Transcript: Labour’s manifesto — where will the money come from?

This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘Labour’s manifesto: where will the money come from?’

[MUSIC PLAYING]

George Parker
A promise of wealth creation or a tax trap. What’s in the Labour party manifesto? Welcome to Political Fix from the FT with me, George Parker. Coming up, Sir Keir Starmer promises voters a decade of national renewal. So what’s the price tag on that? I’m afraid Lucy Fisher can’t be with us today. She’s currently on the 19th hole of a golf course in Puglia, no doubt eating tortelloni with Giorgia Meloni at the G7 summit. But I’m joined by a stellar cast to discuss the latest on the Labour manifesto and the state of the election campaign three weeks in. Welcome to the FT’s Miranda Green.

Miranda Green
Hello, George.

George Parker
And hotfooting it from Manchester, where the Labour manifesto launch took place, is FT politics reporter Rafe Uddin.

Rafe Uddin
Hi, George.

George Parker
Plus, we’re joined on a special occasion by the FT’s consumer editor and host of the FT’s Money Clinic podcast, Claer Barrett.

Claer Barrett
Well, thanks for having me.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

George Parker
Now before we start, Rafe, tell us what it’s been like on the Labour battle bus. What’s the food like and what is the mood like?

Rafe Uddin
Well, it’s been a fun four days travelling around with the Labour party. I think we’ve probably stopped in about six or seven towns, sometimes towns where we probably didn’t need to stop in, tracking Keir Starmer as he makes various different visits; visiting primary schools, visiting technical colleges, engaging with apprentices and young children as he sets out his mission for the election and government. But the snack situation on the bus, you ask? 

George Parker
That’s the key thing.

Rafe Uddin
Well, very bad coffee but fantastic snacks: multipacks of Kettle chips and plenty of extra chewing gum, with Labour-adorned tables.

George Parker
Now, I think it’s useful to point out this is not the same as the battle buses that Miranda you and I have been on in the past, where normally the leader of the party would be on the bus with the journalists right at the back in a sort of suites where you’ll occasionally be ushered in to do a brief interview between stops. It doesn’t sound like that, does it?

Miranda Green
No, I think it’s all more hyper-controlled. In the chaotic old days that we remember fondly, George, there was always the chance that somebody would wander to the back of the bus, share a cup of tea and blurt something out, which is what the journalists lived for and the aides lived in fear of.

George Parker
It does sound much more controlled today. Well, look, let’s start with the Labour party and the launch of the party’s manifesto in Manchester on Thursday. Keir Starmer said Labour was the party of wealth creation, but at the same time he announced several new taxes on wealthy people. Now, Miranda, how do the politics of that work?

Miranda Green
So it’s interesting this because clearly the whole approach to this election is, as we know, one of caution in terms of Labour not wanting to screw up its enormous polling lead and also not wanting to kind of frighten the horses about what it might do, even with a very, very large majority that the polls indicate it might get. And so the party was expected to not produce any surprises this week in the manifesto. Indeed, there aren’t surprises.

But I think what has surprised people slightly is actually the kind of overall tone. So you flagged up wealth creation, but there’s also quite a strong tone of sort of social justice and even class politics arguably in there. So the wealth creation, we’ve got to get growth back in the economy, we want to be the party that does business with business is kind of balanced with we’re going for, you know, almost writing the wrongs, the burning injustices that Theresa May referred to on her first day in Downing Street in terms of lack of opportunities and redistribution. There was a lot of talk about redistribution and trying to redefine it. Obviously, it was launched in Manchester. Levelling up is the unfinished mission of the Boris Johnson government. There was that sort of more traditional Labour approach, I thought.

George Parker
It’s interesting, isn’t it, because up until now it’s always been easy to forget that this is actually a centre-left party standing for election. But as election day approaches and the Labour lead remains rock solid at about 20 points, you get the impression that Keir Starmer’s more willing to talk a bit more about that.

Now Rafe, you were there for the launch. The general vibe of the manifesto, I think, was supposed to be mainly about reassurance. There were no rabbits out of the hat, as Keir Starmer pointed out. Did it feel a bit flat?

