Transcript: Will the economy save Sunak?

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Will the economy save Sunak?’

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Lucy Fisher
Will the economy save Sunak? Welcome to Political Fix, your essential insider guide to Westminster from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. Coming up: in a week where the economy seems to have turned a corner, will the Tory plotting die down? Plus, Labour’s Rachel Reeves sets out her stall. With me here in the FT studio are Political fix regulars Miranda Green. Hi, Miranda.

Miranda Green
Hello, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
And Jim Pickard. Hi, Jim.

Jim Pickard
Hello.

Lucy Fisher
And we’re also joined by the FT’s Anna Gross. Hi, Anna.

Anna Gross
Hi, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
Anna’s has been interviewing Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting this week, but more on that later. So, Miranda, we had a very wobbly week from Rishi Sunak last week into a very febrile weekend. Newspapers splashed on stories of Penny Mordaunt plotting, MPs plotting to replace him. It seems to have died down a bit. And he’s launched this fightback, hasn’t he? He’s tried to get back on the front foot by talking about the economy having turned a corner. Does that stand up to scrutiny?

Miranda Green
Well, it does and it doesn’t. I mean, politically it’s the right thing for him to do. He couldn’t afford to have his MPs go away on their Easter recess staring a sort of set of potentially disastrous local election results in the face, which are coming on May the 2nd and the atmosphere getting more and more febrile. So they had to do something to sort of, you know, look a bit more assertive.

The problem is this kind of unite or die message that he’s been delivering to his MPs is something that he sort of returns to at desperate moments and has done now right from the very first day, you know, of his premiership, and it doesn’t work. They don’t get the message.

I think what’s quite interesting here is one of those kind of weird rules of politics where newspaper stories can actually have the opposite effect of what they’re reporting at the time, ie, if the plotting starts to look too dangerous and you’re about to topple a prime minister, you can actually prompt a certain amount of unity in a party to sort of see off what they think could be potentially disastrous, which is ditching yet another prime minister, you know, before the general election. So in a way, I think the pendulum swung so far towards let’s ditch him that it sort of had to swing back it through a feeling of wanting some safety there. But it is interesting. It hasn’t gone away and there are new names in the frame all the time, it seems, and even Robert Jenrick saying that he will run at some point when it gets to that point.

Lucy Fisher
We’ll come on to some of the other names in the ring that are emerging weekly. But Jim, there was a standing ovation, much stamping of feet and banging of the tables at the 1922 committee, the backbench committee of Tory MPs, when Sunak came and gave them this address, this unite or die message that Miranda mentioned. What do you make of that? I mean, there’s umuch talk of these perfidious Tories sort of clapping louder just before they oust someone. But there has been good economic news on both inflation and potentially further ahead on interest rates this week, hasn’t there?

Jim Pickard
Exactly. You need to take the banging on the tables with a pinch of salt. You know, they banged on the tables for Theresa May, they banged on the tables for Iain Duncan Smith before getting rid of these far-from-successful former leaders.

But the thing I find interesting about all of this is that when you stop and look at, you know, what is the plot that got the newspapers so exciting last weekend, what does that actually consist of? It seemed to me to consist of a very small handful of people just sort of idly shooting the breeze about potential scenarios for replacing Rishi Sunak. And there was a very telling line in the Times by the brilliant Stephen Swinford, where he said that this fewer than half a dozen Tory MPs. You know, out of 350 this is barely 1 per cent of the Conservative party in the House of Commons.

But what we have is we have a scenario where we, the press, and they, the politicians, are being led by the opinion polls all the time, even though in my 17 years in parliament, I’ve seen the opinion polls been wrong all the time, almost all the time. You know, think of all the times when they’ve given Theresa May a 20-point lead and then she loses it, or they put the Remain camp ahead. And yet everything we do is through the prism of that. So if you were to have five Labour MPs sitting in a corner saying, let’s get rid of Keir Starmer and replace him with, God only knows, Clive Lewis, would we be splashing our newspapers with it? And yet there is, of course, because the opinion polls are so bad and the Conservative MPs are so depressed that, you know, we have to take seriously the possibility that something could happen. But I think this is just a bit premature. I think it’s gonna be May the 2nd when the local elections come through, that actually, all this vague plotting could become something genuine.

