Labour’s week of woes

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Labour’s week of woes’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Miranda Green
It just leaves us so open to these general brickbats of, well, your ideas are borrowed, your words are borrowed. What is there? What is the substance that’s yours, that’s your own?

Lucy Fisher
Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. You heard there the FT’s Miranda Green talking about Rachel Reeves, the Labour shadow chancellor who’s been beset by apparent plagiarism claims. Also coming up, we’ll look back on Rishi Sunak’s first year in office, and — happy anniversary, Prime Minister — the next challenging by-election that could be looming. I’m joined in the studio by my FT colleagues, George Parker. Hi, George.

George Parker
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Miranda Green. Hello, Miranda.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
Well, the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war is causing shockwaves around the world. It’s having an effect here in the UK, too. Last week, we discussed on the podcast how Labour was dealing with splits on the issue as councillors quit in protest, and this week those divisions have only deepened. It’s now shadow ministers threatening to walk. So George, on Wednesday evening Keir Starmer was forced to speak with Muslim Labour MPs who are very concerned about his position on the crisis. Their central demand was that Labour should be backing calls backed by some other nations for a ceasefire. Starmer has said he backs humanitarian pauses, the US position, but that doesn’t go far enough for many in his party.

George Parker
I think Keir Starmer will be extremely glad that the Biden administration has started talking about humanitarian pauses because it at least gives him something to say to his many critics and a growing number of critics on his own side, including many Muslim MPs and councillors, Labour councillors, who he met, as you said, on Wednesday. And there have been at least a couple of dozen councillors who resigned in protest of the way that Keir Starmer’s handled this. A lot of anger still going back to that interview he gave to LBC a couple of weeks ago where he said that Israel had the right to cut off fuel and water supplies to Gaza, and that’s really angered people, understandably so in his own party. So that’s given him a significant problem.

You had Yasmin Qureshi, a Labour frontbencher, talking in the House of Commons about the fact that Israel was inflicting a collective punishment on Gaza, something which Starmer plainly hasn’t said either. He is in an extremely difficult political position, I think we’d all agree that, because he doesn’t, you know, given the recent history of antisemitism in the Labour party, is very keen not to appear to be the most critical of Israel amongst the party leaders.

Also, in terms of attempting to become seen as a prime minister-in-waiting, a statesman, does he want to be the western leader who’s ahead of Nato allies, including, most significantly, the United States, in calling for a ceasefire when the Americans only recently started talking about a humanitarian pause? So he’s in a difficult position. He’s got a little bit of cover now from the White House. But, you know, it’s still difficult and will become more difficult plainly for him in the days and weeks ahead when, as we expect, the Israeli ground offensive begins.

Lucy Fisher
There’s a lot to unpack there. Miranda, let’s just start with the LBC clip, which I think George is absolutely right, is one of the key causes of consternation among many in his party. Not only that he first made the remarks, that he took nine days to seek to correct the record and that what he said for many doesn’t wash. He’s sort of said that he’s been misinterpreted rather than he misspoke, that the transcript is quite clear. He said to LBC that Israel did have the right and now he says, well, no, what I meant was Israel has the right to self-defence. Is he mishandling this particular clip, which feels like something that will be, you know, included in his political obituaries whenever they happen?

Miranda Green
Completely agree. And no, it hasn’t been well-handled. The long wait and then actually the clip of him trying to justify what he said or wriggle out of what he said is one of those awful moments that makes you squirm. It would be better to confront it head on and say, this is what I said. You know, the picture’s evolving. More and more people, including the UN, are increasingly worried about the humanitarian situation. We should think carefully about X and Y, you know. So I think that would have been better. But these are councils of perfection because this is, as George says, a really difficult situation when he’s trying to behave in a statesmanlike way.