Rafe Uddin
I mean, I don’t think it felt particularly flat in terms of this is the first occasion where he pulls together all the string that they’ve been trailing for months, if not weeks, into a coherent message launched from the Co-operative headquarters in Manchester. As Miranda says, there’s an, emphasis on the party’s centre-left credentials. Here is the headquarters of an organisation that champions the values of this party. The manifesto is written in a sweepy way that focuses on, well, the prose reads as more centre-left than some of Keir’s interviews. But in terms of the actual sort of ability to pull a rabbit out of the hat, well, he said, you know, it’s not a pantomime. If you want that, head over to Clacton and go see Nigel Farage.

George Parker
Yeah. What’s the mood like in the in the party at the moment? The people we speak to, I think they’re quietly confident, to put it mildly but, you know, increasingly confident, it’s fair to say, isn’t it?

Rafe Uddin
I think so. I think there were lots of smiles as they sort of thought, well, the manifesto has been launched without much problems. There was a protest but they’re used to that now.

George Parker
Well, it played into his hands, didn’t it? So sort of we’re no longer a party of protest. We’re a party of government. It was almost like he might have planted the heckler in the hall.

Rafe Uddin
I believe the heckler walked in with all the journalists. But as you sort of say, it does play into his argument that, you know, they believe that the party has changed since its time under Jeremy Corbyn and he’s steered the ship through that period. And there is an air of confidence and there’s also an air of, “Well, we better not mess this up in the next few weeks”.

George Parker
Hmm. He has been lucky with his hecklers, thinking back to the last party conference and to being sprinkled with glitter, which somehow seemed to help him.

Miranda Green
It did. All of these interventions help him, because then he can do the kind of workmanlike. I mean, I thought the decision for him to stand there in his shirtsleeves again, because it actually worked for him after the glitter bomb and to repeat that trick was clever.

I’m interested in this whole emphasis on renewal and this idea of, you know, give us two terms, a 10-year programme for national renewal because it also, again, this sort of emphasis on, you know, our centre-left heritage as a party for Labour, it kind of makes you think of those successful pitches of the past — you know, 1945, 1997, but also the ‘60s, you know, and Harold Wilson, the white heat of technology. Labour seems to do well when it at least creates some sort of mood that the country can change and can change together. And I think that’s what they were trying to create.

But I think it was so interesting, I know and what you wrote in response to it, George. You picked up this quote from Jeremy Hunt warning the electorate about Labour’s instincts. And I think it’s gonna be really interesting over the next week or so whether the Tories can find any sort of attack that picks up on some of this to spook parts of the electorate, or whether Labour is so far ahead that this is a done deal.

George Parker
So, Claer, we’re gonna come on to that now with you. And you understand money, I think, fair to say. (Claer laughs) We wanna talk about Labour’s tax plans, as Miranda was just alluding to there. Now in the manifesto, they ruled out increases in four big taxes: national insurance, income tax, VAT and also corporation tax. Collectively they amount, I think, to about 75 per cent of all the exchequer’s revenues. So they boxed themselves in. So what happens if they need to raise more money in government?

Claer Barrett
Well, they’re not upping the rates of income tax, of course, George. But neither are they ending this financial freeze that the Conservative party has put into place on the thresholds at which these taxes start to apply. So, I mean, in reality, whoever wins this election, if you get a pay rise, you start to move up that pay scale, then more and more of your pay is going to be siphoned off into paying more income tax and this stands to raise billions of pounds by the end of the next parliament. One projection I’ve seen today is that an extra 3mn people could be paying the higher rates of income tax. That’s 40 per cent tax by 2029. Now, it’s not just tipping into that tax bracket. It’s not just the income tax that you’re paying. It’s also affecting the amount of interest that you can earn tax-free on your savings. If you receive any dividends from your investment, the rate of tax that you’ll pay on that capital gains tax rates as well, linked to the sort of taxpayer you are. So there is this slow creep, creep, creep of dragging more people into higher bands.