Lucy Fisher
The thing is, I certainly spoke to a lot of MPs that I would call “the Sensibles,” quite cautious characters last week who said for the first time, the sense of panic coalescing the party had made them themselves fear for keeping their seats and start to think about the question of whether rolling the dice on a new leader would be worth it.

Jim Pickard
Specifically, the idea that Penny Mordaunt was in the league with a load of rightwingers and they were about to strike, that was the thing that I was dismissing a little bit. 

Lucy Fisher
It may have been a little overcooked. Can I ask you just, Jim, on this question about the economy though, you know, we’ve seen inflation fall faster than expected to 3.4 per cent. There’s suggestion that although interest rates were held at 5.25 per cent for the fifth time in a row this week, that a cut is coming soon. Will people feel better off about the pound in their pocket by the time of an election this autumn?

Jim Pickard
OK, talking to cabinet ministers this week. This is the race against time that the Conservative party is in, which is inflation can come down, interest rates can come down and mortgage rates can come down. By the end of the year, they think they’re in with a much better shot for the general election. But I feel a little bit like the relationship between the general public and the Conservative party, you can overstretch that comparison with an actual relationship between two different people. But, you know, if you’re in a failing relationship and someone takes you to the opera and buys you a thousand chocolates and lovely dinners, if you can’t stand them and you want rid of them, there’s not a lot you can do. And I feel a little bit like people aren’t going to say, my mortgage rate’s come down, I suddenly love Rishi Sunak.

Miranda Green
It’s really interesting, Jim’s point about whether people feeling more optimistic about the economy actually will then govern their voting choice at the election, because in America we seem to have seen that completely diverging now, in that your opinion on whether the economy is OK or not is led by your political allegiance rather than the other way around. And it would be interesting to see whether that starts to disconnect here as well.

Anna Gross
If I can just come in on Jim’s point, just on your analogy about taking someone out for a date and chocolate and giving them flowers and things. In this case, it’s more saying, I will take you on a date in six months, because the reality is that inflation is still going up by 3.4 per cent so people are still having to pay more for things. As Lucy said, the interest rates are held at 5.25 per cent so there are still, over the next few months, thousands of people whose mortgages are gonna end and they’re gonna have to pay higher rates and who’ve got debts to pay off. So I think the reality is for a lot of people, it as you said, you know, are they actually feeling it? No. And they won’t for a long time.

Lucy Fisher
Anna, I know you’ve been watching really closely what’s been going on with the Rwanda bill — now delayed again till after Easter, its passage into law. How big a problem is that for Sunak and getting those planes off the ground finally?

Anna Gross
I think the government has been really trying to push this framing that Labour and kind of unelected peers are trying to thwart the government and trying to prevent it from enacting this policy, which is ultimately what the public wants. But I’m not convinced. I think that, you know, the public really care about migration. They’re really concerned about the levels of irregular migration, about the number of small boats they’re coming across.

I don’t think that the vast majority of the public think the Rwanda plan is the right way to go about it. So I think that they’re not convinced necessarily by this idea that Labour’s thwarting this kind of great vision.

Lucy Fisher
Because you’re talking about — just to my listeners who haven’t been following it closely — the bill was back in the Lords this week. The Lords swept through seven amendments, which means that instead of it passing into law, it’s got to go back to the Commons. They’ve got to send it back to the Lords. It’s got to go through this ping-pong process. So you don’t buy Rishi Sunak’s spin that it’s Labour and Labour peers, crossbench peers in the House of Lords who are blocking it.