I think when these awful international crises blow up, you have to bear in mind that what’s said publicly and what’s said privately are different as well. And so what for example, even the Conservative chair of the foreign affairs committee, Alicia Kearns, was saying at the same time was they have to let in supplies and they cannot cut off the power and water. But as leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer didn’t feel he could say that even if he was thinking it. So, you know, in public life, these things are terribly, terribly difficult and some people are licensed to step out of line and some aren’t. But also, you know, obviously politically for the Labour party, these areas where there are a lot of Muslim votes, sadly, will also be in the minds of his strategists as they sort of try and grapple with what they can say in private, in public.

Lucy Fisher
And I just wanted to pick up on the point you say some people have licence to sort of go further than the party line or diverge from that. George pointed out Yasmin Qureshi, shadow equalities minister, accusing Israel of collective punishment and calling for a ceasefire. And in the Commons, Imran Hussain, another frontbencher, has also signed the early day motion calling for a ceasefire. It feels to me this is a sort of new phenomenon under Keir Starmer’s leadership of a breakdown of discipline among frontbenchers.

Miranda Green
Totally agree. And it’s very, very interesting for that reason is obviously this problem is in its own category. I don’t think this means you’ll get discipline breaking down on domestic policy, for example. But this is obviously an issue which people feel very closely and personally. And also, it does happen on the other side of the aisle. You know, Sayeeda Warsi, who was the first Muslim in the British cabinet under David Cameron, she famously actually resigned her ministerial job over Gaza in 2014. And she this week has been sort of really laying into the current cabinet on the same issue.

But of course, on the Labour party it’s much more politically significant because of the degree to which the Muslim vote, you know, breaks for Labour and with an election coming, that gives them a huge problem because, you know, there’s now a certain amount of speculation as to will people peel off to the Green party, will they peel off to some sort of George Galloway-type vehicle?

Lucy Fisher
A spire in Tower Hamlets.

Miranda Green
A spire in Tower Hamlets, places where those votes are really significant as to whether Labour would keep individual seats.

Lucy Fisher
Well, it’s a febrile situation and we’ll be on the lookout in coming days whether any of the resignations that are threatened or believed to be being threatened by Labour frontbenchers come to fruition.

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Labour’s woes haven’t stopped there this week. Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has launched a new book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics. But what should have been a moment of triumph and celebration for Reeves was somewhat derailed. We’re joined in the studio now by the FT economics columnist Soumaya Keynes. Hi, Soumaya.

Soumaya Keynes
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Soumaya, it was your big scoop that put a slight spanner in the works, I think it’s fair to say. So explain to us — you were given a copy of Rachel Reeves’s book to review and tell us what you found.

Soumaya Keynes
Yes, this is all a bit unusual given that most of the time I spend my time lurking in corners, chin-stroking. But yeah, the real news came because I was asked to do a book review and I wrote it. And an editor sent me a query about when something had happened. I looked at the relevant passage for the date, couldn’t find it, Googled it, thought, hmm, this is a bit familiar. Haven’t I just read this? And then checked the two and there was an identical sentence. A bit off, but on its own people make that kind of inadvertent slip. It wasn’t enough on its own, to, you know.

Lucy Fisher
And where were you looking online? Wikipedia?

Soumaya Keynes
That first instance wasn’t actually Wikipedia. It was a website called RethinkingPoverty.org. But then I thought, OK, well, I’m going to just randomly Google sentences, and if I can’t find anything after 10, I’ll give up. And on the sixth, I Googled, I found another one from Wikipedia. At which point I thought, oh, OK, I think there’s something here. And then, I’d say, maybe a couple of hours, maybe less, and I found seven examples in total, and then the rest were found by some very energetic editorial fellows here at the FT.

Lucy Fisher
So in total, and these were, I should stress for anyone listening who hasn’t yet read the story, and it is really worth comparing side by side. These whole paragraphs lifted from Wikipedia, I think from the Guardian website, one from a report, embarrassingly for Rachel Reeves, written by a colleague, Hilary Benn, for a think-tank.