But aside from that, lots of focus from the financial services industry on what Labour hasn’t said it will definitively rule out. Now, on the pensions point of view, they’ve quietly dropped plans to reintroduce the lifetime allowance, which would be a very, very political thing to have done. It wouldn’t have helped highly paid doctors who they’re trying to retain in the NHS. Obviously the big target is to improve health outcomes and fund the NHS better. So they’ve backed away from that. But they haven’t specifically ruled out changing pension tax relief. Now of course, if you’re a higher-rate taxpayer, then you get higher-rate tax relief on your pension contributions.

George Parker
There’s a lot of money in that, isn’t there?

Claer Barrett
And it’s very, very skewed, that system, towards rewarding the higher earners with the most tax relief for the pension contributions that they’re making. Now, what I did notice is that Labour is going to have a pensions review. Now it’s been quite sketchy in the language that’s used in the manifesto document, but quite rightly, it wants to review how pensions are working.

The basic problem is, George, none of us are paying enough in to funding our future retirement. That could potentially include the future of the state pension and the triple lock much further into the future. We’ve committed to the triple lock of course, which is hugely expensive, getting the pensioner vote in; haven’t gone as far as the Tories. But ultimately all of these promises are pretty unsustainable. So there are levers that they could still pull in the future. But like Miranda was saying, they’re going for this two-term promise, a long-term vision. They need to give the people who are listening to this podcast the long-term confidence to plan their own personal finances properly.

George Parker
And to reassure the business community and wealth creators that Britain will be a good place to be under a Labour government. And just on the pension tax relief, it’s important to point out that Rachel Reeves in the past, not the very distant past, said that she thought it was a good idea to cut the higher rate pension tax relief system. That is not Labour policy at the moment. They have no plans to do it. Another thing that she has refused to rule out now, but has previously advocated, is increasing taxes on unearned income, capital gains tax. Do you think that’s going to happen?

Claer Barrett
Well, I mean, this is a trickier area. Of course, if you were a hedge fund manager, then the plans to change the treatment of carried interest. So instead of charging you like a capital gains tax-type rate on income from an investment to actually charge income tax, which for most higher earners would be 45 per cent — that’s a big change for a small group of people, but nevertheless it is a change that has, you know, spiritual ramifications, you could say, for the finance community. It shows that Labour is prepared to intervene where they think there is an unfair advantage to certain groups of people within the tax system. And of course, capital gains tax is horrifically complicated. It’s very hard for people to actually understand how much they have to pay when they get a capital gains tax bill ‘cause there’s so much going on with the system. There’s been a review from the late, lamented Office of Tax Simplification under the current government that recommended making all kinds of changes, not just a capital gains tax, but how it interacts with inheritance tax, that other great political bugbear. So whether we will see more changes in future mean they’re the obvious revenue raising levers to pull . . . 

George Parker
When you’ve excluded all the main ones.

Claer Barrett
When you’ve excluded all the main ones. And as me and Rafe were saying before the recording, there’s also a question mark over how much revenue Labour might be able to raise from some of the other measures it’s put into place, like clamping down on tax evasion or indeed, taxing non-doms more. One of the emails I had in my inbox this afternoon from a finance guy was saying, well, lots of the non-doms have already left.

George Parker
Well, there’s a whole lot of them hope attached to this manifesto, I think in the public finances space, including the idea that growth will come to the rescue. But if you look at the Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts on this, leaving aside the fact that, as you say, Claer, Labour are committed to sticking to the Tory plans on freezing thresholds and allowances, they say that still amounts to real-terms annual cuts for unprotected departments of about 3.5 per cent a year — a hole of about £20bn. Now, if the Labour party decided it wants to fill that hole or if growth doesn’t come through, what do you think, Miranda? Do you think they will have to pull the tax lever that Keir Starmer says he doesn’t want to pull?

Miranda Green
Well, we should probably have a conversation, shouldn’t we, about our wonderful former colleague at the FT, Beth Rigby, and the moment that Rafe and I were discussing before we came on air, when she had to turn to the audience in the Sky interview with Keir Starmer and explain the form of words that he was using when he said, we have no plan to raise those taxes. And Beth actually turned to explain and to say this is politician-speak, you know, for we’re leaving the door slightly ajar. And that’s the question here, isn’t it, Claer? You know, Claer’s gone through for us all the options that might be there. The insult in politics used to be oh, you think there’s a magic money tree? It’s almost as if the political class has decided to use the idea of economic growth as a magic money tree that’s suddenly going to appear on July the 5th. You know, obviously, we all have to hope that an incoming government finds ways to ramp up economic growth in the economy, because on that depends the entire plan to, you know, rescue the public services and all the rest of it. But that’s not gonna happen quickly. That’s not gonna happen overnight.