Anna Gross
Exactly. I don’t think that’s gonna particularly resonate with people. But I do think that there’s a good chance that if — if, and it’s a big if — planes do take off and, you know, 100, 200 people are sent to Rwanda, I do think that could be, you know, a positive thing for Sunak particularly if, as ministers claim, it does have a significant deterrent effect, because, you know, there is a lot of scepticism about that. The public has yet to be convinced of that point.

Lucy Fisher
For me, one of the big stories on Rwanda this week has been the suggestion from Kigali itself that actually, it wants very much a staggered start to this policy, a maximum of 150 people to begin with. Anna talked about, you know, you needing a quite sizeable chunk of people to be sent over there for it to have this deterrent effect. I mean, to my mind, 150 won’t do. It won’t come anywhere close, will it?

Miranda Green
No. And I think it’s notable that the Labour party thinks it’s a great story for them. You know, Keir Starmer went quite hard on Rwanda at PMQs this week, because if you sort of start to break down the cost per deportee, it looks really expensive. There have also been stories about actually paying people to get on the flights, which is, you know, more taxpayers’ money. So I think you’re right, the more that the policy itself delivers a small number, the less it can help in the way that Anna’s outlined with their argument that it’s some sort of deterrent on more migration into the UK.

But, I mean, I think overall, what’s interesting about this is that both sides think that this policy helps them. And that is probably true, because actually, if you look at the opinion polling as Anna has outlined, it’s something on which people are quite polarised. You know, Labour party support doesn’t like the Rwanda plan for lots of different reasons. They find it cruel, ineffective, and also that it’s not good policy in terms of cost-effectiveness, etc. But there’s a segment of the Tory party support that quite likes the plan. So were it to succeed, were those flights to get off the ground, it would at least be a mark of some sort of competence on the part of the Sunak government and satisfy that chunk of their potential electorate. So I think there’s a sort of polarisation of opinion on it.

Lucy Fisher
Jim, on Wednesday we saw more than 500 people cross the Channel in a single day. I don’t know what your sense has been. To my mind, we in Westminster have talked a lot about the Rwanda policy, the legislation, the legality of getting this plan off the ground. I don’t think we’ve seen on the TV screens the kind of footage of people arriving on the beaches that much this year. And I just wonder, now we’re heading into spring-summer weather, if we start to see these record numbers of crossing. Five hundred in a single day — it is gonna really reignite this topic in the public’s mind, isn’t it?

Jim Pickard
Yeah, and it’s an interesting question, which is if the same thing happens every day ad infinitum, does it stop being a news story because everyone becomes accustomed to it? And I think the answer on this occasion is, up to a point. But as we get close to elections — first the local elections and then the general election, the salience will increase and it will be Reform UK, the Nigel Farage/Richard Tice vehicle, which will take advantage of it the most. And it was one of the arguments within the Downing Street team of Rishi Sunak as to whether to do the election in May, whether to go later in the year. They thought, you know, if you do wait till the end of the summer, you could have, you know, record crossings yet again.

And I think as to this argument earlier about the salience of the Rwanda scheme and whether people like it or think it’s effective or not, I think, you know, the British public aren’t all like brilliantly numerate, but most people can see the big gap between getting a couple of hundred people in the air and literally tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands over several years of people coming across the Channel and how the Rwanda scheme doesn’t seem to be big enough, even if it is successful.

Anna Gross
And just on that point, Sunak has talked again and again as has the home secretary, James Cleverly, about boat crossings going down by a third last year compared to the previous year. They just hammer it home. They talked about it again at PMQs. They always bring it up. But pretty much all of that is to do with a massive reduction in Albanians coming over. And that’s because of a very specific agreement that was made with the Albanian government. And so what you might see this year is that compared to last year, we’re not gonna see the big declines, and Sunak won’t be able to necessarily point to it as the strength of his policy and the Rwanda scheme, which hasn’t actually started yet.