Soumaya Keynes
It is worth saying that there were some paragraphs that were very, very similar. Lots of the instances, and I think we counted over 20, were individual sentences where most of the sentence was exactly the same, right, that there were some quite egregious paragraphs, longer passages where it was sort of worse, but lots of them were sentences, lots of them were biographical information. It’s not the case there were more than 20 whole paragraphs that were just kind of pasted.

Lucy Fisher
Well, thanks for that context. Let’s bring in George and Miranda. George, we’ve already seen the Tories leap on this, haven’t we? Greg Hands, the party chairman, has said, well, look, this is the cut and paste shadow chancellor, classic Labour trotting out the same old lines that they’ve used before. Stephen Bush made a good point in his newsletter that, you know, we can expect to hear Jeremy Hunt make a gag about this in the Autumn Statement. It will be the heckle of choice whenever Rachel Reeves is now at her feet in the Commons. Do you think that this story’s taken off to an extent that, you know, we can expect to see it on campaign posters? Will this be something that really continues to be in the public imagination during the election campaign?

George Parker
Well, it’s certainly captured the imagination of my colleagues at Westminster. I mean, people were astonished, frankly, by the extent of what had happened here that Soumaya and her team had unearthed. So I think there’s a lot of interest in this story at Westminster. There’s a good question about whether there’s a crossover to the public and whether the public care that much.

But certainly, from the initial, the way the Conservatives leapt on this, you know, the cut and paste chancellor, sort of the suggestion that there’s something shallow about Rachel Reeves that someone who might just go around stealing things from elsewhere, they’re not really thinking it through. Those are kind of images that they would love to be able to cement in the public’s mind.

And there’s a good reason for that because Rachel Reeves had done an incredibly good job, along with Keir Starmer in restoring the party, Labour party’s reputation of economic competence. I was just checking the opinion polls before it came out. Twenty-nine per cent of people think that Labour are best on the economy compared with 20 per cent for the Conservatives. And those graphs crossed, not surprisingly, in the autumn of 2022, around the time of the disastrous mini-Budget, but nevertheless a substantial lead for the Labour party. So yes, they would love to be able to take Rachel Reeves down a peg or two, frankly.

Lucy Fisher
And Miranda, do you have any sympathy for her? You know, this is a book that you know, is a canter through female economists. It doesn’t claim to be original research. You know, you and I know how some of these books are written. There’s a team of researchers that helps the principal person. Does a part of you feel just a little bit of sympathy?

Miranda Green
I think it’s quite bad, actually. I think it’s quite lazy. And I think part of the problem is what you’ve alluded to, which is the way the system works, is that people who are rising to prominence are told, oh, you should do a book. And I think that verb “do” is very revealing. What you’re supposed to do is properly research and write a book yourself with your thoughts in it, that people use a book as a platform for their ideas and to sort of bump them up the seriousness league.

And so I think George is absolutely right. The bad thing about this for Reeves is she’s put all this very hard work into being a very credible shadow chancellor, and indeed, one can almost say chancellor in waiting, given the polls. And so this undermines that idea by making it look lazy, a bit sloppy. Course, you have a team of researchers working on your project, but they should not be writing it. And also why did somebody not say to them, by the way, we will not be copy and pasting because this is supposed to be a proper work. I mean, you and I, Lucy, I think we’ve both contributed to similar projects about raising the profile of women in politics, you know, but even if you’re writing a short one-page biography, you do the work properly. So I think it does look pretty bad.

Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s just take a look briefly at what both the publisher and Reeves’s spokesperson said. The publisher, Basic Books, said that at no point did Reeves seek to present as original research the details flagged by the FT and in addition, Rachel Reeves’s spokesperson said, “We strongly refute the accusation that has been put to us by this newspaper. These were inadvertent mistakes and will be rectified in future reprints”. The publisher Basic Books admitted: “When factual sentences were taken from primary sources, they should have been rewritten and properly referenced. We acknowledged this did not happen in every case”. And George, in other countries, plagiarism scandals have actually felled politicians, haven’t they?