And a lot of it also, I went to a very interesting conference this week, a huge new study on immigration to the UK as well as public attitudes to immigration. A lot of the existing growth is actually dependent on these incredibly high rates of non-EU immigration. So you’ve got a kind of political conundrum even if you want to sustain such anaemic growth that there is at the moment, let alone promote more. I mean, I think what will be really interesting is to see whether in the first few weeks and months of a Labour government, they can find enough of these things that don’t cost the exchequer, but that release investment into the economy, such as their big plans on housebuilding and infrastructure, for example.

George Parker
Planning and (inaudible) stuff. I mean, there’s always a possibility, of course, that growth comes back stronger than some people think. I mean, Nick Macpherson, the former Treasury permanent secretary, said he thinks that this is a good election to win and that growth will come to the rescue. And it’s possible that people will look at the country with fresh eyes with a new government and that they’ll look around the world. Where do they want to invest? Do they want to invest in France, where there’s a new round of political uncertainty? Do they want to invest in America, where, again, some political uncertainty? You know . . . 

Claer Barrett
We look a good prospect (overlapping audio) by comparison.

George Parker
Well, you never know.

Miranda Green
I think that’s a really important point actually, because, you know, people slightly take the mickey, don’t they, of Rachel Reeves saying stability would be a change. But it’s true. You know, to get away from the the chaotic impressions that have put off inward investment would be a big win.

George Parker
But given how much effort, Rafe, that has been put in by the Labour party and Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves in particular to woo business leaders, do you think there would be a sense of betrayal if Labour comes in, looks at the books, oh my goodness, it’s much worse than we thought and comes after them and their pensions potentially and their capital gains?

Rafe Uddin
I guess what they will try to do is go in and potentially do a spending review at some point. They haven’t apparently decided what kind of spending review they’ll do, whether they do a temporary sort of short period and then do a more extended period, maybe three, four years once they’re in office. So they are hedging on this. There’s always the possibility that it could be slightly better than expected. And that would be encouraging for them when they come into government.

What they haven’t spelt out and they’ve yet to sort of detail to any of the reporters in the lobby and those who were asking questions at the manifesto launch is what they expect growth to be from all the various initiatives that they’re going to put forward, whether it’s the “Green Prosperity Plan” or the “National Wealth Fund”, they haven’t spelt out what it’s going to look like. What they did suggest was, well, when they were last in government, they averaged about 2.1 per cent in growth versus 1.7 per cent in growth under the Conservatives for the past 14 years, so 0.4 percentage points . . . (overlapping audio)

George Parker
You know, the financial crash came in the way of those two (Claer and Miranda laugh) I think to be fair to the Conservatives. Now, Claer, you’re here. I can’t resist the possibility to talk to you about national insurance. We talked a bit about the . . . 

Claer Barrett
Mmm. Yummy.

George Parker
. . . Conservative party manifesto launch earlier in the week, but it’s intriguing to me that national insurance has been put front and centre of the Conservative election campaign. We all remember that Rishi Sunak actually wants to increase national insurance — a tax he now says he’s aspiring to abolish. And one of the things in the Tory manifesto, the idea of removing completely the main rate of national insurance paid by the self-employed by April 2029. If my memory serves me correct, this was a sort of rate he wants to put up after the Covid crisis. Is that correct? So what’s going on here?

Claer Barrett
I was very surprised to see this overture towards the self-employed in the Conservative manifesto, because during the pandemic, I was one of many journalists who campaigned fiercely for the self-employed to be recognised by the furlough scheme because at first, there was absolutely no support in place for self-employed people. Then some was brought in, but it was more limited. And then large groups of people were still excluded from that, if they were self-employed — company director, for example. And, you know, lots of businesses failed. These are the backbone of British business — you know, people who are entrepreneurial, starting firms, employing people. And the groups that I speak to, their members still feel incredibly betrayed by the Conservatives from that period.

