Israel-Hamas war overshadows Labour conference

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Israel-Hamas war overshadows Labour conference’

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Gideon Rachman
As the Gaza offensive rolls on and the pictures come out, it will become a subject of bitter division within our own societies. And people are worried about the spillover effects within western societies of a really brutal conflict in Gaza.

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 Gideon Rachman talking about the political repercussions of the attack by Hamas on Israel. More from him later. Also coming up, we’ll reflect on Labour’s tightly managed conference in Liverpool. And to discuss that, I’m joined in the studio by my FT colleague, Jim Pickard. Hi, Jim.

Jim Pickard
Hi.

Lucy Fisher
And FT columnist Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.

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Lucy Fisher
So we’ve resurfaced in London, guys, after two northern cities and two four-day conferences spent in sweaty rooms with party apparatchiks. Jim, you did your best Bryan Ferry impression at the end of Labour, didn’t you?

Jim Pickard
Did a little cover of David Bowie there in front of 600 people with a live band.

Lucy Fisher
And with a shadow cabinet minister, I believe. Let it never be said the lobby is not cosy with the opposition (Jim laughs) as well as the government. So Stephen, at the end of all this, where has the conference left us? Should we start by talking about Keir Starmer? It felt to me, you know, his speech really was a big moment for him in convincing his party that he can do it for the election, win the election, and convincing the country, those of them that caught any coverage of it, that he has a bit more zest, a bit more spark than perhaps people thought beforehand.

Stephen Bush
In terms of the wider public, I don’t think this conference has changed anything, but in terms of the mood music in the party and the mood music among the political class more broadly, what he very successfully did in that speech, I think, is that broadly speaking, throughout this conference, you’d have someone standing up and going, conference, the Tories have created a £20bn problem and we’re going to tackle it by closing a £1bn-£2.5bn redundancy. And you kind of go like, hmm, that doesn’t seem like you’re gonna fix that problem.

And what he has done in this speech, whether the kind of cocktail of planning reform, stronger labour market and their green plan, whether that cocktail is actually in of itself enough to get growth going and to therefore make some of those very difficult tax and spending decisions easier for them is an open question. But I think he did a good and convincing enough job of pitching it to the point that I think the party feels that they can go, well, the reason why these £2bn solutions to these £20bn problems are not inadequate is because we’re going to do this radical stuff on planning and that will allow us to unlock higher growth, higher wage growth, higher tax receipts, etc, etc and I think that it successfully convinced all of us in the media listening that they believe that.

It’s still, of course, possible that because their growth stuff might not work, that they will be overwhelmed. But I think that they’ve done enough to convince people in the press that they have got enough about them that they might at least be able to make the next Labour government a success.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, I think, Jim, as Stephen says, to my mind, there’s something about the modesty of what Labour’s offering that makes it sound realistic and plausible. You know, it’s very far away from the magic money tree, massive spending commitments of the Corbyn era. It’s far from the kind of cakeism of, you know, the Boris Johnson-era Tory party. And I just sort of thought, actually, after the chopping and changing, as Starmer put it, the core message that Labour was trying to get across at this conference was certainty and stability. And that is something that will, you know, impress investors and business after all the chaos and the U-turns of the Sunak government, isn’t it?

Jim Pickard
Yeah, and I think the way that the general public approach general elections is that tone and character and feel of a political leadership and a political party is much more important than the line by line list of hundreds of policies. No one in their right minds reads an election manifesto unless they need to for their work and therefore most people, of course, don’t. And therefore it’s about the sort of tone you set. And of course, Boris Johnson succeeded in 2019 by a kind of combination of catching the general public’s frustration and anger about the way that Brexit wasn’t being delivered and was being thwarted with also a kind of upbeat vision of the, you know, if you stick with me, we’ll get things like levelling up and we can get to a green economy without too many problems, inverted commas and all the rest of it.

And of course, the tone of the Keir Starmer leadership is much more muted. It’s a sort of value of stability, technocratic. You know, as Robert Shrimsley put it in a column this week, it’s sort of about being a mechanic rather than a magician. And as Stephen says, you know, a lot of their solutions to really big problems do look a little bit small-scale. Say, for example, you know, £1bn for getting NHS workers to do some more overtime, that clearly isn’t gonna touch the edges of the massive and financial problem at the heart of the NHS. I think some people sort of think, you know, these guys aren’t gonna do anything overly radical. They seem much less chaotic than we’ve had under Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. They might be more principled and more organised.