George Parker
That’s true, I think, yeah, when some people might look at this and think, well, did anyone really think Rachel Reeves was writing this book herself and she had some researchers digging around? But as you say, in other countries, this has been a very serious issue. Greg Hands, Tory chairman, drew attention to this. He’s got connections in German politics. He knows very well that three German ministers have been forced to resign over the last 12 years or so as a result of alleged plagiarism in relation to their doctoral theses. So this is in academia rather than political book writing, but nevertheless, in other countries it has been a serious offence.

Lucy Fisher
And that point about higher education is important, isn’t it, Miranda? Because in any university, if you were found to have done this, it would be one strike and you’re out, wouldn’t it?

Miranda Green
It’s really, really disapproved of for very good reasons. And in fact, because of, you know, the generative AI problem now as well, universities everywhere are having to kind of tighten up their guidelines and make it really explicit that you can’t take stuff from the internet. This is supposed to be your own work. So actually, even the kind of excuse that in this case it was very young people who might not have understood what was wrong with lifting content from elsewhere. Actually, in universities, you know, it’s clear that that’s disapproved of. So that doesn’t really hold water either. I think also for Reeves, there is this slight problem with, you know, her vision is openly based on what’s happened in America. They even call it Bidenomics. And it just leaves us so open to these general brickbats of, well, your ideas are borrowed, your words are borrowed. What is there? What is the substance that’s yours, that’s your own? 

Lucy Fisher
Soumaya, let’s move on from the allegations of apparent plagiarism, because Soumaya, you’ve actually read the book, which of course seeks to place female economists back into the canon. Rachel Reeves has also indicated that part of her motive in writing this was to think herself about how she’d like to run the economy if she becomes chancellor, the first female chancellor, which I think you say is something she points out at least seven times in the book she would be. What can we learn, if anything, from the book? Are there any hints about how she might run things?

Soumaya Keynes
So there aren’t very many. I don’t think this book was intended to make news. Obviously, it has. But the point of the book was to, I think, kind of rattle through lots of these, you know, extraordinary women who have made huge contributions to economics and not always been recognised for that and then to place that alongside, you know, various Labour policies that are consistent or inconsistent with those.

So for example, she talks about Mary Paley Marshall and who with her much more famous husband, Alfred Marshall, wrote about the theory of economic clusters, right? And Rachel Reeves says that this shows that if you have a national industrial policy, you really need to think about a regional industrial policy. So you get hints there. But I don’t think anyone would be surprised to discover that the Labour party was interested in industrial policy. So we get a bit of that.

She talks about Joan Robinson, who was an advocate for the minimum wage. She talks a lot about Labour’s part in that. I think what she’s trying to do is trying to cement herself as within the economic orthodoxy, right? It’s not a case of this book being lots of very radical ideas by these off-the-wall women. And she’s explaining why actually, they make sense. It’s very much not that. It is, you know, these are ideas that have entered the canon. These women haven’t been credited with those ideas often. And look, I’m Rachel Reeves and I understand these basic economic ideas. I’m not going to do anything too outlandish. Please vote for me to be the next chancellor.

Lucy Fisher
And in your review, and I’ll put a link to that in the show notes for the podcast, you make the point that there has been research that shows that actually, if there were more female economists historically involved in the profession, the trade, that could have influenced economic policy. Women economists tend to be a little bit more at home with environmental protections, with government intervention. Tell us more about that.

Soumaya Keynes
This comes down to the idea about whether one’s identity, who one is, informs what one thinks, and the kind of research one does, the kinds of questions one asks. It seems to me fairly obvious that one’s background, one’s gender, would influence the kinds of questions you would be asking. I know on average, female economists are more concerned about the gender pay gap being the result of discrimination, that they’re more likely to think that that’s unfair. I think it’s just natural to conclude that if you have a different make-up of economists, if you have more women, then the output of economics is going to look different.