Lucy Fisher
Really good point. We could indeed see the numbers go up year on year. Miranda, you mentioned earlier that Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister who resigned over the Rwanda policy, arguing that it wouldn’t work; he’s told friends that he wants to run. There’s chatter about Priti Patel that I’m very interested in. And noticeably, to my mind, Penny Mordaunt hasn’t taken any public opportunities to rule herself out of trying to take over before or after an election.

Miranda Green
So the Penny Mordaunt plot is the one that has this kind of feel of a sort of Tudor plot against the Queen or King about it. And, you know, there was even a joke in PMQs that she famously was, you know, holding that sword during the coronation, that she might be the sort of human sword of Damocles held over Rishi Sunak’s head. But then these other people actually coming out of the woodwork are clearly sort of clustered on the right. The Jenricks, the Priti Patels, you know, obviously Suella Braverman for a while was trying to kind of position herself as a potential leader-in-waiting for that wing.

The interesting thing about the Mordaunt plot, should it sort of survive, is that there seems to be this idea that she could be some sort of caretaker leader, so not a leader for the long term. Does that really fly? You know, there’s also Tom Tugendhat, who of course has tried once before for the leadership. So I think it is kind of picking up a little bit of pace. And you know, the speculation has also sort of started around, well, what might Sunak himself be thinking? You know, there must be a good job waiting for him somewhere. I think it’s quite interesting when the conversation moves on to that as well, because then it’s trying to second-guess whether a prime minister will actually want to stick it out. I mean, I personally think he looks like he does want to stick it out. But there is chat about that.

Lucy Fisher
Jim.

Jim Pickard
Yeah. I mean, I think while I’m saying the Penny Mordaunt plot basically was this kind of fragile thing that never took off and was a little bit of a media invention, possibly being egged on by a few malcontents in the Conservative party, the fact of the matter is we know that Penny Mordaunt would love to be prime minister. OK, so let’s be clear about that. And I’m fascinated by the fact that people keep forgetting that she came pretty close in the contest a couple of years ago, and another five votes would have put her ahead of Liz Truss first time around against Rishi. So she missed out then. And then when it was the next one along which Rishi Sunak won, Penny Mordaunt was picking up pace against him in that leadership contest. And you’ll remember that Boris Johnson came back from the Caribbean, flirted with the idea of running, got a load of backers and that took the wind out of Penny Mordaunt’s sails. And I think in other circumstances, if it wasn’t for that Boris Johnson manoeuvre, Penny Mordaunt would now be prime minister. So she does want to be there.

The big question that we keep going round and round to, and Tory MPs, happy or unhappy, keep coming around to, is if you dislodge the prime minister, what do you get instead? And does it look ludicrous having four prime ministers in one parliament? Answer: obviously, yes. And does it win over the general public replacing Rishi Sunak with another random Tory MP when it’s the party itself seems to be massively unpopular? That these conversations go round and round in circles, of course there’s always this (inaudible) faction. Is it an actual plot yet? Question mark.

Miranda Green
Well, we should also mention that Penny Mordaunt’s seat isn’t all that safe, right, down in Portsmouth, which would be another sort of potential factor against her.

Lucy Fisher
Anna, we’ve heard from Hunt the suggestion, the hint that the election is gonna be in October when he used that as a hypothetical when discussing when the public will go to the polls. Should Sunak just come out and announce the date? Is there now a rationale for doing that? There’s been so much back and forth. He took so long to rule out a May 2nd general election.

Anna Gross
The public would very much like him to. I think us political reporters would very much like him to. It would make our lives a lot easier. I do think, you know, if I was in his position, I can understand that there’s a benefit to leaving it a little bit open, because if a confluence of factors came together, if there is some really good economic data that coalesce around the same time as a flight was able to take off to Rwanda and several other things that kind of looked in his favour, I can see that he could sort of strike while the iron is hot and just go to the polls. And that is an attractive proposition for him.