So to see this sop (inaudible) to we’re gonna abolish Class 4 national insurance payments — national insurance is a horrifically complicated tax, like so many British taxes. I mean, that was very, very unexpected. It’s been costed. It’s gonna cost them several billion pounds a year. Will it be enough to make that community want to vote for the party again? I mean, that’s the real killer here.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto, interestingly, went much further on the issues of taxes for self-employed people. IR35, this is the treatment of the tax of contractors — people who aren’t technically employees of a company, but the Revenue might think they are — all kinds of really big cases in the news — you know, TV presenters — Adrian Chiles is one that’s going through court. It’s taken 10 years and it still hasn’t reached a resolution.

The Liberal Democrats would do a lot more on resolving IR35, other thorny problems relating to the loan charge affecting contractors and the whole way that the gig economy operates, because there’s around 5mn people who are freelancing in some capacity in the British economy. The labour market needs it. You know, we need the flexibility. Employers want it, but everyone is terrified of putting a foot wrong, not paying the right taxes and retrospectively, ending up in trouble. And that’s really something that has deeply affected self-employed people in the last parliament.

George Parker
Interesting. And one of the reasons why, of course, chancellors quite like national insurance is you can put it up because people don’t really understand what it is. But equally, the reverse seems to be happening to the Conservatives. They keep cutting it and no one seems to give them any credit. Now let’s be brutally honest about this. Looking at the opinion polls, it seems to me we probably shouldn’t waste too much time studying the fine print of the Conservative party manifesto.

Miranda, what do you make of the new Tory tactic, which we first reported earlier in the week, of the Conservatives urging people to vote for them so that they can provide a strong opposition to Keir Starmer’s government — in other words, to avoid a Labour supermajority, as Grant Shapps put it? It’s a bit early to throw in the towel, isn’t it?

Miranda Green
It’s extraordinary. I have literally never heard anything like it in all the general elections that I’ve taken an interest in, which is very many at this point, being quite long in the tooth. And to do so, you know, just before halfway through a six-week campaign, I mean, what are they gonna say? Are they gonna keep this up for the next three weeks in the desperate hope that some, you know, former Tory voters come back onside in fear of a kind of socialist, one-party state? It’s extremely peculiar.

I did think there was a flavour of this, though, already before they, you know, took this tack. I remember hearing an interview with James Cleverly, the home secretary, in which he said very early on in the first week of the campaign, well, I’m gonna continue fighting right up until the last minute, which is what you usually hear a party that’s really on the skids saying, you know, the day before polling day. And so I did think, you know, they must be looking at private polling in a lot of those seats and thinking that they’re an absolute goner.

It will be interesting to see whether it works. I think there actually might be some mileage in this for some of their former voters, particularly if you do combine it, as we’ve been discussing, with some of the kind of flavour and atmosphere of the political vision behind the Labour plan.

You know, if you could sort of scare a sort of few percentage of people back into the Tory column, you know, at this point, if you’re staring death in the face and you’re thinking, my goodness, we might be down to fewer than 100 MPs — which I think is not an unreasonable prospect for the Tories — you know, you might be into the game of marginal gains, you know, and that sort of scare tactic could be a marginal gain.

George Parker
But also particularly aimed at voters thinking of voting for Reform UK, who I think that the Tory private polling suggests might be concerned about the prospect of an unrestrained Labour government. So it’s obviously aimed at those, but an incredibly defensive strategy, and as you say, quite early on in the campaign.

Now Rafe, you were watching the Sky News debate in Grimsby on Wednesday night. What did you make of the performance by Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak?

Rafe Uddin
Keir Starmer was responding to lots of questions about his time in service of the cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn, the leftwing leader of the party, and he was pressed on this point about running on a manifesto that was much more heavy on the public spending and borrowing than his current message. And he said, well, you know, the party has changed. Corbyn’s no longer a member. I didn’t expect us to win.

George Parker
That was an extraordinary line, wasn’t it? I endorsed Jeremy Corbyn as a future prime minister because I knew he’d never be prime minister. I mean, what an extraordinary thing to say.