Lucy Fisher
Soumaya, we’ve actually gotta let you run because you are actually right now going to dash to interview Rachel Reeves on stage at a public event. It’s quite impressive that she hasn’t just pulled out or cancelled, given that you’ve sort of . . . 

George Parker
Spoiled the book launch?

Lucy Fisher
Given that you’ve, let’s say rained on her parade.

Soumaya Keynes
Yeah. I mean, I think it would have been a story had she booted me out. But yeah, I’m looking forward to the world’s most awkwardly timed interview, and I’m sure we will have an excellent and robust discussion.

Lucy Fisher
Well, thanks for fitting us in.

Soumaya Keynes
Thank you for having me.

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Lucy Fisher
Rishi Sunak has this week been marking the first anniversary of his arrival in Number 10. The prime minister appeared to let slip that a general election is still a whole year away from now, releasing a video urging voters to examine what he achieves over the next 52 weeks. As a reminder, when he stood outside Number 10 last year, here’s what he promised to achieve.

Rishi Sunak in clip
This government will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level. Trust is earned and I will earn yours.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda, has he done that?

Miranda Green
Well, I don’t wanna burst his balloon if he’s listening. (Laughter) But, you know, it’s a pretty mixed bag, isn’t it? I think the main problem is the one that our absent friend Stephen Bush identified this week, which is that he started off selling himself to the public as a solutions man and as a pragmatist and after the chaos of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, as someone who would steady the ship, both in terms of the Conservative party, but more important to the rest of us, the nation.

And now, suddenly, in the last few weeks, his team have tried to rebrand him as Rishi, the risk-taker, Rishi the bringer of big, bold ideas to change the country. And it’s a completely different prospect. They clearly see for good reason that if he just goes to the country saying I’m selling you the status quo, that’s a disaster. But trying to refashion him as the change candidate has some serious, serious problems. And apparently some of this stems from the fact that when he achieved the breakthrough on the Northern Ireland protocol — the Windsor framework, so called — he was horrified to find that the nation was not sort of on its back in gratitude at this great breakthrough. And of course, nobody really cares about Northern Ireland in terms of how they vote. And this kind of turned him off focusing on solutions.

This is the wrong lesson to take. So the people in Downing Street who are sort of letting him have rushes of blood to the head and suddenly suggest that we ditch A-levels or scrap HS2, they need to realise that he needs to come back with solutions to the problems that people are actually worried about, I think, if he has any chance of recovering his position in the polls and surviving a general election.

Lucy Fisher
I think, you pick up on the Windsor framework; that is something, along with his other achievements, you know — the Aukus submarines deal with the US and Australia, renegotiating the UK’s entry back into Horizon, the EU science and research programme — I think it’s fair to point out he has made some achievements, but they have tended to be with foreign partners that don’t move the dial in the polls back home. George, just going back to those comments we heard from him as he stood outside that famous lacquered black door, it is fair to say he has restored a sense of professionalism to Downing Street after the utter turmoil of Johnson and Truss, isn’t it?

George Parker
I think if you set the bar that low, (Lucy and Miranda laugh) I think, to be honest, anybody would claim to have restored some semblance of good governance. No, it is true. And I think for a while the British public responded pretty favourably to the fact that he’d come in. He was actually doing the job, he was looking at difficult problems, he was looking at the data, he was coming up with solutions. I mean, I’ve heard him say on foreign trips that he spent much more of his first few months in office doing foreign policy stuff and nobody really, as you said, Miranda, nobody really gave him much credit for it.

But nevertheless, you know, the first four or five months of his time as prime minister, you could see his poll ratings were gradually . . . they were stabilising or they were picking up slightly. Since the spring, his personal poll ratings have been on a downward path to the point now where he’s at record lows. And now as Miranda said, he’s coming up with new issues which people haven’t probably been thinking about very much in their difficult day-to-day lives, like smoking or HS2 or reforming A-levels at some point in the 2030s. And all the time he’s being dragged down by what people in Downing Street call euphemistically legacy issues. I mean, they blame legacy issues, didn’t they, for the defeats in the by-elections in . . . 