Miranda Green
But I think that comes back to your original question, doesn’t it, Lucy, which is this idea that even if the economy starts to turn the corner, people have to feel it. And, you know, there’s actually evidence from elections, not just in the UK but in the US, that you do need to leave it a while. But there’s that wonderful famous quote from a member of the public saying, “Well, whose GDP is it? It’s not mine”. You want people to actually experience their own everyday economy, I think is what Rachel Reeves called it, doesn’t she? You know, there’s an improvement for that to work at all, even to mitigate the scale of your defeat.

Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s move on to Rachel Reeves, who this week gave the prestigious Mais lecture. Jim, just tell us about this lecture and why people put it up in lights.

Jim Pickard
So for the financial community or the financial/political community, this is quite a big deal. It’s been going on since 1978. And every year a big figure from the central bank or usually a politician will stand up and do a big speech about their economic and financial vision. And I was fascinated to discover that Anneliese Dodds, who used to be the shadow chancellor, was the first woman to give the speech in 2021, which seems a little bit late in history for that to happen.

And so on Tuesday evening, it was Rachel Reeves, the current shadow chancellor for Labour, who set out her vision. A lot of people were very excited by the financial rules she set out. Those of us who follow the Labour party very closely know that certainly, one of them has been around for at least a year, which was this idea that debt should be falling as a proportion of GDP after five years, which is echoing the Conservative policy.

And there is another fiscal rule she set out, which is aiming to borrow only to invest, which we’ve heard a bit of before. But when you say to Rachel Reeves’s team, is this actually new or is it old? They sort of say, well, we’ve kind of alluded to this and we’ve said it here or there, but that here we are announcing to the Square Mile, you know, in lights, in big block capital letters, these are the golden rules by which you can judge us and we will be fiscally prudent. But of course, politically, it puts Rachel Reeves very much in the same box as Jeremy Hunt. And those people who say, well, Labour sounds economically very similar to the Conservative party are not wrong.

Lucy Fisher
I mean, Miranda, another theme that Rachel Reeves really played up was stability. She talked about building on the strength of institutions. Is Labour overdoing the caution?

Miranda Green
It’s such a good question, isn’t it, because listening to Jim there, and as your question alludes to, you know, Labour’s got to walk this tightrope between, you know, excessive or near excessive amounts of reassurance so that Conservative message of don’t take a risk on Labour can’t work. And they’ve looked so closely at the Blair-Brown playbook from 1997 in which Gordon Brown spent a lot of time doing a similar process of reassurance. You know, I will be the Iron Chancellor, you know, I will guard these new fiscal rules with my life. And she’s doing the same thing. You know, stability is the new black.

But they’ve also got to show that they will make some sort of change to the fabric of the country, which involves spending some money on the public services. This is the problem. So, you know, it’s all going to be about where the money comes from if they stick to these very, very strict fiscal rules. And of course, that once again draws attention to the growth plan. They’re gonna have to get money in through economic growth. They’re putting all of their eggs in that one basket. And you can very much see the kind of hand of people like the Tony Blair Institute behind this sort of policy stance, which is we can’t be seen as a high-tax party. We can’t be seen as irresponsible on borrowing. We’ve got to get the economy moving again and get the tax revenue from growth. And that sends you back to their growth plan, where there are quite a lot of holes and the £28bn’s disappeared, you know? So in a sense, there’s a sort of circular policy conundrum about the Labour plan there, I think.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. Jim, you’ve interviewed Rachel Reeves quite a few times, haven’t you, and probably know her better than most. What’s your insight into what kind of chancellor she would be?

