 . . . in the last few days. And you know, there was a time when Northern Ireland and the Troubles was right, front and centre of the news agenda all the time. And then of course during the Brexit years, you know, the effect of Brexit on Northern Ireland, because there’s that land border with the republic, you know, it sort of became a sort of technical conversation and actually the sort of reality of not wanting, you know, catastrophic, dangerous things to happen again in Northern Ireland is sort of brought home in terms of what the potential outcome could be of this data breach, because it’s putting lives on the line again.

I think it was very interesting, you know, Jude’s remarks about just how segregated life still is in Northern Ireland. I also think that’s very little understood in the rest of the UK and sort of slightly shame on us for not taking more of an interest. I mean, I have never really understood why in the years after the Good Friday Agreement, more effort was not made to kind of unpick some of that cultural social architecture that keeps the two communities so separate there. And so the lack of progress in getting Catholics into the Police Service is part of that story.

Jude Webber
If I can just jump in there, I just would say one thing that, you know, policing was supposed to be one of the big success stories of peace and it was a success story. And the risk is that this is setting, you know, setting things back. And I think it’s very important to put it in the context of the Omagh bomb this week, the anniversary. I think the difference is that, I mean, at that time in 1998, the peace deal had just been signed and dissident Republicans had access to weapons and explosives that, you know, it’s harder to come by these days. And there are a smaller number of people involved. So I don’t think anyone is thinking there’ll be another Omagh anytime soon. But we just sort of don’t know. And it’s got people on edge. And that’s, you know, that’s sort of this, you know, worrying backdrop to, you know, the political situation which you described, Miranda. But, you know, politics at the moment is sort of going nowhere. You know, Brexit has tended to harden people’s attitudes. You know, the potted version is that the Stormont executive and assembly isn’t working at the moment because the DUP — the biggest unionist party — is opposed to the Brexit trade arrangements — the Windsor framework — and have hardened or kept their position very hard in order not to lose votes to an even harder-line party. So it’s all very complicated.

Lucy Fisher
Well, Jude, thanks for taking us through that. We’ll have to get you back on soon to talk more in depth about exactly that issue, what’s going on with Stormont and the Northern Ireland government being in abeyance. But thanks again.

Jude Webber
Thank you.

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Lucy Fisher
Now we’ve just got time left for Political Fix’s stock tips. Miranda, who are you buying or selling this week?

Miranda Green
OK. I think we should all buy Anas Sarwar. This is Labour’s leader in Scotland. Possibly, I think Labour’s ranking red prince, because his father, Mohammad Sarwar, was the pioneering Glasgow MP. He is looking pretty good because Labour could actually win 20 seats in Scotland if the latest YouGov polling is to be believed. They’re really creeping up on the SNP and of course, although the SNP remain ahead, their votes are very inefficiently spread across Scotland, whereas Labour’s are concentrated where they kind of need it, which in first past the post is all about concentrating your votes.

Lucy Fisher
Stephen, who are you buying or selling?

Stephen Bush
I’m gonna sell Steve Barclay.

Lucy Fisher
You’ve got it in for him this week, haven’t you? (Laughter)

Stephen Bush
I thought I was, yeah. So I’m gonna sell Steve Barclay partly because, so essentially the kind of argument you hear at the top of government is Steve Barclay said 6 per cent would end the nurses’ strike and it didn’t. I actually think that was as much the fault of the RCN’s leadership as it was his. You know, Unison did end half of the nurses’ strike, but I think he therefore really needed NHS week to be a great success in order to see off the threat to his job in the reshuffle. And it wasn’t. So on the spirit and you should make clear non-falsifiable predictions, I am saying this is the moment you need to get Steve Barclay out of your portfolio.

Miranda Green
I think I already unloaded Steve Barclay (laughter) so I’m feeling a bit smug. Lucy, what about you?

Lucy Fisher
Well, this week I’m buying MBS, Mohammed bin Salman.

Miranda Green
Ohhh . . . 

Lucy Fisher
I think there’s a sense in the UK we’ve been quick on the uptake of just how much Saudi is growing in power and influence on the world stage. You know, there’s just so much money to spend. They wanna spend a lot more on defence capabilities. In an FT scoop, we know they want to get involved in the sixth-generation fighter jet, a project that the UK is leading with Italy and Japan. And this week we know that Rishi Sunak and MBS had a phone call in which they confirmed another FT scoop that an invitation has been extended to him to come to the UK this summer. So it may not be welcome news to many people who remember that five short years ago Saudi agents killed the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. But this is all part of MBS being brought in by the west, I think.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. Miranda, Stephen, thanks for joining. If you like the podcast, do subscribe. You can find us through all the usual channels to receive episodes as soon as they’re released. We also appreciate positive reviews and ratings. It really does help spread the word. If you want to read more about the subjects we’ve discussed in the podcast, there are links to relevant FT articles in the show notes and they’re free to read for listeners. Plus, you’ll find a link there to a 90-day free offer for the FT’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter written by Political Fix regular, Stephen Bush. Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Philippa Goodrich. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Sound design and original music is by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here, same time, same place next week.

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