Rafe Uddin
And it is an extraordinary thing to say. And then he also goes on to say, well, you know, when I became Labour leader on a raft of pledges that were much more sort of leftwing, well, things have changed. I’ve changed the party to . . . 

George Parker
Uncharitable people might say that he says what he needs to say at any given time, which might make you regard what he said about the Labour manifesto and that potentially, if you are being sceptical about this. Now, what do you make of Rishi Sunak’s performance, Rafe? It looked to me like not just a deflated politician, but almost a defeated politician.

Rafe Uddin
Well, I think what he was having to do is arrive at that debate and defend a 14-year record in government, most of which he wasn’t really around for. He tried to move it towards going, well, look at my record in office, look at the past 18 months. Net migration has fallen while I’ve been in office and in charge of this party. But people are not going to quickly forget the “mini” Budget of Liz Truss. They’re not going to forget the Covid period under Boris Johnson and Partygate. And they’re also not going to forget the quite rough, rough waves of the aftermath of the 2016 referendum. All of that is baggage he had to carry into that debate. So actually it was quite tricky for him to come out of it swinging, really.

George Parker
I’d like to just make a little plug here for a couple of articles we’ve run in the FT this week. We’ve done a kind of audit of 14 years of Conservative rule.

Claer Barrett
I enjoyed reading that.

George Parker
With some amazing charts by our colleagues in the stats department, and some quite interesting interviews. We interviewed George Osborne, Michael Gove. I also spoke to Nick Clegg — you don’t hear from very often these days — talking about how the coalition government is the most forgotten government in history, not least because his own party doesn’t want to admit it ever happened. (Laughter) So it’s quite, quite entertaining. But anyway, if you have a chance, I would advise you to read that. I’ve put free links to those in the show notes.

Miranda, were you watching the Sky debates, the broadcast? What did you make of Rishi Sunak’s demeanour?

Miranda Green
Well, it’s sort of, listening to Rafe’s excellent description of it there, it’s almost as if sort of Sunak is a kind of reverse King Canute, because, you know, the Tory tide is going out. There is nothing he can do to stop it. And he is just sort of stood there at the edge, you know, with the water going out and he’s left stranded on the shore. And as you say, you know, he’s not entirely a kind of clean skin anyway as a prime minister, because, you know, he was Boris Johnson’s chancellor, even though he, you know, did resign towards the end as part of the attempt to bring Johnson down. You know, he himself is a strong Brexiter, so he, you know, still wants to argue that there are Brexit benefits.

George Parker
Not as often as he used to.

Miranda Green
Not as often as he used to. Nobody does as often as they used to. And he hasn’t actually, during his 18 months in power, he really didn’t manage to distinguish this time of his premiership from what has gone before. He tried to sort of have it both ways by disavowing the bad things, you know, and trying to claim that he was the change candidate. You remember the five minutes that he tried to claim he’s the change candidate? That didn’t work. So, you know, he has many faults as a prime minister. The whole 14 years is not his fault but he’s been punished for it inevitably by the electorate.

Claer Barrett
Well, George, I’m afraid I’m going to rule myself out of commenting on the Sky News debate. As a personal finance expert, I save money by not subscribing to Sky. (Laughter)

George Parker
Well, a bit like the prime minister, in fact, or his family, at least when he was growing up.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

George Parker
OK, well, that’s almost all we’ve got time for today. Miranda, what are you gonna be looking out for in the next week of the campaign? We’ve reached the halfway point. What do you think’s coming down the track?

Miranda Green
Well, there’s a long way to go still, isn’t there, George? And I can’t help but feeling that although we’ve had lots of kind of drama already, that can’t be it for the next three weeks. And I wonder whether some of the sort of slight pre-election honeymoon gloss on the opposition parties. You know, there might be some grumpy Fleet Street editors somewhere saying, you know, find me something wrong with either Keir Starmer’s team or even, you know, Ed Davey, who seems to be having a brilliant campaign so far. There hasn’t been that much scrutiny, and I’m just wondering whether there’s a row to come.

George Parker
Claer, what are your thoughts?