Miranda Green
It’s a wonderful, wonderful euphemism. (Laughter) I’m using it now in all circumstances.

George Parker
But what I mean by legacy issues is the fact that the Conservative party brand has been trashed over the last three or four years and everything keeps dragging him back into the past, doesn’t it? And we have this week, Peter Bone, the MP for Wellingborough being suspended for six weeks, facing potentially, facing a by-election in Wellingborough from personal misconduct. As we’re recording this interview now, we’re just hearing about a senior Conservative being arrested. All of these things, we’ve got Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former adviser, at the Covid inquiry next week and all sorts of lurid WhatsApp messages no doubt coming out. Rishi Sunak having to go to the Covid inquiry in December. All these things keep dragging him back into the past, which is a place he definitely doesn’t want to live in.

Lucy Fisher
Well, I think, Miranda let’s just look at both those issues. Peter Bone, the suspension that was approved by MPs this week automatically triggers a recall petition, paves the way for an election in his Northamptonshire seat of Wellingborough. They have an 18,500 majority at present. Ordinarily, you think a very safe Conservative seat, but now the spectre of another Conservative loss looms, doesn’t it? And can I just say, I was wondering how many we’ve had. And we’ve had six by-elections since July. Labour have made gains and for the Lib Dems one, Tories have obviously held one, Uxbridge. But this is gonna be another challenge, and it could help Keir Starmer with this narrative about momentum.

Miranda Green
So I think this is really interesting writing about those by-elections that the Tory party lost last week. I spoke to several psephologists who said, you know, we are really in difficult territory for the governing party now because swings of 20 per cent are becoming the norm at electoral tests. And over the last few years you’ve seen a pattern where the kind of traditional voting patterns have been disrupted to such an extent that the electorate is really volatile. And that means you can suddenly get huge changes, huge swings and previously safe seats can fall. So, yes, there could be another by-election test of Sunak and potentially another boost for Starmer.

But I think it’s also just another warning that those seats, which were really where the Conservative party was a kind of bulwark locally, an unassailable bulwark politically, aren’t really that anymore. And actually, some Tory voices are starting to say, look, we’re running the danger of facing the same fate as Labour in Scotland, which is having been dominant in a whole bunch of territory, taking those seats and those voters completely for granted, only to find that there’s a massive swing against us and we lose the whole lot. You know, it’s a realistic prospect, according to usually very cautious political scientists.

Lucy Fisher
We do mention this video that Sunak put out when he talked about, you know, looking at what will happen in the next 52 weeks, suggesting he does plan to do another year in office. It’s raised lots of eyebrows in Westminster. People think that probably does reflect his current thinking about the best timing for an election. Do you think he’s got enough substance left, enough fuel in the tank to really keep going for a year? I know I asked this before we’ve had the King’s Speech. But what’s your sense on that?

Miranda Green
It doesn’t feel like it, I must say. It was one of the main things I thought from the Conservative party conference in Manchester was, what have they got left in the tank, effectively? What are the fresh ideas? What even is the fightback from the moderate wing of the Tory party against what you might call the nutcase brigade who are clearly waiting for an electoral defeat to try and take over? And there wasn’t that much there. And I felt that was really, really significant and depressing, actually.

And for example, I could not work out why Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, was given such a bad slot for his speech and only seemed to speak for a minimal amount of time and not say very much. So I think they’ve got some real problems, actually. It’s gonna be interesting to see what goes into the King’s Speech next month and how they shape up for the Budget. But again, what can they do in the Budget when the fiscal situation is so tight and when the debt issue is looming over them so large and is causing, you know, Treasury heads to be scratched even as they try and put the thing together.