And at the end of the day, if you look at the major events that the different governments of the last 20 years have had to deal with, they’re not things that you write down in the manifesto ahead of a general election. So of course New Labour ended up to some extent defined by the Iraq war that nobody predicted. The last couple of governments have been defined by a Covid pandemic that nobody predicted and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And therefore I think for the general public, there’s a lot to be said just for, are these people kind of my kind of people or at least more my kind of people than that other lot? And for that, he’s probably doing OK.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, and I don’t know about you, but to my mind, there’s been so much written. We’ve spoken on this podcast about the involvement of Blairites in the Starmer leadership office. I had kind of been expecting it to be a little bit more of a Blair pastiche, his speech. And actually, I was impressed that he came across more as his own man than we’ve seen before. He certainly referenced Blair, he referenced Attlee, he referenced Wilson, but there was this sense of him owning as well his working-class roots. There was this kind of message of aspiration for other people from that background, but also this message of reassurance for middle-class voters worried potentially about higher taxes under Labour, or at least traditionally that being the worry. I just wanted to read another line from Robert Shrimsley’s column, which you mentioned, Jim, which I thought was a really fantastic column. He said while the prime minister’s speech — talking about Sunak at Manchester — was “parochial, intentionally divisive and aimed at shoring up a core vote, Starmer’s was national and inclusive”. Was that your take, Stephen?

Stephen Bush
The thing which was very strange about the two speeches, in contrast, is that the Sunak speech felt like the kind of speech that if it were given by an opposition leader one to two years into the parliament would go, oh, you know, they’ve correctly identified that the governing party is a bit split on gender and trans issues, so that’s like a clever dividing line, even though it’s low-salience. Oh, and they’ve identified that you can talk about motorists and that doesn’t commit you to spending more money. And so that’s a clever mid-parliament campaign to run.

But for a government which is going to be judged on its delivery record on the NHS, crime, etc, etc, it was remarkably thin. And ultimately for an opposition where again, where the big question mark was OK lads, but what’s your actual plan to fix this? Because yes, some things do require reform, but, like, broadly speaking, the fact that doctors and nurses can go and have a much better quality of life by going and living in Australia and New Zealand is not a problem that you can simply reform your way out of, right? That does require quite a lot of extra money to fix. And I think the big thing was it seemed at least that what you can’t accuse Keir Starmer saying is not talking about how he wants to get out of that problem. There is now a little bit more detail beyond I’ve identified these big problems, we’ll fix them and we’ll fix it by something, something higher growth.

And so that does set up a very favourable contrast for them, not least because again, as Robert says in his column, right, although Keir has had to be incredibly devious/ruthless/disingenuous, depending on where you sit in the political firmament, he has taken control of his party and marginalised his fringes. Rishi Sunak’s fringes are the home secretary. And seeing as, broadly speaking, the things you wanna be seen as at the time of the election are moderate, competent and united, that is not a combination I would be happy about and not a contrast I’d be happy about if I were Rishi Sunak after this conference season.

Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s have a look at some of the policy areas because it interests me people keep saying they need to put more flesh on the bone and in some areas they do, but there isn’t a shortage of policies. You know, going into this conference, you know, all those mission documents, the National Policy Forum process, there’s actually a lot of things they’ve thrown out, not very many of which have sort of stuck in the minds of the public, I think. So I think they’ve got a challenge ahead in terms of streamlining the offer, choosing what are their best kind of eye-catching retail offers to the public. And one thing that people are aware of, Jim, is the green prosperity plan. That’s been one of their big-ticket items. But yet again, you had a great scoop this week that they’ve scaled that back. Is that wise?