Jim Pickard
It’s a question which I’ve struggled with, this one, because I think the answer I would have given two years ago would have been a little bit different. I think she has been on a journey, and the obvious journey she’s been on has been, in Labour terms, she’s quite moderate, you know. But if you go back a few years, I mean, I remember when in the wilderness years during when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, I remember going to a speech she gave in the East End where she was talking about how there should be an enormous wealth tax every year. I can’t remember what figure it was but I think it was over £10bn-a-year wealth tax because kind of leftwing ideas were en vogue then, I suppose. And everything has tacked to the right, she has sounded increasingly cautious.

You know, two years ago I would have thought on things like the green economy, it was something that she really believed that was really gonna distinguish the Labour party from the Conservative party. You would have thought that she was more inclined towards nationalisation and genuinely believed in things like these employment reforms that they’ve got. I think at the moment, almost everything she is doing is trying to drag Labour into a position where it’s a small target and therefore it is confusing. I’m torn between thinking that they’ll get into government, and they will tack a little bit to the left and show some sort of radical-ish vision and we will see ways of raising tax, which they hadn’t ruled out. And it turns out they can raise some taxes in order to boost public services. And, you know, people on the centre-left will think, oh, actually, she’s one of us. But I also feel that she could just end up, you know, basically firefighting the whole time against these incredible economic storms that they’re gonna go into from day one.

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Lucy Fisher
Well, on top of its plans for the economy, Labour has been promising to fix the problems with the NHS. Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has been speaking with the FT.

Wes Streeting in audio clip
We’re paying a hell of a lot for a failure and that’s what happens when you simply pour ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer money into a broken system.

Lucy Fisher
And the person Wes Streeting was speaking to was Anna. So what did you discover about Labour’s plans for the health service?

Anna Gross
So one of the kind of key driving pillars of Wes Streeting’s thinking on the NHS is that there’s an incredible amount of inefficiency. He has described it previously as a leaky bucket. And he described it to me as broken. And so the whole idea and he kind of kept hammering this home is that, yes, we will give a bit of money to the NHS and we’ve set aside £1.6bn, but it is all contingent upon reform. And we will only give money to this big, inefficient, leaky behemoth if it can prove that it’s gonna change.

So the kind of details of what he’s set out is £1.6bn to pay for 2mn more appointments and surgeries, because, as you know, a huge problem with waiting lists that have crawled up and up; they’re now coming down very slightly, but they’re still very long. And then he’s also got this kind of second prong, which is around massively digitising the NHS. So he’s gonna buy a load of new CT scanners and MRI machines. But also he talks a lot about enhancing the use of AI.

Critics, I should say, would point out that at least some of that and a lot of this stuff around AI and about around digitisation isn’t new. This is ultimately what the Conservatives have been talking about for a long time, and there have been some projects that have worked, some that have massively stalled. But it’s not necessarily the kind of groundbreaking vision that he might sometimes present to us.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah. And often with these digital projects introducing AI, the software, the infrastructure itself involves a big capital outlay at the beginning. I mean, how credible is it this idea that, you know, you can fix the NHS by reform alone? You know, some people accuse Labour of relying on the reform fairy.

Anna Gross
Yeah. I mean, look, I think that there are big inefficiencies in the NHS. You know, I’m convinced, as I think anyone who looks at the NHS, including people who work in the NHS, think, yes, you know, that there are things that could be a lot better about how this is run. But most of the health experts that I speak to say just look at the data. And per capita funding of the NHS has stagnated, certainly since 2010. The UK now spends about 20 per cent less per person on health each year than similar European countries. And it’s quite important to have that international comparator. And they say, yes, we need reform. But you have to address the elephant in the room that the NHS’s state is really struggling. There are lots of buildings that are crumbling or have, you know, literal leaks. And there are these big waiting lists. There’s the issue of pay for junior doctors and consultants. And all of these things do cost money. And I feel like that does have to be addressed at some point.

Lucy Fisher
Questions for Rachel Reeves. Anna, I know one thing you talk to Wes Streeting about was the use of the private healthcare sector — very controversial in many leftwing circles. What did he tell you about that and what did you make of his plans?

