Bloomberg UK PoliticsDay 3 at the Labour party conference in Liverpool as Keir Starmer becomes the first Prime Minister to address the event in 15 years. Trade unions and business lobbies alike are optimistic about his plans, but can the government deliver for both groups? Bloomberg's political editor Alex Wickham joins us with his take on matters. Hosted by Lizzy Burden and James Woolcock.
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The Prime minist has also been very clear he expects those with the broadest shoulders to do the heaviest lifting, and I do think that means looking at things like capital gains tax and making sure that those who get their income from shares and property pay tax at the same rate as those who work in supermarkets or in classrooms.
There are things we can do to improve rights within our economy, but that has to be balanced against any unintended consequences, and we have to make it easy for businesses to take risks.
So that was Paul Novak, the TUC General Secretary, and Rain Newtsmith the direction of the CBI in air. And they're fast because one's quite gently trying to push the case for the workers and the other is doing the same the industry. Keith Starmer says his government can be prone both but can the government really please both workers and business.
Well, you're listening to the Bloomberg UK Politics podcast live from Labour Party conference here in Liverpool. I'm Lizzie Burden, I'm James Wilcock.
Welcome to the program. James.
We've been talking a lot about free tickets over recent days and if Party conference were a music festival, you definitely say that the headliner is on Today. There's been a real buzz here in Liverpool as Kirs Starmer makes the first prime ministerial speech at a Labor Party conference in fifteen years. But as you say, an emerging theme that's been hotly discussed is the question of whether Labour is now the party of business or workers, whether it can be both when it comes down to the nitty gritty of policy, which we've not had a lot of recently. But look, you've got two arenas for a clash, the Workers Writes Bill and then filling this twenty two billion pound hole in the public finances to protect working people. Do you hit business and maybe drive the wealth creators away. We've been speaking to both over the past twenty four hours. Both seem optimistic about what the government has promised. I suppose the question is really can they deliver on both fronts at the same time.
I've got to have a go at you here, Lizzie. I can't believe you are trying to compare this to a music festival. You're trying to make yourself sound way far cooler than you actually are. I think the one stimilarity that they do have, though, it's all about the vibes here. One sort of Labor official said to me that in some ways it would be demoralizing to say it to the delegates, but the real details have been coming in six weeks time in the budget. What this is about is rallying the troops and trying to set out a positive vision after a summer and very difficult headline.
Exactly, it's got to be about the vibes because there has been hardly any policy. Well, let's bring in our UK political editor Alex Wickham. He has been in the corridors of the conference hall. Look, Alex, we set up a clash there. But do you think that's a false clash.
No. I think there are inherent contradictions at the top of the Labor Party in terms of their overall strategy for the next five years. And you know they've won the election. The strategy worked, you can't argue with it. Now is the hard part where they need to actually flesh out the detail. And you know, does Keir Starmer want to do the big things necessary and the big spending necessary to deliver on this decade of national renewal that he calls it, that's going to mean more money for the NHS, that's going to mean more money for green transition and many other things. Or does he believe in the iron clad fiscal discipline that Rachel Reeves keeps talking about, which basically says there is any money for any of that stuff. Now, how they find a way through that clear tension, which I think we are going to see a lot more of over the coming weeks before the budget, but also over the next couple of years. And then, like you say, on workers' rights, there is this big clash between the labor party who says wealth creation and economic growth and business is the number one priority of this government versus traditional labor routes of you know, were actually making things better for workers in the workplace.
We have to ask how did we get here where labor feel they need to be kind of rescuing their positive narrative.
It is quite remarkable, and talking to ministers privately here at this conference, they thought they had a clear plan of what they were going to do in their first one hundred days, you know, positive announcements about GB energy, about workers, right about the things, the sort of change that they talked about in their manifesto they thought that'd be ready to come out of the door once they took office, and instead we actually have had a bit of had the doom and gloom from Rachel Leaves about how terrible the physical inheritance is, and that's sort of opened up a little bit of grumbling, a little bit of internal palace intrigue and in fighting among advisors about whether you know they've got the right approach. And I think what we're seeing from kiss Sarma in his speech today is a little bit of an effort to recognize some of those criticisms and slightly recalibrates his messaging to try to reset basically already only two months in.
But so privately, who are those ministers blaming. Are they blaming the chancellor for taking the doom and gloom approach? Are they blaming Sue Gray for not having enough of a plan. We've had comparisons to the Blair years where the blueprints just aren't even ready.
Or are they looking ahead of the budget and going we haven't got the money for this yet and they're fighting for a pot that hasn't been decided.
Definitely a bit of that. I mean, you're always getting this pre budget period. Minister's for cash and saying come on, I want to do this, I want money for this, and the Treasury usually says no, we can't afford it. That's the age old story, and it's happening again his time. I mean, there is, as we've seen in reporting over the last couple of weeks, a lot of upset about Sue Gray, prime Minister's chief of staff, because ultimately she's in charge of his political operation. She's in charge of, you know, this transition into power, the first one hundred days, delivering on some of these things, and it hasn't quite gone god as they would have hoped. So she's been a vector and a lightning rod for some of that criticism. Ultimately, though, I think your question is a really pertinent one because really, when you get to it, this is the responsibility of the Prime Minister. And what we are starting to hear from loyal allies of Kirstarmer, people who like him, not people who are kind of trying to cause trouble, is they want Kirstarmer to get a bit of a grip and get up to speed with the decisions that need to be made in office and look he's new to the job. You've got to give him a bit of time and be fair. But he needs to make decisions quicker. He needs to be more decisive, and he needs to know what he wants to do and instructs his team to do that accordingly.