Jim Pickard
I mean, I totally agree with what you’re saying about the number of policies. You know, the National Policy Forum document is 140 I think, 130 pages long. And I think going back to your point about whether this lot are Blairite, I think presentationally, tonally, demonstrably in terms of all the Union Jacks and everything else, they are going for kind of Blairite vibe. But I think when you take the pieces of what is gonna be the Labour manifesto one after another, this is probably as leftwing, maybe more leftwing than Ed Miliband’s manifesto in 2015. He was of course described as “Red Ed”, well, of course not by the FT, because actually, Ed Miliband’s policies were pretty normal social democrat, centre-left policies. But, you know, in the scrapping of the House of Lords, huge package of employment policies, the making it easier for unions to go on strike and of course the green prosperity plan, you know, this is as Rachel Reeves said to me when I did Lunch with the FT with her a week or two ago, she said, well, we are a centre-left party. So on that front they’re not gonna apologise.

On the “green prosperity plan”, £28bn was the original promise of debt-funded spending on all sorts of green investments, whether it’s renewable energy or insulation or whatever else. And what Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, did in June was she said, well, when we said this would be £28bn a year, we’re now saying we’ll reach £28bn a year from the middle of the first Labour parliament.

Now, what they are saying and what we reported earlier in the week was that they probably won’t get to £28bn until the end of the five-year parliament and also that they’re going to net off any existing government green capital spending, which according to the IFRS, is a figure of currently about £8bn. Now that number will bounce around the bed and Labour said to us and will say to anyone else asking, well, we can’t sort of put a precise figure on it. But you’ve basically gone from £28bn every year over five years to a sort of ramping up to a net £20bn or so, which thanks to inflation as well, will actually be less in real terms than when the promise was originally made.

Lucy Fisher
Well, it’ll be interesting to see if they come under fire for diluting that further. Also interesting this week that the Climate Change Committee, the climate watchdog, in effect, has crunched the numbers of Rishi Sunak’s weakening of his own green policies and found that they will cost renters and drivers more money. Slightly ironic given Sunak said the point of rowing back was to save consumers money and also that it will make it more difficult for the government to meet its carbon targets. Stephen, we’ve talked a bit about Starmer. Who else stood out for you this week and does it matter or do you think it just needs to be all about him now?

Stephen Bush
I mean, I think in practice, in a general election, the only figures who really matter are the leader, the shadow chancellor, and then essentially everything else kind of just exists as a kind of general mumble in the minds of most voters. But I think the person who stands out for me, not least because we’ve seen this week also stories about judges being told not to send people out on bail to prison, is their new shadow justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood.

Obviously, the argument for Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is she really knows the brief, having been both shadow home secretary under Ed Miliband, but also more importantly, chair of the home affairs select committee. But she is not, I think even her closest allies would say she’s not like a political street fighter, right? She’s not gonna be the person who, like, goes around being like, you’re a disgrace, you shouldn’t have done this in that way that particularly in opposition, you do kind of have to be slightly too close to the bone to get any sort of attention.

And one of the reasons why Keir Starmer has made Shabana Mahmood, who was his election co-ordinator, shadow justice secretary, is she will, as someone put it to me, be Yvette Cooper’s anger translator, right? Because everyone else, right, like Thangam Debbonaire, Peter Kyle, you know, they’ve got the other economy briefs. They are part of the core five people who have had this weird, intensive media training, who they think will be their faces of the campaign. But really, all those people will be doing will be sounding reassuring and sensible on TV to voters and sort of going like, look, don’t worry, we represent non-threatening change.

But the person who I think will be the person who’s most likely to be discussed as well as Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves will be Shabana Mahmood, because the only way they’re gonna get a purchase criticising the Conservative record on crime is a willingness to say things which make parts of their liberal base go, oh, that’s a bit far. Basically, if your attack is not so loud and some people say you’ve gone too far, probably no one normal has heard it.

Lucy Fisher
Let’s just finish talking about the absolutely appalling events that unfolded in Israel. And, you know, I was interested one official I was speaking to said to me that they thought, look, absolutely, of course, right and understandable that the situation in the Middle East was dominating the news agendas. But nonetheless, this person thought it was a really big problem for the party because the annual conference is, you know, one time a year where you’re guaranteed a really chunky bit of media coverage, particularly on the TV bulletins. And when you’re the opposition, that’s really important. And some people I spoke to just felt that Labour had lost their microphone, as one put it, this year.