Anna Gross
Yeah. So there’s been a lot of reporting about the fact that he would like to increase, kind of controversially increase the use of spare capacity in the private sector as he tries to bring down waiting lists and basically reduce the strain on overburdened trusts. And here’s what he said.

Wes Streeting in audio clip
Although there are some people on the left who criticise New Labour’s work with the private sector, use of the private sector fell off a cliff under the last Labour government because the NHS was so good that people didn’t feel the need to go private. And that’s my ambition again, is to make the NHS so good that no one feels forced to go private.

Anna Gross
So what was interesting is that he was sort of saying the whole idea here is that we make the NHS so good, work so much better that no one needs to go private, no one wants to go private. And ultimately, you know, the private sector becomes a lot smaller. And he made some really interesting comparisons with the Blair administration as you heard. So he said that if you look back at the data, and I did, and it is true that there was — partly because there was a lot of investment in the health sector under Blair — but there was actually a reduction in the use of the private sector by the public under Blair’s administration.

But he also, one of the things I found really interesting was that he was trying to distance his vision or show how it was distinct from Blair’s and from Blair’s project. And one of the things he said is that he was not convinced by Blair’s ideological conviction that competition drives up quality and drives up standards. She said the evidence for was patchy. It seemed interesting that he said that in the same week that Rachel Reeves, also in her Mais lecture, was trying to distance herself from New Labour. And I was just wondering whether there was kind of a plan there to try and set out something that’s slightly distinct.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda.

Miranda Green
It’s really interesting to me how Wes Streeting is trying to redefine what he’s previously said about use of the private sector, because it’s true that critics from the left and critics from inside the NHS workforce have been quite harsh on Streeting, I think it’s fair to say, and have talked about him as a sort of fan of creeping privatisation, as they call it. And so he’s obviously trying to be much clearer about what he wants in terms of a relationship with the private sector: using their capacity but making the NHS so good that you don’t really need to opt for private care if you’re a member of the public.

But in a sense, it’s quite smart of him to distinguish himself against those late Blair reforms. Because under Alan Milburn, who was secretary of state for health in the late period of the Blair administration, there was a real ramping up of the internal market and of that whole ethos of competition inside the NHS. And I think a lot of people in the NHS and in health policy would say we’re still recovering from it now.

So I think that is an interesting change of emphasis. I don’t see how what he said to you really addresses this underlying huge structural problem, which is the ramping up of both demand and costs all the time. And therefore the scale of the problem is so great.

And, you know, I was talking to a really senior NHS manager who was saying also some of the key things we’ve got to get right now is, you know, access and equity. We know lots of people aren’t getting the right treatments under the NHS. But of course, by definition, if you find those people who need the treatment, that also then adds more to the demands and the costs. So I think the problem is actually of such an enormity when it comes to the NHS. I’ll be really interested how his arguments develop towards the election.

Anna Gross
And one of my frustrations with what Wes said — and Victoria Atkins, who’s the current health secretary, said and under former health secretary Steve Barclay, they all pay lip service to the idea of increasing investment in prevention, the early services that are gonna prevent people coming in at crisis, which is the really costly bit — but then they never really flesh out that idea.

Jim Pickard
But also with the Conservative party, you know, one of the main things they try to do in preventative health was basically try to tackle obesity. And then that just ran square into the kind of libertarian instincts of most Tory MPs, which is don’t tell people what to eat, all these kind of banning Bogofs in supermarkets — the Conservative party hates them. Boris Johnson tried to go down that path and he was pushed back out of it by his own party. I wonder whether the Labour party might feel more comfortable with some of those preventative, intrusive, inverted commas, measures.

Lucy Fisher
And finally, Anna, I asked the same question of Jim about Rachel Reeves. Just tell us briefly about Wes Streeting, the man.