Claer Barrett
I think we’re gonna see lots more rows over the minutiae of tax policy. It’s the obvious attack card for the Tory party to say that Labour has secret backdoor plans to raise taxes. And as we’ve discussed, the wording in the manifesto didn’t completely rule out tweaks and changes that might happen in future. So anything that would really plunge a knife into the heart of wealthy Tory voters — things like pension tax relief, inheritance tax, future reforms to the Isa regime, capital gains tax, any kind of rumours or worry that can be whipped up because there is so much worry at the moment — lots of FT readers who are contacting me saying, should I take my 25 per cent tax-free lump sum from my pension now? I don’t need it, but I’m worried that a future Labour government might take it away. You know, that’s quite typical of the thoughts going through the minds of a lot of the electorate.

And on Labour’s part, I think we’ll get an awful lot of reassurance, not just from Sir Keir Starmer but from Rachel Reeves as well, the chancellor and reassurance to the business community, who she’s been courting so effectively for the last year.

George Parker
Well, hopefully we’ll be hearing a bit more from Rachel Reeves in the pages of the FT and online, of course, over the next few days. Yeah.

Rafe, what are you looking forward to in the campaign? You’re probably looking forward to drinking that beer that’s in front of you.

Rafe Uddin
Well, so I’ve committed to not drinking for the campaign, which feels like a mistake.

Miranda Green
And me, too, Rafe. It’s awful, isn’t it? I don’t know why I said this to myself. I’m sorry.

Rafe Uddin
But I’m . . . Well, quite tempted. We’ve got one of a hundred “Beth Rigbeers” from the Sky debate that were brewed for the Sky News debate. And I’m tempted to open that up in the coming days and sit back and just and relax for a little bit. I will be probably travelling up to the North East and parts of the country like Boston and Skegness, where Reform UK might be making advancements to actually see what the temperature is like for that party, which is hoping to to replace the Conservatives as the main opposition, because that’s really, I think, where tensions might inflame in the next few weeks.

George Parker
I totally agree with that.

Miranda Green
George, what do you think’s gonna happen next week?

George Parker
Well, I think Rafe’s gonna drink that bottle of beer. And I should just say that it’s called Beth Rigbeer. Just a tribute I think we should pay to our former FT colleague Beth Rigby with anyone listening. So many of our listeners were watching that Sky exchange. I thought she did a fantastic job, just the exact correct mix of, you know, sounding like a human being, but asking some really deep, penetrating questions.

Miranda Green
Unfortunately, Beth’s not standing for prime minister.

George Parker
Alas, not! So what else am I looking forward? So I’m looking forward to seeing a bit more of Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, in water-related situations. I mean, he’s been . . . people calling him Centre Parc Dad, aren’t they? But actually, it’s really interesting. Some people say it’s frivolous. You know, these are serious times. It seems to me, and you were alluding to this earlier, Miranda, he’s running a blinder of a campaign, and there’ve been some opinion polls picking that up. I know that the YouGov poll was taken, I think, around the time when the Lib Dem manifesto was launched so they’re getting a bit more publicity than you would expect. But it put the Lib Dems up to 14 or 15 points, I think. Now that’s probably a blip. You can’t base things on one poll. But just anecdotally, talking to people, particularly younger people, they’ve sort of seemed to have achieved something there with someone that no one had ever heard of, rather boring-looking, middle-aged bloke, and actually made the campaign seem fun.

Miranda Green
Yeah. And also actually catapulted some important issues into the campaign that otherwise would have been ignored, such as social care.

George Parker
And the video that the Lib Dems made of Ed Davey looking after his disabled son, really impressive.

Miranda Green
Really moving video.

George Parker
So listen, that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. We’ll be back on Tuesday with Lucy Fisher in the host’s chair again for a campaign catch-up. Do check out the free links we’ve put in the show notes. They’re articles we’re making available on subjects discussed in this episode. There’s also a link there to Stephen Bush’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free.

Political Fix was presented by me, George Parker, and produced by Audrey Tinline. Manuela Saragosa is the executive producer. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. Studio engineering by Andrew Georgiades and Rod Fitzgerald. And Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Thanks for joining us.

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