Jim Pickard
So someone at the BBC said to me, well, look, we still have to give the equivalent coverage that we gave, at least in the number of minutes, to both of the parties during conference season. But of course, instead of leading the news, Labour coverage was very much at the back end of the news. So that’s obviously one big, big difference.

And of course, if you look at the newspaper headlines throughout the week, and it’s normally you’d have a whole batch of Sunday headlines, splashes full of Labour policy or in previous years gone by Labour civil war. But now they could have expected policy stories and instead that was kind of reduced to, you know, sort of the inside pages. So in one sense there is kind of diminished publicity around the conference. But I’ve never really leaned into the idea that the general public is that interested in the political conference season, and they’re definitely only about 1 per cent as interested as we are as kind of Westminster bubble nerds.

And the obvious, obvious point to make is had this happened under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, we would have seen a lot more controversy and instead everything was very, very tightly controlled around Keir Starmer and the leadership’s message. And when he spoke about the situation in Israel during his main speech in the conference hall, there was complete support for him in that room and people gave him a standing ovation for some of the things that he said.

Stephen Bush
Yeah. I mean, I think that broadly speaking, I think the only reason that party conferences can sometimes be a boost for the conference is, broadly speaking, they create this moment in British politics in which the news agenda is so starved that people have to pay attention to it whether they want to or not. But of course, actually, I was thinking about it, and the Labour party hasn’t had a conference cycle to itself since 2018 because in 2019 of course, they were disrupted by the prorogation court case and the return of parliament. In 2020, there were no conferences because of Covid. And in 2021 there was the fuel duty starting to rise, the shortages, people starting to get panicked about that, which of course they very cleverly used the period where no one was paying attention them to have quite a difficult civil war about their rule book. And last year, of course, it was the Truss Budget, which in many ways was a wonderful overshadowing for them to have.

But the last time they had any public attention was 2018, in which their bitter divides over Brexit, their bitter internal divides over the problem of antisemitism within the Labour party were on full display. I think actually, even if the awful events in Israel and (inaudible) weren’t happening, then probably, actually, the Labour party would have been overshadowed by the unravelling of the Network North proposal to replace High Speed 2. Because would you rather write about Rishi Sunak saying, oh, actually the list of examples is illustrative, or would you rather write about the 15th frontbencher going, thanks to Keir Starmer, conference, we are ahead, but we are responsible.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, to discuss the substance of what’s going on in the Middle East, I’m delighted that Gideon Rachman, the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist, can join us down the line from Paris. Many listeners will be familiar with Gideon’s FT podcast, the Rachman Review, in which he interviews leading decision makers and thinkers on world affairs. But he is, of course, an expert on geopolitics in his own right, so we’re lucky to have him on today. Hi, Gideon.

Gideon Rachman
Hi.

Lucy Fisher
So as we’re talking, the world is bracing for an Israeli ground offensive that hasn’t begun yet. An Israeli unity government has now been agreed. To start with, I just wanted to get your sense of how long that will last, what happens further down the line and do recriminations for Netanyahu’s administration and the failures of intelligence that allowed this Hamas attack to happen? Is that all held in abeyance for the moment or could we see that start to spill into the open?

Gideon Rachman
Well, I mean, it’s bubbling away just beneath the surface. But I think that, you know, Israel badly wants to be unified at this moment. It’s obviously probably among the most traumatic, if not the most dramatic moment the country has experienced since its foundation in 1948.

So they, as you say, they have formed the National Unity internal cabinet of just three people: Netanyahu, the prime minister; Benny Gantz, who’s the leader of the opposition and a former chief of the military, and then the defence minister as well. It’s not a complete national unity coalition because the far-right parties are still in it. And that means that another centrist party led by a guy called Yair Lapid, which is an important player in the Israeli, in Israeli political scene, has not joined the coalition. So those tensions that were there about the presence of the far-right in the government have still not been completely buried.

And that is actually the rumbling issue below the surface, because I think the left critique of what happened is that because Netanyahu formed what was the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history — sparking all sorts of consequences, including massive demonstrations on the streets for weeks on end by people who felt that he was undermining Israel’s democracy through very controversial judicial reforms — that had left Israel kind of looking the wrong way, unprepared, etc.