Anna Gross
Yeah, I mean, I would say that I found him to be, and I do in general find him to be, an incredibly kind of effective communicator. He was quite persuasive. I’ve spoken a bit about his strengths. Just to counter that a bit, I would say that I think that he has the capacity to kind of really frustrate people. And some of the things he’s said have been quite dismissive. And I’ve spoken to quite a few health leaders and health analysts who feel like incredibly frustrated by some of the positions he’s taken. They’ve found to be very dismissive. My concern would be that he kind of he loses some of that support if he were to become health secretary.

Miranda Green
It’s an incredible back story, though, isn’t it? And I would be really interested also whether he actually stays in that brief for very long if Labour gets into power. I could also see him as an education secretary maybe, where also if he’s turned against the idea of competition to drive up standards in public services would be something that would be fresh in education as well, because, I mean, you know, he has this impeccable working-class background, which he wrote about in an autobiography recently, and I think he’s definitely one to watch whether he stays at health or not.

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Lucy Fisher
And finally, we have time for Political Fix stock picks. Jim, who’re you buying or selling?

Jim Pickard
I’m gonna sell Simon Case, head of the civil service, after he was found to be a member of the Garrick Club, which is this exclusive Covent Garden gentlemen’s club that excludes women. And he has stepped down claiming that he’d only ever been a member in order to try to overturn its all-male policy from within. (Laughter) And I don’t think everyone has taken this excuse entirely seriously.

Lucy Fisher
And also Richard Moore, MI6 “C” — he’s had to resign in ignominy.

Jim Pickard
Sell them all!

Lucy Fisher
Who else did you find? You found another one from one of the fiscal wat[chdogs]. . . ? (Overlapping speech)

Jim Pickard
Sir Robert Chote, the former head of the OBR, former head of the IFS.

Anna Gross
Not quite as big a name, but still, you know.

Jim Pickard
Former FT writer.

Anna Gross
Former FT writer.

Miranda Green
It’s a favourite line of people when they elevate to the House of Lords, isn’t it? I’m going in there to abolish myself.

Lucy Fisher
Miranda, who’s your stock pick?

Miranda Green
Oh, well, I’m afraid mine is really boring snoring. So you can probably guess who it is. It’s Rachel Reeves, because I looked at my portfolio; I don’t hold any Reeves, which is a huge error, considering she’s probably gonna be the chancellor of the exchequer. And I think she has proved herself someone of stature who’s capable of the job. She’s been endorsed even by Ken Clarke. So, you know. Yeah, I’m buying Reeves.

Lucy Fisher
OK. But I’m watching you. You’re clearly trying to win this. Oh, not what it’s about. Anna?

Anna Gross
I’m gonna sell Penny Mordaunt. I think that she could potentially be a credible leader of the Conservative party, but I think that she was kind of put on the table too soon. And now she looks to people, Sunak and others are gonna look at her in a very suspicious way. They’ve already kind of passed on from her and moved on to other people, so I think her time has gone.

Miranda Green
What about you?

Lucy Fisher
I’m going to buy Priti Patel. I’ve just been very interested to hear that there’s chatter about her gaining support from Liz Truss. Maybe the rightwingers are interested in her making a return. She commanded a lot of loyalty among the grassroots. She really is a darling of the party faithful. And I just think she’s played a good game, bided her time, keeping her powder dry. But she’s been a little bit more outspoken lately on issues like immigration. And I just wonder if she’s weighing up a comeback.

Miranda Gree
Quite chummy with Farage, quite chummy with GB News — that won’t hurt her.

Lucy Fisher
Yeah, one to watch. 

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Well, Miranda, Jim, Anna, thank you for joining.

Miranda Green
Thanks very much.

Jim Pickard
Thank you.

Anna Gross
Thanks, Lucy.

Lucy Fisher
That’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in the 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 Bush’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, do leave a review or a star rating if you have time. It really helps us spread the word.

Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher, and produced by Audrey Tinline, with help from Leah Quinn. 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 next week.

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