What after this speech are going to be the big flash points going ahead for this government? What are going to cause the big frictions, even more leaks, maybe more negative press? What should kids don't be watching out for?
But there's going to be an immediate question of whether the inviting around his chief of staff, Sue Gray, stops or continues. Does she remain in her role. Does he find a way of smoothing out some of those eruptions that have taken place behind the scene. I think that's going to be a key priority of his in the sort of days and a couple of weeks after this conference, and then it's the budget. You know, there are starting to be slight whispers that perhaps Rachel Reeves might have found some creative ways to change debt measures in her fiscal rules, accounting measures in terms of castle investment, that could find some extra billions tens of billions of pounds to start to pay for this so called black hole, to start to pay for some of the things that labor ministers want their government to be spending on. I think we're going to, at the very least here demands from ministers that, even if the money's not there this year, I want you to really give us a strong signal at the budget that you're going to spend more money on the NHS, You're going to spend more money on various things that have gone wrong with public services. And that's a tough one for Rachel Reeves because her current position is no.
So let me tell you. On the way out of Rachel Reeves's speech yesterday, I was talking to a labor minister who will remain publicly unnamed, but you know who it is, and I asked her, is it going to be five years of prudence and then five years of prosperity, because that's how it sounded to me from Reeves's speech, And she said, it's a decade of national renewal. You work it out. That's a bleak message to business, isn't it. Is that what you're hearing from other ministers just this one.
I mean, I think that won't fly with voters. Crucially, and if they go into the next election saying, you know, we stabilize things, but we haven't done anything good and there's million another five years for that, you know, good luck, because we're voters.
And I think the Prime.
Minister is starting to realize this and how his poll numbers have created very quickly into the administration, which I did not think he thought was going to happen. There is a requirement for him to show at the very least clear progress and to be honest, some tangible results by five years.
Yeah. You know, with the phased approach to turning around the Labor Party, do you feel like that gave him confidence that he could take a strategic approach like this, But actually in office, in power, it's turning out very differently.
Look.
You know, on the one hand, some of these problems that he's talking about in terms of the economy, growth, productivity and all of these things, NHS, these are huge, huge problems that will take years to deal with. Of course, probably any politician, if they're being honest, needs a decade to be able to make their you know, put their stamp on a country and remake it in their image, especially you know, green transition is something again, it's going to take time. That's probably an honest and realistic position for kids Starmer. But the reality is we we live in a in a country with five ire election cycles, and you know he is going to have to come up with a political strategy and that sells that to the public. And you know, within a year or two, maybe three of this government, he is going to have to be able to point to things where he says, look tangibly, I've made this better few the NHS is better in this way, jobs are better in this way, growth is better in this way. If he hasn't got those sort of three or four years in, I think the public will have, you know, short memories and be very quickly losing patients.
Okay, But to be a bit cynical here, we always knew that the government coming in was going to take sort of called Osborne style austerity like planning. They would say it's going to be so so bad, things are going to be terrible all of the previous governments, and then we would get to the autumn and difficult decision to be made, but there would be a sun would rise on this new labor administration. Sure there was a bit of course correct going and in the kind of rocky pier there's been a bit more internal reallything that we'd like we're basically following a long is then easier alongside the Labor Party strategy, right, and it's important to keep this in perspective.
It's not in crisis. You know, they won a huge majority of the election. We are five years out ish from the next election. They've got a long time to get this right. And year one, you're right, the strategy was always year ones, they're tough. Year we front load the pain and then by the time we get to year five of the election, people have forgotten about that and things start to look a bit better. That is a strategy that many, many prime ministers and chances have taken throughout history. It is often a strategy that has worked, and they stand by that strategy overall. You're right, it's a recalibration rather than a you know, total return on strategy two months in. But nonetheless, you know, these speak to some of the concerns of more jumpier people in the Labor Party. If you speak to think to you know, some as strategists, they're relaxed and they say, look, stay the course, don't listen to the noise. We're proceeding as broadly as planned, maybe with a little course correction here, but much you know, as as as we always intended. The problem is in politics, you're always going to have noises off from people, whether they're want more money, whether they're whether they're ambitious, whether they're just like moaning. There's always these sorts of people that have their own views and we're hearing them more and more.
Well, and I guess we're here from kids Starman him South Prime Minister later today.
That's it from us for today. Alex Wickham, our political editor, thanks for joining us. If you like the program, don't forget to subscribe and give it five stars so other people can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
This episode was produced by twa Adibio and I Order Engineer was Sure and Faster Machia.
I'm James Wilcott and I'm Lizzie Berden. We'll be back with more tomorrow. This is Bloomberg.
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