The right will say, well, actually the left was making a huge fuss and had, you know, it caused a distraction because a lot of reservists were refusing to report for duty because they were so angry about what Netanyahu was doing. So those issues haven’t gone away. And I think there are some people who say that, you know, in the long run, Netanyahu will have to carry the can for this, that you cannot have a security lapse and a sort of atrocity of this nature on your watch without being blamed for it.

But for the moment, he’s digging in as prime minister. It may be that eventually they’ll have an official inquiry as they did into the 1973 war, where Israel was also taken by surprise, and the 1982 Lebanon war. And after both of those, the sitting prime minister did eventually leave the scene. But for now, Netanyahu is the leader of a, at least on the surface, united country and one that is traumatised and angry. 

Lucy Fisher
Hmm. And of course, this week we’ve seen Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, jet into Israel; striking that he’s begun to use the language of restraint. I wondered how much pressure and influence can the likes of the US and other allies bring to bear on Israel at this time? Or is it essentially irrelevant given the anger and trauma that you mention?

Gideon Rachman
It’s not irrelevant, but I don’t think it’ll be determinative because obviously if Blinken’s saying that in public, you can be sure he’ll be saying slightly stronger things in private. But I think that there is a recognition by a lot of western leaders that what has happened to Israel is uniquely ghastly and that they need to do something. I mean, you mentioned I was in Paris talking to the French foreign policy people. It wasn’t like there was a sort of double dialogue going on.

At the same time, there is concern that, you know, that Israel, what Israel has announced — cutting off electricity, water, etc — is technically a war crime. And they’re worried by what might be to come and at what point that begins to make support for Israel unsustainable, or at least full-throated support.

And then there’s another aspect to it, which you feel particularly in France but it’s also true in America and in Britain, which is as the Gaza offensive rolls on and the pictures come out, it will become a subject of bitter division within our own societies. You know that some Jewish schools in France and the UK are now having to increase protection because they may be coming under attack. And people are worried about the spillover effects within western societies of a really brutal conflict in Gaza.

Lucy Fisher
I think that’s absolutely something contacts of mine in the UK government are alive to and we’ve just been discussing the Labour conference in Liverpool this week where at this stage Keir Starmer was able to keep a lid on any controversial statements by the left pro-Palestine activists in the parliamentary party. But it is gonna get difficult for leaders of western nations if the Israeli response, whether the siege or the ground offensive, does lead to the deaths of huge swaths of Palestinian civilians. I mean, how can western governments respond to that while still, you know, expressing some degree of support for Israel? It seems to be a really benighted policy challenge.

Gideon Rachman
Very, very difficult. And of course, it will depend on events; on, you know, if at the moment it’s manageable, but if there was some terrible event where scores of people died, where there was, you know, television footage that was unignorable, that can shift opinion quite fast.

And obviously in Britain there’s the particularly difficult situation that the parents of the wife of Humza Yousaf, the lead of the Scottish National Party, are in Gaza. And so they’re in danger. And in a sense, that will sort of personalise the story in Britain, I think, that it’s not just, oh, there are a lot of Palestinians having a tough time, but here is a concrete example of, you know, an elderly couple visiting their family in Gaza who were stranded and in danger. And that kind of personalisation, just as there’s been a huge rush of sympathy for Israel, as you get these individual, gut-wrenching stories — a couple who were killed, a child who’s kidnapped, you know, horrors.

But equally, if you have one or two stories that personalise it from the Palestinian angle, I think that ramps up the pressure on governments. And yeah, and you know, you saw in the UK very quickly people coming out with Palestinian flags apparently to celebrate the Hamas attack. And I think that one of my concerns is that it will begin to play into the culture war in the UK in that there are voices on the Tory right who are saying, well, you know, Suella Braverman was attacked for saying multiculturalism doesn’t work, but look at these pro-Hamas voices in UK. That’s her point. So there’s all sorts of dangers lurking out there.

Lucy Fisher
That’s a really interesting take. I mean, is there much of a role diplomatically that the UK could extend? Or are we really very much bit players in all this?