Lucy Fisher
One does wonder whether there will be an uptick in sleaze scandals if there is this sense the Tories are heading for a spell in opposition if this sort of fin de siècle vibe takes hold in the party over the coming months. And George, you mentioned an MP had just been arrested at the time of recording the podcast. Crispin Blunt, a Conservative MP, has confirmed it is he who’s been arrested on suspicion of rape and the possession of controlled substances. Blunt, who’s the MP for Reigate, has said he will co-operate fully with police and is confident he will not be charged.

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Well, we’ve just got time for Political Fix stock picks. Miranda, who are you buying or selling?

Miranda Green
Well, I feel mean doing this, to be honest, as he’s probably not having a great few weeks, but I’m gonna to sell Jeremy Hunt.

Lucy Fisher
OK.

Miranda Green
As he prepares for his Budget. I know, I know. But you know, the Budget’s a nightmare to put together. He’s already said he can’t offer tax cuts to any of the Tory backbenchers, which is what they really want to hear. He’s gonna have to be quite cautious. He could have to make — well, have to — he could choose to make welfare cuts, which will make him a kind of bogeyman to the left. There’s gonna be a reshuffle at some point. Is his job actually even in danger? And also his South West Surrey seat has been, after the boundaries are redrawn, it becomes Godalming and Ash. He’s really, really vulnerable to a Lib Dem attack there. I think he’s not in great shape and I say that with some regret because he is actually a sensible Tory who was part of the key kind of boost that they had when Rishi Sunak took over. But you know, now with Number 10 actually abandoning the strategy of looking like the head boy prefect team, you know, back in control, Hunt looks quite isolated, I think.

George Parker
I think that’s pretty true. I think there are some people in the Treasury who think that probably, Jeremy Hunt will deliver the Autumn Statements on the 22nd of November, do all the difficult stuff, and then they’ll bring in a fresh face to deliver the good news in the Budget in 2023. But obviously, they hope to start unveiling the tax cuts. The only question is who would the fresh face be? And to be honest, the cast list of potential future chancellors is not that great.

Lucy Fisher
I was gonna say this week I’m buying shares in Oliver Dowden because it seems to me he’s very much trusted by Sunak and his allies, especially those who’ve got it out for Hunt. He’s also seen as a more political beast, which I think is one of the key criticisms of Hunt. I’ve just been interested, you know, he’s been out and about this week at the slightly cringely named “Davos in the Desert” Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia, talking about AI. I just have a sense he’s the coming man in some ways in this administration.

George Parker
Well, that’s interesting. But would he transform the Conservative party’s prospects in the next election? Does anybody know who Oliver Dowden is in the real world? I don’t know. It’s a tough one and I think it will also be quite tough on Jeremy Hunt, who I think has done a solid job as chancellor.

Miranda Green
It’s a ruthless business.

Lucy Fisher
It is.

George Parker
It certainly is. I’ve got to do a stock pick, haven’t I?

Lucy Fisher
Yes, you do. Who are you buying or selling?

George Parker
I think while we’re on the subjects of reshuffles, we’ve all heard the rumours there could be a reshuffle this week or next week and the drivers in the government car service are normally the first people to hear about this, are convinced that — well, they were convinced it was gonna be this week. Now they’re convinced it’s gonna be next week. (Lucy laughs) My guess is that the prime minister won’t reshuffle his team until after the Autumn Statement on the 22nd of November, probably after the Supreme Court ruling on the Rwanda policy, because that could throw into question Suella Braverman’s future as home secretary. But when it happens, I will bet a lot that one of the people who get into the cabinet will be Laura Trott. She’s the MP for Sevenoaks, elected in 2019, a former special adviser. And people like me always tip people who we know when they were special advisers.

Lucy Fisher
Good source, George.

George Parker
But it’s true, a good source. And used to work in public affairs, but she’s highly rated by Rishi Sunak and the Number 10 team as a very capable performer on the media and has done quite a techie job well as pensions minister, and wasn’t pensions reform a very big part of the government’s agenda?

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Lucy Fisher
George, Miranda, thanks for joining. And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners. There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, do leave a review or a star rating, it really helps spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Audrey Tinline. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here, same time, same place next week.