Gideon Rachman
I’d be surprised. I mean, not impossible. I think the question of whether Europe can play a diplomatic role is an interesting one. And so far, you know, I don’t see it. As I say, it is true that European diplomats have been visible. James Cleverly, the British foreign secretary, has been in Israel. Macron has been on the phone to all Middle Eastern leaders.

But really, I think you’re looking, if there’s gonna be an outside intervention, it’s the Americans who’ll lead it and perhaps trying to see whether there are channels in the Arab world. So it would be, I think, probably the Americans talking to the Qataris who controversially but also perhaps usefully have a relationship with Hamas. There may be talks going on there about can you get the hostages released.

At some point they’ll want to talk to Egypt about, well, might they change their view on the moment? You know, Gaza has a second border, which is with Egypt, and that, too, is sealed. You know, might the Egyptians be prevailed upon to open it, to let some people, civilians out? Those are the kinds of issues.

So at the moment, I think the big players are not the Europeans, even though it’s right next door to us; it’s the US, it’s the Middle Eastern countries.

Lucy Fisher
And how could this escalate? You know, what should we be watching for regarding Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and this question of, you know, this extending, expanding into a region-wide war?

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, well, I mean, all of those things you mentioned, I think the one that people are most concerned about at the moment is Lebanon, because Hizbollah have actually far more rockets than Hamas and are just on Israel’s northern border. There’s been already a little bit of trouble. But if they were to come in in a big way, Israel would be facing a two-front war and Lebanon would be, you know, at risk of invasion itself. It’s already in a terrible situation. So that’s, I think, the one that people are most worried about.

Beyond that, there is the concern about where might Iran be drawn in. You know, for many years, Israel has threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. But I think that, unless there’s really conclusive evidence that Iran was involved directly in the planning of this, I don’t think the Israelis want to open up, you know, Iran, a huge country, as another flank in this war. And I don’t think the Iranians would want to risk going to war with Israel because that might bring the Americans in and that might be one of the few things that would actually bring what is a kind of survivor regime down.

But then I think another thing to watch for is the West Bank, which, you know, people talk about Gaza being occupied. Technically, that’s not quite right. The Israelis withdrew, but it’s under blockade and has been for a long time. But they do occupy the West Bank. One of the controversies in Israel is that because of the presence of the far right in the Israeli government, the settlers have been much more aggressive in expanding their settlements and provoking Palestinians. Violence in the West Bank has been going up for a year or so. Israeli troops have been diverted to the West Bank to deal with that.

But now I think I know some Palestinians are concerned that they know that the far right’s been fairly open, that in the long run, their agenda is to drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank and turn it, just occupy it, but turn it into part of Israel proper as they would see it. So some Palestinian voices are already warning that maybe the Israeli far right will try to take advantage of that situation in the West Bank. But even if that doesn’t materialise, the possibility of an upsurge in violence there is for real.

And for example, you know, people here in Paris were talking it through saying, well, Fatah, which controls the West Bank and is kind of the enemy of Hamas, will come under pressure to start arresting Hamas people in the West Bank. Now, if they do that, what happens then? So, there, you know, there’s a lot of dry tinder lying around the Middle East which could catch fire.

Jim Pickard
The question I wanted to ask was what do you think this means for the situation in Russia and Ukraine? Will this divert all sorts of diplomatic energy which would otherwise be engaged on helping Ukrainians?

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, I mean, everyone’s saying that it shouldn’t and mustn’t be allowed to. And there’s talk that some of this aid to Ukraine that was blocked in the US Congress might actually be packaged up now with aid to Israel and pushed through. So in the short term, it might solve a financial issue for Ukraine, but I think long term it can’t be good that there is another, you know, call on western military aid. I mean, you know, the Americans have said, for example, let’s start providing the Israelis with precision-guided missiles while the Ukrainians also need those. And we know already that we’re having trouble supplying Ukraine with the kinds of munitions that it wants. But I think it’s really interesting that the way that Ukraine and Russia have responded to this, so that Ukraine very quickly aligned itself with Israel, and Zelenskyy came out strongly in support of them, despite the fact that actually the Ukrainians have been pretty disappointed by the lukewarm support they got from Israel.

And Russia after, you know, day or so’s hesitation, has come up with a very clear global south line saying, you know, this is because the Palestinian issue was allowed to fester for many years. This is the fault of the United States. But these two sides in the Russia-Ukraine war are both instrumentalised in the conflict for their own, I mean, I’m sure there’s real sentiment there as well. But they’re using the conflict for their own ends in ways that could complicate it.

And I think that western diplomats are already watching what Russia’s doing and the narrative they’re pushing with a degree of nervousness because they think actually, what the Russians are saying, we know is really quite popular in large parts of the world, in the Arab world, in other bits of the global south. And this could actually help them bolster their kind of narrative about, well, our war is the result also of a kind of global injustice, of the west wanting to have it all its own way, etc, etc. So there’s a kind of concern that as well as attracting time and munitions that could have otherwise been spent on Ukraine, it might also be a propaganda boost for the Russians.

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Lucy Fisher
Gideon Rachman, thanks for joining us.

Gideon Rachman
Pleasure.

Lucy Fisher
Well, we’ve just got time left for the Political Fix stock picks. Jim, who are you buying or selling this week?

Jim Pickard
So I am buying housebuilders less than the political classes think that housebuilders are gonna benefit from a potential Labour government because of course there were loads of house bills who popped up this week and said Keir Starmer’s speech saying there’s gonna be a 1.5mn target of new homes is really good for shareholders in that particular property industry. The reality is that there is already a 300,000-a-year target, but that hasn’t delivered 300,000 homes a year. There’s been talk of new towns, which was one of Starmer’s policies for the last decade. None have actually got built. They take a very long time to build and look, at the end of the day, the Labour party can make all sorts of pro-development noises because they have seats in cities, they don’t have seats in rolling verdant countryside. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have worked out the magical solution for getting homes built and also, most importantly, making them cheap during a massive cost of living crisis, with mortgage rates going through the roof and property prices destined to fall a little further, I would have thought.

Lucy Fisher
So sounds like you’re shorting the housebuilders.

Jim Pickard
I’m shorting other people who are buying into them too heavily.

Lucy Fisher
(Laughter) Stephen, how about you?

Stephen Bush
I like how we’ve actually invented a new financial derivatives market. (Laughter) We can now buy stock (inaudible) other people’s takes. So I’m gonna sell the SNP, who have had actually a very bruising week. They lost the Rutherglen by-election by a heavier margin than expected. And Lisa Cameron, former SNP MP, now the newest Conservative MP, has defected. Now, in many ways this is not that surprising. She’s one of the most socially conservative SNP MPs. She was one of the few MPs to vote to keep the abortion ban in Northern Ireland in place. She’s, you know, seen, I was about to say seen as being on the economic right wing of the SNP, which she’s not anymore.

What I thought was striking is one, this shows the SNP is no longer perhaps that broad-based. You know, doesn’t matter what you think about any of the other issues, we are the one home for people who support independence, which we’ve already seen starting to fissure off in a variety of directions. But also I think it was striking that the Conservative party was willing to welcome her in without making her do the I repent, repent, and instead simply (inaudible) her say, well, I now think it’s divisive. Well, I mean, yeah, everything’s divisive. That’s not the same as saying you’ve changed your mind on the constitution. So I think difficult week for the SNP out of their conference and a very interesting week in terms of the inner life of the Scottish Conservatives. And Lucy, what’s yours?

Lucy Fisher
I think this week I’m buying Andy Burnham. Clearly, there’s been a lot of rapprochement between him and the Labour leadership. After a pretty frosty couple of years, he got a namecheck in Keir’s speech in Liverpool. And I just think, you know, devolution is a big part of Labour’s programme. So frankly, probably actually buy all the metro mayors. I think, you know, they are really gunning to gain control of, you know, possibly education, possibly welfare. There seems to be some movement there perhaps yet to come in terms of Labour policy of what they will devolve.

And another thing that’s interested me about it is that from what I’m told, it’s Sue Gray, Starmer’s new chief of staff, who has brokered this peace. And we’ve had a lot in the past about Sue Gray the battle axe, you know, the ethics chief of Whitehall. Sue Gray the bridge builder also sounds to me a really interesting proposition.

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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 is 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.

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